The horizons of the exhibit “FACES”: anthropological context and applications in medicine

The exhibition FACES. The Many Visages of Human History is, in its own way, a landmark of the work that Arc Team, the Museum of Anthropology at the University of Padua and Antrocom NPO are making together.

The reconstructions of the faces of hominins; of St. Anthony and of  the Blessed Luca Belludi; of Francesco Petrarca and of Giambattista Morgagni, are the evidence of a research that lasted for months and that continues nowadays; a research intended to be expanded to other areas of interest.

In fact, the exhibition offers to the visitors the opportunity to reflect on concepts meaningful to anthropology as diversity, self-perception and identity from the point of view both historical and  contemporary, but it is also a mirror of a continuous testing of technologies that open new perspectives in different areas of anthropological research.

Staying in the wake of the topics of the exhibition, there is no doubt that the perception of the self and diversity are important parameters in the assessments of medical anthropology, especially if the feedback on them are carried out in the light of the implementation of new technologies and 3D printing, in particular applied in medicine.

For example, the prostheses that can be constructed, even printed, in a relatively short time and custom-made for the patient. We have a lot of examples from this point of view:  the mandible custom-made for a 83 years old woman or the cranium completely replaced in a 22 years old Dutch patient; or the realization of live organs, such as liver, tracheal cartilage and ear directly using living cells.

More, forensic reconstruction is a valuable tool in reconstructive surgery: examples of implementation, in this context, are the reconstruction of the face of Albert of Trento via open source software, or of the face of a child mummy preserved at the Saint Louis Art Museum.

I shall focus in particular on an implementation made by Cicero Moraes in order to treat the developmental dysplasia of the hip (DDH), a neonatal congenital malformation and treatable using Pavlik harness or making a particular plaster cast (hip spica cast). There may be, in severe cases, even a type of orthopedic surgery.

This treatment involves a continuous monitoring of the patient because of its complications: pain, increased temperature, lesions of the skin. Moraes, together with researchers Munhoz, Kunkel and Tanaka, has implemented an alternative method to the common orthosis consisting in a photogrammetric scanning of the hip in order to replicate the perfect geometry of the anatomical part, with reduction of costs and time and avoiding complications to the patient.

The aims of our research are gradually expanding and we know that we have to do still a lot of work. It's a good thing, however, that we stopped for a moment to take stock of the situation and to recognize that we are helping to improve the state of affairs. Not only in archeology and anthropology, but also in other fields thanks to the scope of what we are doing. A result achieved thanks to motivated individuals who, despite residing in geographic areas far apart, have joined efforts to reach a common goal by sharing data and projects.

Facce: a digital poster for the exhibition

The opening of the exhibition "Facce. I molti volti della storia umana" will soon take place in Padua (14th February 2015), so I started to work also on dissemination tools, trying to focus on new media potentialities.

While the real communication experts will take care of the traditional promotion (posters, handbills, etc...), I would like to use the opportunity to test different methods.

Basically I am just developing a digital poster, which should be an reminder of the exhibition (with some essential informations) and, at the same time, an interactive showcase for the photos that the people sent us (and will send us) for our crowdsourcing campaign regarding the pareidolia phenomenon.
I think that the best way to realize this idea is to compile an app for Android, so that it will be accessible to many different smartphones. I designed the app to contain a WebViewer, linked to an address in our server, in which I uploaded an interactive gallery of images.
My first step has been a fast search in internet to find all the tools I was needing to develop my app, of course checking the licenses and choosing the open source software (an the simplest ones, being a newcomer in such field).
As first I focused on the gallery and I chose an MIT licensed  jQuery tool (jssor), with which I build this slideshow:

Than I looked for a software to develop my app and (thanks to +Michele Mazzurana) I came across another MIT licensed software, MIT App Inventor. This software has two main advances: it is based a GUI (very simple) and it does not require an emulator to test the work (if you have an Android device, you can directly connect it with your project).
Here is a screenshot of the direct link between the software and the mobile:

Direct link between MIT App Inventor and the mobile

If you want to test the app, you can download it here. Please notice that to visualize the gallery you will need an internet connection, so (depending on your contract) your provider could put additional costs (no problem if you have a flat rate or if you use free wifi access).
I hope this post was useful, have a nice day!

PS
If you have pictures regarding the pareidolia effect, you can upload them on the FaceBook page of the exhibiotn "Facce" (do not forget to write the author, the title and the license, for the credits). Day by day the pictures will be uploaded in the gallery of the app.

FACCE, a crowsourcing campaign to build a real open source exhibition

Hi all,

like I wrote in this post, we are working to organize an open source exhibition in Padua for October 2014. In our intentions the concept "open" will be applied to different aspects of the event:

1.  The scientific work will be performed using just Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) and, when possible, the exhibition will be staged with open hardware devices
2. All the produced material (3D models, images, software, hardware) will be released with open licenses (CC-BY)
3. When necessary, part of the budget will be collected with specific crowdfunding campaigns, connected with minor projects
4. We will try to obtian some material for the exhibition with crowdsourcing campaigns, asking people to release the material with open licenses

Today I'd like to explain the 4th point and start one of this crowd-sourcing campaign, which will be also a social experiment to see the potentiality of this medium for cultural aims.

One of the session of the exhibition will be dedicated to pareidolia, which is a "... psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant..." (quote Wikipedia). Obviously we are interested in this matter as it is also related with faces, being this figure one of the most common subject which people sees in different contexts. In this regard Leonardo da Vinci, thinking to pareidolia a device for painters, wrote: "if you look at any walls spotted with various stains or with a mixture of different kinds of stones, if you are about to invent some scene you will be able to see in it a resemblance to various different landscapes adorned with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, plains, wide valleys, and various groups of hills. You will also be able to see divers combats and figures in quick movement, and strange expressions of faces, and outlandish costumes, and an infinite number of things which you can then reduce into separate and well conceived forms" (1). Of curse pareidolia in not only a matter for artists and also normal people are able to see "beyond the image" (from greek παρά είδωλον). Here below you can see one of the most famous picture in this sense, the "Face on Mars" which the NASA spacecraft Viking I took on the red planet surface.

Photo from the Viking I spacecraft (Public Domain)

As you see pareidolia is a phenomenon which involves different aspect of human life, form art, in which is often used intentionally like in the paints of Giuseppe Arcimboldo...

L'ortolano o Ortaggi in una ciotola G. Arcimboldo (Public Domain)

 ... to psychology, where some of the images of the Rorschach test are perceived by patients as human faces (2)

the seventh blot of the Rorschach inkblot test (Public Domain)

... to  religion, like in this XIX century picture, in which some people sees the face of Jesus...

Swedish anonymous XIX century (Public Domain)

... and here we are to the meaning of this post: we need your help to collect pictures of different subjects in which is possible to see faces. In other words, with this post we want to start a crowdsourcing campaign on this topic to set up a special session of the exhibition in which we plan to show your contributes with a digital installation. To help us you can upload your picture on the exhibition FaceBook page (soon we will open also other channels). Do not forget to give your work the credits (that will be presented with the picture):

TITLE OF THE PICTURE (optional)
YOUR NAME (necessary)
THE LICENSE (necessary)

We suggest you to use a Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC-BY 4.0), but also other form of open license are accepted. Here is the official CC website to choose a license.

As an example, below you can see my personal contribute: the dashboard of my car.

Dashboard (Luca Bezzi, CC-BY 4.0)

We count on your help! Have a nice day and thanks in advance!

Bibliography

(1) Da Vinci, Leonardo (1923). John, R; Don Read, J, eds. "Note-Books Arranged And Rendered Into English". Empire State Book Co.

(2) Alvin G. Burstein, Sandra Loucks (1989). Rorschach's test: scoring and interpretation. New York: Hemisphere Pub. Corp. p. 72. ISBN 978-0-89116-780-8.