“La Fabrica dei corpi. From anatomy to robotics’.”
Governor’s Palace, Piazza Garibaldi, Parma
14 October – 17 December 2017
Knowledge of the structure of living bodies, in particular that of the human body, underpins some of the greatest biomedical achievements of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. It promises to increasingly become an irreplaceable guide for translational research aimed at developing biotechnologies for the regeneration of tissues, organs and their bioartificial engineering. Starting from the evidence of Darwinian memory that, in Vertebrates, the attainment of a specific form is a necessary condition to ensure a physiological performance adequate to the three-dimensional (3D) cell mass, today we have come to the realisation that even the capacity of an organism to evolve, i.e. to be able to cope with the challenges of the changing reality in which it lives, depends on the embryonic mechanisms that enable its morphological transformation.
These cultural assumptions were the starting point for the technological challenges that led, in the biomedical sciences, to the realisation of biocompatible materials and their use in numerous clinical and pre-clinical reconstructive fields, including the artistic field of anatomical ceroplastic restoration, up to bioprostheses with biomaterials, 3D bioartificial organs with stem cells and humanoid robots, whose innovations aim to make them operational support for the protection of human health, with the ambitious goal of their use alongside Man in the conquest of space.
The international event ‘The Body Factory. From anatomy to robotics’, a historical, scientific and popular exhibition that will take place at the Palazzo del Governatore in Parma as part of both the initiatives of the Municipality of Parma for the celebrations of the 2200th anniversary of the foundation of the city of Parma and those promoted by the University of Parma for the internationalisation of the University in the 2017-2018 academic year.
The strictly scientific imprint of the event makes it particularly usable for fans of futuristic technologies in the field of biomedicine, in particular regenerative medicine, as well as for lovers of the history of science, primarily medical science.
The constant reference to the experimental bases of the technological achievements presented amplifies and consolidates its attractiveness for academics, researchers and operators in the biotechnological, pharmaceutical, biomedical and robotics sectors applied to the life sciences and its developments in the conquest of space.
The popular and didactic nature of the materials presented makes the exhibition suitable for contributing to the cultural education of students in schools of all levels in Parma and its province, as well as in the Emilia-Romagna region.
Finally, the planned interactive methods, which count didactic workshops, the use of cutting-edge virtual image technologies such as immersive 3D navigation and holography, and facilitated explanatory paths extend its practicability to families, those working in the tourism sector, and those in the cultural heritage and film industries.
THE ROUTE
The exhibition is spread over both floors of the Governor’s Palace for a total of 1,200 square metres.
The first section (on the first floor) begins the cognitive journey that starts in evolutionary terms from animal forms and anatomy to the anatomy of Man and his representations at the end of the 19th century, where the extraordinary collection of physiognomic masks, of Lombrosian doctrine, prepared by the anatomist Lorenzo Tenchini, is collected.
These masks are once again reunited in Parma, for the first time after 110 years, thanks to the generous collaboration of the Lombroso Museum in Turin, which has kept part of the collection since the beginning of the 20th century and has agreed to lend it in its entirety for this event.
In the second section (on the second floor), starting from the structure of the human body, the exhibition opens with artistic and mathematical-computational symbolisations and elaborations for the virtual reconstruction of bodies, and then takes us through the use of these reconstructions for the engineering of bioartificial organs with biomaterials, up to the anthropomorphic simulation of bodies by humanoid robots, the latest frontier of technology applied to human health and for which future uses are foreseen in missions to conquer space.
First floor
Second floor
‘Human Beings and Humanoid Robots’, lecture by Giulio Sandini, as part of the exhibition “La Fabrica dei corpi From anatomy to robotics’
Lecture by Roberta Ballestriero on scientific ceroplasty and artificial anatomy
This bilingual (English and Italian) volume, authored by Roberto Toni, Elena Bassi, Silvano Montaldo and Alessandro Porro and realised thanks to two research grants from the Ministry of Education, University and Research – MIUR ACPR12_00312 and PANN15T3_00816, and a fund from the University of Parma, constitutes the first complete catalogue of the masks in the Tenchini collection, a collection of artefacts that is completely unique in the western world, developed using mixed ceroplastic-anatomochirurgical transplant technology and for which there are still no procedural certainties, but some mysteries remain the subject of current scientific and historical investigation.
