Sculpting Science

I had my first mammogram on Friday. Like most designers, I can’t divorce myself from my unique way of perceiving the world.  So, you can imagine the difficulty I have with a routine screening and the very sensorial experience of a little examining room and its inappropriately sized “mammo-slam” machine. I wanted the full, virgin tour of what many women, including my mother, have denounced as a horribly, painful moment. (There’s only one first, and at my age, there aren’t many of those anymore.) I asked the doe-eyed technician to explain the procedure for me since it was all new, but perhaps I shouldn’t have bothered because my own internal designer dialogue was doing enough talking. A series of sensory impressions washed over me … “This reminds me of the game Twister,” “Why am I wearing a gown if it keeps coming off?” and “Relax, you’re just a dancer, and she is choreographing your body.”

The machine, emitting robotic overtones, seemed masterful at breast plating, but like most medical equipment, it was removed from the actual human experience. The technician clearly understood this as she arranged my feet, hips, shoulders, head and finally my breast against this machine, draping and wrapping me around the cold metal. If you had walked in at that moment, you might have seen my attempt to recreate Auguste Rodin’s The Kiss. However, I was embracing a lover that couldn’t return the very human emotions of comfort and support, and I was left to muse for a mammogram machine of my own making between concentrated doses of radiation.
 
Two images came to me as I stood half naked responding to the technician’s requests to hold perfectly still — the first was the entwined bodies of two dancers from an article on choreographer Alonzo King that is currently featured in the design mind Motion issue, so compelling in their unity, singularity and flexibility; and the second was my daughter smiling and dancing with a sculpture at Maymont Park in Virginia — the cold stone made warm from its wave form and her delight in its human character.
 
The mammogram machine could be so many things — a choreographed component to preventative medicine, comfort, and support to my skeletal structure, a warm embrace (even in its radiation proof skin), or an abstract feminine sculpture — all while still supplying its primary purpose. Instead, I’m left with the distinct impression in my mind and on my breasts, that this is yet another piece of technology not built for the very people required to use it.

- Laura Seargeant Richardson, Principal Designer, frog Texas