Medical Illustration and History
bioephemera | March 6, 2011
Lest any of my faithful readers think they're the only ones whose wonderful linky suggestions I don't seem to get around to posting, my boyfriend sent me this and I didn't post it, and apparently it's on the Daily Dish and 3QD today & he's all like "why didn't you post it sooner? Didn't you get my email??"
Sigh.
So for the record: Brian Dettmer is amazing. He makes these sculptures by carving away - not adding or repositioning - the pages of old illustrated books. And another thing that's really cool: letting the blogosphere (that's me!) disseminate and respond to his work is part of…
bioephemera | February 13, 2011The placebo effect, of course!
A video by Daniel Keogh (Twitterfeed) and Luke Harris.
h/t Ed Yong.
bioephemera | February 10, 2011Okay, I knew that planets are big, intellectually, but a well-done graphic is worth a thousand words, and a pretty HD video is even better. Brad Goodspeed made this video to suggest what other planets would look like, if they orbited Earth at the same distance as the Moon does. I've embedded it, but you should seriously watch it in HD, full-screen for maximum effect.
Scale from Brad Goodspeed on Vimeo.
I have nightmares like that. Seriously. But is the video accurate?
In addition to being full-on creepy, Brad's video produced a fascinating discussion in the comments and on various sites…
bioephemera | February 4, 2011
PMS Quilt, 2008
hand embroidered and crocheted pantyliners
Laurel Roth
Yes, that is just what it says it is: a collection of pantyliners embroidered with profanity.
One thing is clear about artist Laurel Roth: she is not afraid to make viewers uncomfortable. Her series "Hope Chest" is constructed of hygenic accessories embroidered with "off-kilter reflections on biology, fertility, and the ever-changing roles of women" - like the f-word. Embellished with beads, rose thorns, and crochet, the embroideries are twee, kitschy decor - or they would be, if not for their bluntly worded messages.…
bioephemera | January 25, 2011
I think DNA is amazing. I think biotech inspires great design. And if you've read this blog at all, you know I love sciart. But I just cannot understand the new infogenetics product from DNA 11 - the company behind that trendy gel electrophoresis wall art. While I'd normally just say "I don't get it" and move on, DNA 11 claims that their "augmented art" is "the ultimate intersection of biology, art and technology." I don't know how that could get more squarely in the BioE wheelhouse. So let's take a closer look at how, exactly, biology and art intersect in the "Ancestry Portrait" (pictured…
bioephemera | January 17, 2011Observatory is hosting another great event tonight:
From Heumann Heilmittel, "Eine Reise durch den menschlichen Körper" (1941)
Body Voyaging: an illustrated lecture with Kristen Ann Ehrenberger
Date: TONIGHT, Monday, January 17th
Time: 8:00 PM
Admission: $5
Presented by Morbid Anatomy
We human beings have a seemingly insatiable desire to experience the bodies underneath our skins. While many scholars have treated the subject of looking into or through bodies via medical imaging, one perhaps understudied trope is that of "body voyaging." A few writers and artists have imagined what it…
bioephemera | January 16, 2011
Caption for non-PhDs: aren't these sciencepunk brain ice cubes awesome? BRAIN FREEZE!
Caption for PhDs: Still hoping against hope to celebrate your thesis defense in style? Try cocktails with roughly anatomically accurate cortical ice cubes. [Look at it this way: even after six years of beating your bruised cerebrum against intransigent experiments and unsympathetic advisors, you can still out-think and out-publish a chunk of solidified H2O! Take comfort in that, have a stiff drink, be liberal with the bitters - and good luck with those postdoc applications.]
P.S.: They're on sale here, or…
bioephemera | January 13, 2011Isis the Laboratory Goddess sent me a Buzzfeed link featuring this incredible anatomical gown:
The artist/seamstress deserves credit for what appears to be an incredibly elaborate embroidered stiff satin gown that, on different panels, depicts circulatory, skeletal, muscular and pulmonary systems. Wow. I can't figure out who made it, so if you know the original source, please email me the link so I can update the post with the creator's information Mystery solved! The photo is by miyake juin, from a Fashion Week event at Shih Chien University. The gown's designer is Chinese; I direct you to…
bioephemera | January 11, 2011The NYT has a great little article about Chevalier Jackson, a turn-of-the-century doctor who kept a collection of foreign objects removed from people's throats. Dr. Jackson
"preserved more than 2,000 objects that people had swallowed or inhaled: nails and bolts, miniature binoculars, a radiator key, a child's perfect-attendance pin, a medallion that says "Carry me for good luck." . . . He was so intent on assembling his collection that he once refused to return a swallowed quarter, even when its owner threatened his life."
On February 18, the Mutter Museum, which owns Jackson's collection,…
bioephemera | January 10, 2011. . . from gun violence.
A new PSA campaign is based on artwork by artist Francois Robert. Via fubiz.
bioephemera | January 3, 2011
Classes start today for some of us. Are you ready for spring semester? Remember high school, when a spanking new, funky bookbag could recharge your entire dreary January outlook? CraftieRobot has a collection of functional canvas bookbags emblazoned with vintage anatomical art, like the ones above and below. These are fun and surprisingly affordable - I might get one for myself!
bioephemera | January 1, 2011
Michael Reedy's drawings are like 1980s Visual Man and Woman models plopped down in a half-excavated quarry of visual and literary allusions. He achieves a cut-paper, graphic feel by composing on superimposed planes, sort of like a stage set, with strategic uses of outlining and negative space. And he is a master of figure drawing (he teaches it, so he'd better be). When an artist really knows figural anatomy, he/she doesn't need to do anything flashy with it: you can just tell.
While it's not one of the overtly anatomical drawings (like malum E, above), I'm totally captivated by Blash, a…
bioephemera | December 29, 2010
I have no idea how I missed this before the holidays (sorry!), but NBDesigns has a line of oxidized silver embryo jewelry that is pure vintage lab-chic. The embryonic mice are particularly adorable:
And, on the less-cute, more-sciency end of the spectrum, her embryonic chicks look just like illustrations in an old dev bio textbook:
I should also note, since we are coming up on Valentine's Day, that she makes Erlenmeyer flask earrings and pendants with little hearts. (You can also request a glass heart worked into the chain of the zebrafish embryo pendant, or check out her sloth & heart…
bioephemera | December 22, 2010
National Museum of Health & Medicine has an amazing flickrstream of vintage medical photographs and other ephemera. Lately they've been adding diagnostic/documentary photos of Civil War soldiers, as well as some military propaganda posters (anti-VD and anti-food waste, of all things). This series of photos of a lab setup for measuring cranial capacity are my favorites. Check out the handled basket of skulls! And they're using an "insufflator!" I did not even know that was a word.
Happy holidays to our friends at Bottled Monsters and thanks for all the wonderful photos!
bioephemera | December 21, 2010
To Hold You Again
Chris Peters
Artist Chris Peters just wrapped up a winter show at Santa Monica's Copro gallery. I've blogged about his work before; it's inspired by vintage medical illustrations, but his agonized skeletons are ripped from their anatomical atlases to brood in Hopper-esque gas stations, Mad Men-like interiors, and smoky chiaroscuro. Whether you find his work creepy, Goth-chic, spiritual, or even humorous, it's a skilled and thoughtful reboot of the classic tropes of medical illustration.
I'm sorry I didn't get this posted before his latest show closed, but Copro has a…
bioephemera | December 17, 2010Google Labs just released a new "experiment" - Body Browser. You have to upgrade to Google Chrome beta if you don't already have it, but when you do, you can play with a 3-D, rotatable reconstruction of a (female) human body. Sliders let you fade the circulatory, skeletal, muscular, and nervous systems in and out over the body organs; you can toggle labels on and off, and you can zoom, spin, and rotate in a way that would only be cooler if it were on a touchscreen iPad. (Yeah, that's what I said, Google. Do it!) Check out this screenshot:
Toggle a few sliders and you can wrap the vessels and…
bioephemera | December 13, 2010This is un freaking real.
My friend John O at Armed With Science has dug up a classic animated film produced for the National Naval Medical Center in 1973. It starts with an awards ceremony for the "Communicable Disease of the Year," hosted by the Grim Reaper (who turns out to know a lot about medical history.)
The top prize is won by the Dracula-esque Count Spirochete (AKA syphilis), over the vociferous objections of a shortlist of other diseases, including smallpox ("I've scarred and disfigured millions of people!") and gonorrhea (who resembles a lavender Tribble with a pitchfork). The…
bioephemera | December 10, 2010
Diptheria vaccinations in the 1920s
The town of Leicester was a particular hotbed of anti vaccine activity and the site of many anti-vaccine rallies. The local paper described the details of a rally: "An escort was formed, preceded by a banner, to escort a young mother and two men, all of whom had resolved to give themselves up to the police and undergo imprisonment in preference to having their children vaccinated...The three were attended by a numerous crowd...three hearty cheers were given for them, which were renewed with increased vigor as they entered the doors of the police cells."…
bioephemera | November 30, 2010Dave Hone's blog, Archosaur Musings, is hosting a wonderful series of interviews with paleoartists - artists and illustrators who specialize in resurrecting lost species for scientific publications, popular media, and/or fine art. Check out Mark Witton and Todd Marshall for particularly interesting perspectives.
Not only are these pretty posts with lots of eye candy, they're also excellent windows into that varied career options for anyone considering freelance medical or biological illustration. Kudos to Dave Hone for this truly useful (and I'm sure very time-consuming) series of sciart…
bioephemera | November 28, 2010Yes, that's what I said - Gunther von Hagens has a gift shop, and he's selling earrings and necklaces made of slices of equine and bovine genitalia. Don't like ostentatious, plastinatious penis jewelry? There's always a bull penis vasculature walking stick.
I had to blog these, but honestly, I didn't really want to know they existed at all.