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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...

[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...

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 [.....