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Acoustic Osteology

In Collaboration with Sean Clarke

This project imagines how current methods of the medical use of sound might develop to code sound into the structural fabric of the body. The growth rings of bone develop with time similarly to the growth lines on a tree, these lines have been photographed with a microscope and then traced. The data from these traces was then translated to a chromatic scale revealing a complex auditory soundscape.

Through high intensity ultrasound it has the potential to encourage the osteoblasts within the structure of the bone to grow and the osteoclasts decrease. This has been trialled as a healing technique to increase the growth of bone cells in a specific area. The device shown imagines how a more precise wave may be able to actually physically alter the physiology of the bone itself. Meaning a new growth pattern can be introduced. This would allow us to actually alter the growth line as though it were a notch on a vinyl record, coding music or other data directly into the bone.

The exhibit below supported by Radical dB and Etopia and included two interactive spinning discs  made from enlarged microscopic images of bone rings which produced sound when turned, and sculpture of ultrasound bone device.

Installation at Etopia

Installation at Etopia

bone trace

bone trace

microscopic image

microscopic image

display

display

image of bone slice

image of bone slice

bone stave

bone stave

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