Reflection on Dr. Dawson’s Presentation
Image from weheartit.com
A) My experience in my high school anatomy class served me well today. I was able to connect the terms I had learned in that class with a physical heart. The opportunity to handle a real organ of human anatomy solidified the terms and science I had learned before. My main takeaway from her discussion today was not directly related to the tangible organ, however. What I found most interesting was when Dr. Dawson asked the class where their mental images of anatomically correct hearts came from. The answers were varied-some came from science textbooks, some from Youtube or social media, my own mental image was informed by a combination of scientific images and cartoons. These answers made me think more about how knowledge is disseminated through society. The large majority of people come upon scientific images second or third hand. That is, they do not have access to facilities such as cadaver labs or electron microscopes. It raises the question- Would the fields of science seem appear more accessible to the general public if this equipment was more readily available? instead of in the possession of the select few who are able to reach the upper echelons of academia?
B) Since my project this term does not deal with a physiological component, there was no direct correlation between this guest speaker and this specific project. However, her active demonstration at the end of the session – in which the whole class was employed to symbolically carry out the role of the heart through movement – gave me a new perspective on how performance could be used to visualize data.
C) The aforementioned realization that information can come from an enormous variety of sources gives me a lot to think about as I move forward both in my college career and beyond. As someone with a burgeoning interest in contemporary art and visual culture, I decided to explore the ideas of the beauty of visualizing data, and came across an interesting article.
Is Data Visualization the Future of Art?
(personal note on the above article: it is my personal opinion that painting will never lose its relevancy. Some of the earliest records of human art we have are cave paintings, and the traditions has only become more richly varied and provocative since then.)
Today’s presentation may have not made me decide to rush to the anatomy department and pursue a career in medical study, but it definitely planted some new ideas in my head. I would argue that that is just as impactful.
Image from Visual News