Rhett Carlin - ATCM 3355.001 Project 5: Prosthetic Model

Anna Coleman Ladd at work within the "Tin Noses Shop"

Example of tin facial prosthetic

Concept: 

It is impossible to talk comprehensively about the modernization of prosthetics without mentioning World War 1. With the advent of more modern and comprehensive medical practices within the early 20th century, injuries that would once be considered fatal could be treated. This however lead to a new problem, soldiers who were injured would often be left maimed. Soldiers and civilians who had survived injuries but were left with amputated or disfigured parts of there body created a new niche in the market for modern prosthetics that could allow for the injured to continue living a "normal" life after the war. this would be the beginning of modern prosthetics, however one aspect of WW1 era prosthetics that is often forgotten, is the contributions of Anna Coleman Ladd and the "Tin Noses Shop."

Facial prostheses are an interesting subset of the larger family of prosthetics. When imagining prosthetics most people imagine the replacement of an arm or leg in an effort to help the injured person regain mobility or use of the lost limb. Facial prosthetics however, were and always have been a problem or aesthetics. As many as 280,000 people in the era of WW1 experienced some kind of facial injury which left them disfigured. The "Tin noses shop" as it would come to be known aimed to help this exact subset of people. Anna Coleman Ladd and the workers within the tin noses shop would go on to be honored by governmental authorities for the "exceptional work in giving these men another chance at a normal life."

But what happened? Facial prosthetics in modern society are virtually non-existent. The main culprit is plastic surgery, medicine continued to advance and as it did methods or reconstructing a persons face became more attainable. This explanation alone however is incomplete, plastic surgery is and always has been extremally expensive and unattainable for a large portion of the population. There are not many documented accounts of people who used facial prostheses in their day to day lives, but from the few accounts we do have their experiences were uncomfortable at best and horrific at worst.

The uncanny aspect of facial prosthetics lies in their inability to be animated. These masks, instead of allowing for a rejoining of society, starkly alienated the wearer. As men's faces changed, the tin masks that were once form fitted became uncomfortable to wear. The oil paint used to match skin tones would begin chipping rapidly showing off glimmers of metallic tin further creating a sense of uncanny unease. The tin masks, unable to change, served to only highlight the wearers aging and would essentially become obsolete in a matter of years. The reality is that the masks became a moniker for the exact thing it aimed to hide. The purpose of the masks were to hide the ravages of war and instead they became signifiers, a constant reminder of what most people were attempting to forget. 

I wanted to create something that exemplifies this idea. The tin masks were essentially never actually meant for the wearer. They were always meant for the people around the wearer. A proverbial bag over the head to hide what others around them didn't want to be reminded of, it was a shutting of the blinds to realities of the world that ended up pushing those injured even further away.

Shutting the Blinds | Render

Process: I created a model based upon cheap blinds used within my apartment by using rectangular prisms of varying sizes. I began with the top housing and fileted the edges to create a more accurate depiction of the top. The using a Boolean difference I hollowed the top and distributed  the shutters across the z axis. Using very thin cylinders I created the strings which hold the blinds together and control the amount of light let through. I then created a rudimentary pair of glasses that would act as the holder of the blinds. I used a variety of simple shapes and Boolean unified them together. I used the provided head as a model for placing and scaling the glasses.

Ghosted Images

Dimensions and Render 

Materials:

For the glasses base I used a simple brass material. partially due to the use of brass wire on the tin masks but also because I prefer the look of brass glasses over silver. for the blinds i used a matte white paint to really try and sell the idea of cheap apartment blinds. The idea is to evoke the idea of a quick shutting of the blinds to avoid seeing things we'd rather not see.