Video trailer for Biohacking: Do It Yourself!
From January 25th, Medical Museion will house an open biohacking laboratory, pieced together from recycled furniture, IKEA cabinets, and cheap “hacked” instruments made by do-it-yourself biologists from BiologiGaragen and Hackteria. At a series of hands-on events and discussions, visitors are invited to step inside the world of practical biotechnology, and encounter the dreams and realities of open science.
Two of our partners in the project, Sara Krugman and Martin Malthe Borch, have made a video trailer explaining some of the ideas behind the exhibition, events, and the biohacking movement.
Locals are invite...
Source: Biomedicine on Display - January 16, 2013 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Louise Whiteley Tags: biotech communcation displays/exhibits public engagement Studiolab biohacking DIY biology dna @en open science synthetic biology Source Type: blogs
Everyday objects you enjoy touching — investigating tactile aesthetics
During the last 48 hours my mind has mulled over the latest announcement for Medical Museion’s internal Thursday lunch seminar series — with our own PhD student Emma Peterson, who will present her work on methods for investigating tactile aesthetics.
It’s a PhD project within the framework of Jan Eric Olséns project on the history of blindness from a material culture perspective. That’s a very interesting project in itself, but that’s not what has occupied my mind the last two days.
What has kept me busy is that Emma’s seminar will not be a conventional academic presentation only; ...
Source: Biomedicine on Display - January 13, 2013 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Thomas Söderqvist Tags: aesthetics body haptics Source Type: blogs
Museums Showoff next Thursday — including “Why the very idea of a science museum is just plain silly, but if we’re going to have them they should be less like Harrods and more like a junk yard”
I just read about a great museum initiative in London — the Museums Showoff.
You may have heard about Science Showoff — a forum for all kinds of people working with science communication, who meet and share their work in a performance-based way, “and then chew it over with a pint in hand”. It’s very participatory, non-hierachical, and democratic — in other words, very Multitudinous.
Museums Showoff is the sister to Science Showoff, using the same basic idea and format “but filling the stage with people who work in, study or are interested in museums, libraries and collections rathe...
Source: Biomedicine on Display - January 9, 2013 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Thomas Söderqvist Tags: events museum and knowledge politics museum studies seminars Source Type: blogs
The Tweeting Museum
My proposal for a talk at Museums & The Web 2013 - published here:
Many museums have already embraced social media such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. as a means of interacting with their audiences. However, for many institutions the main goal of using social media is still only branding, marketing and redirecting traffic to main websites. Although these are perfectly legitimate goals of any institution, the strength of social media goes beyond that.
On Twitter museums may have a number of organizational accounts that are used to distribute announcements about events, exhibitions, etc. and often these accounts e...
Source: Biomedicine on Display - January 8, 2013 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Daniel Noesgaard Tags: abstracts conferences social web media Twitter mw2013 Source Type: blogs
2013, Science Communication, Public Health, Bonn
Some new years bring with them just a change of numbers – other new years bring bigger changes. 2013 seems to be of the later categories. At least if you consider moving to a different country a change. Starting from later this January, I will exchange my Copenhagen address for an address in Bonn, Germany. I guess you could claim that I’ll start a new life as a Bonn-girl.
I have on previous occasions moved abroad to take on new jobs (in China, Switzerland and Japan) but this time no fixed job awaits me. Rather, I have the opportunity to explore different options, try out my freelance skills and at the same time...
Source: Biomedicine on Display - January 7, 2013 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Nina Bjerglund Andersen Tags: public health science communication Bonn Bonn University Cologne Germany global public health research communication science communication @en united nations United Nations University University of Cologne Source Type: blogs
Biomedicine on Display is moving to www.museion.ku.dk
After almost seven years it’s time for change! This blog was aired on 22 December 2004, and now we’re moving to Medical Museion’s new integrated site: www.museion.ku.dk.
In many respects, Biomedicine on Display has been a pioneer blog. It was the first medical museum blog, actually one of the first museum blogs altogether, and one of the first scholarly blogs dealing with medical history, history of science and medical science studies. In addition, it was one of first scholarly blogs in Denmark and probably the first blog at the University of Copenhagen.
We’ve posted on a regular basis, a...
Source: Biomedicine on Display - October 18, 2011 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Thomas Tags: blogging Source Type: blogs
The Era of Objects
V2_ , the Institute for the Unstable Media is, in their own words
an interdisciplinary center for art and media technology in Rotterdam (the Netherlands). V2_’s activities include organizing presentations, exhibitions and workshops, research and development of artworks in its own media lab, distributing artworks through its Agency, publishing in the field of art and media technology, and developing an online archive.
They just released an e-book called The Era of Objects (the pdf of the book is here) which contains some fascinating and surreal attempts at ‘futurescaping’, mapping out “a heterogeno...
Source: Biomedicine on Display - October 17, 2011 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Adam Tags: general Source Type: blogs
Live-tweeting from Artefacts meeting in Leiden
I’m live-tweeting from the Artefacts meeting in Leiden: see here.
See meeting programme here.
See abstracts here.
You can also follow #medicalmuseion and #af11. (Source: Biomedicine on Display)
Source: Biomedicine on Display - September 27, 2011 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Thomas Tags: collections conferences Source Type: blogs
Drawing hidden truths (abstract for symposium Representing the Contentious)
I have just had a paper accepted for a very interesting symposium called Representing the Contentious, organized in London 14 October by Bronwyn Parry, Ania Dabrowska and Wellcome Trust People Award.
My presentation contains many images from my PhD Delineating Disease: a system for investigating Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva that were not presented to the public for reasons I will discuss.
Drawing hidden truths
How do you show disease in a way that reveals new insights, is clear, informative, is understandable to members of the public as well as to medical experts, and yet remains respectful to the subject? And ...
Source: Biomedicine on Display - September 26, 2011 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Lucy Tags: abstracts aesthetics aesthetics of biomedicine art and science conferences general museum ethics seminars Source Type: blogs
The moral discipline of curatorship
In The Sovereignty of Good (1970) Iris Murdoch suggested that intellectual discipline is moral discipline. She used the learning of new languages as an example:
If I am learning, for instance, Russian, I am confronted by an authoritative structure which commands my respect. The task is difficult and the goal is distant and perhaps never entirely attainable. My work is a progressive revelation of something which exists independently of me. Attention is rewarded by a knowledge of reality. Love of Russian leads me away from myself towards something alien to me, something which my consciousness cannot take over, swallow up,...
Source: Biomedicine on Display - September 24, 2011 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Thomas Tags: aesthetics Source Type: blogs
The fascinating world of blog spam
We all hate blog spam. Spam filters are a blessing — and I’m amazed how efficient they are: I rarely need to weed out the comment folder.
Sometimes, however, my Akismet filter is too efficient, and therefore I use to go through the spam folder once in a while to see if there are any nuggets hidden in the trash. It only takes a few minutes to rapidly browse the spam and I actually rescue a comment (and a potential colleague!) now and then. And it’s also quite interesting to see how the spam content has its own logic over time. A couple of years ago, it was a lot of ads for acai berry juices, last winter...
Source: Biomedicine on Display - September 22, 2011 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Thomas Tags: blogging Source Type: blogs
The reopened National Museum of Health and Medicine in Silver Springs, Md. — hope it’s better this time
Some years ago, I wrote a pretty critical review of the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington DC. Now the museum has reopened on the new site in Silver Spring, Maryland, a little further north of DC.
The new building features, they say, “a state-of-the-art collections management facility” to house the museums 25-million-object collection (that sounds pretty much, and it’s probably because they have a rather unusual way of counting their artefacts, but nevertheless, their collection aren’t exactly miniscule).
The first exhibits available to the public will feature artifa...
Source: Biomedicine on Display - September 21, 2011 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Thomas Tags: history of medicine news Source Type: blogs
Public health science communication 2.0 — new blog
Watch out for Nina Bjerglund’s new blog on public health science comunication via social media: http://bjerglund.wordpress.com/. She is posting frequently, the content is serious and well-written, and the topic is extremely important — because communication with the general public is a sina qua non for public health research. (Source: Biomedicine on Display)
Source: Biomedicine on Display - September 20, 2011 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Thomas Tags: general Source Type: blogs
There’s no cure for curiosity
Jessica Palmer (Bioephemera blog) is leaving ScienceBlogs to start on her own again. And ends her last post with the classic words ascribed to Dorothy Parker: “The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity”. She’s so right. Keep up the spirit! (Source: Biomedicine on Display)
Source: Biomedicine on Display - September 19, 2011 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Thomas Tags: general Source Type: blogs
Synthetic biology — science, art, design
After more than half a year of budget negotations, Medical Museion is now officially part of the EC 7th FWP programme-financed project StudioLab.
Inspired by the merging of the artists studio with the research lab to create a hybrid creative space, STUDIOLAB proposes the creation of a new European platform for creative interactions between art and science. STUDIOLAB brings together major players in scientific research with centres of excellence in the arts and experimental design and leverages the existence of a new network of hybrid spaces to pilot a series of projects at the interface between art and science.
Science G...
Source: Biomedicine on Display - September 18, 2011 Category: Medical Scientists Authors: Thomas Tags: aesthetics of biomedicine art and biomed displays/exhibits events future medical science and technology general science communication studies seminars Source Type: blogs
