Chapter 9 Scientific Looking, Looking at Science

Chapter 9 focuses on the relationship between culture, science and media. Scientific images are dependent on cultural context and interpret images from popular culture, art and the news. Scientific knowledge depends on social, political, and cultural meanings and is a practiced and highly rewarded issue. The rise of technologies such as X rays, CAT, and PET scanning, ultrasounds, and MRIs throughout the 20th century lead us to believe that there was a worldwide shift toward the visual means of representing knowledge and evidence in the growth of science and imagery. The motif "seeing the unseen" was introduced along with digital imaging and rendering.
The Renaissance is described as a period during which art and science were seen as parallel. The rise of anatomy was integral Renaissance art, especially throughout the work of Leonardo da Vinci. da Vinci performed more than thirty dissections throughout his life, and used scientific methods to overlap into his artwork. His most famous image of human is Vitruvian Man, which represents the proportions of man based on geometry. It has come to symbolize the practices of medicine and health and is related to the laws of mathematics and the structure of nature. Another famous painting of anatomy is Rembrandt's The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp. The main point of the painting is the gaze of the onlookers and pleasures and fascinations of the dead man. The fascination of the dead body became a central feature of the visual aspect of modernity. The Paris morgue became the site of spectacular displays where dead bodies, mostly children who had drowned in the Seine River, and women, were put on display. Thousands of Parisians would come to look at these bodies every day. This seems very strange and gruesome to me.
The desire to look into and upon the body also emerged with the practice of surgery in the late nineteenth century. With the development of photography and technologies to see into the body, the relationship of images to science became one of providing evidence of the body's interior. This began with the introduction of the X ray in 1895. The Visible Human Project is a venture funded by the U.S. government and involves taking two bodies, the Visible Man and Visible Female, and creating digital images of them slice by slice. The final images were placed on display through digital photography. Body Worlds is another example of an exhibition of actual dead bodies that have undergone a preservative process called plastination and are put on display in various poses. The exhibit displays gender stereotypes, with males in active scenes and women in pregnant states.
The photograph has played an important role in cataloguing the body. Mechanical and electronic image-producing systems (photography, motion picture film, television, computer graphics) bear the legacy of positivism. This is a true and valid knowledge about the world derived from scientific methods. The camera is a useful tool for mechanically observing, measuring, and studying the real world in a manner that can check, balance or correct the errors introduced by human perception. The camera is a device for capturing reality. By freezing in time events that are so fleeting that they would be missed by the unaided eye, magnifying small objects, or drawing outside objects closer with zooming in, the camera evokes a sense of wonder and makes things that are difficult to be seen, visible. It is an instrument to which the unseen, invisible aspects of the world are seen. Photographs were also useful in identifying offenders and criminals. Through fingerprinting and DNA profiling, photographs acted as a way to reveal a true identity.
X-rays are also wonderous tools because they provide views of a previously unseen dimension of the body in its living state. However, they are seen as fearful because of the skeleton's association with death. Craniology is the science of skull measurement and tactile and visual analysis for comparing skulls to different races. Physiognomy interprets the outward appearance and configuration of the body and face. This science claimed that the eyelashes of men signify pride and audacity. Crainology, phrenology and other sciences were related to the science of eugenics, which was devoted to the practice of studying and controlling human reproduction in order to improve the human race. Eugenics was founded by Sir Francis Galton and is guided by the belief that certain types and races should not breed in order to eliminate their traits from mankind. Nazism in Germany is an example of this because they used genocide, the killing off of an ethnic group of people. The x-ray image is produced by exposing the body to radiation and allowing the waves that pass through the body to register on a photographic plate or screen. This provides a clear depiction of the skelaton and bone densities. Sonography is the process of imaging the internal structures of an object by measuring and recording the reflection of high frequency sound waves that are passed through it. It was introduced in the early 1960s. Ultrasound allows doctors to discern softer structures and not damage tissues. It is like a window into the body through which we see the unknown (such as a baby in a women's stomach). Sonography is paradoxial because it is a sound system that does not involve hearing or the production of noise. The car company, Volvo, used an ad in 1990 to portray their car as being safe. The ad is of a sonogram of a baby and the caption reads, "Is something inside telling you to buy a volvo?" This is a great advertisement because it portrays a fetus and is targeting families with children that volvos are safe vehicles. The image of the fetus acquires meaning beyond its literal meaning in screening and diagnosis.
The Human Genome Project is a global scientific endeavour which aims to create a complete genetic map of the human genome. It is about identifying genes linked to disease, behavior, physical appearance, and many other conditions and factors. It is called a new era of medical science, known as the "age of the genome". Back to the Renaissance, genetics have revealed narratives about reproduction, replication and art and science. Andy Warhol, one of my favorite artists, has a famous artwork called Thirty Are Better Than One. This painting is composed of numerous copies of the Mona Lisa. Here, Du Pont DNA labeling kit, The Renaissance replicates Warhol who replicates da Vinci who replicates the Mona Lisa herself. DNA and genetics are all about replication, and this is seen in artwork and media also. A genetic argument could be used to claim that criminals commit crime because they are genetically known to do so, therefore, we do not waste money trying to help them improve and stop their actions. Mice are used in testing for DNA. Since mice have almost the same set of genes as humans, they are used extensively in gene research. OncoMouse is the first patented animal, developed in 1990 by Harvard Medical School and licensed to Du Pont. OncoMouse is a transgenic mouse whose genetic makeup is used for studying cancer.
The Digital Body was the section of this chapter that I found most interesting. Time Magazine presented a computer generated composite of a women who consisted of all different kinds of races on the front cover of their magazine. The young woman had dark hair and eyes with a medium skin tone. She was crated completely by the computer from a mix of races; 15% Anglo-Saxon, 17.5% Middle Eastern, 17.5% African, 7.5% Asian, 35% Southern European, and 7.5% Hispanic. I feel like this is a very intelligent way to portray the different races and genetics in today's world. This woman was very beautiful and it shows that racial differences really can make a person pretty and not ugly or inhumane. Same goes for the "Elephant Man", who had a disease known as Proteus syndrome where he had extreme facial and bodily malformations. I know a girl from high school who had "Elephantitis" and its an extremely heartbreaking disease. These people cannot help that their genes allowed them to look like this huge, strange creature. Another interesting part of this section I liked was the ability to make images "age". When you make an image "age" you create a virtual rendering of the person as they would be predicted to look like many years after the photograph was taken. This helps in the search for missing people and criminals. I feel like this is a very smart technique in order to find missing people, especially those who have been missing for many years.
Through advertising, consumer-patients have come to receive information about medications. Direct-to-consumer (DTC) ads speak directly to the consumer, even though they can only purchase the drug with a prescription. The ads have a positive effect in motivating patients to be active in their health care decisions. They make drugs seem better than they actually are. The ads usually show people with smiling faces, and who seem carefree and happy and never really discuss the potential side effects the drug can have. DTC ads do not show images of people taking the drugs or receiving treatment, but rather show people content and feeling happy about themselves. DTC ads are not just about selling the drug or product, but about selling science, medicine and their institutions as essential aspects of everyday existence, not just as places we would go to to help during periods of sickness.
In conclusion of this chapter, the visual culture of science makes clear that science, art, culture and politics are all intertwined with one another. This chapter was very interesting and logical. I never thought of x-rays and ultrasounds as media, because they are technically photographs. I never would have thought sciences and medical treatments would have such a big impact on media today.