Clarity,
Office 17622,
PO Box 6945,
London.
W1A 6US
United Kingdom
Phone/ Voicemail:
+44 (0)20 3287 3053 (UK)
+1 (561) 459-4758 (US).
the body is systematically and very finely sliced into oblivion. Beginning
with the feet, the frozen sections are fitted into a cyromacrotome, a dissection
device, described by its creators as a “milling device” that planes the body at very
fine intervals between .3 and 1 millimeters. This technique effectively obliterates
the body’s mass, each planed section dissolving into sawdust due to its extreme
desiccation. After each planing the cross section of the remaining body-section is
digitally photographed, so that each photograph registers a small move through
the body’s mass. Each of these photographs is then converted into a computer data
file, and its position in the overall body registered according to the initial template.
This analogy between corporeal and cartographic space simplified the prob-
lem of how to translate the three-dimensional volume of the body onto the space of
the page, because it conceptualised the body as an accretion of laminar “surfaces,”
as landscapes to be traversed by the eye, a volume composed of layers and systems
of tissue which are laid one upon the other. Hence the anatomical demonstration
proceeded, ideally at least, as a flaying. The ́ecorch ́e figures of classical anatomy
were produced through the peeling away of first skin, then successive layers of
muscle, to work through the body’s volume as if through the layers of an onion,
from outer surface to bone
Clarity,
Office 17622,
PO Box 6945,
London.
W1A 6US
United Kingdom
Phone/ Voicemail:
+44 (0)20 3287 3053 (UK)
+1 (561) 459-4758 (US).