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Week 9: Space and Art

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Book cover for Fountains of Paradise Artist rendering of a space elevator What has continued to fascinate me about the topics we cover in this course is how each different field overlaps with one another. The most recent case of this is the overlap between nanotechnology and space. This crossover makes sense, seeing that nanotech and space are both rapidly advancing fields with great potential for discovery. One of the most well known examples of these two subjects interacting with each other is the potential use of carbon nanotubes for the creation of a space elevator, a concept initially described within the science fiction novel Fountains of Paradise.  While this idea is still in a conceptual form (and there is new research showing that carbon nanotube space elevators are not realistic due to the fact that carbon nanotubes lose a significant amount of structural integrity from just a single molecule being out of place), it will be interesting to see how this current idea i
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Week 8: Nanotechnology and Art

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Buckyball This week we discussed the current state of nanotechnology and it's current relationship with art. The first aspect of nanotechnology which interested me was the idea that nanotechnology has benefited from discoveries in other areas. The first example of this is the inspiration behind how the Buckminsterfullerenes (also known as the buckyball) was discovered. The buckyball is a molecular form of carbon which uses 60 carbon molecules to form a sphere. This molecule was known of in the past, but its structure was not discovered until Richard E. Smalley looked into architecture. By looking at geodesic domes, which were popularized by Richard Buckminster Fuller, Smalley was able to figure out the buckyball's structure. This is a perfect example of the crossover between nanotechnology and art. Like many other forms of science, nanotech and art have been able to learn and develop together even though they may seem like contradictory ideas. Morpho butterfly In the
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Event 2: Fowler Museum

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Me and an employee at Fowler For my second event of the quarter, I went to the Fowler museum on UCLA's campus. During my trip, I visited two exhibits being hosted there. The titles of these exhibits are Intersections: World Arts, Local Lives and Reflecting Culture: The Francis E. Fowler, Jr. Collection of Silver and I saw that both of these exhibits relate to the class in different ways. Performing Knowledge piece and its multimedia component First up was the Intersections  exhibit. This piece of the museum contained art pieces from all over the globe (Africa, Asia, Americas) and from a very large range of time (from five thousand years ago to now). What tied each piece of this exhibit together was the fact that they all were art pieces which interacted with the lives of people around them during their respective times. One of the art pieces, titled Performing Knowledge, really stood out to me. While the pieces in the exhibit were very old, including this one, the displ
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Week 6: Biotech and Art

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As a psychobiology major at UCLA, I have already had some exposure to the subject of biotechnology. As a matter of fact, I took a course as a freshman titled Biotechnology and Society which spanned the length of three quarters. Because of this previous experience, the artists Joe Davis and Eduardo Kac stand out to me as doing a great job in bridging biotechnology and art. Example of Brainbow Kac holding his GFP Bunny Eduardo Kac is famous for his work done with GFP (green fluorescent protein), a technology which has helped to advance the field of biotech through applications such as fluorescent labeling. While it has facilitated many other important discoveries, Kac used it to create a fluorescent rabbit as an art piece. While some may argue that this was a useless exercise, I see it as an expression of art through a canvas no one has been able to use before. It is somewhat similar in this sense to brainbow, a form of art where fluorescent tags are used to color neurons in a
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Week 4: Medicine, Technology, and Art

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Example of brainbow imaging With the concept of art and creativity being as broad as it is, I find it interesting to view the results of medical technology as being artistic. I am also surprised by how much of medicine can be viewed through the lens of art. Great examples of this from class are exhibits like Bodies or artistic viewings of MRI readings. One of my favorites, however, is brainbow. Brainbow is a neuro-imaging method where different cell types are differentiated using fluorescent proteins. There are multiple different colors available and each color can be used to color a specific cell type. This method of visualizing the brain produces some beautiful images which are not only fascinating to look at but also can provide scientific insight into the anatomy of our brains. X-Men character undergoing a medical procedure Another area where art and medical technology cross over is in movies, specifically in the recently more popular super hero movies. Some of these fi
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Event 1: Hammer Museum

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Stories of Almost Everything The Hammer museum is home to many exhibits, but two of them stood out to me on my previous visit. The first was titled Stories of Almost Everything  and was basically a large room full of random objects. I looked at everything from a single matchstick on the ground to a string of balloons on the ceiling which said, "I KNOW VERY WELL BUT NEVERTHELESS" to five old telephone poles also laying on the floor together. Each of these had a description near it which gave a straight-forward description of exactly what the art piece was. While many people (including myself) probably wouldn't consider the pieces in this exhibit to be art, it really depends on the context which the pieces are presented in. Before walking in, there was a description on the wall which explained that the entire exhibit was about how something like a museum acts a mediator between the artist and the viewer. In this context, the museum functions by helping to interpret the
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Week 3: Robotics and Art

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Poster for Blade Runner Today, robots have become a part of our daily lives, even if we don't notice them. Despite their modern presence, however, I am personally interested to see where robotics advance to in the future. Fortunately, I'm not the first person to be interested in this, so there are numerous pieces of media which depict others' interpretations of our future. One great example of this is the movie Blade Runner, which takes places in a future where synthetic humans (called replicants in the movie) are used as a labor force in developing new worlds for humans to live on. These replicants are artificially created to be just like humans so they are basically hyper-advanced robots made from biological materials and which have their own consciousness and intelligence. While it would take incredible science and technology to develop "robots" like this, it would also take an incredible amount of artistry to make them so close to being human.  A Bl
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