2010–11 Grantees
An Iconography of Contagion
A team of medical students— Marie Adachi, Xuan Han, Erica MacKenzie, Bailey Miles, Alex Ruby, and Neha Sathe (Pritzker School of Medicine)—and an artist—Clare Rosean—will produce a paperback book in the style of a graphic novel that integrates science and art to convey scientific concepts about the flu virus through creative illustrations. This publication titled, “Viral Combat: Monica Fights the Flue,” will then be distributed to schools and centers throughout the South Side communities, hoping to spark a new community-wide interest in scientific concepts, medical issues, and their modes of representation through artistic expression. The contents of this book will also become an online series.
Faculty Advisors: Laura Letinsky (Visual Arts) and Dr. Elizabeth Kieff (Medicine)
The Role of Vibrotactile Input in Musical Performance
PhD students Shannon Heald, Stephen Hedger (psychology), and Jonathan DeSouza (music) pose the question: How might phenomena like the McGurk effect change the performance of a musician, who relies on both tactile and auditory sensory information to fine-tune their performance? “The Role of Vibrotactile Input in Musical Performance” will explore how sources of tactile feedback, such as vibration, influence a musician’s performance. The team’s experiment will distort a performer’s expected levels of vibration feedback, possibly suggesting new, non-auditory avenues of sensorial engagement for musicians. The research results will contribute to dissertations and publications.
Faculty Advisors: Berthold Hoeckner (Music) and Howard Nusbaum (Psychology)
Untitled Video Installation
Marc Miskin (Physics) and Amy Stebbins (Germanic Studies/Theater) will use a physicist’s tools of inquiry to create a deeper understanding of the craft of acting by exploring the possible alternative meanings that might be found in facial expressions by capturing actors’ faces in fine-grained temporal detail – 3,000 frames per second, to be exact. The pair aims to demonstrate how important time is in how we interpret facial semiotics and evaluate emotional authenticity. The project will record the faces of actresses responding to emotional stimuli with advanced high-speed cameras, distilling the fleeting micro-moments of facial expressions that would be otherwise imperceptible. The project will culminate in a video installation demonstrating their findings.
Faculty Advisors: David Levin (Germanic Studies) and Heinrich Jaeger (Physics)
Visual Art and Medicine: Using Art to Explore the Practice of Medicine
Students from the Pritzker School of Medicine—Nicole Baltrushes, Celine Goetz, and Laura Hodges—and from the Department of Visual Arts—Jacqueline Hendrickson—will explore these two disciplines modes of thinking in an elective course for Medical students titled, “Visual Art and Medicine: Using Art to Explore the Practice of Medicine,” to explore how the process of artistic inquiry can enhance the instincts and skills of medical scientists. This course will take place over eight sessions for medical students, engaging them in drawing the figure, lectures in visual practices, and guided art museum visits, with the intention of identifying ways in which the visualization and verbal articulation skills of the medical students might be honed by artistic modes of thought. This will culminate in an exhibition of the artwork of the medical students.
Faculty Advisors: Dr. Joel Schwab (Medicine) and Katherine Desjardins (Visual Arts)