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Week 9: Space + Art

Having never thought of space and art's relationship before, I found this week's topic regarding the relationship between the two to be very interesting since this was the first time I had associated the two. While researching I found how art can really help space in different ways. Ways such as educating, concept visualization, and creating collaborative projects. Space and art help educate by being an easier tool used to explain complex ideas to students, workers, and other educators. It also has the ability to make a concept easier for the audience to understand and discuss. An example of concept visualization is when artists and scientists work together to compose a plan, visualize it, and communicate how to complete a future mission or task. Companies like NASA like to take on collaborative projects between artists and scientists/engineers for public display and projects to further space exploration. During the 1960s, NASA decided to create a program that would commission...

Week 8: Nanotechnology + Art

Embedding nanotechnology in art will continue to help shape the future. Richard Feynman, a famous physicist, gave a speech at the American Physical Society at Caltech in 1959 which discussed Feynman’s idea of manipulating matter at the atomic and molecular scale [1]. Faynmans speech paved the way for the future of the nanotechnology field. Nanotechnology started gaining headway in the early 2000s and contributes to almost every other field of science [4]. Such as chemistry, biology, engineering, plus more. Artists took using nanotechnology to the next level. For instance, Cris Orfescu. Orfescu used nanotech in his art by using it to create nano-sculptures, sculptures at molecular and atomic levels. In 2006, Orfescu started to organize annual competitions for other nano-artists to display their work, and in 2008, Orfescu’s nano-art was featured in the New York Times [5]. [Darcy Lewis - Nebula of Man] [K. Elise Cohen - Resurrection] [Renata Spiazzi - Fire in the Cave] Some other way...

Week 6: BioTech & Art

Regarding this week's topic, I found the following three questions to be the most intriguing: 1. Is life itself a valid expressive medium? 2. Is there a need for separate standards for artists creating or manipulating living organisms and semi-living systems? 3. How do we define and value artistic media and technologies? 1. Indeed life itself is a valid expressive medium because we all express it differently. Whether it be from the clothes we wear to our occupation, or even our personalities and morals. It's easily one of the most valid and natural ways to express oneself in my opinion, because we do it all the time without even being conscious of it, just by the way our faces look at each other. 2. As far as manipulating or creating semi-living organisms or systems is concerned, there should be separate standards for artists when it comes to this because without standards we don't have any way of knowing how far artists will go. How can an artist or viewers deem the artwo...

Event #2 - Museum of Natural History

On the same day that I visited the Leonardo Da Vinci exhibition at the California Science Center, I also visited the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. I remember taking plenty of field trips to the NHM when I was younger but hadn’t been back until yesterday. First walking in I was amazed by the mosaic art on the ceiling and the statue in the center. The gigantic fossils on display caught my attention especially because they had animals I had never seen before. They had a variety of mammal and aquatic fossils, live animals, and life-like animal representations on display. The fossil part caught my attention because I like the idea of how scientists have to excavate the fossils, be extremely delicate, and have to put them together like a puzzle. I also like that they had an area where we could see the Paleontologists dust off and work on the fossil in real time. [Figure 1] Natural History Museum Paleontologist Lab [Figure 2] Me In Front of a Fossil On the other side of t...

Event #1- Leonardo Da Vinci -- California Science Center

[Figure 1] Me Outside the Science Center This Monday I took a trip to the California Science Center and visited the Leonardo Da Vinci exhibit. I didn’t do much research on the exhibition beforehand because I wanted to be surprised. First entering, we were welcomed with a brief biography and video about Da Vinci. Around the corner, there was a surplus amount of Da Vinci’s inventions and work beautifully replicated by contemporary Italian artisans. I was amazed and noticed many of Da Vinci’s inventions that I was familiar with. Like the “Mechanical Bat”, the “Great Kite”, “Mechanical Dragon Fly”, and what I thought to be one of the coolest inventions, the “Aerial Screw”. Replicas of Da Vinci’s artworks were also displayed alongside the walls and could be digitally interacted with. There was a giant display of the “Last Supper” and on the digital display, I was able to view the “Baptism of Christ”, “Bacchus”, and of course, the “Mona Lisa”. [Figure 2] Da Vinci's Flying Mechanis...

Week 4: Medicine + Technology + Art

Where is medical technology taking us in art today? This week we discussed how medicine, art, and technology coincide in “bio-art”. Bio-art is the field that intersects art, biology, and technology and includes “medicine, genetics, and extensions to the body, and it encourages discussion on the relationship between living and nonliving organisms” (ARTDEX). Bio-artists use medical technology such as plastic surgery or inserting chips inside themselves to communicate art differently. For example, artists such as ORLAN underwent 9 facial plastic surgeries trying to embody the visions of beauty created by other artists' works. The surgeries ORLAN underwent were inspired by artists like Da Vinci, Botticelli, Boucher, and Diana. As Vesna described, ORLAN “has the chin of Botticelli's Venus those of the lips shares Europa the eyes of Diana from 16th century French and the forehead of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa” (Vesna 7:45). ORLAN “documented the entire performance on film [.....