Psychology: The scarred self
ess than a month after the terrorist attacks in Paris, Trauma, the latest show at Science Gallery Dublin, feels unnervingly relevant. Exploring, among other things, the surprising role of trauma in emotional resilience, this collection of objects and ideas ranges from haunting photos from Northern Ireland's Troubles to a room-sized instrument crafted by a composer with tinnitus (see J. Hoffman Nature 505, 159; 2014) and photograms of plant specimens from Chernobyl. Trauma, from the Greek word meaning 'wound' , is profoundly personal: the sufferer is sealed off within the mental or physical experience. Katharine Dowson's Memory of a Brain Malformation, a delicate laser etching of a brain tumour in glass, emphasizes this isolation. Dowson — who often works with scientists and physicians — portrays the growth as a discrete entity inside a nest of sinuous veins. (The actual tumour was successfully removed from her cousin's brain by laser treatment.) The work evokes both the emotional trauma of diagnosis and the energy of a positive outcome. External trauma to the head can be just as damaging, and the neurological problems arising from it in sport are the focus of intense research. The installation Impact examines the design of helmets for sports such as American football and Irish hurling , sparked by such studies. Mechanical engineer Ciaran Simms at Trinity College Dublin, for instance, examines the body's response to high-force impacts in rugby; Stefan Duma at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg uses real-time sensors in the field and lab to rate commercial helmet design. A darker realm of trauma is explored on the gallery's ground floor in The Interrogation of Detainee 063, an infographic detailing 50 harrowing days in the interrogation of Mohammed al-Qahtani at the United States' Guantanamo Bay camp in Cuba. The exhibit underlines the extreme suffering triggered by torture. Colour-coding shows the duration of interrogation, loud music and inhumane and degrading treatments, such as being forced to wear a muffling hood or humiliating signs, or to write letters of apology to victims of the terror attacks of 11 September 2001. Upstairs, Stressed Body, Stressed Brain investigates one physiological response that is central to the notorious torture technique waterboarding. This response, the diving reflex, is triggered when the face is immersed in cold water. The exhibit invites viewers to lie down and have a damp cloth placed on their cheeks to gauge how this upsets memory …
Q&A: Tinnitus tunesmith
Sound artist Daniel Fishkin tries to convey the experience of tinnitus. As the latest incarnation of his installation series Composing the Tinnitus Suites opens in Brooklyn, New York, he talks about building a mechanical model of the inner ear.
The Tsadik and His Soul’s Sparks: From Kabbalah to Hasidism
The present study shows the continuity between the Safedian Kabbalistic view of the relations between the sparks of a certain soul, and the Hasidic theory, that was conceived of as innovated by and characteristic of 18th century Hasidism, as to the responsibility of the Tsadik for the sparks that belongs to his soul. In the two literatures, the rescue of a spark of one's soul is related to the beautiful captive woman that is conceived of as an externalization of an inner dimension of the righteous person, immersed in a shell.