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It's common for college students to go either for a bachelor of arts or a bachelor of sciences- and that's just one of the many examples of the perceived mutual exclusion between science and the arts. In reality, says Jerry Perry, director of the Health Sciences Library at Anschutz Medical Campus, the two have a lot of common influence over each other.
The upcoming Visibly Human Symposium, which Perry came up with, seeks to explore that common influence.
The idea for the symposium centers on the Visible Human Project, which, over the course of several years, photographed the inside of two human bodies, a male and a female. Here's how it works: the male and female opted to donate their bodies to science after their deaths. The bodies were then "sliced"-at one millimeter intervals for the man and one-third millimeter intervals for the woman-which basically means that, starting at the top of the head, scientists ground off one millimeter at a time and then meticulously photographed it. The result: hundreds of high-resolution photographs of every inch of the human body, from the top down.
The project has big implications in the medical field, said Perry, because "anatomy is the beginning of the study of medicine."
The work for the project was overseen by the National Library of Medicine and conducted at the Center for Human Stimulation at Anschutz.
Perry's inspiration for the project, though, was a work of art, which was in turn inspired by the project.
The state requires that 1 percent of money it uses to fund building projects go to public art. "Because most of the buildings here are funded by the state," said Melissa DeSantis, deputy director of the Health Sciences Library, "we have a lot of public art."
One of those pieces is "Humanescence," a sculpture by the artist Rae Douglass, who took his inspiration for the work from the Visible Human Project. The 30-foot-tall sculpture was installed in the library over the semester break while students were away. "When they came back," said Perry, "it was great to see the wonderment on their faces. There's an element of fun and playfulness."
Nevertheless, said Perry, the piece presented technical challenges for the artist. And that's how Perry sees the library- at the intersection of technical knowledge and creativity. "It's hard to imagine a more appropriate piece of public art in our space," said Perry. "Philosophically and aesthetically, it fits."
The Visibly Human Symposium is partly a celebration of the newly installed piece, but Perry sees it more as opening the door to a dialogue between science and the arts. The symposium will feature three speakers: Douglass, Vic Spitzer, director of the Center for Human Stimulation, and Michael Ackerman, the leader of the Visible Human Project at NLM.
Perry points out that, while the project has a number of applications in the technical and medical fields, there was also a human element to it: "I'm interested in the story," said Perry, "the human that lived, who donated his body to science, whose body was in some way, through technology, transformed."
Incidentally, there is a pretty good story behind the bodies. The male cadaver, for example, belonged to Joseph Paul Jennigan, a convicted murderer from Texas who was executed for his crimes. Jennigan was convinced by the prison chaplain moments before his execution to donate his body to science, though he was unaware exactly what his body would be used for.
For some, that lack of awareness presents an ethical issue, and that's part of what the symposium will address, as well as the processes behind the project and the sculpture, as addressed by the two scientists and the artist.
Perry called the symposium visibly human because it's tied closely to the Visible Human Project. The name is subtly different, however, because Perry visualizes the symposium becoming an annual thing drawn along roughly the same lines, but with different topics. Perry gave stem cell research as a possible example of what future symposiums might address.
"This is what libraries are all about," said Perry, "a conversation."
Visibly Human Symposium Friday, March 6 2 p.m.-3:30 p.m., Education 2 South, room 1002, Anschutz Medical Campus Reception to follow at the Health Sciences Library, 3:30 p.m.-5 p.m.
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