The Manufacturing of Neoprontosil and Other Products

According to, http://www.toxicology.org/gp/fda.asp, the Society of Toxicology website, in 1937 the Massengill pharmaceutical company dispersed Elixir Sulfanilamide. This drug was prescribed generally to anyone who had symptoms of strep throat. Elixir Sulfanilamide contains diethylene glycol, which is a chemical equivalent of antifreeze. There were 107 documented deaths, involving many children, because of the lack in regulations. The Pure Food and Drug Act was deemed to insufficient to protect the public. This tragedy was the critical motivation for the creation of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.

Objects can prove to be the cause of some of the most impactful features or events in someone’s life. “Once he finished work on the Prospector and we struck it rich, he’d start work on our Glass Castle.” (Walls 25). The Prospector was a symbol of aspiration, she wanted to have a more exciting and fulfilling life. Although it also represents lies and distrustfulness because her father never actually worked on the Prospector. Instead, he went out and got drunk. The Glass Castle is quite impactful in Jeannette’s life, it gave her hope for a better life. However it’s not just that, it’s confidence in her father. That he will provide for her and create a good life for her, despite the drinking and other horrible habits he has developed. Jeannette

Hofmann worked for Bayer, which then named acetylsalicylic acid compound aspirin. Aspirin became commercially available in 1899 and today it is estimated that over a trillion aspirin tablets have been consumed by those in need of its curative effects.

The Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938: Sulfonamide tested for flavor and fragrance but not safety, children died and 350 more were poisoned. This act made it so the sale of unsafe drugs could be stopped, that toxic drugs could be seized, and the burden of proof was given to the manufactures to show data of safety experiments.

IG Farben was a cartel of companies, including the pharmaceutical company Bayer which is known for inviting aspirin. Neither IG Farben nor Bayer ever acknowledged or accredit the inventor of Aspirin, Felix Hoffmann, due to the company’s alignment with the Nazi party and Felix being of Jewish decent. IG Farben was the single largest donor to the Nazi party and Hitler, and once the Nazi war machine started amplifying its power and quest for domination, the chemical and pharmaceutical company IG Farben followed suit by using its Nazi concentration camps for cheap slave labor and involuntary test subjects for new and unknown vaccines and drugs. Bayer and IG Farben conducted countless awful experiments which one Auschwitz document stats Bayer purchased 150 female prisoners for experimental purposes. Of the said 150 females purchased, it was listed all 150 had died from the experiments and that the Nazi party was informed to ready another shipment of slaves/test persons. (Douglas 2003) IG Farben not only benefited from slave labor but also systematically looted the chemical industries of Europe as well. In May 2016, Forbes reported that Bayer’s is valued at over 102 billion dollars which isn’t hard to believe considering their business morals.

The pushers can be considered as multiple components of the health care system that promoted, fostered and encouraged the use of Prontosil for patients. Initially, the American medical community did not buy into idea of treating diseases and illnesses with chemotherapeutic drugs. The publication of scientific articles on Prontosil within U.S. medical journals did not even occur until late 1936, meaning most of the medical community was unaware of this drug in the U.S. While all this time, sulfa was well known and widely used in Europe. America lagged behind Europe for pushing the drug into the market mainly due to the lack of U.S. journals covering the topic. The first ground breaking publication that convinced the U.S.

Jonathan Zawada’s practice skips fluidly between object design, sculpture, video, installation, painting, 3D simulations and fashion. The beginnings of his practice have given him a keen eye and thoughtfulness toward the psychological make-up of our ever ‘-present’ world. Taking on complex data structures mixed with analogue elements, Zawada’s work underlines the temporality of human experience.

In this case, it revealing the process where the audience as co-producers of the work itself. (Yerebakan, 2016) This important intent of the artwork is clearly not an object but a process, what is important to conserve here, for the future display of the work, is the participative intent of the work, in which case, then the very nature of what is documented about exhibitions becomes particularly important. (The People Speak 2012) (Graham, 2013)

Sulfanilamide, also referred to as sulfa, was a drug sold in powder and tablet form used to treat infections such as pneumonia, meningitis, and strep throat. In the 20th century, these bacterial infections could easily take the life of anyone. That is why sulfanilamide became so popular throughout the country. Sulfanilamide was invented by a German microbiologist, Gerhard Domagk. It was a red dye derivative that he had discovered that would cure the contagion. The drug was safe until a salesman from Bristol, Tennessee recommended that they produce a liquid form of the drug to make swallowing easier. The company’s head pharmacist and chemist was Harold Cole Watkins, he found out that sulfanilamide was soluble in diethylene glycol, commonly found

As art slowly develops through the twentieth century, moving past voyeurism and historical art where it promotes passive spectatorial consumption, the role of the audience has evolved too. From the traditional historical passive visitor in perspective and panoptic spaces, art has gradually evolved into turning the spectator into an active contributor who not only engages with the work but also becomes the co-author in its creation and completion. Claire Bishop points out, “art must be directed against spectatorship, against the passivity of the masses paralysed by the spectacle of modern life”. This not only applies to art but to objects, image, stories, films etc.

Or, put another way, how one can use the language and the structure of an object to subvert its function. As Mandel states it is that, “duet between a depicted document and a world that is out of control” (BAMPFA, 2012). The photographs seem to have a transparent nature that is illustrative, but in the context of the artwork, devoid of the original information structure they once had, they are weird and fascinating. We are directed to experiments, to physical journeys into the substrata of spaces, into tunnels, down holes, into freezing basements, inside machines. The focus of an object within some of the photographs may be intended for post-production cropping. However objects are only half isolated within the confines of the image through the creation of makeshift studio spaces. In this context participants are absorbed within the confines of their activity, and by implication a system of meaning that we, as the audience, are not privy

In The Nazi origins of deadly nerve gases, Sarah Everts explores the discovery of one of the most deadly chemical weapons, nerve gas. Nerve gas was unintentionally discovered by a German chemist named Gerhard Schrader while trying to produce a new insecticide. The combination of phosphorus and cyanide led to the discovery of the toxic nerve agent tabun, which interested the German military1. Soon after, the German military recruited Schrader and he began to synthesize a new nerve agent that was twice as toxic as tabun called sarin. The name of the nerve agent is an acronym composed of the last names of the scientists that help produce it: Schrader, Otto Ambros, Gerhard Ritter, and Hans-Jurgen von der Linde1. Moreover, Richard Kuhn, a Nobel

turned the curiosity into the life-saving drug we know today. Their research was especially dificult, getting a start in 1939 at

They are just simple inanimate objects, items, things, whatever we want to call them, but it is up to us for those objects to become animate, giving them attention and importance in our lives and we become dependent on those objects. In the introduction of the book Taking Things Seriously: 75 Objects with Unexpected Significance by Joshua Glenn and Carol Hayes, Glenn talks about how different groups in our society criticize each other over commodity fetishes even though they are guilty themselves. We are always looking for different objects to fill the emptiness of our lives and give to them more importance should they really have. Glenn mentions “the success anthropologist Lyall Watson describes any inanimate object which… demands attention and exercises power over those people whom it appeals”, like in the stories of Genesis Cabrera and Josh Ozersky making the object vital in their lives. The stories have few similarities in some of the aspects, of provenance, properties and essence. I think Cabrera’s story will not make it to the second edition of the book since her unexpected significant object doesn’t covert the criteria what there are looking for in the book even though there are some similarities, but I don’t believe the essence is strong enough. Ozersky’s story its full of memories and feelings, the frying pan had a decade of sharing important moments of his life and opposite of

This “thing” ties in with a second theoretical concept I have come in contact with in my courses and research. The concept, developed by Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby is the idea of empowering individuals through the use of critical design. They stress the importance of making individuals think by asking them carefully crafted questions which pushes the cultural and aesthetic potential of works. The author’s research explain how design can fall into two categories: affirmative and critical design. Affirmative design reinforces how things are now and how it conforms to cultural, technical, economical and social expectation. Critical design rejects how things are now and the idea of there being one possibility. It provides a critique of the existing situation through designs that embody social, cultural, economic and technical values. Dunno and Raby state that “more could be learnt from fine art where there is a history of critical strategies for asking questions through objects and stimulated debate in engaging ways” (59). I think that it is relevant because the Heildberg project is a perfect example of fine art proposing questions through art as well as motives debates in a fascinating way. My photography of Record Time illustrates critical design as it rejects how things currently are, as in the lack of effort to revitalize the city of Detroit. It provides a critique of Detroit’s existing situation through the Heildberg project which represents the values of culture, social