Week 10 - Christopher Flannery - Space

Though I was interested in a lot of what the guest lecturer Geckelman had to say, I found it very hard to follow his points. I am a music major and a lot of the terminology and comparisons he made went over my head. However when I did understand something, it was extremely interesting; such as using plasma lasers to break down waste to an atomic level, mixing plasma, and plasma’s effect on different material. I remember at one point he described “plasma” as having memory because when they sent a charge through it, it would react in one way for the first time, and then in a completely different manner when they executed the same exact charge. I found it hard to characterize a material as being conscious and thought that there must be a difference that they are unable to detect. It seems like there are many examples of unknowns and inconsistencies in scientific knowledge and particularly space, that there is mostly likely a mistake in a basic concept, such as gravity. Even when something is “proved” it is likely that it will later be expanded on with exceptions or disproved completely in the relatively near future. I think that an art piece could play on the fact that people are willing to trust science wholeheartedly and quickly despite the fact that it is mostly likely flawed.
I enjoyed when the guest lecturers made a direct connection to art and Geckelman did not do this at all. During other weeks, the connection and interplay was more obvious because the guest lecturer or Professor Vesna provided a lot of names and examples of collaborations between science and art. We discussed the effect that space exploration had on popular culture and world politics, however I didn’t form a strong reference to and effect on art during the lectures.
My favorite part of the week was The Powers of Ten video. I had seen this as a young child, but I don’t think that I grasped the concept firmly then. This video, which should be considered a work of art in itself, conveys one of the most important messages the study of space has to offer; our insignificance in relation to the rest of the universe.
Earlier this quarter we discussed using models of biological systems, such as a sunflower, to create a new system. From my knowledge of space, I know that there are complicated structures that we could also learn from. The visuals are absolutely breathtaking. I would not be surprised there were many examples of the buckyball structure in outer space, or if there are disturbing similarities between atomic and galaxy structure. There is a universal synergy on all scales. Beyond the design of the structures, the satellite images we have are works of art on their own. I found an amazing collection here: http://www.space.com/amazingimages/

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Juliet Lee - week 10 - space & the final frontier

When we started on Monday and the heading of this weeks theme was space exploration the first thing I thought of was those art pieces that are like tigers or under water creatures out in space. And in a way the information we know about the universe is through how artists can conceptualize the ideas of scientists. As evidenced through the entire class, art is there to teach us when the technology hasn't caught up to our research and imagination. An example could be the Power of Ten video we watched, most of what they show us cannot be photographed by anything that we know, on the galaxy or atomic scale. It's pretty amazing how much we can learn through the visualization of concepts. That is one of the features that make us human too, our strong dependence on sight. This class has done a good job of integrating art and science even if it was quite overwhelming at times. There was a lot of information given to us in a small amount of time, and though I suppose it was nice to be given a choice as to which artist we wanted to look into further, but I felt like I lacked the sense to know how to look at their work and understand it without someone else explaining it to me. Artists have a way of explaining their art that makes me think that they are making everything up. That they really just felt like making something and worked backward to give their piece meaning. Therefore it was still the scientist who in giving their perspectives in art and science that I better understood the connection, at least as a legitimate collaboration and not as a purpose to solely create new/different art work. Although Wednesday's lecturer was a bit too heavy on the science and I found a lot of what he said to be going over my head Gekelman’s talk on plasma was really interesting. I was able to attend the symposium for Nikola Tesla and found it to be another interesting dichotomy between art and science and even to how they give presentations in front of a crowd of varied backgrounds. The first and last lecturers Milos Ercegovac and Greg Leyh, I understood what it was that they were talking about, and also their relation to Tesla. Of course when Ercegovac spoke he was very easy to understand because he just gave an overview of Tesla's varied and impressive life and he presented it in a funny presentation. The other scientist was from the Nevada Lightening Lab, and his presentation was also in order and made a direct connection to Tesla through his research on lightning and the Tesla coils. On the other hand, the artists who spoke I felt nearly put me backwards in my thinking that art should be given the respect that the sciences are given. It was sad to hear people leaving throughout the film "Monster Tree" by Paulette Phillips even though the breathing was really annoying and I also wanted to leave. Phillips related her art to Tesla because she used a magnet to hold up a tissue and filmed a girl with her hair blowing straight up into the air and never blinking giving us a magnetic look. That's what I was talking about how to me it sounds like artists just want to talk about themselves and what they created so they make a story that can let them talk longer. In this class I haven't heard a one of our artists say just enough to explain their art and their actions in a convincing manner.

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Juliet Lee - Week 9 - Nanotech

Wednesday's lecture brought up lots of questions in discussion about what is the role of the artist and the role of the scientist. It is interesting because before this class I had never really considered the question as the basis for any serious debate. But now in this class I see that it is an important question to be addressed, as well as the responsibilities each have towards the general public. It's a fact that artists are making social commentaries on current events that are transpiring these days, but I feel like artists can take it too far. I think that its important for both scientist and artists to respect each field of study, right now in lecture I still favor scientists because it still seems more legitimate, but week after week I gain more information that makes me wonder what it is that I am missing about art that so many other people understand? This weeks topic of nanotechnology was interesting. It sounds like the study of science fiction to make it into fact. I like that this concept has a direct link to art through Buckminster Fuller and the buckminsterfullerenes. Unless it was pointed out directly to me, which it was, science is the product of scientists trying to recreate things that they read about or saw in the movies as youngsters. Art really does play an influencial role in our imaginations that mold our minds into new shapes as we develop. It's really an amazing phenomenon. The guest speaker James Gimzewski gave a very entertaining talk to the class. His comparison of art and science as "rubbish" put science into another perspective for me. It's hard to think of science as something to not be taken seriously. That scientific research papers need to be read and cited in order to be meaningful was another interesting point that Prof. Gimzewski made. I don't think that that is necessarily the case, just because something has not been read does not make it any less meaningful. If in the future someone finally reads the work and it can contribute to someone else's findings then, doesn't that give the paper meaning? If an artist created a beautiful work but did not share it with others then does it also lose its meaning?

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Week 9 - Christopher Flannery - Nano

The first point I took from the article by Jim Gimzewski and Victoria Vesna about nanomemes was the limit of the general public’s perception of concepts such as the nanometer. This reminded me off my Astronomy 3 class, the Nature of the Universe, when the professor tried to communicate the enormous size of existence through analogies. It also reminded me of the book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy when a main character is placed in a machine that forces an individual to realize their size and importance in relation to the entire universe; his head explodes. I think it will be quite a while until the majority of people grasp concepts like this: even as a privileged and educated man, I struggle to myself. This dilemma relates back to last week’s topic about human consciousness and the limits of our senses. If humans don’t understand or relate to scales such as nanometers or galaxies, can it effectively be used in art? I do think the feeling one gets when thinking about the concepts is a desirable goal of art. When I googled “nano art”, the third link that came up was to NANO, Professor Vesna’s project with Jim Gimzewski. I think that this work is successful in making the audience consider that effects that nanotechnology will have on the world: the cameras at the entrance representing the threat to privacy, stimulation through tactile, visual, and audio environments, and interactive biological installations.
The discovery of the Buckminsterfullerene reassures me that nature is the best artist of all and that all areas of design can profit from the study of natural bodies. Buckminster Fuller predicted the shapes of many natural structures by drawing diverse formations and scientific theories. Some people credit him as the father of nano-art because of his foresight. After our study of tensegrity and the amazing properties of the domes, it doesn’t surprise me that this molecule is incredibly stable. Some people credit him as the father of nano-art because of his foresight.
Considering the current state of war and terrorism, nanotechnology could help in defense or be a dangerous weapon. When I read about nano-robots being used as anti-bodies, I thought of the possibility of someone creating a swarm of nano-robots to kill or control masses. When I searched for material on this topic, I found about “Grey Goo” which is a science-fiction scenario in which nano-robots reproduce and spread to consume our entire ecosystem. There are many similar theories of the apocalypse, many of which remind me of “The Matrix.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_goo
Science is making a revolutionary and incredibly fact impact over the course of a lifetime and art should be keeping up. It must reflect and comment on our full spectrum of consciousness, but I am not sure how this is possible because science is advancing so quickly and our understanding is always behind.

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Michael Nguyen - 9 - This post is mostly empty space

Professor Gimzewski’s presentation was not what I was expecting from a faculty member in the sciences since I had never heard anyone downplay the role of research and publication. It’s true that some researchers spend their life’s work to figure out almost trivial problems but in the end I think it still will have contributed to the advancement of science. It seemed ironic that Gimzewski would criticize how useless most research was while some of his projects didn't seem very revolutionary either. However, he makes a good point that most science is obsessed with obtaining data and taking measurements. I didn’t realize that at the nanometer level, the wavelength of light would be too large to measure certain things and that new methods for observation would have to be developed. I agree that our culture is dominated by visuals and marginalizes the other senses. Nanoscience forces us to consider the other sense since visualization is no longer possible.

What I find interesting about the installation with the sand mandala is that at the highest magnification, the surface of a grain of sand looks a lot like the surface of a large rock or cliff. In nature, without a reference for scale, objects at the microscopic level reflect things at the macroscopic level. The ritualistic destruction of the sand mandala after it’s made reminded me of other art works which aren’t meant to last very long. Two of my favorites are chalk drawings and buildings made of cards.

Kurt Wenner does street “painings” with chalk and other medium which utilize perspective to create amazing effects. His works are destroyed as weather washes or foot traffic destroys them.

http://hubpages.com/hub/AwesomeKurtWenner

Brian Berg is a cardstacker who uses standard playing cards to create lifesized buildings. They are designed to withstand a lot of force but in the end are semi permanent at best.

http://www.cardstacker.com/

These things help to remind me that at the molecular level nothing is constant. Atoms are in constant motion and quite fluid.

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Section 3 Week 9 Jacob Janco (Gimzewski)

This past week was a bit short, but the content of the lecture on Wednesday was as far reaching in some instances as it was narrow and closed minded in others. My gut feeling, after hearing him say that 95% of all research and science done today is “crap,” was to either challenge him or simply get up and leave. I wisely put aside my visceral response to his stupid statement and listened to why his work and research was interesting and part of the 3% that is apparently cited and can be construed of as “good” research. Of course I had to avoid the self-contradictory “playful” approach which makes up most of his work (contradictory in the sense that he judged other types of science and engineering as a manifestation of that science as, for the most part, futile endeavors.) So, after this brief introduction I will simply tell you how I will structure this post, the first will be me complaining about Gimzewski’s idiotic statements and the second part will be me praising his accomplishments. I thought it would be fitting to tribute a polarized post to a rather polarized man.

The first problem I had with this man was his statement that 97% of science is crap simply because it is not cited. Perhaps I am misunderstanding this man. The research work I do looking at the internal structure of bone, if published, would probably be a standalone work. It is a biomechanical delineation of fact that no one has done before. His narrow minded statement can be extrapolated to one that calls all of biological research meaningless. The inspection and description of biological systems can be extremely specific, and the body of research work for the sciences is huge. To be “progressive” or to be cited by other research projects and works requires the type of work you are doing to be a progressively minded in and of itself. His research work is cited because nanotechnology has extraordinary funds and is an emergent field that has the potential to make a ton of money. Does he take us to be fools? Research in any field is important if it illuminates some aspect of our world that has not been understood before and it deserves respect. Gimzewski showed himself to be a complete ass when he asked if he could strike some of what he said off the record. Dishonorable to say the least, and I’m sure his less “cited” colleagues would be a bit irked. UCLA is a research campus, and to say that 97% of the work done here is meaningless and stupid is to spit on the institution that pays him and funds his nonsense as well as insult the science students involved in research that were sitting right in front of him.

Now to his actual explorations in nanotechnology; he had me interested for the whole of the lecture. Most importantly, he was the first scientist whose work was solidly grounded in the artistic principles of expression and thought that goes against the paradigm. His work is engaging because it is humanly interesting and shows a playfulness that is somewhat lost in the scientific world. I could relate to this playfulness and disregard for accepted trains of thought that dominated my early entrance into the sciences, and indeed it still does. If someone tells you it cannot be done, simply go out and do it. It is a wonderful research philosophy and he backed this point up with his own work as well as with the scanning tunnel microscope- an ingenious invention that, when explained, seems almost fantastical. Feeling an atom? I also loved his work with the butterflies and the spontaneity of the project. I feel creative minds must be behind the work in this field and Gimzewski certainly explores nanotech in ways that shift current scientific thought.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanomotor

Here’s a nanomotor that was build by UCB in 2003, I believe. Gimzewski made a lot of sweeping statements and as I recall he somewhat mocked these endeavors to make smaller versions of what we already have. I still don’t understand how a nanotech researcher can say these things: the extraordinary repercussions of making things “smaller” would revolutionize our world, to say the least. Why does he have to make fun of guys who enjoy exploring the weird world of nanorobotics? I’m sure they play with the same notions of paradigm deconstruction and achieving the impossible that he so boldly proclaims.

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Christopher Flannery - Week 8 - Genes

The majority of this week’s discussion focused on Eduardo’s “GFP Bunny” and his thoughts about the artist’s role in altering the genome. As we discussed in section and on the blog, Eduardo is wrong about introducing new species into the biosphere and uses scientific processes that are norms in the scientific community. Despite this, I believe his project succeeded because he forced many people to consider the future of genetically altering animals and humans. A lot of people are aware of genetically altered plants, but a domesticated animal brings the subject closer to home. Eduardo does come off as ignorant to a person more knowledgeable in the scientific field, however he is spreading the awareness of transgenic art.
Eduardo’s vision of a future with artists creating new life forms reminds me of the argument over Steve Kurtz’s rights to do biological experiments in his home. The ability to build genes could be a very dangerous tool and should not be allowed in the hands of any qualified or unsupervised person. The morality of creating life is an even larger topic …
In the past couple of weeks, this class has felt more like a philosophy of science class. Art has a place in this because it is a tool to draw attention to, comment on, and influence progress in both these fields. In the same way, science and philosophy have influenced art and forced it to evolve alongside them.
I got the feeling that no one was listening during the Charles Taylor lecture. His points seemed too unrelated and hard to follow. I was only able to take a few notes and don’t feel that I took too much away from the lecture. At first I thought this was because I am not a south campus major and did not understand his examples, but a majority of the people in the room seemed even less interested.

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Juliet Lee – Week 8 – Biotechnology, Human Genome etc.

This week I happened upon an art reception at the Kerckhoff art gallery, it was called the “Art Science Fair” presented by the UCLA Neuroscience Undergraduate Society. The show had around 30 pieces and for the most part was drawings, paintings and sculptures, but they were all done by non-art, science majors. I enjoyed the show because it had nothing to do with science (besides one piece that was a water color of a neuron) except for the fact of their majors. And I also liked the show because I was able to vote for my favorite pieces and received free food in return.
Another interesting thing that I found this time online, was the development of a 4-D model of the human body called the CAVEman. It is supposedly going to help teach medical students and to aid in the preparation of more complicated surgeries. I thought that this related to other topics that we had touched upon in class; like the clip Professor Vesna mentioned and showed on YouTube of the section of the human body in a 3-D model. This new 4-D digital human image uses time as its 4th dimension so that the progression of an illness can be better tracked and shown in relation to the rest of the body. It has taken six years to develop and was a combined effort of computer scientists, biologists, mathematicians, and artists to make a high resolution image of the human body. I think that this is a great example of how collaborative projects between scientists and artists can be very successful. It is also like our guest speaker Charles Taylor’s point about how science needs art to put into images abstract concepts that allow better understanding for other people to learn about difficult subject matter.
About the questions posed at the end of Tuesday’s lecture, I do not think that there is a limit to human creativity. Everyday I witness someone doing something either artistically or just in everyday life that I am simply amazed that someone could have thought to do such a thing. If there is any kind of limit it is only our social and cultural constructs that keep people within a boundary of acceptable art. I do believe that life is an expressive medium, artists and scientists have always been trying to gain a better understanding of the world around us and how it works.

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Michael Nguyen - 8 - The price of new genes

As a student of molecular biology and genetics, I never considered the possibility of using the science within an art context. With the widespread popularity of organic products, there seems to be a backlash against genetically modified food and organisms. The art I’ve seen that deals with GMO is critical and seems to warn the public of its dangers. Technological advances have allowed crops to grow in harsh environments and probably provided food for people who would’ve other wise starved. Insulin produced in transfected E. coli allow millions to live with diabetes. However, I am aware of the concern about the issue of at what cost do we have these new life forms. I’m not as concerned about the potential health affects as the fact that corporation control the rights to these organisms and often have the bottom line as the main concern. In that sense I am receptive to art which brings this potential issue to light. It’s not the technology itself that we must be concerned about, but those who control it.

In Eduardo Kac’s article, he says “I suggest that artists can contribute to increase global biodiversity by inventing new life forms.” I’m not sure if he’s entirely serious because speciation isn’t as simple as inserting a single gene. A dog with a fluorescent coat is not a new species and doesn’t contribute to solving the problem of species extinction and loss of biodiversity. The principle of adaptation and evolution hinges on some sort of reproductive advantage; I’m not sure of female dogs fancy fluorescent fur or not. Whether misinformed or overzealous, I don’t think Kac’s idea is a particularly good one. It’s a better idea to work on reducing pollution and destruction of natural habitats than trying to generate new life forms.

One interesting thing I discovered was that the Simpson’s influence on molecular biology. In an episode, Homer makes a hybrid plan of tobacco and tomatoes: Tomacco. This fruit (vegetable?) ends up having an addictive effect because of the nicotine. This inspired someone to actually graft the two plants together; tomatoes were produced which had detectable amounts of nicotine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomacco

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Jacob Janco Week 8 Section 3 - Emergence

It was nice to see Professor Charles Taylor unify Art and Science in his lecture this past Wednesday. All is well in the world; the chaos, of course, was sparked by Dr. Scerri in the previous week’s lectures. Taylor’s lecture was engaging on both an artistic and scientific level. He did not water down either discipline to suit the needs of a particular group of students. As such, I found his discussion of emergence and thinking in terms of systems particularly interesting. This idea of emergence traces back to the lectures in class as well as the guest lecturers in an almost universal thematic element to the subject matter of the class. Casey Reas’s work for example is an artistic vision that emerges from simple processes and programmed systems.

I loved the evolving objects swimming and grappling with a computer created environment. I was blown away by the sheer organic feel that these “creatures” evolved into to cope with their surroundings. They mimicked biological organisms not by their inherent programming, but by inheritance patterns and the effects of the external world. I had never seen something like this, and it plays with the idea of emergence and a systems approach to biology as well as computer systems and mathematics; the last of which, I think, is the root for our understanding of the natural world. When I was young, my father would tell me that a computer is simply a machine that understandings two things, a 0 or a 1. He said that that was what it is. My understanding now is that, yes, from our current perspective a computer is nothing by 0’s and 1’s, but, no, it is far more complex once systems arise. It is easy to extrapolate this idea from a man made, simplistic computer system to the human brain and visa versa. The brain is much more complex, but understood processes form a foundation upon which the incredible, amorphous systems that lead to consciousness are built. From the simple arises the incredibly complex. The person in a crowd ceases to be a singular entity and moves with the ebb and flow of the groupthink.

What is this process? Why is it so elusive? It is so elusive because it is so hard to break it down to cause and effect, which is essentially what science is and what we understand. The problem arises when this huge amount of complexity thrown onto problems. Blue is not always qualitatively blue within the minds of different people. We are trying to piece together these processes using the infinite reduction of science to understand them. The creatures that swim through digital environments that were shown in class take a preexisting system and utilize its function. The incredibly complex mathematical formulas subject to an existent system produce similar end results as in our own tangible world. It is very strange indeed.

Emergence is the next step that we must tackle in science. Contemporary science for the most part is the filling in of what has already for the most part been discovered. I don’t remember who quoted this but it certainly makes sense to me as I read scientific journals with titles that span 5 lines with words that would scare small children. Science was created to understand our own place in the universe just like art was. Argue this you may, but it is true, our goals are selfish and what we discover and find aid us in the discovery of what it means to be human. Emergence is tied inextricably to the processes of consciousness and life and it is necessary to explore it- either as a new discipline in and of itself or as a continuation of science.
Just as a side note, rather than linking to some area of particular research for this week’s blog, I would like to recommend a book. Richard Dawkins was mentioned in lecture and he is a professor for the public understanding of science at Oxford. I have been reading The Ancestor’s Tale. It is an extremely lucid account of evolution, and although I am a life science major I find that I have a tenuous grasp on what is supposed to be one of the most important branches of study in all of human history. I find it strange that people have faith in evolution without knowing a shred of what it means. How is that better than placing your faith in some hokey mystic that claims he has the truth? It is illuminating and touches on these concepts of emergence. We are conglomerates of cells and atoms, you get the picture. Check it out, it is a fun and informative read.

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Christopher Flannery - Week 7 - Consciousness

I have always been fascinated by the limits of senses. It is crazy to think that there is energy we can’t feel, sound we can’t hear, and light and matter we can’t see. I believe it is landmark in human consciousness to address the limits of our sensory system and mind. For this reason, I like Paul Cezanne’s work because he attempts to reflect how a human actually perceives the world. A majority of the time, a person does not spend time sitting in a single place concentrating on a focal point, so why should all art do so? I think it’s almost impossible to do, but I love the idea of trying to represent the relation of objects, time, and movement on a snapshot canvas.! I was ecstatic to see the Jimi Hendrix and especially the Beatles in class because I am a hardcore fan. I don’t think people of my generation appreciate their impact on music, social awareness, and of popular culture. I got the impression that most people in the class did not connect their relevancy to the class’s topic. In particular, I don’t believe that UCLA’s current student population would see the value in drugs, particularly hallucinogenics, for the purpose of reaching a higher state of consciousness. I liked Scerri’s description of “cheating” or “jumping” into realizations through drugs and his warning that it could easily go wrong. It’s always kind of awkward discussing drugs, even for a positive purpose, in an academic setting and this reflects mind altering substance’s dismissal from the popular knowledge collection. The Beckley Foundation is committed to being the first organization to study the effects of LSD on human subjects since the 1970s. Their studies concentrate on “science, health, politics and history of practices used to alter consciousness, ranging from meditation to the use of psychoactive substances.” http://beckleyfoundation.org/
My favorite reading was Gregory Bateson’s “Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unit”. In this article he addressed the two questions of: What exactly is the difference between living and non-living forms? And what connects all living creatures? He does not address the concept of human consciousness but rather takes the approach of what all biological creatures share in common, not what makes humans unique, to find a conclusion.
His main example was asking how one, having only the knowledge of a Martian, could determine if the corpse of a crab ever was a living thing. The first clue he provides is that the crab is almost symmetrical and when there are differences, the structures are made of the same kinds of parts. Every part of the creature is intra-related the rest through a structure that reflects organization, growth, and utility. He goes on to make this relation between similar species, like the lobster and crab, and different species, like a human and a horse. The unifying theme is a system.
His next example is a seashell without an organism left. This example is a different solution to nature’s process of growth. The shell solves the evolutionary problem of growth in a different mathematical process. The spiral pattern retains it shapes and dimensions as it grows and can be found in many species.
We recognize these patterns naturally because we have many of them. In connection to the week’s lecture, how much of this information is innate or arrived at through judgment or learning. Bateson seems to think that all living organisms possess this information at some level, but I find it hard to believe simpler organisms have a concept of evolution and growth.

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Juliet Lee - Week 7 - Consciousness, Quantum Mechanics, etc.

The lectures this week were interesting and entertaining. The guest speaker, Dr. Eric Scerri, had a discussion with Professor Vesna that was on a different level than what I have been used to in this class. Tuesdays talk became animated over the topic of instinct,how we may be able to use it more in our lives and Prof. Vesna's opinion that we should put more value in what first comes into our minds before intellect or other opinions change our initial feelings. I looked up the definition of 'instinct' to clarify what I had in my mind and what I thought I was hearing from our teacher. According to dictionary.com instinct is called an inborn or natural tendencies, impulses or inclinations, a response to specific environmental stimuli. With this I agree with Prof. Scerri and some of the other students in the class that what Prof. Vesna was referring to was not the equivalent to the concept of instinct. Although I think I understand what she was trying to say: what is that first gut feeling we get when exposed to something? How can we recognize what that feeling is and understand it on an intellectual level and use it to our benefit; whether for art or in the sciences or (the part that we had an issue with) when meeting a new person. There is a line that I don't believe we understand where our instincts and memories. Just like we don't understand how physics has worked for us so long, and now quantum mechanics can prove other points while not working together with physics. The sciences seem to be going through an evolutionary time period, but we still don't understand what is happening in the world around us, and I think that it parallels how we don't understand what is going on in our minds. The judgments that we make when we first meet a person are learned behaviors from our experiences throughout life. So if we think of instinct as what it actually is, the evolutionary roots of our actions then I agree that we should try and understand where it is coming from and use it to our advantage. But other than that, I don't think that we can rely on instincts too much. What we have learned over time, even though it isn't biologically programmed into our minds are still legitimate, we don't have to worry about strangers in the same way that we may have used to back in the early stages of human history.
But to hear two scholars talk and argue about the nature of their fields furthered my belief that art and science doesn't want get along. I think that art wants to be taken seriously as the sciences and science does not want to associated or compared with the arts. Its like sibling rivalry, science as the elder has the respect and art as the younger wants to be respected as legitimate in the same way. We know that art and science were once closely associated during the Renaissance, then separated from each other, however I see art trying to bridge the gap, but I don't see science reaching out to help from their end. Maybe they help to entertain the art community, but it doesn't feel like anything could really change anytime soon.

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Michael Nguyen #7 Thanks a lot, my mind is now a mess

I decided to look more into Richard Dawkin’s theory about memes since he’s often mentioned in my biology classes but not in any great detail. Half way through the article I got the sense that but he was using it as a basis to attack religion and the concept of faith but not sure why. An interesting point is that in a historical time frame, one’s genes may not survive but one’s ideas can persist for a long time. “We should not seek immortality in reproduction.” However, it is often that our immediate family members are the ones that help to carry on our memories so there is still some vested interest in physical reproduction.

At the end of the week, I felt more lost than ever trying to think about the connection between art and science. The concepts we covered were more philosophical and difficult to grasp. I had Dr. Scerri for a chemistry class and knew that he was interested in music and the philosophical aspect of the periodic table. Most of the time Dr. Scerri talked about the differences between artists and scientists without addressing anything that would help us to understand how to bridge the gap between art and science. Ultimately, I would like to figure out how make myself a better scientist by utilizing concepts from the art world. I won’t suggest that he make another appearance in future quarters since in the end not much was accomplished.

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Section 3 Week 7 LSD and Consciousness

This week’s guest lecturer Eric Scerri was effective in bringing up the independence of each discipline (Art and Science) and offering a challenge to the extreme of merging the two disciplines. I found his discussion of conscious and different planes of consciousness intriguing. I enjoy discussing what exactly consciousness is and whether a theory of consciousness can be formulated, however I feel like talking about drugs and planes of consciousness; Of course this takes into account that consciousness is a separate entity or emergent property that we have not fully described or even discovered yet.

On the base level we have the consciousness that comes from the input and output of our senses. It is basic stimulus and response. Music makes us feel good, food satisfies us and tastes good or bad, and sex stimulates the brain’s pleasure centers. Arguably all animals possess these basic physical functions. Since these functions are necessary to survival and stimuli for the physical exist all around us, all people have an intuitive and natural understanding of this plane of consciousness. We understand that fire hurts, we understand that it is better to arc a crumpled piece of paper into the trash can than throw it forcefully, and we know that jumping off a 20 foot platform will cause of damage. You do not need a college education for this. From our birth, we know nothing and need to experiment. We do not know that fire is hot, nor do we understand how to throw something, and we certainly do not know that jumping off high objects will cause us harm. We are innocent to the laws that govern this new realm and learn them because they are “easy” to consciously work with and pick up.

Next is a plane that transcends what senses we feel. It is the plane of thought and imagination. It is interesting that in this plane it is possible to forget about the base senses. I find it hard to think and let the mind out to play if I have music playing or if there is some other outside stimulus acting on my physical being. The next logical step is to completely remove the physical and look at the mind as a singular entity. We come closest to this when we dream, when the mind is let out to wander. Our brain does not shut down or even slow down like the rest of our body. Rather, it becomes energized and the constraints of the physical and all that we have learned in the first plane of consciousness deteriorate.

It is interesting to think about dreams as a true reflection of the mind. Elements of the visual, the aural, indeed all of the senses come to play in our dreams. However, these elements that we have garnered in the physical world mix and match in extraordinarily weird ways. They mix in ways that we would never have thought of.

Due to the constraints of this blog space I have to keep extrapolating without necessarily transitioning into thoughts, so I apologize. So let us extrapolate (I love that word) some more. Scerri mentioned the use of drugs as a shortcut to higher states of consciousness. The higher states involve these dream worlds and imaginations, perhaps even the “oceanic feelings” that Freud mentioned in Civilization and its Discontents. So you take some L.S.D. Immediately you experience things in the physical world that were existent only in your dream worlds and imagination. These experiences are intensely real as well. In fact, when you are high, the plane of consciousness of the physical that you intuit and understand has different laws and different properties. Take the movie the Matrix. By plugging into a network and having your higher levels of conscious manipulated, does the reality that you experience become real, while your body sits in some sort of stasis, in some pod somewhere on earth while you live and operate in a different plane? When you take drugs are you directly tapping into the “real” mind? Scerri implied that this may be the case and it is certainly a strange idea to entertain.

Anyways, here is a cool video on LSD and consciousness. Pertains somewhat to Scerri’s discussion of drugs and consciousness.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=PHCUhXc9nLo

Enjoy. Pay attention to the morphing of meaning when Hoffman explains his acid trip. It is not a change in physical property but that of attached meaning.

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Claire Benson-Week 6-Psychobotany

Due to the extreme non-greenness of my thumbs, I decided on a whim Saturday that my time would be better spent attending the Pychobotany opening at Machine Project than going to work and being a productive member of society. While I’m not entirely sure that I made the correct decision, it was one of the most enjoyable openings I’ve ever been to and I did discover many highly useful things about both myself and the plants with which I live. For instance, if I were a tea, I would be lavender grey earl. Also, I not only learned what shy plants are supposed to be, but also what they are when placed in a harshly lit environment and surrounded by people wielding a variety of pseudo-scientific instruments. Apparently they no longer respond to soft caresses after being prodded by a dental hygienist’s tools all evening.


So, the subtitle of the exhibit was Revolutionary Breakthroughs in Human/Plant Communications and, while there were some creative ideas about cultivating relationships with the plants in your life, I have to admit that I thought the title was supposed to be sarcastic until I visited the website yesterday. To be perfectly honest, I had felt transported back to my sixth grade science fair. There was one piece that had three plants labeled Positive, Negative and Control, and viewers were supposed to project said feelings on the three little guys. They gave examples of what sorts of things to project (i.e. sunlight and water or smog and drought) and, I suppose will examine the differences in how the plants survived at the end of the exhibit.

However, even though they had a note posted above the nice beveled dark wood shelves which stated the process of the experiment and their commitment to conducting a valid experiment, the placement of the plants in the space meant that they would not be receiving the exact same light, air from outside the gallery, etc. Basically, it fell into that weird art space where I wish I had been given a better idea if the creators really felt that such observations would yield some sort of legitimate scientific result or if were more just an exploration into the idea of such interrelations. The lack of any sort of synthesis of information or literature pertaining specifically to the exhibit at the opening made me wonder if we were indeed supposed to be reading the stacks of random books (some which had obviously never been opened before) on druids and homeopathy lying around to understand what was going on. The “potion” (i.e. tea) station won me over as it not only was the only area that provided me with refreshments, but a “leaf-let” (ha) that explained the artist/tea lady’s feelings on plant/human relationships (“Herbs are the best friends you could ever have. They give and give and give until your cup of happiness runneth over”). Any confusion aside it turned out to be all in all an entertaining and worthy expedition.

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DESMA9 was a cool class to take - Week 7 - Chris O'leary

The midterm was very reasonable. Professor Vesna pretty much chose the pieces that I thought she would, and I was happy with her choices. I kind of anticipated which artists she would ask about, so I feel like I over prepared because I was so paranoid about it. However, in the long run, I think it was worth it to study everything more. During the first half of the quarter I was unable to study the class material to as great in detail as I would have liked to:

1) Because the amount of material placed on the course site was so overwhelming, and it was intimidating to go through all of it

2) Because of the broadness of the material. Although it should be a nice advantage, it was hard for me to focus my mind on the material since there were so many topics covered.

I am more of a guided learner, who picks up information better when everything is outlined a bit more strictly, so the class structure was harder for me to follow. Nevertheless, as I studied all the material, everything came together. When I read up on the specific pieces listed on the study sheet, I was able to better connect how science and art were portrayed to be linked through the artists’ work.

Initially, I viewed each artist as a separate entity, but as I researched more, I saw how each of them had similar concepts, though portrayed in different ways. For example, emergence was an idea that permeated several of the pieces, and it was expressed in many different ways. For Reas, it was through his mathematical software programming turned art, for Dockray it was his biological ant pathways, for Rinaldo it was his robot sculptures that came alive into a type of living system, and for many of the others, emergence was very much a part of their art. It was really cool for me to finally see the meaning of the art pieces as well as understand why each one chose his or her particular medium. After studying these pieces, I see how effective their art really is in showing how art and science & technology overlap so much and how they truly are intertwined in so many ways and in so many environments.

What really interested me so far in this class is how artists are able to deal with social or ethical issues through artistic means. I think that those mediums are often most effective since you can draw so many analogies from the performances or sculptures. They are so multi-faceted and complex that one can get so much meaning out of something that doesn’t take a long time to view. There is something about visuals and other such forms which stimulate the senses that give the viewer a better understanding of a work. For example the Survival Research Laboratories performances seemed pointless to me at first, but later I saw how it wove in issues about war, destruction, human interaction, the role of machines, safety, etc. There are so many concepts that you could draw from that work, and it really amazed me.

One video I thought was pertinent which I found on youtube has to do with how taste and smell come about. Again, it shows how something so mechanistic such as the chemical underlay of taste and smell can emerge into something much larger such as being able to perceive many different aspects of the world around us. http://youtube.com/watch?v=SsvZsHyvVug

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Michael Nguyen - 6 - The Technocentric Life

Growing up in a period in which technology has become so ubiquitous, it’s hard to imagine an analog life. Computers and the internet facilitated most of my learning when I was younger since it was easier to look something up on the computer than go to the library and dig out an encyclopedia. I still run dozens of searches through wikipedia each week and discover more information about unknown subject (accuracy is debatable). What interests me is how this sort of lifestyle will change humans on a behavior level since the amount of information that must be processed is greater on average than pervious generations.

I saw this installation by Bill Shackelford which provokes pretty interesting concepts

SPAMTRAP : In real time, a computer accesses email accounts used to collect spam and prints it out and then shreds it. This gives a physical quality to the digital assault we undergo each day.

My gmail is sitting pretty with 4143 spam messages and 43 real inbox messages. The ratio of intelligible input and advertising is starting to get ridiculous especially at some of my favorite website where banner and flash ads take up 50% of the screen. I’ve adapted to becoming pretty good at filtering out junk but is my brain being unnecessarily stressed out?

The Matrix presented me with the concept of “uploading” information and skills into people’s minds in the same matter as syncing music to an iPod. It doesn’t seem to far fetch if the mechanism behind memory and information storage in our minds is worked out and enhanced with electronics. This type of thinking usually involves addressing the future of how education is accomplished which we touched on first week. While we are still far way from a world where colleges and lectures are obsolete, but the progression of technology can be so rapid that society must be prepared to accept radical changes in methods of information acquisition and processing.

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Christopher Flannery - Week 6 - Halfway

Overall, I have enjoyed the structure and presentation of this class. Occasionally I felt overwhelmed and confused by the diversity and number of topics covered, but by the end of each week, everything became coherent. The readings and class presentations are well aligned and clear. My only complaint is that sometimes it is difficult to write the blog because it so open-ended. I either feel like I have too many things to cover or don’t know what I could possibly write about. Perhaps we could have optional broad and guiding questions pertaining to the topic of that week so that it is easier to begin and concentrate on a topic.
I really liked all the guest lecturers, especially Professor Reas. I don’t think this class would be nearly as effective without the guest lecturers because the subject matter is so new and still developing. It’s refreshing to study something, especially art, which is current and still evolving.
I was surprised by how short the midterm felt. I had done a lot of preparing, and when I picked an image I was very familiar with it did not take long to layout an outline and fill the pages. All my real effort was beforehand, so taking the midterm was not overwhelming.
When I was discussing this class with my music professor, he loaned me a book titled “Art and Technology: A Report on the Art and Technology Program of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.” The project took place in 1967-1971 and was ultimately considered a failure to live up to its hype. Headed by Maurice Tuchman, the project sought to give the best technology of the time to the best artists in the world. The group asked for funding and donations from over 250 companies and almost 80 artists including Hans Haacke and Andy Warhol. The book documents all of their works in detail.
The project that interested me the most was research done by Robert Irwin in conjunction with IBM. Irwin used an anechoic chamber, or a room isolated from all outside noise and insulated to prevent any audio reverberations, to test the body’s responses to sound, visuals, and tactile effects in such an environment. The subject would wait in the chamber for about 15 minutes so that they were acclimated to “sensory deprivation” before the tests to the senses would begin. After the results, they also tried to discover how if the senses could acclimate and train themselves to the environment. He was aiming to learn about the effects of the length of time spent in the chamber, and visual, auditory, or kinetic stimulation on the subjects.
This project reminded me of Professor Vesna’s work which used visualizations accompanied by a minute of the repulsive sound of a cell dying and then a minute of the lovely drone of a sitar. Both aim to teach us about our own states of consciousness and the effect that the environment has on it.

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Juliet Lee - week 6 - thoughts on the 1st half

The first week of clas have been interesting to say the least. There have been lots of modern artworks and artists that we have been exposed to , none of which I ever would have seen if it had not been for this class. I enjoy the thought of a community of artists invested in something that they take so seriously and care so much about. For example Steve Kurtz, he has made a huge impact in the art world, but outside of it he is relatively unknown. What I do not care for in both his performance art and other artists further carrying out the stererotypes of contemporary art being like a kind of joke, something that cannot be taken seriously as an art form. I still cannot understand why it is necessary for Kurtz to go against the establishment the way he does in order to make a point. To be investigated and persecuted like some kind of anti-American terrorist does not make him more legitimate to people outside of the art world. I think that it would be interesting if could still make his point doing the same 'artwork' while going along with the authorities, instead of against them. Why not question the rules, not by breaking them, but by using them to further his goals? That is why I think I enjoy the works of more 'traditional' artists like Casey Reas, and the way their work is more about the process that they took to get to the end product. It is fascinating the things that people can do with modern technology to create art forms, like Mandelbrot's fractal set. About the actual midterm I was very pleased that there was a study guide for us to use to prepare for the exam. As the class progressed and we were shown more and more images I was getting anxious about how the test was actually going to go. So thanks to whoever decided to limit the number of works down to a select few. In doing that, I felt like it was also easier for me to think of the works in a more critical manner and I could compare and contrast the various artworks better, than from just sitting in class and getting bombarded with images and information. This video clip was one of the featured videos on YouTube, it is called "Doll Face" by Andy Huang. It shows a young womans face as the head of a jack-in-the-box type robot machine, and as she watches a television, tries to copy the face of the image she sees on the screen. In the end the television keeps pulling away and the robot woman wants to keep close and ends up crashing and breaking. It reminds me of Stelarc's mechanical body and Orlan's goal for perfection, tied up in one nice digital video.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=zl6hNj1uOkY

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Jacob Janco - Section 3 - Week 6 - Stream of Thought

As we progress further into the technological age there are various iconic figures that are immediately recognizable and relatable. What truly shapes our vision of the future and of the possibilities of science in general are not the equations and formulas, nor the various working parts of a car. Rather, we are influenced by the amalgam of these and the emergent properties of the structure as a whole. For instance, when I say “mp3 player” the likely response in your mind conjures up a sleek white plastic frame and circular dial- obviously the iPod. The revolutionary compression that the mp3 file format brought us did not pop up in our head, nor did the software and methodology behind it conjure up any emotion. In fact, most of us are not even acquainted with what an mp3 is. The iPod is an icon, just like the ivory box with a black screen is an icon of the PC. Our outlook on the mechanical stems from our own interaction with it. This past week was structured around the midterm; as such I’ll use this blog space to explore something of interest to me that more or less goes back over many of the topics we have already covered. I thought this would be appropriate since the midterm was also a reflection on and synthesis of the various art and ideas presented in class.

As we progress further into the technological age there are various iconic figures that are immediately recognizable and relatable. What truly shapes our vision of the future and of the possibilities of science in general are not the equations and formulas, nor the various working parts of a car. Rather, we are influenced by the amalgam of these and the emergent properties of the structure as a whole. For instance, when I say “mp3 player” the likely response in your mind conjures up a sleek white plastic frame and circular dial- obviously the iPod. The revolutionary compression that the mp3 file format brought us did not pop up in our head, nor did the software and methodology behind it conjure up any emotion. In fact, most of us are not even acquainted with what an mp3 is. The iPod is an icon, just like the ivory box with a black screen is an icon of the PC. Our outlook on the mechanical stems from our own interaction with it.

This class seeks to synthesize art and science. Perhaps the biggest blindness in the world culture today is how inextricably linked the two truly are. Each motivates the other in everything we see and do. The internet shifted from the bleak HTML world of before to the richness of Flash and Java applets of today. The science behind it shifted to accommodate the artistic needs of the human world. Likewise, the art reflected new progress in computer science. This small phenomena is infinitely applicable. From the beautification of home electronics and the innovation brought about by the love for the human aesthetic. Once new technology is born, it is constantly shaped by ideas of beauty and integration with our own humanistic impulse.

Perhaps this omnipresence of Science-Art is almost subconscious. We consider artificial intelligence to be a scientific endeavor. I use “we” in reference to the general populace, or course not in relation to the enlightened individuals in this class. Rather, it is a scientific endeavor riding on the back of a hulking beast called human thought and artistic vision. The art comes into the way it will work itself into the daily lives of people. When we hear artificial intelligence, images of complexities in mechanical process and delineated pathways do not pop up into our head. The scientific idea comes under the incredibly strong influence of human thought and emotion. Maybe an image of an android pops up, that certainly is not scientific, it is an entirely human symbol.

Perhaps we use the word science too lightly. We say science in reference to an innovation in the field of physics, say the creation of a new type of particle analysis; furthermore we call those researchers scientists. Let’s make up a new word and call it Science-Objective. Science-Objective refers to the creation of language. Science-Objective then becomes English; the word science that we so loosely throw around becomes a Shakespearean work. Hopefully this analogy makes the previous point a little clearer. What we have been looking at in class refers solely to the Shakespearean work. The works created may use the language, like in Casey Reas’s work, but they come out into a work of art, not a dictionary of the English language. Underpinning this is our exploration of the blending of science and art. I argue that while Science-Objective and art can be combined, most prevalent in mathematics and art, our notions of science and art are infinitely present in contemporary society. I have to clarify this confusing postulate some more examples.

Take for instance stem cell research, not science and art to the general populace. Now look at it from a different perspective. Science and art blend together seamlessly. Art arguably tries to explain elements of human existence. Stem cell research does not delineate a language like Science-Objective does, it is the product of our own expression of the need to cure disease, understand the body more, etc. Even if it wasn’t for these noble endeavors, application of stem cells to treat disease is not an element of the world, no, it is a human creation. It is a Shakespearean work using the language of Science-Objective. You ramp this up to the iPod which blends design and musical function and ease of human interaction. Science and art are more easily seen here. Now take this up to Stelarc and Ken Rinaldo’s Autopoiesis, certainly it is clear now. We mentally draw a line some where and approach science and art as black and white. In reality the blackness is Science-Objective, it is clear and immutable, from that point on it is Science-Art in a color scale of gray to white. Stem cell research resides in the darker shades of gray , the iPod in medium shades, and Rinaldo’s Autopoiesis in the lighter. I believe Desma 9 seeks to spread awareness of this color scale by presenting students with the lighter shades, from those we can begin to recognize and understand the universality of Science-Art and its existence in everything that we do and interact with.

Midterm week: Completely random and cool link that has nothing to do with Art and Science other than the fact that it’s a guy doing the robot. Enjoy!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=gsOaQGF7kiQ

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Claire Benson-Week 5-The Body

This week’s focus in class on the body has proved to be remarkably relevant. Call it coincidence, the return of warm temperatures or merely the result of over-analysis, but the past few days have definitely fallen into the oddly interrelated category of life experiences.
I went to the WACK! Show (of feminist art from the 70’s and 80’s) at MOCA last weekend and, within the jam-packed space, there were a few pieces that stuck with me. One such work was Eleanor Antin’s ‘Carving: A Tradition Sculpture,’ a clinical photo documentation of the artist’s diet in which she shows images of her body shot every day for 2 weeks (?) from the front, back and both sides. The statement that accompanies the piece spoke about her interest in creating modern sculpture in the way master stone worker/artists created nudes back in the day. The process consists of treating the entire body with equal attention as the “new” body emerges. This is especially interesting within the context of a feminist show as it asks the viewer to contemplate how such a tradition has evolved. The act of a male artist chiseling a female nude out of stone becomes convoluted when we see its counterpart-a woman in the 20th Century re-constructing herself to fit the popular image generated by the heterosexual, male gaze. While she is the photographer, the sterile, harsh manner of the photography of her body doesn’t suggest that she is particularly happy with it. Maybe, again, this is an assumption planted by the context in which I saw the work, but the body issues inherent in the piece are inarguably tied back to the idea of man as shaper of woman.
Another woman artist who takes her physical appearance into her own hands (albeit, considerably more forcefully), Orlan’s work, while very much about gender and femininity, also deals a large amount with spectacle, a concept which seem to come up with increasing frequency in this class. Looking at Orlan (who worries about the shock of her work wearing off) or Stelarc’s antics, I have begun to wonder if this is one of the outcomes of our unprecedented technological advancements. To address the issue of the modern body, is spectacle the only way to engage a modern audience and to continue making pertinent work? Or is it that spectacle just naturally garners publicity? Whatever the answer, even with the art appreciation part of my brain in overdrive, I can’t help but be purely creeped out by Orlan’s doctors’ costumes and the Stelarc-as-Barnum-and- Bailey-ringmaster ventriloquism act.
The final two points of convergence for this week are far more mainstream but, I think, still very apt for the conversation. One is a commercial for the Dove Real Beauty campaign a friend showed me on Youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMxxelZHs8Y), the other Vogue’s annual shape issue. A former avid Vogue reader, I have always found fashion intriguing and think that while Dove’s new push to showcase ‘real women’ (whatever that means) is meant to rebel against the high fashion body type, there is still an inextricable discrimination build into their search for so-called ‘real’ women. Although I think the commercial is very clever and their motives laudable (and am put off by the fact that Vogue’s gamut of “shapes” are tall, short, pregnant, athletic, and thin), I find both to be legitimate forms of creative expression (and noteworthy societal influences) and the place our society is in right now demands that the multifaceted nature of such issues be examined in equal measure.

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Juliet Lee - week 5 - Human Body & Art

This week’s lecture was again an interesting contrast of art and science. When I think about science and the work that scientists and doctors do, I definitely believe that it is an art form. Not everyone could create new technologies or perform brain surgery on the next person; or maybe they could but we would not want them too. It takes time, patience, technique, and lots of studying to become a plastic surgeon. So even though the operations are used by people like Orlan to make a statement or contradict what people believe about beauty, the choice was hers to change her own body to create that ‘artwork.’ I think that art has always been a reflection of the latest in technological advances. And these new art forms come up against opposition all the time like when photography was first developed, it was not considered art but an imitation of what actually took talent to do. But in truth what I think that artists like Orlan and Stelarc are doing is like a form of self mutilation that they document and then call art. They write up a story line and how it is actually a social commentary and therefore is ‘art.’ To me science can be art in its preciseness, and art can be a science in its technicalities and significantly influenced by science, but is science influenced by art? Maybe because I am not in the arts and not hearing about what is occurring in the art world in the same way as I hear about scientific discoveries, but I have yet to see some scientific discovery that is or has been influenced by art.

I had a comment about what Professor Vesna showed us in class. When we were talking about celebrities and cosmetic surgery, she showed a video clip from YouTube of before and after pictures of celebrity cosmetic surgery. I know it is not cool to know this kind of information, but many of those pictures had nothing to do with plastic surgery. Some obviously were, but pictures of actresses from when they were a child to when they were 40 is not good evidence of surgery; and the picture of Cameron Diaz was backwards. She had broken her nose and then kept it broken, the picture of her with the straight nose was from when she was a model before she started making movies. This kind of thing makes me question a lot of what we see in class as evidence of art or science in fact. In the future it would be nice if the professor could use more reputable sites or just not bring up those kinds of things as factual evidence.

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Week 5, Michelle Baba - Orlan, Transhumanism, & Ethics

The topics covered this week really caught my interest… though I must admit that it took a while for me to understand some of the artists and their works. Some of them, especially Orlan, troubled me. I find it hard to understand how her “performances” are considered as being art. Well, I guess it’s like a more disgusting version of a documentary. Orlan critiques (and even mocks) today’s perceptions of beauty through the multiple surgeries that she goes through using only local anesthesia. Even though I understand what she is trying to say about our society, I feel that there are better ways that she can do it that are healthier for herself and more effective in spreading the word – her performances have to be so heavily censored, few can be shown out in the public. Upon first learning about her, I was disturbed and was convinced that she either a) had a troubling early life that most-definitely included severe self-mutilation or b) insane. After some research (on her own website http://www.orlan.net/), however, (though I still feel that she is far too extreme and ridiculous) I was fascinated at how she got her start. Orlan first got her idea of filming surgical procedures when she underwent an emergency procedure for her ectopic pregnancy. And from there… it just became more and more radical – unnecessary surgeries, surgeons out of scrubs and in costumes, bizarre implants, etc. Anyways… though I find the issues that she addresses to be interesting and much called-for, I find her stuff to be hard to look at and difficult to respect from an artists point of view.

Orlan, pre-surgery/"performance"

On another note… the whole idea of transhumanism amazes me (ethics and all that other stuff aside…) Just the sheer fact that we are looking for a way to immortalized our species is mind blowing. If you really think about it, most of us would go to great lengths to extend our lifespan or at least improve our lives – kidney failure? Get a transplant. Lost a leg in a tragic accident? Get a top-of-the-line prosthetic that makes you as good as new. There are few medical problems that we do not have an answer for – and the ones that are unknown are being worked on as you read this. But my question is: Where do we draw the line? What is too much? When do we cross the line between keeping out life good, and pushing its limit? Transhumanism is quite possibly the most dangerous thing that scientists are working toward. If you haven’t seen the movie The Island, see it… it’s relevant. If you have, then you know what I mean. Though I am all for pioneering the science field and understanding how we work… I figure, ethics must come in somewhere…

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Section 3 Week 5 - Mind and Body

This previous week’s lectures focused on conceptions of the human body and its relation to art and science. Artistically, performers such as Orlan bring up questions of beauty and body image, but I found Roy Ascott’s exploration of telematic art and consciousness and the scientific side of what exactly the function of the body is to be more interesting. He brings up the long standing debate over the mind and body link. Are we simply shells for our mind to function in? Is the mind inextricably linked to the body? Or, are our minds and “souls” simply emergent properties of complex physical networks with no metaphysical meaning, but only physiological? This previous week’s lectures focused on conceptions of the human body and its relation to art and science. Artistically, performers such as Orlan bring up questions of beauty and body image, but I found Roy Ascott’s exploration of telematic art and consciousness and the scientific side of what exactly the function of the body is to be more interesting. He brings up the long standing debate over the mind and body link. Are we simply shells for our mind to function in? Is the mind inextricably linked to the body? Or, are our minds and “souls” simply emergent properties of complex physical networks with no metaphysical meaning, but only physiological? These are the basic three cases of how this problem presents itself and Ascott, rather than forwarding an answer to the questions, reflected on each and presented a surprisingly unbiased viewpoint in his exploration of them.

I brought up during the questioning phase of the lecture, the Invisible Man, by H.G. Wells. It is the story of a mad scientist who creates an invisibility potion and uses it on himself. The rest of the story explores his madness and his quest to become visible again, ending in murder and the death of the scientist. I thought the concept of removing your body and existing as only a mind, perhaps not technically in the novel (since his body is still present, just not visible), could be extrapolated to the body/mind question. Do we become different when our physical meat is removed and we float on some other plane using only our minds? To a certain extent, this is true of the internet. The most shy, reserved, and conservative of individuals will become social butterflies as soon as you set them in front of a computer with some social networking website or program. Prepubescent teens returning from the beating of a playground bully suddenly turn into belligerent and loudmouthed braggarts as they slay enemies in cyberspace. It is not fantastical to extrapolate this to the idea of separating the body from the mind and plugging it into some kind of longer lasting network a la The Matrix. From what I have gathered, growing up in the internet age, the body has a huge influence on how the mind presents itself to the outside world, likewise the body takes on the characteristics of the mind. Remove either and you have an essentially different entity. Take away the acne covered face, lanky body, and cracking voice but keep the mind and that mind finds a place in a muscular and handsome hero on the screen. Take away the mind, such as in a heavy trauma accident or even death, and the person you once knew is almost unrecognizable. Their mannerisms disappear and their expressions shift, you no longer recognize the uniqueness that made them them.

All of these ideas of course link back to artificial intelligence and point to our complete lack of understanding of consciousness. The enormous complexity of this issue has been explored by artists for quite a long while and it indeed taps into a deeper question. What makes us human?

http://youtube.com/watch?v=KY-ddVDk2do

There’s a little youtube video of the movie of the Invisible Man. It’s a bit cheesy, but even in this small segment you can see the insanity brought about by his invisibility. As mentioned before, one can be nitpicky and state that the body is present and all that it lacks is visual feedback stimuli for the scientist’s brain while still being completely present. I argue that interaction is very much a part of what we call consciousness and it is interaction that sustains the mind. Therefore, to remove visual and physical interaction is to chip away a huge chunk of the body/mind system. Enough rambling, enjoy the clip.

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Michael Nguyen - #5 - How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Computer

Roy Ascott’s ideas on network are especially interesting to me to because I can recognize how the networking of minds has helped to revolutionize both art and science. In the paper On Networking, Ascott highlights global networking and the computer’s potential to cause a “paradigmatic shift” since interactivity and contribution will be a part of the new art process. In previous posting I questioned who the real artists were if the process involved ants or computer programs but Ascott address this with the idea that “Telematic interactivity offers the possibility of the amplification of individual thought and imagination.” Thinking in this new light helps me to better understand some of the interactive works that have been presented in class.

In the same way, computers have revolutionized science in their ability to store seemingly endless amounts of data while processors double in speed every 24 months according to Moore’s Law. Parallels to interactive art can be made to programs such as SETI@home or Folding@Home which harness the power of distributed computing and allow individuals to contribute to scientific endeavors. In the same way that artists do not become obsolete in the light of networking, neither do researchers.


Folding@Home is a program at Stanford which studies the complicated process of protein folding after translation.

Ascott proposes that dichotomy of art and science should be collapsed in addition to the distinction between natural and artificial which is a good segue into the study of Stelarc’s works. I think that his works are trying to push us to accept the convergence of technology with our physical bodies. I don’t see this as being too far fetched since I’m practically attached to a computer or my phone whenever I’m awake. The only thing limiting total integration is the speed at which technology advances; things that were cutting edge a few years ago become almost obsolete. I wouldn’t want to be the kid stuck with the year 2025 model bionic arm while everyone else has the new shiny 2030 ones.
To build upon the study of natural and artificial we must consider virtual reality. As of now, virtual reality is limited to the sphere of video games in popular culture but in the future it could become as ubiquitous as emailing or voice conferencing. With that possibility in mind, we must then start accepting the idea that our minds can be separated from our physical bodies and placed in an artificial world. One example of how this might apply becomes evident when we take a closer look at the da Vinci surgical robot.


This picture of the da Vinci operating system might be a little scary since the robot in the background looks like it came out of a sci-fi movie.

Although we touched on it quickly during lecture, I’ve seen it in action during a few operations (see for yourself by searching “da vinci” at www.orlive.com which streams surgical procedures). A surgeon must immerse himself in a generated 3D environment and manipulate controllers which perform the actual surgery. The system allows the surgeon to perform delicate procedures with minimal invasion of the patient’s body. I can imagine a future where anatomy will be taught using this sort of system which will revolutionize the established medical school curriculum. I don’t fear in the total replacement of surgeons with autonomous operating robots since each patient is unique and the split second decisions that doctors must make aren’t based on a simple formula or algorithm. However, future physicians who aren’t comfortable with the integration of technology will be left behind. Whether the same can be said for artists remains to be seen.

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Monica Tse - Chris O'Leary Wk 5 - Art-Science, a Natural Partnership

As I continue to study the different artists and concepts mentioned in class alongside the inner workings of the body in my physiological science classes, I see more and more that both art and science can be reflected in the human body. Art and science seem to be at odds with each other in almost every society, but it really shouldn’t. I think that naturally, the two are intertwined; you cannot be exposed to one without seeing traces of the other. In fact, the notion of art and science reflected in the body is a perfect example of this; our bodies are something completely natural and authentic, and within them we find patterns, simple shapes, and connectivity between all the different parts and systems—much like the components of a work of art.

Artist Julie Newdoll exemplifies this art-science relationship in her paintings in which she “merges life science and culture, myths, and molecules”. I thought it was amazing how she was able to analogically bridge molecular concepts and processes to science and mythology. For example, in “Woman Contemplating the Increasing Speed of her Biological Clock”, she compares women’s loss of eggs in ovulation to a waning moon. A waning moon is caused by specific rotations of the sun, moon, and earth that allow us to see a range of portions of the moon. It has much to do with shadows, light properties, and gravitational forces which place the celestial bodies in their particular place. Yet, in spite of its physical causes, what we see is a seamless and almost mysterious end result. The timing of the ovulation process and what it means for women biologically is so well matched up to the gradual waning of the moon. As the moon wanes, the maximum amount of light produced during the night decreases and we lose the benefits gained from a full moon until what remains is only a small crescent. Similarly, as a woman ovulates at a faster rate as she ages, her time to reproduce and carry on her heritage wanes; she loses the benefits of healthier and stronger eggs until it reaches the point at which she can no longer have a child. She makes a similar correlation between the cell cycle and mythology in “Cell Signals and Mayan Legends”, again bridging art and science.

Another thing that I noticed while looking at various artists and scientists is that artists’ work are more influenced by science than science is impacted by art. It is not to say that art has absolutely no effect on science and the things it accomplishes, but tangibly, we see more works of art reflecting concepts in math and science, such as cells, disease, concepts of the human body, and geometry. I think art can be seen as more of an inspiration for the scientist rather than an actual application to his work. A scientist could be at an art gallery and observe the connectivity between components of an art piece or see an exhibition whose purpose is to raise awareness about issues in genetics and from that experience, spark an idea in his mind about how he might approach a question he has been trying to answer. It also has a lot to do with the differing procedures of art vs. science methodology. While artists may have more freedom to create and break boundaries, scientists are constrained to scientific method and strict regulation in their experimentation, which are both important if their work is to be considered credible. Nevertheless, art and science both impact each other in one way or another, and we are able to see evidence of that in various works.

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Michelle Baba, Week 4 - Stephen Wolfram

Though I thoroughly enjoy the things that we cover in this class, I am a little troubled by the small amount of things that we take the time to actually learn about and discuss. I think that so much material has been crammed into each week, we don’t really get a chance to think about all of the different works and artists that we are shown.

Anyways, this past week, self-organization caught my eye. I wanted to know more about it and how it was connected to the artist that was mentioned in class, Stephen Wolfram:
Self-organization is when something increases in complexity without being guided or told to do so. Some examples would be morphogenesis (when a living organism develops and grows), the creation of structures among social animals/insects, and flocking behavior among birds. According to http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/SELFORG.html , it is basically a process of evolution where the effect of the environment is minimal and the development of new, complex structures takes place primarily in and through the system itself. Below is a mathematical construct that displays self-organization created using “Rule 30,” a program created by Stephen Wolfram.

Wolfram, a computer programmer (among many, many other things), studies simple computational systems and believes that they, rather than traditional mathematics, are needed to model and understand complexity in nature. He creates programs such as “Rule 30” to create his art of shapes and geometrical forms.

And to change the topic to computer programs such as Weisenbaum's ELIZA, I'm not even certain that I would consider that as having weak A.I. since it is programmed to give certain responses and ask certain questions in a particular order. I suppose it does fit the definition of weak A.I. since it does perform simple tasks, however, I feel that it do not, in fact, live up to the "intelligence" part of its name... just something to consider. Oh! And there's also the similar program that is contacted via AIM called "Smarterchild" that can be used as a seemingly personalized/intimate search engine.

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Claire Benson-Week 4-Objects and Systems

This week I found the topics we went into the most depth with to be by far the most engaging. Lately a few of the lectures have felt like a bit too much of not quite enough information, so I liked Edward Shanken’s response to Prof. Vesna’s talk because it provided a bit more focus and elaboration on certain subjects.

One remarkable collaboration that has been brought up a few times (although I still don’t feel like I necessarily have a good understanding of what they actually accomplished) is that of Rauschenberg’s and Kluver’s ‘Experiments in Art and Technology’. While the spotlight in the lectures has been on E.A.T.’s concern with “humanizing the environment,” it seems to be even more so about this concept in combination with their interest in advancing the second Industrial, or to be more specific, Technological, Revolution. In looking up their Statement of Purpose from 1967, (http://www.fondation-langlois.org/flash/e/index.php?NumPage=306) it becomes clear that their reasons for creating such a group lay in capitalizing on and appreciating the advancements in multiple arenas. The statement concludes with hopes of “avoid[ing] the waste of a cultural revolution,” and in acknowledging the societal implications of such developments, they also acknowledge the far reaching effects that such changes will have.

I also felt that Jack Burnham’s quote from the beginning of class was especially appropriate for the examinations of revolutions at large because advancements that are multifaceted and strong enough to attract the word ‘revolution,’ always include some sort of system restructuring. However, although many of the innovations of the initial Industrial Revolution also focused on how things were constructed, the product itself (as a sought after result) was still the goal in this era. To Burnham’s credit, it does seem fitting to recognize the shift on many scales and in many more arenas within the progress of the latter half of the twentieth century. As Mr. Shanken started to show us, there were many artists that began to prioritize the process rather than the outcome during this time period, and it therefore makes sense that performance art would emerge as an important force around this time as well.

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something more about bees

So I am sorry for this, but I really would like to continue harping on Sean Dockray’s lecture from week 3. However, he lectured on systems and I think that there are some very interesting ties between some of his pieces of art and some of the systems biology which we discussed on Tuesday in week 4.

On Tuesday we discussed for a little about populations and systems biology. I thought this discussion integrated very nicely with Sean Dockray’s art piece on the ants. I think that colonies in the wild like ants and bees are extremely fascinating. I find it amazing that a queen bee can reproduce parthenogenically in order to create males. These males are haploid and contain half the DNA compared to the mother. Then, when the females lay eggs which are fertilized by these males, all offspring are ¾ related. This is much greater than a normally sexually reproducing family where siblings have ½ genetic relationship. It is often thought that the colonial actions of these species are due to their unusual genetic relationship between the offspring. In this manner, these species are an extreme version of altruism because any particular ant or bee would be more genetically related to their sibling than their own offspring. Thus, they would not reproduce at all. However, this past week I was listening to some podcasts produced by the science journal Science about bees. The journal highlighted some new findings that have shown that the genetic relatedness is not in fact the only reason why bees and ants act this way. Scientist observed that the bees had a policing force. They saw that in fact the female worker bees did reproduce, however, other workers were designated as a police force and these bees went around and destroyed any eggs which were not the queens. In this way, the colonies were able to maintain a relationship of 3:1 females to males and keep the queen as the only reproducing body within the colony. The journal is in Science magazine and the article link is: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/307/5706/54 .

After reviewing this article and listening to the podcast I began to think a little bit more about Sean Dockray’s picture of the ant and also his fascination with how the government and police control society, specifically by controlling traffic. I felt that new meaning on his piece of the ants arose once I read this article. Before reading the article I just thought about his piece as being an interesting biological system where the ants were able to follow one another because they used chemical signals and they followed each other to bring food back to the colony. However, the more I think about it, the more who work on traffic lights and ants seem to become connected. In order for the ants to continue to act in a function colony, the article states that the ants must have to do extensive policing in order to rid themselves of any illegitimate offspring. In this way, the ants will function as a colony and a unit and thus they will walk in straight lines for food and bring food back to their queen and nest. Similar to ants, human society must be controlled by policing and traffic lights in order for us to maintain adequate conduct and order.

I thought that it was truly interesting how after gaining some further insight about ants and bees, unforeseen connections between different art works of Sean Dockray’s can be made. Although these connections may seem like a stretch, or something Sean was not trying to talk about in his art, I still think that this connection is fascinating. It is amazing to see that even bees police their colonies in order to maintain proper conduct, and while it might not be through photo-enforced lights, it is still a big brother watching over.

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Juliet Lee - week 4 - Artificial Life

Truthfully, after I leave class I often feel like I have left a foreign language lecture. The teacher talks and it is like the other students can follow and for the most part understand what is going on. What are the connections between the slides of the different artists? When we visit a website, it is like everyone can see where the next link is going to go and I cannot follow the train of thought, so I nod and act like I can see where the lecture is going. Hearing the guest lecturer on Monday was a nice change of pace. That day Professor Vesna went over numerous artists with examples of the types of works they do, and I am still having issues keeping them straight in my mind. But Edward Shanken took his time when elaborating on a few of the artists. He gave a back story and current situations about the artists; I guess you could say he talked in a more conventional manner that made it easier for me to comprehend what it was that these artists were doing. Shanken talked about the different groups too like the Experiments in Art Technology or EAT and it made it easier to understand where the artist was coming from. It would be nice if Professor Vesna could also slow down when she talks about artists and the styles of work that they are doing and to connect them with each other and not just to the topic at large for the week. I find it more difficult to relate to the artists and understand their work. Continuously every week I see more pictures and I wonder: why is this art? What qualifies a piece of technology into a piece of art? What is artificial intelligence in terms of art? I do not consider the scientific research or developments as artistic, so is it the form in which the artificial intelligence is portrayed in that is the art work? A.L.I.C.E for example responds to questions and sentences that you input into a computer program. I consider that the artistic portion of A.L.I.C.E. is the physical manifestation of the response program. When we talked about the artificial gardens that can be remotely controlled from the internet, or other games that a user can input characteristics into and watch them evolve, all that I could think about was my Tamagotchi from junior high school. Three buttons control the environment of these little blobs, and depending on the type of care you show it, they can turn into different creatures as adults. I wonder just how far we are going to be able to go in the research of artificial intelligence. For generations and generations, people have wanted to find a way to defeat death, and in my opinion, artificial intelligence is a method to beating this issue. But if all of this stayed in the lab, and people like Ken Feingold did not make artistic commentary about it, would it still be considered art?

This is an interesting link to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. There are quite a few projects on technology and it was fun to look through them.

http://blogs.walkerart.org/offcenter/category/technology/

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Grace Tang-Section 3-Week 4

[span class="full post"]This week Professor Vesna touched on subjects concerning Biology, Networks, Natural Systems and Artificial Life. It was a bit overwhelming fore me seeing that may things were covered and the lecture on Monday seemed kind of everywhere. The gust lecture afterwards by Edward Shanken did not do so much to expand and clarify on the topics covered earlier. Self-assembly seemed pretty clear to me and it is defined as independent subjects working to build a larger structure or to make a group achievement. This also related to what was called self organization, the internal organization of a system that increases complexity when continuing on. Sierpinski's Triangle brought me back to the fond memories of psychedelic fractals, only this time in simple two dimensional triangles. I can see how the triangle builds upon itself to make a larger structure. ELIZA the computer therapist and ALICE from the Artificial Intelligence Foundation just crack me up. The personalities added and the responses that can from them proves that artificial intelligence can be made into more complex processes. [/span]

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Week 4 - Christopher Flannery

I liked the interview with Philip Galanter because he made connections between art and music. Generative art seems to have a lot in common with music performance because it is a live process within guidelines, but the outcome is always different. Improvisation and randomization have always existed in music, however it has become more common with the development of jazz and use of technology. Music and art are unfolding and temporal entertainment for the audience. He describes generative art as “verbs” and not “nouns” and I think that this is a great description of music as well.
My music theory teacher used a metaphor to explain why many listeners don’t have the patience for modern music. Listening to an abstract composition is like looking at a giant mural only five inches at a time. Generative and process art can lose an audience in the same way if they don’t come with the correct mindset.
We briefly discussed John Cage’s use of I Ching as a system to randomly designate which notes are played when. Cage is responsible for the resurgence of what has been named “aleatory music” – music where some or all details are left to chance. The system for randomization is pre-determined by the composer however is virtually out of their control. There is evidence of musical “games” involving rolling dice to determine some aspects of the composition as far back as the 18th century. Aleatory music is as close to generative art as music comes. Wikipedia gives a better explanation and links to a number of examples. (the hotlink function is not working for me ...) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chance_music
The most important point that I learned from the Philip Galanter interview is that generative art has always been around and that it is not restricted to only technology. Generative art has existed just as long as art. It is the use of systems and guidelines is what defines generative art, not the tools.
I liked the part of the lecture concerning swarm intelligence, but I was confused how it is any different than normal systems of information sharing. All operations of live need many parts to react and work locally for a larger goal. The human race does exactly that by recording history, collaboration, diplomacy, and professionalism or specialization. It seems to me that almost anything can be analyzed at this level if one steps back far enough. Along with self-assembly, it seems like it only one aspect of the larger concept of synergy which is the drive and original of life, or emergent properties.
Watching the movie Brazil in class, I was reminded of Steve Kurtz’s lecture focusing on the over-reaching power of the American government. Both present their message in a satirical manner of social commentary. On the other hand, I thought it was funny that we viewed the movie because I saw almost no examples of art in the film. The government apparently does not allow any forms of public expression, but the futuristic and bleak setting is shown through amazing imagery. The complicated and dark city-scape, dirty and futuristic electronics, and utilitarianism designs are iconic for government’s oppression of the people. The setting reminded me a lot of the new movie Children of Men, which is also set in the bleak future. In this film, the government has become even more oppressive because the social structure and responsibility has collapsed after every woman on the planet became infertile twenty years prior. It is obvious that film is now the most powerful method of social commentary.

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Michael Nguyen - #4 - Study Simple to Learn About Complex

“The generative systems we create as artists are far simpler than the systems we encounter in everyday life. But by creating these comparatively minimal systems we can discover truths about the world that might otherwise be masked by the relative chaos of the day to day.”

-Philip Galanter

If the word artist was replaced by scientist in the above quote, it would still apply to the approach that is often used in scientific research. I was surprised by this connection as I read this week’s article because it backed up the idea that often times the same concept emerges in art and science but science gets more recognition. To study mechanism in the human body, scientists often go to simple model organisms such as fish, yeast, even bacteria. By studying these apparently unrelated animals, we have learned a great deal about our own human biology. I’m still not quite sure what truths generative art has revealed but I respect the approach and philosophy. (Anyone help me out here and give an example?)

A concept that I wasn’t familiar with until recently is the process oriented approach that artists take. Trying to relate that to my experiences within the study of science, I often see beautiful images produced as a result of scientific endeavors. For example, the video found at the following link shows “Regulated Nuclear Translocation of the Glucocorticoid Receptor”:

What’s happening is that fluorescently labeled hormone receptor proteins in the cell are visualized as glowing green points. As hormone is added to the cell, all of the glowing elements suddenly move into the center of the cell in response. This performance by the cell was choreographed by researchers who probably weren’t thinking of the aesthetics of their experiment. The elegance of the experiment allows us to understand a single mechanism within a sea of chaos that is a cell. Relating back to Dockray’s piece involving the flying dollar bills, the visualization of raw data allows us to understand concept not readily apparently. The same thing applies in this study of the cell.

The above experiment gives us the most miniscule understand of how our bodies work yet was undoubtedly the result of months if not years of research. Processes such how genes are regulated are not completely understood by scientist yet there are those who want to create artificial intelligence? I find it hard to believe that we can create anything close to artificial life when in the grand scheme of things, we know very little. Life has had billions of years to evolve and it seems backwards to try and create something as complex as intelligence in order to get a better understanding of how things in our world operates. I tend to disagree with the idea of strong A-life in light of the Shoe/Fly Fallacy that Edward Shanken touched upon during the guest lecture.

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Jacob Janco Week 3 Section 3 - Zombies!

I was thumbing through some old movie files through my desktop and came across Dawn of the Dead, one of the greatest zombie movies of our generation. Aside from the gore splattering across the screen and the multitude of body parts littering bleak cityscapes is an interesting link to the artificial intelligence discussed in this past week’s lecture. There is an essential imperfection in our understanding of consciousness that handicaps our elucidation of what exactly the thing is. Human beings arguably possess “qualia.” Qualia by definition (and I use definition loosely since it is debated), is the unique and subjective inner experience that John Doe has in relation to sensory perception and stimulus. In this sense, he has a unique and intrinsic response that can never be communicated to Jane Doe. Beings that experience qualia are therefore determined as conscious, and science has yet to explain them. They seem detached from the physical pathways of neuroanatomy and processes of the physiological sciences. The philosopher David Chalmer’s proposed this as the “hard problem” of trying to explain the phenomenon of consciousness. The easier problem is to explain various pathways of sensory input and output, such as: Visual input and image interpretation in the visual cortex, cognition and speech pathways, etc.

To delve into the hard problem, we bring back the zombies. Why are humans not philosophical zombies? Why, when presented with a warm apple pie, does Mary conjure up images of childhood and foster feelings of benevolence while John becomes murderous because he worked at a bakery that mass produces apple pie and that just fired him? The philosophical zombie is a robot that looks to be human in every way. We present it with an apple pie and it smells it and remarks that it looks good. However, it is a singular pathway and a mimic. Similarly, if we stab the robot with a knife, it will scream in pain, but it does not feel pain. It is in this sense a zombie, with all appearance of being human but without the qualia that separates us as sentient beings.

There is an argument against this that some students in my discussion section brought up in relation to consciousness. They argue that once the complexity of the brain is delineated and every pathway is constructed and understood that consciousness arises. Our subjective experience is based on pathways formed from memory and stimulus. I argue that there is a distinct separation between the physical neural networks of our brain and the element of consciousness. The easy problems of consciousness are in the process of being explained, yet the hard problem continues to haunt the neuroscientists explaining the various functions of our brain. It is interesting that when we experience a smell, such as with apple pie, there is an attachment of experience to that smell. We do not simply smell it, rather, it evokes a subjective inner experience that is in no way explainable at this moment. There is a ghost in the machine. We carry out a myriad of processes that result in a functional state of being, but these functions have that experience tied inextricably to it. It is puzzling that an awareness of these sensory functions, carried out for the most part involuntarily almost always evoke consciousness.

Here are David Chalmers’ papers on consciousness. Like this class, he bridges disciplines and possesses a depth in philosophical and scientific inquiry. Perhaps the most exciting aspect of the study of consciousness is that metaphysical thought and discussion of a separate entity of consciousness within the brain has not been dismissed. It cannot be dismissed at this point, and neuroscientists and philosophers debate consciousness heatedly at this very moment. People have a tendency to argue that science has explained everything and is the ultimate method of explaining the natural world, but quite often science exists in paradox to itself and

http://consc.net/consc-papers.html

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The fine line between human and robot - Week 4 - Chris O'Leary

The concept of artificial intelligence which we discussed in class and in discussion really challenged my thinking of the definition of “intelligence” and how it can be considered something unique to humans. As I further considered what I was learning in my science courses about how neurons work in the brain, how we are made up of tiny, inanimate molecules, and the circuitry of our bodies, I struggled with distinguishing the boundary between humans and AI. If robots can be wired to respond according to what we say and to function with some autonomy, how are they that much different from us?

I took a physiology class this year in which we examined body parts every week to learn the bone and muscle structures – whole arms, legs, torsos, heads. I did not associate any of these separate body parts with being part of a once living, feeling, functional human being. Rather, as we examined the bodies, it was as if I was examining a piece of meat. It boggled my mind that these pieces, when put together, could create a human capable of thought, constantly changing response, an ability to love and adapt, etc. This is similar to the concept of emergence, which we discussed in lecture.

So if we could be composed of these mechanical parts, how could it be impossible to create a robot that could have those same characteristics? It completely astounded and stumped me how we can be created completely out of carbon atoms and other such nonfunctional components. It even frightened me as to the degree in which we and robots are comparably similar. Less so that robots might be able to attain our standard, but more so that we could be lowered to the status of metal and circuits. We are so used to considering ourselves as the apex of the life pyramid—making scientific discoveries, creating poetry, erecting great structures, etc.—that it scares me to think that we might actually be able to lose that uniqueness of soul.

As we discussed this issue in section, we made comparisons of differences between us and AI. One idea we came up with was that robots are not like us in that they only mimic what they are taught or programmed to do. For example, with ELIZA, it detects certain words that are typed or certain sentence structures and responds accordingly. It only does what it is taught to do. But as I considered this difference more, I realized that we, in fact, are a product of similar programming. We are raised in a particular environment, trained to respond to various situations in a specific manner according to etiquette, learn to say the same words as our parents, and have a train of thought that is shaped according to those we come into contact with. Essentially, we are “programmed” to have certain qualities, although we do not recognize or acknowledge this form of learning as programming. But nevertheless, there are still some differences between us and robots: our ability to adapt as well as various complexities such as wit and humor. We constantly adapt to our surroundings and adjust our responses to what we hear and see. Even with the difference of adaptation however, there are growing numbers of inventions in robotics that give machines the ability to adapt. How far this will go, I don’t know, but the idea of humanity versus robotics continues to grow finer and more complex.

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Claire Benson-Week 3-Imagining the Possibilities of Relational Aesthetics

I wanted to begin by responding to Einstein’s comparison of imagination and knowledge because, while I agree that imagination is crucial to the success of progressive thought, it is the combination of the two which has created the most lasting and important work in human history. Imagination cannot fully function on its own; it needs knowledge to flesh out and bring creative ideas to life, because without having a firm grasp of the past, there is no way of concretely engaging with the future. While I’m sure that he wasn’t trying to suggest that the two were mutually exclusive entities, I guess the difference in our understandings lies in the assumption that knowledge only refers to that which is currently known or has been in the past. I see imagination as the use of knowledge from applicable sources to create new and innovative ideas or combinations of previously existing materials, processes or objects, and, thus, inextricably linked concepts. Honestly, though, I feel silly being nitpicky with Einstein.

On the other hand, I think that his statement that imagination embraces the entire world is not only a sweet metaphor, but a very apt concept for the emphasis of our class. The large majority of the artists, scientists and innovators that we have looked at-or heard speak- have been advocates of such a principle. This is especially apparent in the work of individuals who have sought out collaborative environments and practices. With this in mind, I felt Sean Dockray’s talk was very appropriate, even though there wasn’t much specific emphasis on the robotics theme from lecture. I really admire artists that can create pieces that exist is some sort of middle ground between conceptual, contemporary art and the experiential business of living and cultivating relationships. His piece about what it meant to be an expert, and subsequently, what a group of “experts” would do with moderate amount of cash, touched on the theme of relational aesthetics (which I like because it often seems like art as an excuse for hanging out with fun people). The sense of humor with which he talked about and created his work was great and the talk reminded me, tangentially I guess, of Peter Sellers’ lecture earlier this year (in the WAC Department) and his emphasis on the importance of communication between people with very different life experiences. Sellers had a more socially conscious agenda than Dockray, whose interest seems to be more about a sociological examination of group dynamics, but the end product of his investigations almost always brought his participants and audiences together. Essentially, my feelings about relational aesthetics boil down to the fact that the art world very often divides people and, therefore, I find myself often liking work that is about bridging, rather than creating gaps in understanding.

Nicolas Bourriaud- coined the term 'relational aesthetics' (hopefully he's not always this alone)

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I wanted to begin by responding to Einstein’s comparison of imagination and knowledge because, while I agree that imagination is crucial to the success of progressive thought, it is the combination of the two which has created the most lasting and important work in human history. Imagination cannot fully function on its own; it needs knowledge to flesh out and bring creative ideas to life, because without having a firm grasp of the past, there is no way of concretely engaging with the future. While I’m sure that he wasn’t trying to suggest that the two were mutually exclusive entities, I guess the difference in our understandings lies in the assumption that knowledge only refers to that which is currently known or has been in the past. I see imagination as the use of knowledge from applicable sources to create new and innovative ideas or combinations of previously existing materials, processes or objects, and, thus, inextricably linked concepts. Honestly, though, I feel silly being nitpicky with Einstein.

On the other hand, I think that his statement that imagination embraces the entire world is not only a sweet metaphor, but a very apt concept for the emphasis of our class. The large majority of the artists, scientists and innovators that we have looked at-or heard speak- have been advocates of such a principle. This is especially apparent in the work of individuals who have sought out collaborative environments and practices. With this in mind, I felt Sean Dockray’s talk was very appropriate, even though there wasn’t much specific emphasis on the robotics theme from lecture. I really admire artists that can create pieces that exist is some sort of middle ground between conceptual, contemporary art and the experiential business of living and cultivating relationships. His piece about what it meant to be an expert, and subsequently, what a group of “experts” would do with moderate amount of cash, touched on the theme of relational aesthetics (which I like because it often seems like art as an excuse for hanging out with fun people). The sense of humor with which he talked about and created his work was great and the talk reminded me, tangentially I guess, of Peter Sellers’ lecture earlier this year (in the WAC Department) and his emphasis on the importance of communication between people with very different life experiences. Sellers had a more socially conscious agenda than Dockray, whose interest seems to be more about a sociological examination of group dynamics, but the end product of his investigations almost always brought his participants and audiences together. Essentially, my feelings about relational aesthetics boil down to the fact that the art world very often divides people and, therefore, I find myself often liking work that is about bridging, rather than creating gaps in understanding.

Nicolas Bourriaud-coined the term 'relational aesthtics' (and hopefully isn't always this alone)

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Christopher Flannery - Week 3

I was overwhelmed by the material this week because we covered so many different topics, and mostly only on the surface. A lot of the class time, I felt like I was scribbling notes too slowly and the slides changed before I could fully digest them.
It was interesting to look at industrialization and modern thought from the viewpoint of the artist. Having been comfortable with the idea since childhood, it’s hard to imagine that people lacked understanding of perspective. It makes me wonder how differently they perceived other things like music, taste, and literature. How much do we comprehend? Art can invoke a lot of philosophical questions (like how Descartes was mentioned in class). The history we covered in class tied in to Buckminster Fuller’s article describing how man spread across the globe and learned. His description was very removed and broad; it was more a metaphorical commentary on human nature and attitude towards our planet and each other.
Like most other people on this blog agree, I don’t think that the artist being a step removed from the actual production of the composition takes anything away from the worth of the project. Creating art for mass production should be thought of as distinct from what is called “fine” art. I see it as having more in common with engineering and architecture, along with a lot of artistic insight. With modern tools, every object we create is a product of art and technology. Technology amplifies the art.
It’s kind of odd reading two articles written generations ago about the present. I feel like a lot of the points that Walter Benjamin made in his essay were learned early on by my generation. We all learned that photography and film are forms of art and it doesn’t occur that they may be any lesser because of the different processes and media. The current generation accepts technological art equally and easily.
Searching the internet, I found this forum called ARChives, and a particular post discussing mass-produced art, including skillfully hand-made copies of classic painting and other machine-made art forms. The author’s points include the utilitarianism and precision of the modern techniques.
http://www.artrenewal.org/articles/2003/Best_of_ARC/best1.asp?msg=588&forumID=27

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ROBOTS ARE OUR FRIENDS (and more) -> week3 -> megan daalder

Machine and humans are friends nowadays. Everyday I see them ported around in pouches with the same tenderness a mother kangaroo shows to a baby Joey; they’re our constant companions. Our minds flow into the machine through our fingertips, a McLuhenesque extension of what’s usually contained within our skulls. The machines that once sucked us into their oppressive clutches like they did Chaplin in modern times, have since been redeemed by the computing devices and pacemakers that have proven themselves worthy of being inside the home, and the body.



It seems most people are comfortable with the wide variety of cyborgs who walk among us on a daily basis, you could go as far as to say that anyone who drives a car becomes superhuman the minute they step into the beast and speed off at 60+ miles per hour without breaking a sweat (unfortunately the environment is feeling that energy being expended right now in a much more severe way than your average muscle ache). In any case, it’s interesting to see how humans and machines are growing more comfortable with one another. In Japan, heaps of time and money go into developing robots that are not only cute, but also capable of caring for the large population of aging individuals, from robot therapy, to robot sponge baths, to cleaning robots, to (ehem) spoon-feeding robots (cough, modern times?).



Though I am being slightly idealistic (that’s slightly) about our future with robots, I think some of the most interesting artwork, research, etc to come out of our current relationships with machines is collaborative, as opposed to one taking control of the other. If the industrial revolution marked a period of mechanic enslavement, than today represents a period of computational collaboration. Reas is one example of someone working with the machine to produce works of art, Ken Goldberg uses robotics and the web to create a community garden for people living in disparate regions of the world, the wifiSense bag embeds the transient connectivity that we travel trough daily into a wearable item, the WhereIsGeorge? project allows a community of people to track their money as it travels through hands and across the country. It’s all about the connection of people, ideas, objects and translation of data that is invisible to something that is visible, or tangible in some way.



Though the Transhumanists and Stelarcs of the world may want to leave their bodies behind and live in the machine, I think the machine can be used to heighten ones experience of the physical world. Machines can do many things that people cannot, and likewise, people can do many things that machines cannot, so why not take advantage of emerging technologies that allow us to get the best of both worlds.



Ah, this is the zenith of creative potential! I want to build a communal thinking cap - put EEG sensors on 10 people’s heads at once and feed it to a computer, then somehow output the data, put them on different tracks in some custom music editing software and sonify them and play them as a sweet sweet song. That’s not the very best idea, but there are many, many many many and I’m excited to be here.

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Jamie Summers - Week 3

The interesting question of robotic art was raised in lecture this week. In my opinion, these works are still art. You might say that art is created based on inspirations and things that move somebody, so when a robot creates art, is it not in fact art because a robot cannot be emotional moved by anything. I disagree.

Just because a robot is doing the actual brush strokes, somebody had to make the robot, and somebody had to program the robot so that it knows what to do. So, according to this argument, robotic art is in fact still art produced by the programmer. For example, lets say that a painter paints a painting. This painting is so exquisite and so beautiful that he gets many offers to buy it. He wants to sell the painting to everyone who gave him an offer, so he hires a programmer to program a robot to replicate his exact brush strokes. With this, the painter himself is allowed to paint another picture, as well as the robot. The robot in this case is just replicating the art that was originally created by the painter. If one says that robotic art is not art, then in this case they are saying that the painting that the painter painted is not art. A second example is the assembly line for cars. Cars can be considered a work of art. Even if you disagree, you must agree that a car design is intricate and requires a large amount of creativity. Car assembly lines produce anywhere from 40-70 cars per hour during production, and without the help of robots, this would not be possible. Since robots aid in the production of cars, and a making a car is considered art, then robots themselves are making art. Even if you do not believe that a car is a work of art, you must admit that the initial inspiration and creativity of the designer is not lost simply because the car was made by a machine.

On a completely separate note, I found a related exhibit not of art created by robots, but art created out of robots. http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/009466.php I suppose this exhibit utilizes the innovations of the industrial age as mentioned in the reading “The Work of Art in the Mechanical Age of Reproduction” as well as the innovations of the information age as a new medium for creating art.

In this particular piece, I feel like the artist is creating a connection between the unemotional, mechanical world of robots and the emotion-driven world of humans. I find it to be a bit disturbing because although it seems as if the robots are locked in a passionate embrace, it also looks as if the machines behind them are forcing them to kiss.

It seems as though they are being pushed together against their wills. It is interesting that such a stereotypically unemotional machine can be used as an artistic medium that can evoke such strong emotions in its viewers.

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Monica Tse - week 3 - What are the boundaries of art?

Considering the interaction of art and robotics made me think a lot about what “art” really is. If machines, programming, the growth of a garden via electronic technology, among others can be considered art, couldn’t anything be considered art?
The first things that come to my mind when I think of art are drawings, oil paintings, Greek sculptures, and architectural structures. I tend to link “art” with personal and direct interaction between the artist and the art he/she creates, something that the artist expends sweat and blood on in order to create the final masterpiece. For example, the marble statues of the Greek gods must have taken weeks of meticulous and painstaking labor to create, and it took at least a couple of years for the paintings created collaboratively by Reuben & Bruegel to be completed. You can see up close the rounded curves sculptors chose to form or the specific brush strokes painters chose to make. I feel like I am connected with the creator of the piece of art and have a glimpse into the artist’s personal perspective of what art means.

Therefore, when I read about robotic painting, such as the Robotic Action Painter, it was difficult for me to accept it as art. Still not being able to define what exactly “art” is, I saw the paintings created by these electronically programmed machines as straying far from the hand-created works of traditional artists. To me, this was much more impersonal and seemingly uncreative. I saw a piece of metal that was formed to obey particular algorithms that would allow it to draw precise circles and lines; to me, there was no sense of creativity. I guess there were two reasons why I did not view robotic paintings as art:

1) It is directly created by a machine rather than a human. So there is a disconnect between the art created and a living, feeling, unpredictable creator.

2) Because the robots are created via equations and commands, there is no creativity involved; the art created seems to be set in stone with no room for spontaneous alterations.

In my eyes, I saw the robotic process as lacking the ability to alter choices of what is drawn, which is linked to a disconnection from the human soul (something that is crucial to creating art) and the emotions and thought process that come with it. I think it is the direct human involvement that makes me see art as art.
However, the more I thought about the means by which the robot was created, the more I saw that there was human involvement. The artist is the one who is creating the robot which paints the paintings, so in essence, the human person is still the one creating the final piece. He or she chooses what abilities the robot has to create images and so the artist’s personal input is in fact a part of the mechanical piece of metal. I saw more how the robot was simply a middleman between creator and creation. I still don’t know how we can define “art”, and it is still difficult for me to see the art in robotics at first glance, but I better understand how the interfaces meet and mingle

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Juliet Lee - week 3 - Robotics & Art

Attended the lecture put on by IPAM for Benoit Mandelbrot’s The Nature of Roughness in Mathematics, Science and Art. I feel like a lot of what he said went over my head, but I enjoyed hearing him talk about the work he did on fractals and how he had found them before he knew what it was that he was looking at. It must be an incredible feeling to discover something, only to realize that it had been around you for a long while. Mandelbrot also talked about Brownian loops and clusters and islands. I did not understand what this was, but apparently the Brownian Island is created by a looping Brownian Motion function and it creates what looks like a realistic two dimensional island image. He referenced a few artists as well when he spoke of fractals, like Salvador Dali and Katsushika Hokusai. What I think he said was that Hokusai was had fractals in his work in the shadow of the clouds on Mount Fuji. Even though I am slow in connecting the math to the art, I appreciate how these mathematical equations create art. I can understand a function creating a pattern and if you add color it is basically the same as taking a pen to paper. What I do not understand is the work of those such as Stelarc. He declared that the body is obsolete and is now growing an ear on his face and has a third arm. Why is this considered art? He sounds like a scientist who has tendencies towards masochism. In my opinion, art should be able to be appreciated by others and not just the artist. Let’s say that a traditional artist who painted pictures dies and leaves all kinds of work behind in his studio. People could go in there later and see the completed works as well as those in progress and understand what was going on. But say Stelarc dies and someone went into his studio. What would the average person think about the things that he is doing to himself? Maybe the Department of Defense would have to be called in to investigate what was going on like in the case of Steve Kurtz, but more importantly, would anyone be able to appreciate what he did? If I walked into where Stelarc had worked, I would think that this person was mentally ill and probably thought that he could change the human body into a robot and killed himself because he did not understand the complexities of the science. Here I must stop and reflect a moment, because I am always writing how I do not understand something that is considered art. This class has been difficult for me in that I am not the creative type and I have a hard time thinking outside of the box. But it does not mean that I do not know where the artists are coming from. I say that I don’t understand Stelarc and yet I do see the artistic value he could have to some people. I think I have to be more patient with myself and with the artists that we look at in class.

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Michael Nguyen - Week 3 - What is the human role?

If one accepts the idea that digital creations are works of art, then it is reasonable to question who the real artist is. Sean Dockray’s Ameising 1 and 2,500 One Dollar Bills are eye opening works that rely upon formatting acquired data into a visual representation. While the data is supplied by ants or participants of wheresgeorge.com, Dockray is deserving of credit for developing the software behind the animations. This situation isn’t controversial but how about something like this:

The website I used to generate this image was http://automatic-art.net/ using software written by Kelvin Luck. The individual images within the collage were scrapped from random Flickr contributions. All I did was give the program a word (waves) and pressed a button while everything else was automatic. It would now be difficult to decide who the real artists are.

These challenges arise as a result of the industrial revolution where production became automatic and the skill factor was taken out of the equation. In this week’s reading, Walter Benjamin states that the difference between an authentic work of art and a reproduction is the passage of time and change of ownership. In an age where bit for bit copies of digital art can create an indistinguishable copy, his argument no longer holds.

We are then left to question, what is the human element in art that cannot be produced by machine? I think that it’s our ability to perceive ideas and situations in unique ways. What I mean by this is that we can show others how to think about a situation whereas a machine cannot. Dockray saw ants crawling on the ground and made the video which lead us to question whether each ant is an individual or simply a “cell,” a single element, of the whole. Similarly, in photography the artist captures a moment in time yet the manner in which they present it to the audience reflects the unique perspective of the artist. Sure, the camera influences the focus and exposure but beyond that there is no greater meaning which it imparts on the image. In the face of automation and the verge of full artificial intelligence, art still exists. This means that there must be an element that is intangible and irreproducible. As technology advances, so does the specific human element, but machines will forever be merely tools.

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Michelle Baba, Week 3 - Our Third Industrial Revolution

Learning about robotics and biorobotics reminded me a lot of all of the movies that I have seen. Just off of the top of my head:

Data from Star Trek
Johnny 5 from Short Circuit
Terminator
R2-D2 & C-3PO from Star Wars
RoboCop
Inspector Gadget
I, Robot
Bicentennial Man
A.I. Artificial Intelligence

For an even crazier list of movies (since 1980) visit:
http://turtlemeat.com/robot/list-of-robot-movies/4/

… the list could go on forever and the robots vary from those created to help humans perform calculations and various tasks (as in R2-D2 & C-3PO from Star Wars) to human beings that have undergone some sort of severe trauma/body damage and require some reconstruction with mechanical part (ie. RoboCop, Inspector Gadget, and Will Smith in I, Robot). In the case of healthcare, is there a certain point at which we must draw the line, when people are becoming too artificial? Are we going to find a way to prevent the break-down of the human body? I ask this because, at the rate that we are going, with all of the technological advancements and scientific breakthroughs, it seems that we are seeking immortality.
Today, we may not see robots on every corner as often portrayed in many futuristic movies, however, robots have been around for quite some time (after all, the word was coined in 1920). We currently use them to explore outer space, aid doctors while performing surgery, and have invented ways to make them wearable – thus “improving” our very own bodies. As seen below, even prosthetic legs, have been consistently improving throughout the years.




One of the current trends in design are exoskeletons to makes us faster, stronger, etc…


And the latest creations, which, quite frankly scares me (since it is available to the public) is the Land Walker. It’s gigantic, and it has a machine gun attached to its side…





for more information, visit:
http://www.gizmag.com/go/4004/


or to watch it in action on youtube: http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/robots/wearable-robot-suit-complete-with-side-mounted-gun-for-sale-191651.php
I know it’s a little forward thinking, but what if one day we are virtually indestructible? (I’m sure there must be at least one movie about something like that…) Who knows, maybe one day in the future (when people have robots to do work for them and everything is automatic) this era of robotic-design will later be referred to as the Third Industrial Revolution…

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Kevin Yackle - Week 3 - why we need art to need robots

After listening to the talks and lectures this week about the integration of robots and art, I thought that using robots in art could allow artists to do things that are truly unique. The reason I thought so was because of the diversity of robots in our culture. Robots can mean so many different things:

1) in one sense robots are the epitome of the advancement of our society. Showing how we have progressed. I think a good example of this is how in movies the scenes of the future are always filled with robots. It seems that in our society, we judge societal progression now based upon how advanced our robotics is getting.

2) Robots could also represent the laziness of our culture and our cultures movement to mass production. Robots are necessary for businesses and factories in order to mass produce consumer products. In this sense, robots have replaced humans as workers and I think that robots represent how our cultures has adapted and changed, allowing robots to do jobs that people would not necessarily want to do. I can see how this could be both good and bad.

3) I also think of robots as representing destruction. Robots have been in TV shows where they battle in gladiator style arenas to the “death”. Robots are also used in combat now. It is interesting to think that a war now constitutes people pushing buttons to shoot missiles and flying drone airplanes.

In these three senses I think it reveals how closely robots have become integrated within our society and in some senses represent how advanced our culture is. However, what they mean exactly changes depending upon their context. They can represent advancement and death; it just depends on when and where they are being used. Because of the ambiguity of their relationship with society, I think that they are perfect thing for artists to explore in order to perhaps more thoroughly investigate this relationship.

Stelarc is a good example of an artist who is investigating this relationship. He does the bodily transformations with robots and has even gone as far as to say that the human body is not necessary. I think that this is definitely an extreme considering that artificial intelligence is such a controversial subject, but HUMAN intelligence is definitely no controversy. But I think that Stelarc is a good example of an artist who is using robots in order to explore their potential and explore their relationship with humans.

Another good example is the survival research labs. Their giant shows which are very violent show the potential of robots to create massive amounts of destruction. It is interesting because they are building these enormous and advanced robots and then just using them to destroy each other. SRL is basically exploring how robots are considered an image of how advanced our society is, but then they are also exploring how these advancements can be used to create our own demise.

When I was searching online for interesting things about robots, I came across this interesting website that is very satirical. I really got a kick out of it and I thought that it was a perfect example to back up my arguments here. The website is: http://www.iamlost.com/features/robotporn/ This website is a fake porn site that instead of men and women depicts robots. It just seemed so funny to me because as a society we envision robots as the image of our advancement and because of this we are constantly associating and integrating robots in our society. This website reminded me of the show the Jetsons where they have robots as maids. Perhaps they even had robots as sexual objects? It seems so ridiculous, but that is why I think it is so perfect. To us today it seems ridiculous, but who knows, in the future perhaps robots will become such a strong part of our society that website like this will no longer be jokes.

I think that robots are a good art technique for artists to explore because there is such an ambiguous relationship between robots in our society. All that can be definite is that robots are an integral part of our society and that we envision them to become more and more important in the future. The relationship with society is constantly evolving and our society needs artists to explore robots in order to help reveal what we need to be excited for and to fear.

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Anna Marks - Blog 3

I thought this week’s topic was very interesting and thought provoking. I’ve never considered robotic creations as art but after viewing the presentations from this week I look at robots differently now. I think the Survival Research Lab is a very interesting group of guys that have taken their creative minds and created a new form of art that provokes people’s thoughts and reactions differently than other types of art.In discussion we talked about the meaning of art and what we thought the definition of art was. I agree with the statement that art is the outcome of any creative process but I also think that there are some limitations to art. I think that anything can be art; a photograph of a shoe or a box placed on a table in front of a red painting. However, I think that the quality and interpretation of the art depends entirely on the viewer. Art has a different meaning and provokes different feelings for each person that looks at it and they can interpret it however they want. The audience can agree with the piece or performance or they can disagree, but I think that anything can be art and people shouldn’t discourage and disagree with the fact that it is art. My friend went to Italy last quarter to go to an art school and at a club one night a group was doing a performance and the show consisted of dancing naked for 20 minutes, then having the main dancer perform a enema on themselves. When I first heard of this I was completely discussed and couldn’t even fathom how this was considered art, but my friend thought that it was an interesting way to express oneself and went into a lengthy description of the meaning and purpose of the show. This just shows how different people can appreciate different types of art.
When I first heard and saw the performances done by Survival Research Lab I was disturbed and surprised because I thought it was just a violent, destructive show and I didn’t really think about the meaning behind it. However, as I thought more about it I realized that the purpose was to expose people to the violence that is going on in the world today. The purpose was so surprise and disturb people, but the purpose of that was to shock people and make them realize that the world is not perfect and pleasant, but that there is a harsh and violent side to it. It took people out of their comfort and safety zones to get them to think and express themselves out of their usual ways.
I think a lot of people don’t consider these performances art and I would disagree with them completely. They creating masterpieces out of garbage and used materials in order to put on a show for the public to express their feelings and beliefs. I would say this is almost the definition of an art show, maybe not the traditional art show, but it definitely epitomizes the purpose of art performances.
I found some really interesting sights that promote a different side of Survival Research Lab and help to clarify the purpose of the shows.
http://www.streettech.com/bcp/BCPgraf/CyberCulture/SurvivalResearchLabs.html
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4609876

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Claire Benson - Week 2

Although I admittedly don’t know nearly enough about the specifics of the ratio, I think the formation of a spiral, seen in countless natural forms, is one of the most interesting examples of the link between mathematics and nature. I’ve used the idea of the Golden Proportion in my work before, but am really curious to know more about the particulars of exactly how it’s formed. In one of the videos we saw in class, this was explained and drawn out, but I think I’d need to go back and watch it again to really understand how it works (and, to be perfectly honest, not having taken a math class in three years probably wouldn’t help my attempts).

Personally, I think that technology’s relationship within the interplay between math and nature is rather secondary as a human (and specifically modern human) construct, but interesting nonetheless when exploring such a complex subject matter. Technology from the very beginning has been a way for mankind to harness nature and impose efficiency on the world around us, so I think that placing it within the discussion of math and nature makes for a slightly convoluted relationship. Also, I think that one of the downsides of efficiency is its propensity to categorize and alienate. If thought about in terms of C.P. Snow’s article, the need to make everything efficient is one of the foremost problems with regards to specialization in schools and, therefore, lack of interdisciplinary learning.

Casey Reas’ “drawings” were incredibly beautiful and I loved that he was able to create these organic, whimsical forms purely from the application of equations. He really was a perfect guest lecturer to have as his work spoke to the intersection between all of the many disciplines we have been examining. I found myself wondering if he had ever tried working with sound or other mediums, because the scientific nature of his process seems well equipped to be solid format for shape and media experimentation.

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Michelle Baba - Week 2

After this past weeks' lectures, I realized that I had a lot of stuff to research... almost all of the names that were mentioned completely went over my head (as the only people whose names I recognized were Escher and Mandelbrot!). Therefore, I decided that it would be best that I looked up some of the names that I heard and find out a little about them and what they did that contributed so greatly to the advancement of art and science.

When we learned the quote “The further art advances the closer it approaches science, the further science advances the closer it approaches art” by Buckminster Fuller, I did not think much about the man who said it. Later, after I did some research on him, it finally dawned upon me that he was the man whom the Buckyball was named after! Anyways, he was famous for revolutionizing architecture and engineering by creating the first geodesic dome structures (which could amazingly support all of its weight without any internal supports at virtually any size = limitless and efficient). Though the Buckminster Fuller Institute website is currently undergoing some construction (therefore preventing access to some of the information about him), I would highly recommend visiting:

http://www.worldtrans.org/whole/bucky.html

to see the Dymaxion Map of the world, developed by Fuller as the first world projection to show the continents on a flat surface without any sort of visible distortion… personally, I think that it’s completely amazing how he was able to understand geometric figures well enough to be able to literally disassemble them and flatten the “outer layer” into a two dimensional drawing.

(top picture: Richard Buckminster Fuller and

bottom picture: the Montreal Biosphere that he created in 1967)

Here's a an example of his dymaxion map:

Regarding the lecture that Professor Casey Reas gave on 4/11, that was the first time that I had ever heard of Sol LeWitt. I also had to look him up, and found that he was an American conceptual artist and minimalist who created many structures and diagrams/sketches that I actually recognized. (For example, the Four-Sided Pyramid in Washington D.C.) Similar geometric figures are often as optical illusions that are widely available in books and on the internet – resembling many of his structures.

above: the Four-Sided Pyramid

below: an optical illusion (though not quite like the pyramid one that I was thinking of)

On a different note:

I'm pretty amazed that Mandelbrot is coming to our campus tomorrow to speak... after learning about him in my calc class in high school, I honestly thought that I'd never come across his name again (then again, I also never expected to see that same Escher video!). I'm looking forward to seeing him in person and I hope that I can understand at least one thing that he is going to speak about (which is, unfortunately, pretty unlikely...)

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mega daalder - Week 2

I’m reminded time and again these days that the future is happening now. A lot thinking is being done about the coming years, decades, centuries - from the Delta Scan in 2005, to the History Channel’s national City of the Future competition, to recent United Nations report on global warming, one of the most pressing questions is: how can we properly adjust to a world ripe with such imminent threats as global warming, the rapid depletion of natural resources, and overpopulation?

This contemporary question is almost identical to one made famous by Buckminster Fuller in the 1970s: “Does humanity have a chance to survive lastingly and successfully on planet Earth, and if so, how?” And this weekend, a very similer question was addressed by a group of architects who exhibited in the “Open House”at Pasadena’s Art Center. The show featurs living environments designed with our uncertain future in mind, and funnily enough, one of the first future homes from yesteryear to greet visitors at the door is Bucky Fuller’s “Dymaxion House.” Built in the 1946, this house moved around a central mast, created its own power, had a changeable floor plan and was heated and cooled by natural means. Bucky’s design philosophy, which looked to nature first and foremost for inspiration, extends into the rest of the exhibition, which features several designs that used principles of biomimicry to develop technologically sophisticated living systems for human proportions.



One of the most interesting of these nature-inspired proposals was the “Jellyfish House” by Lisa Iwamoto and Craig Scott, a site-specific initiative to convert Treasure Island, an old military base off the coast of San Francisco plagued with a variety of environmental hazards, such as toxic soil, into a livable environment. The architects propose an elaborate “skin” for Jellyfish house that, among other things, acts as a system for purifying rainwater through cheaply made titanium dioxide covered cavities and ultraviolet light exposure, water that can later be used for household purposes.



Another site specific example, dunehouse by su11, takes its cue from the plants and animals that have evolved to the harsh desert climates over eons, to jumpstart an evolutionary development in human habitats and accommodate the growing number of residents to Henderson Country currently living in track home heaven (or hell). The software used to construct dunehouse allows the structure to be flexible and because each component of the house is acted on locally, the entire structure adapts when a single parameter is changed, like an organism adapting to a change in its environment.

Whether it be water-purification systems or customized computer software, technology helps bridge the gap between the man made and natural world in nearly all of the designs in the exhibition, which of course, seems like a logical next step: technology is applied by humans to help us learn more about ourselves and our surroundings. Then, with the help of technology, humans implement man made designs that attempt to approach the complexity of nature’s design.

Not only does this seem like a logical step, but also like a step we will have to take in order to survive in the future we’re faced with. The problems that led Buckminster Fuller to believe humanity had reached a critical point in the 1970’s have only gotten more extreme in today’s world, where 50% of the population live in cities (and over 70% will in 20 to 30 years), the UN just released a grim report on the stark reality of global warming, and bumblebees are being threatened with extinction (which would inevitably lead to our own demise in a only a number of days). In this world, scientific knowledge and it’s marriage with technology will be key to our survival.

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Christopher Flannery - Week 2

The professor introduced this week’s topic, “Mathematics, Perspective, Time and Space”, by discussing the development and meaning of the number zero in various cultures. The history tied into the first correct concept of vision, by Brunelleschi in 1413, up to the modern mastery and application in many mediums. I have learned about fractals and am particularly interested in their creation and structure only because I think that they look amazing.

Before attending this class, I expected a majority of the material to focus on the use of computers to create art through animation and film. I was pleasantly surprised and the wide range of applications we are focusing on.
As a music major, I am continually relating the subjects of this course to my field of study. I was particularly happy when Professor Reas showed his art performance along with Steve Reich’s “Music For 18 Musicians.” The music composition is an example of minimalism, a genre characterized commonly by a steady pulse, repeated patterns, consonant sound, abstract motives, and creative instrumentation that began in the 1960s. Reich wrote the hour long composition in twelve different “phases”, or sections, that each focus around a different tonal area. The goal of the piece is to create a sonic landscape that envelopes and involves the listener in a non-traditional manner.
Deas’s work and minimalist music have a lot in common. Deas creates abstract and inorganic images while minimalist music shuns natural lyricism and common methods and practices of historical and popular music. Both are temporal experiences that develop, fade, and evolve. With a knowledge of the music, I could see that Deas’s work was inspired by and accompanied the performance. Here is Steve Reich’s myspace, including part of the mentioned composition. He is awesome!

http://www.myspace.com/stevereichmusic

Like art, music also has a lot in common with math. Professor Vesna showed us the exact fractions used to create perspective and depth. The scale of musical tones is also divided by fractions of frequencies. This site gives a brief history and then goes into a lot of detail about music theory.

http://members.cox.net/mathmistakes/music.htm

I was surprised how simple the program Deas used and how the final product was only a guided computation by a machine. Regardless, I think that this is still a form of art. It reminded me of my iTunes visualizer, but much better and more intense. I found an article that covers the argument over whether programming is considered an art or not:
http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2005/06/30/artofprog.html

Just like architecture and engineering, programming requires creativity, imagination, computation, and a goal. The majority of the argument seems to be about whether it is considered a “fine art” or merely on the level of a craft. In cases like Deas, he is indirectly creating an amazing piece of art, however it is not the same if it was his own hand. I still feel like a computer is a different form of a paintbrush. Ultimately, programming is a form of expression through design and must be considered an art.
I have heard our ability to perceive music called a “miracle” and a “physical phenomenon.” Vision and hearing are our measurements of reality to the best extent of our brains. I am grateful but not surprised that we are able to understand and replicate divisions and measurements of space and sound.

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Mega Daalder - Week 1

I was actually surprised to see that the CP Snow article was written in 1990. I could be exceedingly optimistic in saying this, but I think we are living in a time where crossing boundaries is necessary and should be expected, even required, to make things interesting and to cope with the range of complex problems we face today. I sound almost as severe as Snow does in his article (his tone so opinionated that I almost stopped reading), so I’ll back up and employ the good old I messages for fear of gross generalization. I think there are many disciplines right now that have benefited by borrowing from one another, there is the cross-over between biology and computer generated artificial life, architecture inspired by biological forms, and biofeedback devices with more inspired visual output (or at least the potential for more inspired visual output), for example.

All of these examples, however, are all applied arts and sciences. Art with a capital A may be a bit different.




Being something of an artist myself (i guess, but definitely not with a capital A), I can attest to the fact that in science, the artist finds a great deal of novelty - petri dishes, electron-scanning microscopes, neuro-feedback devices - all of these tools of science strike a chord with anyone interested in thinking more deeply about the process by which life grows, sight is extended, and brain waves are visualized in real time.




In fact, the mere thought of it all makes me want to break into a laboratory immediately and conduct all the experiments my heart desires, using all the technology i could have ever dreampt up to advance my own personal inquiries. This is all fine and well (and I assure you I won’t act on this impulse this evening), there are just two potential problems:

1. the interest that an artist has in science is poorly informed and thus his or her use of the technologies is potentially hazardous, and/or his or her interest in science is purely aesthetic and thus superficial and useless.
2. the gap between the applied arts and Art art becomes either too large or increasingly small, leading to something else entirely (which may not actually be a problem).

The second point is really the one of greater interest because scientists can be of use artists and artists can be of use to scientists but what does the product become? A tool of science or a piece of art? why not both? but then in what context is it shown? both?

Steve Kurtz can be used as an example to help get some bearings on this distinction and perhaps make clear what science and art can learn from one another. Kurtz actually straddles three fields, art, activism, and science. His output is a critique on the uses of science, thus he necessarily uses science to communicate his counterpoint or parodic response. In his case, art functions as a way of re-appropriating science and critiquing how it is used and by whom.

For the scientists working with him, Kurtz provides an opportunity to participate in a critique on the power structures inherent to scientific discovery and practical applications. Kurtz is then responsible for shaping the creative delivery of science to a new audience.

Setting Kutrz aside for the moment and thinking about other examples of scientist artists, it seems that technology is what bridges the gap between art and science. Technology, used conceptually or practically, has infiltrated both fields and this is where science and art will meet, shake hands, and either make friends, or part ways.

I would defnitely like to shake hands with some of the microbiology and neuroscience majors in this class though.

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Jacob Janco - Week 2

This week’s lectures dealt with conceptions of space and time through mathematics and art born from mathematics. I find mathematics and art to be interlinked on a far less theoretical level than modern molecular genetics and graffiti or physics and sculpture. Mathematics, like art, is very much a language that deals with the infinite and the unexplainable. They are languages that try to make sense of the world in the purest of senses and I believe become intertwined in doing so.

Mathematics is pure science and logical thought. From applying it we get physics, from applying physics we get chemistry and from applying chemistry stems the biological sciences. It is our chosen language that we use to understand, manipulate, and use the world around us. I believe that many of us take this for granted; a book of numbers, the magical runes of our day and age, can make slabs of metal fly through the air and allow people to communicate from thousands of miles away. We can do these things because mathematics questions fundamental elements of our world. Take for example the act of bringing two fingers together. Biology can explain to an extraordinary detail the mechanics of contracting muscles, neurological impulses, and chemical processes and give a perfect explanation as to how this happens. Physics can describe how those muscles must have tension to pull together the fingers, almost unhindered in the medium of air and describe the various forces acting on the finger tips. Mathematics, on the other hand, deals with an underlying meaning of 2. This is a simple example of the universality that mathematics has become and its applicability to everything in the world around us.

If we take mathematics as a method and language to describe phenomena in our world, then art follows quite closely behind as a means of describing those phenomena using a variety of languages and methodologies. It is our attempt to quantify the infinite and understand the elusive and mysterious. It is almost as if we are poking at some colossal meaning or grand equation with our human-created language of mathematics and artistry. Spoken languages attempt to quantify our emotions and thoughts so that people can understand them, but truly, no matter how hard you try, you can never communicate your exact state at any moment in time. It is impossibility. Mathematics and art are intertwined in this way; they explore but do not fully answer. This relationship can be shown in methods of perspective and foreshortening, the way colors mix and play on a canvas, and in contemporary use of mathematics to create complex artwork such as in Casey Reas’s projects. To solidify my ramblings and ruminations on math and art, I would like to bring up Reas’s piece on computer coding and links between codes. This was my favorite of his works that he brought up in lecture. Basically, for those who don’t remember, he had lines of code for a program and drew blue links to the different lines of code as they were executed. From a rigidly mathematic structure, I saw visual representation of its structure in a way that was artistic, without losing its precision and roots in perfect mathematical order. I found it refreshing to stare at a simple picture and see a piece of the infinite emerge from simple coding. A matrix-like moment if you will and a moment in which I glimpsed the possibility of higher forms of these two languages. It was something closer to the truth and something that can be realistically explored by bridging more completely the realms of mathematics and art.

As far as extra research goes, I found that architecture wasn’t mentioned of much if at all as a method of representing the synthesis of mathematics and art. As a discipline, architecture essentially relies on mathematics to build human spaces that are functional and beautiful. As clichéd as it may seem, I have to mention Frank Lloyd Wright since he is an absolute genius in the field and I’ve admired his work for a number of years. Here is his famous house:

The way the shapes stack and complement the natural environment bring math and art into organic is breathtaking. I’ll link up some information on math and art from a class website I managed to find. It’s pretty extensive and is great for going in depth with things discussed in lecture.

http://www.math.nus.edu.sg/aslaksen/teaching/math-art-arch.shtml

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Anna Marks - Week 2

When thinking about the last two weeks of class and the different topics and speakers that were presented to us, I think that Casey Reas and the programming that he created is a good example of the bridge between art and technology. He’s a traditional artist at heart, drawing since he was little, and has now transformed his childhood pastime into a complex and intriguing program that involves both artistic talent and mathematical knowledge. However, it surprised me that he said that he disliked math when he was in school because the majority of the work he does revolves around math equations and procedures. It fascinated me how a computer could make such beautiful creations, but at the same time I was thoroughly confused with how it worked. I was never very good at math, I always sat confused in class and was always puzzled with the homework, so when Casey was describing the processes that were used I was a little baffled. Its interesting how he can describe the processes in text and then transform the theory into an equation, then create a continuous motion on the computer that creates a dazzling piece of art.
I know that last week the topic was of the two cultures but I wanted to add more about the differences between the two speakers this week. I felt that Steve Kurtz was not a good example of bridging the gap between science and art because I felt he was more focused on the reaction from the audience and the publicity then the actual art and science of his performances. An example of this is the show where the guy was wearing a burger king crown and playing with cars. This had nothing to do with science and the purpose was to see the reaction from the cops and the public. However, I think that Casey is a perfect example. He fuses art and technology together perfectly, using computers to create his art. He is dedicated to his work and interested in the public’s reaction, but enjoys what he’s doing and does it for the art. Plus, Casey is the one using math and art instead of using a mathematician to create the formulas. Steve used scientists in his projects but didn’t do any of the science by himself.
I thought the lecture this week was very interesting and I especially was interested in the history of the number zero and the fractals. I researched more about how zero was created and the meaning. Something that I found out was the even though we start counting from 1, computers have used the number zero as the starting point when counting. A lot of programming languages are making the change to start from zero and it’s becoming a popular starting point.
Here’s and interesting link I found about Casey and the work he’s done.
http://acg.media.mit.edu/people/creas/

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Grace Tang - Week 2

This week's lecture was centered around Mathematics, Perspective, Time and Space. Casey Reas's lecture was pretty interesting as it demonstrated only the cusp of what a combination of art and mathematics would be. The simple equations of adding and multiplying and shapes such as lines and circles are used in his process program to produce images that were always changing by painting over itself. One of the examples he showed an organic sense to me and reminded of the films showed in biology class about cells growing and expanding. I never ever had a liking for math, seeing that I always associated it with the never-ending boring amounts of time spent in tutoring and prep classes. If there's a class made for simple everyday math used, such as doing taxes, then I'll take it.
The Mandelbrot set looks insanely complicated but it uses simple math such as adding and multiplying, but doing so a million time or more. The equation for it is: Z=z2 + C (there are arrows on either side of the equation sign). What results is a weird bug looking shape that is black in the interior yet different colors are used to display the outside and its complexity. I did not like the film Mandelbrot: The Psychedelic World of Fractals. The dizzying displays are what my friend who will remain anonymous described as: “Is this what it's like to get high?” For a pattern that repeats itself over and over again, funky things can be done to it and I'd prefer Reas's art as a screen saver or desktop picture over Mandelbrot's set any day.
I loved the video Professor Vesna showed in class about Martin Escher. The added sounds and animation make it a bit more silly and entertaining. It was interesting to see the artist's influence from the rooftops and the coastal scenery of Italy to the Islamic motifs in Alhambra, Spain be turned into his obsessiveness about repeating patterns and designs. What was memorable about the film was when comparing the two black and white ducks which fitted each other like a puzzle. I recall the the commentator described it as 'one tail turned up while the other tail turned down'.
Professor Vesna's lecture included a section on Buckminster Fuller, seeing that she used Bucky balls in one of her works. Fuller wanted the geodesic dome to be an alternative and possible replacement to the homes we have now. He questioned the square structures and their inefficiencies and noted how nature used other shapes such as triangles, octagons and what not to build itself. He even went as far to propose huge domes that would cover parts of New York city. The domes would keep parts of the city warm in the fall and winter and shield the inhabitants from snow, rain, and other harsh elements. Although I do not imagine that happening anytime soon, however, I do remember this:

Yes, little kids climbing around this structure all day certainly proves how strong the geodesic dome really is. One of the largest Geodesic dome structure today is the Eden Project which houses two artificial biomes. Interestingly, the domes were built of old and re-used china clay.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eden_Project

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Juliet Lee - Week 2

http://users.skynet.be/J.Beever/pave.htm

Mathematics and art in my opinion have a closer relationship with each other than does mathematics and science. The science that we try to connect in our class is scientific technology and the newest advances that scientists are studying today. That is why I think that I had an easier time understanding Thursdays’ guest speaker, Carl Reas, more than Steve Kurtz’s lecture. However, if math related art is that of geometry and symmetry than I can see that relationship easily. But does art have a connection with all of mathematics? Like the higher division mathematics, statistics, calculus; and what is the mathematics behind perspective? When drawing perspective, I thought that all you needed was a vanishing point and a ruler. Other than that I really enjoyed looking at the work of Escher, the way that he created art is quite unique. Every time that I see one of his pieces I can stare at it for a long time and let my eye wander over the scene and marvel at the fact that he drew these images from hand without the aid of a computer. Not that a computer cannot create art, as I have learned this past week. Looking at Mandelbrot and his fractals was incredible. I have never actually seen or heard about him and it was fascinating to see how the image seems to go on to infinity. In my mind it is the image that goes along with pi (3.14…). There might be an ending but we have yet to find it in the image or in the number of pi.

I very much enjoyed the work of Carl Reas and liked the way that he broke down his art to how he starts and develops his work through computer language. It was neat to hear that he works with two different mind sets that help him achieve his end goal. Before I did not think that the computer could generate art like that, no more than what we would enter into a paint program, or the linear lines that the first screensavers made. It made me think about not just the literal idea of perspective and its development in the Renaissance, but of our mental perspectives now on what art is exactly and how we can go about creating new types of art. An artist I found online while looking up perspective is Julian Beever. He creates sidewalk chalk drawings that look like he is drawing into the ground, or something sitting on top of the sidewalk. It is an incredible sight. It is called anamorphic illusions, which are drawn to look three dimensional when looked at from a certain angle. I thought that this was a different take on the use of perspective in art, and it takes a fresh new eye to see the possibilities of this kind of art. It makes me wonder what else is out there that we have yet to see and discover.

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Michael Nguyen - Week 2

I found this week’s lectures on perspective especially interesting because I never asked myself when artists were first able to progress from the flattened 2D images to more realistic three dimensional spaces. What stood out to me was that although Giotto attempted linear perspective using intuition, it wasn’t widely adopted until Brunnelleschi formally described it, highlighting the close relationship between math and art.

What’s ironic to me is that statement that Escher felt closer to scientists than to artists because I sometimes feel the opposite. Although most of my classes are in the sciences and I am genuinely interested, it doesn’t give me as much satisfaction as when I’m working on something artistic. One of the downsides to studying science is that synthesis of something novel is difficult without first mastering the topic whereas in art, anyone can participate at any level. Being able to create something on my own fills a void that studying o-chem or biology presents. Either way, Escher has always been one of my favorite artists/scientists and one of his works sits above my desk:

The ability for science to create something genuinely beautiful can be seen in Mandelbrot’s fractals. The tie that I made between fractals and Professor Reas’ work is that both are very organic even though the coding that lies beneath the surface is mathematic and quite simple. I mentioned in class that some of the movements and behaviors coded by Professor Reas reminded me of the movement patterns exhibited by bacteria swimming around on a plate. This picture that I’ve had for a while (original source unknown) might seem as though it was generated from a Mandelbrot set, but it’s actually a piece of broccoli:

This goes to show that even as technology progresses and has the capacity to boggle the mind, it still reverberates with nature and the extremely simple.

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Kevin Yackle - Week 2

I really enjoyed last week’s lecture and guest speaker. It is truly interesting to see how intertwined mathematics and art really are. During Tuesday’s lecture I kept thinking about the Golden ratio and how this is a perfect example of how art and mathematics intersect.

Adolf Zeising was a philosopher and mathematician who studied the golden ratio in nature. He found many examples of it and claimed that the Golden Ratio was a universal law within nature. He stated:

“[A universal law] in which is contained the ground-principle of all formative striving for beauty and completeness in the realms of both nature and art, and which permeates, as a paramount spiritual ideal, all structures, forms and proportions, whether cosmic or individual, organic or inorganic, acoustic or optical; which finds its fullest realization, however, in the human form”.

The Golden Ratio has found itself throughout history. The Great Pyramids and many Greek temples were created with the Golden Ratio in mind. This ratio has even permeated the art of great artists like Leonardo Da Vinci in his painting “Mona Lisa”. If you want to check out how the Golden Ratio is involved in these architectural pieces and art you can find them here: http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/~demo5337/s97b/art.htm.

However, after doing a little more research and reading on Adolf Zeising and the Golden Ratio I became a little unsettled. If the Golden Ratio is the only way that something can be perfectly beautiful, then how could new creative art be invented which is also beautiful? At first I thought that that was a ridiculous question to even ask, but the more I thought about the Ratio it seemed so powerful. It was unsettling to imagine that a particular Ratio has proven the test of time and permeated so many cultures ranging form the some of the oldest to relatively modern times and has been used by so many great artists. Perhaps the Golden Ratio is too perfect and too pleasurable and will always be involved in our art and cultures. I think that art can be amazing when it is intersected with science, but I also think it is the job of the artist to explore the boundaries of and ideas that math has perhaps not investigated.

On a completely different note, I wanted to pose a quick thought and play the devil’s advocate about Fuller’s quote about science and art. I find it paradoxical that some artists use math to dictate their art and are limited by the boundaries of art. However, as Fuller’s quote states the more we learn about science the more it become art. I think that this is particularly true in the field of quantum mechanics. The more you try to explain the movement of sub-atomic particles the more one has to approximate. There is no way to truly define the trajectories of these particles. Thus, it does seem unexplainable, and seems to fit many of the stereotypes of art. Specifically that it doesn’t have to be explainable. So, what I am trying to say is that the more we learn about the science, the more we are learning that perhaps we cannot explain it precisely and almost have to observe its nature as art instead of mathematics. And if this is true, then it seems backwards that artists are confining themselves by math to create art because math cannot confine nature, whose beauty artists are often trying to reflect.

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Michael Nguyen - Week 1

After reviewing Professor Vesna’s Tuesday lecture and C.P. Snow’s article on the two cultures, it is even more evident to me that the current situation at UCLA conspires to maintain the division between art and science. Although it is generally an ideological separation, it can sometimes be a physical separation:

Anyone else have to go from Broad to Young Hall in 10 minutes while fighting through the crowds?!

Most students are aware of the division between our North and South campuses, but rarely is anyone concerned about the implication. It is generally accepted these two communities can peacefully coexist but integration is beyond the current realm of imagination. Students who support the idea of unity between the two cultures and campuses might not be wholly aware of what that entails or its challenges. Last quarter, there was a “North vs. South Campus War” that was meant to be a fundraiser for the Hunger Project. Details can be found at the Daily Bruin: http://www.dailybruin.com/news/2007/feb/28/campus_hunger_project/

The organizers claim that the events (jousting, trivia competition, talent show) help to “foster campus community by giving people the opportunity to identify with their side of campus.” I would imagine that reinforcing stereotypes and pitting students against each other would be one of the worst ways of building campus unity even though some of the participants thought otherwise:

“David Luong, a fourth-year biochemistry student who participated in the joust on Tuesday, said he believes the event “is a good idea to try and build campus unity.”

The common bond that’s easiest to identify for students at UCLA is the general college experience. Whether it’s staying up late to write a lab report or English paper, students experience the same challenges regardless of their concentration. Unfortunately, students from the different campuses rarely identify with each other and instead, often antagonize each other. The common belief by science majors is that North Campus majors are much easier and not as legitimate. This stems from the fact that a 5 unit English class might have 4 papers and no tests while a 2 unit Virology lab can have weekly quizzes, midterm, final, lab reports and lab notebook.

The physical separation of classes, reinforcement of stereotypes, and unequal assignment of credit for classes all contribute to an environment that is not conducive to unifying art and science. Regardless of these challenges, I hope to get out of this class a better understanding of the common ground between art and science. The first step was attending the lecture by Steve Kurtz and screening the film by Lynn Hershman Leeson.

I was impressed by the amount of technology and science that the Critical Art Ensemble used in their projects. Kurtz emphasized that there are forces which are trying to limit the public’s freedom of expression and access to knowledge. My gut reaction to the projects which involved spraying bacteria into the environment and using transgenic yeast to make bread and beer was one of shock and concern. With a background in microbiology and virology, I’ve studied the power of microbes to cause diseases and affect our environment. I immediately questioned whether the projects were safe and thus identify with those who initially oppose the actions of the CAE. As the lecture progressed, Kurtz showed that collaboration with scientists ensured that projects were safe and scientifically sound.

The film Strage Culture about Steve Kurtz’s ordeal with the justice system served to highlight the existence of powers which threaten both the freedom of artists and scientists alike. Although I sympathize with Kurtz and believe that there is some hidden agenda to make him into an example, I don’t think that it’s completely unjustified. Biotechnology in the wrong hands can be used as a tool to create biological weapons and Kurtz doesn’t adequately address this aspect. While I wholeheartedly support an artist’s freedom of expression, my scientific background wants to limit widespread access to the tools of biotechnology simply because there is a great potential for abuse.

This “fear” that I have about the abuse of biotechnology is probably also widespread among the general public. I would imagine that those who are not as familiar with the technology are even more fearful. Whether or not the fear stems from knowledge about biotechnology’s powers of the stereotype of the mad scientist is debatable. I think it’s important to realize that this fear is driving the “culture of science” further from the norm. As the class continues to explore the subject of art, science, and technology, I hope to be able to develop some ideas of how to reconcile this increasing division.

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