Anatomy and Art

Well, it’s that time of year, and for the first time in four or five years, I’m headed out to Burning Man.  I’m really excited about the opportunity to make the trip again, and I’m looking forward to seeing how the event has changed while I’ve been away, and maybe even getting some perspective on how I have changed in my time away from it.  In the time since I last went, I’ve found a new career dream, I applied and completed the graduate program that I just finished.  I don’t think that I had even heard of anaplastology or thought of the idea of medical art the last time I was there.  I was focusing on anatomy in art around that time in my life, but had no idea the paths that would open for me.

I know that living in Chicago has changed me.  Any time you uproot and move, it changes you.  I know that my studies have changed me.  This program has been a huge challenge, and it has been a part of shaping the me I am today.  I look forward to conversations with old friends about the things that I have learned and the new dreams I have for the kind of work and life I want for myself.

A lot of people work very hard every year to create amazing art installations and beautiful things for this event.  I don’t have anything like that to bring at this point.  Believe me, it’s easy to get to thinking about what one would do with unlimited funds.  With the work I’ve done in the last year, the temptation becomes to make all kinds of anatomical art out there for people to interact with and play with in the middle of the desert.  But even without being able to do anything like that, I feel like I’m bringing some piece of the outside world with me.  I’m glad for the time I’ve taken away from this event, and for the things I’ve learned, and work I’ve done.  And now it’s time to go back, and challenge myself with desert living again, and learn a little more about myself outside of the academic environment again.

There is such a spirit of possibility out there.  Even just getting such a coveted ticket this year, well the odds were tough, but here I am going.  The people helping me get there, and who I will stay with are such ‘anything is possible’ people, that they never cease to inspire me.  I had to give some thought to allowing myself to be away from my computer and distracted from the job hunt to go, but I feel like this is the right decision.  I hope to return enriched, and ready for the next steps to come.  After all, if 50,000 or so people can come together to build a city in the desert for a week and then tear it all down just because they want to, what can’t we do?

Well, first things first, I’m in Dallas!  It was a long drive down, but a good one I’d say.  As is typical for me on long drives, my brain got to bubbling over as the miles passed by, and this particular drive I found myself thinking about an undeniable difference between medicine and art.

Somewhere barreling south on I-55 through Illinois with Johnny Cash singing about how he’s gonna break his rusty cage and run, I got to thinking about how art is so largely about putting our humanity on display, about letting people see more of ourselves.  But medicine, while it does explore the inner workings of humans, seems to minimize expressions of humanity on the part of medical professionals.  They are expected rather, to be above humanity, behind the white lab coat, infallible.

I don’t believe I’d ever quite recognized that juxtaposition before.  And it is one that I think I’ve been feeling for a while now, just without really recognizing what it is.

Anyway, this traveler has arrived, and just this morning I began my anaplastology internship in Dallas.  More on that to come, but so far so good.  I’ve also got my big computer set up out here, so expect more posts on animation as well.  The sun is shining and old friends have been so kind as to take me in for my time out here.

It’s good being in Texas again.

Last week, I posted my very first animation. It was created using 3dsMax, and then I added some sound in Final Cut Pro afterwards. It was pretty cool figuring out how to make all those little objects move around and interact with one another.

I’ve been thinking a lot about animation lately. Just last week I spoke with a surgeon who is interested in creating patient education animations to give to his patients prior to surgery. This has me thinking a lot about what is possible there, and what is appropriate. There is a website, Understand.com that specializes in doing this kind of thing.  Some of their pieces I like better than others.  It’s nice having some time to think about what I feel is important to a patient education video, and to talk to previous patients of various procedures about the kinds of things that they understood going into surgery, and what they wished they’d understood afterwards.  If anyone reading has any thoughts and/or personal experiences to this end, I ask you to please comment with your thoughts.

Yesterday I went to the Art Institute here in Chicago.  I found myself marveling at the various techniques utilized over the centuries.  But as we looked over so many pieces, I started thinking about how certain techniques have really become a thing of the past.  They say even painting is becoming less and less valued.  Arts like etching, mezotinting, and carbon dusting, while still appreciated in older works, are simply no longer practical for emerging artists to learn at the level of their predecessors.  These days more and more things are done on a computer, and there is reason to do them that way, but it changes everything.

Tonight I went to a bar that had both DJs and live music playing.  The live music was still very electronic though.  And it was pretty good.  I even found myself quite happily dancing to some of the DJs sets.  But at a certain point my thoughts turned from how good we have gotten with making music electronically, to how long before analogue instruments become the neat old-timey way of making music.  We already have a generation of kids that know the game Rock Band better than they do any real instrument.  And the truth of the matter is that we have gotten very good at making electronic music.  So at what point, is the effect of real physical instruments not going to be worth the cost of making them, and time put into learning to play them?  It seems inevitable.

Here I am posting a photo of a guitar, and realizing that I took it with a digital camera, because just like everything else, it has become more economical and efficient to do photography digitally now.  And I know that we’re all aware of this.  It seems like every time I go out lately, someone is relieved to be catching up in person rather than through some social networking site.  it’s all the same issue.

So where do we draw the line?  Can we really draw a line?  Or should we be setting our sites on the new and exciting forms of expression and communication our digital technology enables?  Perhaps it is sentimental to worry about instruments, and tools, and skill sets left by the wayside when there are so many more waiting to be explored.  What would Rembrandt have done with Photoshop?  What if Leonardo da Vinci had been able to flip through digital images of scanned human figures when he studied them?  What if Van Gogh had learned to paint on a screen instead of a canvas?  Would their work have been anywhere near as inspiring?  Would they have seen that next level still waiting to be discovered?

Last night I had the rare privilege of seeing a few of artist Dave McKean’s works up close and first hand followed by live performances and a screening of the 1929 silent film classic, Faust.  I had first discovered Dave McKean in my highschool years through his collaborations with Neil Gaiman.  Then he wrote Cages, and there was just something about it.  I couldn’t synopsize that story for you now if I tried, but even not having looked at it in over a decade, there are pieces of it that continue to stick with me. When I shook his hand last night, I asked him if he would speak a bit about his process.  As it turned out, his time at the microphone was short, but what he did speak of was inspiration.  He spoke of being inspired by these old early films.  And in some ways, I think that was a better answer.  Process always begins with inspiration. You can see here, the original film image of the devil taking the village, and then McKean’s take on it.

Now I had gone to this event last night looking to be inspired in mixed-media work.  I went with a head swimming with thoughts about what one medium can bring to another and how I could use different kinds of skills together in my own work.  But what I found instead, was inspiration in how powerful appreciation alone can be.  And maybe this whole idea of mixing mediums to create something new really begins with looking at more kinds of art. The works I saw last night were not anatomical or scientific in nature.  They were, on the contrary, works of expression.  But perhaps there are lessons to be learned here that can be utilized in other kinds of art. So I guess the thought I leave you all with, is to remember your inspirations, whatever they may be.