recent biomed

Apropos earlier posts (here and here) about the posthumanist movement:  The Forschungsmuseum Alexander Koenig in Bonn (Germany) will soon open an exhibition by artist Reiner Maria Matysik called ‘Biofakte–Organismen der Zukunft’ (Biofacts–Organisms of the Future’). Matysik’s project takes it point of departure from the notion that gene technology will eventually lead to a radically new evolutionary stage which he […]

Medical museums do not necessarily need to be in dialogue with contemporary science and technology; they can remain safely embedded in the past. But if they have the ambition—like we do—to contrast possible biomedical futures with the medical past (so as to be able to create some really engaging exhibitions), medical museums are well advised to make some educated guesses […]

Two days without posts, because we’ve been discussing the next exhibition after ‘Oldetopia‘ which closes in December 2008. It will be based on the subprojects in the ‘Biomedicine on Display’-project and the working title is (surprise, surprise) ‘Biomedicine on Display’; but don’t be surprised if the final title turns out to be different. Yesterday we laid the frame budget and today the […]

One of the problems of growing older is that all exciting mind-expanding conferences these days seem to be arranged exclusively for phd’s and postdocs! Like this summer school meeting on the history of medical imaging from the Renaissance to present times, organised by the Centre for the History of Medicine at Warwick University 7-11 July 2008:

Bruno Strasser at Yale University and Marianne Sommer at ETH Zurich are organising a small workshop at Yale, 21-22 June, 2008 of potentially great interest for future biomedical museological practices. Under the title ‘Making Sequences Matter: Collecting, Comparing, Computing’ the workshop will focuse on “the emergence, development and diversification of protein and DNA sequences as scientific objects and tools […]

When Jens Hauser gave a seminar here at Medical Museion last spring, he talked, among other things, about his next exhibitíon — on skin. His idea of exploríng skin “as a place where art, science, philosophy and social culture meet” is now becoming realised in Liverpool (UK) under the title of sk-interfaces. “What used to be understood as a surface […]

I was just reminded by Nick Hopwood on an email-list that the Wellcome Trust has quite recently introduced a more generous policy for the free use of Wellcome Images. The reproduction price is now waived for a wide range of non-commercial uses. See the terms here. The large majority of the >100,000 (!) online items in the digital image database are classical medical history pictures. […]

Forget about subcellular and molecular animation movies being done for research purposes or as didactic tools. The real driving force in the future will be pharma advertising. Take a look at this demo reel from iMed Studios — a spin-off company from Engineering Animation Inc., now part of the Saatchi & Saatchi family — that “develops scientifically accurate, visually impactful, leading edge multimedia […]

I’ve been thinking further about what a loose intellectual movement around human enhancement and converging technologies may look like. Did some search and came across the Betterhumans website which seems to be one of the major on-line gathering places for the transhumanist crowd. One of the most prolific contributors to the discussion forum, Anne C., an electrical engineeer in California, expresses a rather […]

Speaking about the formation of biocitizenship: Non-fiction writers Lois H. Gresh and Robert Weinberg (who have written about the science behind James Bond) have now published The Science of Stephen King (Wiley 2007). The preview from Amazon doesn’t raise expectations of a particularly scholarly experience, but it could nevertheless be fun reading for King-fans during the upcoming holidays. And maybe there are […]

I’ve just read a call for papers to a workshop in Brussels, 6-7 May 2008, organised by the research project ‘Knowledge Politics and New Converging Technologies: A Social Science Perspective’. The aim of the project –which is funded under EU’s 6th Framework RTD Programme for three years, from April 2006 to March 2009, and is run by a consortium co-ordinated by Nico […]

The most non-sensical biotech spam ad I’ve received in my inbox this fall: October 2, 1836 Charles Darwin returned to England aboard the HMS Beagle. He carried with him the information that would lead to his Theory of Natural Selection. The Theory of Evolution was born. October 1, 2007Bar Harbor BioTechnology, Inc. launched The PerfectCircle™. The next step […]