It鈥檚 not every day someone drops a heart聽鈥� even a printed plastic heart 鈥撀爄nto your hands.
鈥淗ow old are you?鈥� the museum warden asks, but the girl is still staring at the heart and isn鈥檛 listening. 鈥淪he鈥檚 seven,鈥� her mother says. 鈥淭hen that heart is a little bit smaller than your own.鈥� The young visitor鈥檚 stare grows even wider.
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She is visiting a new exhibition called , which fills three rooms of the Hancock venue of the Great North Museum in Newcastle. One room is devoted to how we see, record, and talk about the heart; another to the experiences of people聽鈥� especially young people聽鈥� with congenital heart disease. The third houses a video installation which, through deceptively simple animation, folds poetic imagery associated with the heart around actual medical scans of blood flow and vasculature.
It鈥檚 a collaboration between artist and biomedical engineer . Layton, who makes art in collaboration with communities, arrived to develop work at Great Ormond Street Children鈥檚 Hospital in London just as Biglino and his colleagues there were finding new uses for 3D scanning in their work. Biglino鈥檚 seven years鈥� work in paediatric cardiology, at Great Ormond Street and at the Bristol Heart Institute, had established countless practical applications for 3D visualization, from training staff to planning operations, understanding the dynamics of blood flow, and testing new devices.
鈥淚n young people especially,鈥� he explained, 鈥渢here can be a huge difference in anatomy between patients, even before you get to any abnormalities.鈥� Now 3D scanning holds out the possibility of being able to customize treatments to the patient, but Biglino makes clear there鈥檚 still a long road to travel, and much evidence to be gathered.
Biglino is also exploring another very promising area: using 3D scans and models to communicate directly with patients. At first he thought that handing someone a model of their own heart would provide them with a sort of teaching aid. This hasn鈥檛 happened. Big words and complicated descriptions continue to elude young patients and slip from the memories of their frightened families. Nonetheless, being given comprehensible data, in the form of a legible picture or a model, does seem to improve patients鈥� experience of treatment.
Biglino talks warmly of one client he knows, with a monstrously complicated cardiac problem, who said of his heart, 鈥淚t鈥檚 like a Rubik鈥檚 cube. It might never get put back together鈥澛犫�� an analogy that struck an immediate chord with the surgical team.
Medicine is that most awkward of disciplines: it can heal the flesh even as it traumatizes people, or leaves them in despair. Poetic explanations and scientific explanations have to dovetail in medicine so patients and clinicians can talk sensibly to each other. Enter Layton, Biglino and their collaborators: young people with congenital heart problems and their families, clinicians, nurses, and at least one psychologist. Together they have developed a body of art 鈥撀爏culptures and pictures, scans and animations聽鈥� in which clinical and family narratives coincide and illuminate each other.
And there鈥檚 wit to leaven the worthiness: Layton鈥檚 piece called The Bud is a 3D print of a heart, vasculature and kidneys planted in soil within a vitrine. It鈥檚 a play on medical terms like 鈥渁ortic root鈥� and 鈥減ulmonary branches鈥澛犫�� also a fascinating reminder that our heart and other organs haven鈥檛 just inherited their form genetically: they鈥檙e sculpted over time by the very fluid flows they handle.
But that鈥檚 not to deny the deep, necessary and nourishing melancholy to this show. As one collaborator said, presented with a copy of her own heart, 鈥淚 feel like I am holding snow in my hands.鈥�
聽runs at the Great North Museum, Hancock, Newcastle,聽until Sunday 6 May
