The science of creativity


Veronica Simpson explores the Parallel Practices initiative, which sees creatives pair with medical academics


FX

Words by Veronica Simpson

How many designers crave a little time out to go and immerse themselves in a field they have always been fascinated by? Perhaps it wouldn't be so unusual to engineer a short sabbatical - say three months - to study textiles, sculpture, glass-making, lighting design or any number of fields that would quite naturally be perceived to have an enriching effect on your aesthetic or technical skills, whether you are architects or interior, furniture or product designers. Now imagine spending three months in a field that has - at least on the face of it - absolutely no relevance to your everyday design practice. A field such as medicine.

If you think that sounds bonkers, you wouldn't find the artists and makers who have just spent three months at King's College laboratories agreeing with you. A joint initiative between the Crafts Council and the Cultural Institute at King's College London, called Parallel Practices, was launched last September to 'demonstrate the mutual benefits and value of collaboration between academics and makers and to stimulate learning and innovation through a focus on the body, materials and processes'.

Viral II, a piece from Tamsin van Essen’s Erosion series
Viral II, a piece from Tamsin van Essen's Erosion series

After a call-out for participants, four medic/maker teams were assembled for three-month residencies in strategically chosen departments of King's medical complex - where making and research were more closely aligned. Robotics laboratories proved fertile ground for textile maker Karina Thompson; also for book artist Les Bicknell and jeweller Naomi Mcintosh, whose combined inspirations led to many explorations of paper folding and soft robotics.

Richard Wingate, of King's MRC Centre for Developmental Neurobiology, was paired with two resident makers: Celia Pym, textile artist, explored 'mending' in anatomy and the relationship between care and caretaking in textile repair; while ceramicist Tamsin van Essen was invited to participate in the laboratory exploration of tissue and muscle development in mouse embryos. Her responses to the delicate and painstaking processes of tissue colouring (using different chemical dyes to reveal underlying cell structures) resulted in a series of pieces which she displayed on her worktable in the College's Gordon Museum. Says van Essen: 'The science is fascinating but the processes they go through to get there are most interesting, looking at the physical transformation of specimens.'

Psoriasis, from van Essen’s work Medical Heirlooms
Psoriasis, from van Essen's work Medical Heirlooms

She found herself entranced by how the staining revealed tiny muscle buds. Transformative biological processes - disease, decay - rendered eerily beautiful and moving, are a key in van Essen's work. But she didn't realise quite how beautiful the science itself would be. One process worked with bones instead of tissue, 'staining skeletons to make them completely clear'. Dyes are then applied to reveal cell structure, staining the relevant areas red and blue. 'They look like little jewels,' says van Essen. The balance of lab protocols with experience and intuition seemed similar at times to many creative processes; and the sense of anticipation, after days of patient work, to see if the dyes have 'taken', felt akin to the moment of revelation when a kiln firing is revealed as a success or failure. She was experimenting in her own work at the same time, with pieces that are all about 'revealing the inner structure and just hinting at what's happening below the surface'. All that she saw and learned is 'like a really rich library of stuff to draw on'.

Pym, meanwhile, spent 10 weeks at a table piled high with colourful yarns and mending equipment, within the Dissection Room (DR), surrounded by cadavers steeped in preservation fluids. Students and staff contributed things they loved that needed repair - sweaters, a knitted heart, pyjamas, belt loops, a sports jacket, a backpack. Once she got used to the smell of preserving fluids Pym found it quite 'cosy', and eerily silent. The seriousness with which students work on the donated cadavers spoke of a nervous respect and awe.

During the residency, Richard Wingate commented on the Parallel Practice blog: 'Celia's pitch to the students has evolved over the weeks into a tightly argued case for mending, a gift for a gift, which makes eminent sense to the class.'

Resident textile artist Celia Pym, second from the right, with the Parallel Practice students
Resident textile artist Celia Pym, second from the right, with the Parallel Practice students

What the makers' work revealed for the medics is perhaps harder to quantify - beyond the initiation of unusual and far more wide-ranging conversations than would be typical in a lab, inspired as much by the freedom the makers have to play and experiment as from the experiments themselves. From feedback, van Essen felt that her work offered new perspectives on the analytical processes and transformations that the medics took for granted - ideas rendered in 3D in clay on her worktop sparked many discussions.
Pym's intervention tapped into something far less visible but no less profound: in the sober and analytical space of the DR, a place where medics learn to detach themselves from their emotions while dealing with something deeply affecting, her work provided an emotional connection between the careful dissection and analysis of donated bodies - their very donation a mark of their and their beloveds' generosity - and the care and respect that one is showing for much-loved items through repairing them and making good.

Says Pym: 'For me, the project worked because Richard was so open to the idea that this might be valuable - that these people might be better doctors if they had a different perspective on what was going on in the room.' Students who were struggling to process the slicing and dicing of human parts would gravitate to her table. 'I think they liked having that opportunity - if they felt faint, they'd come and sit with me. [My] desk proved to be a point where they could hang out for a bit but they were still present in the room.' She wondered if every DR should have a 'darner in residence'. And if they did, would she be interested? 'It's one of the kindest and nicest places I've ever worked,' she says. Which she admits is 'really, really surprising'.








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