Week 3, The Medical Industry / Technology / Art

Orlan Gives Birth to her Beloved Self

As technology has progressed over the years and society has allowed for more freedom of thought and expression, so too has medicine been used for purposes beyond simply aiding human health and well-being. One subject mentioned during this week's lecture that particularly interested me was the idea of plastic surgery being used artistically. This idea in particular has redefined the common understanding of what might be considered "art," and has also pushed society to overlook cultural taboos, such as nudity and physical pain, in honor of artistic expression.

 

Orlan, a renowned French artist known for her unique and unorthodox artistic expression, has promoted and expanded the idea of human art in ways most artists would never dream to attempt. In the video to the left, Orlan reveals her thought process, claiming that materiality is of no importance to her. The idea is her main concern with her works, so she has performed and transformed her own body for the purpose of expressing unique ideas. With modern advances in biotechnology, she explains "I cultivate my cells." Narcissism, Orlan contends, is of utmost importance in exhibiting her plastic art in order to reflect her various perceptions and thoughts on feminism and the female's position in society.

The way in which biology has been used to express ideas and evoke feelings is not limited to surgical treatments, as we discover in the Pilobolus dance performance to the right. Here we notice the use of strength and dance techniques to symbolize biological and emotional relationships.

Throughout this week's lectures, we were further informed on the history of art and its weight in the advancement of anatomical teaching and discovery. It makes sense that art played such a heavy role in medicine, as it would be pretty tough to describe the shape and placement of body parts such as the hypothalamus or gallbladder without intricate illustrations. We see evidence of this as we recognize the detailed editions of every medical student's fundamental illustration-heavy reference book, Gray's Anatomy.

The images below display art techniques such as proportion, shading, and design to portray the complexity of the human body that every medical student must know.

Finally, we observe another interesting and new form of art from Diane Gromala's TED lecture, describing the elements of virtual reality environments used to treat chronic pain as an alternative or supplement to drug use. With the permission of technological advancement, medicine has been able to expand to unconventional forms that provide sensual conflict to permit distraction from cases of chronic pain. Art plays the prominent role in such forms of emotional medicine, as media artists design virtual environments specifically catered toward accessing unused parts of one's conscious, as one might access through meditation or mind-altering drugs. These few examples alone boggle my mind as to how much we can express and treat with technology; only time will tell what other fantastic discoveries will be made for entertainment, access, and design purposes in art.

Works Cited

"Anatomy of the Human Body." Edward Tufte. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 July 2014. 

French Artist Orlan: "Narcissism is Important." YouTube. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 July 2014. 

"Gray's Anatomy (Hardcover)." Tower Books. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 July 2014. 

Orlan. Orlan Gives Birth to Her Beloved Self. N.d. Google Images. Web. 13 July 2014. 

Pilobolus: A Performance Merging Dance and Biology. YouTube. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 July 2014. 

TEDxAmericanRiviera - Diane Gromala - Curative Powers of Wet, Raw Beauty. YouTube. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 July 2014.