Monday, March 5, 2007

Sappol: Role of new imaging technologies

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From: Michael Sappol
Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2007 14:28:20 -0500

I'm a historian. I work on the history of anatomical illustration,medical iconography and representation. I'm also an exhibition curator.A few sketchy thoughts: New imaging technologies (MRI, sonography, CTscan, PET scan, etc.)--like anatomical engraving, watercolor, pencilsketching, chromolithography, photomicroscopy, chronographometry--havebecome a part of our visual environment, are a visual vocabularydeployed by fine artists and designers, in gallery, book and museumsettings, and also in commercial film, video, print, computer graphicsand other media. As such images become pervasive, there is a cumulativenaturalization effect: the digitized, manipulated image, paradoxically,signifies the natural world, becomes the order of things. Evenhistorical productions that might provide a counter-example, such as the pre computer age imaging technologies listed above, become subsumed bydigitization, insofar as most people only know such productions throughcomputer, television, or digitized printed pages and projections.

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