Help An IAMer With A Project! C’mon, Do It.


(Scarification comes from Ze in Milan, Italy.)

Unrelated to the above photo, Clara recently wrote in about a project she’s putting together for school, which sounds like it could be pretty great, but she needs help from YOU. Yes, YOU. Take it away, Clara!

Dear BME members,

I am a student in Hong Kong working on a video documentary about the health, safety and ethical issues of tattoos and piercings.

As this is a project on body modification, I would like the members of BME to help me by sending me pictures or videos of the following. Basically, if you have any of these photos/videos in pretty decent quality for a DVD, hanging around in your hard-drive…

******

Tattoo problems
– Scarred up DIY tattoos.
– Faded DIY tattoos.
– Tattoos with blowouts. Example.
– Name tattoos with the outline of another tattoo waiting to be filled in. Example.
– Tattoos after laser removal. Example.

Problem piercings
– Rejecting piercings. Navel, eyebrow, surface…etc.
– Badly done piercings. You know when a client comes in complaining about a piercing done down the road in that shady store? Example 1, 2.

Piercing gun horrors
– Hugely swollen up, infected, or embedded gunned piercings. The grosser the better. Example 1, 2, 4, 5, 5, 6.

Well healed tattoos/piercings
– Tattoos/piercings that have been done correctly to help my audience distinguish the difference between a poorly and a well done piercing/tattoo. Ear (all kinds), navels, eyebrows, tongues, labrets, surface…etc. Tattooists/piercers, this is your time to shine! Send me your portfolio!

Jewelry
– Your studio’s jewelry display.
– Anatometal surface bars.
– BCRs, Curved barbells, Straight barbells.
– Internal & external threading jewelry, placed side by side for a comparison.
– Substandard jewelry. Example 1, 2, 3.

Studios/Equipment
– Your studio’s layout (reception, sterilising room, piercing/tattoo room.)
– Your studio’s logo.
– Clamps
– Needles (sharps and cannulas.)
– Tattoo machines.

Sterilisation and disinfection
– Autoclaves.
– Ultrasonic cleaners.
– Bagged up tools.

Animations
– If there are any 3D animators on BME with too much time on their hands, helping me create animations in HD quality will be very, very much appreciated.
I will need a few of these, showing the insertation and removal of BCRs, Curved/straight barbells (internal & external threading), and the mechanisms of an ear piercing stud. Anyone who would like to help me, please contact me at [email protected]

Videos
– Videos of anything piercing/tattooing related. Must be in DVD quality or higher though. Anyone who would like to help me, please contact me at [email protected] to make arrangements.

******

My final video will be in standard DVD quality, where the resolution will be 720 x 576. To allow me some “space” to zoom in/out, or pan sideways without affecting the resolution, I would appreciate it if you can send in your pictures/videos in as high a resolution as possible.

Please email them to [email protected] Or, if the file(s) are too large, you can compress them into .rar or .zip, and upload them to Mediafire.com.

Please only send photos/vids that you own (you should be in the photo/vid, or you must have taken the photo/vid yourself.) Please send them to me with your full name and your city of residence. Your name and city of residence will be used in the credits, whilst your email will be kept confidential. By emailing me picture(s) and/or video(s), you are agreeing to let me use your videos/pictures in my school project, and I have the right to edit or make changes to them as I deem suitable.

Please note, I will not use genital or nipple (male AND female) photos/videos as this is a school project.

Thank you BME. I hope that this is something the whole BME community can be involved in.

Much appreciated, Clara Chan. (IAM: fuck_life)

Questions/comments? Email me.

11 thoughts on “Help An IAMer With A Project! C’mon, Do It.

  1. Cool project, but I’d like to give my 2 cents on one of the sub-topics.

    IMHO the evils of gun piercing are overblown in the body modification community because we like to think of ourselves as smarter than the average member of the public.

    Adverse consequences of gun piercings are largely due not to the instruments themselves (yes, the older models had issues but there are several newer models where NO unsterilized part touches the piercee’s body), but the stupidity of
    a) the people performing the piercings: part-time or temporary employees of franchises who receive minimal training on the use of the guns and no blood-borne pathogens training; and who use them on inappropriate body parts*.
    b) the people receiving them: teenagers or children who are likewise unaware of potential adverse effects and think it’s OK to skimp on/ignore aftercare, and can’t resist fiddling with their new piercings.

    *Some people think that studs “shatter” ear cartilage, which may happen, but this study, done with real human ears, found no difference in damage in gun vs. needle piercings.

    I know lots of people here are vehemently anti-gun and will disagree with me, but I’m honestly not trolling, I’m trying to be clear about what really does the damage in gun piercings gone wrong.

  2. clara nice to see u made mod blog 😛
    i agree about the guns but wasnt your project due like 3 months ago?

  3. Justin: I got an extension until the exhibition, but it means that in my essay i’ll have to write that i didn’t finish my product yet. Nevertheless, i’m so excited.

    Thanks everyone!

  4. #3 – I dig what you are saying, but isn’t another problem with guns the quality of jewelry that is often used? I have seen a gun piercing done on cartilage with a nickel stud earring that began to rust within a couple of days and created a big pussy boil that did NOT look pretty… also had a friend who couldn’t get her studs out after what she was told to be the ‘healing time’ as the back had rusted to the stem, irritating the hell out of her ears. In both these instances, they didn’t stand a chance even with proper aftercare. This is much less likely to happen if pierced with a needle and a high quality ring or stud/barbell, right?

  5. i went to get my cartilage pierced at claires a few years ago but when they went to do it, it only went halfway through my ear and omggg so painful D:

    then the next day i went to a shop and got it done the right way *thumbs up*

  6. …oh and that was because they werent using one of those little sharp studs, i actually wanted the barbell, which they didnt know the gauge of

  7. oh yea. studex makes 16ga ex threaded barbells. the 16ga makes it more prone to blowouts, not to mention the external threading RIPPING through your cartilage.

    and the technician’s not even supposed to put the ball on for you. the gun basically forces a translucent plastic butterfly backing onto the stud, and gives you the ball for you to put on 24 hours later.

    Many times, I have heard: i’m getting pierced with that, *points at barbell*, because it’s cooler.

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