griffinsDESMA9

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 ...

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...

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 ...