--- Week 10 --- Section 2 --- John "Matt" Ko ---

This week we talked about space and space exploration. The next frontier. A lot has happened in space in the last 50 years. We've orbited the earth, landed on the moon, sent satellites to the outer reaches of our solar system. Because of the all of the advances in technology, so many things that seemed impossible are now very possible. Though there are still many things scientists hope to accomplish, they have already accomplished many things already.

Even before venturing into space, people have been fascinated by the cosmos. Astrology played a huge role in prehistoric and early historical times. People based their lives on what Astrologers could read from the stars. While astrology is now widely accepted as unscientific and often totally fabricated, people in those days took it extremely so seriously that kings sought the advice of the stars before taking any action. And today, though few believe that the stars will guide your life, just about everyone is still fascinated by space.

So much of today's pop culture has been influenced by space. Star Wars, Star Trek, Apollo 13, E.T., The X-Files, and many other movies and TV shows have all been influenced and inspired by space exploration. Many venture to the northern regions of the world, just to see the Aurora Borealis. It is not uncommon for people buy telescopes and go to observatories just to see Venus as large as a quarter. Thats not even that great and people go see it. They buy art and photographs of various planets and galaxies. Just recently, many people have joked about the now-no-longer-a-planet Pluto. People are obsessed with the concept of extraterrestrial life and UFOs. Websites about aliens are widespread throughout the Internet. Anywhere you go today, its very hard to go too long before running into the idea of space.

Just the vastness of space is incredible. Not only that, the universe is so complex that its hard to even pretend to comprehend it all. What Professor Geckelman shared with us about plasma just complicates the universe more! And yet we love it! The idea of plasma creating a network throughout the universe baffled me. I never knew that the universe was so organized, what with so many different galaxies floating and spinning around in what seems to be random patterns. I just assumed things drifted around aimlessly in space. But in reality, plasma and all of the magnetic forces created by it moves the universe. Its amazing!

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Kiesha Nazarenus, Week 10!!, last week :(

It’s hard to believe that this class is almost over. We’ve covered so much material but as I sat down to write my final essay I began to realize the extent to which everything connects and supports each another. Especially as we discuss this week’s topic, Space Exploration, all the previous topics seem to connect and tie in perfectly.

Why it is that man kind is so interested in the concept of extraterrestrial life? Why is it that we feel it necessary to know what is not known…what drives this desire? Will our interest in space exploration lead to technological advances that will guide our society to a new way of living?
Tens of thousands of UFO reports have been made worldwide. Reports of unusual aerial phenomena date back to ancient times, but reports of UFO sightings started becoming more common after the first widely publicized U.S. sighting in 1947. Now personally I can’t possible look at some of the things people testify to and truly believe it… and frankly because of gut instinct I think UFO’s are a bunch of nonsense, but at the same time there is some convincing evidence out there. At this site I found, http://http://www.syti.net/UFOSightings.html#anchor361824, astronauts were cited as having testified to witnessing extraterrestrial life and actually believe in what they see. Whether this is true or valid or whether these astronauts are actually sane and credible, I don’t know, and I don’t know if I can fully buy into it BUT it does make you think. These men are up in space where most of society never goes and they testify to seeing UFO’s. In a taped interview by J. L. Ferrando, Major Cooper said: "For many years I have lived with a secret, in a secrecy imposed on all specialists in astronautics. I can now reveal that every day, in the USA, our radar instruments capture objects of form and composition unknown to us.” As I was scrolling down the list of astronauts I froze when I got to Neil Armstrong. Neil Armstrong is quoted for saying that “Aliens have a base on the Moon and told us in no uncertain terms to get off and stay off the Moon” and that unnamed radio hams with their own VHF receiving facilities that bypassed NASA’s broadcasting outlets picked up an exchange where Neil on the moon said “I’m telling you there are other spacecrafts out there, lined up on the far side of the crater edge! They’re on the Moon watching us!” Is this all just a big conspiracy…or are we just hesitant to believe? I mean who are we to say that in some other galaxy there isn’t another life form with similar intelligence to us.
I really like our guest lecturer this week even though the discussion was scientifically based without much discussion of art. It always amazes me when I see the research and projects that are being done at UCLA and Walter Gekelman’s work tops my list. At the end of lecture he briefly touched on a couple practical uses for plasma including some for medical purposes. Class was ending so he didn’t really get to expand on it, but he mentioned how people are trying to engineer new forms of biological tissue by growing it in plasma and plasma torches that can seal tissue instantly and plasma scalpels that will seal while cutting to prevent bleeding during surgery. Medical practice has the potential to change drastically as we form new ways for expanding a person’s life span. But at what point will prolonged life have a serious effect on over-population? When will our fascination for being able to cure everything kick us in the butt?

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jose fernandez, week 9, nanobots and shock treatment

Nanotechnology is a subject which I am not familiar with. Yet it caught my attention when Prof. Vesna discussed of some of the advancements that it can present in the field of science. The root word nano describes objects that are very small, invisible to the human eye. One of the projects that I was amazed by was the tiny robots that went into the body and helped cure malfunctioning parts. This is a great innovation since it can relieve the stress that a doctor goes through working at such a small scale. The tiny robots would be program to attack blood clogs in the blood stream or fight against cancer cells. This goes back the week on robotics. Robots are really becoming a consideration for replacing humans in the medical field. I don’t mean that humans will not be involved anymore but that robots will be used to do the tedious of tasks. For example, I was watching a show on the discovery science channel where three robot arms were being used by a the doctor in another room through remote controls. The robot was performing a small incision that required much precision. The human hand is very shaky and for a doctor to do this is a hard task. All the doctor had to do was guide the arms and the job was done. This is a seriously advanced procedure that still has time to go before it becomes a norm but it sure looks promising.



Blood clogs can really lead to some serious damage to the human body and the tiny bug-like robots can really aid a person in prevent a stroke or even a heart attack. I can just imagine miniscule objects cleaning out the blood stream over time without regular visits to the hospital. Cancer is another disease that can be cured with this technology. Killing the cancer cells and removing them is a long process. Having these helping out with removing cancer cells just like the clogs with make the doctor’s procedure a bit easier. It will be a constant fight since the robots would take over when the doctor needs to take a break. That way it would be more effective in the sense that the fatigue would not take a strong hold on the doctor.




This was not talked about in lecture but I remember from my neuroscience class a procedure to fight epilepsy. Neurosurgeons would use shocks to the brain at the neuron level. The doctor would insert a small transmitter in the brain that would conduct electricity from an external source. This procedure induces seizure that would allow the doctors to see what the main problem was. In this same field, immobile patients would have a similar conductor placed in the immobile part of the body. Say a person was unable to walk, an external battery source shocks the potion of the brain controlling the immobile body part, therefore contracting the muscles and producing movement. I cant recall what year was this procedure was developed but I think this was nanotechnology at an early stage.
In the near future every little robot or chip will play a big role in hoe people live their lives. We are beginning to put ourselves at the hand of technology. To some people it can become a scare to think that we might evolving to the point where we are no longer alone as the only human race, but that robots, big and small, will soon live along with us as a norm. medicine is going to be replaced by nano robots.

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Kiesha Nazarenus, Week 9,

This week was short and compact but nevertheless encompassed a broad amount of information…all of which was interesting and seemed to only support this class’s aim at illustrating the merging of science, technology and art. I feel like this week particularly addressed the science and art aspect. Seeing some of the visuals presented in class on Wednesday amazed me in their simplicity in complexity. At first glance when looking at the atoms arranged to form the letters UCLA in gold and blue I figured it had only taken a few minutes to create. Upon hearing that it took a couple days I realized just how complex this “artwork” really is. Perhaps that is what makes it so beautiful…the complexity in such simplicity.

I’m not really familiar with nanotechnology so I looked it up on wikipedia and read that “it could variously be seen as an extension of existing sciences into the nanoscale, or as a recasting of existing sciences using a newer, more modern term.” I didn’t fully appreciate the meaning behind the word until I glanced at how it is being used and read “although there has been much hype about the potential applications of nanotechnology, most current commercialized applications are limited to the use of "first generation" passive nanomaterials. These include titanium dioxide nanoparticles in sunscreen, cosmetics and some food products; silver nanoparticles in food packaging, clothing, disinfectants and household appliances; zinc oxide nanoparticles in sunscreens and cosmetics, surface coatings, paints and outdoor furniture varnishes; and cerium oxide nanoparticles as a fuel catalyst.”

http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanotechnology
Of course after reading that nanotechnology is applied to the sunscreen I put on before laying out at the beach I began to wonder why it was artists or I suppose scientists as well would manipulate this technology to create visual creative work we deem as art. Well, like I’m sure many of us did, I googled nanotech and art and clicked on a link that presented me with a Nanotechnology Art Gallery.

http://http://www.nanotech-now.com/Art_Gallery/Cris-Orfescu.htm
Just like with other art I liked some of it and disliked some of it. It was funny because as I would look at different people or organization’s work I would describe them in terms of “oh that is really abstract” or “these pieces contain a lot of patterns” or “I really like the colors in these pieces.” Some were very scientific in approach and others were more artzy in their approach. What characteristics do we classify for being more “artzy” though? I mean when I browse through some just seem to be art and others don’t.
Some of my favorites though were:
Cambridge University who used a lot of bright colour and patterns.
Magnetic Nanotubes where an alloy remains present in the ends of the nanotubes and is magnetic so the image generated shows colours that represent the direction and intensity of the field.
Crystal Kaleidoscope which has a false colour convergent beam electron diffraction pattern recorded at 150kV parallel to the three-fold axis of lanthanum aluminate.
‘Dancing’ quantum dot which is a plan view bright field transmission electron micrograph of a germanium/silicon quantum dot in a silicon matrix.
Magnetic Dot that shows the magnetic microstructure in a natural, finely exsolved intergrowth of magnetite blocks in an ulvospinel matrix.
I also really liked Cris Orfescu’s work though it was much more abstract looking to me and blended into itself.
My favorite was Flamingo which is a 1,1,1,2,2,2-Hexamethyldisilazane hydrolyzed and dried at room temperature.

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Christine Dang - Week 9 - An Obsession with Minimizing

One of the first classes I took here at UCLA was a Fiat Lux seminar on Nanotechnology with Professor Eshaghian. One of the subjects we covered in this class that I found very interesting was the current populace's obsession with making everything smaller and smaller. Why this obsession? I can understand the usefulness of having things be more compact for portability. However, there is a point where reducing size becomes ridiculous. The example mentioned on Wednesday for one, the microscopic wheelbarrow. Like was mentioned, what is the use of the microscopic wheelbarrow? It's times like these that science annoys me. There is much research out there that really, doesn't have much of a point to it. Doing things simply to continue to prove that they can be done seems utterly useless.



Additionally, the nano-art discussed seemed not so much art but more of the "look at we can do" aspect of science. Sure, the alignment of molecules to spell out UCLA was intriguing, but I don't know if I would classify it as art in the usual sense. However, some nano-art does amaze me. For example, the microscopic sculpture of the bull created by the scientists at Osaka University. Some of the artwork created by Alexa Smith is also very interesting. The strange mix of colors and patterns becomes all the more fascinating when I realize that this piece is created by bombarding a "canvas" of sorts with atoms.


However, this experimentation with nanotechnology is also fairly worrying. As we've seen quite clearly in the discussion of genetic experimentation in the past week, scientists do not seem to have many bounds as to what lengths they will go to. With nanotechnology, what greater damage could come from it?

In class on Wednesday, I remember it was mentioned that science fiction heavily influences and inspires the research in nanotechnology. In the nanotech seminar earlier this year, one of the experiments we discussed was a theoretical "teleporter", much like the ones seen in Star Trek or Star Wars or any other slew of science fiction. What would this experimentation lead to? Would it be like in Spaceballs where bodyparts arrive all misaligned?

Also, another aspect we discussed was the usage of nanobots for biological and medical technology. However, as I discovered from my seminar, many of these tiny little robots are self-replicating, allowing them to handle essentially a problem of any size. But what happens when these self-replicating robots run rampant and essentially reproduce out of control? This then leads to the potential problem of "grey goo", which could cause unpredictable problems for not only the patient they are used in, but also the already heavily damaged environment should they get loose.

Personally, I feel that currently we know so very little of nanotechnology as it is. Perhaps we should be researching more before we delve into the artistic side of things. While I understand that "doing things for the sake of doing things" is a huge part of research and discovering new, unique properties, I believe that these artistic forays should be held off until scientists have a better grasp on what the properties of nanotechnology are. As it is, when substances are brought down to a nano-scale, their properties change dramatically. If so, why so many almost frivolous creations? I see that it is artistic, and I see that it is unique and interesting to do such things with new technology. But at the same time, I feel that it is still too much of an unknown territory to be doing such things.

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Julie Fair- Week 9- Seeing is Believing

The field of nanotechnology is certainly intriguing. There is something very alluring about a world you intuitively know exists, yet cannot see or ever hope to see. Professor Vesna mentioned that this has led to a paradigm shift, in which “seeing is believing” is no longer valid, and has been replaced by “feeling is believing.” As far as methods for research go, I suppose this idea is legitimate, since nanotechnology uses the Scanning Tunneling Microscope which uses a version of “feeling” to map out the physical properties of the otherwise invisible nano world. Personally, however I feel that without the visual images produced by such “feeling” technology, the nanotechnology field would still lack validity. Here is where art comes into play. Visual images of the nano world are needed for people to be able to wrap their heads around the concepts being put forth relating to nanotechnology, and in turn to validate the field itself. Quoting a website pertaining to art and nanotechnology, “So how do you make something so minuscule and abstract appear real to the ordinary eye? Why not through art?” http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/12/1223_031223_nanotechnology.html23_nanotechnology.html

Both real images from Scanning Tunneling microscopes and artists renditions, can help to make the nano world more realistic to the ordinary eye. These techniques could be a great way to get information about nanotechnology out to the general public, who at this point seem largely in the dark on the subject, and as they have already begun to, these techniques could be used to aid in education, where students are studying organisms and chemicals at the nano level. Although these images and renditions may not depict the nano world exactly, they can still serve an important function as the bridge between the abstract invisibility of the nano level and the concrete visibility of the macro level. Here is an example of an artistically colored image from the nano level and an example of an artists rendition of a molecule, also at this level:

I also think that the naming of nano-sized objects after more concrete and relatable objects could be an effective means of making the nano world less abstract. In the case of bucky balls for example, knowing that their structure resembles a geodesic dome, as designed by their namesake, makes it much easier to visualize the invisible molecules structure. This could be used more widely to make molecular structure more concrete to the novice.

On a somewhat separate note, I just thought James Gimzewski's comment that atoms are mostly nothing was very interesting. I find this to be a very difficult concept for me to get through my head. I look at my body and I see material; visual, tangible, concrete material. It seems impossible that a body like this could be constructed of subunits that are mostly nothing. The ratio just doesn't seem correct. If each subunit is mostly nothing then shouldn't my body be mostly nothing? And in this case, how would it have the structure that it does? What is it then that there is enough of present within me along with the "mostly nothing" that gives me my structure?

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Derek Ganong - Nanotech: how we see it.

I think that nanotechnology is the way of the future but not in the traditional sense that science fiction writers would have use think. The idea of having small robots that work within the human body or collectively outside of it pretty absurd at the present moment. In Michael Crichtons book “Prey”, the nanotechnology particles are designed for mainly military applications and they are collectively intelligent. The resulting story is horrific and initially made me afraid of and position myself against nano-technology. Several years after reading the book and making up my mind on the matter, I re-examined the story and found that it was not a fair representation, or a feasible one, of nanotechnology. For starters, the nanobots in prey were all imbued with a type of strong artificial intelligence that allowed them to take control of themselves and completely cut themselves off from their creators. Not only is this type of artificial intelligence not possible with the present computational systems and execution languages, but the bots unanimously identify humans and all other animals as a threat and take hostile action against them. To add to this, the bots were capable of reproduction by using biological material. The problems with these circumstances are many. While it is clear that the artificial intelligence is not possible (and if it was we would have more control over it), the fact that the bots were hostile to biology is probably due to the nature of sci-fi thriller novels. With all this said, the biggest impact that prey had on me was that it married all of the said traits to nanotechnology and caused me to be afraid of it. When I hear the word “nanotechnology” I cringe. It has the same effect that words like “tuberculosis” and “plague” and “nuke” and “communist” and “british” had in their respective time-frames. And so like a nuclear power plant or modern day communist, nanotechnology is subject to developed stereotypes and expectations based on the exposure of the topic to the public by artists such as Crichton.
The kinds on nanotechnology that tend to get left out that people should know about include the microprocessing chips in computers who’s nano-scale architecture allow the tunneling of photons through barriers in order to create efficient calculation devices. Other nanotechnology applications in our present day include pharmaceuticals and prescription drugs as well as the desalinization of salt water and contact points of electron tunneling microscopes. As we can see, nanotechnology is already all around and greatly shapes the world we live in today. The types of nanotech that we will be seeing in the next several decades are not flying robots who consume biological organisms to reproduce, nor are they invasive devices that roam you blood vessels. Right now, they are mainly on the manufacturing scale. This is not to say that there will never be nano-robots with the capabilities described (only with more control over them than artists would have you think). Like in all new emerging technology, it is the job of the artists to expose the public to the ideas that constitute new radical methods that are a result of improved technology.
Our guest lecturer this week was Professor James Gimzewski of the department of chemistry and biochemistry. His lecture was very entertaining and his mannerisms reminded me of a character in a movie (but I wont reveal that character or movie in this blog). Gimzewski’s interests seemed to lie in the determination of how nature exhibited characteristics that are similar to nanotechnology, examining it, and trying to utilize nature to create artificial methods of efficient nanotechnology utilization. One of the examples that he gave use was a particular blue butterfly whose wings were actually grey but the structure or the wing altered the reflection of the lightwaves to make it appear blue. The surface of the wing had lots of nano-scale structure and the examination of this structure was Gimzewski’s main interest in the matter. Through some surfing, I came across the nanotechnology now website that contains information on practically every nanotechnology piece of new and the history of the field. It is worth checking out.
http://www.nanotech-now.com/current-months-news.htm

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Allen Wang Week 8 - Gene Therapy?

With advancement in science, we are given the illusion that we are almost invincible. If we lose a heart, no matter, we can grow another one. If we catch some strange disease, no matter, we can most likey find a cure. But, with the limitations of research and the controversy of stem cell research, out biotechnology is limited for the time being.
If we did live in a world where biotechnology was free to explore its boundaries, it would probably be like a world of Jurassic Park. With its ability to clone and explore science freely, nature would eventually take its course and probably end up destroying everything in its path. Because man believes that it can control nature and anything else that it holds, man becomes too ambitious and eventually creates something out of its control and becomes destroyed by its creation. The dinosaurs, resurrected by man, cannot be contained because of the chaos theory, and therefore the dinasaurs break through the chains and locks and emerge to search and destroy the lives of humans in search for food.
We are not ever able to contain nature for nature is chaotic. Even in an contained enviroment, we must expect the unexpected in order to survive. The book and the movie versions of Jurassic Park has shown that even though the enviroment was well contained, with unpredictable variables and expectations, such as the backstabbing Nerdy and the storm that passes through the island, the elements can combine to devestation effects. The outcomes were the destruction of the lives of humans, dinosaurs, and as well as Jurassic Park itself. Because of the destroyed containment field of Jurassic Park, the animals, which were once contained, were released into human populations, though never to be found ever again.
Jsut because we can advance greatly in biological technology, we shouldn't because we might reach the point where we as humans cannot control the power that we discover. Though we should still advance, we need to act cautiously and realize that we are not the all powerful beings that we believe ourselves to be.

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--- Week 8 --- John Matt Ko --- Section 2 ---

This week we went over transgenic art and what it implies for society. Transgenic art is what Eduardo Kac calls his projects. The basic idea behind it is the creation of hybrids, though not in the typical manner of crating hybrids. Prior to the great advances in medicine and technology we have today, hybrids were made primarily among plants, and other times among dogs and cats. Hybrid plants are made by grafting different stalks onto each other and on the basis of dominant and recessive traits, things such as seedless lemons and oranges are made. In dog and cats, hybrids are made through the process of interbreeding. Essentially, any non pure-bred dog or cat is a hybrid. However, now that technology has come as far as it has, hybrids can be made straight at the root, the genome. Things that normally couldn’t be made, like hybrids between different animals or humans and animals, can be made. While these hybrids aren’t usually the kind of half-horse half-man you might think, the implications are pretty scary. It may even be possible to create things like centaurs and chimeras someday.

I for one, am not totally against what Kac is doing. Creating a green rabbit using GFP is a great advancement for science. It signifies the fact that we are now able to read the genome, and are on our way to fully mapping the human genome. And the concept isn’t foreign to me either. I had already heard of green mice from my friend in a Life Science class. However, deciding to call it art is the point at which I disagree with Kac. It’s a science experiment and that’s it. Perhaps there is beauty and creative expression in using the advances of science to create something new, but this happens in labs all over the world all the time, but none of these people call it art. To them it is their research, career, or even life’s work. To call Kac an artist would be to call these scientists artists as well. But to these people, this is work to advance science, not to express themselves artistically. So I don’t quite understand how Kac has the freedom to call himself an artist when he does exactly what scientists do.

Another thing we discussed in discussion was the development of actually growing cells into steaks, so that we don’t have to kill animals anymore. This I also feel isn’t art, though I would say it is closer to being art than Kac’s rabbit. I have somewhat of a problem though with doing this in the first place. Mainly because you don’t know about it’s consciousness as a living object. We can’t know that it doesn’t feel pain when you kill it, and if it does, it would be just as cruel as killing any other animal. I don’t have any problem with it myself, but if the issue is the animal cruelty, the problem I think is still there.

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jose fernandez, week 8, flourescent stick

Currently in display in the LACMA museum is an exhibition by Dan Flavin, a minimalist artist. The name of his exhibition is called a retrospective. I first noticed the advertisement a few weeks ago when I was on my way home. The art piece on display outside was a photograph of a long and thin yellow fluorescent light against a white wall. Well, at first I tried connecting this piece to the topic of the class but was not able to do so at the moment. When I got home I began to think about it a bit more.
Anyone that knows about star wars, which might be the entire world’s population, would quickly think about light savers at first glance. It really looks just like a light saver. Anyways, trying to connect it to art and science was quite difficult. I am not someone that really analyses artwork in search of meaning. I was almost forced to think about this piece though because it just would not leave my mind. Then I remembered that interpreting art has no right or wrong answers. So I began to think about it and actually came up with, what I thought, was an interesting connection.
The best interpretation I though of was the Sun. Although the sun is not actually yellow, it is the light source to Earth. First of all, light is life. Without light the Earth would have never existed. The Sun, which is a star, was required for the formation of the Solar System. So I guess I’m relating this image to the section on the universe, which is still left to be covered. The Big Bang was though to be the initiation of the universe and that was a large explosion of light that created everything that is now the universe. So the fluorescent stick can represent the Sun and life with its strong illumination. Say that this stick is alone in a dark room. The moment that the electric current runs thought the glass at the speed c, the lightless environment will become illuminated. It is giving life to a place where nothing can be seen by the eye alone. The instant the room becomes lit, it suddenly has life. Everything in the room will become visible. It’s like night and day for the Earth. At night everyone is sleeping, pretending to be dead. As soon as the Sun takes a peak at the sleeping world the dead revive with a jolt of life. It allows us to see everything
This example can be seen in the image of the galaxy that in on the webpage. The surroundings are dark but the luminescence of the stars give off enough light to create a halo around the constellation. Gather up billions of fluorescent sticks and you have a large light source enough to have a similar impact on a smaller scale.
Yet we all know that the Sun will one day die out. This is the same case for the light stick. It may burn for a long time but in the end it will cause the previously dark room to go dark again. It also represents the end. It can only burn for so long until it reaches the stage where it can no longer burn and loses its power, its life.
There are many ways in which the image of a yellow, or any color, fluorescent stick can be interpreted. I found my interpretation the moment I saw the sun glaring through my bedroom window. Like it was said earlier, light represents life. The bright day is alive while the dark night is dormant. The Sun is the only light source that can illuminate the entire planet. A fluorescent light is capable of illuminating an entire room. At first I didn’t think the stick was remotely comparable to anything. Maybe this comparison doesn’t make sense, but that’s the way I saw it.

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Week 8- Julie Fair- Ethics and Biotechnology

This week's topic of biotechnology is immensely complex. It can be analyzed and discussed on so many different levels and in so many different ways even within the same field of study. I thought it was especially interesting to be exposed to artists' perspectives on the issue. Previously I had not known that there was so much art work out there that addressed this issue. I guess I had pretty much only ever experienced this issue in the arenas of science and politics until now. I think that the artists' points of view with regard to this issue will have important implications in the future and I can see their work becoming increasingly significant in the political sphere as the field of bio tech becomes more prevalent and developed. I can see artwork pertaining to biotechnology becoming an important way to get information about the field in general and about controversial ethical issues it raises out to the public.

With this idea in mind, I will say that I found Paradise NOW especially interesting and significant. As I browsed a site detailing this project (http://www.exitart.org/paradisenow/), I found a list of the topics it proposes to address and it really seemed to hit some of ethical issues brought about by biotechnology square on the head.

Here is the list:

"Race - The implications of genetic research confirming that humans of all races are 99.9 percent genetically the same.
Economics - Ownership of genes and whether they should be patented and sold to the highest bidder
Reproduction - Germ-line gene therapy and how it could be used to design babies and/or improve the health of human beings before they are born.
Privacy - DNA identification and who has access to the information
Health - How gene therapy and new technologies will be used to prevent and treat disease
Food Safety - Risks and benefits of genetically engineered food crops and animals."

I personally believe that these issues are exceptionally important for our society to address, and feel that they have not seen enough attention on a nation wide or global level. I think that perhaps this type of art work is exactly what is needed to bring these issues to the forefront of global thought and media. They may be able to reach audiences in a way that other information relaying forms, like articles etc, cannot because they are more aesthetically appealing and attention grabbing. Here is an example of a piece from the project:

I think it does a pretty good job of orienting one's attention to a particular issue, as does the piece below, which is also from the project.

It is pretty clear that this picture is addressing the ethical issue of genetic engineering in food. It relates significantly with the issue raised by The Tissue Culture and Art Project that we discussed in section, where in the future it might be possible to grow steaks without growing animals. As I browsed the projects website I found a quote that seemed to capture the essence of the ethical issue with consuming certain animals as food, "...we must practice some kind of hypocrisy in order to be able to love and respect living things as well as to eat them." This idea can also be applied to the image above and the concept of genetic engineering of food, where I also see hypocrisy in the idea of doing genetic testing on livings things while "loving and respecting them."

On this point however, I am torn. As we discussed in discussion, where do we reach a balance between ethics and progress? As a life science student, a meat consumer, and an environment/animal lover I am able to see both sides of the issue, and have great difficulty deciding where I stand on it. However I do know that as time goes on, this issue is going to become more and more significant and some sorts of answers are going to become necessary.

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Christine Dang - Week 8 - In the Name of Art and Science

Art and science are both fields that depend heavily on innovation for new discoveries and advances. As such, practitioners are constantly pushing the limits of their field, bringing in new techniques, new materials, new ideas. Also, as we've seen, science and art have a tendency to rely on one another.

However, this brings up the subject of what one of the previous posters dubbed "artists in the lab". This melding of these two fields in such a way results in these so called artistic experiments, such as transgenic art. One of the major experiments/creations discussed involved the genetic alteration of animals with the GFP gene taken from jellyfish, with a particular focus on mice and the now-famous bunny Alba.

But when it comes down to it, why are we doing this?




Many people are set on edge when they see artistic expressions such as these. Most people do not like needless torture or wanton killing. For the most part, people do not like to see animals harmed and are offended or disturbed by these transgenic creations. Personally, I agree. While I see some semblance of artistic expression, there are better, humane ways to get one's point across. Call it art if you will, but the simple presence of artistic expression does not justify the inherent cruelty of such experiments.



On the other hand, researches say they do it in the name of science. They are researching for the betterment of mankind. They are doing such things to further the research done to cure cancer and other diseases that ail people all over the world.

Grudgingly, most people accept this. They feel it is a necessary evil. They feel that they ends justify the means. And, quite frankly, people are selfish. Do they care how many rats must die in order to discover the cure to their disease? Or a disease they could possibly get?

It was a sacrifice for a worthy cause.

Worthy for who? Do the countless mice who died in experiments benefit in any way? Well, perhaps, their being dead does mean an end to the experimentation they must endure after all.

Another defense commonly used is that "these animals were bred specifically for scientific experimentation". To be honest, every time I hear someone cling to this excuse, I chuckle.

How is that any better?

Just because a creature had the unfortunate luck to be the offspring of a particular pair in a particular place and time...that gives you the right to its life? If anything, I would say that doing such a thing is an even /greater/ cruelty to the creature. Arranging, planning, giving it life. A life of sheer torture, followed by its eventual death (and if its lucky, a quick and painless one).

At least if these animals were instead captured, they had had the chance to escape. Their fate was to some degree in their hands. They had the choice to go after that particular bit of bait. The choice to wander in that particular region of their habitat. Still unfortunate, perhaps, but regardless, the creature had had some control over what happened.

And what of the failed experiments?



I recall a news story that hit last year. Taiwanese scientists had managed to create green-glowing pigs. Nothing unusual from the material covered in this class. However, the breakthrough in this story was that their pigs were 'better' than other country's transgenic pigs.

Their pigs were entirely green. Internal organs and all, everything would glow green.

When I read that story, I remember being amazed at what science could do. Then I was disturbed by the sheer fact that they had created green glowing pigs. And then, I had the thought...they know that its organs glow green. Which means, how many failed pigs did they cut open only to discover that it was not green enough for them to consider it a success?

Also, my mother once told me tales from her time in medical school involving the various labs and dissections she had done. One has remained with me all these years. For this particular lab, she had to anaesthesize a sparrow and then dissect it. It was still alive. Its lungs filled with air, its heart was still beating. The purpose of this experiment was to observe the functioning of the avian tri-chambered heart. My mother said it was 'amazing' and that she had been very 'curious' about the whole thing.

So...curiosity now is a valid reason for torture and death? If it's valid, then why are serial killers arrested. How are they tried? If a demented man mutilates his victim because he wanted to see their insides, how is that any different? He was just curious after all. The scientist is just curious. The victim has no say. The specimen has no say.

Since when did we give scientists unhindered control to life and death? Since when did science lose its ethics? To what degree are researchers allowed to go, merely for "the cause". What else shall arise in the name of science?

I fear the day when scientists are allowed to freely experiment on humans without their subjects knowledge, for inevitably that day is coming. Oh wait, correction, it has already come.

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art as a crime- james zavala- week 8

This week’s topics took a turn that I appreciate. For the last couple of weeks I have been bored with the class, but this week was a different story. I have never gotten so angry about the topic and things that a professor has said during lecture. We talked about the topic of science and how animals are subjected in order for studies to be conducted. Although it may seem horrible, the human race has benefited from studies imposed on animals and although it may sound harsh to say, some studies have been well worth the sacrifice of an animal. There are others though that seem to be only for the purpose of finding something neat or putting out a message. It is then when I understand that the end does not justify the mean. It then makes me even angrier when artist put themselves in same positions as the scientist about no positive intentions in the sense of subjecting animals. I fully understand and appreciate the fact that artists get the message out to the public but it must be done so in a rational manner. It is hypocritical for someone to criticize something and then turn around and do the same thing. There are artist who are trying to protest the subjection of animals but their message is poorly put across when they decide to do it in the same manner that they are criticizing. The professor brought up a good point but nonetheless I don’t find it to be valid. She stated that although she knows its wrong for artist to do what they are criticizing it is more affective in getting the point across. NO!!! There are other mediums that artist can work with in order for them to state what they want; the self is one. Although it may seem ridiculous, if an artist really wants to capture an audience’s attention by subjecting a being to cruel punishment, then let it be themselves. I always saw Stelarc as a crazy artist but nonetheless, I respect him for the fact that he subjected himself to unusual things and not anyone else in order to make his point. What I am trying to say is that if you want to show something and convey a message, use the medium of your own self to do so, make yourself glow in ultra violet lights if you want. In discussion it was then brought as to define what is living and available to be subjected to studies. Xarene stated that she felt bad because on one of her projects that she had worked on, she had killed living plants. This may not be remotely compared to the art projects done onto real animals. It all goes back to the self and having a sense of awareness, being conscious. A plant does not know that it exist and has no emotions or ability to feel, animals like humans do. To create something that will suffer and be conscious of, like the rat that was susceptible to getting cancer is not appropriate for the sake of art. In essence, let every being be their own, it is only ok to conduct such experiments when the ends justify the means, otherwise impose them upon you.

heres an interesting link.

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Kiesha Nazarenus, Week 8, bioart

This week’s topic lead to some opinionated views…of course when does this class not lead to opinionated views? In all seriousness though I got to thinking in our discussion section this week. We were into the topic of the bunny that “glowed in the dark” and whether or not it is acceptable or should really be done as a form of art. Somehow this got into the whole vegetarian debate and the testing of rats in labs. It’s kind of funny because our class seems to have extremists promoting both sides of the topic since it is made up of everything from art to biochem majors. Let’s face it, if you bring up the “rats should be treated just like people…how would you feel if tests were done on you against your will” debate in this class you’re going to get some people who are there to say “Pah-leese”. This is how I feel in simple terms…you want to advance in science and technology, then get over it. Now this will probably turn some people against me so in more eloquent terms since we are unable to test certain things on humans the most appropriate alternative is testing on rats and without this testing we would be unable to progress from the advances we have already made. Of course I’m getting off topic because what this class really pertains to is the artwork being composed on these other living beings. Do I think this is right? I really don’t know yet. Should we be able to and do we have the right to submit other living organisms to this treatment? How is it different from scientific testing? And what validates scientific learning over artistic expression? In what ways does this differ from Stelarc and Orlan’s work and because of these differences does it make one form more acceptable over the other? All questions I think about.

The guest lecturer was interesting this week. He seemed like a really sweet guy with quite a lot of knowledge and quite an interesting life. You know when your looking at something that seems so complex and then someone points out something to you that is so simple you can’t believe you never saw it before and then whenever you look at it the only thing you can see is the something so simple that was pointed out to you and it just makes everything make perfect sense. Well if you followed that it’s along the lines of what happened to me in class on wed. Up to this point it has just kind of been like, ok yea we have art and we have science and sometime the artist uses some of the science stuff to make their art stuff. But, I was sitting there listening on wed and it just all came together. Everything from the illustrations of the anatomy of the body to the bird books drawn vs. photographed to the illustrations of molecules to the moving diagrams of malaria to the performance art in a NASA meeting to Karl Sims work. All of it is science and yet all of it was expressed to us through art. I never recognized how it came down to such a simple and organic form. Karl’s work really interested me and I’m pretty sure that I was first exposed to his work in my AP bio class in high school. Through animation he is able to illustrate Darwinian evolution. http://http://www.genarts.com/karl/evolved-virtual-creatures.html Each week gets more and more interesting. With just two weeks left I wonder what is yet to come.

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Derek Ganong - Week 8 - Artists in the LAB!

This weeks lectures have brought up several very complex questions that many people in the class feel very strongly about. These questions dealt with the role of and limitations, if any, that should be imposed on creativity as well as the right of any organism to utilize another in such a way that is harmful to it. I, like everyone in the class, have an opinion on both topics and I want to use this blog entry as a stream of consciousness of my opinions so that I can draw rationalizations from them.
The following is a quote from Albert Einstein and accurately reflects my opinion of creativity and knowledge:

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand." -Einstein

I believe that imagination and creativity are the most important human elements. Without them there can be no realizations and we will be stuck looking at everything around is from the same angle in with the same ideological basis. With that being said, a persons creativity and imagination should know no bounds insofar as that creativity does not pose a threat to the well-being or potential creativity of others. An example from lecture and discussion would be an artists use of biological agents or genetic alterations to produce hybrid variants of animals and other organisms. In this situation, an artists should have the freedom to do whatever they like, but they still need to go through the proper scientific channels if they want to display/release anything that could have even the most remote effect on “spaceship earth”. This is why scientists have a stage of peer review before they publish results. Like Sean Dockray says “the group is smarter than the individual”. This means that no matter how groundbreaking an exhibit May be or how astonishing an artists piece of transgenic art is, it must be examined by the peers within the works idiom. I think that there should be no restrictions on what an artist can do with transgenic art, or any art for that matter, but the work must ALWAYS be evaluated before its exposition. No matter how trivial the pieces danger is, it must be reviewed if it has even the slightest chance of causing harm to our ecosystems. Artists that work in this realm must adapt to a different way of exposition if they chose to work with a medium that poses far more health implications than paint and clay.

The other controversial question that was brought up is the right of humans to use other animals for testing, artwork, etc... I am still undecided as to wether or not I agree with the use of fruit flies and lab mice for scientific gain or artistic achievement, but I have come to the conclusion that the solution will involve some kind of compromise or balance. While the experimentation on other, lower-order, animals will reap great scientific progress, the ethical implications of sacrificing another life for that of humanity are quite great. It all really comes down to personal opinion and attitudes. If you have no problem with staying in the present then it would be easy to come to the conclusion that the condemning of lab mice to unnatural, painful, and short life's for the sake of scientific progress is a terrible, monstrous thing. On the other hand, someone who believes that it is the goal of humanity to supersede biological limitations and progress would have no problem using genetically identical rodents for testing.
I think that the solution is to have an open mind, but logical thought tends to make me lean towards the opinion that testing on biological animals is a necessity. The long term future for humanity is pretty scary. With our population continuing to grow an unimaginable rates and pathogenic production and mutation can easily spread to all corners of the earth, the only hope for humanity is to either eradicate those pathogens or colonize space. (Both of these options also require developing the means to sustain life). When you look at it this way, it becomes a painful necessity to gain knowledge as quickly as possible.
Throughout this blog I have come to the realization that the minute, single human, lifetime does not allow us to be as long term oriented as we must in order to survive as a species. The ethical concerns over animals in the scientific testing realm are purely short sighted. Nothing bad will come from the simultaneous elimination of the fast producing rodents and gaining of valuable medical knowledge. For that matter, I think that the artistic use of animals should also be allowed to the same degree that the scientific testing of animals is. Art has just as important of a role in the education of society. While science reveals, art conceives and is the expression of imagination. I will say, however, that the use of animals for the testing of cosmetics is absurd. I cannot find any situation where cosmetic animal testing is good in any way.

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Christine Dang - Week 7 - Consciousness and the Brain

Thought. It's such an everyday activity, from the moment we wake up in the morning to the moment we finally fall asleep. For each moment we spend awake, there is a constant stream of consciousness that flows from one thought to the next. And even in moments of "blankness", the mind is at work.


But what is this thought, really? What is consciousness? From a scientific view, it's technically no more than the firing of electrons from one synapse to another. The brain is nothing more than a central nerve that controls the entire body. So from where then, does this consciousness arrive? Consciousness, thought, one's spirit, the soul. Most people acknowledge and recognize the existence of these things. But what are they really?



Personally, I am of the belief that science can explain everything in life. That, at least, on a physical level, science is the basis of existence. However, I've yet to hear a scientific explanation for the simple existence of thought that would satisfy me. Sure, there are plenty of psychological reports on thought and consciousness and instincts and whatnot, but that is not what I'm seeking.


Common belief is that one's consciousness arises from the brain. It apparently just sits there, floating about along with the gray mass of nerves. But I remember the professor mentioning once running into a tub of floating brains and commenting "there is no way that that is consciousness" (or something along those lines). That line just stuck with me. Even though so many people associate the brain and conscious thought, once the brain is taken out of context. Once it becomes just a floating mass in a bucket, somehow it becomes so terribly difficult to maintain that association.

Then there is the debate between instinct and conscious thought. Are they both controlled by the same thing? Can instinct also be associated with the brain? But then what of the unicellular creatures that could undoubtedly be argued to possess at least a basic survival instinct? They certainly do not have a brain, at least not of the technical sort. They possess a bundle of DNA, genetic code, which controls their actions and is generally referred to as the "brain" of the cell.

However, people can certainly agree that conscious thought is anything but straightforward programming. Even given the exact same situation, people will often react in drastically different ways. Additionally, perhaps consciousness is the higher evolution of the base survival instincts. Perhaps consciousness arose once people were put into situations where they no longer simply require survival but something more than that.

But that still does not answer the question of how consciousness works. What are the mechanics that operate behind its existence? Why is there a separation between the right brain and the left? The creative and the logical sides? Or perhaps consciousness does not exist at all in the brain, but elsewhere. Perhaps the division between right brain and left is merely society's materialization of the imposed division between the arts and the sciences. As it is, most people seem to believe that one can only be left-brained or right-brained, either logical or creative. However, as we've clearly seen in these past couple of weeks, the coexistence of both is far from impossible.

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Allen Wang Week 7 - Nano Tech

Nanotechnology has been a great influence to the brain and other parts of the body. With nanotechnology, humans have advanced beyound our natural capabilities. With the possibilities of improving ourselves with nanochips inside our brains, we can supposely increase our memory and thinking capabilities. The human can be really an advanced species if nanotechnology was advanced enough to work. Right now, nanotechnology is just a futuristic idea that woudl really advance the technology world.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RwZIioDyl0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6Oc071AlZQ&mode=related&search=

The part one and two respectively of the nano technology documentary. It is very interesting in a sense that it explains how nanotechnology affects our bodies. Nanotechnology affects us to the very molecular level. Yet, this documentary contains very bad audio and is sometimes hard to understand so I even though I watched the the documentary, it is probably not worth watching

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxilVKlFlo8&mode=related&search=

This video, more scientific, is more interesting and appealing. It presents the future of computers with the help of nanotechnology. With nanotechnology, computers become a home factory in which one can create almost anything just with the simple nanocomputer machine

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-pNbF29l9Zg&mode=related&search=
This video shows the help of nanotechnology with soldiers. Though it is still underdevelopment, it will help advance humans beyound our limits of technology currently. With nanotechnology, our future is limitless and we can advance the human race many levels over.

With the advances of nanotechnology, there would most likely exist much controversy on whether nanotechnology would help the quality of life or woudl it jsut destroy life itself. Well, as always, we are always afraid of change yet humans as a race would eventually learn to accept this new technology into our lives.

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Week 7- Julie Fair- A Definition of Consciousness

In this week's lectures professor Vesna addressed the concepts of memory and consciousness. Memory is a relatively concrete subject, well studied in science, relatively well defined by society. Consciousness on the other hand, is almost impossible to define. It is difficult to study, at least in isolation, and is not well understood by society. After attending this weeks lectures and witnessing the debates spawned from the subject of consciousness, I have realized more than ever that in many ways that arguments surrounding the topic of consciousness are, for the most part philosophical arguments. Every one has their own idea about it, and it seems that no matter how long a group debates about it, no real conclusion is ever reached.
Of course in my head, I think I have a pretty good idea about consciousness. Until I really start to think about it. Then I begin to realize how difficult it really is to define. So I enlisted the help of Merriam-Webster and even the dictionary seem confused about an exact way to define consciousness, listing five slightly different definitions, some with multiple parts, clearly attempting to capture the complexity of the concept. The one I liked the best was: "capable of or marked by thought, will, design, or perception."(http://m-w.com/dictionary/conscious) However, this definition, while useful, still does not capture the complexity of the idea. By scientific standards it would be correct I suppose, but it cannot begin to encompass all that consciousness is. It cannot even account for all that we discussed in lecture this week.
I thought it was very important that professor Vesna addressed not only this perspective of consciousness, but also the more abstract connotations of consciousness, like consciousness arising from groups, the effects events have on consciousness and the higher levels of conscious attained through drugs and meditation.
This week in discussion we talked a bit about the consciousness that arises from a group when we discussed the global consciousness project (http://noosphere.princeton.edu/) and the idea of memes, such as the Wilhelm Scream. It reminded me a lot of Casey Reas' talk about swarm intelligence. When I think about the concept of swarm intelligence and I look at the definition I cited above, it makes me very curious about what groups are capable of. To what extent does the outcome of a groups actions reflect the wills of the individuals? To me it seems that swarm intelligence is the average or mean of the wills of all the individuals involved. And as I think about this I begin to realize that this is very similar to the way our body is structured. All the cells in our body can be seen as the individual participants in swarm intelligence. It we are to look at swarm intelligence as a form of consciousness, then what does that say about the individual consciousness we experience? For me, this brings about a whole new set of questions surrounding the consciousness idea. It brings into question the concept of duality we discussed in lecture this week. To what extent do the cells of all parts of the body influence our consciousness, our decision making, our actions, our will? Is our body really just a small scale version of swarm intelligence or is there something else there? What role does our brain play? Is it just reacting to the input of all the cells of the body or is it, in fact, directing those cells actions? Or, to deviate from the scientific approach, is consciousness something outside of all this. Humans are thought to be the only organisms that experience consciousness but surely if it is only a version of swarm intelligence on a smaller scale then other organism, that are organized the same way we are should also experience consciousness. So we're back to square one and once again it has turned into a philosophical debate.
I also benefited from Professor Vesna's approach to the idea of consciousness as the way events affect our consciousness. She talked about the effect of seeing the earth from space for the first time and the impact of the concept of quantum mechanics. It made me realize how much everything we experience in our lives affects and helps develop our consciousness. You really aren't the same person that you were five years ago. This is especially apparent to me now, at the college level. Up until now all my peers and I have experienced a relatively similar education. We have all taken the same required courses to graduate and all took the SATs. Here in college however, our paths are diverging and every new course we take is helping to develop our unique consciousness. Aside from major events like those professor Vesna mentioned, even each class we take affects our consciousness immensely.
I also appreciated professor Vesna's addressing drugs when discussing the concept of consciousness. Drugs and their function and effects are something I am very interested in. They are part of the reason I am going to pursue a psycho-bio major. I think that drugs have a tremendous impact on consciousness, and for me it is fascinating learning why drugs produce the effects they do scientifically and then comparing this to the experience of a user. I thought Dr. Scerri's statement that drugs were a short cut to states of higher consciousness, that were temporary and jumbled was a very new and interesting way to look at both drug use and consciousness.

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basic instincts - james zavala- week 7

The class has clearly shifted from the perspective of art to that of psychology. This weeks topics were interesting in the sense that they focused a lot on the unconscious mind. I did not really understand the point of the industrial revolution and the fact that the professor showed a picture of the world and the fact that people had barely seen it in 1969. It then made sense. People have just recently achieved a global consciousness and it is interesting that all it took was a picture of where we are. Also with the industrial revolution presentation, it seems that she is trying to make students understand that there has recently been a consciousness in the world of electricity and the things that are possible because of it. She then talked about the atomic bomb and the way the people took it in different places. It was almost disgusting to see that America celebrated it and the things that it did embarrass me. C’mon, electing a Miss Atomic Bomb seems almost like a joke being how ridiculous it is. It was interesting to know (because I honestly did not before) that people study the behavior of particles in the quantum level to predict the behavior of much bigger things including the solar system.
There was then the talk about the meme being that it is something that is popularized through people. People are why things both succeed and are well known, or if they perish, and I am glad that there is actual term that identifies this. I like the analogy that the professor did on the rhizome. It was simply a plant which lives in the root and then the upper part which pops out of the ground will die soon after its born. It is almost like if she is saying that people are the roots and that the trends are what stick out of the plant; although it stuck out, it died and soon after something else will be born while all along the root (the root is analogous to people) of the plant continues to live forever. She then rapped it up referring to the noosphere, which is the mind in the style of the atmosphere and biosphere, which is true our mind is affected by out surroundings.
I have been really thinking about this concept of being instinctual and the more that I think about it the more that I disagree with myself. Initially I sided with the professors point that there is something that will let you know what to do or feel. Then I also think about it and realize that this feeling is brought upon from past experiences and that they all relate to something we have seen or done. Then the guest speaker came along and spoke about the conscious mind and what it is. He stated that it is basically awareness of thinking and gives examples like the guy who solves equations in his head by relating them to shapes and the fact that people remember things based upon their five senses. And then I think, yeah sure you can relate things to part of your senses but then again what about if it is your first time out in the world and you know nothing and have had no experience. When animals are born, how is it that they know what to do even though they have had not prior experience. Man is no exception to this rule, a question that I leave to ponder that I myself cant answer is, if everything has an explanation due past experiences then to what experience, or anything else for that matter is the explanation that a new born baby will suck on a mothers buxom for nurture?
here is a neet link.

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Kiesha Nazarenus- Week 7- psychart

"Think for yourself and question authority" -Timothy Leary This week proved to be quite interesting both in topic, lecture and guest speaker. Who would have known that a chem Professor could have so much interest in the arts? I don’t know about you but I may just have to stop by Kirkoff Monday night for a cup of coffee to sneak a peak at Scerri’s band. I think this Monday’s heated debate was the first that I have experienced so far in college. While centered between the two professors I couldn’t quite tell if it was based on academics or personal pride. I don’t know how others felt but I was just a little tense listening to the conversation and I had to side with our professor as far as her ideas went and to a certain extent because I felt like she was being ganged up against. Regardless though it’s interesting to me how it is not an uncommon thing for professors on our campus to have multiple interests that span from academics to the arts. Xarene sent our section a link to an article published in the daily bruin that was about professors who had academic interests as well as interests in the arts…one of the highlighted professors did salsa! It seems like more and more now we hear about how healthy and beneficial it is to have interests and participation in multiple fields of interest. I personally know that I probably wouldn’t be able to live quite as peacefully if I wasn’t able to spend equal time pursuing dance as I do my academic classes. Life should be lived with balance, and this is just another way to balance a person out.
A couple names and topics caught my attention in Monday’s lecture. Once of which was Dr. Timothy Leary whose quote and picture can be viewed above. Reading about him through a couple of different sites was pretty interesting and tying in what our professor spoke about with the ties to The Beatles, John Lennon’s song ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’ on The Beatles album Revolver was influenced by Tom Leary and his work on The Psychedelic Experience. His popular saying “Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out” was later explained by him as "'Turn on' meant go within to activate your neural and genetic equipment. Become sensitive to the many and various levels of consciousness and the specific triggers that engage them. Drugs were one way to accomplish this end. 'Tune in' meant interact harmoniously with the world around you - externalize, materialize, express your new internal perspectives. Drop out suggested an elective, selective, graceful process of detachment from involuntary or unconscious commitments. 'Drop Out' meant self-reliance, a discovery of one's singularity, a commitment to mobility, choice, and change. Unhappily my explanations of this sequence of personal development were often misinterpreted to mean 'Get stoned and abandon all constructive activity.’” After reading this I couldn’t help but smile…the man tried to prove that LSD was something we should all do…why not I suppose.

http://www.leary.com/
Another man who got my attention was C.G. Yung. I think many people, whether they admit it or not, would like to know if their dreams really have any meaning at all. Yung believed “that dreams may contain ineluctable truths, philosophical pronouncements, illusions, wild fantasies, memories, plans, irrational experiences and even telepathic visions.” How do we know if this is true though…is it just left to the believer or how much evidence is there??
And lastly, I think I’m going to have to put aside Elle magazine one day this summer as I lay out at the beach in order to read Blink. It caused quite the commotion in class yesterday so before I make any comments I better read and research so that I’m ready to stand strong in the case that I get caught up in a debate.

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--- Week 6 --- John “Matt” Ko ---

The midterm didn’t turn out as badly as I had originally feared. When I first heard that the midterm was going to be an in class essay, I sort of freaked, but when it came down to it, it wasn’t that difficult to write. The grade I’m going to receive, on the other hand, is another story entirely. --- Week 6 --- John “Matt” Ko ---
I’m just going to use this time to talk about my view of the class so far. I think that the class overall has been an eye opening experience for most of us. A lot of the things I’ve seen in class are new to me, and though I don’t always fully enjoy the things presented, they are still valuable to my learning. One thing I can’t get over is how much I enjoyed Casey Reas work. I have nothing but praise for his work. And I was so lucky to have him show up on the midterm slides! He was probably the first to introduce the whole concept of generative art to me. Before that, I don’t believe I had ever encountered a piece that “made itself.” I hope to someday achieve the same level of fusion between art and science that he did.
However, I also see some things in class as irrelevant to what we are studying. I’m not saying that these things aren’t relevant at all, but I have a very hard time drawing the connections. For example, I don’t totally understand why we were studying artificial intelligence. Maybe if we were talking about the realm of generative art and artificial intelligence’s part in it, then I would be able to draw the line. But when we discuss the current levels of AI, or the different projects currently being worked on, and all of the advancements there, I feel less like I’m in an art class, and more like I’m in a science lecture.
And I still don’t quite understand how Stelarc can be categorized as an artist. To me, his projects and ideas sound more like science experiments than artwork. It seems impossible to me to make the connection between building yourself a third ear and calling it art. Maybe creative expression, but not necessarily art. To me something needs to be visually appealing in some way to be called art. Dance, design, photography, all of these have visual appeal inherent to them. Music would be the exception I suppose, but instead you would have audio appeal. To be frank, there is nothing appealing about Stelarc’s work. Maybe I have more of a conservative view on what is called art and what isn’t, but I guess I can’t help it. I’m very open to hearing explanations of why Stelarc is art, and if the argument is convincing enough I’m willing to accept it, but until then I will still be of the opinion that he is irrelevant to the subject matter of the class. I hope not to offend, but I hold that opinion pretty strongly.


PS So sorry this entry was late, but I've been having inexplicable technical difficulties this evening... :(

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jose fernandez, week 6, midpoint

This week I took the midterm that I was worried about. I knew it was an essay exam so I was not really looking forward to it. I do not enjoy writing essays, especially when it is in exam form. I cannot get my thoughts together in such short time. Regardless of the time I had to get it done at least 3 pages. At first I was not sure how I was going to study the material, so I just reviewed every piece of artwork on the study list. So I tried to figure out which ones would be the most likely to appear and studied those. Luckily one of those that I studies was Ken Rinaldo’s artwork. It had worked out since I did not have to struggle as much to remember what to write about. Even then, I still ran out of ways to relate his piece to other things. Either way the exam was easier than what I thought it would be.
That same day I went home and on my way there I noticed a new art exhibit at the LACMA museum. I did not pay attention to the name of the artist because the sample artwork that was being displayed caught my attention. It was a picture of a yellow light, looking like a light saver, out of star wars. It was surrounded by the halo created by the lights intensity. I tried connecting it to the class on my way home but I was not able to reach a conclusion, I gave up after the first attempt because I was tired from the essay.
Up to this point the class has been interesting but it has its boring moments. At first I was thinking the class would be more interactive; using computers in the process. Either way it has been good, some interesting subjects. For the next weeks I expect the same things. Art has been getting more interesting as the weeks went by so I guess they’ll keep getting more interesting. I’m not looking forward to hearing Prof. Scerri, he’s a tough teacher.

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Allen Wang Week 6 - Days of Reflection

Art is really what we define it to be. I searched for art on youtube and the first result was a video displaying imagination at work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtzdxseO-gs

This video shows the ability of artists who can think on the spot and draw different and varing art that are both insightful and beautiful. By erasing certain parts of an art, a whole new art can be created. Art is defined by the artist, and the artist can make anything that he or she wants. Yet again, who said that art had to be created with brushes and paint?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLL4khimqrw

This video shows the art created with what we use every day, coffee and milk. Who knew that we could make art with the simplest objects and food. But then again, most of the art that we have seen and analyzed are created by inpratical methods such as computer programming and metal works. With this video, we can actualyl relate more to the art and I am pretty sure that some of us would actually go try some of this coffe art, I know I will. (Even though I woudl fail the numerous times before even creating anything even decent.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XliOko5xrr0

Though I did not find much interest in this as the ones on top, this is very amusing nonetheless. This is art created with metal, probably mercury most likely. This is very interesting because the metal actualyl represent the spikey things that you can find in caves, though I dont know the relationship between them but it seems like a similarity may exist.

At ends, art is what we created it to be. If we can think it, it will be art. Art, though easy as it may seem, is actualyl very difficult to create new and innovative ones each time. Everyone can create great art by drawing the same art over and over again. It is when we add innovation into our art does the art become something very different.

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Duy Phung -Week 6 -Polymer and the Art of Microencapsulation

The class has been great so far. We have seen many artists using current advanced technology to present and enhance their ideas and works. Since I’m biochemistry major, I’d like to use this opportunity to introduce a useful type of material science: polymer and one of its versatile applications: microencapsulation.
Polymer is a high molecular weight organic compound, natural or synthetic, whose structure can be represented by a repeated small unit, the monomer (e.g., polyethylene, rubber, cellulose). Rubber was first discovered by Columbus’s crew around 1493-1496. The sailors saw natives of South America and Haiti playing “caoutchouc” balls, which were made of dried juice of some trees. In 1770 Josheph Priestley termed the word “rubber”, which later was a generic term for materials with highly reversible elasticity, when he used it as an eraser of pencil marks. In 1839 an American named Charles Goodyear successfully discovered hot vulcanization, which allowed setting the shape, of rubber with sulfur. In 1938 just before World War II, world production and consumption of natural rubber boomed and reached 1.4 million tons. In 1989, world consumption of rubber of all types was over 13 million tons yearly. Today the range of rubber products exceeds 40,000 items, and most important application is of course rubber tires in car industry.

Microencapsulation is a process by which tiny parcels of a gas, liquid, or solid active ingredient, which is referred as the core, internal phase, or fill is packaged within a second material (shell, coating, or membrane) for the purpose of shielding the active ingredient from the surrounding environment. These capsules, which range in size from one micron (one-thousandth of a millimeter) to seven millimeters, may have multiple walls. The preparation of a microencapsulated product is something of an art, primarily because of the broad range of scientific and engineering disciplines they encompass, as well as the interconnectivity of these disciplines. as Asajo Kondo asserts in Microcapsule Processing and Technology:
“Microencapsulation is like the work of a clothing designer. He selects the pattern, cuts the cloth, and sews the garment in due consideration of the desires and age of his customer, plus the locale and climate where the garment is to be worn. By analogy, in microencapsulation, capsules are designed and prepared to meet all the requirements in due consideration of the properties of the core material, intended use of the product, and the environment of storage...”

Microencapsulation is always directly involved with polymer. The applications of microencapsulation are widespread, and the most common ones are carbonless copy paper and pharmaceuticals. In a complex process used to make carbonless copy paper called coacervation, the core is first dispersed as tiny droplets in an aqueous solution of a polymer such as gelatin. The difficulty lies in the fact that the core material has to be immiscible in the aqueous phase. Therefore, physical chemistry and thermodynamics are used to govern this process.
The second step is adding a second water soluble polymer, such as gum arabic, to this emulsion. After mixing, the pH needs to be adjusted so that the result is the spontaneous formation of two incompatible liquid phases called the coacervate (high polymer concentration) and the supernatant (low polymer concentrations). This step requires an additional specialty: polymer chemistry
Later the forming of microcapsules is governed by mechanical science and diffusion chemistry, and the hardening of shell is involved with thermal release and polymer chemistry. Every step is highly dependent upon the others. Even for scientists working with microencapsulation, it’s hard for them to decide which factor is more important. All these variations in this coacervation process have to cooperate well in order to produce a desired product. Therefore, microencapsulation is a real art of chemistry.
http://www.swri.edu/3pubs/ttoday/summer95/microeng.htm

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Julie Fair- week 6- Post Midterm Reflection

Although we didn't cover any new material in lecture this week, I felt like I still learned a lot. Doing all the outside research to prepare for the midterm brought me into contact with a ton of new information, and understanding that we were going to need to be able to use our knowledge to make connections made me look at the material in a very different light. Basically it just made me realize how amazingly talented all of these artists are and how passionate they are about their work. I especially noticed this with Steve Kurtz, Buckminster Fuller, and Orlan.

When I was researching Steve Kurtz, I read through pages and pages of info about the Cult of the New Eve. His explanations for the cult and their practices were so thoroughly developed. It just made realize how much he puts into his work. This had to have been something that really meant something to him for him to be able to develop it so far. I found it really impressive that he had so much information listed and that it was so well supported. For example: his descriptions of the "False Eves," where he has so much information listed to support his ideas and theories. In the case of the android eve, he cites several movies drawing from the concept and mentions her first appearance. He also explains his reasons for believing she is obsolete etc. In short, he makes a very good case for his claims and is very logical in his approach. It just stood out to me, how much detail he put into his project. This is a photo of the android eve:

Buckminster Fuller also really stood out to me because of his dedication to his cause. Beyond being an artist and designer, he was a true humanitarian and for that, he is equally impressive. His work is amazing in its aesthetic appeal, but even more remarkable is the potential it holds for mankind. I thought it was very interesting to read that he accurately predicted the time when it would become possible to end hunger in the world. I did not know that this was a possibility at this point in time until I did this research. I think that it is amazing that we have this capability and yet, no one has made any significant move to make it a reality. I think part of the reason for this might simply be a lack of knowledge. Very few people must know that we have this capacity as a world, or something would be happening to make it happen. I thought Bucky was amazing because he dedicated his entire career to helping the world and working toward a better future. Check him out:http://www.bfi.org/our_programs/who_is_buckminster_fuller

Orlan also stood out to me (how could she not???). Her work must obviously mean a lot to her for her to be going through the procedures she is in order to produce her pieces. As I was researching her for the midterm, I really began to realize she was coming from, because at first I had no idea what kind of statement she was trying to make. Now I realize that the way she approaches creating art is very fitting for the message she trying to send, that women do not have to conform to a man's definition of beauty.

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Kiesha Nazarenus- Week 6- my opinions

I found out about this class through a sign posted in Ackerman. As I was trying to balance my pre-med classes with dance classes this stood out to me as a fun mix of two subjects often separated. So far the class has proven to be just that. I like how each week is focused on a different topic pertaining to art and technology and how we seem to have at least one guest speaker each week. Despite the confusion with setting up the discussion times, I feel like the discussions are effective and I good time to discuss the various pieces we see in class. So often I feel like discussion classes are a waste of time but getting up and being there at 8 really isn’t so bad. The midterm did a pretty good job at getting us to explore quite a few pieces in depth. I found myself spending hours looking over the artists’ websites and reading through material about their pieces. I would just get so interested in it that I wouldn’t want to start studying for my life science 2 midterm. Even though we were only going to have to write on one piece we still had to be equally prepared to write something on all of the pieces. At the time I found it kinda of annoying but now that it is over I’m glad that I was forced to look at all the variety in artists.
So far I have really enjoyed the interactive art work and the art work that related to the human body and medicine. I really enjoyed Ken Feingold’s work with all the symbolism and human interaction. Reading through the conversations generated by some of his pieces was really interesting. Other favorites of mine so far have been Orlan, Hans Haacke and David Rokeby. My favorite Rokeby piece is Very Nervous System…probably because it really got me thinking about my perceptions of dance and music relationships.
My favorite guest lecture so far would have to be Steve Kurtz’s. I left the room that night with all these new ideas and I was awe struck by everything that had happened to him. His pieces of work that he did with the critical art ensemble were unlike anything that I thought was possible. You can hear or read about those kinds of projects but to have him there actually speaking about them in first person experiences made it all come alive. It would be really interesting to go out to lunch with him one day and hear more about all of his work.
I’m really looking forward to some of the topics that are to come in the next four weeks. I’m excited for memory and consciousness and the week we do human genome and animal bioengineering. I’m curious to see how our final will be formatted and if we are restricted to the next four weeks of material or if we can further explore and beginning of the quarter as well.

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Eddison Lai-Week 6-Course thoughts

In the past art to me had always been about the end product. I guess that’s because I’ve always done my schoolwork based around getting to the end product. In my math classes, I worked equations out and it didn’t matter how I did it, as long as I got the answer correct. In physics, there were many different types of equations to manipulate. As long as I got the correct answer, I was safe.

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I always thought that art was supposed to be interpreted after it was done. I never really thought about the process it takes to create art. First you have to think of something to create and then figure out how to create it. After that you have to start by trying to accomplish what you want and many times, it doesn’t happen right away. Also many times the process is so unpredictable that the end product it nothing near what an artist imagined. I’ve tried drawing before and when I could never get the product that I was aiming for, I would get frustrated. My respect for artists of all types grew as I found out first handed how hard it is to create art.

So far in the course, my favorite topic was kinetic art. I love it when artist include audience into their artwork. My favorite pieces were Autopoiesis and and n-Cha(n)t. It was interesting to see how well the artists could show their purposes and also have audience interact with their work. Part of the reason I like these pieces are because of their relationships to artificial intelligence. I see a bright future for robots and artificial intelligence and hopefully I’ll be part of it.

Here is a little history of artificial intelligence

http://www.atariarchives.org/deli/artificial_intelligence.php

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Derek Ganong - Week 6 - AI and midterm comments

I thought that the midterm was very fair and reasonable, the only thing I didn’t like about it was that it was in a blue book. In a class where there are almost ZERO hand-outs and nothing is turned in on paper, we had to hand write a final. I think it was the first time that I had to use a pen and pencil in this class. I don’t know how it could have been done differently, but I would have been a much happier camper if we were somehow able to type the midterm. Not only do I have pretty terrible handwriting, but I tend to lose track of my sentence flow because of the lack of speed with handwriting. As a result, my handwriting tends to be a bit more choppy than my typing in terms of flow and syntax. I assume that this will be taken into account in the grading of out midterms.
The class so far has been one of the best introduction classes I’ve encountered yet. The pace of information is fast enough to keep everyone interested, and to account for that, the grading and finals are handicapped. I like this much better than covering only very specific topics and having very specific tests. I had no idea that a lot of the artists we looked at were out in the wild and creating such interesting things by using science to accomplish that of art: reactions.
My favorite two artists were David Rockeby and Ken Rinaldo, and I was glad that at least one of those two were part of the midterm. Since I wrote about Autopoesis for the midterm, I want to use this blog to write about N-Cha(n)t.
Rockeby’s N-Cha(n) was perhaps one of the most intriguing pieces to me because of its implications with technology. With his installation, you almost get a sense of a computer consciousness when it reacts to stimulus in much the same manner as animals and humans do. The installation consisted of multiple computers at various points in the room and they were all networked. They would all sense sounds from the same participant, but they would detect slight variations in timing, volume, and intensity because they were located in different parts of the room and the participant was in a single place. This difference in detection can be compared to the human eyes or ears. They are in different locations on the body and so sense the same thing (a sound or flash of light) with slightly different attributes. Using these differences, the human or animal brain performs calculations that enable the animal to detect where a sound is coming from or the relative distance to something. N-Cha(n)t operates in much the same way. The multiple computers are like members of the same sensory group (hearing) and they all detect the participant in different ways. They then communicate these “associations”, as Rockeby calls them, to each other and react to the slightly different shared associations by going into chaotic warbling because there is uncertainty among the different sensors. I believe that this is a primitive artificial intelligence trying to understand what they detect. The installation functions like a real neural network, it calculates difference based on shared associations, and then acts on them.
I think that this May be where those who are on a quest for intelligent machines must look to truly create intelligent robots, and not just machines that can act intelligently. This is exactly why, as shown by Sean Dockray, that the group is smarter than the whole. Shared associations and differing opinions can often lead to the most intelligent response (like the guessing of am animals weight averaged among the crowd and compared to the estimates of an “expert”). Computers with multiple sensors for the same thing, that are in turn networked to more computers that detect similar things (and an enormous amount of shared memory between them all) would enable machines to intelligently react and judge their reactions and plan future reactions. It’s all in the networking. Networking brings information, like wikipedia, and the internet is the largest source of information ever known to man. The equivalent of a MEMEX machine must be created for all “intelligent” machines to refer to and constantly update while reacting. Then, artificial intelligence would evolve exactly like human intelligence, from observation and mimicry. Machines would become more and more “intelligent” as they learned and interacted with things that are “intelligent”. The very attempt to understand an interaction, the purpose of Rockeby’s installation, would stimulate information that the mechanical neural network would interpret and act based on its understanding of the stimulus.

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Julie Fair- Week 5-Art of the Human Body

This weeks theme, really hit home for me. As a student who is currently investigating the pre-health route here at UCLA, I found the topic very though-provoking. As with most weeks in DESMA 9, this weeks lecture and guest speaker made me really question which direction I want my life to go in the future. As I look at the material that is presented to us in class, I am constantly torn between the art aspects and the scientific aspects of each piece. I feel like although the whole point of the class has been to highlight the interaction and overlap of the arts and sciences, I still feel that one is really made to choose one over the other at some point. Especially on our campus. For someone like me, who is taking the pre-med prequisite classes, there is no chance for a design major. That would require an entirely different school here at UCLA.
I find it so very frustrating that as a student of the college of letters and sciences that the closest you can get to an art class at UCLA is a theory class, like art history. You are given no chance for a creative outlet. I think this system, at least on campus, is a huge part of the deep division between the arts and the sciences. The other day I heard one of the TAs talking to a guest speaker about the set up of the class, and he was saying that it was "one-sided" and by this he meant that those participating in the teaching of the class were overwhelmingly from the arts end of campus. He was mentioning the lack of participation on the scientific end of things. Now as I think about this comment I think I have come to realize the origin of this problem. It is this set up, which I have been describing, where science students become basically isolated from the creative arts at this point in their education. Under these conditions, how does anyone expect the participation of science students in this program?
Having said that, I would like to now discuss some of this week's material.
The first thing that really stood out to me, was the human body project. This project is amazing because of the potential it holds for use in education. Here is one description I pulled of the net http://www.madsci.org/~lynn/VH/: "The Visible Human Project has generated over 18000 digitized sections of the human body. This introduction and tour uses images and animals from the project to teach key concepts in human anatomy. " This is an amazing new and revolutionary approach to teaching about the human body. I also feel that this work is very artistic in and of itself, even without any manipulation like in the youtube clip Professor Vesna showed us where it was set to music and was placed in sequence among other images. I think in this particular instance, the image itself even in its bare scientific form is beautiful and artistic.
I also found the work of Orlan very intriguing. Her work is so drastic. That, I think is the word to describe it. It takes the idea of augmenting the body to an exceptionally new level. I cannot even imagine doing anything close to what Orlan has done to not only her own body, but to many others. I cannot imagine what kind of person would be willing to undergo something as intrusive as surgery to create an art piece.
One other thing I was very impressed by this week was Roy Ascott's presentation. It was amazing to have him come and talk to our class when we have heard so much about him from so many of his contemporaries. It was interesting to hear him reflect on his experiences with the early forms of networking. It just made me realize how far technology in this department has come in such a short time.

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--- Section 2 --- John Matt Ko ---

This week’s topic was one that I found especially interesting. The phrase “the human body as art” brings up a number of images, each resulting from different interpretations of it. One of the first examples we saw in class was the different “sculptures” of the human body, basically without the epidermis, exposing all of the muscles. To me that was a little stomach turning, especially the thought that real people were used to make them. However, there is much to be admired if you think about how far we’ve come in our medical knowledge and abilities. Another example was the visible human project, which left me with the same basic impression as the other, though I suppose this project was done more to use as reference material rather than to present as art. However, we saw in class the example of the movie that someone made, using the visible human project as part of it.
The body as art could also be interpreted as something like dance. Dance uses the body’s natural fluidity of motion to attract the attention of viewers, to impress them. Dance is great because of all of the creative power that goes into expressing otherwise abstract emotions. Mimes are also great examples of this. Also, if you saw the academy awards this year, you would have seen the group of people known as Pilobolus, who used their bodies to portray objects from several movies. I was amazed at their creativity, making a stiletto high heel, a minibus, and even a gun using merely human bodies.
To me, the phrase, “the human body as art,” means just that. I see the living body, the human body, as one of the greatest pieces of art, in and of itself. Being the creationist that I am, I see the body as one of God’s most complex creations. Just reading Ingber’s article instills this awe in me. With everything about how atoms come together with a natural tensegrity to create literally everything, how can you overlook it? And what makes those atoms come together in that way? Yes, the tensional forces cause certain formations, but why is there tension at all? Architects work so hard just to make arches and buildings that don’t collapse or implode. In the same way, I see God putting in that same effort to make atoms doing the same thing, but on the atomic level, and even on deeper levels than that. He puts in the same amount of effort as an architect just to make sure everything keeps stable, not collapsing on itself.

On Thursday we also saw Roy Ascott, and talked with him about networks. Again the internet came up as an important example. Also, we discussed the possibility of things like placing telephones in our head to enhance human to human networking. I guess I don’t really understand how his lecture really applied to the subject of art. Even though he did present some examples of how they related, I guess I didn’t really understand.

For Pilobolus at the Academy Awards: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAKlVwTpnNI

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Duy Phung -Week 5 -Human Body and Mind

Human beings possess the most wonderful and powerful tool in the world: mind. It enables us to advance quickly and dominate the Earth although human appearance has been relatively short compared to other organisms. For example, cockroaches have basically had the same form (various sizes though) in the past 300 million years. Of course human body and human mind is deeply related to each other. Without mind, we’re just as same as other animals. Without body, mind doesn’t have enough power to think, process, store, and keep the knowledge we’ve learnt and developed, so it’ll eventually disintegrate and perish.
It takes nine months for an embryo to develop into a fully functional infant. After being born, it takes roughly three years of tremendous intensity to feed and take care of a child before he or she can walk by his/her own. The maximum amount of time for any animals, which are renowned for their devotion to their children, is one year. Humans, in the other hand, require a constant support from both parents. Obviously, that would mean danger to the parents in the past since they have to feed their children, support themselves, and also avoid natural enemies: tigers, wolves, drought, floods, etc… I hate to say this but it’s the truth: it takes at least 18 years for the parents to get rid of their offspring. Why bear such a great burden? The brain is the answer. The compensation for this trouble is the biggest brain/body ratio that provides us the superb mental ability to surpass other organisms later on when we grow up. Last year Science magazine reported the smartest dog under human training we had never seen. It could memorize about 200 different commands, picked out the right items that were totally new to him with around 80% accuracy. Pick any 7-year-old kid passing by any street, and I’ll bet it’s just a joke to him. The smartest dog, a kind of animals considered possessing thinking ability, is nothing to a human kid. Mozart, whose age at seven, already composed some piano masterpieces.
When Prof. Vesna discussed about plastination at the beginning of her lecture, I felt great because I was one of the students that talked about Prof. Gunther von Hagens in the first week blog. I saw his work as an exhibition art show on human body. I was impressed to know that the blood arteries, if added up in length, would be equivalent to the Earth’s circumference, or the length of stomach if stretched out could cover a tennis court. The best specimen to me was a body in posture of thinking and playing chess. Prof. Roy Ascott’s lecture was another interesting experience. We had a full one debate about human body ability, mind ability, and their interaction as well as other enjoyable topics, such as telecommunication or diseases associated with technology. Whether the students’ ideas were sound arguments, the lecture definitely provoked our critical thinking and analytical skill.
Throughout human development, the majority number of death cast on us wasn’t caused by diseases or natural disasters but rather by fighting to each other. Worse we fight and die for what we believe, so more or less it’s related to religion. The Holy War, the 9/11 incident, the Middle East struggle… are first things in our mind when we think about religious conflict. The mind that enables us to be far more superior to other organisms also gives us reason to fight other over unnecessary point “our God is stronger than yours”. To religious people, have you ever asked yourselves the most important question “what would happen if you were born as a Muslim, not a Christian or vice versa?” Would you still find it reasonable that your new God is better than your former God? I guess you can’t answer that because you wouldn’t find any logic argument. Many people just simply follow their parents’ belief, which in turn was founded on previous generations. I urge you to read the book “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins not to find the reason to abandon your god but to enjoy a great biologist’ work and find a way to balance between science and religion for our own good.
http://http//richarddawkins.net/home"
I think this video clip is pretty cool although I didn't use it to illustrate any point in my discussion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_H1S9d5h-Ps"

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Christine Dang - Week 5 - Avatars and Self Representation

As technology advances, it is becoming increasingly more involved into the everyday lives of humans. Most people have accounts on various social networking sites such as myspace and Facebook, and nearly everyone has an instant messaging account of some sort, be it AIM or ICQ or MSN (or in many cases, all of the above and then some). And it's taken even beyond that with Skype and the inclusion of voice calls across many of these messaging clients. In addition to this is the increasing popularity of webcams, closing the distance gap between many. With all of these available options present on the internet, many people in fact do live the majority of their lives in front of their computers.



And that's just for the everyday users.



Many more people take it a step further by joining large communities in which they create avatars and control these representations of themselves through virtual worlds. This allows people to essentially live a second life through the use of technology (and that, in fact, was the title of one of the programs discussed in Wednesday's lecture). However, this has been done for ages in the world of online gaming. Each person had a character of their own and in many games, were able to be unique enough that said character could be identified and recognized on sight. This was made possible even in the more basic of character creation options (such as the one found in World of Warcraft). Through the several combinations of physical appearance joined with the various additions of items, people were able to create fairly individual characters.






This was taken a step farther with the creation of more in depth systems, such as the one found in Everquest II. This system allowed people to modify their avatars appearance down to the physical structure of the face, including features such as the jawbone width and ear height and various other characteristics. With such an extensive system, however, it was most interesting to see the characters that people created in relation to their actual appearance. Many people took the system and modeled their characters to represent themselves as closely as possible, allowing them to essentially place themselves into worlds they could never personally experience, such as the rich forests of Greater Faydark in Everquest or the bustling cantinas in Star Wars Galaxies.






Some took the opportunity to create themselves as they wished to be, tweaking physical properties that would require cosmetic surgery in real life. Or even to a lesser degree, changes in color would require dye or colored contacts. With these programs, people could represent themselves as they truly wished to be seen.





Others still saw this as an opportunity to experience the world as strange, fantastical beings and to live lives that would never be possible. To imagine, create, and live the life of a mythological creature in a world setting so far from our own. Cat people such as the Kerran of Everquest and the Mithra of Final Fantasy XI are a common theme, as are anthropomorphic wolves and foxes. This is probably because large cats such as panthers and tigers along with wolves and foxes are popular totem animals, and many people are eager to see this aspect of their lives incorporated into the representation of themselves.



All in all, however, people of all sorts have created avatars of themselves in an online world. Many have created multiple personas. Some even play as the opposite gender for whatever reason (though many guys tend to play as girls because they end up being favored in many situations). Technology has so invaded our lives that people do live their lives connected to it, to their computers and to the internet, which then connects everyone together. Society is shifting its focus, and with ever increasing options, people are truly allowed to self representation with no bounds. Online, people can simply be however they wish, removed from the limitations of the world. Perhaps one day soon it will be that the real world will be considered the second life, and the online the primary.

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jose fernandez, week 5, Body Worlds

This week’s lecture focused on the human body as an art form. The guest lecturer was Roy Ascott, which I could not quite understand what he was saying. Anyways, the lecture on Monday was good. I especially like the segment on the plastination of actual human bodies. This attracted me because I have had a past experience with this type of art work. I remember when I was a junior in high school that I first went to the exhibition. The Body Worlds exhibit, created by Gunther von Hagen, was a big hit around the nation. I had seen various advertisements that caught my attention, so I could not wait for it to come to Los Angeles. It took place at the California Science Center and I remember going with my parents on the last day it was on. I was a bit squeamish at the time since I knew they were real human bodies. Regardless I had waited a long time so I went in and was astonished to see so many skinless bodies. I began to wonder how someone would do this as an art exhibit. As I looked around I knew I was not the only one that felt that way. I noticed many people having confused expressions in their faces.
I began walking around the internal organs sections where the heart, lungs, kidneys, etc. were being displayed individually. Healthy body parts were displayed next to ill parts. For example there was a healthy lung against a lung that had been diagnosed of cancer. There was a considerable difference between the two. After that exhibit I moved to the exhibit showing the different systems that make the body function properly. There was the respiratory system with all the veins surrounding the body from top to bottom. The digestive system which is quite long. The nervous system was kind of cool. There were just so many of them.
Towards the end I finally got to the best demonstrations of the body. These were the ones that had the muscles and all the other body components as a whole. I though that there was only going to be bodies standing around in an upright position. Yet all were positioned in an active manner, as if they were engaging in an activity. There was a man skateboarding, another one playing soccer, and a pregnant woman too. But the best one I think was the horseback rider. The man was on top of the horse that was also displayed skinless. I found that one to be the craziest one of them all. I mean, the horse was full grown and to plaster the entire animal it would have taken months. After that I did not think the exhibit would be any better but I was wrong.
My second favorite exhibition was the fetus one and the sliced bodies. The fetuses were amazing in size. To think that a human being six feet tall starts off from cells that grow to a few inches and then to feet is a wonder of nature. The time that it takes is also amazing. Before we left we saw the sliced bodies. These made me think the most. I mean, how can a machine cut an entire body about 2 feet wide into hundreds of pieces thin as paper. The precision that the machine cuts them at is crazy. The organs and bones remain in the position without being damaged.
Overall the exhibition was just crazy. I would definitely go again. Well that was my story of my first visit to the Body World. The human body is truly a piece of art.

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Eddison Lai-week 5- complex networking

There are many traits that distinguish humans from other species of the earth. One of them is the desire to live long and healthy lives. Humans try to attain their goal through science and medicine. Our species is constantly trying to develop ways to fight disease and prolong life. We develop products such as antibiotics and technology including cryonics because of greed. The developers are powered by their greed for money, and the people who fund the projects are powered by their greed for a healthy life.

What enlightened me was a Japanese movie I watched last night called “Casshern.” It was a futuristic movie about a society in war. Even though the country had won the war, their military kept fighting. In the end, we find out that it is only because the elders of the government are searching for a “neo-cell” which creates regenerative cells. The leaders order the military to look for terrorists but they are actually killing hundreds of people a day to find the neo-cells. I’m not trying to say that medicine or the desire to live longer is bad, only the greed behind it. The reason I am bringing up the movie is because the movie reminded me a lot about the topics covered in lecture this past week.!!!

Cryonics is the practice of preserving a human body for future resuscitation. The desire to live again is shown in the movie because the scientist put his dead son in a pool of neo-cells, and his son came back to life. I can picture this happening in the future with cryonics. What worries me is the side effects. In the Casshern, the treatment has side effects which require containment in a highly pressurized “armor” suit. How do we know what will happen if cryonics does work? For all we know, if a patient comes back to consciousness, his organs may not function properly and he very well may can explode into a million pieces for all we know.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health_medicine/1281061.html

After the movie, I thought a lot about how complex the human body is. The networking that enables us think, move, and live may be far too complicated to replicate, no matter how hard artificial intelligence designers try. Robots in the future will be able to move, speak, and possibly live for a short time, but their existence will be in no way comparable to ours. Their design will be no match to our natural biological networking. There may be hundreds of wires and programs that robots follow, but humans have an estimated 100 trillion cells. Also, robots and computers exist by being built, while humans exist by birth and growth.


To me, surgery that does not aid or repair a body part to fully function does not make sense. I support prosthetic limbs and laser eye surgery but to me, plastic and cosmetic surgery is meaningless and improper. Also, implanting magnets in fingertips and mobile devices in human bodies are both interesting but unethical to me. Besides, new technology for cell phones comes out every year. Models become outdated within a year. So I agree with what I believe the majority of the class feels that surgery is fine if you need it but not for your convenience. !!!

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Kiesha Nazarenus- Week 5- body as art

So let’s go back to the original
question of what art is. This week we were introduced to a new concept: the human body as a piece of art. Is the human body a piece of art untouched…or does it require manipulation in order to convey the artist’s message. And, as we began to think into this concept of body art we enter the world of life after death and preserving our physical form for eternity. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who had to take a double take when the artist Orlan was mentioned in lecture on Monday. I immediately connected her with the puzzling images of Stelarc, but still there was something so unusual about her. In my mind Stelarc is creating advances in human anatomy. From what I understand he is interested in the evolution of the physical body and the limitless potential our body has. Orlan on the other hand was inflicting pain on her self in order to make a statement. I mean, my aunts have gotten a face lift done before and they are out for a couple of weeks…I can’t imagine what she must go through with the things she does to herself. I went to her website (http://http://www.orlan.net/) and started looking through the images she had posted and I’ll admit, I was a little disturbed. Regardless though, some very powerful messages came across quite loudly: the human obsession with beauty and the determining factor of what our society labels as perfectly beautiful and what we will put ourselves through to obtain this beauty. There were a few images of her right out of surgery and in any other context you would have thought she had been physically abused but those bruises and swelling were self inflicted. Is a person’s obsession with beauty self abuse?? One set of images was titled “pieces of conviction” and there was an image of bright blue pumps. When I saw these I couldn’t help but laugh because it is ridiculous how women submit themselves to wear these things when they hurt…you can lie all you would like to yourself but a pair of flip flops will always be more comfortable than a pair of heels. She also drew faces with blood all of which while distorted were angry or upset. Anyways, I could probably go on all day about some of things I saw but I also wanted to say something about self preservation and second life.
Some people want to be buried with family, others want to be cremated and sprinkled over somewhere special or kept in an urn on the mantle place, but now people can get there body preserved for life at the Cryonics Institute. Ok honestly, why in the world would you want your body preserved for life? And if this kind of thing becomes popular and affordable to the common man, where are we going to store all these lifeless bodies that have no further purpose in life? I mean talk about people having issues moving on. When I was reading through their website I was stunned with “As an optional extra (at extra cost) a Cryonics Institute Member may contract for cryonics professionals from Suspended Animation, Inc. to wait by the bedside during a terminal condition and immediately begin cooling and cardiopulmonary support upon pronouncement of death to minimize brain damage. When and if future medical technology allows, our member patients hope to be healed, rejuvenated, revived, and awakened to a greatly extended life in youthful good health, free from disease or the aging process.” Well I guess you never know with the way technology and knowledge progresses.

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Zara Feeney 803454305 - week 1- Two Cultures in mind

Zara Feeney
04- 06-07
803454305
TA: Xarene

Blog- Desma 9- Week 1- Two cultures in mind

In the world of academics, a striking opposition exists between science and art.
During this weeks lecture, the idea of stereotypes and opposition in School systems, as well as religious organizations within art and science was presented. Scientists often see artists as either starving and desolate, or rich and pompous. Artists often see scientists as madmen who never stop working in their labs. A stereotype, however, is a fixed/generated pattern meant to control groups of people, and is many times proven false.
Instead of continuing the long held tradition of making science completely opposite to art; C.P. Snow presents the possibility for opposites to become one. He hopes everyone knows “the second law of thermodynamics” and has “read a play of Shakespeare.” Everyone, whether they are more artistic (north campus at UCLA) or more scientific (south campus at UCLA) should be equally acquainted with both sides of the academic world. C.P. Snow looks at artists who are using technology to cure world, and reversely scientist who are expressing physical/ experimental science to reach the metaphysical. By briding the gap between art and science, C.P. Snow forms sort of a third culture.
Well known scientists further explicate C.P. snows idea of a hybrid culture—something that is the grey between the black vs. white opposition of art and science—thorughout their carreers. For example, Feyeyaband, who presents the idea of a methodological paradigm( the “against method”) says that the structure of method is similar in art as well as science. Both science and art can prove something false to be true or vice versa. Feyerband notes that eventually every methodology can be proven wrong and ultimately “anything goes”. This idea is the only principal that does not inhibit progress.
Later on in lecture we discussed the controversial topic of science verses religion. One view is that science and religion are completely conflicting. Another view is that they can actually intertwine (ex- Galieo, Darwin). Christians feel that science is a threat to their faith, and scientists feel like religion is a threat to their scientific freedom. Unlike in the past, teachers just guide students in the write direction and do not tell them exactly how things are meant to be ( finally women can teach too!). Now as students in this generation, we can question authority, since thoughts and facts are always evolving.
Artist, Steve Kurtz, the guest speaker for this week, told his personal story of how authority affected his ability to integrate science into his art. He and his team “Haliflax” wanted to conduct experiments to test how much the government was altering the food Americans eat. When his wife of 27 years died unexpectedly of heart failure, the FBI searched his house, found petree dishes with unknown bacteria and immediately accused him of an attempted terrorist attack. Although his art may be absurd, authority is usually even more absurd.
As this class continues, the overlapping between science and art will become clearer. For example, the professor mentioned that with the invention of light bulbs and photography, painters started to paint less realistically. In all situations, it is evident or not, science affects are and reversely art affects science. By integrating art into life as well as life into art invoke political and social change becomes possible.

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--- Section 2 --- Matt Ko ---

This week’s topic was on generative art and also artificial intelligence. There is debate over whether or not generative art is truly art or not. And I am not surprised that there is such a debate. There are different extents to how “free” the art is to develop. Some artists would generative art and totally just let the art make itself, and others would make it more of a precise process, almost leaving no freedom for the art. I personally like generative art that is more artist controlled than not, and I would say that such art should actually be considered art. But in the end, to me, whatever is appealing to the eye is art. So, if the generative art is left to run without the artist doing too much, and it makes something appealing to the eye, I wouldn’t give the credit to the “artist” but rather to whatever system used to create the piece. As strange as that may sound, I think that is the best way to consider such a case. I would be much more comfortable saying that nature made the work than a person who didn’t contribute. A great example of generative art where the artist has taken control of the production is our prior week’s guest, Casey Reas. He did all of the programming required for the art to be done. Hans Haacke’s Condensation Cube is a decent example of artist control. He came up with the idea to display condensation as art, building the cube, and placing it in an atmosphere where condensation would occur. However, this case is also a very hard case to distinguish. Since Haacke had minimal involvement in the process, some would say that his cube is not art. And it isn’t as though what is being created isn’t an everyday occurrence. So it’s very tough to decide. I am very close to not calling it art at all.

Artificial intelligence is another gray area for me. I don’t know how much AI is involved in art exactly, but either way, it’s really hard for me to decide what I think about it. AI is a promising idea, and I see many great uses for AI in our society. However, AI taken to the point of the movie I Robot scares me. If AI were ever really self aware, I would feel very strongly against it.

As we talked about in discussion, current AI is lacking in many respects. If you look at things like ELIZA, such an AI really needs to be able to respond freely, in creative ways. If ELIZA does not know how to respond, she tends to either rephrase the text that was inputted, or she will divert the question somehow. A real AI should have a creative response for any statement. However, the greatest struggle in the study of AI is that an AI will probably never be able to exhibit ethics and morality, and be able to sense feelings and express them, just as a human would. These features are what I would attach to the definition of intelligence, and without them, AI can never truly be intelligent.

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Christine Dang - Week 4 - Chaos and Order, Logic and Art

Each passing week it seems that we cover a different aspect of science, and yet, despite all of the inherent contradictions, it all somehow makes sense to relate these rigidly logical fields with the relaxed creativity of art. At first I had expected this course to focus more heavily on art and how technology can enhance it. I had hardly expected this intriguing paradox between logic and creativity. In this week’s reading, generative art was discussed, and this style even further increases the oddity of this amalgamation of art and science. Not only is there the mix between calculation and emotion, but there also exists the combination of both chaos and order. The pieces themselves are based on calculation, pattern, an ordered schematic of some sort. And yet from these static instructions arises random patterns and creations, many unexpected even to the writers themselves.

As mentioned in the description of the '99 Conference of Generative Art in Milan, Italy, "Generative Art allows us the possibility to perform our ideas as genetic code, and to realize, as the natural DNA does, always different and unpredictable series of events, pictures, objects, architectures, music, environment, all recognizable by our creative idea." Until I saw this statement, I hadn't even thought of relating the uniqueness of pieces of generative art to the creation of DNA strings. I truly could not make a better comparison. It could even be related to the "unexpected even to its creator" aspect of generative art, for when DNA is transcribed into RNA strands by the polymerase, every once in a while an unexpected error or change would occur, dubbed a mutation.

Examples of Generative Art, by Bogdan Soban

In the Fiat Lux seminar in Design | Media Arts that I took last quarter, we discussed this one program which detected the electric impulses sent to a plant’s roots upon touch and utilized these impulses as a method to control the growth and creation of various plants in a 3D garden. While the basis of the piece itself is a static program, no two gardens created through this system were identical. Thus, order creates chaos, and logic gives birth to artistic creativity. Furthermore, when this piece was on display in a gallery, a man in an electric wheelchair attempted it. The next day, the machine would no longer run. When the artist was called in and the program was fixed again, they discovered that somehow the electric impulses were affected by the presence of the wheelchair and had shorted the display. In this way, pieces sometimes yield results that are unexpected even to its creator.

Generative art also brings up the debate of intelligence. How intelligent does a program have to be before it is considered artificial intelligence? A program used for a piece of generative art is essentially self-reliant and can continue to create on its own, would this be deemed intelligent enough? Most people do not seem to think so. In last week's discussion session, we took another look at some of the earlier interactions with artificial intelligence. Many people looked at the simple text-based models as pointless and "dumb". However, those programs can and do interact with people on some semblance of intelligence, preprogrammed or otherwise. So what determines intelligence? Is it the ability to learn and change? Sentience, thought, feeling? Artificial intelligence is indeed an intriguing concept, especially when it appears that for the most part, people have not even yet defined intelligence itself.

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Duy Phung -Week 4 -Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Technology has advanced quickly, especially in computer sciences. Prof. Vesna discussed many network and computer concepts and applications, which were new to me, in the modern world such as: the Turing test, artificial intelligence, swarm intelligence, and generative art. I don’t understand much about these things since my major is biochemistry. However, AI was an interesting topic that I’ve some knowledge, so I’m going to discuss about it today.
I’m sure we’re all familiar with the concept of AI. We’ve encountered it anywhere in our daily life, and fortunately it has developed well enough to serve human beings. Personally I have seen them most in video games industry. AI is my entertaining friend although frequently it appears as my smart and organized enemies in video games and often gave me hard times. Without it, video games are boring since they’re all filled with predictable enemies and repetitive battles.

People have been enjoying the benefits of AI, but they’re instinctively afraid of AI as it might evolve sophistically enough to overshadow humans and then rule the world. Many movies have come out to illustrate the idea and successfully added more fear to people. For example, the movie Brazil on Wednesday lecture captured our attention about human life in future. A man worked lonely with special machines to find himself often daydreaming about a girl he had never seen before. It was his only motivation to live. Even that in his dreams he wore robot-like outfit, flew with steel wings, and fought with machinery demons. After meeting the girl in real life something exploded in his mind and he continuously ran into troubles. The message was simple and clear: along with the development of technology, human social interaction becomes a major problem; therefore directly or indirectly under influence of AI, disasters will be inevitable.
Since John McCarthy coined the term Artificial Intelligence meaning “"the science and engineering of making intelligent machines" in 1955, AI has been well studied and applied widely in many fields, especially of computer sciences, engineering, and the rising neuroscience (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_intelligence for more information).
When the IBM Deep Blue was the first officially supercomputer using its AI to win the chess game against a reigning world champion, Garry Kasparov, under regular time controls after a six-game match in 1997, it was heralded as a major turning point in the continuing struggle between man and machine. The omen has turned out to be right as computers have developed strategies designers have never thought of in game AI and strategic planning fields.
It was interesting and amusing when Prof. Vesna introduced us ELIZA, the computer therapist. After chatting with her online for a few moments, we immediately knew she was a computer since she was evading to answer the questions directly but rather asked other questions back to us. I wasn’t surprised to know that in 1960’s many people thought her a woman because the field was new and people didn’t have the knowledge back then. Nor would I be surprised if my children laughed and told me the computers we’ve experienced now were dumb in the future. In conclusion, human and AI development has direct influences to one another, and it’s not exaggerated to say both will unify to become one in a near future.

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jose fernandez, week 4, networks/systems/AI

This week’s lecture was on biology, networks, natural systems, and artificial life. I thought that I was going to enjoy this lecture because I am planning on majoring in biology. It was unfortunate that we only had class on Monday. We had to see a movie on Wednesday. The lecture dealt with things that are now widely recognized as important aspects of life. The first thing was the first network between two computer systems. It was predicted by H.G. Wells in 1937, which was similar to the internet, something ahead of its time. It began with two computers and then it spread out to a several other systems. Presently it is called the internet and has expanded globally. We were shown complex models of the various networks computers have established across time. I guess the networks were being compared to the web of life or the food chain. This was the biological aspect. I did not really understand this part. Then the lecture shifted to an interesting topic in artificial intelligence. I was seeing the movie I, Robot this Sunday and I found myself remembering what we had talked about regarding artificial intelligence. Robots are able to be constructed in a way that they can carry out tasks just like humans do. Yet their lack of emotion and sentiments is something that prevents them from actually being human like. I believe Joseph Weizenbaun was the man that stated that robots would never make intelligent decisions because they lacked human characteristics such as emotion. Many decisions come with that thought of what might happen and the consequences. A robot is just programmed to do tasks with out thinking about them. Another topic that was interesting was systems. We were shown several types of systems and how they function. These were self-assembly, which deals with the repair of a malfunction with out the help of an outside source. Similar to this is self-organization. There is a control system which regulates behaviors of systems. These can all be found in humans. There is the nervous system, the digestive system, and the heart. These were the thing that caught my attention of the whole lecture.
The movie on Wednesday was quite interesting. It was called Brazil and for the entire time I kept wondering why it was titled that way. Anyways the plot was wacky and very futuristic. When the professor said it had a connection to what we had been learning. For the most part I was able to recognize how the place where the main character worked as a system. Many people work as one to get the job done with the boss being the central part of the system. Apart from this I had a hard time connecting the lectures to what was going on in the movie. Unfortunately I had an appointment at 11 so I had to leave class early. I am sure I missed some of the connections the professor was talking about. Overall it was the worst week so far.

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Week 4 Section 2 - Allen Wang - Are insects ruled by a grater mind?

http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/4/1/reviews/kluegl.html

It has been a great question whether insects, as a colony, have more intelligence than a single unit of the insect colony. Though the single ant worker would wander around aimlessly, even for life, without serving a purpose. Yet, as a colony, ants can achieve many great goals every day. Every day, food and found and collected with the help of the colony as a whole. With the work as a whole, ants can get much accomplished. Each by doing their part for the colony, ants can fight when in danger and collect when food is avaliable.
While forging, ants actually give off different scents for different types of food. Different smells tell the other ants that different foods are avaliable, therefore if different types of food is found, the ants would prioritize and go for the more important and nutrictious food first, then go to collect the latter of the food, if the food is still there.
While forging may be an important part of the ant life, there are other jobs avaliable too. Other jobs consists of caring for the larva or the storage of the incoming food. By working together, ants can make jobs efficient and faster. Though all the workers are almost identical in every way, they all play an important role in that ant colony as a whole. This delegation of tasks is just like that of a robot, in which a robot is each assigned a different job, such as, a refrigerator is only for storing food and a car is for transportation. By each working is important tasks, a society is created. If each ant diverges and works on different tasks, ineffieicny is created, such as if a car is used to cook food by heating up its engine, it may work but it'll be inefficient.
For ant colonies, there also exists the job to create new paths and repair broken ones. by coperating with one another, ants can survive. It is based ona trust system in which each ant, though identical, is programmed to perform different tasks. The insect colony is efficient on its own terms, but each individual worker does the work that is insignificant. If a few worker ants died, the ant colony would still survive, but is the colony died and the worker ants scattered, their survival rate would decrease drastically.
It is without doubt that insects require the ability of the colony to survive. As an individual, ants would be lost. And this insect colony represents both the human and robot society that exists today. Our jobs, to be blunt, is very insignificant to the human race as a whole, but together, we help advance the world. Though there are a few selected few, such as Bill Gates or Newton, that actually shape and advance the world individually, there are very few, compared to the size of the population as a whole, that have actually impacted the lives of colony as a whole.
Therefore, in a mattter of speaking, we are after all living in a colony, mindlessly. We have the abiliy to be significant though. The creative thinkers of the world help shape the world while others jsut walk about accepting whatever comes and do what others order them to do. We, as the human race, in a greater sense, are no more free from the colony than the ants of a ant colony are free.

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Julie Fair- Week 4- A.I. Etc.

Although this weeks theme was clear in the material presented, professor Vesna seemed to cover a huge and diverse amount of material. Having said that, I thought it was nice to have Edward Shanken speak after professor Vesna's presentation and offer different points of view and more thorough explanations on some of her points.
Concerning professor Vesna's presentation, I thought it was very interesting to find out just how far back the field of computer science goes. I had not realized that the concept of computers had originated as long ago as the 1930s and that the idea of artificial intelligence had been around since the '50s. I guess because these fields have only recently begun to make much progress, I thought they were more recently created.
During her presentation, Professor Vesna mentioned cellular automata, but did not really go into detail about it. After looking it up I found out what a complex, yet basic concept it is. I researched John Horton Conway's "Game of Life" which gave me a much clearer picture of what cellular automata entails and the way in which it can be seen to relate to the processes of biological cells. I found out that the "Game of Life" is a zero-player game, which means that its evolution is determined by its original configuration so after a human creates this initial configuration, no other human input is necessary. The game just goes on its own rules. The game is based on the idea that each cell has two possible positions- alive or dead. Each cell is effected by the cells around it, whose configuration determines whether the cell will live or die. These rules apply continually which is what drives the game.
I saw this as relating to biological cell systems in the way it portrays each cell as interconnected to all the other cells of the system, much like the cells of a biological organism. It demonstrates that technology is beginning to be able to recognize relationships like this that exist in biological systems, which makes me wonder, by following along lines like these, how close technology can come to replicating biological systems. Info on Conway's Game of Life: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_Game_of_Life
Professor Vesna also mentioned a few pieces in her presentation that involved interaction with humans. I found this subject very interesting as well because it represents such a different approach to the concept of arificial intelligence than does the idea of modeling a technological system after a biological cell system. Here the goal is immediate results, instead of gradual build up of a system until it reaches a level of organization that allows consciousness. Here the consciousness is truly artificial, however much more tangible. Pieces like "Alice" and "Eliza" clearly demonstrate this concept: they are obviously simple versions of "consciousness," however they are appealing because they have such a lifelike appearance.
Now getting back to my point about Shanken's presentation. I thought he brought up some very interesting points that professor Vesna did not. For example his mention of the shoe-fly fallacy, which demonstrates the way the concept of A.I. can be misconstrued by stretching the idea of what constitutes artificial intelligence. Through this fallacy, the label of A.I. could be stretched to technologies where intelligence is clearly not present.
I also thought his mention of the idea that, although art and science often develop similar methods simultaneously, science is usually given credit because people do not know how to interpret art compared to science, held particular validity. In my limited experience, I too have noticed this phenomena. Especially during the course of this class, I have noticed that art we look at has many similar elements to much more well known scientific fields and discoveries. Shanken's annunciation of this concept just made me fully realize its validity.

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Kiesha Nazarenus- Week 4- Dance, Alice and a WEIRD movie

In dance the movement comes forth from the music. The music is what provokes the body to move in relation to the emotion that is a direct reaction to the sound. When the professor briefly spoke of David Rokeby she caught my attention because his work centered around music coming forth from movement. Movement creating music. When I was reading about one of his pieces of work, Very Nervous System, it said “The feedback is not simply 'negative' or 'positive', inhibitory or reinforcing; the loop is subject to constant transformation as the elements, human and computer, change in response to each other. The two interpenetrate, until the notion of control is lost and the relationship becomes encounter and involvement.” While his movement may not necessarily be able to be termed conventional “dance” it was still the movement creating music rather that music creating movement. He stated “Any movements made by people within the space create sounds whose qualities reflected the qualities of the movements.” My question for him is what music is deemed correct sounds to form from certain movements of the body? Is it pre-programed that certain speeds of movement or range of motions of movement will produce certain sounds? There would be no spontaneity in this art form, which makes me think that there is no individualism or soul and emotion behind the creation…almost detached from humanistic expression. In dance it is the artistic expression that allows a person to connect to the movement, such as how a person will move in relation to the music, but does a soul-less object have this artistic ability? Of course this seems to be the direction our class has been moving. With all the technological based work that we are being exposed to I think the biggest question coming to our mind is- What is art…how do we define it….or who is allowed to define it.

http://http://homepage.mac.com/davidrokeby/reflex.html
The project with A.L.I.C.E. while kinda cool really doesn’t have any purpose or meaning more than just being kinda cool. I mean from it springs games like the Sims and interactive video games, all of which provide us with a form of entertainment, which I suppose would be its purpose. I wonder how long it will take before we create a computer so smart that it is able to blend in with our society. At the moment you can’t help but laugh at some of the responses A.L.I.C.E. makes and the turn about expected answers it creates. But then again would we really want computers to be so smart and where are we going by creating this technology…and even more so, how does this relate to art?
This week was jam-packed with info that is all worth doing a little research on to get a more in-depth understanding of some of the pieces people are creating. But let me tell you, I thought the movie we watched was extremely bizarre. It just went on and on and on and was gruesome and just plain off the wall. I suppose its purpose had something to do with technology and the corruptness of government but honestly I thought I was going to go crazy sitting there and watching it.
I’m excited to move on to the next week but hope that the topics that are discussed pertain a little more to art than strictly advances in technology.

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Section 2 week 4: Still missing judgement, and emotion

Some examples of AI from artistic ideas to science:




For the biology part of the lecture on Monday, I thought swarm intelligence was really interesting. I never thought about how ant colonies work. They actually communicate with each other in their own way specific to their species. From what I understand, ants' only missions are to search for food to bring back to the colony. They do this efficiently by leaving invisible trails of residue so that other ants will know the path between the food and the rest of the colony. The ability to work together is what much of a network is. In addition, the ants sometimes form chains, creating bridges for other ants to cross and work together to bring big chunks of food.!!! Very Nervous System creates a relationship between body, space, sound and technology. The video that Professor showed us in class really amazed me. I didn't realize that motion, sound, and space detectors could have been used in that way. It was also a little surprising when I found out how early the project was started. I never knew the late 80's was a time of such artistic display of creativity. The fact that the computer is able to detect the specific motions of the performer and interpret the movement's enthusiasm really makes a path for computer and human interactivity. This makes me wonder what is the next step that links computers to human body. Hopefully next will be the human mind.

I really appreciate how artists think ahead of their time. They use their creativity to envision the future. In some senses they shape the future. A lot of the crazy ideas that are presented through media like films and literature give people inspiration to build such things like humanoids and generative art. I saw this week how much interaction there really is between science and art. Much of the scientists' work are reflections of artistic ideas. Major examples are found in films including Frankenstein and the two futuristic movies about robots was brought up by Professor Vesna in lecture. Those two movies were made decades ago and today, we are still trying to make those dreams come true.

I can see a big future for artificial intelligence. This has been a major topic of study and thought for many many years. We have seen many advancements in movies as well as reality including Eliza and I Robot. Eliza is a major accomplishment in its time. The program was designed to be somewhat of a computer therapist. It would talk to you and answer to whatever you typed. It took into account what you said and gave a response that often envoked more questions. The only setback was that it sometimes didn't give you a straight answer that you might be looking for. It would give you a response that is also a question making you a little frustrated to not have an answer. Often you can't find out much about a topic because it is programmed to a limited response. I Robot was very creative innovating. Although it was not the first time that the idea of humans and robots lived together, it definitely was a well thought out portrayal of human and android interaction. The story is of a robot who actually finds a way to understand and feel emotion. He develops a conscience and starts to act on his own and not just under programming and instructions of humans.

Generative Art is very interesting to me but right not it seems that there is a limit on how far it can go. Right now, a major set back is creating a robot that will judge, compromise, and adapt to human feelings. We have almost everything. At MIT, we already have had the knowledge from the Cog project to take into account someone's words and react with facial expressions. However, a lot of it only depends on the volume and words. We have yet to see robots that are able to take into account many human emotions like humor, sarcasm, joy, and many other things that require expression and tones. Since we have almost every other aspect to mimic humans, all we need to do in order to create human-like androids is to develop ways to consider human emotions.

Cool androids:
http://www.androidworld.com/prod01.htm
!!!

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James Zavala week 4 internet and other stuff

Wow! Where is this class going? I was very interested in the topics that the professor presented at the beginning of the quarter but now I am not so sure that what she decides to show is very artistic. The reading also begins to become less interesting. The reading for this week was about generative where an artist was interviewed about his work and gave his thoughts and opinions of his art rather than talking about it. I did enjoy his art although. It seems that the art was a body of its own. The artist states that one of his goals was not for people to merely see the bones of the dinosaurs but to be able to see how they interacted and they lived. The display was also very extravagant which would definitely catch my attention. Nonetheless I have no clue what his art is being that it didn’t give me a detailed description of the piece but the history of what he does and his thoughts. No offense, I don’t care, tell me about your work and catch my attention that way.
Mondays lecture was interesting with the whole thing on the robots. I went back and read the title of the course, which was appropriately given. I understand the talk about the computers connecting and how the Internet is revolutionary. Going into detail about a website that came before myspace was very interesting but needless to say, I lack the connection between the information given and art. It would be something if the class was geared to informing about late breakthroughs but I am pretty sure that it’s supposed to be centered on art, which I have not seen lately.
I thought that the talk about the amoeba and how it solved a puzzle for it to eat was very interesting. For something without a brain or sense of self to do something so complex, makes it something to admire due to its abnormality. We then got into the subject of self-organization due to the amoeba, and looked at the pictures of ants and the fact that they cooperate together to become successful. It’s interesting to know that major companies pay attention to these behaviors to become more successful. To me it seemed to be an intelligent decision. Looking at something that is self-organizing gives a company a heads up on what they can do for future success.
Up till this point I find nothing that was presented as artistic or anything that I could appreciate myself, then again I might be wrong.
On the other hand there are other things that I could appreciate as art. I loved the piece by David Rockeby and his method of movement and how that created sound. That was so awesome not only can you appreciate the complex method that he took to create such a masterpiece but also the final product was something to appreciate. The computer therapist was also interesting to me, it says a lot about society. I would read it as your crazy, go talk to a computer; but even then the programs response are very far from a real conversation; Which leads into something that was brought up in section, computers are not as smart as they could be because they have no sense of consciousness. I am glad to say that I am smarter than a computer.
The movie that was presented was very weird. I honestly did not like it but the conclusion that I came to that the movie was trying to convey was that the government doesn’t allow for people to be so dependent on computers and therefore for computers not to be so complex was for the reason that computers malfunction. The movie was complete chaos all due to the computers. The past weeks have been more interesting that this one and the previous one to that one was far more interesting than that one. I just hope that it’s not a pattern for the class to get more uninteresting as the weeks fly by.
i loved rockeby and his website kicked butt, check it out!

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James Zavala week 4 internet and other stuff

Wow! Where is this class going? I was very interested in the topics that the professor presented at the beginning of the quarter but now I am not so sure that what she decides to show is very artistic. The reading also begins to become less interesting. The reading for this week was about generative where an artist was interviewed about his work and gave his thoughts and opinions of his art rather than talking about it. I did enjoy his art although. It seems that the art was a body of its own. The artist states that one of his goals was not for people to merely see the bones of the dinosaurs but to be able to see how they interacted and they lived. The display was also very extravagant which would definitely catch my attention. Nonetheless I have no clue what his art is being that it didn’t give me a detailed description of the piece but the history of what he does and his thoughts. No offense, I don’t care, tell me about your work and catch my attention that way.
Mondays lecture was interesting with the whole thing on the robots. I went back and read the title of the course, which was appropriately given. I understand the talk about the computers connecting and how the Internet is revolutionary. Going into detail about a website that came before myspace was very interesting but needless to say, I lack the connection between the information given and art. It would be something if the class was geared to informing about late breakthroughs but I am pretty sure that it’s supposed to be centered on art, which I have not seen lately.
I thought that the talk about the amoeba and how it solved a puzzle for it to eat was very interesting. For something without a brain or sense of self to do something so complex, makes it something to admire due to its abnormality. We then got into the subject of self-organization due to the amoeba, and looked at the pictures of ants and the fact that they cooperate together to become successful. It’s interesting to know that major companies pay attention to these behaviors to become more successful. To me it seemed to be an intelligent decision. Looking at something that is self-organizing gives a company a heads up on what they can do for future success.
Up till this point I find nothing that was presented as artistic or anything that I could appreciate myself, then again I might be wrong.
On the other hand there are other things that I could appreciate as art. I loved the piece by David Rockeby and his method of movement and how that created sound. That was so awesome not only can you appreciate the complex method that he took to create such a masterpiece but also the final product was something to appreciate. The computer therapist was also interesting to me, it says a lot about society. I would read it as your crazy, go talk to a computer; but even then the programs response are very far from a real conversation; Which leads into something that was brought up in section, computers are not as smart as they could be because they have no sense of consciousness. I am glad to say that I am smarter than a computer.
The movie that was presented was very weird. I honestly did not like it but the conclusion that I came to that the movie was trying to convey was that the government doesn’t allow for people to be so dependent on computers and therefore for computers not to be so complex was for the reason that computers malfunction. The movie was complete chaos all due to the computers. The past weeks have been more interesting that this one and the previous one to that one was far more interesting than that one. I just hope that it’s not a pattern for the class to get more uninteresting as the weeks fly by.

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Artificial Proof and Art

I really liked the guest lecturer this week, Edward Shankin. Several things that he said really hit home for me. The first was what he said about art and interpretation. I know from the experience of attending an arts boarding high-school that, when it comes to the visual art medium, things can be pretty abstract and, at times, they can seem “pointless” and just plain “weird”. When professor Shankin said that most people aren’t able to as specifically interpret art as they are other things, it struck me that this was why visual artists are seen as “weird” and their art as wildly passionate but lacking purpose. I can recall countless exhibits, both at my old boarding school and in the art galleries of UCLA and Cal Arts (where I visit almost every week) in which a first glance appeared to be randomness or abstractness for the sake of it. I believe that the reasons for my interpretations are that I am not accustomed or used to analyzing things that have no real concrete basis for which to start an investigation.
1. In writing, you start with words and what they mean and what they don’t mean. Then you move on to the sentences and, after all meaning is examined (with a dictionary) you explore what ideas they could reflect.
2. With music you can analyze the harmonic movement and compare it to the common practices of different eras in musical development. Then, you can examine the modality and the nature of the melodic lines and rhythmic elements. 3. With movies and animations you can examine actions and dialogs and examine the first with the expectations and stereotypes that are present in society and the second with the same technique that is used to examine literature. All of these forms of art have concrete ways that all people already have a solid grasp on (language, sound, and chronological, real-life actions). When we come to visual art, however, there is suddenly almost nothing present that is familiar enough for most people to examine it with. Often the single thing that people will use to interpret a piece of visual art is the title, because it is in a language that they understand.
The second point that professor Shankin made ties in now. He said that art and science often have parallel ideas and arrive at the same resolution, but that art rarely gets credit or recognition. I believe that this is because the fundamental language of art is more foreign to people than the hypothesize>test>report method of science. In fact, I cant even tell you the equivalent statement for art. Maybe its realize>develop>display, or hypothesize>rephrase>reveal. What I do know now is that I need to look a little closer at the next art exhibit that I habitually approach as an abstract stab in the dark.
The other topic that I have been thinking about lately has been that of artificial intelligence and the relationship between biological and computerized systems. I personally believe that computers cannot become intelligent by virtue of their complexity. I think that the source of human awareness needs to be discovered before we can know how it may be artificially achieved and reproduced. In the current approach to making an intelligent machine, code must be written that a chip them compiles into binary and is executed. I think that this is the fundamental barrier that must be overcome before we get computers that are really self aware an intelligent. By design, programming languages are based on the need for reactions, limits, parameters, and computation orders. Because of this, no computer will be able to connect two abstract ideas or think for itself. They will only be able to choose a correct response out of stored responses that were already thought of. New approaches to programming languages are needed. I think that some type of language that can be continuously revised by the computer based on its experiences and encounters is needed, but such a language would need to be able to reference things and know how to use references. In a sense, an aware program would need to have included in its script all knowledge and experience that can be absorbed and developed in any person between infancy and adulthood (or have the ability to acquire them). The code would have to be able to judge actions and reactions not solely on winning and losing or gaining and giving (standard languages only know addition and subtraction). These are the barriers that must be crossed before we have truly intelligent machines.
The majority of artificial intelligence websites define AI as “the area of computer science focusing on creating machines that can engage in behaviors that humans consider intelligent.” The problem I see here is that we are judging intelligence on things that we consider to be behavior that an intelligent being would exhibit. Not only could our perception of intelligent behavior change, but intelligent behavior alone is not proof of intelligence.

One such website is here:
http://library.thinkquest.org/2705/
it has lots of info regarding AI, its history, and numerous approaches at creating it.

I believe that AI can and will be created, but all the research i have seen and the attempts i have read about have jumped to the conclusion that our programming languages are sufficient and our knowledge of where our intelligence comes from and what intelligence is are correct.

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John "Matt" Ko - Week 3

The Industrial Age played a huge role in forming what we now know as art. Things like the printing press, factories, and eventually even computers all change the way we use, look at, and treat art. The printing press was the first opportunity for men to easily reproduce their writings. But along with that I would say that this was probably the start of type as art. I would venture to say that at this point people arranging the type for the printing presses were thinking about how to make the print visually appealing. And so the type would have been designed a specific way, arranged a specific way, and so on. You could also say that this led to what we see today in advertising and the use of type in graphics design. One website that I know of that uses type in a creative way is http://www.typorganism.com. It gives browsers the opportunity to interact with type art, experiencing it at home.

This wouldn’t have even been possible were it not for the invention of the computer, and the internet. No one thought that computers would become such a common household appliance. They used to take up entire rooms, but now just about every household has one. With the introduction of the internet, computers then became tools to easily broadcast works of art from the convenience of the home. One no longer has to travel to a gallery to view famous works of art. Computers are also used to compose works of art. From things like graphics design, computer animation, and web design to things like Casey Reas’ work.

Machine shops, another product of the industrial age, also bring new light to art. There are aspects of design in the production of anything from water bottles to cars. Not only that, but mechanical production brought to mind the idea of the robot, and has inspired many art forms. Robots have been portrayed in things like comic books, and many have produced metal works that are supposed to resemble robots, though they do not have any automated functions. However, there are certain things that actually are robots that I’m not so sure should be considered art. Things like the mechanical third arm and that big machine show of destruction maybe useful or entertaining, but I don’t think that I would consider them to be art.

I’m more interested in machines like the mechanical wooden mirror made by Daniel Rozin, or the LED art by Paul Klotz. Things that just either change the way traditional art is made or the medium it is presented on can be called art to me. These are welcome advancements to me. This is probably because of my desire to view things aesthetically pleasing.

I also found the concept of circuit bending interesting. Taking what one would normally consider music, and changing it in various ways. Again, I can’t bring myself to fully validate it as art, because it is not as pleasing to the ear as regular music, but the creativity is definitely there.

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Week 3-Eddison Lai-Industrialization to robotic art

In high school history classes, I learned about industrialization. But it wasn’t until this week that I viewed it in as the advancement of art. It started with things like steam power and textile manufacturing. Then, the second industrial revolution came with the electrical power generation and assembly lines. I was taught to believe that the technology only benefited the economy but I have come to realize that if the technological advances that came from the industrial revolution hadn’t come forward, a great faction of art would not be available today.!!! Nowadays, in addition to the classic arts, like painting and sculpting, and many other art forms, we have kinetic and robotic art. Kinetic art is said to be sculptures that contains moving parts. People believe that the “Bicycle Wheel” by Marcel Duchamp was the first piece of Kinetic Art. He and many others who followed took already existing parts and put them together, making a connection between audience and artwork. I believe that these early interactive pieces have paved the way for much the modern work we see today including Stelarc’s human machines and Ken Goldberg’s “Telescope Garden.” I like kinetic art because it takes art to another dimension. It requires more senses than just sight to appreciate it’s significance. It brings in movement and audience interaction that paintings and photography cannot.


Robotic art uses a lot of computer programming, sensors, and actuators. In the movies, we see a lot of artificial intelligence. “Star Wars” was good example with R2D2 and C3PO. Although many movies had the idea of robots and androids, they consisted mainly of humans in suits pretending to move robotically. In real life, we aren’t that close to Hollywood’s version of artificial intelligence.
Much of the robotic art in today’s society is focused around toys. Sony has a line of AIBOs, which are robotic pets that interact with each other. Honda came out with the ASIMO, a life size robot aimed to give schoolchildren an insight on engineering. http://www.honda.co.jp/ASIMO/

Other sectors of robotic art include such pieces as Survival Research Lab’s shows and robotic painting. I for one am not particularly pleased when I hear the destruction and chaos that SRL shows have to offer. They may be considered art but I am for sure not a person who would enjoy this kind of art. Robotic painting on the other hand is quite amusing. It is not very artistic in terms of the final product; most of it is just random colors and marks, however, there are a few pieces which I can appreciate for it’s attempt of spontaneity.

Even though Professor Sean Dockray was totally off topic in his lecture, I do appreciate his work. Through much of the lecture he basically just showed a lot of pictures and videos. I like his pieces where audiences get to interact, especially the cabinet piece. I appreciate what he showed us on circuit bending and also was amused by his insights on collective intelligence. I am curious to experience whether it is true that a group’s median is better than a expert’s word. Circuit bending seems like a promising art. It isn’t as painful to hear as SRL’s shows. Also, circuit bending only takes memory, common sense, and a few toys to get started. !!!

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Kiesha Nazarenus- Week 3- Ken Feingold

This week one particular artist caught my eye above all the others. As our professor flashed through websites she stopped at one that struck me as interestingly unusual. Various pieces all containing heads…just heads…both realistic looking and dummy looking. Well the artist is Ken Feingold and after reading through his works I fell in love with what he is doing in regards to art and technology. The pieces he did that I particularly enjoyed had to do with heads that engaged in dialogue either with themselves or with the audience. None of the dialogue is pre-recorded rather it is created through computer programming that develops individual personalities for each of the “characters”. The amount of technology put into the pieces is pretty cool but the artistic meaning behind each piece makes it completely interesting. In the piece If/Then there are two identical heads that speak to each other while doubting their own existence. The conversation focuses on existence and whether or not they are the same person and whether or not they will really ever know.
Is this life?
Imagine being me.
Do you see things clearly?
How do you feel?
Sometimes I feel very confused.
Can I control my feelings?
I feel like I exist.
I feel like I am inside my head.
What does it feel like to be inside your head?
Inside my mind I can sense that there is an I that is something that’s not the one who is sensing.
Why?
Why do you look just like me?
No, I don’t look just like you - I am accidental.
Sinking Feeling is another single head who is convinced of its own existence, but desperate to know "Why don’t I have a body like everyone else?" or "How did I get here, what am I doing here?"
Another piece with two heads is similar in that the heads look identical and question whether or not they are the same person since they look alike, blink at the same time and sound alike. This piece, What If?, has one figure speaking into the other’s ear which brings about questions: Is one putting thoughts into the other’s head? Or is the other one hearing voices? Are they really the same person? They worry endlessly about what they don’t know, can’t remember, or don’t want to think about and they tend to repeat themselves.
-what if I’m imagining this?
-what if you are dreaming?
-why does this keep going on?
-what do you want me to tell you?
-how can you describe this?
-what if this is a big joke?
-what if we are just pawns in our own game?
-it is not easy to understand this.
-what if we were analytical?
-what if this is all there is?
-what if i catch on fire?
-what if you catch on fire?
In a more political piece, Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, three floating heads discuss several basic questions regarding humans and nature
M: All of the small particles work together – there are more of us than anything
A; Are we the only ones who think about the future?
M: We don’t think about mind.
A: Hah hah hah, what a laugh!
V: Do animals love vegetables?
A: We are the ones who can reflect on things and make them change.
M: Can reflect on kings and make them change? Don’t ask me!
V: When one thing kills another so that it can survive, isn’t that violence?
You is a piece with two identical heads laying next to each other…but one is male and the other female. They argue with each other about their relationship, then make up, then regret their argument, and begin to argue again. Each time there dialogue is slightly different but generally in a similar way. The message sent to the audience is to see how phrases can have little real meaning, but a lot of power to do harm.
Feingold also has certain pieces that interact with the audience. Box of Men explores the idea that those who decide the guilt or innocence of others may be acting in frighteningly arbitrary and seemingly random ways.
Jimmy Charlie Jimmy is a dummy head that is constantly talking to himself until someone comes up to him at which point he stops talking and if the viewer talks to him he starts repeating the words of the visitor until the visitor steps away.
I really enjoyed reading through Ken Feingold’s various projects. His way of portraying his ideas is unique but entirely effective.

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Christine Dang - Week 3 - Robotics, Detachment, and Art

Even in the earliest incarnation of robotics in the machines of the Industrial Revolution, they have always been associated with an intense sense of detachment. With the advent of interchangeable parts and the assembly line, workers no longer had any connection to the final product. All they knew was their specific part and the mindless, mechanical task that was assigned to them. This detachment continues on to all forms of machines, robotics, and in fact nearly all aspects of technology. Even that to which this detachment does not apply continues to be viewed as such. For example computers can now be used for many kinds of communication, and yet there still remains this cultural connotation of computers with isolation.




Furthermore, robotics and machinery are closely tied to engineering, a largely math-based field which is generally considered as coldly logical a profession as can be.

This then leads to an interesting contradiction that lies within the concept of robotic art. Robotics and machines are considered to be these cold, impersonal, and emotionless objects. Art, on the other hand, relies greatly upon the ability of a piece to form a personal connection with its audience. Thus, robotic art manages to somehow connect with its viewers on an emotional level because of its emotionless nature.


The reaction to robotic art is generally one of disturbance and unease. Commonly, the more human-like these creations are, the "creepier" they are perceived to be. This emtoional response is enhanced if the robots additionally perform or art in some human fashion. This organic nature of something that is decidedly inorganic triggers a great reaction in a fair number of people. In this way, intruigingly enough, that which is emotionless can generate emotion

However, at the same time, robotics in art can also enhance the level of human interaction with art. In fact, even the earliest examples of interactive art relied on machines, such as the old coin-operated strength tests and other such machines often seen in carnival games.



In modern times, robotics and artificial intelligence offer such a vast possibility in interactivity. For example, these Robot Actors created by Carl Pisaturo can not only run off a pre-written program or be controlled by an operator, but they can also interact with their environment as well as with one another, Furthermore, through these interactions, the robots can actually expand their vocabulary and knowledge by learning from their environment.



Then there is also the other aspect of things, that of art of robotics. As discussed in the article "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" by Walter Benjamin, mechanical reproduction of art has been long since in development. However, some artists have taken this a step beyond the norm of simple reproduction and onto actual works of art created by robots. In Monday's lecture, AARON was presented. This robot, programmed by Harold Cohen, does not merely replicate already existing pieces of art, that can be done well enough with the use of a high quality scanner and printer. Instead, AARON's artificial intelligence allows it to creatively devise and paint its own pieces of art. However, this then brings up a very important question: Is the robot actually capable of artistic thought and ability, or is it merely the medium through which Harold Cohen creates his pieces? At this point and level, who is the actual artist? As the technology advances, this line will in all likeliness simply become increasingly more blurred.

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Julie Fair- Week 3- Robotics in Art

The pieces presented this week really opened up a new art genre to me. Prior to this week's lecture I had known very little about the field of robotics as an art form and had had absolutely no idea that this field had developed as far as it has. The one main idea that I took away from this weeks presentations, was how diverse the field of robotics has become. Sure, all the pieces we saw this week can fall under the robotics category, but they all achieve such different things with their use of robotics. Two drastically different uses are Leonel Mora's work, where he designs robots to produce paintings, and the work of the Survival Research Lab, which uses robotics to create a large scale show where the machines are performing. Each uses machines, but to achieve very different final products.




I found it very interesting to see the directions artists are taking with technology. Many are going in suprising ways as with the painting robot. Mora is not only using technology as a tool to aid in his painting, but is actually making it possible for the robot to create the art completely on its own. This is interesting because it appears that for Mora, the creative aspect lies not in the painting but in the creation of the robot. This is a very different focus than that of most traditional art forms. I find this interesting because I feel that it forces me to re-think my definition of "art." And basically it has just made realize exactly how difficult art is to define.
What I have come up with is that the concept of art differs apon one's position. For someone viewing art, the focus is on the aesthetics of the piece and the type of resonse a piece warrants. For the artist, the focus is on the construction of a piece which has significance to the artist.


I think in the case of robotic art, the pieces can much more be seen as art from the creator's point of view. I personally do not find robots, such as the large constructions of Chico MacMurtrie, very aesthetically pleasing, as many viewers might not. However, the artist creates a piece because he or she enjoys it and sees it as significant in some way. I respect this aspect of robotics and find it interesting to see what amazing things these artists are capable of doing with technology.

I thought it was interesting that when talking about one of the artists, it was noted that the government wanted him to come and work for them but the artist refused to. I find it interesting that although some of these artists have the means to make huge profits through the use of their technological knowledge, they have chosen to use their skill for creating art pieces. As I look at some of these pieces I see potential in the machines to do so much. They could be used in medicine to help people or in other industries to make money and I just find it very interesting that these few individuals have chosen to use their skill artistically.



This week, I also really enjoyed the guest speakers I heard present. First there was the Mandelbrot lecture. I went into that lecture really not knowing what to expect, but basically with low expectations, since math does not interest me all that much. But I ended up really liking the presentation. I thought it was very interesting how comfortable Mandelbrot was in speaking about both math and art. I liked that he approached the topic of fractals from both positions and how he included other artists in his examination of fractals from the artistic stance. He pointed out fractals in pieces I would never have noticed before, such as in the clouds and waves of Hokusai's pieces. Visit this site to see his wave painting: http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/ukiyoe/fujibig.gif


I also really enjoyed Sean Dockray's presentation, and although he didn't think he was talking much about robotics, I thought his presentation was very relevent to this weeks theme. His work with circuit bending demonstrated a new artistic area where robotics can play a part: music. Certainly circuit bending uses robotics of a sort and it can easily be seen as an art form. It is interesting to see the range of sounds that are withheld from the audience during the normal use of a device. I also thought his idea of certain aspects of humanity as being robot-like was very interesting. Like how he was taking about the way a society functions as being sort of robotic. In a sense, society is similar to a machine. Individuals can effect it, in a sense giving it the parameters by which it will function, but then it takes those parameters and creates something unpredictable, similar to some of the machines we have been examining, such as the work of Joshua Davis: http://www.joshuadavis.com/. I just thought it was an interesting way of looking at society that I would otherwise, never have thought of.

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Duy Phung - Week 3 - Robotics and Art

This week we have witnessed many great things. First it was the excellent lecture "The Nature of Roughness in Mathematics, Science and Art" by "the father of fractals" Benoit Mandelbrot. Second the evolution of robotics and art has developed and advanced during Industrilization discussed by Prof. Vesna. Third Prof. Sean Dockray lectured on robotics and art from his experience and perspective.
In the beginning of his lecture, Prof. Mandelbrot pointed out the nature of the rough and the smooth. While most things we've encountered in real life are rough, the smooth is very rare and most of it exists in mathematics. I was surprised to know that some fractals do exist in nature (the Cauliflower), in architecture (the Eiffel tower or an African village), and in painting (“the Wave” by Katsushika Hokusai). The latter part of his lecture focused on the discovery of fractals, which were involved with a lot of mathematical equations. I’ve got to admit that I didn’t understand about the Brownian loop and cluster and how he came up with the idea of fractals derived from it. However, it was quite good to see one of the greatest mathematicians in person and hear him talk.
In class lecture, Prof. Vesna discussed about the history of industrialization, mostly in America and how the development of robotics has shaped contemporary art. My favorite parts were the Australian-based performance artist Stelarc and the Survival Research Labs (SRL). Stelarc deals with mind-body problem and tries to push the human limit to the extreme. Moreover, he builds machines that enhance human physical ability. Personally I don’t like his work. They don’t look interesting, and I don’t see their practical application. The image of his whole body hanging in the air with the hooks actually piercing through his skin gave me an irritable feeling. SRLs were a different story. Watching their festival show in video was an enjoyable experience. There were all kinds of weird war machines, each with different design, movement, sound, and of course… gunfire power. The atmosphere was terrific and everybody at the show all got excited. I couldn’t help thinking about war video games I had played when I watched it. I called this SRL “art” because their distinguished designs existed not only in paper or computer but in real world, where hard-working designers have successfully drawn the audience together and completely got them through their work. Human-human interaction and human-robotics interaction make the difference.
The interaction between robotics and society was also the topic in Prof. Sean Dockray’s lecture. Unlike other guest lecturers we’ve met so far, Prof. Dockray discussed many interesting topics which many of them were not involved in robotics at all. His experiment on the movement of ants was an example of social interaction. I loved watching these ants moving around and the way the Sean presented his idea on ants’ antenna. From there, he moved on to show us the movement of cash and his $150 experiment. Although the experiment was unscientific, it was a good way to test human thoughts in modern society and human-human interplay. I’m pretty sure we could anticipate the outcome: lottery, throwing money away, buying drinks, and happy ending for all participants. It seemed that society has shaped our thinking and acting behaviors and we in turn have exerted our influence to each other and society.
I was fascinated to figure out that we don’t have freedom at all when we’re driving a car. I always had thought when I got a car; I could go any place I wanted and was pretty much free. I was wrong because as the Prof. Dockray pointed out, we were controlled by traffic light. This is the most obvious example of how robots controlling human beings.

I choose the Soccer Robots to present the idea of how people use robotics to entertain ourselves without any commercial momentum.
I was lucky to be at the RoboCup in 2003, and it was actually entertaining to watch the Soccer Robots playing against each other team. Although the speed was very slow because the Soccer Robots had to sense the ball position and executed their actions on their own, seeing cube-like players on wheels competing lying-dog-like players for the balls was a freshening experience. Colorful and funny players, designers’ reactions, and spectators’ uproar when there was a goal all contributed and gave me a memorial night. To me that was robotics and art all about.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/06/0617_020617_TVrobots.html

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jose fernandez, week 3, robotics

This week’s topic on robotics and industrialization impacted the world was by far the most interesting yet. It was interesting to think that robots are considered pieces of art. I never would have believed that art would consist of machines doing things men programs them to do. One aspect of robotics I can designate as art is the process that is involved in creating a robot. Beginning with the artwork design of the model, an artist must become innovative and curious about his artificial human machine. Then the in between process of bringing the robot into form and life becomes the task of an engineer whom can be called an artist in his own right. Just like a painting takes time and patience, a robot requires the same effort. Artists are out to provoke the public eye and robots do this well. They give a look into the imaginary world which can only be seen through science fiction movies, cartoons, and books. They make the audience feel as if they are in another world far apart from their own. I have never been around personally to witness a show put on by robots like the people at survival research lab but from what I have seen in the videos and pictures of the machines I was amazed by the marksmanship and precision that went into them. The shows are amazing and fairly violent. My take on the reason as to why do such a violent show is to demonstrate how humans are becoming killing machines through warfare and destruction of our own humanity and off all other species in this planet.
It is amazing how far industrial technology has come. Robots would not have been possible if not for the first industrial revolution and the progress it has made since. The intro of electricity and the innovative assembly line gave way to what is used now to make robots. These industrial sectors are required for the creation of robots. With out electricity they would not be able to move. There has to be a process for building these robots, just like a car. There is a designated engineer for each of the parts required for the robot. The computer was also a key component. The computer is responsible for giving the robots a “brain” that can store every movement that the controller gives it. The controller thus controls the robot through electrical signals.
A look into the future world of robotics can give people chills. It may be possible that within this millennium the world is going to be operated by robots instead of humans. The creation of highly intelligent robots, like “Aaron-robot painter”, may displace humans and will soon create a mechanical world where many robots can be programmed to do even the most difficult tasks, even those out of reach for humans today. Soon enough robots will be take control of the world and humans will not be able to control them anymore. This looks like the story line of many science fiction books and movies. The dreams of these visionaries might just become a reality.

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James Zavala - Week 3 - Robots

This week’s talks were definitely not as interesting as last weeks were. The readings on the other hand were very interesting although it didn’t teach me specifically about art but other things about it. I liked the fact that there was a reading dedicated to stating that people will not grow without the mentality of stepping out of the box. It begins with a wonderful analogy of someone using the piano top as life raft and that although it might work for that situation it would not be wise to make all boats in the shape of a piano top. Its body led to the conclusion (at least the one that I picked up) that there will be no progression if those engineering the necessary objects do not work together and off of each others ideas. The process of creating should not have a pattern to be followed or have a set rule or limits; it should be a process of creativity and ingenuity.
The other article was very redundant. I felt that its point was something that is original and not made by the hundreds is beautiful, pure and authentic. The point of the story was very true; anything that is made by the big quantities looses its self and individuality. It no longer is a beautiful piece to appreciate being the fact that there are so many that they become repetitious and boring. As dumb as it may sound, my liking is very parallel to this thought although it is difficult to find things that are one of a kind nowadays. (But I digress) I completely agree that things that are made only once are more special but in today’s world with the needs and fast pace making something unique for every individual may not be the best method.
This leads to the talk about the Ford assembly line and how everyone becomes robotic in the process of creating. Although this may be true the creativity of utilizing math, statistics physics and the like to create such ingenuity is remarkable. I definitely would not say that the Ford assembly line is something that could be considered to be art. This could also be said about the printing press. In section it was mentioned that art is a very difficult thing to define but it could be seen that it is defined by its intention. If something is created for the purpose of entertainment it may be considered art oppose to something that it created for practical purposes. In that note many things are definitely art but others may still be ambiguous.
Concerning robotics, the things that were demonstrated may be considered art although they may not be aesthetically pleasing to me, they could be the most beautiful thing that the Joe sitting next to me has ever seen. The idea of cybernetics which stems from being the dictator to me seems a bit weird. It is not something that I understand or really care for, but nonetheless it does not mean that it can not be considered art. Chico Mac Murtrie is someone who created pieces which I appreciated because they are things that can be appreciated for just that they are. It was not looking at the process although the process does not have to be ignored but the final product can be appreciated for what it is. Cohens was very interesting; he created a robot that would paint for him. The pieces that the robot created were very pretty but to able to create the robot is what I would appreciate most from the whole ordeal.
I don’t like nor understand how Sterlac and the presenter from Wednesday could be considered an artist, but needless to say I am not stating that they are not. Only because I don’t understand it, does not mean that it is not art. The whole hanging yourself with hooks, growing an ear on your arm or making weird sounds from circuit bending is not really up my alley. Nonetheless, I will not neglect the fact that others may appreciate it for what it is and it may be the most beautiful piece of art that they have ever encountered. It goes back to old saying, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
I found a link where they bring up the topic of Sterlac. Here it is.

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Derek Ganong - Week 3 - Invariances, Time Travel, The Eiffel Tower, and Evolution.

I was one of the few attendees to the Mendelbrot lecture who was under the age of 50. While a lot of what he said went over my head, a good deal of it did sink in and started to mean something to me. When he started talking about the smooth and the rough (or irregular as he said it should be called) I was thinking to myself “so things are defined by what they are not, so what?”. As he progressed through this topic he repeatedly spoke about something called an “invariance”. As far as I could gather, an invariance is a function that remains unchanged under any transformation (ie: a fractal). He gave some examples of fractals and people who came before him that would have had to have some concept of scale invariance because of their work. Such examples were the formations of African villages, Salvado Dali paintings, Katsushika Hokusai paintings, and the Eiffel tower (in its initial conception). I particularly liked the brief section on perspective in the lecture. He presented the audience with a picture of what appeared to be a 1X1 foot (or so) plot of sand. The next slide put a person on the sand to show scale, and it was apparent that the size of the plot was on the order of several tens of feet across.
With respect to invariance, I tried to identify things that were both functions and that did not change with transformations off the top of my head. On of the first things that crossed my mind was the concept of time. I know that time does not change in its value, but I do know that intense gravitational pulls or speeds close to the that of light can alter times properties. So I searched for any information that had to do with both time and invariance and I came across the following website:

http://www2.slac.stanford.edu/VVC/theory/timereversal.html


According to this website, not only is time reversal mathematically possible but the collisions between particles is invariant. “This invariance is exact in strong and electromagnetic processes, but not in weak interactions. It is broken in the same processes that break the combined invariance symmetry” So I then came across another invariance and set about determining what it meant.

http://www2.slac.stanford.edu/VVC/theory/chargeconjugation.html

On this website I learned that “invariances, in particle physics, are relationships between different processes.” In simpler terms: the invariance here states that all particle processes are identical to those processes that are mirrors of the processes (all the particles are replaced with anti-particles (all charges are opposite)). In terms of time concept, this means that reverse time is possible with antiparticles undergoing the same reactions that regular particles undergo. The rest of the information regarding this was very high level physics and I did not spend the time required to figure it all out, but I plan to look back over it later because it particularly sparked my interest.

Another topic that go me going this week was the cybernetic and robotic artwork of Stellarc and his mantra that “the body is obsolete” From what I gathered from his website, Stellarc believes that the human body is impotent in its stagnant evolution and that cybernetic augmentations are needed to remain effective in the biological scheme. I happen to strongly disagree with Stellarc in this respect. I think that the human body is one of the most astonishingly tough and well adapted things that biology has produced. Our dexterity combined with our brains has led us to mount insurmountable odds and not just survive, but excel over all other creatures. Through my researching the feats and effectiveness of the human body I came across one astonishing instance here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1804668.stm

In this instance, a bipedal human has beaten a quadrupedal horse in an 80Km endurance race. I don’t know what more Stellarc would need to see to be convinced that the human body is capable of far more than it seems. I believe that the human brain is our most valuable asset. Mental toughness can overcome most physical limitations and allow a level of planning and autonomous action that a robot could never have today. In fact, the majority of military training involves building up a soldiers mental toughness. I don’t see why Stellarc would want a second ear or a third arm if it inhibited his dexterity or capacity with the ones he was born with. In regards to human evolution, Stellarc’s attempts at moving it along are a moot point because cybernetic implants are not heritable and, with modern medicine and health care, wont effect any kind of sexual or natural selection.
That being said, I admire Stellarc for his work with the practical side of cybernetics. One such project is his goggles that he is attempting to help blind people see with. This could very well be the next big thing in modern technology and medicine: full appendage or joint transplanting and an artificial means to help those who cannot see, hear, or speak regain those senses through robotic aid.
It just irks me when someone says something so presumptuous just to get a reaction out of an audience. (which he did!). Stellarc has a very noble cause both in the name of technology and human improvement. I think he should capitalize on that instead of on sparking emotions with one-liners.

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Zara Feeney- Week 3- Robotics and art of the future

In this lecture we learned about how many things influenced the want to use robotics in art including the industrial revolution, Henry Ford’s idea of the assembly line, as well as the second industrial revolution which included electronics.
Throughout the history of Modernism, art has made many dramatic impacts on society. One of the most emphatic movements of Modernism was the Constructivist and De Stijl movement. Constructivist and De Stijl effected politics and social life of the early 20th century in a similar way to contemporary art today.
Constructivism was an especially political art movement in Russia, as it was pre-revolutionary and contributed to inciting political up rise among the proletariat. De Stijl in the Netherlands was political in the way that it expressed a desire for political and social change to achieve a more utopian order in society. Varvara Stepanova’s constructivist costume design is in my opinion the most intriguing example of avant-garde’s desire to bridge the gap between art and life. His rigid costume design was intended to make a uniform society whose ideals were all the same. Stepanova insisted that once art and life could become connected, this utopian ideal could be achieved. If Varvara’s theory was correct, this teaches us now that our society has come no closer to utopia than society of Varvara’s time. Constructivism remains as an example to current society of art’s power to invoke political and social change. In many ways, art today still serves the same purposes.
The Bauhaus group also wanted to reunite creativity with the industrial world by training mainly in industry and handicraft as opposed to drawing and painting, which the academy preferred. This group wanted to unify many different types of art. In his essay, “The Theory Organization of the Bauhaus movement,” Walter Gropius claims that“ the ultimate, if distant goal of the Bauhaus is the collective work of art—in which no barriers exist between the structural and the decorative arts” (311). An artist must know how to stray from traditional techniques and realize a groups potential by gaining new forms of expression. He, as well as others in the Bauhaus movement, believed in the power of a collective effort. He believes that “Only an apparent unity can be achieved if many helpers carry out the design of a single person” (313).
According to the Bauhauists, collaborative work is the most effective when a group agrees on the same ideas of expression. Everyone involved must understand the same principal theme intended for the piece. The group must work harmoniously so the collective effort can become stronger and can have more of an impact than an individuals work. Gropius feels that this group force or spirit “creates for itself a new life other than the life of nature”(313).
Also integrating art and life, Rivera, who led the mural movement in the 1920s and 30s, used mural art as a public, idealogic and didactic propaganda for the proletariat. In his mural Detroit Industry (1932-33), it is clear that Rivera is attempting to analyze mass product assembly, make a statement about the working class ( the worker and the work should be united, and not in an assembly line), give a public message about technology either being good or bad, and use past and present cosmology. This mural is divided horizontally into three sections, the top one medium size, the middle one very narrow and the bottom one the largest. The top section has two simple human forms lounging symmetrically in the foreground, and has five hands ( of different skin tones and ethnities) protruding our of a rock like form. In the next panel, there are a few of earths basic elements that represent the connection between past and present cosmology. Lastly, in the lowest and largest section, Rivera paints a assembly line and a factory using a compilation of angular forms and an endless line of restless workers. In this chaotic mess, there is only one point where thhe viewer can depict a small red car in the distance. There is a separation of the work from the worker, because in an assembly line, a worker can only see what they are making, but do not know what the end product is.

This Website provides a lot of information that explains what artists today are making. http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2002/03/51058

In society today, art serves the purpose of answering the question “what if?” Contemporary artists present new ideas to push the limits to shock, amaze, and otherwise make an impression on society. In a sense, art does and always has attempted to be beyond society in the way it tests the boundaries of what is acceptable and will eventually grow to be accepted.

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Julie Fair - Week 1 - Cultures of Art and Science

Professor Vesna has taken an entirely new angle on the concept of culture. It is one that I never payed much attention too before. Now, however after only one week in the class, I have realized the validity of her approach to the concept of the division and distance between the arts and sciences. Now I definitely have come to realize that the division between the two is very real. I have found that the points professor Vesna has raised make perfect sense to me, it is only that I have never payed attention to the topic specifically before. I found the piece my C.P. Snow exceptionally relevant to the central theme of the class and found it to be very explanatory. After reading it I felt that I truly understoond the emphasis of the class and found it be a good tool for demonstrating the direction in which I should direct my effort in the class.
I also found the Snow piece especially interesting because it was written from the perspective of a British scholar. It was very interesting to hear the argument he made about the two cultures in general, and then to look at the comments he made about the situation in Britain specifically. I personally thought that many of the statements he made about his own country were highly relevant to our situation, in the U.S. in general, but also on our campus specifically. This division is so evident on the UCLA campus and pervades so many aspects of our lives as students here. It is present, even in the very design of the campus, with the division of "North Campus" and "South Campus."
This class has specifically made me realize the degree to which this division has become a rivalry. I had never really looked at it this way previously. But now I am beginning to see the rivalry in many everyday situations. I have noticed the difference the most in my GE courses where you get people of both realms coming together. I have noticed in conversations with people from both ends of the campus that people from each culture definitely seem to exhibit a sense of pride about their side of the school. It is rare to find a person from the sciences that is highly enthusiastic about the arts, and vice versa. I found this observation very interesting because I am definitely the type of person that is torn between the two, and pretty much equally enthusiastic about both.
I also found the Steve Kurtz lecture extremely interesting and informative. Going into that lecture I had no idea what to expect. I could not imagine what kind of art he could have been producing that would entail the use of biotechnology. After hearing him speak and present his pieces I understood his work much better and had a more thorough understanding of the type of art we are going to be looking at in this course, something I knew almost nothing about before this. It was fascinating to see the political relevancy of his pieces and the way they forced the inclusion of science in his work and his cooperation with scientists. It was also interesting to see the way it is viewed as so unusual for an artist to be in possision of biotechnology, even to the point of the paranoia of the authorities involved in the Steve Kurtz case. His story was very eye-opening for me.
The article I am attaching is very interesting in the way it is able to capture the way Steve Kurtz innocent actions were so badly misinterpreted. I particularly like the way it mentions this case as a story of the times in which we live because it makes one realize that this really is a product of times in which we are living right now. At no other historical period would we be so paranoid about a situation like this. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8278-2004Jun1.html

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Christine Dang - Week 2 - Mathematics in Art

On Wednesday, Professor Casey Reas came to present his artwork, created by using a programming language called Processing. One of the questions he received at the end of the presentation really caught my attention. What is it like to work with both programming, an intensely logic-based trade, and art, which most people consider a most definitely non-logical subject. Math and art, two subjects that most everyone agrees are very different and many consider it exclusive. People will refer to themselves as left-brained or right-brained, creative or logical. And yet it is very possible to have both, as seen through this week’s presentations. After Wednesday’s presentation, I decided to do a quick search online for other joint works between math and art, and I discovered much more than I had expected.

The first result was tessellation, an age-old example of art in math (and math in art), that I had actually long since forgotten about. Most everyone learns of this in their young age, looking at images of multi-colored triangles and parallelograms and stylized lizards. It seemed at the time to be so very simple. Take an image, repeat it. And yet in tessellation lay this balance between logic and creativity. There was both a rigid structure and a smooth flow from one image to the next. I found this contradicting balance oh so very intriguing. Even in the earliest example, the Roman mosaics, there was this creation of smooth forms and images through the use of square tiles, a rigid shape.

Others continued in this fashion, such as this image, in which the rigid triangle forms are balanced with the circular rotations of the stingrays.

As I continued to look around online, I came across the website of Helaman Ferguson, a sculptor and mathematician. On his site, he writes of the balance between the two, science and art, and of the mathematics in art. Here he writes “Our society tends to compartmentalize people and professions, maybe with good reasons. Overcoming this compartmentalization has been a continuing battle for me. I refuse to be diminished by being described as just a mathematician, by being described as just a sculptor--I persist in both. Fortunately for me our society is diverse enough to permit both.”

Ferguson’s sculptures are created through a combination of computer programs and traditional handcrafting via hammer and chisel. He utilizes the computer to provide him with “quantitative information.” However, “[his] computer tool position and orientation monitoring system does not do the cutting work, [he does]”. In this manner, Ferguson performs very similarly to Reas, creating works of art through the use of computer programs, which is also that which I am personally interested in, 3D animation and modeling.

Many of Ferguson’s sculptures also have elements involving the balance between the smooth and the rigid, such as the piece called “Ariadne’s Torus,” which admittedly initially caught my eye due to the mythological reference. This piece is at the same time circular and sharp, essentially a hoop with edges, a concept that I am downright fascinated with.

However, I am glad to see that there are many artists who are great proponents of math in art and that the two subjects are not necessarily exclusive and can indeed be used to accent and compliment one another. Furthermore, with the continuing advent of technology, it is only logical that it begins to find its way into all aspects of our lives and culture.

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John "Matt" Ko - Week 2

The two things that stuck most with me after the first lecture were M.C. Escher’s work and the fractals. First on the fractals, when we were watching them in class, I felt like I was watching a computer’s music player visualization mode, like the one in iTunes. The fractals were almost hypnotizing. The formula itself is pretty simple, but to think that it makes something so complex is amazing. However, from the aesthetic standpoint, I don’t think fractals are that beautiful. In fact they’re pretty hideous. Yet, I can’t deny the fact that to an extent they succeeded in combining both math and art.

On the other hand, hearing all about Escher amazed me. His work is so commonplace these days. I’ve seen his work in various art books, children’s books, and even on Family Guy! I was always amazed by the symmetry of his works. And when I see how he makes shapes fit into each other perfectly (e.g. the ducks, the lizards) I wonder just how much work he put into designing those shapes. I know that on at least one occasion I’ve attempted to emulate the geometry he uses, but to no avail. The image of the shells discussed in the video was another great of example of his ability to manipulate shapes. In my eyes he truly possessed artistic genius.

In our second lecture, Casey Reas came as a guest to our class and shared with us his work. He uses programming and I guess what you could call applied mathematics to make is art. He uses very simple commands and very simple mathematical principles and makes art that appears to be much more complex than one would expect. I guess, if you wanted to, you could call it an evolution of sorts, from the simple to the complex. The funny thing is that his work looks so much more beautiful when the program is running than his still image productions. The fluidity, development, and constant change in the piece when the program is running give it a somewhat soothing feeling. This was the case, at least, for the processes he showed us in class. It is no wonder that he was able to use his art form to express the feelings of the concert he was “performing” at. Casey also shared with us what he is doing in the computer science program on campus, and it was cool to hear that he made students take some design-type classes. He also shared with us how he does his work. He told us that he takes some days to work on developing his program, and the other days are when he forms his art pieces. I feel like I can look up to him in a sense, because he is living the way that I hope to be able to live in the future. I would like to reach a point where I would be able to do chemistry on some days, while I can pursue graphics design (or whatever I’m in at that point) on the other days.


Here are some clips of Escher on Family Guy. Enjoy! :)

Crazy Stairs~!

MC Escher!

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Duy Phung - Week 2 - Math, Art, and Chemistry

After attending the lecture on Monday, I left the class but my mind was still wandering about Buckminster Fuller. I definitely heard this name before, not in architecture but in my study field (my major is Biochem). Then suddenly I remembered how I knew the name. He was not a biochemist; however, his name was associated with one the most useful material created by chemists in 21st century: C60 Buckminsterfullerene.
According to Wikipedia encyclopedia, Richard Buckminster ("Bucky") Fuller was an American visionary, designer, architect, poet, author, and inventor.
“Does humanity have a chance to survive lastingly and successfully on planet Earth, and if so, how?"
Buckminster Fuller
He was most famous in the field of engineering, design, and architecture. His best legendary work was the geodesic dome.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller
The C-60, short for Carbon-60 fullerene, is a naturally occurring molecule comprised of 60 carbon atoms and belongs to a family of carbon allotropes, which include fullerenes, diamond, and graphite. The fullerene was named after Richard Buckminster Fuller, and is sometimes called “buckyball” because the Buckminsterfullerene have a similar shape to the geodesic dome. This fullerene is ideal for use as building blocks in nanotechnology (carbon nanotubes). These tubes of carbon are usually only a few nanometers wide but the length can vary because its unique open structure could contribute the formation of new compounds. Another very importance of C60 application is in material sciences as it could trap small ions in its cages hence creates the new material with superconductivity property.


After 11 years Sir Harold Kroto, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Florida State University received the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1996 for the discovery of C60 buckminsterfullerene.


http://news.ufl.edu/2007/04/10/nobel-laureate-to-speak/
Nowadays the nanotube technology has been applied widely in many fields. It’s hard to estimate its influence in this modern world. Due to its highest tensile strength and conductivity, carbon nanotubes have already been used as composite fibers in polymers, transistors, semiconductors, and memory circuit and have high potential in nanoelectromechanical systems. To me it seems that Buckminster Fuller has fulfilled his mankind quest since he has not only exerted successfully his influence in his fields of work but also in sciences as well.
Prof. Vesna repeatedly exclaimed on Monday and after Casey Reas’ lectures “I wish we didn’t have the boring math teachers in high school”. She was probably right. I still remember we all loved math in elementary school regardless of our gender. In junior high school, we became less interested in math, especially the girls. Then suddenly in high school we realized we all hated math. The main reason: it was so boring and dry. Why didn’t we have math instructors with little artistic sense in their blood? I wish we did have. That would have resulted more science-based artists and vice versa. There would be more Casey Reas not only in computer programming and art but also in various fields, such as physics, chemistry, or even history as well. Then we don’t need to discuss stereotypes existing between science and art because basically everybody could be an artist or/and a scientist simultaneously or at least has potential in both disciplines. Rather we only focus on how to take advantages and integrate the ideas in both fields interchangeably. Hopefully in a near future we’ll witness dramatic changes in arts and sciences so that they will work together smoothly to produce many masterpieces contributing to human development.

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Allen Wang - Week 2 - The Art of Math

Math has always been the logical topics requiring the most perfect of calculations. With one tiny miscalculation, the whole world of mathematics would collapse. Because the world of math is so dependently based on the laws of logic and reasoning, the creative mind seemed futile towards the world of art. Yet, because of the creative minds of the art world, people have figured out methods to bring out the creativity of the mathematicians. By fusing the world of art and math together, a whole new perspective of the world is created.

Art, such as these, are based on a sense of logic and reasoning. There are patterns of the colors drawn all over this figure. Though art usually forces out the randomness of creativity out, beautiful and insightful are can still be created though series of mathematical calculations. This fusion of math and art has created new perspectives and the evolution of art itself. We, as people, have come to understand that art does not require insightful randomness of the world to converge onto a single piece of drawing. Art, too, can return to the world of order and present the chaos of the world.

We may find art often difficult to understand. Yet, we often find math difficult to understand too. By combining two negatives together, we expect to find a positive, but chaos often creates more chaos. Because of so, this combination of logic and art has created an insightful world that creates a sort of scientific world that brings people of all different ages and interests together with a single interest. Because these mathematical art are often intriguing and mesmerizing, people find much interest and are usually attracted to this type of art without actually understanding why. Because this type of art actually triggers the logical part of our minds, it puts both our logic and our creative brain at work, attracting human, which are thinkers, with a complex puzzle in which people enjoy solving unconsciously.

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Kiesha Nazarenus - Week 2 - Math is Actually Interesting??

When I think of taking a math class I am transported back to elementary school where I would do problem after problem of addition or multiplication. In jr high and high school we would memorize equations and steps for solving complex problems but ninety percent of the time I really had no clue as to what I was doing and the other ten percent of the time I was so board to death I didn’t stay interested. So to be completely honest when I heard this week was going to be about how art and math were connected I was far from interested. I wanted to get to the weeks on biology and the human body. But I quickly became very interested.
The thing that sparked my interest the most was Escher’s work.

I remember in geometry creating a shape that could fit into each other and be lifted and moved and remain geometrically correct. Looking at some of his work completely blows me away. How he thought of these shapes or created the patterns is beyond me, but regardless it makes for completely fascinating work.
Sitting in class and looking at the works of these men was interesting, but could their work really be considered to be art? I guess that question would depend on what your definition of art is. Being a dancer, I consider dance and the movement of the body as an expression of one’s inner soul as art. Escher is quoted as saying "I am always wandering around in enigmas. There are young people who constantly come to tell me: you, too, are making Op Art. I haven't the slightest idea what that is, Op Art. I've been doing this work for thirty years now.” I think this week’s discussion has helped to expand my understanding of what art can really encompass. Escher’s work was an artistic expression of his passion and therefore revealed itself as just that: ART.

http://http://www.mcescher.com/
Now this got me thinking about how math is taught in schools. I mean, if one week of a class not even focused on math can make me somewhat interested in the subject why is it that for thirteen some years I have been so horribly un-interested in the subject. I found it quite interesting when Casey Reas was saying that people would take his class and finally understand certain things about math that they never could understand before. So much of the time you come across people who interpret math to be dry and boring and from this philosophy stems their disinterest in the topic. While math is very straight forward and precise I don’t know what harm there would be in creating a little interest in people who dismiss the subject at an early age.

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jose fernandez - Week 2 - mathematical art

This week’s lectures were quite good, dealing with the incorporation of math into the arts, a relationship closer than one may think. First off it began with a brief history of how the number “zero” came to existence and use throughout the world. This was fallowed by the implications this number had on cultures. It was seen as the devils number in one culture and it also confused many people about the start of the millennium. The impact that math had on art was really the impact perspective had on the way artist did their artwork. From such great artists such as Duccio whom attempted annunciation for the first time in 1316 to Leonardo de Vinci, their art were all attempts to create a sense of 3D. The person credited with the first correct attempt to do so was Brunelleschi with his paintings using linear perspective. Some of the art work really demonstrated an artist’s skills with math. One painting of Jesus hanging with a chapel backdrop is amazing. It is proportioned correctly and the angles are all accurate. It fascinated to see artist using math in a way that made their art that more realistic than say a painting of a flat image. People want the illusion that they are there witnessing the event occurring in the painting. This is possible through the mastering perspective in artwork.
Another important aspect of math and art is the use of dimensionality. Artists need to move away from flatland if they want to give their paintings or structures a dimensional aspect. A 3D look makes the images more realistic. Along with dimensionality, symmetry also played a big role on artwork. The paintings of M.C. Escher included both of these mathematical properties. Some of his drawing of the Italian countryside had a three dimensional look although some structured were not proportional. The artwork that I most recognized was the symmetrical ones. I found it interesting how he was able to draw two repeating objects pointing in different directions that were alike. The trick was that the outline of one object was the outline of the other. This is a great illusion that can confuse even those that have a good eye for art. The first time I saw one of his artworks I was only able to see one of the two objects. At first I though that the space created by the outlining of the blue birds was just filled in with yellow. It took me a few more glances at the image to recognize that those yellow spaces were actually birds going in the opposite direction. I found that quite amazing. The guest lecturer for the week was very interesting. The works he did caught my attention the whole time because the images created by him were extraordinary. He mentioned that he did not enjoy math at all during high school but now that he understands the impact math has on his field of art, he finds joy in numbers and equations. I guess that is one problem that an artist can have; neglecting the influence a different field from art can have on art itself. I myself cannot seem to like art as much as math, but I can see how math makes art more interesting. So far this week outlasted the past week. I really enjoyed it.

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Julie Fair - Week 2 - Art and Math Relationship

The relationship between math and art is very intriguing. Art especially, seems to use math in so many ways. This relationship is very evident in Escher's work, were distances and shapes have to be amazingly exact in order to come together correctly in the piece. Whenever you are making things fit together in a pattern, a certain degree of mathmatics is necessary. Without the use of math he would have to use tons and tons of trial and error to figure out what shapes would work into which specific patterns. Through the use of math you can figure what is going to work in advance. Looking at Escher's mosaic pieces like the one below, you can tell how much calulated thought he put into each piece. I would find it interesting to know what the process of creating a piece like this would entail, i.e. where Escher began when creating something like this that is so obviously a repetion of and adaptation to one begining portion. It would be interesting to know how he went about designing that starting segment so that it would be able to fit together perfectly as more segments were added.

The mandelbrot sets are equalling intreguing. For me however, this form seems to entail much less creativity than most art. This seems to demonstrate the different degrees to which math and creativity can play respective roles. The mandelbrot set shows the orientation further toward the mathmatical end of the spectrum. Although a very interesting field, I personally find it less appealling asthetically because I see little inspiration behind it, since all someone did was put in some equations into a computer and the computer did all the construction. Although I suppose there is some creativity potential in the choosing of the degree to which the image is magnified and the choice of colors. It just seems rather limited in this respect. I do however, find the madelbrot set images very intersting in the fact that it sould only be created with the use of a computer. And I think it demonstrates the potential the computer holds as a new medium for art.

Casey Reas work also demonstrates the possiblities of computers to produce art on a completely new and different levels. The pieces he has created so far are already amazing, but more inportant is what these pieces suggest can be produced using the methods Reas uses. I personally found his explanation of the process he uses to create the pieces immensely interesting as that is the way I like to understand things: from the very beginning of the process. I also thought his comment about his liking for the randomness that takes over the process after he gives the initial instructions interesting. I too, enjoy things that function this way. I like the idea of being able to put in a set of data and then just waiting to see what happens.

Reas' use of technology at such an elementary level is very appealing to me and has presented me with a new view of how art and science can be used together, a view I would never have thought of before. I think that designing things this way would be very feasable and would be something I would like to do because it there would so many things you could do with it aside from just creating pieces. It could be used to create web pages, computer games etc. I could see this technique really tkaing off in the future, especially because of its interactive potential. This potential can be seen in the samle pieces on the website describing processing: http://www.processing.org/learning/examples/letterk.html

A final note: This week in discussion our TA encouraged us to allow our minds to wander as we took in the lectures of the week and see where our minds would take us. One such wandering my mind took brought me to the idea of another palce where art and science are intertwined. I was thinking that a very interesting thing to study would be the minds response to art, not on a conceptual level but on a scientific level. It would be interesting to see what kind of brain activity different pieces produce. This info would be used a soothing tool in psych wards on the medical/scientific level and could be used by artists to produce pieces that would produce certain responses from the audience. Just a thougth I had.

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Eddison Lai - Week 2 - Math and Art

This week, we have been saying over and over that math is intertwined with art. I felt like I was being told that mathematics was one with art. I do not agree with this statement. Yes, sometimes, artists use algebra and geometry in their work but that is as far as it goes. There is no use of higher mathematics like statistics and calculus. So it is a false to say that art and math are deeply connected. Including M.C. Escher, there are many instances where an artist uses Symmetry, proportionality, patterns and sequences, but I don't see art with probability or multivariable calculus. The part of mathematics involving figures, shapes, and symbols are used in art but it seems that the logic, reasoning, and relationship part of mathematics are not used at all.

Mandelbrot fractols are geometric patterns that are repeatedly seen in smaller scales over and over that surprisingly never come to an end. As you keep zooming in, you keep finding similar fractals. This goes on for as long as you wish. You can zoom in one thousand or one million times, and you will still see the fractals. They have some math involved and it does raise an eyebrow because it can be infinitely scaled down but I do not consider it true art. There seems to be little choice and also low level of knowledge to be a fractal artist. The only things you can do are change the colors and zoom in. http://cs.clackamas.cc.or.us/mathold/

Don't get me wrong. I am at awe by the quality and detail that these mathamatical art pieces have from their symmetry and repetitiveness. I also love the way perspective was brought into art officially by al-Haytham around 1000 A.D. The effects of perspective make art more real and proportionate. I like the way the artists can capture almost every detail. Sometimes it is almost like looking at a still picture from a camera.

Computer programming to me is the closest math will get to art. There are uses of properties of math like calculations however, to me, some artistry has been removed at the cost of addition of mathematics. The artwork of computer programming, including Casey Reas, simply just doesn't seem very artistic to me. It's amusing to see his work but I don't consider it art or math. I'm sure the computer programming artists are using creativity and expressing themselves, but i don't see any beauty or significance. Even this has only a little of each subject, but so far this is one of the best links we have between math and art.

What I found interesting was how Professor Reas said he separates his work in art from his work in math. He said that he has to think like a mathematician for a few days and then switch to thinking like an artist the next few days. I think this is a very smart way to work because the two different subjects call upon different portions of the brain.

Math is a subject in which it is very difficult to mix with others. It doesn't rely on any subjects like how chemistry and biology rely on each other and how history (in America) relies on english. Math is it's own language and does not need anything but itself to survive. Since it is very dense and independent material, math is very hard to relate to art. No wonder why we don't see much mix of the two.

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james zavala - Week 2 - mathematicians

SECTION 2
James Zavala
I loved this week’s lecture. We spoke a lot about great mathematicians and looked at their work and realized not only how beautiful it was but also gave thought at how intelligent the creator must have been. In enjoyed the talk that she dedicated to Brunelleschi on how he developed the vanishing point. He had to pay close attention to the math in the sense that as it approaches a vanishing point, the picture literally approaches infinity but gives the illusion that it approaches zero and gives depth to the piece. There was also the topic that was brought up of Albertis who developed a mathematical reasoning which I forgot but needless to say it is interesting to see that an artist would think in such a way to even develop a mathematical reasoning to what is happening.
I appreciated the fact that she brought up Leonardo Davinci’s Vetruvian Man being the fact that it has such a great story behind it. To my understanding Leonardo Davinci created the piece to demonstrate the fact that people are perfectly symmetrical which requires mathematical thought since it deals with the geometry of the body. It states that if a person were to extend his four limns like a star and be rotated with the belly button as his center of rotation then a perfect circle would be created. Another thing that he noticed was if a person stands straight and extends his arms out to align with his shoulders then he would create a perfect square. Amazing thought isn’t it? I found it to be funny being that I have an enormous cloth with the painting hanging in the main wall of my living room.
Wow! That is the best way that I can describe Maurter Escher’s work. The man had to have been an exceptional mathematician being the fact that he created symmetry in his work. I am currently taking a teaching mathematics class and he was topic of choice for a lecture and we worked with his art, how it was symmetrical about a point and how we could utilize it to enlighten our students in the field of geometry. His work as an artist arises many questions as to perspective and what is physically possible. Not only does that involve mathematics but includes physics being that some of his work demonstrates a person looking down from a balcony to another person walking up the wall which seems to be possible in that person’s frame of reference but nonetheless when looking at the entire picture one can see that it is physically impossible. The artist worked as physicist would in quantum physics since he looked at everyone’s frame of reference and made the impossible possible by bringing together all the possible and creating a whole. His demonstration of the mobius band has to be by far the most typical way of explaining that the mobius band only has one side; the ant walks in a straight line without jumping or crossing and walks both the inside and outside of the figure.
I didn’t really enjoy the psychedelic video by Mandelbrot that was shown being that it made me feel like I was on peyote, but the concept behind it with the Cartesian plane was very interesting. I did on the other hand enjoy the point made by Buckminster Fuller which stated that the sturdiest structures are not squares like we create, but other shapes that are found in nature.
Casey Reas was a treat! His programming was different from anything that I have ever seen. My programming has consisted of plugging in mathematical equations to develop a program which will output values and not a masterpiece that he has created. I loved the fact that he said that his art was organic being that he lets it go and lets it do whatever it feels. I was very pleased with his presentation being that he showed every aspect and then the final product of his work. I liked his art so much that I made it my background and other people seem to think that it is beautiful as well. The circles and distance piece was by far my favorite since although it utilizes basic math it yet very complex. I was really happy he took the time to go to our class. So, thanks.
An interesting website that I found which speaks of Mandelbrot and his work which gives a very good description what he did is: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/MandelbrotSet.html

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North vs. South, Right vs. Left

I think that it is very important to be both cerebral and intuitive about all the aspects of our lives. I think that the knowledge that we have different halves of our brain for the two types of thinking has provided the biggest barrier in the path to simultaneous right and left brain thinking. I came across a situation of personal brain segregation when I was writing the first draft of this blog.

I sat and wrote about how fascinating the Mandelbrot set was and how it was so amazing that such simplicity in nature, and thus mathematics, could lead to something that is infinitely complex and geometrically diverse. I then went on to discus how other things in nature exhibited the same beauty and simplicity: like Pi (the ratio of a circle’s circumference to it’s diameter), e (which is a unique, non-trivial function and the base of the logarithm) and i, (the square of which is an invalid answer for a square operation). All of these mathematical anomalies are either transcendental numbers, or they yield results from mathematical concepts that, by their definition, cannot be achieved. The amazing thing about these three numbers is that they have been observed within nature (spheres, electrical current, space-time, geometry, etc…) and that they can all be combined to create a rational number. The formula e^(i*pi)=-1.

After writing that far I caught myself using only the right side of my brain and only looking at math, art, simplicity, and nature from an analytical standpoint. What I had written was dry. After taking a break and looking at my rough draft with a new perspective, I decided that the thing that really got me going about the lectures this week was that math and art utilize different halves of the brain, and most people (myself included) have let that dictate our attitudes towards things that have been labeled as right brain and left brain territory. I then realized that I do things every day that require the use of both sides without even knowing it, and I get more fulfillment and personal satisfaction out of something done that way than anything done lazily with one half.


As reflect back on the classes I took in high school and the classes that i have taken here at UCLA (and that are offered) I am seeing a trend. That trend is that classes are either designed to focus you on a specific knowledge set within the idiom of the class's parent school or they are designed to allow the students to express their views and develop them in the way that they see fit. So, in simpler terms, we have cerebral classes (like math, physics, econ, music theory, history of ______, etc...) and we have intuitive classes (like drawing, art, performance ensembles, studios etc...) There are very few classes (and none that i have yet found outside of the jazz ensembles and combos) that require you to both approach the content from a cerebral standpoint (reading music and playing within a tonal idiom) and an intuitive standpoint (to play what you hear and produce your own sound) at the same time. Then again, the 2 credit jazz ensemble and combo that I'm in are the two most mentally engaging classes that I've had thus far in my college career.

Improvising over a set of chord changes involves identifying stacks of pitches within a given tonal center by reading an abbreviated mathematicesque symbol that tells you which of those pitches are played in which order and if they are raised or lowered a half step. These chord changes can happen as often as 4 time per measure, and measures typically last no longer than 2 seconds (at 60bpm which is slow for a ballad). To add to that, there are over 500 distinct arrangements of these chordal notes in each of the 7 modes of harmony.

On the other side of improvising, you must simultaneously produce sounds and melodic elements that you create on the spot. You get to create a song any way you like, as long as it fits in with the harmonic material that the analytical part of your brain is dealing with.

I find that it is much easier to use each side of the brain separately, and I find myself doing this throughout the day. In improvisation I could just focus on playing by ear or I could just focus on playing the scales that are implied by the chords. But when I do either of these without the other (and go back to listen to my practice or rehearsal on tape), I can very easily tell when both sides of my brain are engaged and when they are not. The music is either intensely creative and free (but not very harmonically complete) or full of harmonic diversity (but devoid of any original material or personality). I find that whenever I become mentally worn out I tend to shift from one side of my brain to the other.

When I was researching the connection that music had with the physical universe I came across the following website.

http://www.valdostamuseum.org/hamsmith/musPhys.html

It talks about music and sound as linear wave functions and how they relate to quantum field theories, the weak force, and the color force. The second essay talks about music existing in time and mathematics. The other entries deal with music in all other scientific realms. I found it very interesting that science was so integrated into music, and it just reaffirms the reasons that I have discovered for why my mental stamina is so low when making music.

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