Week 4

     This week really opened my eyes to how medical technologies connect to art and identity. I've never had anything major done with medical technology myself, just regular checkups and vaccinations — so I always thought of it as something purely practical. I never realized it could be something artists use to explore deeper ideas until now. The lecture introduced artists like Orlan, who uses plastic surgery as performance art to challenge beauty standards.

 Eduardo Kac’s Time Capsule project, where he implanted a microchip into his own body, also really stuck with me. It made me think about how technology is becoming part of who we are.

 Donald Ingber’s article, "The Architecture of Life," explained how even at the cellular level, our bodies are like tiny architectural structures, which honestly made me see biology in a completely new way. Silvia Casini’s piece about MRI scans showed me that these aren’t just boring medical images, they’re also emotional, almost like portraits of ourselves. 

Reading Peter Tyson’s article about the Hippocratic Oath made me realize how much medical ethics have changed too. It’s crazy to think about how much the world has shifted since that oath was first written. Overall, this week really changed how I think about the body, not just as something biological, but as a canvas for technology, art, and culture.

    Works Cited: 

Casini, Silvia. "Magnetic Resonance Imaging as Mirror and Portrait: MRI Configurations between Science and the Arts." Configurations, vol. 19, no. 1, 2011

Ingber, Donald E. "The Architecture of Life." Scientific American, Jan. 1998

Tyson, Peter. "The Hippocratic Oath Today." PBS, 2001, 

www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/hippocratic-oath-today/.

"Medicine + Technology + Art" Lectures, Victoria Vesna

Kac, Eduardo. "Time Capsule." 1997, www.ekac.org/timecps.html.