Event 3: Philosophy + Art + Science: Building the platform for interdisciplinary projects at the National Autonomous University of Mexico

Last Thursday, I went to Maria’s lecture of interdisciplinary projects at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. It was a very interesting lecture talking about the combination of art and science, and I learnt a lot from it.

Maria’s team mainly focus on art of biology. They believe that artists can create great and useful pieces by going into the biology lab. We always want to see the nature change through technology, but at the same time the nature can be technologically produced by the combination of biology and art. So here comes the question: What is the distinction between nature and artificial? Maria gives us four ways as the outputs of their solution: holding exhibitions, going to festivals, going into labs and building labs. In this way, the collaborations between artists and scientists are enhanced, they both get chances to work on specific projects and work collectively.

She gives us some examples of their projects. The one impressed me most was the the adoption of Arabidopsis, the small flowering plants related to cabbage and mustard. Actually it’s one of the model organisms used for studying plant biology and the first plant to have its entire genome sequenced. They want to cultivate the mutant of this flower (which reminds me of Xmen, ha-ha.) and the transgene will have enhanced beauty. They achieve this by asking scientists to pick certain genes and discard the rest. They develop the first generation and keep seeds of the good ones and cultivate following generations until they get the satisfied ones. It’s really like going shopping. They choose specific kind of genes, saying “I want this one, I don’t want that one…” and finally get the extreme beauty. Of course they have many other interesting projects related to local culture and living styles, such as the transgene corn exhibition.

I highly recommend this event because it shows us a feasible way to combine art and science. We should bring art into labs and get amazing results.

me at the lecture

Week 9: Space + Art

Last week we learnt about nanotechnology, which features very small object, and this week we start to look at space and art, which means very huge concepts like planet even universe. Though they are very distinct from each other, we can still find the connection between. Indeed, we should use all we learnt before to study the space and art.

When we become familiar with planet we are living now, we come up with this question naturally: what does the universe look like? In 16^th century, Copernicus first stated that sun is at the center of the universe. Though it looks wrong today because we now know sun is only at the center of the solar system, it was still a great step in his era. At that time Catholic church ruled everything and thought they were most powerful creature in the universe, and of course earth is at the center.

 

 Nicholas Copernicus

Later with the development of technology, we wanted to go beyond the earth and see what the outer space really looks like. Scientists want to build a space elevator which connects earth and space with a cable. It’s still hard to achieve today but it may come true one day in the future. We always say that war promotes technology and that is exactly true. After World War II, because of the fear of atomic bomb threaten by the other country, the United States and Soviet Union started the famous space race. In less than thirty years, they both got great achievements in the field of astronomy. In 1961, Gagarin became the first person going into the space. In 1962, John Glen became the first person to circle the earth. In 1969, Neil Armstrong made his little step as the giant step for whole human beings. And now, this technology has been moved into private area to make commercial space travels.

 

 Neil Armstrong on moon

I have seen lots of movies talking about space, such as Star Wars, the Martian and Guardians of the Galaxy. They dream about the untouchable future. Directors and actors use their imagination to show us the possibility of unknowns. They give us reasons to believe that there are more things waiting for us to discover.

the Martian

 The technology gives inspirations to artists, and artists show more possibilities to scientific research and developments. Though I know it’s a long way for us to explore the universe, I am excited to see every change in this journey. 


Sources:
Leveillee, Nicholas. P. "Copernicus, Galileo, and the Church: Science in a Religious World". StudentPulse. 2011. Web. 26 May, 2016. http://www.studentpulse.com/articles/533/copernicus-galileo-and-the-church-science-in-a-religious-world.

Gallman, Stephanie., Said-Moorhouse Lauren. "Neil Armstrong's widow finds artifacts from moonwalk in a closet". CNN. 10 Feb, 2015. Web. 26 May, 2016. http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/09/us/neil-armstrong-moon-artifacts/.

Kremer, Ken. "‘The Martian’ is a Cinematic Triumph – Follow Mark Watney’s Trail across the Real Mars in Photos and Flyover Video". Universe Today. 12 Oct, 2015. Web. 27 May, 2016. http://www.universetoday.com/122798/the-martian-is-a-cinematic-triumph-follow-mark-watneys-trail-across-the-real-mars-in-photos-and-flyover-video/

London, Jay. "MIT Startup Connects Art with Space, and Space with Art". Slice of MIT. 18 Nov, 2015. Web. 27 May, 2016. https://slice.mit.edu/2015/11/18/tekuma-i-am-not-an-artist-art-basel-miami/

Marlo. “Pepõn.” Powers of Ten blog. Eames Office LLC, 26 Nov, 2012. Web. 27 May, 2016.

Documentary Tube. "HOW IT WORKS: The International Space Station". Online video clip.
YouTube. YouTube, 3 Jul. 2015. Web. 27 May, 2016.

 
 

Extra Credit 1: Art of the Austronesians: The Legacy of Indo-Pacific Voyaging at Fowler Museum

As I walked into the Fowler Museum exhibition room, my sight was caught by the big boat standing at the middle of the room. The whole exhibition has a familiar ancient Asian sense to me. The textile on the boat is made with typical eastern pattern, the edges of the boat curve up just like what I saw in my primary school textbook. But what shocked me more is the story behind the boat.

Just like the native Americans crossed nearly half the earth to come to Continental America, the owners of the boats sailed vessels in ancient times to migrate throughout a region spanning more that halfway around the globe. These people were originated in Taiwan and they were mainly seafaring agriculturalists. Generations passed they gradually occupied the Southeast Asia like Philippines and Indonesia, then they didn’t stop but traveled farther to Solomon Islands and Marianas. In later migrations they even made to Madagascar, Hawaii, New Zealand and Easter Island more the eight hundred years ago.

This exhibition shows their culture through their visual arts. Since they came from East Asia and lived in other places for such a long time, we can expect a mixture of traditions. In fact, their cultures borrowed selectively from foreign sources, especially for those objects in last two hundred years. They explicitly reflect a variety of such accumulated influences. They considered sea as a basic feature of their life, it also represents the highest technology they can achieve at that time. The Both spars are sprits -- there is no mast on this rig and both sprits hold up only a corner of the rectangular sail. The design helps to reduce wind and waves when sailing. For the textile in the exhibition, it was cleverly made of beadwork. In the drinking cup shows below, we can see the religious pattern made up by the beads. This is not only beautiful but easy to carry with net structure on the top and a loop to handle. And in the big cloth hanging at the entrance shows the combination of different cultures, the technology for making such a huge art pieces must be very mature at that time.

 the boat at the middle of the exhibition

 the ceremonial cup

 the textile

I highly recommend this exhibition because it shows us the advanced technology for sailing and spinning of Austronesians at the early time and their cultures. It gives us a change to see a totally different world and I really enjoy it.

 me at Hammer Museum

Week 8: NanoTech + Art

Though I have heard the concept of nanotechnology a lot, I always thought that it’s very far away from us. It seems to be a world specifically for those high level laboratories. After this lecture, I found that nanotechnology is actually everywhere around us. It changes the world in a tiny but powerful way. 

By the definition, one nanometer is 10^-9 meter, which is a very small distance that we cannot see with our eyes. As early as in 400 B.C., Romans use gold nanoparticles to make lantern and plates, then people used nanoparticles for different colors in making stain class. The famous physicist, Richard Feynman, first came up with concept of nanotechnology and predicted that it would be one of the most important topic in the future technology development, and his prophecy comes true. The most common use of nanotechnology today is in the field of medicine. For example, doctors can manipulate nano robots to perform surgery at cellular level, remove individual diseased cells and even repair defective portions of individual cells. All of which are hard to achieve by the human hands and normal size operation.

                                                                      ancient Roman cup made of gold nanoparticles

nano robots for medicine

Of course the special “talents” of nanotechnology also make great success in commercial world. People use silver particles’ antibacterial characteristics to make socks and clothes that can keep clean for a long time. The adherence gecko feet let scientists see the future of adhesive products. The lotus leaf effect uses nanostructures to be water-proof and it has been widely used in windows of high-speed train to avoid the cost of cleaning. The self-organization and self-assembly of nanoparticles helps to change substances to a certain form for certain application.

nano material socks

The artists also find chances to create art work by using nanotechnology. The structures are visualized with powerful research tools like scanning electron microscopes and atomic force microscopes and their scientific images are captured and further processed by using different artistic techniques to convert them into artworks showcased for large audiences. They show us the beauty of nanostructure and zoom in the distance between technology and general public.

Deep Sea Creature made by nanotechnology

 

Being cutting-edge means to be controversial, and there are problems occurring during the process. We should envisage these problems as well as being confident about the future life.

Sources: 

Merali, Zeeya. " This 1,600-Year-Old Goblet Shows that the Romans Were Nanotechnology Pioneers". Smithsonian.com. September, 2013. Web. 19 May, 2016. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/this-1600-year-old-goblet-shows-that-the-romans-were-nanotechnology-pioneers-787224/?no-ist.

Gorvett, Zaria. "The Era of Nanoronots: How Techonology is Reinventing Medicine". AsianScientist. 27 May, 2015. Web. 19 May, 2016. http://www.asianscientist.com/2015/05/features/era-nanorobots-technology-reinventing-medicine/.

Grossman, Elizabeth. "Tiny materials in countless products raise big questions for environment and health". Ensia. 2 Dec, 2015. Web. 20 May, 2016. http://ensia.com/features/tiny-materials-in-countless-products-raise-big-questions-for-environment-and-health/.

Lilley, Maiken. "The Art of Nanotech". Nova. 18 Nov, 2010. Web. 20 May, 2016. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/art-nanotech.html.

Gimzewski, Jim., Victoria, Vesna. The Nanomeme Syndrome: Blurring of Fact & Fiction in the Construction of a New Science. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 May, 2016. http://vv.arts.ucla.edu/publications/publications/02-03/JV_nano/JV_nano_artF5VG.htm.

KPMG US. "Art of Possible: Nanotechnology" Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube. 8 Dec, 2014. Web. 21 May, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdjIDFgD6lk.

The Era of Nanorobots: How Technology Is Reinventing Medicine Read more from Asian Scientist Magazine at: http://www.asianscientist.com/2015/05/features/era-nanorobots-technology-reinventing-medicine/

The Era of Nanorobots: How Technology Is Reinventing Medicine Read more from Asian Scientist Magazine at: http://www.asianscientist.com/2015/05/features/era-nanorobots-technology-reinventing-medicine/

The Era of Nanorobots: How Technology Is Reinventing Medicine Read more from Asian Scientist Magazine at: http://www.asianscientist.com/2015/05/features/era-nanorobots-technology-reinventing-medicine/

 

Event 2: Anne Niemetz Lecture

On May 3, 2016, I went to the lecture given by Anne Niemetz. It was a really joyful and interesting event and I learnt a lot from it.

As an artist who focuses on wearable technology, interactive installation ans audio-visual design, Anne is very adapt to the applications of modern scientific devices and technologies. At most times, it’s hard for me to understand an artist’s work and design since I am an engineering student, but Anne’s work gives me sense of familiarity. 

 

 belt using Arduinos

In the lecture, she talked about beats. In physics class, I learn that beats forms because of the sounds with difference frequencies are played together. Sometimes we may hear beats from one audio source when we are in-between two huge and concrete objects because of Doppler’s effect. It’s kind of excited and fancy to hear the beats in an art creation. Anne showed us the clip of audio she made with beats. The strong rhythm seemed to be in resonance with the heart beat and gives us sense of magnificence. One thing that is impressive to me is her usage of Arduinos when making a belt. I am an electrical engineering student, so I know how important Arduinos are to electronic practices. In my project for my major classes, I programmed them to control the motor at certain circumstances, but I never thought they could be used for shining belt one day.

 the Circadian Rhythm

As for Anne’s art pieces, I like the one called Circadian Rhythm. She records the positions of sun at different times of the day and put all picture together. We can see that the positions make a perfect sine wave. It is the beauty of math and art. In one of her student’s work, the clothes on model are cover with hexagons of different sizes. Each of hexagon has a stick supporting the surface. When the power is on, the stick extends and contracts at different times to make a wave on the body. The scene is a little bit weird but attracting.

I highly recommend this lecture because it shows us the beauty of the combination of art and science. In the future, we have to put what we learnt into practices. The creativity is lying in every part of our life, not only wearable technologies. And our goal is to use it to make our life better.

me at the lecture(kind of dark... 😂）

Week 7: Neuroscience + Art

The brain is the most important and amazing part of the human body. The internal functions of the brain are very complicated. Our sight, auditory sense and tactile sense cannot operate without the control of the neuron. It also has close connection with the art, since we use it to perceive the art and outside world as well as altering and modifying the visual performances.

One of the most impressive pictures to me in the lecture is Suzanne Anker’s Butterfly in Brain. By combining the image of butterfly with the MRI scan of the brain, she presents us dialogue of signs within the symmetrical structures of chromosomes, the butterfly and the brain, all of which possess an axis copy. Through pictorial substitution, demarcation, and relocation Anker creates a body of work out of science-based data. Another attempt tries up understand the brain structure is the Brainbow. By simultaneously illuminating the neurons in brain with distinct colors, we can easily see the groups of neurons and connections between them. 

Butterfly in Brain

different colors in Brainbow

Another interesting topic of the neuroscience is definitely the dreams. Why we have dreams, what determines the content of our dream, what is the boundary between dream and reality… There are many questions haunting around all people. We have to admit we only know little about dreams. Sigmund Freud is the pioneer in analyzing dreams. Freud was the founding father of psychoanalysis, a method for treating mental illness and also a theory that explains human behavior. He argues that we are not entirely aware of what we even think, and often act for reasons that have nothing to do with our conscious thoughts. Dreams provided the best examples of our unconscious life, and in The Interpretation of Dreams Freud both developed the argument that the unconscious exists, and a method for gaining access to it. Many artists create works to help us visualize this process.

 

In a word, there are still many mysteries in neuroscience, both scientists and artists have their own way of exploring them. According to their work, we can have a better understanding of our cognitive consciousness who we are.

Sources:
The Neurocritic. "The Butterfly in the Brain". The Neurocritic. 8 Jun, 2008. Web. 12 May, 2016. http://neurocritic.blogspot.com/2008/06/butterfly-in-brain.html

Weissman, Tamily A., Sanes,  Joshua R., Lichtman, Jeff W., Livet, Jean. "Generating and imaging multicolor Brainbow Mice." Cold Spring Harbor Protocols. 2011. Web. 12 May, 2016.
http://cshprotocols.cshlp.org/content/2011/7/pdb.top114.full

EphemeraAndMore. "ANATOMICAL HEAD art print Subconsious Human Mind Brain Dream neurology psychology medical science upcycled vintage dictionary.” Photograph. Etsy. 2015. Web. 12 May, 2016. https://www.etsy.com/listing/230924021/anatomical-head-art-print-subconsious?ref=unav_listing-same

Reid, Caroline.  "Google's AI Can Dream, and Here's What it Looks Like." IFLScience. 22 Jun, 2015. Web. 13 May, 2016. http://www.iflscience.com/technology/artificial-intelligence-dreams

Big Think Editors. "This is Your Brain on Dreams, with Michio Kaku." bigthink. 2015. Web. 11 May, 2015. http://bigthink.com/think-tank/this-is-your-brain-on-dreams-with-michio-kaku

Christopher deCharms. "A Look inside the Brain in Real Times" Online video clip. TED. TED. Feb, 2008. Web. 13 May, 2016. http://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_decharms_scans_the_brain_in_real_time?language=en

Week 6: BioTech + Art

From this week’s lecture, I get the idea that biological technology can also be a platform to express art and development aesthetic views. The artists use modern technology and life medium to create art and draws attention to social and ethical issues. It completes the other side of the scientific research and technological development, letting us think more about who we are and what we can be.

Joe Davis, as a bioart pioneer, came up with the idea of sending human biological information in a bottle to the extraterritorial space. But his bigger contribution is encoding a symbol for life and femininity into a E-coli bacterium. He named this Microvenus which opens the gate for bioart. Following this trend, scientist modify animal genes to give them some unusual characteristics. For example, they extract the glowing genes in jellyfish and enlarge the glowing function, then they put it into rabbit’s embryo to make it a glowing rabbit. We cannot judge whether this action is right or wrong to a living creature, just like there is still controversy in using rats in medical experiment today, but at least we can know that modifying and combining genes is a useful way to “create art”. We also see a familiar face in this lecture---Orlan. Besides performing plastic surgery on stage, she had another bold idea to make the Harlequin Skin. She combined skin pieces from different cultures even different races to represent the unity of people around the world.

Joe Davis

glowing rabbit

The bioart doesn’t only apply to animals but also to plants. Horticulturalist Edward Steichen and his follower George Gessert use their aesthetic views to develop their favorite kinds of flowers. They only picked their satisfied ones for reproduction and throw out the “bad” one. In this way the human aesthetic preferences influence the natural evolution. Just as the saying goes: “Only the fittest survive.” Here we decide who is the fittest.

Marion Laval-Jeantet inject horse blood into her own body

In a world, the biological art is a beautiful but complicated world, we can appreciate it, question it or disgust it, but we cannot deny that it’s just started and we can get more tips and suggestions for our own survival in it.

Sources: 

Caputo, Joseph. "Creating art with genes and bacteria". Elsevier. 20 Jan, 2016. Web. 6 May, 2016. 

https://www.elsevier.com/connect/creating-art-with-genes-and-bacteria

"Bioart: An introduction". Physorg. 23 Nov, 2015. Web. 6 May, 2016. http://phys.org/news/2015-11-bioart-introduction.html

Young, Emma. "Mutant Bunny". New Scientist. 22 Sept, 2000. Web. 7 May, 2016.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16-mutant-bunny/

Fundación Telefónica. "May the horse live in me: Tercer Premio VIDA 14.0". Online Video Clip. YouTube. YouTube. 18 Oct, 2012. Web. 7 May, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Awz4w22tFHw

Kelty, Chris. “Meanings of Participation: Outlaw Biology?”. Web. 7 May, 2016. 

Maldarelli, Claire. "Are We Ready for Designer Babies?". Popular Science. 21 Mar, 2016. Web. 8 May, 2016. http://www.popsci.com/are-we-ready-for-designer-babies