Project Facade

September 25, 2005 12:44 PM

Project Facade: (Warning Graphic Images) An artistic response to the Gillies Archive. The Gillies archive is a collection of documents on plastic surgery conducted on British soldiers in WWI. The web site has a list of facial reconstruction case studies. Sir Harold Delf Gillies pioneered the pedicle tube technique for facial reconstrucion.
posted by obedo (6 comments total)

That's not, by the by, this Project Facade, an interactive drama (imagine a soap opera where characters talk to you and your actions change the story and the outcome) that is much more than just a chose-your-own-adventure.
posted by zpousman at 1:02 PM on September 25, 2005

Well I learned a new word today: Pedicle.
I couldn't rightfully take my eyes off the case studies.

Thoroughly freaked out a co-worker.
posted by Busithoth at 1:09 PM on September 25, 2005

Thanks obedo, excellent post. Something people don't think about: by WWI they had gotten a lot better at keeping people from dying from wounds that would have killed them 50 years earlier. But with the people alive, you ended up with a lot more people in Johnny Got His Gun situations.

One of the pages [embedded QT] in the Project Facade site has films at the tin facial prosthetics. I read that in France they had special resorts for these maimed vets to go to where they could relax without people freaking out when they saw them.
posted by marxchivist at 1:30 PM on September 25, 2005

missmerrymack: Yeah, that's an especially rough one... Seems like all they ended up doing was to add an extra year of suffering for the poor guy.

One weird thing I noticed about that case is that he has a "Wounded" date of 14/17/16. Is this some "old-timey" type of calendar notation I'm unfamiliar with?

On a side-note, I randomly came across period book on this subject while doing unrelated research at the University library... Needless to say, my other research was deferred for many hours while I poured over the pages.

Thanks for the links obedo.
posted by numlok at 3:42 PM on September 25, 2005

Excellent link. I have been going back to it off and on all afternoon and evening.
posted by briank at 5:03 PM on September 25, 2005

numlok: it's probably a typo, either in the original document or in the transcription. From what I can put together, the dates are all done in dd/mm/yy format, and 14/16/17 isn't a valid date.
posted by staresbynight at 9:36 AM on September 26, 2005