Daniel Baker - Week 10 - The Sublime in Space, Plasma, and Art

Of the many facts that Walter Gekelman discussed in this week’s lecture, one seemed to stand out as a symbol for the weekly subject: the idea that their our 100 billion galaxies in our universe, each with 100 billion stars each, meaning there are 100 billion x 100 billion stars in the universe. That’s a lot of stars. This statement, seemingly hidden amongst the various facts and comments about plasma, left a strong impact in the middle of the lecture. It was one of those moments where you realize just how unfathomably large our universe, and how tiny and relatively unimportant we are. Even if one’s actions significantly change the whole globe, our planet is just a microscopic fraction of the entire universe, so do our actions really count for anything? But it is also a positive realization as well, immensely freeing for our lives are so short, and we are so small, that every little moment counts and it seems ridiculous to waste any part of our lives, years, or even day. With so little to change, how can we sit around idly without even being responsible for our fraction of the universe that we actually can make a difference upon? It is an important job being tiny and relatively meaningless.

This is the art in space. Yes, there is the art that takes advantage of the physical characteristics of a dark vacuum or weightlessness, but what is really the art that is beautiful is that which utilizes the philosophical implications of space. The idea of space is both incredibly frightening and intensely intriguing, and therefore becomes a sublime subject in the realm of art. The sublime feeling of terror (but unreal terror) and pleasure that kicks in when confronted with something incomprehensible has been a popular subject of art for centuries. Caspar David Friedrich, one of the most well known painters of the sublime around 1840 is one such example.

His works deal with the sublime qualities found in nature, in the vast landscapes that both overwhelm and stimulate. These same feelings can be found in space, in its philosophical implications and its artistic representations.

The symposium on Tesla seemed to bring up some similar issues of the sublime in the inventor’s work. In the last speaker’s presentation on the Nevada Lightning Lab, there were descriptions on the new research center for the lab, featuring the largest Tesla Coils ever conceived. The size and power of the proposed coils are powerful enough to create actual bursts of lightning that split through atoms, a phenomenon called Relativistic Runway Breakdown that as of now, only occurs in real lightning bolts. These massive structures that have the power to mimic nature clearly conjure up feelings of the sublime, bringing forth ideas of both terror and a desire for more. Both Tesla’s works as well as the Nevada Lightning Lab’s deal with huge and almost magical concepts, creating an intimidating and fearful buzz surrounding their ideas, yet the scientists continuously yearn to delve deeper.

What seemed interesting in Gekelman’s conversation on plasma is that in order to understand the nature of the universe, one must look at an extremely small scale. All of Gekelman’s research is driven by the release of tinier and tinier sensors measuring the smallest characteristics of the subject. The item under inquiry is so small that special visualization techniques must be employed in order to understand what is going on at such a microscopic level. Similarly, art that deals with space must use some sort of method to display the hugeness of space in way that we can comprehend. Both areas rely on art to be able to comprehend ideas that are out of our normal range of cognition. Both the incredibly huge quality of space and the incredibly small quality of plasma provoke the same feelings of the sublime. Each is powerful and yet intriguing, and interestingly both deal with getting closer to understanding the fundamentals of the universe, but from completely opposite directions.

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Week 10, section 4

Even though it's the most overused quote, I think I like it a lot: "Space, the final frontier." There are SO many visions that are conjured up when we think of space and many of them are futuristic. UFOs are always considered beings with far advanced technology when compared to our own; as mentioned in lecture, earlier views of space were the ability to do more with technology than what we have. After all, we use the words "space-age technology" to define things that are way past our abilities to create. Now that I have drawn this connection, I'm going to quickly talk about future technology and art just because it's on my mind. The future and art have a very interesting connection in that, to a large degree, artists create what people perceive to be the future of technology. Concept technologies like concept cars represent awesome future technologies and now there is such thing as a "futurist" who visualizes and estimates what the future is going to be. In the end, it takes a dreamer, an artist, to make these things while scientists are caught up doing what's already been done a little bit differently. (END TANGENT)
In the 1950's, during the atomic age, people were very interested in going to space, colonizing planets and even the moon. In the children's book at right, you can see an artist's interpretation of going to the moon. I remember, in fact, as a child, how much Star Wars' futuristic spaceships that were shaped like jets influenced my playing. I used to make Lego versions of the cruisers and fight with others but the point is that it was the media version of the future that I took to be the actual future.
Unfortunately, I didn't get to see the speaker for this week, but I did have the pleasure and disappointment of going to the Tesla event. I felt that there was a very well defined artistic side of the event but barely any science side. Still, I enjoyed understanding how much Tesla influenced and was influenced by art. I feel like Tesla was not really linked at all to the lady who showed her work with the electromagnet but simply used the idea of Tesla's invention in her work which I don't feel is truly relevant; there was an undercurrent of her simply trying to promote her art rather than appreciate the means to her art. However, the woman who spoke of "Resonance" seemed to have a much closer relation to him and seemed much more in touch, even though she remarked at the beginning that there was more than just Tesla in her art show. Finally, best of all, I liked the man who created Tesla coils as his work seemed closest to Tesla's, not only by the mere fact that he made Tesla coils, but by the fact that he had a purpose to help people. In other words, in making his giant Tesla coils, his goal was to ultimately simulate lightning as found in nature so as to improve the safety of vehicles. He mentioned other entertainment based applications, but this was just for the sake of funding which ultimately is another important aspect of his work. It is very likely that one will find a person who makes Tesla coils but if you ask what their reason for it is, they will tell you it is for fun or to experiment around with. None of these things are really useful to humanity and so you wonder what possible use a Tesla coil could have. It is only until you meet someone like this speaker that you actually feel how important work in the development of high voltage electronics is.
Now I'd like to speak to the affect this class has had on me, because I'm sure it is valuable knowledge to whatever TA or professor reads this. Before, I had the understanding that science and art were completely separate realms. I would get very defensive when my "artsy" friend worked on engineering based projects because I felt that an artist could not possibly know science better than I. However, as this class progressed, I started understanding that it is the artists that create dreams and the scientists that can make them happen. This doesn't mean that scientists can't dream and that artists can't advance science, but it means that everyone has a little scientist and a little artist in them, causing a varying amount of creativity and productivity. I learned from this class that these things are mixed in all areas and should be delighted in rather than feared.

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Annie Wu- Week 10

When I first learned that this week’s topic was going to be about space exploration, gravity, and macro & micro cosmos, I could not really understand how these things related to art and design. Of course, there is some kind of artistic quality, or aspect, about the innovations that are constantly being created to send into space, but the definite connection between art and space just did not really stand out to me right away.

After learning about it more, I realized that art and design really seem to affect all different aspects of life, even space exploration; it is going as far to even contribute new ideas to space exploration and the future possibilities regarding space habitats. Space artist Pierre Comte’s project “Biospace 1, 1991” deals with the idea of having inflatable space structures, developed for the prospects of human habitation in outer space. There would be a total of two launches into space. The first launch would send a cylindrical module into space, containing essential equipment such as the power supply, remote control, and more. The second launch would send another module into space, except this one would contain the inflatable structures. The two modules would meet in space and after connecting, they would move farther apart as the structures would begin to inflate. After everything is done inflating and automatically “setting up,” the entire structure would become operational and functional. Astronauts would then be able to deal with the insides of the structure however they wanted—they would be decorating the interior like as if it were a house on Earth. It is so interesting to see how art can inspire people to create structures like this, to motivate them to invent new ways of living.
http://www.spacearts.info/en/db/get_work.php?id=810

Another thing I realized about space art is that it has the capability to really force people to experience and perceive space in completely new senses. In Louise K. Wilson’s installation, “Terra Firma, 1996,” she stages the setting of a laboratory. She used documentation from an experiment concerning motion sickness, which she had observed how the human body reacted with the space around it while being moved around (for example, spinning around in a chair). Wilson’s installation is meant to involve the viewers, for they are supposed to interact with the setting by listening to the audio documentation of the motion sickness experiment, watch the visual recordings, and read the written documents. Wilson probably engaged in this experimental study because of J.G. Ballard’s idea of “the state of humans in weightlessness as ‘a forced return to infantile dependency.’” The viewers in the installation have to analyze Wilson’s role in the experiment; not only that, but they also get to see space presented in a new way. By participating in the installation, the viewers get to see how Wilson physically interacts with the zero gravity environment surrounding her and the effects of her actions. They are able to see space in a way they are not accustomed to, and consequently, they also get to witness a different experience of the human body.
http://www.spacearts.info/en/db/get_work.php?id=619

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Week 9 - Daniel Baker - Feeling is Believing

In James Gimzewski’s lecture on Wednesday, he mentioned as he described the Scanning Tunneling Microscope that “Feeling is believing.” This statement seems to be imperative to a field like nanotechnology, where the traditional observational sense of sight has become useless. As mentioned in “The Nanomeme Syndrome” article, the idea that ‘seeing is believing’ has become obsolete; a strange new sensation for a culture that relies so heavily on sight within daily interactions. Just like Gimzewski stated, we experience the world (and science) through sensors: interactions with machines and people, and these sensors are changing in the realm of nanotechnology. Modern day is full of visual stimuli, and while the other senses are of course important, it seems as if the sense of sight is most vital. Advertisements, street signs, clothing: everything is geared to first appeal to our sense of sight. Art as well is dominated by the presence of sight, for in order to observe a typical piece of art, one usually only uses their eyes. (“Look but don’t touch!” rings a bell) But in a world where our eyes just do not cut it, this dominant sense is transferred from vision to touch, augmenting the standard way we perceive the world.

The Scanning Tunneling Microscope’s use of a small needle to touch the atoms in order to sense them essentially uses touch in order for us to “see”. It is linked to the neurological occurrence of synesthesia, a condition where people’s senses begin to blend together. Someone diagnosed with synesthesia could report that they can taste music, or that colors have a certain texture to them, fusing the senses together in a similar way the one may “see” what the Scanning Tunneling Microscope “feels.” The condition offers a unique way of perceiving the world. Interestingly, people who have synesthesia understand the occurrence to be completely natural, and do not see anything strange about it, something that is quite the opposite for people who do not observe the world in such ways. Now scientists are being forced into understanding the world through these terms, using touch as a dominant sense, yet they result to purely visual forms in order to explain their findings.

A test to see if a person has synesthesia (the one on the right is an example of what an affected patient might see)

Another area that Gimzewski presented that also shows links to synesthesia is the appearance of music based theories in these new fields. Quantum mechanics and string theory both employ the fundamentals of sonic vibrations to explain their occurrences, creating a bridge between sound and vision. In order to “see” the truth and draw a mental picture, the sights of sound (waves) are used as explanation. One must draw from many senses in order to fully comprehend the theories. The traditional visual form is starting to become inadequate to comprehend the intricacies of the universe. Visual art no longer is an accurate portrayal of the world like it used to be, for we are getting to the point where science is making it clear that there is much more required to understand our lives and what we are made of than simple visualizations. The qualities of these new fields seem to be leading society into a different mode of perceiving the world than what they are used to; it becomes more apparent that a larger dependence on other senses other than vision is required to understand and accept the fundamentals that make up life.

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Boris Lipkin - Week 9 - Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology seems to be the technology of the future. All of the fantastic things that we see in movies or read about in books is what nanotechnology hopes to achieve. The world right now is rigid, stiff, and inflexible. Nanotechnology offers the key to make it malleable and easier to control and change things. The possibilities for nanotechnology offer everything from a cure to cancer to the elimination of carbon emissions.
I think one of the most interesting projects in the works for nanotechnology are nanoshells. Nanoshells are tiny hollow spheres that are only a few nanometers in size. They can be used to physically destroy cancer. The problem with cancer is that while most cells have a timing mechanism as to when they are supposed to die, cancerous cells don’t have that so they spread out destroying the body. How nanoshells work is they are covered with antibodies and inserted (probably injected) into the body. They would then attach themselves to the cancerous cells. After they are attached, a laser is pointed at the skin of the person and while it does not do any harm to the skin it heats up the nanoshells. As the nanoshells heat up they literally end up cooking the cancer cells to death. This process is pretty painless and would be able to destroy cancerous cells intravenously without causing harm to the person like chemotherapy does.
Nanotechnology has the potential to change the world and just as the internet and telecommunications did in the 1990s. The impact that nanotech could have on society is immeasurable, the problem is that I don’t know how long it will be before that impact can be felt. While it seems to be right around the corner, the technology might be anywhere from years to decades (I hope not centuries) away. I’m sure that the struggles that we face now regarding nanotechnology will be looked at by people in the 22nd century as we now look at the early computers that took up rooms and did less than today’s graphing calculator. It’s amazing how far technology has advanced since even I have been alive, which is less than twenty years. I remember listening to records and not having a computer at home when I was growing up. Now I listen to an iPod and don’t know anyone at UCLA who does not have a laptop, let alone a computer. It’s amazing how far we’ve come in such a short period of time and it’s just as exciting to see where we will be twenty years from now, with lots of nanotechnology I hope.

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Nanotech.

The work of physicist-turned-artist Julian Voss-Andreae which demonstrates that even objects as large as Buckminsterfullerenes obey the peculiar laws of quantum physics. [wikipedia link]

If I had to come up with my own definition of nanotechnology, it would be the study, analyzing, or producing of really, really small stuff. And as simple and maybe even idiotic as that definition might be I feel that it is as general as it can get to cover the wide range of fields nanotechnology is already integrated with. From science, to art, to tennis racquets, it seems that nanotechnology is everywhere, whether we see it or not (ha-ha-ha). So it's not too surprising that nanotechnology can be found in the art world.

The ever so popular buckyballs. Did you know there was a buckyball theme as an option for the myucla page before it got revamped? (I had it for my background for a little while =D) We saw more examples through Professor Vesna and Professor James Gimzewski work with buckyballs in Inner Cell. While searching through the internet I found a picture of Julian Voss-Andreae's Quantum Reality (Large Buckyball Around Trees). A physicist who researched buckyballs and quantum physics, turning the science he knew into art. I find it fascinating that such a scientific model, the fullerene, a molecular model of the structure of carbon atoms, is being used in such artistic ways. The geometric "perfectness" of the structure also reminds me of the mathematical patterns and precision of Maurits Escher's work we discussed earlier in the quarter.

During discussion we also found out about claytronics, programmable matter, or in simpler terms electronic playdough. This idea of having tons of little tiny capsule like pieces that work together to form whatever you would like is amazing. If this type of technology actually reaches production in my lifetime I just can't wait to see the effects it will have in not only the art world, but the entire world. As cheesey as the info video was, I could only imagine what else you can do with that type of medium.

Nanotechnology is all over the science world, and in many ways artists are using nanotechnology in their art to make this new science more acceptable to the masses. Just like it was said in lecture, how much of the population actually knows about nanotechnology? Ipod nanos are really the only thing some might know about nanotech. There are many things unknown to the public about nanotechnology but there is some things that can be questioned about what is being done to further the reasearch of nanotech. A funny example Professor Gimzewski had mentioned was the production of a nano wheel, a nano wheelbarrow, and what the heck you could put in a nano wheel barrow. I feel that we have a long way to go with nanotechnology and so much more to learn and discover.

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Kelly Banh- Nanotechnology and Art

Nanotechnology in the art world has taken many forms. From DNA to other atomic and molecular structures and even shapes in nature, artists have used natural inspiration to create nanotech art. Some have played off of Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic dome, and others have worked off of plants and flowers. One of my favorite pieces is from Ghim Wei Ho of the University of Cambridge Nanoscale Science Laboratory. Ghim Wei Ho, who used a scanning electron microscope, chemical vapor deposition, and Adobe Photoshop, has produced pieces like Nano flowers and Nano trees.

This is a nano flower bouquet, “three-dimensional nanostructure grown by controlled nucleation of silicon carbide nanowires”

These are nano trees.

Pretty pictures- so what?
An article featuring the interactive exhibit of Professor James Gimzewski and Victoria Vesna explains just that. The PBS NewsHour article, “Nano: Where Art Meets Science,” discusses how art can makes science more understandable. This is definitely one of the reoccurring themes throughout the quarter. The relationship between science and art runs deeper than just art used in science and science used in art alone. It serves a greater purpose, and that is to aid the advancement or understanding of one (or both) by utilizing the other. Artists may not fully grasp the works of a scientist and vice-versa. So as a result, the two worlds could have remained isolated. The consequences of this were taught early on in the class after reading C.P. Snow’s article about bridging the gap and moving beyond specialization.
The idea of nanotechnology and art colliding is also symbolically represented. Take nanotechnology- “a field of applied science and technology covering a broad range of topics. The main unifying theme is the control of matter on a scale smaller than 1 micrometre, normally between 1-100 nanometers, as well as the fabrication of devices on this same length scale.” Art has the ability to represent ideas and concepts, as well as things that are concrete. It brings the attention of its audience to topics that may otherwise go unnoticed. It is able to project from a small inspiration and grow; perhaps even continuing to grow after the work of art is completed by the artist in the minds of its viewers. With nanotechnology being so small, art is able to project large ideas from it. Perhaps it will continue to go unnoticed if not influenced by the grand abilities of art to reach a greater audience. In this way, the union of art and science is symbolized the projection of a small scientific concept into a large display of art.
A 2003 National Geographic news article also covered this union. (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/12/1223_031223_nanotechnology.html) It began the article with the say, “seeing is believing,” which is a bit ironic considering the properties of nanotechnology and how it cannot be detected by the naked human eye. Science makes it visible, and art, you can say, makes the science which makes whatever it is that is so miniscule also visible. Professor Vesna is also featured in the article, stating, “This new science is about a shift in our perception of reality from a purely visual culture to one based on sensing and connectivity.” I am intrigued by this “perception of reality.” If art comes to a point of interpretation based on every individual, where exactly is this shift taking place?

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Annie Wu- Week 9

The development of nanotechnology is without a doubt going to benefit humankind. This science and technology are conducted at such a minute and complex scale that there are so many possibilities for the future. However, also due to its extremely small scale, the implications of nanotechnology are difficult for many to understand and to fully accept. Without visualizations of what is taking place at the molecular and atomic scale, it is hard to believe that nanotechnology can result in so many helpful innovations, that it can actually bring about great changes in the world.

Honestly, before this week’s discussion on nanotechnology, I really had no idea what it was really about. I knew that it was science done at the molecular state, but that was about it. The concept of nanotechnology seems pretty amazing to me now, because of how much we can achieve with it. It seems to be so unthinkable that there is actually the possibility of effectively fighting against cancers, or other diseases, with the developments of nanotechnology. Instead of actually physically having to remove the areas infected with cancerous cells from the body, now there could be a way to directly fight against the cancers, internally. With nanotechnology, cancer treatments would not only be more effective, but they would probably be less painful. Hopefully nanotechnology will reach the point where we can use it in medical treatments without having any doubts of its abilities.

Not only can nanotechnology greatly improve the human’s defense against diseases and other threats to the body, but it can also help improve our environments. They can really be used to “gain greater performance and new capabilities in green technologies,” to clean up the air, water, and soil in our surroundings. Also, with the advancements in nanotechnology, we can be more efficient with our resources. Nanotechnology can help us generate energy, as well as, reduce waste. I feel like we really need these nanotechnology developments, because honestly, humans have really changed the Earth, and it has not necessarily been for the better. The amount of living space is decreasing, as the human populations grow and proliferate. With more and more people becoming “modernized,” more vehicles are used, thus resulting in the mass emissions of harmful gases into the atmosphere. Our ozone layer is depleting due to the harmful gases released into the air from human activities, which are also spurring global warming. There is more waste on Earth and we are running out of places to dump it. Basically, we have been polluting and wasting our resources, and we need some way to conserve and to regenerate them. With nanotechnology, we can save and make the most of whatever we have left. Also, we can make the world a cleaner and healthier place to live in, and maybe even contribute to helping out areas of poverty.
http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif


With nanotechnology, the possibilities for the future are seriously endless. I think it is so interesting how nanotechnology can even affect art. These two areas are so seemingly different that at first, I could not really see how they relate. However, now I realize nanotechnology has the potential to really further art. For example, with claytonics, art will be THAT much closer to representing reality. It would be a closer representation of reality, compared to something like sculpture or a lifelike painting. Also, claytonics requires human interaction, in order to mold and shape things. By having to interact with claytonics, viewers would get a firsthand experience of creating art themselves, thus drawing some kind of reaction from them. And isn’t that what art is all about? Interaction and discovery. From nanotechnology/claytonics, people would truly get a new sense of what art is all about, because it is “synthetic reality.” It seems as though representation and reality are bridged that much closer; because of nanotechnology, people would have another way to perceive the real.

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Tygue Luecke-Week 8-ROBOTS ARE NOT OKAY!!!

Due to the fact that we spoke about so many revolutionary discoveries and inventions this week (and I have to admit that I am thinking mostly about the discovery of Watson and Crick, considering that I have studied them many, many times prior to this week), I want to mention how desensitized we have all become to such advances. I mean, I feel like I hear about such things on the news all the time these days. Whether they are actually occurring, or even if they are merely being mentioned, they seem to be invading our televisions and newspapers constantly. I wonder how many of these things that we are told are truly revolutionary will (1) be treated with the same respect and weight Watson and Crick’s discovery and (2) hold up in time like so many of the things we have learned about this week. This all makes me wonder what it would have been like to grow up in an age when technological innovation was not nearly so ubiquitous. I feel like it would be a more exciting time in which to be raised. I cannot even fathom how amazing it would have been to see the moon landing in 1969, and now we learn about people who create bionic arm art exhibits and grow third ears in class on a bi-weekly basis. I don’t even know how impressed I would be if we were to someday land on Mars. How sad.

I don’t know about you guys, but I always wonder what it would be like if a person from around 1900 were to see one of those super-long buses here in LA, or something equally futuristic looking.

This is one of those things that makes me that we just know too much:

http://www.limblengthening.com/news/reccforpincare.html

I am a big fan of plastic surgery, and yet somehow this just seems like too much. Hmm… now that I consider my affinity for plastic surgery, it might be wrong for me to think limb lengthening is just wrong. It might be. I don’t know.

Okay- now for reals: THIS is not okay:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article682284.ece

Frankly, growing skin over robotic limbs downright scares me. Remember Star Wars: Return of the Jedi? Well, not even Luke Skywalker gets skin. He has to make due with a leather glove. And he is from a galaxy far, far away. Hmm… maybe because he’s from a long, long time ago… That MUST be it, because there is seriously no way that we should have the ability to do anything they weren’t able to do in Star Wars. That, I am SURE, is not okay… at least with me. I suppose I’m not okay with a lot of scientific things, though. It’s mainly just robots.

On the subject of robots, robots are not cool. Robots will become FAR too complex FAR too quickly, and people will all too quickly start arguing for robot rights. UGH! Robots will NEVER deserve rights, no matter how much their inner processes may resemble human feeling. And this reminds me of our discussion of Eliza and Agent Ruby and networked consciousness. It’s all just wrong to me. Just wrong. So, basically, what I’m saying is: don’t support robots. They will be given TOO much credit, and might just take over the world. SO BEWARE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Tygue Luecke-Week 8-ROBOTS AE NOT OKAY!!!

Due to the fact that we spoke about so many revolutionary discoveries and inventions this week (and I have to admit that I am thinking mostly about the discovery of Watson and Crick, considering that I have studied them many, many times prior to this week), I want to mention how desensitized we have all become to such advances. I mean, I feel like I hear about such things on the news all the time these days. Whether they are actually occurring, or even if they are merely being mentioned, they seem to be invading our televisions and newspapers constantly. I wonder how many of these things that we are told are truly revolutionary will (1) be treated with the same respect and weight Watson and Crick’s discovery and (2) hold up in time like so many of the things we have learned about this week. This all makes me wonder what it would have been like to grow up in an age when technological innovation was not nearly so ubiquitous. I feel like it would be a more exciting time in which to be raised. I cannot even fathom how amazing it would have been to see the moon landing in 1969, and now we learn about people who create bionic arm art exhibits and grow third ears in class on a bi-weekly basis. I don’t even know how impressed I would be if we were to someday land on Mars. How sad.

I don’t know about you guys, but I always wonder what it would be like if a person from around 1900 were to see one of those super-long buses here in LA, or something equally futuristic looking.

This is one of those things that makes me that we just know too much:

http://www.limblengthening.com/news/reccforpincare.html

I am a big fan of plastic surgery, and yet somehow this just seems like too much. Hmm… now that I consider my affinity for plastic surgery, it might be wrong for me to think limb lengthening is just wrong. It might be. I don’t know.

Okay- now for reals: THIS is not okay:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article682284.ece

Frankly, growing skin over robotic limbs downright scares me. Remember Star Wars: Return of the Jedi? Well, not even Luke Skywalker gets skin. He has to make due with a leather glove. And he is from a galaxy far, far away. Hmm… maybe because he’s from a long, long time ago… That MUST be it, because there is seriously no way that we should have the ability to do anything they weren’t able to do in Star Wars. That, I am SURE, is not okay… at least with me. I suppose I’m not okay with a lot of scientific things, though. It’s mainly just robots.

On the subject of robots, robots are not cool. Robots will become FAR too complex FAR too quickly, and people will all too quickly start arguing for robot rights. UGH! Robots will NEVER deserve rights, no matter how much their inner processes may resemble human feeling. And this reminds me of our discussion of Eliza and Agent Ruby and networked consciousness. It’s all just wrong to me. Just wrong. So, basically, what I’m saying is: don’t support robots. They will be given TOO much credit, and might just take over the world. SO BEWARE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Kelly Banh- Beef and... ART?

All this talk about plantimals is a bit disturbing. Combining the genetics of different kingdoms to produce crazy hybrids- I’m not too sure I would approve. I’m going to hold off on my opinions about interbreeding organisms with a brain or consciousness and discuss the mixing of an apple and a steak (which really turned out to be an internet hoax. go figure… but then again, is this really far off?). Then, I’ll attempt to link this to art.
Presenting the “applesteak,” a “New fruit's taste/texture said to be indistinguishable from an apple, but with the genetics and nutrition of beef.” The fake article was created by Ward Nicholson, highlighting the potential dangers of such a creation, the competition the “applesteak” would create for the beef market, the disputes between vegetarians and animal rights groups that would arise, and ultimately, who gets to decide genes and food choices. As a side note, the article also touched on Brave New World as Professor Taylor mentioned during his guest lecture.
The article was commented about on beyondveg.com, where this blurb was also found: “Too bad wiser heads prevailed upon the author to label this as the spoof it actually is. Just imagine the hue and cry that could have resulted had this been let loose somewhere else on the Internet as real. Think of the chain postings on email diet listgroups netwide, the barrage of protest letters to biotech firms and Congress--the panic, the fear, the mayhem! Coulda, woulda, SHOULDA. Read it and weep.” Sure it was a scam, but to Nicholson, it was an expression, and possibly very well categorized as written artwork.
During discussion, we were presented with the video of meat cultured in a lab. Ward Nicholson’s article is not much different from that video. If we are able to culture meat in a lab, then perhaps with more research and experimenting, beef could grow on trees? What’s more important? The economic efficiency of such a product? The benefits of eating an apple with the nutrition of beef minus the harmful fats? Not killing cows for food? These are the types of questions that arise from exposure to focus on videos and articles like that of the lab-cultured meat and fake article of Ward Nicholson. Just as Orlan experimented with cosmetic reconstruction, the purpose of art is believed to evoke emotions and opinions on issues like man-made beef and unnecessary surgery.
So what of this man-made cow meat? It was an extremely difficult topic for the class. One of the things that was mentioned was that it would provide vegetarians with an alternative to eating “meat” without killing an actual animal. Personally, I wouldn’t support this. Vegetarianism is a choice, and if you are going to stand by the beliefs of true vegetarianism, then there shouldn’t be any loopholes. If people have been doing it for years without the aid of biotechnology, then it should be continued in such a manner. Many of my family members are religious vegetarians, and they have been perfectly content with the natural resources that they have been given. No need for imitation beef products and shrimp-looking tofu. That’s just… weird. An article like Ward Nicholson just shows how absurd it would be. Internet hoax… maybe. Or maybe artistic expression.

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Week 8 - Daniel Baker - Ethics and More

We have studied art that modifies the body from the outside in, now the focus turns to art that modifies from the inside out. This appears to be the section where the level and of science is surpassing the amount of “art” in the projects. Possibly, it is because biotechnology a hot topic in today’s society. Perhaps it is because the process of creating the art is actually creating new life, but this subject of genetic mutation for artistic appreciation prompts plenty of discussion, specifically on ethical terms. Take one of Eduard Kac’s other pieces, “Specimen of Secrecy about Marvelous Discoveries.” The piece is basically living organisms on display, like a zoo but in an art gallery. The project evolves and changes based upon changes in its environment, meaning guests walking past could transform its evolutionary path. This has a direct link to generative art, for in both, the artist sets up the scenario and lets the art to evolve and create itself. Here however, it is life that is evolving, not just a computer program or the ways in which a robot moves about a canvas.

As time and more experiments proceed, it becomes harder to distinguish where the separation between “art projects” and “science projects” lies. Take the “GFP Bunny” for example. It is clearly a breakthrough in science, but also is a breakthrough in art as well. It challenges the norms in both, successfully bringing up new questions in both the art realm and the science realm. What therefore makes the GFP Bunny into an artwork? Is it only art because an artist makes it? It was in fact, a collaboration between scientists and artists, therefore I would say it would lie under the categories of both. The only non-scientific part of the project was the fact that the artist wanted to take his work home with him afterwards, something that would be deemed unacceptable in the scientific world.

This leads us to question what ethical rules must be laid down in order to protect the art from the artist, for dealing with living creatures for art projects is quite different than using inanimate objects for art. What is even a tougher question that what these rules are, is the question of who has the right to make these rules? The government? The artist? The viewer? It is a large problem that I am not sure even where to begin to start solving it. For the realm of science, the government has already begun to take precautions to protect individuals’ rights over then genetics, as well as the recent debates about stem-cell research. But how would the government go about protecting against art? So far, the artists have not done many things that are that different from what scientists are doing, so the rules that apply to science have also fit into the realm of art. But what comes next? Will scientists claim themselves to be artists to create experiments that are not restricted by the government? After all, artists are supposed to express their opinion through their pieces, so who will have the nerve to tell them they must limit their artistic creativity?

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Week 8--Cui H. Cao--What is progress?

I was not ease while looking at the image of GFP (green fluorescent protein) Bunny during the lecture. Still, I am not ease now because deeply I feel sorry for the rabbit, whose gene had been manipulated and whose chance of surviving from the natural selection remained unknown.

Because of the scientific and technological progress, human beings are able to better controlling life by studying gene. Further on, because of all this "progress," artists had developed deeper insight in this genetic age. Here comes the transgenic art. Some artists thought the process of creating transgenic art is like painting on a canvas. "Similar to throwing paint at a canvas, the transgenic artist throws genes at living organisms and then waits to see what happens. "
However, this way of manipulaing life can't be taken as an expression of art at all. I admire the creativity of GFP Bunny's the arthor, as well as his knowledge and talent in both field of art and science. However, I don't consider this movement as a progress, neither in art or in science.

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Boris Lipkin - Week 8 - Biotechnology

While we talk about and learn new ideas each week, I keep on thinking about the Two Cultures in relation to each week’s guest speakers. In week 8, we had Chris Taylor from the EEB department talk to us. He discussed his very interesting research into the possibilities of stopping malaria infection in Africa and discussed the links that he saw between art and science. He brought up a performance by a scientist, Fiengold, and the need for artists in the scientific fields.
It amused me when Professor Taylor brought up how integral artists were in helping scientists present their research. Sure, they hired artists for these jobs but these are not scientist-artists or artist-scientists. These artists do not take part in any of the research that goes into the work done by the scientist. On top of that, the artists don’t even get to be true artists either. They have very little freedom for creativity and I’m sure must follow strict guidelines so that the art meets the requirements set out by the scientists that they work with. If anything, this probably furthers the divide between artists and scientists. In today’s world we do not expect a scientist to have the artistic know-how to be able to create the art that accompanies their research. The fact that they hire artists to present their research just shows how specialized today’s world is. The artists have a very specialized, commercialized task also that does not involve any active participation in the research being done. Hence the artists aren’t doing science and the scientists aren’t doing art. The same principle can be said of Fiengold’s “performance”, what he did was a scientific demonstration that would mean nothing to anyone outside of the scientific realm. It wasn’t a performance unless we want to count scientific experiments as performance pieces, which I don’t. The links that Professor Taylor tried to set up between art and science seemed very weak to me and did as much to spread the two fields apart as bring them together.
Looking back at past weeks, the same concepts can be seen throughout the course. The artists that were “scientists” such as Steve Kurtz, Casey Reas, and others simply used science or scientists in their art like Professor Taylor uses art to describe his science. To me, when we talk about science we talk about the research being done to gain more knowledge in whatever field of scientific inquiry. Thus the work of Steve Kurtz and Casey Reas does not qualify as science to me because while they use modern science or scientists in their work, they are not pushing the boundaries of human technology or advancing research. When Steve Kurtz works with scientists, I’m sure he uses them in a similar capacity as Professor Taylor uses artists: they are there to create one piece of his artwork using well-known techniques with little freedom of ideas. The scientists are there to serve a purpose; to fill a niche that is needed for a successful performance.
Looking through the first eight weeks of this class, I cannot find one example of a hybrid (not the transgenic art style) artist-scientist or scientist-artist. In my first blog I wrote about the splitting of the Two Cultures after the idea of the Renaissance Man, who was an expert in all trades including art, science, literature, etc. disappeared. I think this class has demonstrated how the divide has grown since we’re almost done and I still don’t have an example of someone who bridged the gap of the Two Cultures.

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Annie Wu- Week 8

This week’s topic is obviously a very controversial one; transgenic art is such a new idea that it is hard to accept and hard for people to apply to their daily lives. Personally, I still do not really know what to think of transgenic art and genetic engineering. I feel like there are so many possibilities in this area, because of the developed technologies, that sometimes it is hard to distinguish whether these advancements are for better or worse. I mean, inevitably, transgenic art and genetic engineering will be big parts of our future, taking the technology that we already have to another level. I feel like it is such a huge step that its influence on mankind, and life in general, is somewhat questionable. Transgenic art raises a lot of questions, such as, what is considered to be art, the definition of the physical body, and the ethics of this genetic practice.

Like we mentioned in discussion section, art is more about discovery rather than its visual appeal. I truly believe that the main aesthetic characteristic of art is how people relate to it, the relationship between the work and the viewers. Transgenic art is definitely an art form because of the reactions and emotions it evokes from viewers. When I first saw Eduardo Kac’s GFP Bunny, I was without a doubt instantly intrigued. Never had I seen a fluorescent green bunny before, other than in cartoons or drawings. What really amazed me was HOW this was possible. By simply tinkering with the genes within organisms, we are able to produce such interesting results. The process of genetic engineering is an art form itself, because of the consequences. Transgenic art is really able to draw some kind of reaction out of people, whether is it positive or negative. Also, it really expands the idea of what art is because transgenic art can apply to so many things and produce endless possibilities.

Because of transgenic art, it really does seem as if the body is becoming more obsolete. The physical body is no longer a restraint, seeing as to how it can easily be changed through the genes. Whereas Stelarc questions the definition of the body through his robotic extensions, genetic engineering questions the definition of the body by directly changing the body itself. If the body can be so easily changed through the adding of synthetic or natural genetic material, then what is the body’s purpose? What is its function, now genetic alterations supercedes it? Transgenic art really expands our perception of the physical world.

What is most controversial about transgenic art is the moral principle of it. To me, transgenic art is really interesting because it helps us to understand genes more and because of the many possibilities it offers us as humans. However, I do think that genetic engineering should not be tampered with too much; there has to be some kind of limitation. I do not think that it is our place as humans to play the role of God, to try to take life into our own hands. I am sure that genetic engineering would be very beneficial to humankind when it comes to dealing with diseases and other disabilities, but I do not think we should take advantage of this technology and try to overdo it within our lives. I do not think it would be necessary for us to created neon-colored house pets, or to make hybrids of organisms, such as plantimals. I think that would be us stepping over the boundary, where we use transgenic art superfluously.

In this article I found, it states, “Kac wants genetic manipulation to be viewed also as a form of artistic expression.” While I agree that genetic manipulation can be seen as an artistic expression, I do not believe that it should be taken advantage of. Yes, the process of genetic manipulation can be considered to be artistic, and the end results are provoking; however, I just don’t feel that life should be tampered with. In a way, this reminds me of Frankenstein, where Dr. Frankenstein acts as God and creates a living person on his own. It is something that is not natural and is simply not meant to be. I think only because of man’s pride and ambitions is genetic engineering a possibility.

http://www.cbhd.org/resources/bioethics/omathuna_2002-07-08.htm

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Tygue Luecke-Week 7-Dr. Scerri and other nonsense

Unfortunately, I was not in class on Monday due to a dental emergency, but I did hear about the "encounter" between Professor Vesna and Dr. Scerri. However, I took Dr. Scerri's Chemistry 14A course last quarter, so I'm very aware of his behavior. So, it came as no shock to me on Wednesday when he acted in his usual rude and self-absorbed fashion and treated Professor Vesna just about as poorly as he treated many of his chemistry students. Granted, Dr. Scerri is a brilliant man, and I'm sure his work has added a great deal to the scientific community; however, I do not feel that his intelligence makes up for his lack of manners, and I would like to commend Professor Vesna for behaving not only as a professional, but also as a kind and considerate human being even in the face of his appalling disregard for her very valid thoughts and opinions.

Now that I got that out, I suppose I should be moving on to actual material from discussion and lecture.

RISOME. This is something Zach briefly mentioned in discussion. I didn’t really understand what he was talking about, and I attributed this at least partially to my lack of sleep and subsequent lack of focus. However, I researched it a bit more, and it still makes absolutely no sense to me. If you’re reading this, and you want to figure out for yourself what this RISOME business is, check out this site:

http://risome.soc.surrey.ac.uk/conference.htm

The home page is trying to achieve some sort of Matrix aesthetic, but failing miserably. Random falling numbers and symbols from the Japanese phonetic syllabary do not look mysterious, nor are they pleasing to the eye. In fact, I feel this design just serves to undermine the seriousness and validity of the whole idea that is being explained. Okay, enough of that. I just can’t handle things that try so hard to be interesting and mysterious and aren’t. Anywho, if any of you readers (if there are any of you out there) want to give me the shorthand of this explanation, please feel free.

Now, Dr. Scerri, Dr. Scerri. Well, first off, I would like to say that, if what he said about ancient practitioners of Eastern religions/philosophies figuring out elements of modern quantum physics by way of enlightened meditation, I am extremely disappointed. Wouldn’t you think that enlightenment, if in fact something like this could be attained, would hold much more profound secrets than ones dealing with the momentum of falling bodies and other related things? Of course, I am seriously marginalizing the importance of physics for my point, but I am just deeply disturbed that laws of science would be the only things to be learned from nirvana. I am a religious man myself, so I suppose it would be expected of me to think such thoughts, but I cannot for the life of me believe that all there is to learn is more about our universe. As big as it may be in our human-conceived measurements, it just does not seem big enough to constitute all that there is and all that there ever will be.

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Week 7--Cui H Cao-- Mind Connects Everything

"while we may all operate as individuals, we also appear to share something far, far greater - a global consciousness. "--Dr Roger Nelson

I'm very interested in the topic of Global Consciousness Project. Though at the very first moment I couldn't believe that even scientists rationalize things in psychic ways, I think their ideas, which are still not fully expained, are all reasonable.

With the same situation, many artists are lived under stereotype and critisms that their abstract artworks and expressions are off-trail from the reality and so-called "normal life." Actually, every piece of artwork is presenting a piece or a collection of mind and consciousness. Mind connects everything. That's why an eastern viewer, who may have no knowledge of the western social and cultural backgrond, can fully understand western art; and that's why scientists are driven to fugure out the enigma of the global consciousness.

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The Mind and Consciousness

This week’s topic about the mind and consciousness is something that I wrestled with in the past and still do. The definition is consciousness varies with experts of different fields, or rather just different people in general. This is an interesting connection to art also because the definition of art can be widely interpreted. By simply being aware of things around you can be deemed as being conscious, but is it really true when ultimately you are the one to make that judgment about yourself? Or is it fair to let someone make that judgment about you if there is no concrete definition of what consciousness is?

We’ve now gone from the body as art to the mind and its mysterious ways as art and what I find fascinating in this transition is why the mind didn’t come before the body. I’m not trying to ask why we didn’t look at the mind before the body in this class, but why wasn’t it contemplated like the body, before the body in the world of art? Even artificial intelligence seems to follow bodily forms of art that date back ages. Like Stelarc, “The body is obsolete” without the mind and consciousness right (I understand that wasn’t his argument)? Is that not why the state of vegetation exists, thereby leaving room for us to decide whether or not to cut the life of a person or not, determining if they are obsolete or not?

Another issue relative to this that I’ve been seeing popping up over the internet is the emerging transgender issues. Some people have felt since birth, that they were “Born in the Wrong Body” http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18250458/. Some of these people feel in their minds that they are men, but their body tells them they are female, vice versa.

The issue even made front page of Newsweek last week: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18618970/site/newsweek/. The increasing number of youth coming out and telling their stories of being of or looking like one gender and feeling innately, in their minds another, makes us think more about the mind and its role on biological factors such as this.

Dr. Scerri lecture’s was one of the more understandable and interesting ones of all the guest lectures. Though it would have been better for visuals to compliment his lecture, I guess his lecture was still better than a few of the other ones. I especially liked his explanation of the state of mind to mind-altering drugs. The fact that we can leave our normal state of mind through these drugs and become oblivious to worry is wonderful, is it not? They would sure reduce a lot of unnecessary stress that we have become bogged down with, especially college students. But of course, such drugs are outlawed for their own complicated reasons.

Dr. Scerri also talked about his passion for music and in his story, I found myself relating to him. I learned to play the clarinet in middle school and though I don’t play it anymore I truly do feel that those few years of learning and playing music has had an impact on me mentally. I read online in the past that humming can even be soothing for people with Alzheimer’s. Its medical implications are unknown, but it has proven to help calm patients with Alzheimer’s. After all, Beethoven is one of the most renowned musical geniuses and he was deaf. That just goes to show that even mental or physical hindrances cannot hold back what music can do for a person or vice versa. Here, I can see a connection between the “Two Cultures.”

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Week 7

When I first came across this topic, I questioned its relevence to art. I find that, as a scientist, I view all things as science because it is easy to see how everything in nature abides by simple rules and patterns however, when it comes to art, definitions and distinctions become very blurred. The moment someone calls something art, it is as if it becomes so immediately. Additionally, anything beautiful in some way becomes art. For example, the human brain, consciousness and subconsciousness are all beautiful in that there is a mystery to all of these things but the very reason I would call them art is because they are science and the very beauty of science is that it is an uncharted road and so, in a way, our understanding and way of finding new things is a very artistic enterprise. However, perhaps this is just a matter of symantics. As time goes by and more experts present in this class and we go over more material, the definitions become less cloudy.
Anywho, the second reading was very interesting to me in that it referred to the idea of sequences and patterns that weren't really sequences or patterns like th numbers 2,4,6, 8,10,12,27. The thing I find interesting about this is that it is a study of itself; the human brain and the limitations of situations sometimes spawn artificial patterns because of familiar ideas and oftentimes we are wrong when it comes to patterns as things can appear to be in sequence when they are really not. In a similar way, this writing asserts that there is a pattern to our thinking as does the very science of behavioral sciences. In fact, as a whole, humanity as a whole works strikingly simple patterns and this is why we have such things as sciences. We all see things in differnt yet similar ways and this is how we are governed--by our similarities, not our differences. Judging by these similarities, it is easy to find very general to somewhat specific actions that people will take in certain situations. For example, I bet if someone tallied what a person gets from a cafe, it would nearly always be the same exactly or the same sequence of orders. If we took samples for longer, it is very likely that one could guess exactly what that person will order next. Mr. Bateson throws around, very frequently, the words "not predictable" but ultimately, predictability has a probabilistic nature to it; if someone predicts something, they do not know exactly that something is going to happen but rather can guess within reason that something is very likely to happen and so, to this length, I disagree with the author.
Interestingly enough, Varela and Bateson both talk about something that interests me--phenomenology. This relates to my outside research as there is was an interesting project by an artist named Shepard Fairey called the "Obey Giant campaign." I spoke about it last week but find it suprisingly related this week. To reiterate what it is, Fairey was trying to show his friend how to cut stencils and made one based off of an Andre the Giant poster. The first sticker he made said "ANDRE HAS A POSSY" which served as a joke. He later turned them into stickers and, to further the joke, put them on anything he could find. It was peoples' interpretations of the stickers and the symbols behind them that made the whole project. As it evolved and Andre's face became more stylized, the words "OBEY" were printed below his face and so it came to have an anti-establishment feeling to it and so while half of the people thought it was an awesome underground campaign set up for the purpose of rallying protestors to current situations (public policy, government people, and administrations), others thought it was a group whose purpose was to tear down the American government and all of the unity that it holds; the former group praised the sticker campaign while the latter tore the stickers down. Ultimately, Fairey put up stickers on a visceral level with seemingly no effective intellectual purpose behind his actions.
Boy, I suck at segues so pretend like there's one here. ...and so, on the topic of memes, I find its idea very intriguing. On an artistic level, there's an almost visual representation of idea after idea flowing from one person's conscious to another's and one idea of beauty and art form from preconceptions but are not taken entirely as every person contributes to this idea to make it grow and become different. Similarly, science comes from building on others' ideas and thus technology exists and becomes a living thing with each person learning from another. I wish I could expand on this but there's really no way that I can put it. At its very basic level we can see the beautiful growth of our worldwide community where information, technology, music, culture--everything becomes free and, the more free and accessible things are, the more the community can grow, and the more ideas that are sent around that become bigger parts of the world. I hope I gave that whole idea some justice.

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Week 7 - Daniel Baker - Consciousness and Culture

When applied to computing and the arts, the realms of the conscious and subconscious can be seen to be important themes. Sigmund Freud’s work with the unconscious, though debated, opened up a whole world to be explored. Within the world of art, the introduction of the Surrealists in lecture I found particularly interesting, as I am also learning about them in my European Film class. Their underlying theme was that art and literature should explore the unconscious, and even to the extent that their artwork became products from only the subconscious. A popular tool for creating art was the form of automatic writing, where the artist would simply write down everything he or she thought in a train-of-thought kind of mode. This, the surrealists thought, would eliminate the amount of conscious thought that goes into a work, and only the products of the subconscious would remain. In Dali’s only film, he and another Surrealist filmmaker, Luis Bunuel, came up with the “plot” to their film Un Chien Andalou using this process. They then discarded everything they had written down that seemed unsurprising to them, leaving only what they felt to be the true products of the subconscious. What was created is considered to the perfect example of surrealist thinking: a crazy, dreamlike sequence of irrational events, inspired in large part by the discoveries of science.

It seems interesting to discuss the conscious/subconscious issue in regards to art in science, because while they seem to go hand in hand, it appears as if they still remain independent fields in this area. They both influence each other, but I do not seen any direct combination of the two cultures. Mostly it seems as if one acts as a bridge for the other, for example, the idea of the MEME describes the scientific-like characteristics of transporting a thought or product of the arts, but there is no interaction beyond just using the other field as an input for the other. The science of how the MEME is transferred does not mesh with the artistic way the MEME is created; the two sections of the process remain independent.

The issue of the collective consciousness plays a vital role in both science and art, and seems to be a halfway point between the two. For instance, the image of Earth from space (an art product) managed to change the collective consciousness in the same manner that the atomic bomb (a scientific product) did. The collective consciousness also provides inspiration and can be reflected in both scientific research, like sociology or the idea of the rhizome, and artistic endeavors, like the work of Paul Cézanne. There is also a fine line between explaining a property of the collective consciousness and creating something that affects it. One example would be how the Beatles went India to study Eastern ideas of consciousness in order to bring them back to the United States and make a comment on the current ideas surrounding consciousness (i.e. drug usage), but by presenting these ideas, the band succeeded in changed the collective consciousness of culture in America. The issue of quantum physics where one is essentially defining and affecting a subject by observing it comes directly into play in regards to this issue, ironically describing the process that occurred when the principle was released to the public.

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Boris Lipkin - Week 7 - The Mind

This week’s classes were by far the most exciting and non-conformist so far this quarter. Professor Eric Scerri was a very different then our previous guest speakers. The one thing that really set him apart from the rest is that he is a first and foremost a scientists. Sure, he’s a musician on the side also but that’s more of a hobby, he is definitely a scientist. The other speakers that we’ve had talk to us about the connection of art and science were artists who dabbled in and used some science and technology in their works. Scerri is the opposite as he is a scientist who dabbles a bit in art. This is where it gets interesting. All of the other speakers in this class did not contest any ideas that Victoria was telling us about but if anything tried to expand and build on them. But even on Monday Scerri challenged Victoria and both were very unmoving in their arguments about the role of instinct and intuition in modern society.
As befitting a scientist, Scerri of course disregarded instinct as causing nothing more than prejudice and insisted on gathering cold hard facts and analyzing them before coming to a conclusion. Like an artist should, Victoria stood her ground on how trusting your instincts because they are usually right could lead to good things most of the time. Why this argument and the general overview of the other speakers in this class amused me was because in The Two Cultures this is exactly what C.P. Snow was saying. Both Scerri and Victoria and their respective ideas fit into the two stereotypes that Snow had in his lecture. Of course, Victoria and Scerri disagreeing also fits into the stereotypes that artists and scientists can’t agree. It reminds me of the line in the essay that went something like “the two sides used to smile at each other politely across the way, now they just make faces at each other.” Those aren’t the exact words but the message is pretty clear. While all of the artists that have spoken to us this year agreed with Victoria and furthered her ideas, Scerri the Scientist went against everything that she was saying.
As for my own opinion on the issue, I think both are right but that the context is what matters. Of course, while doing research on new medicines for example, it is vital that you test out all aspects of it and make sure that it does what it does, you can’t just be like “well, I feel like it’s going to work.” On the other hand, in an artistic setting it makes sense to be instinctive because that creates the raw and unobstructed art that can be so powerful. As far as instinct and intuition goes in other areas I personally tend not to trust it too much. Victoria mentioned that she looks at a person and her intuition tells her something and she goes with it, well I tend to agree with Scerri on this one and think that that is more prejudice than anything else. Sure, intuition is part of what makes a first impression but not letting the person even utter a word, to me, is a little too much. Overall, the class this week was exciting and novel because we had a speaker who brought new ideas and challenged what Victoria has been teaching us.

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Annie Wu- Week 7

I liked how this week’s topic dealt with the ideas of consciousness and memory, such as surrealism. The areas of transhumanism and dualism really stress and enforce the notion that art deals with both the body and mind, instead of just one of the two. However, it seems as if this week, we focused more on the mind and its ability to perceive the world in different ways. We dived deeper into the power of the mind, and we were exposed to how much depth there is in the mind. Basically, we saw how our thoughts affect our lives. Earlier, we studied how art was demonstrated through the body, such as through the works of Stelarc and Orlan. I feel like their art focused only on the human body, because of the physical works they implemented directly onto their bodies. Now, we are shifting towards the human mind and it seems like art is being associated more with abstract things, such as thought and memory, instead of just the physical human body.

Personally, I thought it was really interesting to learn about memetics, to see how cultures and behaviors are passed on and spread around. Like how Gregory Bateson states in one of the articles for this week’s reading, art is “based on presuppositions.” I think I do agree with this viewpoint, because art really seems to be based on assumptions and beliefs. Art is built on ideas that are passed on throughout time, and artists just continue to build and expand on these ideas. Looking back on the different art periods that occurred, each one of them was some kind of reaction to its preceding period. For example, for a while, art was traditional and focused on classical forms, trying to imitate and embody reality. However, modernism was later developed, and artists began to stray away from the norm and the conventional. Instead of depicting depth and volume, they actually reverted back to flattening out the figures in their work. Even though artists started this movement by “rebelling” against what was traditional and accepted by society, they were actually just bringing back an artistic method that had already been used. It was not like they invented flatness—it was always there, and the artists just revived the idea.

I found this article online to be pretty interesting, as it analyzes how art relates to the memetic structure. In the article states, “The artwork serves to focus the attention of the programmed conscious mind, while the root meaning (thought virus or memetic structure) embedded within slips unnoticed into the subconscious.” So basically humans are already somehow preconditioned to think in a certain way by society and their surroundings. When they see an artwork, they will form varying perceptions and opinions of the artwork, depending on the “programmed memetic structures” in their minds. However, the “deeper” meaning of the artwork will still slip inside their minds. So basically, there are two ways to analyze and understand artwork. One is to have a surface understanding of artwork, where we judge them based off of the knowledge we absorbed from our surroundings. The other way is more inconspicuous, I suppose, where the actual meaning of the artwork just enters into our subconscious, without us realizing it. Maybe we do not focus on this root meaning in our subconscious because we are too preoccupied with our conscious understanding of the artwork.

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Week 6 - Daniel Baker - The Human Instrument

A very interesting artist that I discovered through the blog we-make-money-not-art.com is Michael Waisvisz, who was featured on one of their latest articles. Basically, Waisvisz explores the connections between the human body and sound, creating new and innovative ways of experiencing and generating sound. It seemed to relate to the class and our discussions with Sean Dockray, who introduced the synthesizer and its outlets for creative expression in terms of art making.

One of his works, entitled “The Hands,” uses touch sensors in a glove like device that users wear in order to actually touch sounds. It described that given a clean recording of a sentence, users can feel the separations between the words and modify the recording by moving your hands and grasping the words. The device bridges a gap between two very different senses that normally would not have such a strong connection to one another. The contrast of mind and body is directly addressed by combining the two: the sound as a product of the mind (as it can only be registered in a mental form) and the sense of touch as a product of the body (as it is physical and visceral). This shift in sensory experience would probably be confusing at first, but I would imagine that because it deals with simple sensory interaction, that it would not take long for us to get used to. The separation of mind and body shrinks when artists are able to harness the basics of each and force them to interact together.

Another interesting piece that Waisvisz has created is the “Cracklebox.” It comes in many forms but basically arose from the artist taking the back of synthesizer off and directly touching the circuitry in order to create new sounds, completely bypassing the keyboard. Waisvisz noticed that the keyboard, found in all churches in the form of an organ, had connotations that he wanted to separate from and so distanced from it as far as possible: using the body as an instrument. Here the human being (an organic, or “wet” material as Roy Ascott puts it) fuses with technology to operate and influence the device. Apparently, this concept has actually been patented by Microsoft, so I am curious to see what comes from it. Various forms of the Cracklebox have been created, taking on the forms of clothing, where wearers manipulate the clothing they wear in order to make sounds, to sets of dishes, where users create noises by pretending to eat with silverware and by touching the plates and putting forks in their mouths. These devices take normal movements and interactions with objects and create a completely original sound track to them. It seems as most combine the senses of touch and sound in order to make the art, once again relating to the mind/body issue. But the human body as an instrument is a very interesting concept, for it is true that our voices do make sound and could be considered instruments, but the possibilities of creating new instruments out of ourselves by technological modification adds a new “harmonic range” to our bodies. The potential offered by the body as a range for creation is endless, and the range just seems more vast when adding the modification of technology to the calculation.

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halfway through the quarter...

The above image is the work of Los Angeles based artist Lita Albuquerque. Her concept is to mirror the southern constellations through the placement of 99 blue spheres on the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica. International Polar Year Website


As I was studying for the midterm I felt pretty confident in my knowledge and understanding of the various pieces that were on our study list. And when I saw Casey Reas's work up on the screen I felt even better. It was easy to write on an artwork and subject that I not only understood but also liked. Looking through some of the blogs I have to agree with one of my fellow classmates; the midterm was fair and very straight forward, but in a class as innovative as this one, the midterm could have been just as innovative. However, I'm not complaining. I'd much rather have a straight forward midterm and final than an extremely difficult one that would make me dislike the subject.

Well, we're done with our midterm and already in week seven! Can you believe it!? With only a few weeks left in the quarter I feel like we've learned so much but there's still much more left to learn. Again agreeing with what some of the other students have written in their blogs there was a lot of information covered this quarter. Sometimes it would be a tad bit overwhelming and a bit confusing as to how it would relate to the subject. Maybe for when this class is offered next time, one or two specific pieces be focused on for each subject to be explored and discussed thoroughly and extensively. Other than that I find the structure of the class to be very organized and well thought out. Each week’s topic is fresh compared to the previous week, guest lecturers are interesting, and the pictures and video weaved into the lectures are interesting and entertaining. Being a “try to save trees” kinda person I also like the utilization of the website for accessing readings, study lists, etc. (But of course a working website is more than appropriate for a Design Media Arts class that is titled “Art, Science, & Technology”.) Overall my experience taking this class has been great. I’m learning a lot in a definitely different way than I’m used to and being exposed to a subject I wouldn’t have otherwise taken.

I’m looking forward to the rest of the quarter. This week’s quest lecturer is Professor Scerri from the Chemistry Department. Being a science major, Professor Scerri’s name is one that I am familiar with, although I’ve never had a class with him. I’m interested to see how a science professor will approach the subject and what he will lecture on. The next few weeks’ topics are even more related to the science that I am studying: biotechnology, cells, molecules, nanotechnology, etc. I am excited to see how maybe I can go into the science and medical field and do art.

So what else is there to say than cheers to a successful first half of the quarter and to an even better second half!

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Tygue Luecke-Week 6-Opinions after the midterm

Sooooo, review and a midterm to talk about, eh? Not a whole lot of material to work with… guess I’m going to have to find my own stuff to talk about. Bummer. Well, that’s all right, I suppose. First, though, I would like to say that I found the midterm a bit more challenging than I expected to be due to the limit on length. Even though I didn’t even end up using the full five pages, I was so concerned about it the whole time that… I don’t know where I’m going with this anymore. Plus, I surely don’t want some 200 page minimum to result from what I say. No bueno.

Okay, so just for a starting point, I Googled “art and science.” The first thing that came up was the Art and Science Hair Salon. Out of curiosity, I checked out their most recent hair show and realized how terribly ugly their hairstyles are. In case anyone is looking for an edgy haircut, beware of these styles. Here’s a link:

http://www.artandsciencesalon.com/experience.htm

Now that we’re past that unpleasantness, onto something cool. I’d have to say that my favorite known application of design and technology is auto design. So, here’s a link to a YouTube video of the 2007 North American Auto Show:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RSEhlQEJLY

There’s some amazing stuff there. Does it bum you guys out that the prototypes hardly ever get translated into visually similar, functional cars? I wish that just once the body of a prototype would be used with a technologically engine to make totally awesome, totally affordable cars. It just makes me so angry that all the big car companies excite you with all their amazing looking cars, then bore you with their lineup when the new models are seen driving on the street. On this note, why can’t cars that look like Ferraris and Lamborghinis have decent-not racing/performance- engines come with a price tag similar to that of a mid-priced sedan? I would totally be up for a mediocre performance form a car if it were just to look like a Lamborghini. Come on car companies!

Okay, I lied. My favorite application of art and science is plastic surgery- not car design. But car design does come in a close second. I mean real plastic surgery, by the way- not plastic surgery Orlan style. Someone needs to tell that woman to get with the times and realize that plastic surgery is no longer shocking. I like good, old-fashioned makin’-hot-people-hotter plastic surgery. Okay, that description doesn’t help my argument. I just what plastic surgery is able to do for people. I know that there are way too many sixteen-to-eighteen year old girls running around talking about how their new boobs have saved their self confidence and social status, but I really do believe in the ability of surgical procedures in boosting the self confidence of those who seek it. This was not meant to be an advertisement in any way, but, since I’m on the subject, if anyone needs a good surgeon, come talk to me. There we go. Now I can’t be accused of advertising. Sweet.

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Boris Lipkin - Week 6

The midterm this week was a very fair, albeit conventional way of testing our comprehension of the material. For many of the students in this class, the topics and ways of teaching are very new and different from the classes that they usually take. Unfortunately, the midterm fell along the lines of most of our other classes. It would seem fitting that in a class that is so different that the grading would be very different also. I would’ve preferred to get away from the midterm/paper way of testing comprehension through something more hands-on where we get a deeper understanding of the topics in this class. I think we could’ve learned a lot about other people’s ideas by expanding on our discussion sections by doing some kind of integrative project on the topics of the first five weeks of the course. This class is unique in its concepts and approach of having lots of guest speakers from all sorts of areas teach to bring in new ideas so I think the midterm could’ve used more of that too.
Overall, the first five weeks of this class have been very interesting and different. As an econ major I’ve gotten used to figuring out math-based problems and reading graphs (just some stereotypes) so getting out of that setting and being in a class where we write blogs, have different topics and speakers each week, and learn about another part of the world is a gleaming success of the GE classes at UCLA. These classes are meant to expand our thinking and apply our knowledge in areas that we will not be focusing on. This class has done a great job of that as I would have never heard of artists such as Stelarc and Orlan in any of my other classes or everyday interactions. It’s good to know that I am expanding my horizons and going at least a little outside of the areas that I am comfortable in. If I have an opportunity to take some extra courses while I am here, I definitely think that some sort of art history class might be something that I would be interested in. I’m glad that this class has been taught on a level that expects students taking it to be new to its ideas so I hope that other art history classes will take that approach. This class has been the most outside-the-box class I’ve taken here and has certainly provided me with more conversation topics than any of my other classes.

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Kelly Banh (End of Week 6)

Midterm:
I felt that I wanted to showcase more of what I had learned in the first half of the quarter on the midterm than the option we were given. It would have been much more enriching to do a midterm project instead of an in-class midterm essay. However, given what it was, the format of the midterm was not bad at all. Allowing students the option of writing on the piece of their choice is very fair, as different students may have found different magnitudes of importance in the various artists we covered. It still would have been nice to do something other than a written essay. The one aspect that I’ve enjoyed so much about the class so far is that it is an organized class in structure, yet nonconformist in thinking and interpretation and its encouragement of doing just that. I just wish we would have had the chance to participate in a midterm project that would have been consistent with these class values that I’ve had very high regards toward.
First Half of the Quarter:
Like anyone else, I learn better with visual aids. I have looked forward to being exposed to more and more works of art in the class, of which many of the artists I have never heard of. So far, my favorites have included the Mandelbrot sets, Reas, The Growing Raining Tree, and under individual research, the p-glow gene rabbit. I have found it much more difficult to enjoy certain generative art pieces like the condensation cube, and the Cult of the New Eve. Also, I enjoy the structure of discussion. We are able to touch base on a mix of the reading materials and the lecture materials, but most importantly apply those materials to new ones brought about in discussion alone. I’m awaiting the rest of what class has in store for us, and I hope that we touch base on more social science-related artworks as well as health-related artworks because it is such an important science for me personally.
Health-related Art:
We have often regarded doing or performing art as a stress-reliever and self-expression. My favorite science-related topics are anything in the health field, which is why I’ve chosen to discuss art in health. The website, www.changingimages.org, is “dedicated to enriching the lives of people in traditional institutional settings by bringing color and comfort through supervised interactive art activities.” We have discussed the importance of art in bringing the attention of the general public to controversial issues in biotechnology, and I feel that art as a means of “healing” is just as important and just as related to science. It involves the effects of art on the brain and mental health, which in turn, affects physical health. In the same way that music is a performing art many people have found escape in, visual art like paintings and photographs can also provide people with the same outlet and comfort. I’d like to learn more about the scientific properties behind related studies to this topic, and it is something that I will most likely do self-led research on in the future.

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Annie Wu- Week 6

For the midterm, I was actually pretty surprised that I managed to write so much on the image that I chose. I guess all the ideas and thoughts just came pouring out as I wrote the essay, along with the information and things I had learned from discussions and lectures. Before taking the midterm, I had actually worried about not having enough to write about the art works from the study list. However, during the midterm, I realized that I did not need to worry so much, and that because art is so open for interpretation, I could just write about my own analysis and opinions. This really made me appreciate art that much more, simply because there is not an exact right or wrong answer…everything just kind of depends on your logic and reasoning. Art is really amazing and I really love this field—there so much freedom and space to explore.

I realized that for the first half of the quarter, everything we have talked or learned about in class has basically been focused on science and technology. We have not focused on art or design without some kind of integration of the sciences and/or technology. This is a really different approach for me, because I am so used to studying art through purely art forms, such as paintings and sculptures. This class is really different (in comparison to Art History: Modern Art, which I took last quarter) in its approach to design and art. It really forces me to see art from a completely different perspective, and it shows me how broad art can be. Sometimes I am surprised by the endless boundaries of art—things that I normally would not have considered to be art are actually art. An example of this would be the Mandelbrot fractal set. I would have just categorized it as a visual representation of math, and nothing more. I did not realize the aesthetic quality of it. I guess this just goes to show how people today still perceive the sciences and arts to be at opposite ends of the spectrum.

While searching online, I found this article “Blurring the Line Between Science and Art,” and obviously, based on the title alone, it relates to what we have been learning in class. It talks about Caitlin Piette, a student who uses her artistic and creative abilities to help her work in the laboratory. She is doing research on “the relatively unknown effects of certain proteins on embryonic development;” she studies these proteins by staining cells with bright colors and taking detailed images of them. The images she produces are considered to be art pieces themselves. I think it is really interesting how she manages to use her artistic skills to her advantage, to help her in the sciences. Throughout this course, it seems like most of the art works we have studied were created with the help of science and technology. Artists such as Stelarc, Orlan, and Casey Reas use technology to perform and create art. In Piette’s case, it seems to be the opposite, for she uses art to study science. I guess this could be the same for Mandelbrot, because of how bright colors are used to study his fractal sets. I really do believe that the gap between science and art is closing, because they are constantly being intertwined nowadays. By implementing both these fields together are we able to progress into the future.

http://www.newswise.com/articles/view/529886/

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The Human Body and Art

The human body as a form of art is certainly not a new idea. Cultures of the long lost past used the human body to display art forms that represented certain ideas of their culture. Just recently I saw on TV, a National Geographic special about an African tribe whose men at "manhood" would have their bodies cut by a blade leaving scars behind to resemble their most revered animal, the alligator. In this day in age, or perhaps in “our” digitalized world and not countries who know nothing of the computer or internet, the human body in the context of art has been revolutionized by the advancement of both science and technology.

In discussion we watched a video of a man who had worked on a robot that would help add strength to the human body. Essentially, its significance is that it can possibly help the disabled be able or help troops with their hundred pound loads so that they can save their energy for important tasks. When I saw this, I thought about Christopher Reeves who had suffered from spinal cord injury and therefore could no longer walk up to his death. With the lag of stem cell research for moral, religious, funding, and other reasons I thought to myself this robot that could possibly help mobilize some was quite a fascinating idea.

The next step from this would probably entail giving up human control to the authority of another to control. Stelarc fits into this category. The idea that the body is obsolete is interesting because as they are listed on the website http://www.stelarc.va.com.au/stelarc1.html, they are somewhat true. It is true that the body can only withstand so much. The human body in connection with technology is amazing as to what to what it can do or possibly do in the years to come. Because we are always searching for new ways to better ourselves, I believe there will be more and more work along these lines (Stelarc). As the site states we will continue to seek ways to extend ourselves and with the digital age we’ve entered and expect to advance, especially with respect to Roy Ascott’s concept of telematic interactivity, I’m interested to see what the human body in art form and the digital world will look like the years to come.

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Week 5 - Art and the Body

Art and the body is not simply tattoos or piercing anymore. With the artists featured in last week’s lecture art and the body is on a whole new level. When discussing Orlan and Stelarc during lecture and section I found what these artists were doing extremely bizarre. Why mutilate your own body simply for the sake of art? But I realized it has more meaning than that. Orlan, with her performance plastic surgery, is definitely sending out a powerful message. The way I interpreted her artwork is the power one has to do such things to his or her body. Orlan was in control of what procedures would be done on her and therefore was in control of the finished piece. I also felt that she was showing that plastic surgery is the new art. Anyone can be the artist (of course if you have enough money =) with the final results definitely determined by the person undergoing the surgery. I also feel with some of her own procedures that she is showing the absurdity of it all. Just like art, beauty is subjective and is different in the eyes of each person. Yet, many people undergo plastic surgery to change their appearance to what society thinks is beautiful. Stelarc on the other hand wanted to push the body’s limits through his artwork. With the combination of flesh and machine I felt that he wanted to show how amazing and how limited the human body is at the same time. With his third ear, although I was questioning why would someone want a third ear on his or her arm, I found it fascinating how this technology is possible. It reminds me of the movie Bicentennial Man, where robotic parts were used to replace “worn out” body parts. Although Stelarc was more focused on the art aspect with his pieces, I feel that this is revolutionary to the medical field and the future of medicine.



I wish that last week’s lecture had more information and examples of the influence of art on current medical technologies. Although all the topics discussed last week were very interesting I would have liked to see more of the different side of the merging art and science spectrum. We did touch on the topic slightly during the video on MRI imaging. It was a little difficult to search for examples of art’s influence on medicine online. Many of the links that came up were related to science’s influence on art. Many web sites displayed pictures of artworks with medical/scientific themes. I did however find some articles that I found somewhat related to the topics we discussed in class. One article discussed the influence of music on a physician’s own mental state. (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4167265) Another web site of the Unit of Art in Medicine at The University of Manchester (http://www.medicine.manchester.ac.uk/artinmed/) has links to how art has affected facial anthropology, forensic facial reconstruction, research, etc. Just a suggestion for next year to possibly integrate these topics in the lecture a little bit more especially for those who are non-science majors.

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Section 4 week 5

I have always been and will always be interested in Superheroes. Comic books represent such a meaningful art form to me that I don't believe it's possible to explain. I mention this because this week's research led me to the idea of superhuman feats. When we think of medicine, technology and the human body, we are led straight to the idea of super-abilities. Just think, we live five years longer than we did 50 years ago and with each year, thanks to medicine, we live even longer. We can fight off diseases much better than we could before, and technology is making humans even more able bodied, according to popular science. There are metal strips of memory materials that are elctroactive, able to pull stronger or as strong as a human which could enhance or simulate our own muscles; implantations and electric signal sensing hats can allow a person to remotely control electronic objects while other implantations can make our skin fight cancer while giving us a tan; more and more, our bodies and our machines are molding together. The human body is almost like a blank canvas for engineers, biologists, and scientists to splash colors of technology all over. More and more, our "selves" have become more and more loosely defined in terms of body but rather consciousness. This, I think, is a very relevant point that Mr. Roy Ascott presented. I thoroughly enjoyed his lecture as I thought it was amazingly relevant and thought provoking. Related to this idea of technology and biology is his idea about cell phones being implanted into the human skull. In truth, I wanted to talk very badly but sometimes I'm too timid to speak up and sometimes I think what I have to say is stupid. I wanted to say, though, that I think that the idea of implanted cell phones is just too far ahead of its time for people at the moment. Actually, I believe it is an essential evolutionary step in communication. Look around at how communication has changed over the years. There was a time when we drew pictures as representations of an item but that was too easily misunderstood-after all, a picture is worth 1000 words. Then we moved on to speaking and then writing and reading all the while keeping speaking constant. Many wars are fought over speech, and many conflicts are created out of misunderstanding. What if, when we communicated, we skipped the step of translating thoughts into words and then interpretted words into thoughts again? What if we just sent people our thoughts and communicated with our minds? We will have to look to things like radios and broadcasters or phones that allow communication to be translated into electronics that can send that to be interpretted. What a beautiful concept. Everyone understanding one another. People wouldn't have to simulate experiences for people in speech but rather in pure memory. Mental pictures could be sent as they are in emails.
I suppose I have to include a lecture item so I'll talk about Orlan because i've already talked about Stelarc (even though Stelarc is WAY related to the idea of the rest of this blog). I love Orlan's art especially because it's such a new idea. I don't have much to say about her, but I think she's way bold an uses such a different medium and method that people find it both interesting and innovative.

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Daniel Baker - Week 5 - The Digital Body

Roy Ascott brought up two questions worth noting in regards to not only this weeks subject, but also from the perspective of the class as a whole: Who am I in the digital world? And what is “my body” within it?

Even though Prof. Vesna stated that this weeks subject dealt with the human body as referring to its singular form, it has become apparent that the digital body has become a plural form. No longer does your body just belong to you, but in its digital form it becomes a possession of the community. In order to understand the prevalence of the communal body, one can analyze the digital mind, being a part of the body, and how it has become a shared resource. One example is Roy Ascott’s interactive “La Plissure du Texte,” where readers literally became the collaborative authors of a story. The text is the product of a communal mind, where each member contributes and becomes a part of the shared digital mind. The piece is a good example of the body must be considered in the digital sphere, because the piece can only be read as a whole, as a collaborative work; for reading it as a singular author’s work, one would only get a portion of the entire story.

Another example of what the individual is in the digital world is the piece by Stelarc, where individuals’ muscles are wired and then controlled by the artist. Individual control of the body is no longer possible, an individual’s muscle moves just the same as the other, making the separation between the two “bodies” less important as seeing the muscles move together as a collective “body.” It shows how the body has surpassed just its singular form, how it is not anymore about the individual’s boundaries but instead about the overarching inclusion. This seems to relate to Ascott’s mention of the Ethereal Self, where individuals imagine themselves removed from their skin in order to spiritually extend beyond the physical containment of their bodies. In the Stelarc example this is basically happening, since the individuals no longer have control of their bodies, they are put in a different mindset where they become separated from their physical self. Another example would be Stelarc’s piece where his muscles are controlled by a digital avatar. The fact that the artist no longer has control over his physical movements signifies that the avatar is the dominant force, not the human; real bodies are no longer as important as digital ones.

It now is not what you look like or how you act that matters, but what information you are linked with. Second Life’s avatar creation allows users to customize every feature of their digital appearance, forming an identity that distinguishes themselves in the digital community. In the realm of blogs, it is one’s written words that become a body. Your physical appearance does not define who you are, what you have on your Facebook does.


The digital body has become a screen name; it is whatever piece of information you choose to present yourself in a network. It is changeable, malleable, and updateable; it offers unlimited expansion to its owner to do whatever they wish to it with vary little consequences. If given the choice, who would want to be stuck in a real body, where you are only presented with one option? (That is, unless you are Orlan.)

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Limitations of the Body- yes or no? (Kelly Banh, Week 5)

Much of our studies about Australian performance artist, Stelarc, have emphasized his presentation of the body and its connection to futuristic mechanisms and technology. After seeing images of his exhibits in class, I was inspired to speak about how his works actually have a relationship with images from the past. I saw the image of body suspended in the air with hooks in a pose of mediation. And I found an image of a robotic arm attached to his own. These immediately reminded of religious images that have displayed Gods in states humans have been incapable of being in themselves. Here is the first image:

And the image I chose to compare it with:

This is an image of Buddha, one of the gods of Buddhism, floating in a Lotus flower amongst the clouds.

Here is the second image:

And the image I chose to compare it with:

One of the gods of the Hindu religion.

Because Stelarc tends to revolve around the idea that the human body is obsolete, it appears he has been searching for ways to extend the body’s capabilities in order to achieve almost “godly” tasks. Although Stelarc did not draw inspiration from the two religious images above, there are definitely parallels between them. In the first, he is levitating in mediation. In the second, he has more than two arms. If we think about it, what he has done to his body is no different than what artist, Orlan, has done to hers. Orlan uses images of operation of cosmetic surgery and supplements them with props that provide symbols and implications of her opinion. The evils of plastic surgery are neverending. Addicts continue to change one thing after another in hopes of achieving perfection, in hopes of achieving the “above average” and the exceptional. This is beyond human as well. The body is being extended beyond its capabilities, beyond its natural state to a standard that is inhuman. In the past, humans have been unable to attain this standard. They only existed in images of worshipped gods. These worshipped images may very well be the inspiration for the procedures that the human population has taken upon themselves to undergo. And thanks to modern day technology, it has gradually become more and more possible. It is important to point out that although there are similarities between the works of Stelarc and the works of Orlan, they both take different sides: one positive and one negative. Stelarc pushes the limitations of the body, expressing that machinery can perhaps aid as a beneficial extension of the body. On the other hand, Orlan points out the evils of plastic surgery through her images in a darker, more unpleasant way. The underlying question is: Should the body be pushed to its limitations? This is what these artists suggest their audience to think about. I believe that Stelarc and Orlan have done this is the most effective ways- through visual and performance art, tying in concepts that the common crowd is familiar with: technology and cosmetic surgery.

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Week 5--Cui H Cao--That's What Life is All About--Interactions

My Economics Professor emphasized at the end of the International Trade lecture, "Economics is all about life, though sometimes it's too ideal and sometimes too realistic." I noded.

"That's how life works." Professor once mentioned in our lecture in response to the work of processes. I was impressed.

With my futher adventure in expoloration of the definition of art in DESMA 9, I've eventually developed a strong sense to connect art with every very aspect of my daily life: from the design of my senior thesis research to the colors of the food in my lunch box. The networking between art and life is ubiquitous.

After reading Dr. Donald E. Ingber's "Architecture of Life," I perceived that the forms of life are perfectly presented by art. In the old time when art was limited as only a object, the viewers comprehened art works as reflections of the meaning/truth of life, which were considered as the messages from the artists. Nowadays, blended with the developed technology and scientific information, art serves more than a messege. It becomes the bridge that connect between artists themselves, and between artists and the viewers. More importantly, personal interactions, which construct the major part of life, are generated by the creativity of art. Take "telematics" in Roy Ascott's words as example, "by offering the means of collaboration in the creation of image and text," telematic interactions involve " not only simply the exchange of ideas between people but the direct involvement of many individuals in the creation of meaning."

It's a thread.

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Annie Wu- Week 5

This week’s topic was by far one of the most interesting in this class. It really broadened the definition of art for me, forcing me to realize that there are seriously just so many ways to interpret art. Yes, I knew that art already was a broad and openly interpreted subject, but the fact that human bodies can be considered as art or be used as a demonstration of art really made me see things in a different light. Art is not just restricted to paintings, sculptures, media, robotics, designs, etc. Performances, exhibitions, and demonstrations can be considered artistic as well, because they reveal some kind of truth or teach the viewers something new. I guess basically anything that can reflect the world or present it in a different perspective can be considered as art. It truly amazes me that people are so willing to make a statement or impact in the art world that they are even willing to use their own bodies as their tool, their canvas.

There are so many different ways to demonstrate art through the human body. Orlan’s performances are one way to see the human body, as she undergoes plastic surgery in front of an audience. At first, I really could not understand why she would do something like that to her own body. I understood that she was trying to make a statement, trying to prove a point. A point about what? About how people are so caught up with their images that they are willing to mutilate their own bodies? I later realized that a way to interpret her work is that she is trying to redefine the term “beauty.” This really stuck out to me when I saw the implants of cartilage on the sides of her face. The sides of her face bulge out because of these implants, but apparently, she likes them, because she is the one who decided to place and keep them there. Maybe she is rebelling against society, by defining “beauty” on her own terms, considering what is “beautiful” based on her own preferences and no one else’s. It seems like she is testing the standards of beauty, questioning and provoking society. Her art is the basically the reconstruction of her physical appearance, both the surgical process and outcome. Through her “carnal art,” Orlan really managed to shock a lot of people, causing a lot of people to redefine “art” and “beauty.” What’s sad is that plastic surgery is such a common thing nowadays that her performances are probably not as powerful as they once were. Because people are so caught up with their appearances and maintaining the social standards of beauty, they have managed to dull down even the most extreme messages created through art.

Even without having to disfigure or test the human body, the human body by itself can also be considered as an art form. This is clearly seen through “Body Worlds,” where plastic corpses of real human beings are put on display. These bodies are donated and undergo a process of plastination, where their bodily fluids are replaced with different colored plastics. All the tissue structures are retained as well, so viewers can see everything that is within the body. These dead bodies are positioned so it seems like they are doing something, such as running, riding, playing games, etc. I would definitely consider this to be some kind of art form, though other people may disagree. It’s amazing that we are able to see how the body functions underneath the skin. Every person in the world has a body, so this exhibit can be related to everyone who views it. The subjects of the exhibition are universal, and even though they may be shocking, they are something that everyone should be able to relate to or understand. I think it’s wonderful how the human body, something that is often taken for granted, can make such powerful statements and draw such strong emotions from people. People may be disgusted by these corpses, but it’s interesting because they have the same functioning bodies as them.

more on Body Worlds

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Sara Saadeh, Week 5: Telecommunications and Osman Khan

So far my favorite guest speaker has definately been Roy Ascott. I think he did an excellent job of addressing the topic of telecommunications and how they have affected the art world as well as the world at large. As techonology advances we see a change in how we communicate. In terms of cell phones, they have almost literally become apart of us as we are constantly connected to them, taking them everywhere with us. Whether we go to class or the supermarket or even private places such as the bedroom and bathroom, we are accompanied by this little companion. It seems that we are more connected to people across the globe than we have ever been because of the advances in telecommunications. Roy Ascott's mentioned the Astral body, otherwise known as the out of body experience, which touches more on human spirituality. This type of art he explains, shows that nature is always moving and the artists believe people themselves are always in motion. So this art is not your traditional fixed art, but focuses on bringing movement into the work to express the life taking place.
What was even more interesting was his discussion of Cyberneticks, in which one sees the world as a series of systems that is never ending; one system always connects to another system. This is interesting because just as we through our cell phones are always connected to the rest of the world, this connection can also be seen in nature where we are all systems intertwined and branching off of other networks. Art has the ability to expand on this fenomenon by creating art work that shows ways in which we are connected. In fact, Roy Ascott explained that art isn't simply a thing over there, but it is right in front of us, we are emersed in it. This idea has only recently been accepted as artist take a closer look into the human body to find connecting systems. I was really fascinated by the idea of looking at society as a pyramid in which it always starts from an apex and then flows down into the masses that make up the pyramid's base. This implies a bird's eye view of society and a unique way of looking at art because you can see so many more details and points of focus depending on where you're standing.
My favorite art piece that Roy Ascott discussed in his presenation was the "Hole in Space" piece in which people are looking through a window at people that they first assume to be themselves but realize after taking a closer look that its of people across the continent that are looking thorugh a window at them. With the use of satalites people from different sides of the world are looking in real time at each other. It evokes an amazing sense of connection that in a sense eliminates the once old feeling of foreigness. We now have the capability to travel and communicate to people anywhere in the world, which as a result closes the gap that once existed between continents. It's an amazing sense of connectivity, which I believe was the objective behind this work. A man named Osman Khan used this idea to create his "Mis(sed)communication" in which he placed these videoconferencing systems in areas of conflict to show how people interact and behave, especially in high traffic/tension situtations. He came up with interesting results and his work definately provokes a lot of thought in conflict resolution. I encourage you to take a look, it's really quite fascinating.

http://users.design.ucla.edu/~osman73/missedcommunication.html

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Boris Lipkin - Week 5 Human Body

This week’s topic was a little different for me from the other ones we’ve had because it related to something else that I was learning about right now. One of the other classes that I am taking right now is Astrobiology in which we’ve had a lot of conversation on the things required for life to arise. Listening to lectures in that class and then the discussions of how we can “create” or alter life on our own was a very big contrast between the two classes. This relates to last week’s topic where artificial intelligence was brought up a lot but also to this week’s topic where we talked about changing part of our life and this week’s reading on “The Architecture of Life”.

There’s many different ways to look at what life is composed of. My astrobiology professor has complained several times that life does not have a concrete definition and like that water is H2O. Some may define it as a being that is conscious and able to interact with his/her/its environment. He defines it as any organic chemical compounds that have cells, stored information (DNA, RNA), a method of reproduction, behavior, and metabolism. Basing what we’ve talked about in class on this definition by combining a few components of robotics we can certainly come up with a robot that is made of smaller parts (cells), has a computer processor (stored information), reproduction is a bit trickier but if a chair can reassemble itself over and over again, it might be possible to build a robot that can out of its parts put itself together, we already have robots that interact with their environment and learn from it (behavior), and all robots need some kind of power source (metabolism). Thus according to this definition it might be possible to create a robot that fits all of the characteristics of life but I will bet if you were to show such a robot, nobody in this class would call it “alive”. Thus I’ve returned back to where I started, that the idea of “what is life” is a conundrum and we can’t define what’s alive because any definition that we come up with can be reproduced in a way that is not what we consider alive.

Then this week we talked about changing life through transhumanism, moist media, Stelarc’s work, and how we use our bodies. Both Victoria and Roy Ascott mentioned transhumanism in talking about how we can use our bodies for other purposes or to contain other entities. You can say that Orlan uses her body as a very sordid artistic medium and I’m sure that there are lots of other examples. Thus while we are not creating new life we are changing some of the properties of it Roy Ascott also brought up that “our world is constructed by us” and how digital artists use this idea to create their own worlds. I think that while digital artists can create images of their own worlds, they are not creating those worlds. People have been dreaming up new worlds for hundreds of years, digital artists have just found a way to show these worlds to make them seem even more surreal. I would say out of the topics that we’ve covered, Stelarc is the one person who has done the most with altering life and what is human. His machines that tap into the human body and let him change some small parts are just a first step into what might be possible. I don’t think that we can, as of now at least, create new and different life, but we can alter the life that we know and I think we’re doing that faster and faster.

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Tygue Luecke-Week 5-Body Worlds, Orlan, adn Whatnot

When we discussed Gunther van Hagens’s Body Wrolds exhibit, I found it strange and unfortunate that I was one of few people in the class who had visited it. It was a truly amazing sight, and I would recommend that everyone who can co, do. However, I want to say that I heard not too long ago that the plastination process was found to be problematic, and the exhibit had to be taken off its original tour plans for maintenance. I’m going to look that up right now, but first, here’s a link to the Body Worlds site:

http://www.bodyworlds.com/en.html

Well, I found nothing to support that suspicion that something had gone awry with the plastination process. However, in searching for “body worlds plastination problems,” I found a fascinating article called “Science, Art, or Carnival Sideshow: The ‘Human Body Worlds’ Exhibit in Cologne,” in which the author questions the importance placed on the scientific aspect of von Hagens’s exhibit in relation to its intended shock value. Journalist Deitmar Henning wites, “Gunther von Hagens' full-body plastinates offer very little in the way of providing clarification and enlightenment with respect to death—despite all his claims to the contrary.” I find some of his arguments extremely compelling, especially when he questions the scientific or medical lessons a viewer might be able to glean from the portion of the exhibit featuring deformed fetuses in jars and a woman, six months pregnant, lying in repose, as if expectant of an approaching lover. I have to say that when I saw the exhibit, I was wondering the same exact thing. If any of you are interested, here’s a link to the guy’s article:

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/mar2000/body-m23.shtml

Of course, while I do question some of the “scientific” motives of von Hagens, I still stand by my recommendation of the exhibit. Whether it is scientific, artistic, or merely there for shock value, it is still a fantastic thing to see.

Now, for this Orlan character- I find her work not only lacking any sense of innovation, but also lacking shock value. I can understand how she may have had some appeal when she began her work years ago, but now that it seems as though everyone and their mother (wow, I don’t think I’ve ever used that statement in a truer sense) has had some sort of cosmetic procedure, it is no longer novel to question the motives of such procedures. I think a more interesting idea to explore is that of the changing idea of beauty over the ages. I know she has surgeries done in replication of classical figures, and I think it would be far better if she were to be exploring the fact that people nowadays no longer find the classical form to be the picture of perfect beauty.

Though I found Roy Ascott’s lecture a bit hard to follow, I found what he said about Jackson Pollock to be of particular interest. I think it it’s awesome that by painting his works on the ground, he changed the classical perspective of a painting on the wall. I, personally, don’t find it spectacularly revolutionary that he did this, and that is precisely what I find so interesting about what he did. It just seems that someone sometime before should have been able to think of painting on the floor. I mean, there have been a whole lot of ceiling paintings, so I don’t see why it took so long for someone to invert it and paint on the floor! Maybe I expect to much, having grown u in a world of constant change and radical innovation. Or maybe people were just too slow on the uptake back in the day. Who knows?

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We're All Generative!

Science and art are definitely both generative. Can you tell the difference?





There were many topics covered in lecture and section last week that covered a wide range of topics: networks, natural systems, biology, generative art, artificial life. As we learned about all these different topics I am still somewhat lost on the connection of some of these topics to art. As for networks, the example of the first internet connection being between UCLA and Stanford was very interesting but I think I missed the point of how it relates to art. The same goes for artificial intelligence. It is really interesting to see the development of A.I. such as the evolvement of Eliza to Alice, but I think I need to see more examples to establish the connection to art. I hope that we can go over this more in discussion or again in lecture just to clarify some things.

It’s a little hard for me to agree with Philip Galanter that generative art is as old as art. The definition Galanter gives for generative art is that it “refers to any art practice where the artist uses a system, such as a set of natural language rules, a computer program, a machine, or other procedural invention, which is set into motion with some degree of autonomy contributing to or resulting in a completed work of art”. When thinking of classical pieces of artwork there doesn’t seem to be much autonomy. Back then paintings, portraits, and sculptures were very much in the control of the artist and not some external force. By definition generative art is very much about the process rather than the final piece of work and I feel that before many artworks were about the finished project. I feel like I can really relate generative art to my own science experience. In my chemistry lab we are required to keep a lab notebook. In this notebook we are to document every step, observation, resource, change, mistake, etc. With a carbon copy on the back and a ban on white out we can see our entire process from start to finish, mistakes and all. As our professor articulated at the beginning of the quarter, it is better to see where we have made mistakes in order to correct them rather than having a perfect final lab report and we know nothing about the experiment. Although I wouldn’t call this generative science, but writing in my lab notebook, in my opinion, is as generative as Philip Galanter’s Chaotic Conductor.

I definitely can agree with Jack Burnham, who said, “"Deep-rooted drives lasting several millennia are not erased from the human personality overnight. Yet there is abundant evidence that the modern era of artistic expression through sculptured objects is drawing to a close. Taking the path outlined up to now, it would be logical to speculate on the quasi-biological nature of future art...” Generative art seems the way to go these days. And from the works of Casey Reas, Hans Haacke and other artists, art does now seem to have a biological feel.



this piece is one of Casey Reas’s:

http://www.computergraphica.com/2005/03/16/casey-reas-updates/

And this is a picture of neuronal cells:

http://www.qbmcellscience.com/gallery/img10.html

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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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Tygue Luecke-Week 4- AI and such

First, I suppose I should say something about Brazil. What a bizarre movie that was! Still, it was a great example of science affecting art in a way we haven’t discussed in as much detail as in other cases. In Brazil, the art of movie making helps to make a social commentary about the growing presence of science and the potential problems it can cause. With all the machines going awry in the movie and the central and absolute control over the maintenance of the machines, it is clear that the movie was making a very anti-establishment statement laced with a clear warning about putting too much control into the hands of technology. It is interesting that we hear such strong anti-establishment, anti-technological arguments as well as anti-establishment, pro-technological arguments, such as the one made by Steve Kurtz.

I find it fascinating that the Difference Engine was created as early as 1822. That is incredibly impressive, especially considering that the sewing machine- a machine that seems much simpler by comparison- was invented in 1830. However, in researching this fact, I found that photography was also invented in 1822. Here’s the site I found that on:

http://www.anatine.co.uk/c19.htm

It also has a bunch of cool timelines and other related things. I suggest you check it out. I just spent about 10 minutes on it myself.

Being as impressed as I was with the invention of the Difference Machine, I was rather unimpressed by the fact that H.G. Wells was one of the first to conceptualize a pre-internet idea of information sharing. It seems that someone should have thought of such an idea much sooner. I mean, if a machine can actually be invented that performs mathematical calculations, it seems that someone could have merely published an idea about an information network.

An interesting concept came up in section- and that is that we humans discuss intelligence only in terms of human intelligence and therefore have a hard time conceiving of true artificial intelligence. The more I thought about this idea after section, the more I became fascinated by it, mostly because I cannot even imagine an intelligence that is not human. And if said inhuman intelligence did exist, I can’t decide whether or not it would fit under the current definition of intelligence. This, of course, brings me far away from my original considerations and leads me into questioning definitions, which is neither helpful nor relative to my discussion of this week’s material. So- back to the point- as for me, I’m not sure I will ever be able to accept the idea of artificial intelligence simply because I can’t wrap my brain around it; I would have to assume many people might encounter the same problem when they consider the same issues.

Here’s a link to the site for the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence:

http://www.aaai.org/home.html

I would like to ask these people why they find it so necessary to advance artificial intelligence. Why not focus on humans first? Shouldn’t we work on our own problems (social, medical, etc.) before creating a new institution with its own new set of potential problems? I personally think so.

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Annie Wu, Week 4- Generative Art

Something that really caught my interest this week is the topic of generative art. According to Philip Galanter in the assigned article for this week’s reading, generative art is “‘any art practice where the artist uses a system,’” and allows there to be “some degree of autonomy” to contribute to the artwork’s outcome. Galanter also said that generative art is like working with “experimental philosophy.” I really like this idea of “experimental philosophy,” because it just shows how effective art can be in revealing some kind of truths to viewers. It is like playing around with various systems, just so that one can have different results to study and to draw conclusions from. Learning new things is what will propel us into the future with new ideas and perspectives. Because of this aspect, generative art definitely seems to be something beneficial to our culture.

Generative art is more about the process of making art, rather than just the end product. By analyzing the process of something, people are more likely to realize something or learn something about the world than if they were just to stare at a painting hung on the wall. They would actually be participating with the artwork when watching the processes take place. Everyone would have their own experience and understanding of the art piece, meaning that they can all relate to it, in some way or another.



As we mentioned already in class, Casey Reas’ creations could be considered to be generative art because we were able to experience the processes they underwent. It really intrigues me how his art is created, because the product is a result of both his input and chance. Casey is the one who writes the codes, yet the images are created through random interactions and chance. Endless variations could be derived from the same codes and program.



Generative art is not only strictly restricted to computer programs. Generative art could also be created from natural systems, such as the condensation cube by Hans Haacke. It reveals a biological system, a system from the natural world, as it demonstrates the process of water inside a clear cube. Lisa Autogena and Joshua Portway's Black Shoals Stock Market Planetarium is another example of how generative art can be based on something other than just programmed algorithms. This work relies on a system of human processes, for the factors in the image are based on the world’s stock markets. Whenever people do anything in the stock market, such as trading stocks, the lights of the stars change.
http://www.artificial.dk/articles/generativespecial.htm

Basically, what attracts me to generative art is that the artist is not really the “sole creator” of the end result. There has to be some factor of change, of randomness, that plays into the piece. In essence, it is the artist and nature that are responsible for creating generative art. I think generative art really reflects how much nature plays a part in our lives, and that it is something we cannot really run away from.

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Section 4 Week 4

Okay, so this week we covered a lot of topics a handfull of which I thought were REALLY interesting. The first thing that caught my eye was the idea of generative art because it has an intrinsic relative nature to it. Upon first hearing the word generative art (with some understanding) we consider computer-based and organic systems like insects or computer algorithms that create intricate paths from which we can derive patterns or what we think are recurring paths. Using these things and robotic graphing systems we can create art and then the question "is that really art?" is realized. Randomized computer graphing, interactive art that grows as you touch it or walk near it or yell at it, what makes this art? For organic systems, it almost seems like a comedy that nature plays on us; we try to map it out and predict its next moves but then it pulls a quick one, making us realize we can't replicate what it has made. Math can't define nature, nature just defines math. People see it as a concrete idea but ultimately it is just as fluid and changing as the seasons. This is the beauty and artistic nature of our computations is that they're sometimes infinitely close but at the same time, close is not right. Also one of the things I think particularly plays into this relativity is that sometimes humans like to separate themselves from these systems when we are just as natural and just as mathematical as any. I believe that when 1,000 people are in the same place, they will interact almost the same as another thousand because there is an equal probability of random variety among them and as the saying says "places change but people don't." We are as easily mapped as ants or plant growth patterns or anything else. It is for this reason that I love the generative art that Philip Galanter does as it grows as people interact and is considered random and happens while the observer interacts with it while it is somewhat predictable and deviates only a bit.
The next topic of interest is artificial intelligence. I read an article in Popular Science about artificial intelligence from a nobel laureate in the field. Somebody asked the question 'is the development of artificial intelligence the equating of human consciousness into a computer?' to which he replied, very smartly and simply, "no." He explained that a human can walk into a room ten times and feel differently and interpret the room in ten different ways while a computer entering a room simply interprets it in one. Humans have the ability to discern an actual item from its symbolic counterpart. We can ascribe meaning and emotion into a song or thing or voice or view while a machine can only interpret what has been fed into it. Even if it learns from its environment, it will never understand the feelings something can hold even if it understands further the entire knowledge base that the internet contains. And so, it is to this extent that AI can reach. Interestingly enough, Wilson reflects in his article that the artistic nature of AI is in its goal to reach into human nature and fool a human into believing that it is itself a human. Being able to hold converstaions, reflect feeling and understanding are all part of being a human and it requires researchers to look both into the limitations of machinery and the far stretches of humanity to make AI a reality.
I actually found an interesting video on youtube.com about a robot from Cornell University that is able to map out itself. First it moves and then utilizes several sensors that allows it to interpret how much pressure is applied to different areas of its body and where it is spacially to determine what it looks like and how it works. Additionally, when it is injured, it repeats the learning process to find out what is wrong with it, and how it can move without that part. When you think about it, we kind of learn in this way. We move and say and do things to test how far we can go not only in physical measures but socially. I think this a huge step in moving toward AI. This is the link to one of their vids but I can't find the original video that I watched.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNdDsK_t1Vs

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Daniel Baker - Week 4 - Dependency and Generative Art

When discussing generative art, it seems nearly impossible to not make references to nature. Combining natural and organic systems with mediums like computers and robots seems at first to be something that would clash, but really it allows us to view the familiar in a new light. What seems most intriguing this week are the models of cellular automata. The idea that a cell’s status depends directly on the surround cells’ statuses, seems to go hand in hand with art. I attended a lecture this week by Ong Keng Sen, a Singaporean director who produces performances with various artists from around the globe. One of his most famous works is a play entitled Lear, based on Shakespeare’s play of the similar name. Throughout the play, actors trained in highly traditional styles of performance all share the same stage, something that does not occur often in normal productions, let alone productions of King Lear. But in the process of throwing all different types of styles together, the actors had to take workshops where the theories of each performance method was shared with the rest of the group. Each performer’s individual knowledge became part of the larger, group knowledge. Onstage, this group awareness seemed to parallel that of the cellular automata; each actor dependant on all the others, even though they were all individuals separated by clear differences.

Generative art takes this process of dependency and shifts it slightly. Instead of simply the art piece being dependant on segments within itself, the work as a whole is dependant on outside stimuli. In one instance, such as Ken Rinaldo’s “Autopoiesis,” the art piece is dependant on the viewer, changing its movement based on the movement of the spectator. But the spectator then makes changes to his or her normal movement as a reaction to the art piece’s reaction. The interaction between art piece and viewer has become a sort of cellular automata, or even shows remnants of the recursive mathematics of Mandelbrot. It is like an infinite feedback loop has been created, and continuously taking the reaction of one and using it as the input of the other.

The other form of generative art seems to have a more linearly dependent characteristic. In these pieces, the artist creates a set of rules for the piece and then basically lets the work go free. Examples would be Norman White’s “First Tighten Up On the Drums” and the work of Casey Reas. There seems to be a looping factor only in the developmental stages of creating the work, where the artist tweaks the rules based on the product from before, but after these rules are finalized, the piece only interacts with itself. Is the dependency of one segment within the work upon another on the same level as those of Ong Keng Sen and Ken Rinaldo? The part that seems to be missing is the human factor. In Ken Rinaldo’s work, for example, humans play a part in the loop of dependency, while in Casey Reas’ work, the process is complete dependent on itself. The pieces that depend on human interaction pull the viewer into the process of art creation; the art depends on the viewer in order to be created. Spectators hold a direct stake in the formation of art. But the pieces that are autonomous seem to leave the viewer behind, for they will create art with or without the viewer present and while interesting, are less engaging.

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Week 4--Cui H. Cao--Who is the controller?

"We are now in transition from an object-oriented to asystems-oriented culture. Here change emanates, not from things, but from the way things are done."
Jack Burnham, 1968
I was impressed by this opening of Week 4 Lecture and at the same time it reminded me the work of Casey Reas "Processing." I was once confused and wondered how to understand and derive "esthetics" from his work. Which is most important in the eyes of artists, the outcome or the process? It's not only the images that count. More importantly, it's the process that bring the applauses. As Burnham stated, "the specific function of modern didactic art has been to show that art does not reside in material entities, but in relations between people and between people and the components of their environment." With this knowledge, I've changed my way of approaching and understanding Art. Whenever I visit Art muesums, I am not watching still objects, but my mind is watched by the meaning of the pieces of art.
Also, I'm fond of the below theory of Art:
Art, as an adaptive mechanism, is reinforcement of the ability to be aware of the disparity between behavioral pattern and the demands consequent upon the interaction with the environment. Art is rehearsal for those real situations in which it is vital for our survival to endure cognitive tension, to refuse the comforts of validation by affective congruence when such validation Is inappropriate because too vital interests are at stake...."
It has significant influence on my thinking of the definition of art. It's not only related with beauty or pefection. Art is a mirror, if you move, what you see in the mirror is moving as well; therefore, I think, I need to move on, in order to explore my discovery journey of definition of art.

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Sara Saadeh Week 4; Swarm Intelligence and Mobile Feelings

I found this week’s topic to be a lot more interesting to me. Although making its connection to art is a bit of a stretch for me, but then again I am forced to reconsider a lot of artistic areas in this class. Swarm intelligence was especially fascinating to me because it delves into a complex process of nature. Nature being a subject we continue to be perplexed by is dominated both by science and art and they strive to recreate and understand it. The amazing ways in which the different organism and organic systems function as a means of following certain patterns and rules that just seem to exist, is in itself incredible. Often times much of how these rules and patterns came to be is unexplainable. Yet, little by little as science and engineering discovers new ways to understand the complex systems of nature we are able to apply those concepts to areas such as business and art. Art, however, not only utilizes these concepts but helps us to better understand them through visual representation. Just as the artist in this week’s reading explained that he wanted his art to be more than mere bones of dinosaurs, but to show the complexities of their lives and how they interacted, basically bring them to life. That is what I think art is very good at especially with generative art, it brings animation to these systems and makes the audience, like myself, have an easier, more enjoyable time observing it.
The idea of using natural processes such as swarm intelligence to achieve some form of artificial intelligence does seem a bit scary in the sense that I don’t really like the idea of our world being run by machines and computers. The fact that many businesses use swarm intelligence to run their businesses and products more efficiently is promising in the economic world. I never thought such a simple organism as an ant could hold the secret to such a complex idea/process that we could utilize in our business world.
One art concept I really enjoyed was a piece called Mobile Feelings, by Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau. It addressed the issue of cell phones causing us to publicize our intimate experiences by talking about them on the phone in public in which we often animate them because we subconsciously know others are listening. So, they created this project to show how uncomfortable it would be to share more private body sensations with strangers over the phone, it would be quite unsettling. I think it is a very interesting project that might not seem like art. However, it involves the participator to utilize his sensations and get intimate with the art, therefore having an emotion effect on them. Art has this ability to probe into our emotions and sometimes we need that, especially nowadays when increasing technology causes us to become more detached and desensitized to the world around us. Art in this way brings us back to our most primal state of raw emotions. I recommend taking a look at this piece of art and well as the other’s on this website, they’re very interesting.

http://www.interface.ufg.ac.at/christa-laurent/WORKS/index.html

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Week 4 - Boris Lipkin - Futuristic Art

This week’s classes weren’t quiet as interesting as past weeks have been. While Edward Shanken’s talk had some novel ideas neither Brazil nor Victoria’s lecture had much value to it this week. I think my biggest complaint with the last few lectures has been that instead of talking about concepts or ideas relating to the topic of discussion, all that we talk about are examples of artists and artworks in the topic. While these are valuable as examples it’s hard to understand how all of it relates without any prelude that connects the ideas in this class. I’m not sure if there is enough information out there about some of these topics but the examples without the bigger ideas make the class hard to follow.
Anyways, in this blog I’ll try to talk more about the part of this week’s class that I did enjoy, Edward Shanken’s lecture. He really seemed to have a lot of experience talking about a lot of the ideas of perception and artistic interpretation. Before his lecture I had never thought about how artists view the future and how closely it does or doesn’t mirror reality. When I started thinking about this topic, George Orwell’s 1984, which was written in 1948, was the first thing that came to mind. While of course there were some things that did not mirror reality a significant part of the novel did come true and that might be why it is so famous around the world.
1984 is just an example of a work in this genre but looking at the bigger picture is even more intriguing (at least to me). When you write (or paint, sculpt, etc.) about the future you have almost endless leeway for your imagination, especially the farther you go into the future. With this much freedom however, comes a lot of scrutiny. While at the time that the work of art is made the artist or writer probably has as good of an idea of the future as anyone else, it is if his or her work survives the test of time that people will look back and see the flaws in the work. Thus the further into the future the work of art tries to go the more freedom the artist has in their ideas. However, the flip side is that each idea of the future increases the chance that the work of art will look completely ridiculous if read in the time that it is set in. 1984 was able to withstand the test of time because it was very realistic even when looked upon twenty years after the time it was set in.
You can also connect this to last week’s topic. This is the artist’s perception of the future and invention before it happens. Some ideas might never come true while some might even inspire scientists to create the outrageous inventions found in these works of art. Thus art and science might be even more connected than we looked at before. Art and science does not have to connect by artists working directly with scientists. Scientists can inspire artists in a different time and artists can also do the reverse. While artists and scientists are working further and further apart today, they continue to work together just not always in the same time frame.

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It's an analogy, not a definition (Kelly Banh, Week 4)

This past summer, I was enrolled in a philosophy class at UC Davis titled “Minds, Brains, and Computers” which set a foundation for the study of artificial neural networks with a lesson on the Turing Machine. The Turing machine processes a series of commands, performs the coded actions, and repeats the steps until it reaches a coded stop command. It did not occur to me that this has or will have anything to do with art.

Above is an illustration of the Turing Machine at work.

Right from the jump, Philip Galanter’s interview presents his definition for generative art: “Generative art refers to any art practice where the artist uses a system such as a set of natural language rules, a computer program, a machine, or other procedural invention, which is set into motion with some degree of autonomy contributing to or resulting in a completed work of art.” From Galanter, the algorithms and mathematical codes used in the Turing Machine can then be supported as artwork. It is common to view art only based on this dictionary definition: “the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.” And it is easy to forget that art also refers to: “the principles or methods governing any craft or branch of learning: the art of baking; the art of selling.” If we take the second definition, the Turing Machine can also be more appropriately labeled and accepted as art. Art, therefore, is not referring to the final product, but the process developed to reach a final product.

Take, for example, this exhibit of compact MAC computers.

Known as Hyperscape 1, these eight MACs run on a Hypercard program which manipulates images and communicates among each other on which images to accept or reject and as a result, display. Created by artist, Richard Bolam, the display is not only meant to show how humans process information, but also to display random and abstract images as art. Bolam’s Hyperscape 1 can be comparing to the Turing Machine. The Turing Machine accepts codes and prepares to perform the coded action. Hyperscape 1 accepts codes from the main computer and chooses to either accept or reject an image. The Turing Machine actually performs the coded action (i.e. print, move to next strip on the memory tape). Hyperscape 1 displays random images on its eight screens. These processes require communication, something that is not governed directly by the human creator, but programmed into the machines by the human creator.

Another interesting example I found was Jonathan McCabe’s “generative art from neural networks.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neMQMNFlMIo

"The patterns are made by repeated foldings, rotations and shifts, and then each point is coloured depending on its positions during the operation. A process of artificial evolution was employed to develop the final images, involving repeated variation, selection and "cross breeding" of the recipes used to generate the images."

The patterns represent the interconnected processing elements found in neural networking. But that’s exactly what they are: representations. The art is inspired from science, and provides a concrete analogy for the actual scientific process. An actual neural network, as shown below, in my opinion, is not art.

On a final note, I’d like to recall the folding paper and paint activity we all did as children in preschool or kindergarten.

Generative art or not?

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What is art? - Week 3 - Section 4

During discussion last week the question of “What is art?” came up. It makes me wonder if anything with a creative touch can be called art, but just like how beauty is in the eye of the beholder, art is also subjective.

I really like the idea of teleart, especially the telegarden introduced to us last week in lecture. It mixes the classic beauty of flowers in a garden with the scientific aspect of a robotic arm. I also like the concept of how the garden is managed by hundreds of people through the internet. Without cooperation between all the users the garden would not bloom. It is an interactive kind of art that puts the user in control of the piece. They can pick the flowers and have to take care of them, which ultimately determines which flowers grow and don’t. It’s has taken kinetic art to the 21st century.

While searching for more examples of teleart on the internet I came across TeleDoodle from Toys-R-Us (http://www.toysrus.com/sm-tele-doodle--pi-2335105.html#prod_prodinfo). It’s a doodling machine for little kids that allows them to create art on the TV. I think it’s pretty cool for kids to have different ways to express their creative side, especially since that generation is already so tech-savvy.

I loved Ken Rinaldo’s robotic sculptures that involved the interaction between the beta fish. With the augmented fish reality I thought that from far away the structure itself could serve as a modernized plant pot/aquarium. But then up-close and while in motion it becomes a little robo-vehicle for the fish. Just like the telegarden, this installation depends on interaction, just this time instead of users on the internet; it’s the fish in the bowl.

Honestly, I’ve always had a traditionalist viewpoint on art. Sculptures, paintings, photographs, etc. in museums where you look and don’t touch is what I have previously considered to be art. And I am guilty to have looked at non-traditional art and think “That’s weird. Who thinks this is art?” With this class however it has really opened my eyes on what could be considered art. With kinetic art, teleart, and interactive pieces I have discovered a sense of amazement and awe. I love the idea of interaction and how the audience can be a piece of the artwork, even in a little way, such as the telegarden. I think I have a new found appreciation for how versatile art can be.

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Daniel Baker - Week 3 - New Forms of Body and Mind

In response to Walter Benjamin's article, I find it very interesting that the methods once used to reproduce art are now being used as inspiration for new art. The systematic processes implemented at one time to show no creativity, now offer new modes of creation. It is an interesting comment on what is art. By simply changing "why" something is created, without changing the "how," one is able to transform a reproduction process into an art process. This, I believe, is true creativity. It does not demand a large production cost or special equiptment, but instead displays the art of the everyday; it uses things that we take for granted and uses them in different ways in order to make art.



It becomes apparent that this belief is present in the artists work this week. The works of Leonel Meora and Harold Cohen, with their painting robots is an excellent example. Their pieces use what appears to be modified Roomba's in order to create art. Now, the question becomes what is art? Can art be made by machines? Personally, I think that the product becomes less of an art piece than the process that it took to produce the result. Art, up until now, has been something that humans create, and so I think that this stereotype (if you could call it that) has been impressed upon me. It will take some time until society comes to accept that computers are capable of producing art on the same level that humans are, and it will be interesting to find how long this will take, if is possible to reach that point. But for now, the part most widely accepted as art would be the human involvement, and so the programming of the robot becomes the art. The paintings the robots create seem to just be the icing on the cake.



The theme of body and the mind seems to be very fitting when discussing these pieces. Going back to the robotic painters of Meora and Cohen, one may ask if the robots become an extension of the artist? Since the programming of the robots could be considered as the "mind" of the artist, a simplified and very focused version at least, then one may be able to say that the robots become the body of the artist, carring out the wishes of the artists mind. The robots act as the artists hands, following the rules the "mind" has created for them. In much of the same way that Stelarc uses robots that are physically attached to him, Meora and Cohen's art use robotics in a similar way. The only difference is that while Stelarc's machines are truely connected to him and respond to his movement, Meora and Cohen's respond to what the artist has written. Both could be considered forms of extension to the artist's body and controlled by the artist's mind; in each piece the product is a cyborg like mixing of the body, the mind, and the machine.

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The Message of Art (Kelly Banh, Week 3)

This week, I chose to identify one specific idea that stood out to me from Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” In passage two, he wrote, “Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be. This unique existence of the work of art determined the history to which it was subject throughout the time of its existence. This includes the changes which it may have suffered in physical condition over the years as well as the various changes in its ownership.” This quote was significant to me because I feel that as a painter, even my finished works of art continue to be a blank slate. Most cannot comprehend this. However, Benjamin’s quote conveys exactly what I mean by this. He basically says here that an original piece of work captures the experience of the artist, and perhaps their every mistake that makes the piece unique. Obviously, original pieces are far more valuable then replicates. For example, an original painting versus the prints that a company may reproduce for sales. His mention of time and space in this quote, for me, refers to the influences of the stimulus present in his environment that may have played a huge role in the creation of the piece. Often, due to the environment in which I choose to paint, my pieces will appear to take on the atmosphere of the location I am in, my mediums will change based on the weather, temperature, and time allowance, and how meticulous I am while composing will depend on the mood I, myself, am in. The last line of this quote means that a traveling piece of art, whether through time or through owners, will carry along the physical imprints that it receives from each phase of “life.” Only the original can capture such a quality. I know this firsthand because the paintings I mail home to my mom will often endure indentations and scratches from poor packaging and luggage damage during air travel. In that, we can remember from looking at those scratches and indentations that they were gifts to my mom which I mailed home to her from school. Therefore, the scratches and indentations represent the event of the separation between my mom and I while I am away at college. This is a rather simplistic explanation and example for Benjamin’s quote, but I feel that it delivers the same message. Every change which a piece of work takes on physically after it is already done continues to add to the meaning of the artwork. This is what I meant by “even my finished works of art continue to be a blank slate.” Art is never truly at a resting state in my eyes. We are used to hearing about people adopting new interpretations of pieces of art, but very rarely do we note the physical changes that artwork undergoes and the fact that that, too, gives artwork a new meaning and more stories to tell. Art delivers a message.

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alexfleming - Week 3 -Technologies Contribution to Art

Week after week this class has me questioning what is art? My perspective has completely changed. I used to see art as a painting, photograph, drawing... but now it seems almost anything has some artistic form. Last weeks Mathematics and Art completely changed how I viewed art and also how I viewed math. I had a greater appreciation for both. I was able to realize how closely related the two subjects can be.
This weeks Industrial Age, Kinetic Art and Robotics topics have done the same; opened up my eyes to an entirely new perspective of art. Along with the Industrial Age and advancement in technology has come the advancement in different forms of artwork. Technology is being used to not only create art but new forms of art as well. The topic of a relationship between Robotics and Art was hard for me to grasp in the beginning but after doing some research on the Internet I came to find that it was actually quite common.

I found that there was a Robotic Art workshop where people could come watch and interact with robotic art.

Kinetic art, a form of art connected with the industrial age, was easier for me to understand. I was also surprised at how many books, websites and photographs I found pertaining to the subject.
Benjamin Walters article, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" again raised the question of what is art? Now that artwork was becoming so easy to replicate, and replication were becoming more exact, what was the importance of original artwork? Is authentic artwork special anymore? I believe that because of mechanical reproduction and its ability to exactly replicate original art people have lost appreciation to those authentic pieces. The art is available to the masses, it looses its uniqueness and therefore is depreciated by the public. Reproducing artwork causes a lack of appreciation towards the original artwork, and also causes the original artwork to loose its unique specialness because it is available to masses.
Reproduction of Art, Technology of Art, Kinetic Art, Robotic Art...has all greatly changed my opinion of what I believe art is and how I value art. Human talent and creativity shown through work is admirable art in my opinion.

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Lisa Yang - Week 3

Coming into this class I had no background in any art whatsoever, so I thought. As the class progresses however, I am discovering that art can take many forms, shapes, styles, etc…

I never really thought about math playing a huge role in the field of arts. But after lecture last week I’ve learned that math is fundamental to certain forms of art. I took basic computer programming in the past so I do recall using very basic math to create very basic programs. It is very intriguing to me that with that very basic math I was using or perhaps just tweaking the numbers and operations a little, certain forms or patterns can be created, thereby producing a work of art. Even that is considered art! So perhaps I do have some background in art with the little programs I wrote that produced those very basic shapes, figures, and forms.

Moreover, as society progresses we will likely see the advancement of technology and with that, the advancement of human life. Artists are even utilizing these new avenues to produce new forms of art, like those videos we saw in class for example. But more specifically technology advancement is helping reduce human effort all around. Whether that is a good or bad thing, I am not sure. But we saw this during the industrial revolution when Ford began to use programmed machinery or some form of “robotics” on their assembly lines. And these new technologies even fall into the field of art.

I was most amazed by the concept of the telegarden. For this “robotic” garden to be considered art is hard to grasp, but the telegarden could be considered a fusion of art and science. As art progresses also, it is being produced and intermixed with all other fields. We talked about this in both lecture and discussion. Whether art will lead science or vice versa, only time can tell, but meanwhile the idea of robotics as an art is indeed fascinating.

By just typing in robotics into a search engine on the net, I got plenty of hits. What I found that most fits along these lines (art/science/human advancement) is how NASA has its own department devoted to robotics and what it can do for space exploration. The website is here: http://www-robotics.jpl.nasa.gov/

I find all of this to be interesting, considering that I came into this class not knowing what to expect and not knowing how to view the different types of art forms that we’ve discussed so far this quarter. I always looked at art being the traditional artwork worth millions of dollars to be mounted on the wall for display with pride and joy and not even thought about it as computer programmed machinery that can produce certain types of art or the programmed machinery itself being an art form. This goes to show how much impact art has on human life.

What is art then? It can be many things as we’ve learned. There is traditional, classical art, then modern art, and now with robotics and cybernetics, even more modern art? Whatever it is, this new era is still unfolding with new artists like Professor Sean Dockray and I’m excited to see what else can be deemed “art.”

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Tygue Luecke-Week 3- Art, Robotics, Opinions, Etc...

Before I go into a discussion of this week's material, I would like to make a quick note on the idea of stereotypes. At Mendelbrot's speech on Monday, I could not help but notice all the stereotypical mathematicians and "mad" scientist types. Anyone else happen to notice that? It is unfortunate that such stereotypes should be so negative when they are so often rue, or at least often based firmly on the truth. Maybe if they just weren't used for in negative ways...

Now onto the robotics- I noticed in section how much the question of What is Art?" came up. And I just don't know what to do with that, considering how pointless it would be to try to define art. Still though, when we discuss huge, pointless machines destroying each other for an audience, once can hardly question what it is that makes art art.While, as I have mentioned before, this notion is deserving of discussion, I feel like far too many artists devote their work to just that idea. I suppose it may teach us something to test a society's idea of art and compare it to that of another societies'; however, I just don't think we can learn a whole lot more from all the overabundance of artists who still insist upon basing their work on this unanswerable question.

This brings me to the work of Stelarc. Excuse me if I offend anyone, but I just cannot approve of his work. First of all, while I mostly understand the point he's trying to make, I'm pretty sure the body is NOT obsolete. Just because he is able to make machines that can perform the work of the human body does not mean that he no longer needs his body. The day that he is able to build his robots without the use of his body is the day that he can claim that the body to be obsolete. And what was the point of hanging his body from hooks? That proves NOTHING, save that he's a bit crazy. I just don't get it. So please, if someone DOES know what was up with that, let me know.

Check out this article:



Here's JUST another artist pushing the boundaries of art. REALLY, this is NOT necessary. Now, whenever this question comes up again, I am going to be tempted just to say no. NO, it is NOT art. What is the point in pushing it this far? Back in the day when art was seen ONLY as paint on canvas and sculpture, asking this question would have ACTUALLY been relevant. But in the days when people put blood and urine in a jar with a crucifix and call it art, the point is LOST!

Really, though, what do you people think about this? Do you guys think there's any point in asking the "what is art" question? What can we do with this nowadays? I'm sorry. I'm just so sick of it now. Well, this blog has become just a bit too opinionated. I apologize. I will make sure the title reflects this.

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Sara Saadeh, Week 3: Recording History through Photography

This week we studied many different forms of art that incorporate or are greatly influenced by mechanical reproduction. My most favorite form of art has always been photography because of the many ways in which one can minipulate an image to create a wide range of different versions. Just as two people looking at the same scene can interpret it in completely opposite manners, photography allows its creator to sculpt a piece of art from often times a very simple moment captured on film. In some cases they can even tell a story.
One specific artist that did just that was a man named Eugene Atget, who was mentioned in the Walter Benjamin's article, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction", for having recorded the history of Paris, France around the 1900's through photography. There is a remarkable truth in the age old saying that "a picture is worth a thousand words" because we can read all about France's history in a textbook, but the reality that is portrayed in a photograph can feed our imagination that much more. It can bring us back to that time and it becomes more alive when we see the people living at that time and the condition of the city in all its rustic beauty. No amount of flowery rhetoric could provide as rich a visual as that of the life captured in a photograph.
Taking a closer look at Eugene's work, he is described as not being interested in the "art photography" movement but his work was a "complusion to preserve natural environments from the destruction already visible in the industrialized northern districts of the city, and, in the same way, images of working individuals may have been made to record distinctive trades before the changes in social and economic relationships already taking place swept them away"(Rosenblum, Niomi). So, he literally used photography as a means to record the history of this very historical city, but in such a way that one can literally look through his photographs and feel as if they are taking a tour of the city. The only perspective he used in these photos was that of a person on foot, which added to personal feel of the photos. He also used toner which brought out a lot of detail in his photos and created an old looking feel as well, which is what I get when looking at them. On one of the websites I researched, they compared his photos to that of the same buildings as they look at present day. It is quite remarkable to see the difference in the two as if you can see time pass by through the pictures.

It was very interesting to see that Eugene Atget disregarded most of the rules of photography to use it as a tool for a project he felt compelled to create. But, in this way he was able to create a whole new approach to photography that expanded this incredible form of art.

http://www.masters-of-photography.com/A/atget/atget.html#photographs

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Annie Wu- Week 3

It is definitely really interesting to see how art has transitioned from being traditional and realistic to being industrialized and robotic. This great shift reflects the changes in cultural values, as well as, the constant motion of art. The Industrial Revolutions really spurred these changes in art, as there were the assembly lines and new technologies. It’s funny how things that we would have considered earlier simply to be purely functional or mechanical can now also be categorized as artistic.


Kinetic art is a great example of this transition of artistic values. Sculptures had traditionally been used to glorify the human body, or public figures. They were usually carved from marble or cast from bronze; basically, sculptures were made from heavy and durable mediums so that their monumental size and significance would stand out to the viewer. However, this is not the case for kinetic art. In kinetic art, the sculptures have moving parts, and are composed of different materials. They are machine-like, and their motion is provided either through natural forces or mechanical means.

Marcel Duchamp’s “Bicycle Wheel” was the first kinetic sculpture. His sculpture is also a readymade, meaning that the parts of his sculpture were already made and available to him—all he really did was stick things that were already created together. “Bicycle Wheel” is just a bicycle wheel attached to a stool. Both these items are so common and were probably made from assembly lines in factories. This leads me to question then, “What is art?” If Duchamp is able to create “art” with such everyday, manufactured objects, then is there really such a thing as a standard for art? Couldn’t everything be considered as art then?

It’s also interesting to me how robotics is considered to be an art form now. New technologies are constantly being more and more developed, and even though something such as robotics may not seem to be inherently artistic, it really is, because it forces people to look at the world in different ways. To me, “Robotic Chair” is a really cool example of how robotics and art can go hand in hand. This chair randomly collapses, and after it falls apart, it manages to autonomously pull itself back together. It is a robot because of its ability to self-assemble and it’s computer “brain.” Simultaneously, it is an art piece because of what it demonstrates and represents.
Robotic Chair

While I do think that robotics and industrialization have without a doubt helped art to achieve new levels of creativity and expression, I’m not so sure that these new technologies have only affected art in a beneficial way. From robotic and artistic creations such as the “Telegarden,” it seems as though these new technologies can make society more impersonal. Rather than interacting directly with the garden itself, people are communicating through the Web. Even though they gain this new technology and method of communication, they are still losing the personal aspect of this activity. They don’t get to enjoy directly working with nature and have instead become more caught up with technology.

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Boris Lipkin - Week 3 Robotics and Art

For this week's blog I would like to address three different topics: one brought up by the reading, one brought up by Victoria, and one by Sean Dockrey. It seemed to me like the four sources that we had this week gave a comprehensive view of the industrialization of art but each focused on completely different ideas and topics.
From the reading entitled The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Walter Benjamin certain sections on the authenticity of photography and film really interested me. On page seven, the article states: “From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the ‘authentic’ print makes no sense. But the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function of art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice—politics.” I really disagree with this analysis of photography. While today even a negative is hard to find, the importance of authenticity for photography, and art, is still very vital. In an age where magnificent works of art can be drawn on a computer and a photograph can be edited to increase contrast, change the cloudiness of the sky, or change dozens of other things, the definition of authentic photography has shifted to mean “without or with minimal computer touch ups.” With this new definition, finding the moment and taking an authentic picture of it under the correct settings has remained something that takes skill, patience, and sometimes a bit of luck just like many of the older art forms.
At least to me, film and photography are the only art forms to have been created since the industrial age that can be classified along the lines of the artforms created before that. The advancement of photography and film has made it possible for everyone to create great works of art even if they are not artists by trade. However, the other forms of art that Victoria brought up in class did not really qualify as that for me. In his article, Benjamin sometimes used beauty interchangeably with art and I tend to mostly agree with that definition. The magic that art creates is through its beauty and awe of its viewer. That’s why I, personally, don’t consider the Survival Research Laboratory or most of the other works that Victoria brought up in class as art. Until robots can draw like Sonny does, in I, Robot I really can’t see their products as art.
Moving on to Sean Dockrey’s lecture, I would first like to say that I found a lot of his projects very interesting and creative. His art, just like Steve Kurtz’ and Victoria’s is definitely a product of the late 20th and early 21st century as the mediums through which he makes art were simply not available even 50 years ago. Looking back at Sean’s, Steve’s and Victoria’s work what stands out to me in it is that all of it is based on interaction with the viewer or more often the participant. While the forms of art that we are used to are the artists interacting with you by showing you an image, a sculpture, a video, artists in the 21st century are creating art that depends fully on its participants in order to be art. Thus a lot of the art that’s being brought up in this class is more of a social analysis making the human mind its medium instead of a canvas or a roll of film.

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Cui H. Cao--Week 3--Robot?

"They're crazy... the fire, the noise, and the fight...what is the sense of building these robots and making them fight with each other?"

I was confused.

However, right after my words dropped on the ground, I realize that my critics were offensive.

What is Art?

There is no definition, but ways of understanding.

Struggling... for knowledge.

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Section 4 Week 3

I was kind of disappointed by the speakers this week and i hope no one takes offense to this. There is one reason why I didn't like Mr. Mandelbrot's and a few why I didn't like Sean's. I came into Mandelbrot's lecture with very high expectations. It was my impression that he would speak very elegantly about the artistic beauty of his set and while he did do that to a degree by showing appilcations of it and "fractal ideas" in artwork and what not, I thought it didn't have the levity or pep that I had expected from it. As for Sean, I felt he didn't put much effort into it. He had a long list of movies and so he didn't have to take up the time himself, and he didn't really talk about the topic at all; he just BSed a connection between our topic and his like a junior high schooler BSing literary analyses and their own. He spoke about his own works and then tied the beginning and end (kinda) to our topic. Circuit bending is interesting but not robotics. A political statement about how traffic lights make robots out of people is about robotics but not a connection between art and robotics. I know I'm being very critical so let me say this. I liked his art because he was very creative and had interesting ideas which is what his lecture was about. However, it just wasn't connected to our topic.
Okay, that being said, I think it's really hard to look at something and decide how much it is art and how much it is science. The reason I say this is because science in art is very much the same as science itself. Take Stelarc for example. While he makes explicit art pieces like "Blender" or "Stomach Sculpture" much of his art pieces represent the frontier of technology. For example, he has created several machines that read skin surface signals produced from nerves to both control and be controlled by technology. However, at the same time, in Japan, the same method has been developed to create a healthcare bodysuit that can double the wearer's strength. (see picture of HAL)
Several scientsts would like to create a prosthetic ear as Stelarc has envisioned but in many ideas, scientific and medical morality are bringing into question this project (as he wants a third ear). Finally, his "Prosthetic Head" project which can reasonably answer all things an "interrogator" says has another name in the scientific commnunity--artificial intelligence. As technology becomes a larger part of the art world, art seems to become a huge part of the science world; breakthroughs in one become synoymous with breakthroughs in the other. Given there were a lot of things that Fuller said in his article, I think one of the things that really struck me was when he used the analogy of horse inbreeding to explain why specialization is detrimental to our society. He said, "We can develop faster and faster running horses as specialists...but in doing so we breed out or sacrifice general adaptability." It occurs to me that this mixing of groups just forms a new group and so as the line is blurred between the art and technology world to bring about a new "technoart," we produce a new arena of specialization. Then we will wish to think outside the box so that we can look to other ideas so that we can be no longer specialists but well rounded people. We will say that people who specialize in technoart are as closed minded as the scientists and artists who refuse to intermingle today and so we will join two other areas of study and then continue doing so until we have an all encompassing subject of technosocioartisticscienligiosophiclinguilaw. Going back to Fuller's quote, we will be, even then, considered "unadaptable." Think of how much we miss out on by thinking there are only these specific groups that we can study. Science, art, religion, history, language, they are all as diverse as technosocioartisticscienligiosophiclinguilaw but we will continue to criticize our specialization in specific groupings and call ourselves closed minded or specialized and not well rounded or "adaptable." There is much to what Fuller says, though, as stereotypes are perpetuated as to who is what and as people play into these stereotypes by becoming introverted and uninteresting.
I suppose I should be ending this as I'm about to hit the word limit but from this lesson, I think I understand now that art is moving into all realms of science, helping to develop it rather than threaten it. I've always felt like there couldn't be an artist more versed in the nature of physics than me but now I realize we're all scientists. An artist's creativity helps us think outside of the box and imagine better worlds.

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Art and Robotics

Robotics in art is a very thought provoking and inspiring topic. First, it is an interesting merge of science in art in certain respects. It plays upon the idea of not only moving artwork, but the idea of interacting with art or having the audience in a sense play the role of the "artist." In some respects, such as the Telegarden, the designer of the garden only pieces together the framework and the people choosing the seeds comprise the "artists" of the work. In my opinion, not only does this attempt to bridge the gap between art and science but also works to for a higher purpose: uniting people under the principles of both. Robotics in art may be a bridge that helps reveal to the world that science and art must exist harmoniously.

It seems that a general idea that exists in humans is the desire to create a robot that embodies the characteristics of a human. This, to me, shows a duality between art and science. People would argue that the creation of this robot would be purely scientific: a means to create something using a series of mathematical equations for movement and mathematical properties for vision and sound. But is not creating a human out of scrap metal similar to creating one out of oil paints on a canvas? Both are ways to portray a human, yet when identifying a classification one is "scientific" and one is "artistic." I just thought I'd mention this because it relates back to first week.

I thought this picture was very interesting:

It shows where are culture is moving towards. The Telegarden and Sean Dockrey's presentations interested me most this week. Art is meant to spark the mind, make it think, bring about a change within it perhaps. I think the art forms talked about this week excel at making people think or at least getting them involved. I liked the Telegarden particularly because it could bring people together from all over the world with various different backgrounds. It helped unite cultures just as art should appeal to all people.

My interest in these lectures drove me to the STELARC website: http://www.stelarc.va.com.au/, which i found to be very informative and gave me insight into some reasons behind his projects. In fact, in the opening paragraph on his site, he notes that ever since man existed he has been somewhat attached to technology. This is what STELARC explores: the actual attachment of technology to the body. I also found this picture interesting:

I've never really been exposed to new forms of art such as this. In fact, I had never thought robotics to be at all artistic until I found various ways in which they could be used. The first three weeks of this class have really expanded my mind in regards to what can or cannot be art, and the fact that technology and art can exist together, and actually need each other more than I had once thought.

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Daniel Baker - Week 2 -The Shape of Art

Geometry seems to be ever present in art, and vice versa. Both art and geometry are all about shapes and visual structures representing abstract ideas or meanings. Therefore, the collaboration between the two is not difficult to find. In architecture, for instance, Aldo Rossi, an Italian architect in the 20th century, wrote about the ways in which buildings are constructed with very simple archetypal forms. These forms include just simple circles, squares, and other basic shapes that make up a sort of language of architecture. They allow complex structures to be easily broken down and studied.

In some sense, Rossi is simply writing about how our brains seem to absorb complex forms. If one thinks about how the brain processes works of art, it is very similar to the way that Rossi discusses breaking down buildings. We are able to recognize a face in a painting because of the basic shapes that make up the complex form, yet our brains are so used to identifying what we know as a face, that it seems to process instantaneously. But what about shapes that are not so easily recognizable? I have noticed that while looking up at ceiling and just staring closely, the small imperfections in the texture first appear separate, unsystematic entities, but if I keep staring my mind begins to pull together these unrelated shapes to form familiar ones. Much like staring at clouds, completely randomly formed shapes, and being able to see a whale or a cartoon character. Basic geometry is constantly being used in our brains and is something that artists use to their advantage, even if they are not directly aware of it.

An example of an artist that is aware of art’s dependence on geometry is Clifford Singer, who chooses to use simple geometric figures for the basis of his art because he feels that it can be universally understood. Much like Rossi, he believes that geometry is a language, where basic building blocks are used to create more complex forms. “I use geometry as a language to engineer my aesthetic expressions,” says Singer. Every shape within the artwork has meaning beyond its simplistic appearance, he uses them to unite the piece together, instead of splicing it apart as a first glance may predict. He uses his methods to create works that challenge the way that people think of geometry and simple shapes, crafting art that continuously is in dialogue with itself.


The Geometry of the Circle, Square and Heart
http://www.mi.sanu.ac.yu/vismath/clif/index.html

Math is such a fundamental, concrete part of life, that it seems interesting to combine it with something as abstract as art. But math’s precision and solidarity can be used within art to strengthen and improve upon it. Similarly, the more abstract realms of science, such as fractals and infinity, seem to be becoming more and more artistic and abstract, blurring the lines between the two disciplines even further. Yet geometry seems like the most fundamental similarity between the two, for anything complex can be broken down into simple forms, and geometry provides us with these.

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Manilynn Disuanco - Week 3

When I first started to think about math and art the first thoughts to pop into my head were connect-the-dots pictures and paint by number images. Aren’t these the simplest forms of the merging of math and art? And to think we were exposed to these things at such a young age.

When I think of math I think of a very structured subject, with methods and formulas used to get a single right answer. While I find art to be quite the opposite, with never a right or wrong method to create a piece open to millions of interpretations. Yet, during lecture there were many artworks shown that displayed how math was already significantly a part of art even as early as 1316 with Duccio’s attempt at perspective. With his artwork, Annunciation, I saw how geometry, lines, and perspective subtly play out in art. It reminds me of architecture and the arts and architecture course offered here at UCLA. Most modern buildings in themselves have become works of steel and concrete art. Yet, to be an architect one has to be very familiar with math, especially geometry to create not only pretty but functional buildings.
Although I’m not the greatest artist in the world I do like to doodle and play around on Photoshop. I’ve noticed that when I do doodle (haha) I tend to like symmetry, draw patterns, lines, etc., images that draw from math aspects. It’s probably the left side of my brain mixing with my right. I am also a very visual person. If I see a graph in science or math class or if my ideas for an essay are laid out in a chart I tend to understand and do better. In this class it is easy to see how science can be used to create art, but I found it hard to see how art could enhance science. However, now I begin to notice little ways that art has snuck up into the science world.
A point about the methods of education that I found interesting was brought up in lecture by both Professor Vesna and guest speaker Casey Reas. They both disliked math in high school and wished that the subject was taught differently. I must say I agree with them both. It got me thinking that if there was more integration between the subjects taught to me in my high school I feel that not only would I have retained the information better but would have found interest in subjects I hadn’t liked before. Going back to what we had discussed in lecture last week the separating between disciplines is apparent. We also discussed in section whether or not specialization was beneficial. With the case of Casey Reas if he only specialized in art and knew nothing about computers he wouldn’t have been able to create the innovative pieces that he does today. Although it could be argued that specialization is efficient and that people would be happier doing something they loved, I say that to know a little bit of everything makes for the true Renaissance woman/man.

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Week 3 Section 4

When I first started to think about math and art the first thoughts to pop into my head were connect-the-dots pictures and paint by number images. Aren’t these the simplest forms of the merging of math and art? And to think we were exposed to these things at such a young age.
When I think of math I think of a very structured subject, with methods and formulas used to get a single right answer. While I find art to be quite the opposite, with never a right or wrong method to create a piece open to millions of interpretations. Yet, during lecture there were many artworks shown that displayed how math was already significantly a part of art even as early as 1316 with Duccio’s attempt at perspective. With his artwork, Annunciation, I saw how geometry, lines, and perspective subtly play out in art. It reminds me of architecture and the arts and architecture course offered here at UCLA. Most modern buildings in themselves have become works of steel and concrete art. Yet, to be an architect one has to be very familiar with math, especially geometry to create not only pretty but functional buildings.
Although I’m not the greatest artist in the world I do like to doodle and play around on Photoshop. I’ve noticed that when I do doodle (haha) I tend to like symmetry, draw patterns, lines, etc., images that draw from math aspects. It’s probably the left side of my brain mixing with my right. I am also a very visual person. If I see a graph in science or math class or if my ideas for an essay are laid out in a chart I tend to understand and do better. In this class it is easy to see how science can be used to create art, but I found it hard to see how art could enhance science. However, now I begin to notice little ways that art has snuck up into the science world.
A point about the methods of education that I found interesting was brought up in lecture by both Professor Vesna and guest speaker Casey Reas. They both disliked math in high school and wished that the subject was taught differently. I must say I agree with them both. It got me thinking that if there was more integration between the subjects taught to me in my high school I feel that not only would I have retained the information better but would have found interest in subjects I hadn’t liked before. Going back to what we had discussed in lecture last week the separating between disciplines is apparent. We also discussed in section whether or not specialization was beneficial. With the case of Casey Reas if he only specialized in art and knew nothing about computers he wouldn’t have been able to create the innovative pieces that he does today. Although it could be argued that specialization is efficient and that people would be happier doing something they loved, I say that to know a little bit of everything makes for the true Renaissance woman/man.

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alexfleming - Week 2 - Art vs. Math

I had never really thought of math being related to art or any kind of creativity. I had always been really interested in art and really struggled with both math and science, especially math. It wasn’t that I was horrible at math, I just figured I was a more artistic person and I guess fell into the stereotype that one is either a math or science person, or one is creative and artistic. As an incoming freshman at UCLA this stereotype seemed to be true; one is either a "South" campus major or a "North" campus major. I came to school knowing that I only wanted to take "North" campus classes and therefore have completely avoided "South" campus. Not until this class did I realize how close math and science are related to art, and that both subjects can be considered art.
Art uses so many aspects of mathematics: space, shapes, angles.... I found this image on the internet. This sculpture alone incorporates so many aspects of art. In order to create certain art, the artist must also be a mathematician.

This sculpture was done by Tony Smith,
"Tony Smith mixed art and math; for him, it was the most natural thing in the world."
Here is another photograph that again uses mathematics to create art, or art to create something Mathematical.

I was really surprised when I found that this picture was from a website for and Art and Math conference. When I searched art and math on the internet I expected to find no results, instead I found hundreds. I had never thought of these two principles being closely related and such a debated topic. But that it has been discussed I can really see how crucial math and art are to each other and vital to the creation of both.

When I began reading Henderson’s article " The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry In Modern Art", I was really intimidated as soon as I read the word geometry because I directly associated it with math. Both after reading the article I concluded that alternative use of space in art and thinking in general was influenced by this idea of the fourth dimension and Non- Euclidean geometry. Non-Euclidean geometry "supported the birth of abstract art." Henderson said that this "encouraged artists to depart from visual reality", and allowed a "visual experience".
I believe that it is really important for an individual to recognize the relationship between math and art. I wish I had noticed it early because I would not have been so turned off by anything involving math. In order to create art it is essential to have mathematic abilities and in order to create math it is also important to have artistic abilities.

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Tygue Luecke - Week 2 - Art and Mathematics

First off, I would like to comment on the recent overlap in the curriculum of this course and that of my modern art history class. In discussing the arts of the Enlightenment era, mainly the neoclassical style, my professor mentioned that science and art were inseperable, contrary to the ideas of C.P. Snow. With paintings as proof, Professor Boime showed the class how patrons of the time put their money in both the sciences and the arts, in favor of furthering knowledge in general.

Knowing that artists and scientists alike have been supported financially by wealthy patrons for hundreds of years, I came to wonder when and why the division began to occur. Clearly, in some point in history, artists lost much funding to their scientificlly-minded contemporaries. Was this merely because scientific research itself costs more, because art is thought of as a luxury, or a secondary form of learning, or some other reason? I don't know. Despite my research on this topic, I found very few reasonable and crdible answers. So, if anyone might have an idea, please enlighten me.

Now, onto this week's topics. I was particularly interested in the work of Casey Reas and his feelings toward it. It took me much too long to ponder this topic, for I would have loved to have asked him how he felt about artwork that, after giving initial intructions to, creates itself. As I consider myself an artist in some respect, I know how it feels to feel close to one's work. I also know that it is extremely importent to me to be able to control all aspects of it. This is what led me to thinking about Casey' work. I just wonder how he feels about the control over his work. I wonder if it is something he feels is important, and all his pieces are technologically predetermined to be just as he desires them, or if he takes pleasure in the fact that his works grow and transform into something totally unpredictable after he provides them with the initial frameowrk. I cant help bbut to be reminded, in this case, of a parent raising a child in the way they see best fit, then letting the child break free to become what it will and just hope that it learned enough when the two were together. Just a thought.

And on that very thought, I researched automatic art, not knwing what I would find. As it turns out, there is a site dedicated specifically to something being called "automatic art." Here it is:

http://automatic-art.net/

Upon entering this site, one is prompted to wiat while an empty "canvas" is trasformed into a work of "automatic art." Also, it gives the option of typing in key words for the automatic art program to consider when compiling images to piece into the canvas. Now, this only makes me question the completely (in my opinion) unanswerable question of "what is art?" because I just can't fathom the idea of a computer program that pieces images together being considered art. This, it seems, is merely a jumbled version of a Google image search. However, I have to wonder if it is a statement about arbitrary artwork, easy media access, or any number of other modern-day concerns. And, if it is, does that make it art? Are those ideas themselves too played out to be seen as innovative? Can an idea be too played out, or does it just become inetnsified over time? These are more questions that are certainly discussion-worthy, though I believe they have no answer, nor do they necessarily need one. This brings me to my last point.

Concerningt the Madelbrot set and it's nickneme "the fingerprint of God." As I mentioned in discussion this week, I feel that statements such as that are really taking innovative ideas too far. I just think that humans are often too eager to know everything there is to know, whether the information is relative to life or not. Anyone else have any thoughts on the matter?

I would love to hear what the class has to say on the matters I have brought up, so please feel free to comment this blog. Also, I highly recommend going to that automatic art site and typing in a few key words to see what comes up. It's pretty interesting- and entertaining!

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Kelly Banh - Week 2 - Math and Art

Linda Henderson’s article on the fourth dimension and non-Euclidean geometry in modern art brought two facts to my attention. The first was that “Like non-Euclidean geometry, the fourth dimension was primarily a symbol of liberation for artists.” The second was that “Shadows, mirrors, and virtual images were added to the four-dimensional vocabulary of the artist by Duchamp, whose approach to the subject was unique in this period.” Combining these two facts can assist in the understanding of what the fourth dimension is and why it is a progressive tool for artists. More importantly, the connection between math and art, as has been emphasized in lecture this past week, is supported by the concept of orthogonality. The properties of this concept are based off of the right angle and the perpendicular. In terms of art, paintings have exhibited spaces which run orthogonal to the three dimensional spaces. Also, terminology alone suggests a consideration of mathematics. Because artists were able to acknowledge the existence of a fourth space, paintings, I believe, became more intricate and elaborate.

If we compare these paintings with painting from the 18^th century (randomly chosen), even olden-day perspective painting appeared to have less depth no matter how detailed the artwork may have been. Such an ability to convey depth in a painting has evolved with the contributions of the fourth dimension. Without the influence of mathematics, this is impossible.

I believe that the allowance of artists to utilize the fourth dimension broadened their artistic ability. I think this is what Henderson meant by her “symbol of liberation for artists.” From figure 12 and figure 13 above, Duchamp’s adoption of the terms “shadows, mirrors, and virtual images” seems very appropriate. As mentioned, the evolution of depth requires that such qualities be present in the art world; the artist must be able to show shadows, mirrors, and virtual images.
From this discussion of the progression of art by means of mathematics, I found it important to also discuss how art had stemmed purely from math, and not just the artistic use of math to enhance paintings. Monday’s lecture included the Mandelbrot Set. The Mandelbrot set is a fractal given by quadratic polynomials. From there, these types of images are derived:

This image is a representation of what artwork can come directly for mathematics. It is not simply a use of math applied to art, but a piece of art derived entirely from math. Note the slight difference.
I believe that this is an important distinction to make because it shows the full capability of emerging fields of study. As art and science have been incorporated into one another, art and math has also. And even beyond that, it has created its own presence in a field which appears to be completely unrelated. It is a typical connection to make between art and math through, say, architecture and landscaping, but through technological advances, art and math has been incorporated through Mandelbrot sets. If this trend in mathematics and art continues, I believe that there will be extreme progress in today’s popular culture.

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Justin Nordheim - Week 2

Nature revolves around mathematics. DNA is a series of four different molecules; gravity constantly accelerates a falling object; the molecular weight of hydrogen is always a certain average. This explains the very fact that mathematics are inherent in art itself as they are inherent in the very molecules that make up those art forms. If anything can be explained rationally, it can always be connects to the mathematics behind the ever so complex nature of human thought and creativity. M. C. Escher, Frank Gehry, Carl Reas: all of these artists used mathematics to create art forms that still serve as icons today despite how long ago they were created. They are not separate, but a unity of mathematics and nature that form many modern art forms today.

One of the greatest parts about art is all of its forms. There exist hundreds of mediums ranging from spray paint on concrete to programs that create art forms that "live." The mathematics involved in art forms has similar characteristics: the math can be trigonometric, analytically geometric, or even calculus based. But all the mathematics involved produce beautiful art forms that are inherent to the idea that nature and mathematics can work together harmoniously. Not surprisingly, harmony stems from the mathematical basis of the physics involved in sound. These art forms have led to many various types of design and an acceptance of a possibly changing culture. In fact, it in necessary for mathematics to exist in order for some of these art forms to be created. For example, M. C. Escher manipulates the idea of perspective, a principle that relates to our eye and mind's interpretation of the physical world. Similarly, programming revolves around the idea of multiple zeroes and ones to perform specific actions represented by the image on the monitor.

In my thinking, I realized that the topic for this week very closely parallels many of the ideas presented last week. The third culture is one that combines the ideas of both cultures, and in turn creating an entire new culture with new ideas and ideals. This is what all of the art forms which we were exposed to this week represent: the programming of Carl Reas, the tessellations of M. C. Escher, and the various principles of architecture. The third culture is already emerging in artists and many have no even realized it. All of the people presented last time that make up the third culture were scientists, raising the point that if a culture was emerging wouldn't it have to somehow represent both of the old cultures? Either way, artists have begun to merge scientific ideas such as the effect that gravity has on painting and programming. It also brings an important point about why this culture has begun to surface as an idea in the first place. Currently, the world has experienced thousands and thousands of art forms and it is the most advanced it has been technologically. Viewed in this way, it seems that art has always kept up, and it has just been hindered by the development of technology. It is undeniable that the advent of new technologies has opened up many new careers that are classified as artistic: web design, architecture, fashion, engineering. I guess my final point is that the third culture has, in fact, always existed in some way. Art has been an interpretation of the farthest developments of mankind. It could only represent what had been discovered. I say that to emphasize further that it is not limited to that: art is creativity and it is creativity and thinking that has led to every technological advancement. A new view of the world. Art and, whatever "technology" is limited to, have always been intertwined and will continue to be.

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jenna.pletcher - So Simple and Beautiful

I remember in elementary school we had to make a shape or animal and repeat it around itself to make a picture. Little did I know then we were creating a regular tessellation and the creation of such images including fractals used a much more complicated form of math that I would eventually learn. In high school when we came back to tessellations and fractals my childhood picture made so much more sense.
The fact that these designs seem so simple but actually take a very complex form of math to understand is part of what fascinates me about the images we have been looking at. For example here are a couple images I found when researching fractals:

The concept is simple and infinite. The more Escher designed and created the more complex and beautiful his drawings became. Our guest speaker also pointed this out when he was creating new fractals with his program. The equations and variations are very simple and the images they create appear complex and infinite.
Escher created whole worlds that at a glance make sense but the more carefully you examine them you find interesting intricacies that fooled you before. Here is one of the worlds he created:
Notice that the flow of the water makes no sense what so ever. However when I first looked at the image I didn’t notice what was weird about it. His images trick your mind, your brain tries to make sense of what it’s looking at and it isn’t until your force yourself to really examine it that you see what makes it so interesting.
I also found and interesting puzzle online to help you understand the Poincare Disk. I think with more of an explanation of the mathematics I would understand more of what is going on. It is fairly intriguing regardless. Click here for Poincare Pool - http://pirate.shu.edu/~wachsmut/Java/Poincare/Pool/pool.html
And here for Poincare Puzzle - http://pirate.shu.edu/~wachsmut/Java/Poincare/Puzzle/puzzle.html
Escher is a wonderful example of how art and science can be combined. What is very interesting is that Escher had no formal math or art training but discovered these patterns on his own. As I browsed through his art modern day examples came to my head. Not only do I remember images from the walls of my high school math classrooms but movies as well. In the movie “Labyrinth” Jennifer Connelly runs away from David Bowie in a maze of stairs turning each way, defying gravity and logic. Escher’s work must have been an inspiration just look at them together:
Escher did his work in the earlier part of the 20th century and curiously enough we still have problems finding ways to connect science and art. Escher could not have done his art without math and science showing the world the beauty that can come from the combination of these two cultures. It’s odd to me that in the 21st century these two cultures are still at such odds with one another.

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Annie Wu - Week 2 - Math & Art

This week’s lecture on the relationship between math and art really caught my attention, because ever since I was younger, math and art had been my favorite subjects. Friends would tease me, calling me a “nerd” just because I enjoyed math. I think I like math because of how it has a structure, how there is so much logic and patterns involved. On the other hand, I enjoy art because it’s so free and open. Anything can make sense in the art world and everything can be open for interpretation. So it was very intriguing for me to learn about how math and art work together in the world today.

Brunelleschi’s development of perspective was definitely a great achievement for art. By using a vanishing point in a painting, it is amazing how everything within the painting seems to just fall into place, like pieces of a puzzle. Art really emphasizes the importance of math, because math is used to explain and define the relationships between objects and space. Without math, we wouldn’t be able to have incredible lifelike sculptures or paintings. There wouldn’t be the perception of depth and space within flat paintings. With the combination of math and art, incredible feats have been made. Architecture is another example of math and art. Architecture is not just about designing structures—calculations have to be made in order to determine the stability and functionality of these structures. What is the point in merely designing things if they are not realistic or functional? With this, I really think that math is a great asset to art, because it can be used in so many ways to accomplish greater means in art.

I enjoyed Casey Reas’s works very much, because he was able to create such beautiful images with simple math equations. I was kind of surprised that I was able to understand most everything he explained, in terms of the math that was involved. I guess I just expected him to have used more difficult math to create such complex-looking images. I later realized that those images are just a result of the repeated interactions between simple geometric shapes.

I also really like the works of Maurits Escher. From his works, it is apparent that there are patterns and geometric shapes involved. It’s so amazing how Escher could develop such seemingly complicated images and patterns from simple geometry and symmetry. He used mathematical concepts and ideas to further art, and it is probably because of this he had stated that he felt closer to people who worked scientifically instead of his fellow artists. His interest in mathematical structures allowed him to explore art in a different light, to see things in a different perspective.


This piece, titled "Cycles," by Escher, is an example of how he integrates math into art. Throughout the piece, he simply repeats the simple hexagon shape and from that, he creates different perceptions of space and depth. He basically transforms the flat plane of the paper into something so much more. Everything in the artwork fits together because of the hexagonal shape. As a result, there is a certain flow in the movement of the figures within the work.

More information and explanation on Escher's works-
http://www.mathacademy.com/pr/minitext/escher/

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Cui H. Cao - Week 2 - Creativity: from Zero to Infinity

"Mathematics is permanent revolution."
--The Kaplans,
Authors of "The Art of the Infinite"
www.maa.org/reviews/images/artinfinite.jpg

--"Zero--It's an emptiness of fullness"

Professor Vesna
--"I did the initial drawing, then the processing did the rest which became out of my control."
Guest Speaker Casey Reas
--"That's how life works."
Professor Vesna

I'm really interested in the concept of Zero. It's a number that can't be ignored, a circle that starts at its end. It has the meaning of nothing, but means something. It appears in mathematic, philosophy, art...and everywhere.
Started with the definition and comprehension of Zero in the fields of Mathematic and Art, Professor Vesna brought us into the world where Math and Art blended.
I heard of Piero della Francesca and Leonardo da Vinci and their renowned Art works, but haven't known the great mathematics ideas that led them into the infinite world of art.
As Professor Vesna pointed out that prospectiveness is necessary in order to understand painting. I was amazed by the works of Escher, who perfectly applied mathematics into his graphic designs, which feature infinity and impossibility.
Circle Limit III by M. C. Escher (1959)
In addition, his works are appreciated both "artically and scientifically." For example, he raised the topic of gravity in his famous "relativity."


Relativity, byM. C. Escher. Lithograph,1953
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a3/Escher%27s_Relativity.jpg
Similarily, our guest speaker Casey Reas's art work--Processing also takes Mathematics as fundamental element. One interesting thing is that Escher didn't have mathematical training, and Reas didn't like math when he was at school. However, their passion of art brought them success in Math Art. One difference is that Reas uses technology as a media to enhance his creative ideas of geometry and art.
Math is not only about solid numbers if you come to understand the fullness of zero; Art is not only about the colors that you see on a painting. If you think scientifically, behind each color, there is a number.

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Week 2 Mathematics and Art

When I started thinking about the combination of art and math it was very hard for me to find an example of this interaction. All of the examples that were brought up by professors Vesna and Reas were a mix of art and computer science. While computer science implements some mathematical properties and equations, at least to me, it is not the same as math. Computers and programming have become a medium of art but simply because something has numbers in it, it does not mean that it is math.
I was really shocked that Casey Reas hadn’t taken a math class in fifteen years (not just because he went to MIT but because he was an avid computer programmer). Both of my parents work in software development but up to that point I had always thought of math and computer science as being the same thing when clearly, they’re not. Mathematics looks at the world and tries to explain relationships, sets, and equations in mostly theoretic terms. On the other hand, computer science does not in almost all cases come up with drastically new ideas about the world, instead it simplifies operations that could have been done by hand and makes them thousands of times faster and easier. Even though this task is very important for research in other fields and for society in general it has almost no real relationship to mathematics. Both Casey Reas and Benoit Mandelbrot used very simple mathematical equations to create what can be considered art. Their use of mathematics, however, does not make them mathematicians. It’s like saying that because I know how to say a few words in Spanish it means that I am a fluent Spanish speaker. Computer scientists just barely skim the surface of mathematics. The mathematics that’s used in computer science is just the tip of the iceberg and 90% (or in this case probably 99.99%) of it is under water.
After making the distinction between computer scientists and mathematicians I looked for mathematicians whose work included art or artists who had mathematics in their works. What I found was almost exclusively discussions of art history and perspective just like the professor brought up in class. While no doubt this is a mathematical analysis of art, it again does not go beyond the surface of mathematics.
While of course I am not an expert on this topic and maybe there are artist-mathematicians or the other way around, I was not able to find any. I think the reason why science can compliment art but mathematics can’t is because mathematics is based almost exclusively on its own relationships and ideas. Whereas most sciences are based on observable events or behaviors in nature, mathematics is a man-made invention that with now thousands of years of research we continue to discover new areas of. Almost all of us use some kind of math every day but we have almost no understanding of what the latest advancements in the field were. With so few people being able to follow mathematical research, it becomes clear why artists and mathematicians have not found a common ground.

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