Animal body worlds

Add this one to my must-see list: Animal Body worlds. Gunther von Hagens, creator of the human version of Body Worlds, has done it again this time using animals in a plastination exhibit opening in Germany. I thoroughly enjoyed the human version - in fact I got to see it twice, both here in the States and while overseas in Ireland - and as an animal and medical enthusiast I really can't wait for this one to start touring the world.

Living Paintings

Now here's a twist on an old past time: instead of painting on a canvas to make something look 3D, Alexa Meade paints real people to look like flat oil paintings! I still can't wrap my head around it; I mean I understand the idea and process but to see the images my brain just has a hard time reconciling it, especially when photographs are taken of her "masterpieces" out in the real world. Simply amazing! Check it out here: Telegraph UK: Alexa Meade Living Paintings.

The VisualMD

This is a great video clip highlighting Alexander Tsiaras and his work creating beautiful educational videos and interactives from real medical data. Beginning with a New York based company called Anatomical Travelogue, Tsiaras now has branched off and created TheVisualMD, an online database of interactives and articles for the medical education of the general public. He has also published several books, two of which live on my reference shelf: The Invision Guide to a Healthy Heart and The Invision Guide to Lifeblood. The images are really beautiful and I especially love how he takes real photographs and superimposes actual medical data on top to show relationships between the internal body and what you see happening on the outside.  Everything he uses is from real data; nothing is made up or the consequence of artistic license. Here are just a few examples of some of his work:

www.hurriyetusa,com 

Alexander Tsiaras, Anatomical Travelogue and TheVisualMD

Alexander Tsiaras, Anatomical Travelogue 

And for an interesting comparison, take a look at this modern image by Alexander Tsiaras (from his book "The Architecture and Design of Man and Woman") constrasted with a piece done in 1774 by Jan van Rymsdyk entitled "The Anatomy of a Human Gravid Uterus":

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www.medgadget.com (Tsiaras)

National Library of Medicine (Rymsdyk)

  

www.medgadget.com 

Alexander Tsiaras, from"The Architecture and Design of Man and Woman"

War Horse

What amazing equine art! The show is called "War Horse" and is based on a book of the same name by Michael Morpurgo which tells the story of WWI through a horse's eyes, a horse who was raised on a private farm, got recruited for the British Cavalry and then was captured by the Germans. The way they created these horses for the stage is really incredible; I can't believe all the coordination involved and how realistic they look when it all comes together. Maybe if the show does well enough in London we'll be lucky enough to see it come to the US. Here's another video that shows a little more behind the scenes: War Horse.

Mona Lisa

Leonardo DaVinci is one of my favorite men in history and I am continually amazed at his contributions and achievements in science and art. The Mona Lisa, perhaps one of his most famous pieces, has been the subject of countless investigations and debates over the years and still remains the center of many unanswered questions. However, one question about her peculiarly enigmatic smile has recently been put to rest: Why does she appear to smile one moment but then that smile fades as soon as you try to examine it up close? Scientists from the Institute of Neuroscience in Alicante, Spain have looked closely into this phenomenon and arrived at a conclusion we all should have expected (after all, this is Leonardo we are talking about): it's science!

When Leonardo painted the image of Mona Lisa, he deliberated painted the edges of her smile in a slightly blurred method known as sfumato while leaving the rest of her mouth in sharp focus. The end result is meant to play with our eyes and the differences between our peripheral vision and central vision within the retina. While the retina allows us to focus directly on objects of interest and thus see them in very high detail, our peripheral vision developed as a way for us to take a general scope of our surroundings. Able to pick up slight movements and changes in our environment as well as general shapes, peripheral vision alerts our brain as to where we should look next but doesn't provide any great focusing ability. By painting the center of Mona Lisa's mouth in clear detail but leaving the edges fuzzy, Leonardo effectively prevents us from seeing the smile when we view the face head on (using our central retinal vision) but allows it to sneak back in when we focus on some other aspect of the piece thus allowing our peripheral vision to take over. Pretty sneaky Leo....

It's too bad that I'm not a professional neuroscientist. These findings were just presented in October of last year at the Society for Neuroscience's annual meeting in Chicago, and it would have been interesting to go. Click here for more information.

In an attempt to find an article on horse anatomy and conformation that I had read a few months ago, I happened to stumble across these illustrations by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins by accident. They come from a book entitled A Comparative view of the Human and Animal Frame which was published in 1860 and which has now been scanned into a web collection by the University of Wisconsin. I was most interested in the two images involving the horse, shown below, but there are many other interesting illustrations including some comparing humans to elephants, lions, antelope and bears within the collection.

 Source: University of Wisconsin Digital Collections

http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/HistSciTech.CompAnat 

Of course, browsing through that collection led me to another wonderful find as the University also has a great collection of veterinary illustrations by Hermann Dittrich, a German medical/veterinary illustrator from the early 1900s who I've admired for quite awhile (after all, veterinary illustration is one of my interests). A few of my favorites are shown below but it is definitely worth browsing through the entire collection, especially for anyone interested in veterinary illustration. In addition to the horse, the collection includes illustrations of cows, dogs, lions and deer in some of the most detailed and beautiful veterinary illustrations I've seen (click on the images to view larger).

Source: University of Wisconsin Digital Collections

http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/Science.VetAnatImgs