The image I chose to recreate was Fig. 46 Rabbit Motor Neuron from “Texture of the Nervous System of Man and the Vertebrates” by Ramon and Cajal. I’ve had some experience doing live cell recordings from the motor neuron of a rabbit before so I was drawn to the image because of its familiarity. The original image was the product of a Nissl stain, which was developed to visualize discrete clumps of the endoplasmic reticulum. Clarke’s work in advocating for the need for proper, “representation” in anatomical drawings as laid out in his work, “Imaging in the Brain”, inspired me to try and do a recreation of this anatomical drawing that tried to rely on more than just a visual representation. Objective anatomical drawings, if we are to try and make them objective in the sense that they are objectively conveying information about actual morphological structures, should be capable of transmitting more than just a single dimension of a structure. In the case of in vivo cellular recordings, electrophysiologists rely on sight, hearing, and most importantly touch. To accomplish my goal, I employed the use of leather paint (which when dry creates a leather like feel) and semigloss paper in order to try and differentiate textures between the Nissl bodies, cell nucleus, and blank space inside the cell. I first traced the outline of the motor neuron onto a piece of wrapping paper in pencil and then went over it in pen. I used this outline to copy the motor neuron onto a white piece of paper and began to add the additional features of the cell such as the nucleus. Once I had a penciled outline, I began to selective apply the leather paint and shading to the image. While I sacrificed some of the definition of the final image in my use of paint due to my lack of skill, I feel like I created an image which accomplished my original goal of something with tactile differences.
FIELD NOTE 1 OF 3
Date: 2/10/22
People Involved: Ken
Location: Living room of my house
Reconstruction conditions: Room full of natural light with background music
Time and duration of reconstruction: 1 hour 2:23-3:23 PM
Equipment and tools used:
Notebook paper, mechanical pencil, ruler, eraser
Subjective factors, e.g., how things smelled/looked/felt:
As I practiced creating a trace of the image on the paper, I felt bored. Just sketching in pencil meant there were no noticeable smells or noises that were remarkable which is really different from how I would interact with cells while doing wet lab work.
Prior knowledge that you have:
I’ve taken a lot of the neuroscience classes available at Rice and I’ve gotten the chance to do cellular recordings from a rabbit motor neuron before in lab.
Reflection on your practice:
I’d say that for what I was doing, it was about right? Learning just to get a feel for the basic dimensions of the image and thinking about how I should begin to do shading resulted in a pretty uniform experience.
Photos/video documenting process:
Questions that arise:
I wonder if actual artists use lined paper to give them a better idea of the dimensions that they are eventually going to work with? Perhaps better knowledge of my medium or more practice with sketching would mean that sort of knowledge is instinctual. I also wonder for how long did early scientists have to practice drawing something without lines or grids in order to feel comfortable doing any of this freehand if they needed to.
FIELD NOTE 2 OF 3
Date: 2/12/22
People Involved: Ken
Location: My Bedroom
Reconstruction conditions: At night, after having finished cooking dinner in a colder room than before that was quiet
Time and duration of reconstruction: 8:37-10:14 PM
Equipment and tools used:
A4 Copy Paper, wrapping paper, pencil, pen, ruler
Subjective factors, e.g., how things smelled/looked/felt:
Room was cold. The wrapping paper was glossy and much different tracing on than the notebook paper. Tracing from the wrapping paper onto the copy paper was a weird dichotomy of having to press hard enough to make the outlines but soft enough to not break the paper.
Prior knowledge that you have:
I’ve never done much tracing before. While I’ve practiced calligraphy, there wasn’t much of an overlap between the skills.
Reflection on your practice:
Actually figuring out how much pressure I needed to apply took me a couple tries. I went through about 2-3 sheets of wrapping paper before getting a decent stencil.
Photos/video documenting process:
Questions that arise:
I wonder if there are easier methods of trying to create an outline for something? If/when people do hand-drawn diagrams today, what do they use?
FIELD NOTE 3 OF 3
Date: 2/13/22
People Involved: Ken
Location: My bedroom
Reconstruction conditions: hotter room with fan on to facilitate quick drying of leather paint.
Time and duration of reconstruction: 3:35-6:18 PM
Equipment and tools used:
Leather paint, mechanical pencil, brush, nitrile gloves, semigloss paper, tape
Subjective factors, e.g., how things smelled/looked/felt:
Leather paint has a leather-y smell. A lot like how newly printed leather-bound books smell. My final product did have a lot of textural differences as I wanted it to have due to the uses of leather paint, pen, mechanical pencil, and semigloss paper. Perhaps because it wasn’t fully dry, there were also elements of smell to my image which were not intended to be there.
Prior knowledge that you have:
Never done anything like this before! I use the leather paint I have to repair my jackets and make small patches in furniture. Never tried to use it to create art before.
Reflection on your practice:
It was really fun and interesting! While I know the original work was only a visual aid, I feel like my reconstruction which is both visual and tactile is something that I would appreciate if I wanted to encounter a diagram like this in a textbook or manual. That being said, I realize my artistic skills are quite terrible, but I think I got the “broad strokes” of the message across.
Photos/video documenting process:
IMG_1769
Questions that arise:
How often, if ever, do scientific diagrams and anatomical drawings use tactile elements?
Assuming that one day it is even capable of reproducing anatomical drawings that also convey tactile elements, would it be useful to do so for a majority of people?