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Description

I based the operating theater here off of a few sources, chiefly the Strawberry Hill House's interiors and a 19th century genre painting which I was able to find of an operating theater in session. I decided to myself that it would take far too long to draw an entire crowd of observers, so there are only eight.

Following more contemporary rules around sanitation, the operating theater is domed with glass to prevent contamination from the outside.

When I think about operating theaters as the semi-public display which they were before the 20th century, a notion from Baudrillard comes to mind, that being Fascination. Towards the end of Simulacra and Simulation, he talks about it having the same pull as "seduction", with the difference being that where seduction entices someone with its external appearance, not revealing what is underneath, fascination entices someone with the exact inner workings which the external appearance seeks to hide.

Baudrillard then goes on to talk about the 19th and 20th centuries as golden ages for Fascination, him citing the ways in which we interact with televisions, automobiles, mass media systems, governments, etc. I once joked that the feeling was "cumming to the inner workings of a steam engine".

With the operating theater as a public spectacle, the Human Body is put on display in the same ways which it might have been in a gymnasium or a bathhouse, but instead of the external appearance being what is focused on, the inner workings, all of the blood vessels, muscular connections, and skeletal apparatuses, are what is focused on, studied, and adored. Operating theaters represent the beginning of a new kind of Eroticism which exists in the surgical space uniquely.
Here's the weblink: sites.google.com/view/23cdelta…

Description

I based the operating theater here off of a few sources, chiefly the Strawberry Hill House's interiors and a 19th century genre painting which I was able to find of an operating theater in session. I decided to myself that it would take far too long to draw an entire crowd of observers, so there are only eight.

Following more contemporary rules around sanitation, the operating theater is domed with glass to prevent contamination from the outside.

When I think about operating theaters as the semi-public display which they were before the 20th century, a notion from Baudrillard comes to mind, that being Fascination. Towards the end of Simulacra and Simulation, he talks about it having the same pull as "seduction", with the difference being that where seduction entices someone with its external appearance, not revealing what is underneath, fascination entices someone with the exact inner workings which the external appearance seeks to hide.

Baudrillard then goes on to talk about the 19th and 20th centuries as golden ages for Fascination, him citing the ways in which we interact with televisions, automobiles, mass media systems, governments, etc. I once joked that the feeling was "cumming to the inner workings of a steam engine".

With the operating theater as a public spectacle, the Human Body is put on display in the same ways which it might have been in a gymnasium or a bathhouse, but instead of the external appearance being what is focused on, the inner workings, all of the blood vessels, muscular connections, and skeletal apparatuses, are what is focused on, studied, and adored. Operating theaters represent the beginning of a new kind of Eroticism which exists in the surgical space uniquely.
Here's the weblink: sites.google.com/view/23cdelta…