The Brain Observatory at UCSD is right now showing the slicing of the brain of an amnesic patient into histological sections on streaming video.

The whole brain of the dead patient (called H.M.) was frozen to -40C and is now being sectioned in a whole-organ microtome during one continuous session that they expect will last about 30 hours. After sectioning the brain they will do ex vivo MRI and so called blockface imaging, and will of course store all the histological sections. The whole sectioning process is streamed on video and will end later today. Watch the live video here.

This is as far as they came at 9.30 am today when I made a screen-dump:

Fascinating histology live!

(thanks to Alex for the tip)

We have just recruited Morten Hillgaard Bülow as a PhD candidate. The three-year stipend is financed by the new interdisciplinary Center for Healthy Aging at the University of Copenhagen. The Center was established last year with a budget of 300 mill. DKK for a five-year period — and a smallish amount of the total will be used for studies of healthy ageing science communication in a museum context here at Medical Museion.

Morten’s project is titled “A genealogical study of the concept of ’successful aging’ and its relation to the idea of ‘human enhancement'”. More specifically, the project will investigate how the notion of ‘successful aging’ has been understood and defined in the field of neuroscience over the last decades, and how ‘successful cognitive aging’ has played together with discussions about the possibility for so called ‘cognitive enhancement’. Morten will present the project in our seminar series in January and more details will also appear here on the blog.

By the way, Morten is not a newcomer to Medical Museion. Four years ago he spent a couple of months with us as part of his studies in history and philosophy at Roskilde University (where he earned his MA last year) to work out a ‘value strategy’ for us. Welcome back to Medical Museion, Morten!

(soon I’ll present our new postdoc — stay tuned!)

Nu ligger Medicinsk Museion godt nok ikke under Kulturministeriet (som KU-museum hører vi under Videnskabsministeriet) — men det gør jo ikke kulturminister Carina Christensens udspil (se dagbladet Politiken idag) mindre interessant.

Ministeren mener kort sagt at hvis folket ikke vil komme til museerne, så må museerne ud til folket. Kunsten og kulturarven skal ud på gader og torve, ind i indkøbscentrene og ud på friluftsbadene — eller der hvor folk nu tilfældigvis befinder sig i deres hverdag.

Grundlæggende synes jeg at det er en glimrende måde at tænke kulturarvsformilding på. Selvfølgelig skal museernes samlinger og udstillingstilbud ud og luftes! Vi skal ikke vente på at folk kommer ind i templet, men ligesom Jesus skal vi være der, hvor folket befinder sig (man kan drage mange interessante analogier mellem kirken og museerne!).

Ligesom en del andre museer (Trapholt m.fl.) har vi prøvet at lave en del udstillinger tættere på brugerne. For to år siden var vi med til at lave en udstilling om Rigshospitalets historie i forbindelse med deres 250-årsjubilæum. Den blev placeret i indgangshallen og blev set af tusindevis af ansatte, patienter og pårørende hver dag igennem flere måneder.

Vi har også eksperimentet med udstillinger på Bella Center. Da 5000 europæiske anæstesilæger var på kongres i København for to år siden kunne de se en kulturhistorisk udstilling inde på messeområdet — halvdelen af dem kom forbi vores 100 kvm i løbet af de to dage kongressen varede. Det var ikke mindst den grønne, frygtindgydende jernlunge fra polioepidemien i København i 50-erne som trak — men også den gamle flaske med curare!

Og vores seneste udstilling — om proteiner i historien — er placeret midt i vandrehallen på Panum, mellem undervisningslokalerne og kantinen, hvor mange hundrede studerende og ansatte går frem og tilbage hver dag. Hvis vi havde stillet den op i vores fine gamle museumsbygning i Bredgade ville den have haft et langt mindre publikum end  i det halvoffentlige rum på Panum.

Og så videre. Der findes altså allerede museer som i praksis lægger kulturen ud til brugerne. Og vores erfaring er, at det giver rigtigt god mening at tage museet ud, der hvor folk befinder sig. Det har været succesfulde udstillinger både for os på museet og for brugerne — og for institutionerne som har huset dem. Ren win-win-win! 

Samtidigt skal vi huske på at det ikke er uproblematisk. Man skal kende sin målgruppe, man skal arbejde meget tæt sammen med brugerne. Risikoen ved at bringe kunsten og kulturen ud til indkøbscentre og sportsanlæg er at museumsvirksomheden overgår i fladpandet oplevelsesøkonomi. Man kan nemt komme at tænke i “antal kunder i butikken” istedet for at se brugerne som kvalificerede, engagerede deltagere i et fælles langsigtet kulturarbejde.

Jeg tror at den nu højaktuelle diskussion om brugerinvolvering og museum 2.0 vil være et bedre udgangspunkt end den oplevelesøkonomiske tankegang. Når vi vil bringe kunsten og kulturhistorien ud til folket, så skal vi ikke primært gøre det for at tjene penger eller bidrage til det samlede eksportværdi — men for at skabe bred forståelse for vores historie og folkelig beredskab til at håndtere fremtiden. Det er brugerinvolvering og brugerstyret museumsinnovation det handler om, ikke oplevelser som Handelshøjskolen i København opfatter dem.

At the last weekly staff lunch meeting we had a short discussion about the notions of ‘topical’ and ‘timely’ exhibitions. A ‘topical/timely’ (Danish: aktuel) exhibition is one that relates to current social or political events, like for example showing a climate exhibition here in 2009.

One argument in the discussion was: Aren’t topical/timely exhibitions exactly what university museums by definition ought to avoid getting involved in? If university museums are by definition elitist — because universities are by definition elitist, as we discussed in a couple of earlier posts (here and here and well summarised by Adam here) — then their job is not primarily to create topical/timely exhibitions (even though this is an absolutely worthwhile thing to do) but rather to create exhibitions that set the agenda for what will become topical/timely. That is, one would expect university museums to be in the lead museologically, because the rest of the university has (at least in its self-understanding) taken on the role to be cognitively leading.

In a sense this is quite trivial. Going beyond what is topical/timely is what drives not just the world of science and scholarshíp but also much of the world of music, visual arts, literature, film making, fashion, etc. Neither scientists nor artists are content with creating knowledge or works of art that are topical/timely; they want to create new and so far untopical/untimely conceptual worlds, new data, new procedures, which are by definition untimely when they appear.

But many museums — especially, and paradoxically, university museums — still behave as if they stand outside the world of scholarship and creative arts. They want to cater for the current taste rather than change the taste.

And here comes the conondrum: the quest for untimeliness seems to be problematic for us who believe in the positive value of the notion of ‘museum 2.0’ (participatory museum). I mean, how can you wish to restructure the museum with its collections and displays into a user-driven institution while at the same time promoting the creation of new and unseen museum visions and practices? Can you do both without becoming a schizophrenic museum? And generally speaking, how do museums handle the tension between being avantgardish and being populist.

Som de fleste sikkert allerede har hørt i radioen her i aften, har Medicinsk Museion, efter lange forhandlinger med en anonym giver i Køge, erhvervet en unik samling af glasampuller, indholdende oldgamle farmakologiske præparater. Samlingen, der betegnes som ‘alternativ’, består ifølge registranten af en række ekstremt væskedrivende naturlige (ikke kemiske!) stoffer og bør derfor indtages i meget, meget små mængder (helst i homoeopatiske mængder eller mindre, dvs. som negativ vægt). Da vi åbnede en af ampullerne i museets baggård for en time siden for at kontrollere indholdet blev skydækket umiddelbart mærkbart fortyndet og da vi senere gik ind på DMIs radar, kunne vi se at det daglige regnområde over Sjælland havde formet sig i en stor cirkel rundt om et tørlagt København, med Medicinsk Museion i centrum. Der behøves næppe andre beviser for disse naturpræparaters fænomenale virkning.

I haven’t been around natural history museum DNA researchers for a while. So I didn’t know there is actually an -omics discipline called ‘museomics‘ — “the large-scale analysis of the DNA content of museum collections”. It’s not a joke, they (the Center for Comparative Genomics and Bioinformatics at The Pennsylvania State University and others) mean it seriously :-).

Is it really the case that almost all museum exhibitions dealing with medical themes these days are displaying DNA-images and colourful neuroscanning pictures?

Well, at least this is what the organisers of a meeting in Dresden next April seem to be suggesting. I think they are exaggerating a bit :-). But that said, the theme of the meeting — KörperGegenwart, neue Technologien, neue Sammlungen [contemporary bodies, new technologies, new collections] — is right on the spot.

The point of departure for the meeting — jointly organised by Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung in Berlin and Deutsches Hygiene-Museum in Dresden — is that the colonisation of the body by means of the life sciences has resulted in a gradual retreat from the immediately visible and material body.

An invisible biomedical body

The concepts, models and findings of contemporary biomedicine defy immediate visualisation, collecting and conservation. Therefore museums like Deutsche Hygiene-Museum, which was founded with the purpose of displaying the body, find themselves in an entirely new situation.

I couldn’t agree more — this is actually the central point in the paper on biomedicine as a challenge to museums that Adam, Camilla and I have just published. So we have every reason to participate (if we can: the meeting language is German and my German is rusty at best :-).

Rusty or not — it’s worth participating, because the meeting will address three types of timely questions for medical museums: first, the history of the techniques, tools and concepts by means of which the human body has been cut, dissected, interpreted and displayed; second, whether current biomedicine has made the body immaterial; and third, how the new biomedical body affects museum collection practices.

The meeting takes place 22-24 April next year. Read the call for papers here. If you want to participate, send a note to Stiftung Deutsches Hygiene-Museum, tagungszentrum@dhmd.de, or contact one of the four organisers: Sandra Mühlenberend (sandra.muehlenberend@dhmd.de), Susanne Roeßiger (susanne.roessiger@dhmd.de), Uta Kornmeier (kornmeier@zfl-berlin.org or Katrin Solhdju (solhdju@zfl-berlin.org).

We are of course not the only museum that struggles with how to juggle art, science, materiality and medicine in our exhibitions. Next Friday, 4 December, the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at University of Cambridge is organising a most interesting afternoon symposium titled ‘Assembling Bodies: Art, Science & Imagination’.

Curators and artistic contributors to MAA’s current experimental exhibition with the same name will explore techniques of investigation and presentation — including relationships between the body and material things, the potential of exhibitions as research projects, incorporating different sensory engagements in museum display, and accommodating multiple audiences.

After an opportunity to see the current exhibition there will be four presentations:

Anita Herle, ‘Exploring the body in the arts, social and bio-medical sciences’:

How do we know, experience and create different bodies? How have different bodies been imagined, known and acted upon in different times, places and disciplinary contexts? This presentation will examine the creative potential and challenges associated with curatorial techniques of assemblage and juxtaposition.

Mark Elliott, ‘Putting the pieces together: negotiating parts and wholes in Assembling Bodies’:

Exhibits about the measurement, classification and distribution of bodies highlight ways in which fragments, measurements or representations can ‘stand’ in for larger categories or entities, such as body, type, or human. This paper considers how the curators negotiated the relationship between parts and wholes, highlight the contingency as well as the potency of some of the technologies that make bodies visible.

Jocelyne Dudding, ‘Shifting images: Using ‘anthropometric’ photographs in museum display’:

This paper discusses the historic use of ‘anthropometric’ photography in the collecting and classifying of information of human bodies. It explores how anthropometric methods of photography were followed in some instances, and resisted or ignored in others, why other photographs were recontextualised and used as ‘anthropometric’, and how contemporary artists have responded to such classification.

Bonnie Kemske, ‘Capturing the Embrace: a sculptural engagement with Merleau-Ponty’s ‘lived experience’:

The inclusion of ceramic ‘hugs’ in Assembling Bodies challenges the dominance of the visual within exhibitions, makes us question our perceptions, and leads us to a more engaged understanding of personal relationships to art. Capturing the embrace as ‘cast hugs’ engages the body’s sense of touch as a way to merge the body as subject with the sculptural object: ‘… not the thing on its own, but the experience of the thing.’ [Merleau-Ponty 1962]

Admission is free, but spaces are limited. Mail liz.haslemere@maa.cam.ac.uk to reserve a place. If it wasn’t for the damned carbon footprint I would be tempted to fly Easyjet Cph-Stansted-Cph for a one-day trip. Why not videocast the presentations?

En lidt forsinket påmindelse om årsmødet i Nationalkomiteen for Videnskabshistorie og Videnskabsfilosofi, der bliver afholdt i Århus 15. – 16. januar på temaet “Brug og misbrug af videnskabshistorie – med særlig henblik på undervisningen”.

Naturvidenskabernes historie (inkl. teknologiens, medicinens og de matematiske fags historie) bliver produceret såvel som anvendt. Blandt de der anvender eller forbruger videnskabshistorie er naturligvis videnskabshistorikerne selv, men der er mange andre forbrugere. Således spiller videnskabshistorie, ofte i en eksemplarisk form eller med en legitimerende funktion, en stor rolle i videnskabsfilosofien og den dukker også op i forskningspolitiske sammenhænge. Desuden spiller den en noget upåagtet men dog vigtig rolle i dele af den videnskabelige forskning selv, fx i form af analogier der skal retfærdiggøre eller perspektivere ny videnskab.
En særlig rolle spiller videnskabshistorien i den højere undervisning (gymnasie- og universitetsniveau), hvor den direkte eller indirekte indgår i både den faglige undervisning og i mere tværfaglige sammenhænge. Almen studieforberedelse (AT) på gymnasierne og Fagets Videnskabsteori på universiteterne er vigtige eksempler på sidstnævnte. Hvordan og hvorfor optræder videnskabshistorien i undervisningen?
Hvordan og i hvilket omfang bør den indgå? Hvor hører den hjemme?
Videnskabshistorien kan have en positiv funktion i undervisning og andre sammenhænge, men den har det ikke automatisk. Den kan bruges såvel som misbruges, og misbrug er ikke ukendt. Det kendes fra bl.a. politiske og religiøse sammenhænge, men også fra videnskabelige. Hvilken form for videnskabshistorie er rimelig og legitim at bruge, og hvilken er ikke – et sådant spørgsmål er vigtigt at rejse og diskutere.

Helge Kragh (helge.kragh@ivs.au.dk) vil gerne have forslag til 30 minuters oplæg i næste uge. Se mere på http://www.ivs.au.dk/arrangementer/aarsmoede2010.

Last year we had a discussion on this blog (see here and here) about whether objects ‘talk’ — no, they don’t! But do they ‘die’?

The UCL-based Autopsies group (associated with Film Studies) suggests they do. The group runs a cultural studies project called “Autopsies: The Afterlife of Dead Objects” to explore this morbid issue. Here’s how they reason about the ‘death’ of objects:

Just as the twentieth century was transformed by the advent of new forms of media—the typewriter, gramophone, and film, for example—the arrival of the twenty-first century has brought the phasing out of many public and private objects that only recently seemed essential to ‘modern life.’ What is the modern, then, without film projectors, typewriters, and turntables? How has the modern changed as trolley cars disappeared and hot air balloons were converted into high-risk sport rather than the demonstration of national pride in science and a crucial tactical mechanism of wartime? But what will our twenty-first century entail without mixmasters, VCRs, or petrol-driven automobiles? Does the ‘modern’ in fact program the death of objects? What is the significance of death for things that live only through such a paradoxical program of planned obsolescence? How can cultural historians and theorists participate in the reflection on the ends of objects, from their physical finitude to the very projects for their disposal, the latter increasingly of concern with the multiplication of things that do not gently decompose into their own night.

In other words, what the Autopsies project actually tries to do is to reflect on the life course and ultimate fate of the material things we associate with ‘modernity’ — and dressing this up in the metaphor of ‘death’.

The ‘death’-metaphor might be useful. For example, I guess you could say, in some cognitively productive sense, that science, technology and medicine are huge modern technoscientific systems for the production of dead things. Because the perpetual quest for creativity, innovation and progress, by definition as it were, continuously kills off ideas, concepts, theories, methodologies, instruments and practices of the near past, turning them into a dead objects — dead scientific objects, dead technologies, dead medical instruments, dead diagnostic procedures and dead therapeutical regimes. The killing of living objects and parallel production of dead objects is an inherent necessary side-effect of the innovation machinery. 

I don’t think the ‘death’ metaphor radically changes the way I look at objects. But it nevertheless introduces a slightly different angle to the way I understand science, technology and medical museums — from being repositories of cultural heritage, they can be seen as graveyards for dead scientific, technological and medical objects.

And for some reason I like the idea of conceptualising medical museum objects as ‘dead objects’ better than the notions of ‘talking objects’ and ‘evocative objects’ (that said, ‘madeleines’ is my favourite metaphor).

(thanks to Haidy Geismar for the tip about the Autopsies project)