Flex and Ply: Does my S2 look big in this?

The Universities of Ulster and Durham are engaged on a Wellcome Trust funded project exploring material metaphors for knowledge and understanding of anatomy. This presentation will use imagery, garments and live models to illustrate various aspects of the project. These will include the popular and well travelled Incisions Gown http://news.bbc. co.uk/2/hi/health/7213757.stm and jeans representing various dermatome maps of the lower limbs. (Dermatomes are areas of skin supplied by a nerve). These jeans illustrate unexpected variation between such maps, and unanticipated problems which arise in moving from two-dimensional illustrations to three-dimensional representations as required in clinical practice. Mapping from the texts exposed anomalies in the diagrams and implied that the body had a mismatched side seam. We will show how such approaches can be implemented in teaching, but also how they evoke complex, profound and sometimes moving narratives from members of the public, which in turn can be used to enhance learning. We will also discuss and illustrate other hidden maps of the body such as Langer and Blaschko lines, as we move back and forward between medical, aesthetic and personal identity discourses of the body. (For non anatomists, S2 is the dermatome which covers the derriere…)