BACKGROUND | EXHIBITION | VIEW

This pilot workshop and exhibit aims to visually translate haptic ways of knowing into interactive projection images. It transforms the diagnostic styles of pulse and palpation from text, to touch, to sounds and shapes. It begins with a primary source analysis of the twelfth century reproduction of Mai Jing 脉经 first composed during the Western Jin (265‒316) and compares it to its seventeenth century Latin translation Specimen Medicinae Sinicae (1682) and the eighteenth century Jesuit report De la Medicine de Chinois (1735). Through a collaboration among medical scholars, cognitive scientists, and artists, this workshop invites creative coders to teach participants how to create responsive digital mapping for displaying biometric information. By introducing early modern non-English language sources into the new field of digital health humanities, this pilot workshop furthermore compares different diagnostic approaches to the body that remain otherwise overlooked in contemporary discourses of health practice.

Sponsored by the Humanities Research Center Spatial Humanities Initiative at Rice University

Goals & Outcomes

This is collaborative art installation and a crash course in coding. We will focus on learning the fundamentals of coding by using Processing, an open-source language and IDE (integrated development environment) based on Java. In addition to having a graphical interface ideal for those in the new media arts community, Processing is a great jumping off point  for Arduino, p5js, and other creative tools.

1. Use interactive, generative digital visualization examples to master the fundamentals of coding including control flow logic, functions, arrays, and objects.
2. Gain a level of coding literacy that maps easily into real-life examples in statistics, data mining, app development, and the digital humanities.
3. Test and prove your new skills by building an interactive audio player
4. Learn about scholarships and and low-cost coding resources
5. Work as a group to code and install a visualization of biomedical pulse data combined with data reflecting alternate epistemological frameworks for display @ Rice University
   

SCHEDULE 

Part I. Primary Source Discussion: July 7 2020 2pm-4:15pm  

• PART 1: PULSES
• 2:00-2:10pm: Introductions
• 2:10-2:20pm: “On Pulses and Palpation,” Dr. Lan Li
• 2:20-2:30pm: Student pulse presentations with Tian-tian He, Eddie Jackson, Josh Harper, Katherine Wu
•  
• PART 2: INCONSISTENCIES
• 2:30-2:45pm: “Considering the Translation of Maijing 脈經,” Dr. Guangming Li
• 2:45-3:00pm: “Interpreting 虚实 as Deficiency and Excess,” Echo Weng
•  
• INTERLUDE
• 3:00-3:15pm: “Meridians and Musical Modes,” Chi Li
•  
• PART 3: PALPATIONS
• 3:15-3:40pm: “Impalpable Palpations,” Dr. James Clifton and Dr. Tianna Uchacz
• 3:40-3:50pm: Breakout teams
• 3:50-4:05pm: Discussion
• 4:05-4:15pm: Closing, Tristan Revells

Part II. Bootcamp: July 8_10_13 2020    

• Day 1, July 8 (2-4 PM)
• Guest Speaker: John Mulligan on “Abstraction and Subtraction in Bridget Riley’s Visual Data”
• Tristan Revells on Exploring Generative Art: The Basics of Processing (variables, shapes, colors)
• .
• Day 2, July 10 (2-4 PM)
• Guest Speaker: Rodrigo Ferreira on Control Societies
• Tristan Revells on Coding an Interaction: Extending our Toolkit (data structures, control flow, motion)
• .
• Day 3, July 13 (2-4 PM)
• Guest Speaker: Anthony Acciavatti on Bad Fluid Maps
• Tristan Revells on Assembly: Building an interactive audio player (libraries, UI)
• .
• Pre-Class Preparation:
• No coding experience necessary. Simply sign-up and installation instructions will be emailed prior to the first class.
• .
• Part III. Installation: TBD
• Guest Speaker: Dario Robleto on Pulses

REGISTER 

Contact Lan Li at LL@rice.edu to register for the workshop.

An excerpt from Michael Boym’s Specimen Medicinae Sinicae (1682) displaying textual and visual translations from the the classical twelfth century text Mojue (1189).