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Biomedicine in museums

Nyt center for medicinske videnskabs- og teknologistudier ved Københavns Universitet

By Biomedicine in museums

Det nye Centre for Medical Science and Technology Studies (MeST) ved Københavns Universitet inviterer til åbningsevent torsdag den 2. december med forelæsninger af Sarah Franklin (“Life After In Vitro Fertilisation: Has biology become a technology?”) og Ken Arnold (“Art and Communication of Medical Science”).

Professor Sarah Franklin er en af verdens førende forskere inden for videnskabs- og teknologistudier. Hun er især kendt for sine banebrydende studier af reagensglasmetoden (IVF), kloning, mbryonforskning og stamcelleforskning. Hendes seneste bog handler om det klonede får, Dolly. Hun er en skarp analytiker, som kombinerer STS med antropologi, kønsforskning og kulturstudier. Hun har siden 2004 været professor på London School of Economics, hvor hun sammen med Nicolas Rose har ledet STS – centret BIOS.

Dr. Ken Arnold er Head of Public Programmes ved Wellcome Trust, hvor han bl.a. har været ansvarlig for fondens store satsning på samarbejdsprojekter mellem forskere og kunstnere. Han er primært kendt som initiativtager til og kreativ leder af Wellcome Collection, som i løbet af få år er blevet én af verdens mest omtalte offentlige arenaer for biomedicinsk forskningskommunikation. I 2010-2013 er han Visiting Professor ved Medicinsk Museion for at bidrage til arbejdet med at opbygge et forsknings- og praksisprogram for’public engagement with medical science and technology’.

Arrangementet finder sted torsdag d. 2. december 2010, kl. 15:00- 17:30 i det anatomiske teater, Medicinsk Museion, Bredgade 62, København K

Det vil være reception efter festforelæsningerne, med tid til at diskutere samt nyde et glas vin og lidt mad.

Centret, der markerer en ny satsning indenfor medicinske videnskabs- og teknologistudier i Danmark, er et samarbejde mellem forskere ved Afdeling for Sundhedstjenesteforskning og Medicinsk Museion, som begge er afdelinger ved Institut for Folkesundhedsvidenskab under Det Sundhedsvidenskabelige Falultet, Københavns Universitet. Centret ledes af professor Lene Koch, med professor Thomas Söderqvist, professor Signild Vallgårda, lektor Mette Nordahl Svendsen, lektor Klaus Høyer, adjunkt Jan Kyrre Berg Olsen Friis, adjunkt Henriette Langstrup samt en række postdocs og ph.d.-studerende som medlemmer.

Centrets formål er at tilbyde seminarer til all interesserede og valgfagskurser til studerende. Det indgår også i et tæt samarbejde med det nyetablerede forskeruddannelsesprogram for Medical Science and Technology Studies ved Det Sundhedsvidenskabelige Fakultet, der ledes af Thomas Söderqvist.

David Goodsell's cell-art

By Biomedicine in museums

The covers of most major scientific journals are plastered with beautiful, realistic pictures taken with the latest advances in microscope technology. This month’s Nature Medicine is no exception.

Few of these images, however, have the qualities of David Goodsell’s works of art. Goodsell, who is based at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, creates hyperrealist paintings that render the molecular world not as an abstract, diagrammatical space as we know it from biochemistry textbooks, but as a teeming, chaotic, dense and beautiful mess. They are simple, yet they portray the complexity and distinct organization of subcellular life in a way that no ‘real image’ can.

For example, Goodsell’s pseudocolor depiction of HIV — shown here in cross-section and incorporating all current information from structural biology and electron microscopy — gives a much-maligned pathogen a unique artistic quality.

Reminiscent of those of the Pre-Raphaelite painters, William Morris, and the Austrian symbolist Gustav Klimt, the hybrid ornamental-organic style of this and Goodsell’s other paintings give the molecular world a retro feel, bringing the cell and its contents closer to us and our lives. The challenge of putting biomedicine on display in museums and engaging the public at large is to make connections between the abstract visualizations of the molecular world and the lived existence of the postgenomic individual. It’s one of Goodsell’s great contributions that he offers a way to bridge this gulf.

Read more here (Nature Medicine, vol. 16, September, p. 943, 2010)

Museums as public dormitories where all risks are controlled

By Biomedicine in museums

Museums have become safe houses. Great public dormitories where art [or science?] sleeps after the officials testify that it has earned some rest. All risks are controlled and all rivalries canceled by the professionally cutting-edge and tolerant institution. They tell two stories. They are the official messengers of the mainstream and the dull record of whatever has happened to acquire power. But they tell another story: They are documents of the violence of canonization and they reveal themselves as belonging to power and discipline. There is no story of art without a story of cultural division and cultural denigration!

Quoted from The New Futurist Manifesto by Dave Beech, Andy Hewitt and Mel Jordan (The Freee Art Collective).

Sociale webmedier, videnskabs-, medicin- og teknologihistorie

By Biomedicine in museums

Er du interesseret i medicinhistorie og den sociale web? Selv den, som ikke taler svensk til daglig, kan få noget ud af den her session på de Teknik- och vetenskapshistoriska dagarna 2010 i Göteborg:

Sociala medier och vetenskaps- och teknikhistoria. Dags för teknik- och vetenskapshistoria 2.0?

Under de senaste 10 åren har sociala webmedier (wikis, blogs, Facebook, Twitter m.m.) revolutionerat hundratals miljoner människors sätt att använda webben. Vetenskaps- och teknologihistorisk samt STS-orienterad forskning och förmedling har däremot ännu inte förhållit sig särskilt aktivt till denna utveckling. Det är dock svårt att föreställa sig att dessa ämnen på sikt kan undgå att integrera sociala webmedier i sin praxis. I den här sessionen hade vi tänkt oss att reflektera över vilka konsekvenser sociala webmedier har för vår akademiska praxis – både idag och inom en överskådlig framtid. Vi kommer att ta utgångspunkt i våra egna erfarenheter av sociala webmedier och i en del aktuell forskning på området. I god social webmedie-anda vil vi gärna engagera konferensdeltagarna och sessionen kommer därför att organiseras som en kombination av korta inlägg och diskussion. Som förberedelse av sessionen kommer vi också att upprätta ett virtuellt rum på ett eller flera medier (Facebook? blog?) i september.

Hvis du er interesseret i at præsentere på konferencen, kontakt mig (som er sessionsansvarig): Thomas Söderqvist thss@sund.ku.dk.

Kulturklik — it's so much yesterday — om igen!

By Biomedicine in museums

Jeg var lige ved at sætte tastaturet i backgear i går da jeg fik en mail i indbakken, der fortalte, at organisationen Museer i København og Omegn (MIK i daglig tale) lige har skiftet navn til Kulturklik. Og fået en ny “visuel identitet”.

Formanden for MIK, Frank Allan Rasmussen, siger, at han er “yderst tilfreds” med det nye navn og identitet.

Jeg er meget uenig. Navnet Kulturklik er udtryk for en dyb misforståelse af, hvad museer handler om.

Museer handler ikke om at klikke sig ind på kultur på webben. Det kan godt være at nogen mener at man er med på vognen ved udsende digitale identitetssignaler. Men i min optik er man dermed snarere med på slæbevognen.

Efter femten år af digital eufori, begynder vi at forstå at museerne handler om noget hinsides web- og klik-kulturen. Museerne er locations for alle dem, der er ved at blive trætte af den digitale støj. Museerne er arnesteder for en post-digital materiel kultur.

Museer i København og Omegn er et godt retronavn. Det er ikke særlig spændende, det er ikke spor sexet eller cool. Men det er lige præcis, hvad de fleste museer i København og omegn faktisk handler om.

Det værste med navnet Kulturklik er altså, at det overfladisk set oser af ny og spændende digital “progressivitet”, men i virkeligheden er det dybt konservativt. Det peger bagud istedet for fremad. It’s so much yesterday. Om igen!

Læs mere om den nye “identitet” her.

Blogging about history of science and medicine

By Biomedicine in museums

If you write or read blogs that include history of science and medicine, you may be interested in filling in this short online survey posted by Jaipreet Virdi, a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto — it only takes a minute or two. Jaipreet explains the background for the survey here.

(Thanks, Rebekah, for the tip. Rebekah also recommends this link to a good list of blogs and twitter accounts with history of science content).

Horror podcast and medical theatre tours around Medical Museion during the '1700s — Globalization, Gossip and Greed' festival, Copenhagen

By Biomedicine in museums

This year’s Golden Days festival in Copenhagen is organized under the theme The 1700s – Globalization, Gossip and Greed — and we are part of it (of course).

On September 10, 8-10pm, Third Ear invites to a Horror Podcast evening in our main exhibition building (the Royal Surgical Academy from 1787), and there will also be guided tours in the anatomical theatre on 7, 13 and 19 September at 4pm.

See further: here and here.

Program for the conference 'Contemporary medical science and technology as a challenge to museums', Copenhagen 16-18 September

By Biomedicine in museums

Here’s the list of speakers at the 15th biannual conference of the European Association of Museums for the History of Medical Sciences, to be held at Medical Museion, 16-18 September 2010, on the theme ‘Contemporary medical science and technology as a challenge to museums´.

THURSDAY, 16 SEPTEMBER

  • Thomas Söderqvist: Why this conference now?
  • Kim Sawchuk: Biotourism and biomediation
  • Kerstin Hulter Åsberg: Uppsala Biomedical Center: A mirror of modern medical history – how can it be displayed?
  • Wendy Atkinson and René Mornex: A major health museum in Lyon
  • Robert Martensen: Integrating the physical and the virtual in exhibitions, archives, and historical research at the National Institutes of Health
  • Ramunas Kondratas: The use of new media in medical history museums
  • Danny Birchall: ‘Medical London’, Flickr, and the photography of everyday medicine
  • Joanna Ebenstein: The private, curious, and niche collection: what they can teach us about exhibiting new medicine

FRIDAY, 17 SEPTEMBER

  • Judy M. Chelnick: The challenges of collecting contemporary medical science and technology at the Smithsonian Institution
  • James Edmonson: Collection plan for endoscopy, documenting the period 1996-2011
  • John Durant: Preserving the material culture of contemporary life science and technology
  • Stella Mason: Medical museums, contemporary medicine and the casual visitor
  • Alex Tyrell: New voices: what can co-curation bring to a contemporary medical gallery?
  • Jan Eric Olsén: The portable clinic: healthcare gadgets for home use
  • Yin Chung Au: Seeing is communicating: possible roles of Med-Art in communicating contemporary scientific process with the general public in digital age
  • Nina Czegledy: At the intersection of art and medicine
  • Lucy Lyons: What am I looking at?
  • Henrik Treimo: Invisible World
  • Victoria Höög: The optic invasion of the body. Epistemic approaches to current biomedical images
  • Ken Arnold and Thomas Söderqvist: A manifesto for making science, technology and medicine museums

SATURDAY, 18 SEPTEMBER

  • Morten Skydsgaard: The exhibition ‘The Incomplete Child’: boundaries of the body and the guest
  • Sniff Andersen Nexø: Showing fetal realities: visibility, display, performance
  • Suzanne Anker: Inside/Out: fetal specimens through a 21st Century lens
  • Yves Thomas and Catherine Cuenca: Multimedia contributions to contemporary medical museology
  • Nurin Veis: How do we tell the story of the cochlear implant?
  • Jim Garretts: Bringing William Astbury into the 21st Century: the Thackray Museum and the Astbury Centre for Structural Molecular Biology in partnership
  • Adam Bencard: Being molecular
  • Roger Cooter and Claudia Stein: Visual things and universal meanings: aids posters, the politics of globalization, and history
  • Karen Ingham: Medicine, materiality and museology: collaborations between art, medicine and the museum space
  • Silvia Casini: Curating the biomedical archive-fever
  • Thomas Schnalke: Dissolving matters. The end of all medical museums’ games?

I’ll be back with more info soonish. See also the conference website.

Metaphors that both scientists and artists draw on

By Biomedicine in museums

Immanuel Kant didn’t like metaphorical thinking in science — and his rebuke of this ambiguous way of investigating the natural world is one of the pillars for the modern separation of art and science.

However, in a statement article published yesterday in an issue about art and science in the German journal Gegenworte  (#23, 2010), art historian Ingeborg Reichle and cell biologist Frank Rösl suggest that the arts and humanities can inform a new approach to, for example, cancer research, “because not only artists but also scientists work with images, symbols and metaphors, draw on their intuition and make use of coincidence”:

System theory, non-linearity, dissipation and emergence are today research concepts with which one attempts to understand living cells as multi-layered adaptive networks as well as dynamically oscillating systems. The exceptionally varied nature of networks obliges us to think about how the world and nature shape themselves and which laws can be deduced from this. […] It is possible to imagine the generation of new approaches to animated micro-biological processes through the construction of alternative scientific models, and also through the creation of new art forms. Because not only artists but also scientists work with images, symbols and metaphors, draw on their intuition and make use of coincidence.

(translation by Eurozine Review)