I discovered something nice today. Darling Creative Agency linked to my work as inspiration. That pretty special to me. And, it’s pretty nice to see someone take advantage to the larger files I make available! They presented my work then I did. :)

If you scroll through their art and skulls tags (the two associated with mine) the work is pretty impressive and definitely inspiring. It’s humbling in a way too. So, Darling Creative in now a definite follow. Thanks for the props. :)

Oh, and I included the screen grabs of their site as eye candy. Enjoy.

“Any art that aids in the identification, apprehension, or conviction of criminal offenders, or that aids in the location of victims or the identification of unknown deceased persons.”   (Karen Taylor)

Francesco Bertinatti (fl. mid-1800s) (anatomist), Mecco Leone (artist), Turin, 1837-39. Lithograph.

I understand that some might say a large part of my endless curiosity is morbid.  I’ve heard this often enough that I thought a good way to start the discussion o forensic art would voice some thought and share some study as to why.

Why certain themes in medicine and nature are regarded by some as morbid, and why I, personally, am so interested in these disturbing and unpleasant aspects of life.

The answers to the first part of that question I quickly discovered are extremely complex, so much so as to keep me from explaining throughly.  I surmise that the reason certain themes are regarded as morbid depends a great deal on cultural, history, geographies, religions, politics, evolution and so on.  Suffice it to say, I will leave the explanations as to the cultural taboo of death and the morbid to the many greater minds working on the question.

As for the second part of that question, “what’s my personal attraction to the macabre?”, that I can illuminate.  In describing my own experiences I’ll attempt to explained briefly why I continually find my work exploring the grim or ghastly; how I ended up learning two dimensional and three dimensional forensic facial reconstruction.  I hope to shine a light on this dark connection to my art and to my thesis.

First and foremost, I look to the dramas and tragedies of others to see how to better handle my own life.  In coping with and preparing for what life presents I’ve come to cultivate a certain beloved wonder in the macabre twists of fate and nature.  The unfairness, irony and synchronicity that make up life all have lessons to teach. I try not to ignore these lesson even though they my disturb me.

I once asked my sister if her fiancee’s family knew about our history, our families secrets.  “No. Of course not.”  She explained to me that she had learned long ago not to tell “ugly stories to beautiful people”.

But those hidden tragic stories need to be told.  They are how we as individuals and a societies heal and develop.  For that to happen, these stories need a sympathetic audience. It is important to me to look at these morbid, macabre, sad, even depressing stories and experience the narratives that most people don’t want to look at, hear about, or be near.

One of my favorite poems explores this same fascination, Design, by Robert Frost.

On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches’ broth
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.
What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?
If design govern in a thing so small.

Many people associate a morbid fascination with sadomasochism or the occult. (citation) There are numerous reasons for this, from our deepest instincts for survival to the perpetuation of this visceral reaction in entertainment and media.  And as much as I love a good horror, mystery or suspense I have always been bothered by the phenomenon of suffering as amusement, devoid of empathy or thought.  I do not see beauty in suffering, nor do I believe pain can be exquisite.  I do not believe deformed infants floating in formaldehyde are “cool” or any less tragic then the death of any child.

What I do believe is that life will be surprising, strange and tragic.  I believe that the pain and suffering of one life can teach us something valuable and that it’s up to us to not look away from these stories in disgust or sadness.

Bernhard Siegfried Albinus, 1749

Charles Estienne, 1546

My interest in forensic art started with a love of figurative art and medical illustration.

My interest in figurative art and medical illustration stem from a desire to understand my own body and how nature can go wrong.

My sister and I both have scoliosis, a skeletal disease of the spinal column. I have a double S curve with reverse lordosis and an unfused sacrum.  I suffer from chronic pain due to permanent nerve damage in my left leg and foot.  One of the most painful experiences of my life was when my arch collapsed due to these damaged nerves.  A lot of X-rays of us were taken growing up, to the degree that it’s been suggested as a possible cause of my infertility.  I still get a lot of X-rays, CT scans and MRIs even now.My sister Julia had it much worse however. She was disfigured.

My sister was what most people think of when they think of a hunch back.  She wore a Boston back brace for most of our time in junior high and high school. We are eleven months apart in age. We and had the same friends and were in some of the same class together growing up. I experienced her suffering ver acutely. At 18, she had spinal surgery for eight hours. Two metal rods with fourteen hooks where inserted into her back, “straightening” her spine. In eight hours she grew six inches.  My sister was never the same; another story too deep to elaborate on here and now and deserving it’s own response.  The point to be understood in my early and repeated exposure to these kinds of medical problems, was that this was the beginning of my interest in the human form and looking at the inside, the layers beneath the surface.

Years later when I would be exploring ways to use my skills in a more meaningful way that would be of some use to society, I would combine these interest of the macabre, science, medicine, art, anatomy, and the desire to tell a human story into my interest and training in forensic facial reconstruction.

I volunteered my services a forensic artist for several years before changing course once more to focus back on research, design, and fine art.  My experience in forensics helped not only my ability to draw and sculpt the human face, but it also help me to connect powerfully to the stories of others.

My activities and interests throughout my life can be seen as a series of curious connections.  Although, not always in straight lines or clean paths, these connection all smoothly, without effort, lead to my thesis: fictional stories of real people intertwined in macabre, dramatic and tragic circumstances.  It is also not surprising that the final form should be located in a museum and take the shape of an interactive sculptural puzzle that rewards the viewer for making the effort to understand.

Stories are the edge, the interface between what can be known and what is never to be discovered, because it is a mystery transcendent of all human research.”  Joseph Campbell

We are narrative creatures. Before we are even born we are told stories. I once leaned close to my sister’s belly to impart advice, describe life and entertain my yet unborn niece. Then, as soon as we can speak we begin to announce our own stories to the world. Years later my niece comes running, yelling “Nikki! Puppies! Nikki! Puppies!” She’s pointing to the next room with one hand and tugging on me frantically with the other. In her excitement and limited 3-year-old vocabulary she was telling me a story: “You got here just in time. Nikki is having her kittens in the other room. You have to come see them!” Even after death our stories are told for us. So although my niece will never meet her grandmother, she will know her through the stories my sister and I tell her. More then opposable thumbs or the use of tools, the human need for narrative is what makes our species truly unique.

There are as many forms of narrative as there are ways in which to communicate. All of those forms extend out into an endless assortment of genres and media, as if all the world was made for the cultivation of stories. Since the beginning of human history there has never existed a people without narrative, anywhere, at any time. (Bruner, 1986)

Narratives are the fundamental organizing principal of human existence. They invest experience with meaning and enable an ongoing construction of reality. We use stories to remember the past, explain the present and dream about the future. (Bruner, 1986) Our lives are immersed in stories. They are how we understand the world around us and the world within us. Whether grounded in fact or a flight of fancy, stories can teach us about ourselves. (Jonassen 2002, 69)

It is easy for us to see how we gain knowledge when a narrative is merely a recounted fact or is based in a system of realities. Some may ask how fictional narratives can be a source of genuine knowledge. (McCormick, 1983:399) The answer lies in any reflective person’s attempt to understanding and articulating their experiences and beliefs. This attempt at understanding relies on the balanced value of not only factual recounting but fictional inventions.

When Plato, for instance, puts the whole problem of the theory of knowledge in his parable of the cave … these are genuine and true symbols, that is, attempts to express something for which no verbal concept yet exists.” (Jung,1971)

3.6.1 Introducing the 8 characters

1006.120
Istria, Trieste
Girolamo Zini, age 20
Rope-walker. Died of atlanto-axial dislocation (broken neck)

1006.136
Salzburg
Veronica Huber, age 18
Executed for the murder of her child.

1006.114
Porto-Ferrajo, Elba
Gianbattista Tozzi, age 24
Policeman.
Died of stab wound in Florence.

1006.014
Northern Hungary
Julius Farkas, age 28
Protestant, soldier.
Suicide by gunshot wound of the heart, because of weariness of life.
Depressed nasal root.

1006.035
Russia
Andrejew Sokoloff
Scopzi (Russian sect that believes in Castration).
Dies of self-inflicted removal of testicles.
Dual left supraorbital foramina.

1006.059
Vienna
Francisca Seycora, age 19
Famous Viennese prostitute.
Died in the General Hospital of meningitis.
Prominent temporal lines continued onto frontal lobes.

1006.039
Siam (Thailand)
Rai-Tao-Si
Famous criminal, guilty of many atrocities.
Captured with ten of his band in Batavia
(now Jakarta). Hanged in castle of Semarang (Java).
Prominent zygomatic bones.

1006.012
Szigeth (Hungary or Romania)
Geza Uirmeny, 80
Reformist, herdsman.
At age 70 attempted suicide by cutting his throat.
Wound not fatal because of ossified larynx; laryngeal fistula remained.
Lived until 80 without melancholy.
Dual right supraorbital foramina.

Lucía is the 1st short video of the series “Lucía, Luis y el lobo” (“Lucía, Luis and the Wolf”). The video was shot frame by frame with a digital photo camera. Materials: charcoal, dirt, flowers, found objects and cardboard.

Luis is the 2nd short video of the series “Lucía, Luis y el lobo” (“Lucía, Luis and the Wolf”), it is a follow-up to the short video Lucía. The video was shot frame by frame with a digital photo camera. Materials: charcoal, dirt, flowers, found objects and cardboard.

I’ll start with an update on the 2D reconstructions.

The four final subjects for symposium are finished and a ton of print variations have been made for the Congress of Curious People show at Coney Island. All the minor adjustment have been made to the final images. Zini and Huber’s eyes, Farkus ears and brow, and Tozzi is finally finished.

I submitted final images for publication and uploaded the project abstract to the website.

I’ve created a slideshow to run on a loop next to the prints for teh first weekend at Coney Island. I’ll bring the cabinet down the following weekend, April 16th.

I have to mat and frame the finales which required time to prepare and order but there all ready to go.  The frames are here, back from VA where they were originally sent. I wanted to get a good match on the stain for the cabinets and the best way to do that was to give the frames to the cabinet maker.
He did a great job on matching them up. (More about the cabinet later.) I ran around the city one day looking for affordable matting. No one would quote me over the phone of course, so I ended up going to 4 different custom framers before deciding to order online.

No one cuts mats on premises anymore. I’d be surprised it any of the “framers” I dealt with even knew how. Everything is sent out to be cut by lasers. All the frame shops had a 3 to 5 day waiting period and none of them carried regular mat board. They only offer acid free rag and UV glass, the most expensive option with the highest markup. The cheapest 16″ x 20″ mat I could order with a 2 1/8″ opening all the way around started at $30.00, I need 4. SO I need the regular mat as bad as that is. I’m good at archival work and not bad at not so archival framing. (I’ll cut in a buffer of rag paper so it can stay framed with the bad mats for a short while.)  I offered to cut my own if I purchased the board even though I knew they’d say no because of insurance reasons, but I had to ask.  I can cut a mat perfectly in seconds. But oh well, does me no good without the equipment.  I’ve picked up some precut glass from Michael’s. I think I will take one framed piece with me to Coney Island and display it on an easel.

I had at first thought I would only set up for the first weekend, but then I get the schedule for the second weekend and knew it was my best opportunity to get get some feedback from the “curious community.”

Here’s a quick glance at the line up for the last weekend, for a detailed itinerary check out Observatories Post on the weekend.

The Congress for Curious Peoples
Saturday and Sunday, April 16th and 17th
The Coney Island Museum
1208 Surf Avenue, Brooklyn

Saturday April 16th
10:00 – 11:00 Keynote Speaker
Norman Klein, author of “The Vatican to Vegas: The History of Special Effects”

11:30 – 1:30 “The New Curiosity”: Scholarship as Artistic Medium
Mark Dion, Joanna Ebenstein, Wendy Walker,
Moderated and introduced by Aaron Beebe, The Coney Island Museum

1:30 – 3:30: Lunch and Sideshow Visit

3:30 – 5:30: Immersive Amusements/ Scripted Spaces
Elizabeth Bradley, Mark Dery, Amy Herzog,
Moderated and Introduced by Alison Griffiths

Sunday April 17th
10:00 – 12:00: The Fairground and The Museum: Human Anatomy on Display
Lisa Farrington, Anna Maerker, Mike Sappol, Elizabeth Stephens,
Moderated and introduced by John Troyer, author of “Technologies of the Human Corpse” (Forthcoming)

12:00 – 1:00: Lunch

1:00 – 3:00: The 19th Century Dime Museum in the Contemporary Imagination
Will Baker, Aaron Beebe, D. B. Denholtz, Evan Michelson, Mike Zohn,
Moderated and introduced by Andrea Dennett

3:30 – 5:30: Science and Technology for Public Amusement
Laurel Braitman, Fred Nadis, Simon Werrett,
Moderated by Lord Whimsy/Allen Crawford,

Tickets for the weekend are $25 and can be purchased by clickinghere.

I have one 6″ table and two chairs.  I’m hoping I can get some help bringing the cabinet to set up somewhere, but there may not be room for it. I ordered some binders to display the variety of prints available. I learned to keep track of print variables when I worked in stone lithography. The ability to make each print a bit different then the one before through the application of different inks is very familiar to me. It was one of the aspects of stone etching that I explored for years.  This process was similar in the unpredictability of first “pull” but, with good notes taking during the print process, the consistency of future prints is very reliable. I am beginning to feel towards my printed how I use to feel towards a troublesome but rewarding litho stone.

The last photos posted on this site of the cabinet was the still in progress pre-stained piece.  I feel like that was centuries ago.

If you keep up with things on the BackwaterBlog, then you saw some updates before the delivery.

Ishi, a college and classmate generously offered her help in Maya. I give her the skull of Girolamo Zini, The Rope Walker, and a very basic introduction in 3D/2D facial reconstruction. She gave it a few hours to quickly realized there was something ver off.  After some emails and a quick meet-up, we determined I had given her a GIANT Zinni skull. The scale was increased 15:1. So the pegs she had created were barely visible.  I’ll have to go back into OsiriX and find out what happened.  I’ll see if I can re-export the build or measure the skull.  Either way it’s an interesting problem and I’m also wondering if it contributes to the nomaniflod geometry. I’ll post more of an update on this later.

I solved the problem of the lighting with a simple, low energy and very inexpensive solution. USB LED laptop mini lights.  I tied several models, the seven LED model being the most like a floodlight to my dark little stages within the box.  I was going for a more spot lighted look and the little single LEDs on long flexible goosenecks work perfectly. I wrapped them in matte black gaffing tape to reduce the chance they might bee seen and to reduce any reflection they might give off. After some research I discovered the perfect USB hub that ran off it’s own power, was triangular so that it fit snugly into the corner of the box, was dark and had seven forward facing plugs.

I’ve decided to carve some of the central figures for the diorama.

Farkus, The Wounded Heart

The Cabinet under construction @ Backwater Blog

An illustrated lecture and book signing with professor Ann Fabian
Date: Monday, February 21st
Time: 8:00 PM
Presented by Morbid Anatomy

When Philadelphia doctor Samuel George Morton died in 1851 he left behind collection of more than a thousand human skulls. Not the grisly leftovers of botched operations, but the fruit of 20 years’ work gathering up human remains from around the world. Friends sent Morton heads from Peru, Cuba, Mexico, and Liberia, from almshouses in Pennsylvania, swamps in Florida, beaches in Hawaii, gallows in Indonesia, tombs in Egypt, and battlefields in Texas. Naturalists like Morton collected plants and animals, but trafficking in human remains was something strange and different. Morton was sure that human skulls held clues to the riddles of race that troubled his generation. Were human beings all one species? After measuring skulls, Morton thought not.

In her new book The Skull Collectors: Race, Science, and America’s Unburied Dead, professor Ann Fabian details the story of Morton’s collection of skulls; in the process, she not only details Morton’s problematic and flawed ideas about race and science, but also the stories behind the individual skulls comprising the Morton Skull collection, the remnants of which now reside in the storerooms of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Whose skulls were these? How did they get to Philadelphia? And what has happened to this great collection of heads?

Ann Fabian is a Professor of History and American Studies at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, where she recently completed a term as dean of humanities. She has published books on gambling and personal narratives, and written about the bodybuilding publisher Bernarr Macfadden, the ancient remains of Kennewick Man, and the dead bodies left floating in flooded New Orleans. She is working on a new book about ruins. The School for Advanced Research, the American Antiquarian Society, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation supported her research on The Skull Collectors: Race, Science, and America’s Unburied Dead. She is pleased to talk about this curious business.

via Observatory » The Morton Skull Collection: Race, Science, and America’s Unburied Dead.

I split the shots and set them up in layers in photoshop. From Josh’s example of his friends dog I decided that the walker moving from the far background to the foreground might be a visually interesting affect. I marked the frame steps and positioned the closest foot on each step.

A layer was created for each tracing and then it was just a matter of getting to work. I traced each frame and rearanged the layers once everthing was done.

I ran the frames through the 512 GIFanimator (found HERE) trying different delay times to mimic walking speed and such. I found the animation needed to be not just a two up as suggested but actually a 3 up worked even better.

After I got the flow working a little better I went back into photoshop to develop the color scheme. I want something fun for the content and something high contrast for the mechanics to work well, but I also have an aversion to primary color schemes. This is what I finally came up with:

The issue of blurry vs. sharp is also on my mind. I want to test half tones on the linear zoetrope, just to see what it does to the illusion. Will it make it blurry like we would expect, or will a half tone sharpen the image like a higher dpi might do? We shall see.

There is still a lot of work to be done on these (adding the rope, coloring them all in, sizing and position of each figure for a start) but I think they’ll work well when it’s all said and done.

I received my invitation to sell prints at “A Congress of Curious People”.  I’ll only be there for the first weekend of the event April 9-11 (even thought I’d love to be there for the entire event school gets in the way ;)

APRIL 9-18, 2010

AT SIDESHOWS BY THE SEASHORE
AND
THE CONEY ISLAND MUSEUM
1208 SURF AVE.

A CONGRESS OF CURIOUS PEOPLES:
AN AMAZING COLLECTION OF HUMAN MARVELS

Since the 1860′s, Coney Island has been a beacon for strange and interesting people. For generations, it has attracted the curious and the enlightened, the onlooker and the performer. Every spring Coney Island USA convenes The Congress of Curious Peoples, a 10-day gathering of unique individuals at Sideshows by the Seashore and the Coney Island Museum, celebrating Coney Island’s subversive and exciting power and exploring its political, artistic, and spectacular possibilities through performances, exhibitions, and films by important artists in the world of the 21st century sideshows.

AND

Adding to the madness, this year, in conjunction with Observatory and the Morbid Anatomy Library, Coney Island USA introduces the Congress for Curious People.Consisting of a 2-day symposium and 5-day lecture series, this additional congress will take a scholarly yet popular approach to the curiosities and wonders of Coney Island and seek to investigate–via lectures and and a scholarly conference–the relationship between education and spectacle in American amusements, the collection of curiosities from the renaissance to the present, and the display of “freaks” and “primitive peoples” in fairgrounds and worlds fair settings. The series will celebrate the interdisciplinarity of Dime Museums while calling into question both popular and scholarly assumptions about the importance of Coney Island’s legacy, its sordid past, and its titillating present.

BUT

HOW DO I MAKE SENSE OF THIS OVERWHELMING BUT EXCITING SPECTACLE!?

SCHEDULE:
1) Opening Weekend
The 10-day spectacular begins with the opening night party in Coney Island’s Freak Bar and the induction of new members into the Sideshow Hall of Fame. Opening weekend features an exhibition at Observatory (off-site in Gowanus), and two days of performances by some of Coney Island’s best-loved performers on stage at Sideshows by the Seashore.

2) 5 nights of Thrilling Lectures and Esoteric and Bizarre Performances
Opening weekend is followed by 5 nights of lectures and performances by international acts and scholars appearing on stage in the Coney Island Museum and Sideshows by the Seashore.

3) Super Freak Weekend and the Congress for Curious People
The climax of this star-studded wonderfest is “Super-Freak Weekend” – which includes performances by some of the world’s most important natural-born freaks- individuals whose performance is their physicality itself – and a scholarly conference, called the Congress for Curious People, in the Coney Island Museum.

For all the details and the full breakdown of events check out there website: Congress Of Curious Peoples.