conference & exhibition
3rd Oct AEIMS DAY
9:45- 10:15
Mike Sappol
Death, personhood, and specimens: Competing ethical claims and imperatives; or Who and what are anatomical collections good for?
"You could take this specimen as a forlorn icon of divided personhood… But what was the anatomist trying to demonstrate? We don’t know. It’s uncatalogued. Unprovenanced. Awaiting further research if there are threads to follow.
It’s an object in a collection, not a person. But, if they aren’t persons, specimens still sometimes pull on us. Like a cloud covering the sun, we somehow feel both the presence and the loss. An existential penumbra. Somewhere between life and death. Past and present.
And, we’re prompted to identify and project. We see ghosts, conjure voices. By nature, we’re animists. We put ourselves, and our social relations and our history, into things with faces. And see faces in things. In classical rhetoric, the term is prosopopoiea: we imagine that utterances emanate from a dead person or really anything. You might get a story or hear a cry of pain. A reproach. A joke. A murmur. An oracle. We use the object to stage a séance. Ok, it’s poetic. Political. Magical. But sooner or later the trance has to end. Snap out of it! Get back to business..."
10:15 - 10:50
Francis Wells
Leonardo and Physiognomy: A paradox?
The causes of facial appearance were embodied in the medieval study called Physiognomy. This had developed from the Greek , with Aristotelian elements. It was developed in conjunction with the study of the Soul and the four Visceral Humours. It was regarded as “a science of Nature by application to animals and to man”.[1]Leonardo was well informed about the pseudo-science of Physiognomy and wrote about it, but although seeming to embrace it at times, describing people’s appearances in terms that a Physiognomist would recognise, at others, along with Alchemy and Necromancy, declared it to be fanciful at best. What was his true position on this? This presentation will explore this apparent paradox.
[1] The quotation is from ‘Liber Phisionomiae’ by Michael Scot. A copy was owned by Leonardo
Claudia Pama
Pareidolia: The Science and Art of Seeing Beyond Form
In my presentation I will explore the phenomenon of Pareidolia—our brain's tendency to perceive meaningful patterns, such as faces, in random or ambiguous stimuli. This cognitive bias not only reveals much about our perceptual processes but also has significant implications across various fields, including art, anatomy, and medical education. After an introduction to Pareidolia I will discuss how the brain contributes to this phenomenon and why certain individuals may experience it more vividly. I will further discuss how artists have made use of this phenomenon and what its role is in medical illustration and anatomy. Time permitting, I will touch upon the broader questions posed by pareidolia, including its impact on our understanding of reality, identity, and consciousness.
11:00 - 11:30
Arthur I. Miller
The Private Lives of AIs
Today's AIs are larger than life. They have shown creativity in cracking complex board games like chess and Go and defeating Grand Masters. They write decent prose and are getting better at it, produce wacky and sometimes amazing art and, more seriously, enable astounding advances in medical research. So is there more to them than numbers and probabilities - something that is heading towards even greater creativity, maybe even consciousness? After all, we humans are made up of inert atoms and molecules, yet we have these qualities. I will explore all of this and take a good hard look at the private lives of today's astounding Generative AIs.
13:00 - 13:30
Pascal Coppens
The use of AI in healthcare in China
My presentation will cover topics such as health tradition, digital health, inclusion, trust in technology, demography, data, AI in healthcare, user adoption, personalized healthcare, infrastructure, Generative AI (ChatGPT-like).
13:30 -14:00
Andrew Burd
The Sexual Anatomy of Intimacy
The skin is my organ. It is the largest organ in the body and subserves multiple functions. Some of these functions are to keep us apart: the barrier functions purposed to maintain our unique identity. But whilst we want to be unique we also want to be desired. The psychosexual functions of the skin drive a global multibillion dollar industry. In this fundamentally depressing presentation I look at the dishonesty of the medical professionals and the delusions of the public that combine to create a world where sex is losing context.
14:00 - 14:30
Melissa Wert
A Brief History of Nursing: Told through the life, works, and artifacts of Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale is often known as the 'mother of modern nursing', through her care, compassion, and dedication she would forever shape the profession as a whole, and introduce revolutionary new theories for care that are used to this day. This talk will focus on the history of nursing told by a member of staff at the Florence Nightingale Museum. It will show how the profession has changed over time, with a special emphasis on 'the lady with the lamp', and finish at modern day with an introduction to the museum's newest exhibition, Caring Companions'. Drawing its inspiration on the words of Florence Nightingale, "A small pet is often an excellent companion..."
15:00- 15:30
Andrew Carnie:
The Very Edge of Anatomy of Art Making
From 2017 to 2020, I followed the work of the research team CANDO, Controlling Abnormal Network Dynamics using Optogenetics, at Newcastle University. The science group's investigation involved the use of gene therapy and brain implantation to control focal epilepsy. This approach can be applied to a range of further neurological disorders and the methodologies change human anatomy - architecture beyond what we currently know. I intended to make artwork to illuminate the science and its implications.
In 2021 I made work for the Anatomy Museum in Riga, on space travel. Then in 2022 I made pieces on brain implants for the Science Gallery Bengaluru, India. And, since then and until today, I have been inspired to try and make work about circadian rhythms, the patterns of day and night, their effect on sleep, the microbiome and the immune system; and a prevailing crisis in well-being, anxiety and sleeplessness, infecting city-based societies.
Questions arise about how our bodies cope with changes in work settings, unnatural spaces, outer space, the home, dislocation and alterations to the body's architecture, its organs. How do we cope and how are our bodies reacting? Can we make art on these topics? As artists, should we be working in this realm at all? The art space is the place where we can continue without restraint to dream of the future. But is this a 'step' too far?
How did this all play out in the works made for the final exhibitions, Illuminating the Self, shown in Newcastle in 2020, at the Hatton and Vane galleries simultaneously, for the Anatomy and Beyond show in Riga in 2021, for Psyche exhibition at the Science Gallery Bengaluru, in 2022 and later in the exhibition Being Human: Seeing Ourselves in 2023-24, at the West Down Gallery.
15:30 -16:00
Auriole Prince
Every Face Tells a Story: Exploring Identity and Bias in AI
Auriole runs Future Face AI a face changing technology company that creates hyper personalised experiences of how one can look in the future with lifestyle factors. Recent advances in AI technology are bringing new opportunities for everyone, but can also amplify bias in society.
16:00 - 16:30
Mark Roughley
"Should humans from the past exist as digital humans in the future?
Current 3D and 4D technologies are enabling the production of computer-generated characters for games and movies, which are overcoming the uncanny valley effect to create realistic digital humans that can move and speak with you. Digital toolkits from these industries are being adopted by facial reconstruction specialists in order to depict historic people from their skeletal remains, and for the public to interact with a person from the past. Opportunities exist for these digital humans to ‘live’ in current times and potentially forever; or as long as their computer files exist, but this poses a number of ethical questions. In this presentation, we will look to debate whether humans from the past should exist as digital humans in the future?
16:30-17:00
Wendy Birch
The Evolution of Anatomical Education: From Vesalius to AI and Beyond
This talk will explore the evolution of anatomical education, from the artistry and scientific rigour of Andreas Vesalius in the 16th century to the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and other digital tools in our modern era. Vesalius, often called the father of ‘modern’ anatomy, transformed the field by prioritizing human dissection over the reliance on ancient texts, particularly those of Galen. His masterpiece, De Humani Corporis Fabrica, combined meticulous scientific observation with detailed anatomical illustrations, offering unprecedented visual representations that set a new standard for anatomical education. These illustrations not only educated but also revolutionized the way anatomy was taught and understood.
Over the centuries, anatomical teaching has evolved through cadaveric dissection and the development of iconic anatomical atlases such as Gray’s Anatomy, which further integrated art and science. The use of medical imaging technologies such as X-rays, CT scans, and MRI in the 20th century offered a new perspective on living anatomy, enhancing traditional methods while highlighting the importance of visual learning.
The 21st century marks a new era where AI, virtual reality (VR), and augmented reality (AR) are at the forefront of anatomical education. These technologies provide highly interactive and immersive learning experiences, allowing students to perform virtual dissections, explore 3D anatomical models, and engage in AR simulations. AI further enhances this experience by personalizing education, providing real-time feedback, and assisting in interpreting complex medical images.
This presentation will trace these historical developments, emphasizing the interplay between art, science, and technology in anatomy education. From Vesalius’s groundbreaking illustrations to today’s immersive digital environments, this talk explores how visual and technological innovations continue to push the boundaries of how we understand and teach anatomy.
4th OCT MAA DAY
09:40- 10:00
Philip M Ball
Mudlarking on the Thames
It’s not what you find, it’s what you find out.
Definition of a mudlark:
A person who gains a livelihood by searching for iron, coal, old ropes, etc., in mud or low tide. Modern day Mudlarks are hobbyists who search the foreshore of the Thames at low tide in search of artefacts and small items of found treasure.
A brief history of London, its occupants, and their relationship with the river Thames, and what the found objects tell us about their lives.
My Mudlarking hobby re-started in 2018 with the gift of my Port of London Authority (PLA) Foreshore Permit, which allows limited access to parts of the foreshore and explore by ‘eyes only’ with a shallow dig depth of only 7cm. The river doesn’t offer up its treasure in chronological order, there is no telling what you might see from Roman pottery to modern day mobile phones and even guns.
I shall bring a few objects with me to pass around the audience.
10:00- 10:30
Nina Sellars
Fat Addendum
How does a new organ enter anatomy’s historical archives: is it as simple as making an addendum? If we begin with the axiom that before an organ can be ‘represented’ in the visual history of anatomy it first needs to ‘present’ experientially to an observer, what can we infer about this observer and their processes? Did they attend to the body differently? This paper engages these questions by giving thoughtful attention to the example of adipose tissue (body fat) and its contemporary recognition as an organ. The story of adipose tissue’s reclassification tells us as much about our perceptual abilities and the ways in which we construct anatomical knowledge, as it does about this vital component of the body.
These ideas are further explored through a discussion of Sellars’ artwork: Sentinels, a biological art installation comprising living human preadipocytes; Adipose Museum, a glass and photographic installation; and the conceptual arts project, Fat Addendum, designed as an inclusion, book eight, to Andreas Vesalius’ 1555 edition of De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem, made in collaboration with Jenifer Wightman.
10:30 - 11:00
Vivian Nutton
Tools, fluids and the Greek origin of organs
One of the major developments in the history of early Greek medicine over the last thirty years has been a greater interest in the less familiar texts in the so-called Hippocratic Corpus. The theory of the four humours is now seen as merely one of a large variety of alternatives to explain the workings of the human body. Some are based on fluids, others on notions derived from cookery, and still others from work processes involving tools, for which the Greek word is organon, hence organs. This presentation looks at the ways in which the word was used in medical writings, and how this notion of bodily tools could be integrated into wider system based on a balance of humours or fluids.
11:00 - 11:30
Tom Turmezei
“Radiology, anatomy, and a new wave of imaging”
My talk will reflect on how I have seen anatomy education evolve with more and more digital imaging over the years, leading on to some of the very latest techniques that I (and others) have used with a focus on the next edition of Gray’s Anatomy (due 2025).
One particular point of focus would be how clinical imaging has become a superb resource for finding and documenting anatomical variation, in which many thousands of scans can be searched for variants (rather than cadavers), and how this can be juxtaposed to a single piece of art of image that might aspire to represent “standard” anatomy - both extremely valuable in their own right but very different challenges. This would also be of relevance when it comes to generative AI and how we might consider what is a “true” image.
13:00 - 13:30
Martin Kemp
Leonardo and bio-mechanics
Leonardo da Vinci’s extensive drawings and notes devoted to anatomy do not arise in a medical context. He does not engage with surgery or “physic.” Rather, he was dedicated to the exposition of god’s supreme design. in which nothing was missing and nothing was redundant. His great set of drawings of the bones and muscles completed around 1510 expounds the form and functions of the bones and muscles in meticulous mechanical detail, probably in collaboration with the young Paduan doctor, Marcantonio della Torre. Leonardo undertakes new kinds of diagrammatic analyses of the mechanical systems of the body. His greatest realisation of mechanical mathematics in anatomy comes when he looks at the valves of the heart; in studying the heart he also conceived a casting technique that he had first adopted to determine the form of the ventricles in the brain, radically revising their traditional arrangement. In a range of portrayals from diagrammatic to pictorial and from static to dynamic, Leonardo’s anatomical research is unrivalled in revealing the mechanics of the human body.
13:30 -14:00
Sandra de Clerck
Investigating the narrative and expressive possibilities of glass ; The Blashka Collection
in my lecture I will talk about Leopold and Rudolf and Blaschka, a father-and-son duo from Bohemia, known for their extraordinary contributions to the art of glass modeling in the 19th century.
Renowned for their breathtaking glasswork, meticulous craftsmanship and innovative techniques, the Blaschkas created breathtakingly realistic glass models of invertbrates, and fauna & flora.
Their work served an educational purpose, bridging the gap between art and science.
14:00 - 14:40
Ruth Richardson and Brian Hurwitz
Post humans beyond the slab
A story which appeared in a pamphlet printed in London in the 1890s sold for one shilling. It recounts a social gathering in full swing one New Year’s Eve. In a London medical school, the corpses have come back to life and are chatting, singing. and speechifying when a medical student stumbles into their midst. He is recognised and welcomed, initially with some reserve, until he proves able to enter the spirit of the occasion. The narrative anticipates the relational values with which dissection will be endowed in the late twentieth century. Its surreal and post-humanist perspective emerges through the affective and moral agency of the once animate. No longer will cadavers be considered the ‘silent teachers’ of human anatomy, who inhabit the insensitive, asocial realm of the dead; instead, they are the vital co-producers and moral guardians of anatomical knowledge, who place demands on their dissectors.
16:10 - 16:30
Alexander Lukas Bieri
A choleric with a steady hand: Raoul Zingg's legacy in medical illustration
A glimpse into the work of one of the most gifted but also difficult characters in 20th Century medical illustration
16:30- 17:00
Mara G. Haseltine
The Age of the Anthroprocene: Exploring the Link between our Biological and Cultural Evolution
We are at a unique time in the history of our planet when for perhaps the first time a sentient being is aware of the possibility that they are responsible for a mass extinction event, in fact this will be the planets 6th mass extinction event. I believe it is the job to an artist to reflect their times and this epic story of the life and death of the biosphere as we know it is something that has come to consume all of my work. In this talk I will investigate the link between our cultural and biological evolution and the role of art as a tool to create the necessary the cultural shift towards a shared bio-ethic in which humans create symbiotic relationship to the environment and our shared biosphere based in the holistic concept of " Geotherapy ".