I’m done with the second day of chemo and the first day of radiation. The True Beam radiation machine was pretty cool in a perverse kind of way. It needs a team of italian designers to give it a make over but it had one exceptionally cool aspect. The head where the beam comes out is made up of a kind of lens who has columns of leaves that open and close automatically. As the head (a rather large and massive apparatus) turns about your head, these leaves constantly open and close modeling the treatment to the shape of the cancer in the neck and throat. It is fascinating to watch. On the one hand it looks like a sound diagram. On another level, I expect it to model itself into a face that would speak with me, like the liquid robot in terminator, maybe an early iteration of that fungible machine. And finally one tries to imagine the shape of the tumors. You don’t see the radiation beam, the only thing you see are these modulating leaves. I have experience with robots such as 3d printers, laser cutters and cnc cutters. This is clearly a level of sophistication up and it is a reductive sculptural process.

Warning geek out! Maybe a little too much to see but the titanium leaf column control is some where around 5:39 or about 3/4 of the way through.