Blogging Instructions
Each week by Sunday at midnight each student must post a 500-800 word blog entry. Reflect on the questions raised in Prof. Vesna's lecture, guest lectures, and readings. Connect these concepts to self-directed research. Provide one link for each post to something you've discovered. Examples are news articles about scientific, artistic, political events etc. that relates to class topics. Images are optional but enjoyable for everyone.
Use the "Create New Post" button in your "dashboard" once you've logged in. Use the buttons above the text box to add photos, links, and text formatting.
When Posting Always...
Label your post with your section in this format (without quotes): "Section 1"
This allows your TA to find your blog posts.
Email myself or your TA if you have technical issues.
oleary@ucla.edu
xarene@ucla.edu
zblas@ucla.edu
datadreamer@ucla.edu
Use the "Create New Post" button in your "dashboard" once you've logged in. Use the buttons above the text box to add photos, links, and text formatting.
When Posting Always...
Label your post with your section in this format (without quotes): "Section 1"
This allows your TA to find your blog posts.
Email myself or your TA if you have technical issues.
oleary@ucla.edu
xarene@ucla.edu
zblas@ucla.edu
datadreamer@ucla.edu
Labels: Instructions, Week 1, Week 10, Week 2, week 3, Week 4, Week 5, Week 6, Week 7, Week 8, Week 9
posted by Desma9 at
11:54 AM
2 Comments:
Section 2, James Zavala
I loved the topics for this week. I am a math major therefore me taking this class is merely for extra units and is competently tangent to my major. Therefore the thought of taking a design technology class to me was a completely different experience. Nonetheless the teacher concentrated on the fact that a scientist and an artist should both be very dependent and informed with each other’s issues being that art is greatly affected by science and vice versa. The reason that this is true is because with advances of technology there are more things that can be done with it artistically. I have taken another design class, which emphasized that technology can advance with the right tools, which are made possible by artist.
I felt that the readings by C.P. Snow addressed scientist and them alone. He seem to have categorized them as people who were religious being that they came from the slums and to work their way up in life they utilized their brains and science. Nonetheless it was Darwin whom I have an understanding that as he was developing his theory of evolution, he set it aside for a while and did not continue with it being that his religion did not approve of it.
There was a quote in one of the readings by David Peat, which says
“Creativity becomes nature singing her own songs. The
scientist and artist become assistants, co workers with nature.
Nature seeks new ways to express herself though human
society and human skills. In turn we seek to celebrate nature
though acts of renewal.” which I think is absolutely beautiful. It allows the
reader to understand that both science and art work together with nature to collaborate and create a beautiful masterpiece. Nature can be seen as the needs and wants of people and thus both the scientist and the artist come together to produce the necessary product. The quote is certainly a justification for the point that artist and scientist are interdependent which each others advances.
The paper by Stephen Wilson brought up a good point, which stated again that both the artist and the scientist could be the same person being that they are intertwined in their work and gave great examples. One of which that stood out to me was with the one with mathematics and algorithms, as I would love to see how he could use that artistically. Something that I would have to disagree with him was that he pointed out that art has utilized science more in its development than science has used art. The reason I say this because a past class has taught me that things that we take for granted have themselves taken someone’s thought creativity and artistic talent to develop. Although it may not seem so, the smallest detail of a scientist like a computer has required that a person design the way it looks, its size, the material which would be most efficient to make it, and the such required the thought process which is attributable to an artist. Therefore anything that a scientist has used for his development can be attributed to an artist talent.
I really enjoyed the readings for this week being that they addressed my studies even though I thought math was something that was not going to be and issue in this class; Hopefully that will not be the case. Something that I found interesting which can be seen as a collaboration of art and science is a band called ratatat which can be found on http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=53122911 . They collaborate sounds of science and make into beautiful. They are worth checking out.
SECTION 2
James Zavala
I loved this week’s lecture. We spoke a lot about great mathematicians and looked at their work and realized not only how beautiful it was but also gave thought at how intelligent the creator must have been. In enjoyed the talk that she dedicated to Brunelleschi on how he developed the vanishing point. He had to pay close attention to the math in the sense that as it approaches a vanishing, the picture literally approaches infinity but gives the illusion that it approaches zero and gives depth to the piece. There was also the topic that was brought up of Albertis who developed a mathematical reasoning which I fprgot but needless to say it is interesting to see that an artist would think in such a way to even develop a mathematical reasoning to what is happening.
I appreciated the fact that she brought up Leonardo Davinci’s Vetruvian Man being the fact that it has such a great story behind it. To my understanding Leonardo Davinci created the piece to demonstrate the fact that people are perfectly symmetrical which requires mathematical thought since it deals with the geometry of the body. It states that if a person were to extend his four lims like a star and be rotated with the belly button as his center of rotation then a perfect circle would be created. Another thin that he noticed was if a person stands straight and extends his arms out to align with his shoulders then he would create a perfect square. Amazing thought isn’t it? I found it to be ffuny being that I have an enormous cloth with the painting hanging in the main wall of my living room.
Wow! That is the best way that I can describe Maurter Eschers work. The man had to have been an exceptional mathematician being the fact that he created symmetry in his work. I am currently taking a teaching mathmatics class and he was topic of choice for a lecture and we worked with his art, how it was symmetrical about a point and how we could utilize it to enlighten our students in the field of geometry. His work as an artist arises many questions as to perspective and what is physically possible. Not only does that involve mathematics but includes physics being that some of his work demonstrates a person looking down from a balcony to another person walking up the wall which seems to be possible in that person frame of reference but nonetheless what looking at the entire picture one can see that it is physically impossible. The artist worked as physicist would in quantum physics since he looked at everyones frame of reference and made the impossible possible by bringing together all the possibles and creating a whole. His demonstration of the mobius band has to be by far the most typical way of explaining that the mobius band only has one side; the ant walks in a straight line without jumping or crossing and walks both the inside and outside of the figure.
I didn’t really enjoy the psychedelic video by Mandelbort that was shown being that it made me feel like I was on peyote, but the concept behind it with the Cartesian plane was very interesting. I did on the other hand enjoy the point made by Buckminster Fuller which stated that the sturdiest structures are not squares like we create, but other shapes that are found in nature.
Casey Reas was a treat! His programming was different from anything that I have ever seen. My programming has consisted of plugging in mathematical equations to develop a program which will output values and not a masterpiece that he has created. I loved the fact that he said that his art was organic being that he lets it go and lets it do whatever it feels. I was very pleased with his presentation being that he showed every aspect and then the final product of his work. I liked his art so much that I made it my background and other people seem to think that it is beautiful as well. The circles and distance piece was by far my favorite since although it utilizes basic math it yet very complex. I was really happy he took the time to go to our class. So, thanks.
An interesting website that I found which speaks of Mandelbrot and his work which gives a very good description what he did is: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/MandelbrotSet.html
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