Tuesday 13 May 2014

getting your head around it



I spent a couple of days up in BARC getting a feel for what they do and what I might be interested in taking as starting points for my work.
A big thanks must go out to the staff especially Tom Sparrow and Andy Holland who tried to explain the black art of 3D modelling.  I think they would agree that they have probably failed.  I have been playing with one of the images at home in meshlab trying to get my head around how the program works but it is this image that has surprised me most.  It reminds me of one of those cut out and make your own models at home kit.  I just cant get my head around the technology behind this image.  All the tiny bits are the facets of the lumps and bumps at the back of the skull.
So whose skull is this?  It’s from the collection of the Royal College of Surgeons.  It’s a historical piece that was used a long time ago as a teaching aid. It’s the skull of a young man with Downs Syndrome.  I have very mixed feelings about it.  The number painted on it seems a little disrespectful but if it was a well-used sample that helped people learn and understand and if the writing on samples was an established protocol of the time to stop samples being mixed up then is it okay? I don’t know and it’s something to think about.