Marta DeMenezes

Perusing the prof's blog, I ran across Marta DeMenezes' website.  What caught my artist's eye was the sub-page "Ectopia."  After reading her explanation of what ectopia was in her world, I looked up the definition using the trusty search button and, of course, Wikipedia topped the list of references.  The Wikipedia definition was as follows: "In medicine, an ectopia is a displacement or malposition of an organ or other body part. Most ectopias are congenital, but some may happen later in life."  Marta's use of ectopia defined a laboratory for the intersection and collaboration between artists and scientists.  Artists were encouraged to take up a form of residency at a Portuguese biological research institute and develop artistic works in collaboration with the locals.  Given the traditional medical definition of ectopia, I concluded that, in Marta's lab, the mixture of art and biological science may produce a sort of thought provoking visual displacement on a microscopic scale.