If Looks Could Kill - Graphic Art & Design

“A process at the interface of the medical discipline of anatomy and modern polymer chemistry, Plastination makes it possible to preserve individual tissues and organs that have been removed from the body of the deceased as well as the entire body itself”

The Bodyworlds exhibit was unreal, spectacular!

Points of Interest:

• Organs look much smaller plastinated than when soaking in formalin.
• Everything is so fibrous - Tissue, muscle, tendons, even bones - they look like coral, with tiny pockets when processed this way
• No ghostly activity, which I was hoping for, considering all of the deceased present. ;)
• I found the Horse the most compelling out of all. Magnificent creature.

A very sterile installation, all of the souls seem to have long since departed. Logically, if there were to be ghosties, it would center around an area or individual, instead of the body left behind.

Which raises another point, made more readily apparent by this exhibit, that the spark that makes you, you, lies in the energy of the being. How the skin hangs on our bones, how it’s weathered, how we decorate it, the tension in one’s muscles that shape the flesh - the exact same thing that’s missing from CGI - that which departs when we do.

We saw it in Dallas, thanks to Angel of Malevolence! :D Be sure to listen to her station, Redemption Radio where she serves up metal just for you, Ren, for yooou.

Not one of my personal favorites, but there’s no denying his talent, the misunderstood Vincent Van Gogh fancied himself a realistic painter, rather than the expressionistic one he was labeled as due to his complementary colors and pronounced strokes.

Though “tragically brought down by incomprehension and madness, Van Gogh himself aspired to serenity and happiness.” It eluded him. He snuffed himself at 37, suffering from the seizure disorder and hallucinations, exacerbated by alcohol and probably syphilis as well.”

(Source) - Slideshow on Van Gogh with detail

Of further fascination to me, is the fact that if people were eventually “scanned” for perceived mental illness, we wouldn’t have work like his. The line between madness and creativity is hardly there - afflicting not just artists, but scientists, raising the question:

Do the mad have access to hidden worlds of imagination, denied to the sane? Is madness the final frontier of art and science? Is genius only a step away from insanity?

(Source)

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), neuroscientists are able to determine the following:

• Which of 2 images a subject is looking at
• Whether one is looking at a face, animal or scene
• What finger you’re about to move

Already, scans have been used to identify brain signatures of disgust, drug cravings, unconscious racism, and suppressed sexual arousal, not to mention psychopathy and propensity to kill.

Interestingly, John-Dylan Haynes, coins the phrase, “mental privacy,” which is exactly what concerns me about this.

(Source) - complete with links to abstracts and additional detail

Visit the Gallery, click on Design, to peep the full sized version of the Illustration I did this weekend, shown top-right.

Not only is this a bad-ass AC/DC song, but also a compelling question raised in this article, “Who Made Who?” Does God exist outside of our minds, meaning he created us, or did we create God?

Spirituality and belief don’t have to equate to religious faith, Newberg said. The feelings of enlightenment and well-being some derive from religion can come to others through from artistic expression, nonreligious meditation, watching a beautiful sunset or listening to stirring music.

Scientists studied the areas of the brain stimulated by the activity of prayer, meditation and speaking in tongues (glossolalia) with interesting results:

1. Both prayer and meditation showed “decreased activity in the parts of the brain that have to do with sense of self and spatial orientation — which suggests the description of oneness with God, of transcendence sometimes experienced in meditation or prayer.”
2. Those speaking in tongues were shown not to have control over their own speech, but they were unable to locate another area of the brain as responsible for it, you can imagine the implications here.

The Center for Spirituality and the Mind is “bringing together some 20 experts from fields including medicine, pastoral care, religious studies, social work and bioethics” to explore the relationship they have demonstrated and proven via brain scanner images, and how to integrate this with treatment to complement medicinal treatments.

P.S. If you like the icon shown above, you can nab it here.

This is one of the most intense images I have seen, a mummified woman cowering and covering her face, contorted in terror over whatever she faced 600 years ago. Also, a mummified baby discovered at the same site reminds me of the styling for Tool’s Sober video.

Both are to be on display at the Museum of the Nation in Lima, Peru.

( Source )

Advancements in humanoid robots, the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology has developed an entertainer robot. She stands near 5′3″ and weighs 132 lbs.

Shown is one of the better pics, in the others she is more noticeably inhuman due to her mannequin-like eyes and brows.

This is a source of endless fascination to me, how robotics (and computer animation) are always a bit off due to the soullessness of the eyes and the overly-smooth features, expressions and movements.

Source