Week 4: MedTech + Arts

This week’s topic was rather fascinating and disturbing at the same time for me. Professor Vesna talked about how medical technology influenced arts and how arts helped to advance technology. Anatomy helped artists understand more about human bodies and thus convey their ideas more precisely. Professor Vesna also brought up some ideas that I have never thought of before, that technologies like anatomy and plastic surgeries can themselves be forms of art.

MRI scans help us look into our bodies without actually doing operations.

Plastination is a technique invented by Dr. Gunther von Hagens which preserves human bodies or human parts by removing fat and water. He then used the technique to carry out the Body World expeditions which showed preserved bodies which might be repositioned for art purposes. I find it particularly fascinating because the exhibitions provide us with ways we’ve never had before to look at human bodies and appreciate their elegance and complexity. Exhibits like smoker’s lungs also discourage people from smoking and drive people to lead a healthy life.

An exhibit from the Body World exhibition

However, I think there are times when this form of arts went to far. The Visible Human Project intended to complete a full digital library representing the anatomy of a normal adult male and female. The male donor was an executed prisoner who agreed to be part of the project because he was told his body would be used for scientific reasons. However, the committee did not disclose any more details about how his body would be used to him. If the prisoner had known the nature of the project, would he still agree to donate his body?

A poster for the Visible Human Project

The advancement of medical technologies would definitely provides artists with more creative ideas. Hopefully we can thus get more insightful ideas about our own bodies.

Sources

Gromala, Diane. “The Body is Obsolete” Contemporary Arts Media. N.p., 26 Oct 2012.

Orac, Tricia. “A surgeon visits Body Worlds” Science Blogs. N.p., Web. 26 April. 2010.

Stelarc, Steph. “The Visible Human, Prisoner?” Street Anatomy. N.p., Web. 26 Oct. 2008.

Vesna, Victoria. “Medicine and Art: Part 2.” YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 25 Dec. 2012.

Wong, Virgil. “Art Exhibited in Galleries and Museums around the World.” Art. N.p., 2012. Web. 26 Oct. 2012.

Week 3: Robotics and Arts

Since the introduction of the printing press, machines have become an inseparable part of our society. They helped to modernize our society and also became an important topic artists would discuss. The development of machines inspired artists and arts in turn led to more development of machinery. 

This week, Professor Vesna talked about many ways arts and robotics influenced each other. Robots were first visualized in Czech writer Kare Capek’s science fiction play Rossum’s Universal Robots(R.U.R.) and may have inspired scientists how robots should behave. The invention of the streamline production by Ford, while enriching workers, also made these workers only a fixed part of a large machine. Charlie Chaplin then discussed in Modern Times how industrialization dehumanized workers.

A scene from the R.UR. play

The poster for Modern Times

While robotics and machines help bring new ideas to artists, they also in some way undermine creativity and the uniqueness of arts. Walter Benjamin, a German Jewish philosopher and essayist, discussed the negative effects of mass production and machines on art in his essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’. He made the point that mechanical reproduction and mass production can hurt originality and creativity. I think the result would be that while arts are being mass produced, their values are becoming more and more undermined and artists make art to make money rather than express their ideas.

However, I believe that robotics and machines could lead to new inspirations for artists. For instance, Google made A.I. that can produce paintings according to certain keywords such as dreams or sunlight. These innovations could provide artists with new insights about how arts might be created.

A Google A.I. painting

Sources:

Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. London: Penguin, 2008. Print.

Mateer, Dirk. Production, Innovation, and Efficiency in "Modern Times". N.p., n.d. 2012.<http://www.criticalcommons.org/Members/gdmateer/commentaries/production-innovation-and-efficiency-in-modern-times>

Metz, Cade. Google’s Artificial Brain Is Pumping Out Trippy—And Pricey—Art. N.p., n.d. 2016. <https://www.wired.com/2016/02/googles-artificial-intelligence-gets-first-art-show/>

Vesna, Victoria. “Robotics.” Lecture. CoLE DESMA 9. Web. <https://cole.uconline.edu/~UCLA-201209-12F-DESMA-9-1#l=Week-3-Assignment/id4287887>.

Vishnevetsky, Ignatiy. A century later, why does Chaplin still matter?. N.p., n.d. 2014. <http://www.avclub.com/article/century-later-why-does-chaplin-still-matter-205775>

Event 1

This Wednesday, I went to the workshop with Linda Weintraub. The workshop was about net-materialism which encourages people to interact directly with nature. Linda first talked about how our lives are dominated by mass-produced/ artificial products and the virtual world like the internet. The point she was trying to make is quite interesting and intimidating: we’re so obsessed with artificial products that we lost our ability to contact with the nature and the control over our own bodies . Although technology and science help improve arts, as Professor Vesna mentioned in lectures, they also have devastating effects on the nature and how we interact with the nature.

Rearranging objects according to their weight

After the talk, Linda led us into a room filled with stuff she picked up from a forest in Upstate New York, where she hoped we can connect with the objects with solely our bodies, and communicate with the nature. It was quite a unique and overwhelming experience. Several objects require us to use our sense, rather than precise and scientific measures using electronics, to interact with. For example, there was a box full of mosses whose smell Linda hoped us to describe using our own senses rather than a chemistry composition of the particles composing the mosses. 

The honeycomb Linda collected from the woods

I would definitely recommend the event to my fellow classmates because I think it would provide us with a perfect opportunity to rethink over the influence of mass production and artificial products on our lives and also because it was such a fun experience!

Me at the event

Week 2: Math + Art

In this week’s lecture, we learned about how math influenced arts and how artists came to discover principles of mathematics throughout their artworks. In particular, Professor Vesna talked about how math concepts like vanishing point and perspective influenced the way artists make arts. Almost all Renaissance artists used perspective to enhance their compositions, including Masaccio, Mantegna, Da Vinci, etc.

The concept of vanishing point helps artists convey their ideas more accurately

The Last Supper, by Da Vinci, is a perfect example of how Renaissance artists used perspective to convey their arts. By locating the Jesus’ head at the vanishing point for all the perspective lines, Da Vince created a vibrant scene filled with emotions. The reactions that the apostles have implied that one of them would betray Jesus. This painting, with its innovative way of rendering, signals the peak of the Renaissance and how science and math influenced arts.

The Last Supper by Da Vinci

Today, mathematics is becoming even more relevant in the fields of arts. This quarter, I am taking the computer graphics class which is a perfect example of the juxtaposition of math, arts and science. The course requires us to use mathematics to model the real world to create animations. The topic is pretty relevant in the real world, as we see great animations made by companies like Pixar and Dreamworks that brought so much joy to people’s lives. The combination of arts and math make all of this possible.

Pixar characters are modeled with the help of mathmatics

References

Cruise, Brit. "Pixar in a Box: the Math Behind the Movies". N.p., n.d. 2012. <https://www.khanacademy.org/about/blog/post/127714217180/pixar-in-a-box-the-math-behind-the-movies>

Nichols, Linda. "Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper" N.p., n.d. 2003. <http://www.italianrenaissance.org/a-closer-look-leonardo-da-vincis-last-supper/> 

Mckay, Kate. "The Basics of Art: The Renaissance" N.p., n.d. 2008.  <http://www.artofmanliness.com/2010/07/16/man-knowledge-the-basics-of-art-the-renaissance/>

"Science and Art of Perspective" Science and Art of Perspective. N.p., n.d. 2008.<http://www.webexhibits.org/sciartperspective/raphaelperspective1.html>

Vesna, Victoria. “Mathematics.” Lecture. CoLE DESMA 9. Web. <https://cole.uconline.edu/~UCLA-201209-12F-DESMA-9-1#l=Week-2-Assignment/id4287887>.

Week 1: Two Cultures

CP Snow introduced the idea that "the intellectual life of the whole of the western society" was split into two cultures, humanities and sciences. Here at UCLA, we can clearly see the division between the two cultures on our campus. The north campus is generally considered as the "arts and humanities" part of the campus and the south campus is, on contrast, considered the "sciences" part of the campus where most students majoring in sciences and engineering took their classes.

UCLA Humanities Building

In a later edition of The Two Cultures, however, CP Snow came up with a third culture which includes the scientists and other intellectuals who attempt to bridge the gap between arts and sciences. As a computer science major student, I encounter the interaction of the two cultures everyday. A lot of classes that I took not only required me to understand computer science concepts, but also required me to have a deep understanding of subjects like philosophy and linguistics. For instance, the artificial intelligence class I took involves both philosophical logics and computer algorithms. Another computer science class I took, Programming Languages, incorporates theories from both Linguistics and Computer Science. Lots of theories from humanities subjects have became building blocks of Computer Science theories.

AI relies heavily on philosophical logics

The third culture is increasingly playing a more and more important role in the modern world. It creates opportunities such as new things to explain and new ways of expression. We must be well-prepared to adopt the rising third culture and seize the opportunities. 

A portrait of CP Snow

References

Brockman, John. "The Third Culture." N.p.: n.p., 1995. Print.

Johnson, Phillip. "Engaging the Thrid Culture." N.p.: n.p., 1996. Print.

Kelly, Kevin. "The Third Culture." New York, Science, 1998. Print.

Snow, C. P. "The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution." New York: Cambridge UP, 1959. Print.

Snow, C.P. "The Two Cultures: And a Second Look." N.p.: n.p., 1963. Print.