WEEK Four: The Body & the Library l

This week we continued with our biological theme by focusing on the imaging of the body. We screened two films: Barbara Hammer's Sanctus (1990), her optical printing tour-de-force using classic X-ray footage of the human body in various states of activity, and The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes (1971) by Stan Brakhage. This title is a literal translation of the word "autopsy" and his documentary does indeed take place in a morgue. (It's silence is a blessing.)

Then we had our first field trip to the Special Collections Library at Norlin, where Barb, Greg, Deb, and the other librarian treasure hunters laid out an entire display of fascinating research materials from the archive on our units subject of Biology, The Body and Microscope Vision.  This incuded a working microscope from the 1700's, anatomical and obseravtional drawings from Da Vinci reproductions to contemporary artists books, and a collection of Bentley's snowflakes images on glass slides. Truly awesome and inspiring! We can't wait to go back next month...

this last image is The Rosetta Disk, a project of the Long Now Foundation. It is an archive of every language on the planet embedded on a disk, seen here though the glass orb which is half it's sphere, all *in analog form* so one needs a microscope to  read the documents.