In the arts and events calendar for the new year, it reads under September 19 that a exhibit is opening in Boyd Hall. It doesn’t give any details on the calendar or tell you what it is. It seems almost like a mystery and the mystery is indeed, a beautiful one. With the opening of the new remodeled Boyd Hall, the Science department has decided to display art in it’s lobby like Silver. Boyd’s first art exhibit is called Paradise Reconfigured and it is displayed by Paul Vanouse. Unlike Silver, Boyd is doing art exhibits that are more science orientated and Paradise Reconfigured is all about pushing science and human anatomy to it’s limit.
The exhibit roughly consists of elements of a art exhibit originally called The Visible Human Project. The subject of the exhibit was a human body that was preserved in blue latex and embed in a wax block. The body was then cut up into over 2,000 pieces and then photographed. The Visible Human Project was the result of these photographs that are called anatomical pictures, or what medical science would call human anatomy art. Paradise Reconfigured has more to offer than the likes of The Visible Human Project, another added subject, a female who donated her body to the project and is now pictured along with the exhibit.
The location of Paradise Reconfigured is on the ground level lobby of Boyd Hall and the exhibits consists of a selection of different activities. Three garments are on a wall, representing three databases and three different stories; one is “Adam” the first participate in the program, the second is “Eve” the woman who donated her body, and a third called “the Objective Scientist” is there to tell the story of the medical procedure. Visitors of the exhibit are invited to hear each of the garments’ story with the push of a button. The stories are told through speakers while images are shown through a stack of three televisions that are encased in wax. The screens show pictures of cell recreation, which resembles the taking of a cat scan x-ray followed by the showing of close-ups of human skin and hair. The stories and passages from the Book of Genesis are recited over a unknown opera symphony number giving it almost a eerie effect. In between selections, the exhibit’s bypass mode is the beeping of a heart monitor that seems to echo throughout the halls of the Boyd building.
Paul Vanouse’s art is the first to be displayed in the new Boyd Hall and it probably won’t be the last. Paradise Reconfigured pushes the limits and our understanding of the human body just as much as it pushes the standards of art. It shows and also displays the human body not only as the most beautiful creature on Earth, but shows it as a entirely new art form though the use of medical science. The exhibit is on display in Boyd Hall Science Center until November 25.