Week 4: Art + Technology + Medicine

Growing up seeing a lot of art performances where dance in a main feature has always allowed me to view the body as a medium to create art.  I was not aware of the technology/medical influence of the study of the body affected art and vice versa.

Leonardo Da Vinci began to do private studies on human dissection to create accurate depictions of what the human body looks like.  From the origin of Da Vinci, and even earlier with the Egyptians efforts to preserve bodies we have come to art of "Plastination."  The artist Hagens has taken the preservation of the body to an extreme where he uses them as his performance pieces, replacing the body parts with water and plastic to preserve the body.  These performance pieces he brings around the world working with real donated bodies.

Professor Warwick implanted a chip into his arm to connect to him a mechanical hand and computer. He has expanded his methods to various ways to become one of the first legitimate cyborgs.  His attempts originated from researching into other ways of healing the body besides using medicine to numb the body so the pain disappears for a moment, like Advil.  His motivation comes from believing that technology can communicate with the smallest details of the body fixing the problems instead of dismissing them for a time.

Ted Talks Chronic Pain VR

Diane Gromala has spent a lot of her life in chronic pain.  She spoke about Virtual Reality has the ability to help ease chronic pain.  VR is as effective as drugs releasing similar sensors in the brain that opiums does.  Her research has shown that biofeedback and mindful meditation is a possible cure for chronic pain.  The sensory conflict VR help bring an ease to the mind, doing things like walking without any pain, which fights at the core of someone learning not to do something because it is suppose to hurt.




Works Cited:

 Vesna, Victoria. “Http://www.youtube.com/v/Ep0M2bOM9Tk.” Lecture. Medicine pt1 . Youtube, 26 Apr. 2015. Web. 26 Apr. 2015. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ep0M2bOM9Tk>.

Vesna, Victoria. “Http://www.youtube.com/v/psjnQarHOqQ.” Lecture. Medicine pt2 . Youtube, 26 Apr. 2015. Web. 26 Apr. 2015. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psjnQarHOqQ>.

Gromala, Diane. "TEDxAmericanRiviera - Diane Gromala - Curative Powers of Wet, Raw Beauty." YouTube. TED. Web. 26 Apr. 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRdarMz--Pw>.

Casini S. (2011). Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) as mirror and portrait: MRI configurations between science and the arts. Configurations 19, 73–99 10.1353/con.2011.0008

Hagens, Gunther Von. "Current Exhibitions." Exhibitions. Web. 26 Apr. 2015. <http://www.bodyworlds.com/en/exhibitions/current_exhibitions.html>.

"Kevin Warwick - Home Page." Kevin Warwick - Home Page. Web. 26 Apr. 2015. <http://www.kevinwarwick.com>.

Week Three Robotics and Art

What I've noticed with how people respond to industrialization is either very much for it, or against it.  There is not a lot of middle ground.

In the movie The Imitation Game Alan Turing was a man sent to decipher the German Waar code to win WW2.  He was working on making an automated computing engine.  In this film, his leaders are fighting him not believing it will work.  While eventually all his friends begin to support the whole idea.  There were not people mentioned that were indifferent towards the machine. People are not indifferent towards technology and industrialization.  In the same way, some people love the new Iphones.  They buy a new one each generation.  While other people believe it is affecting them poorly to keep sewing into the Apple corporation that controls everything.  

Industry has always affected jobs.  So people care.  The lecture mentioned Gutenberg bringing the printing press to the west.  Which was able to do so much more work then a person.  But that still took someones job who was writing down all the books.

As well came Ford and Taylorism.  People were beginning to work to create more cars, which gave them jobs.  But there came a thin line where people began to be treated like machines, instead of people.

Robots, or cyborgs have always been of a lot of interest for people.  The movies first came up with the Robot, which meant work in a slavic language.  And the interest for it to be like a human has always been on our minds.

Hod lipson talks about in his Ted talks the possibility of robots actually getting to a point where they can adapt like the animals they are mimicked by in creation.

Building Self Aware Robots

Works Cited

Vesna, Victoria. "Industrialization, Robotics, Kinetic/robotic Art." YouTube. YouTube, 1 Jan. 2011. Web. 20 Apr. 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRw9_v6w0ew>.

"Building "self-aware" Robots." Hod Lipson:. Web. 20 Apr. 2015. <http://www.ted.com/talks/hod_lipson_builds_self_aware_robots#t-332319>.

"Posts Tagged "henry Ford"" Action Speaks. Web. 20 Apr. 2015. <http://actionspeaksradio.org/tag/henry-ford/>.

"The Imitation Game Official Trailer #3 (2014) - Benedict Cumberbatch Movie HD." YouTube. YouTube. Web. 20 Apr. 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gcyB72nFmc>.

Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." Shocked/Random House. 1936. Print.

Week 2: Math & Art

The fascination of numbers and art was and still is slightly over my head.  I was unaware of the strong opinions and theories based on them all.

Pi the movie

I ended up watching Pi by Darren Aronofsky. The film mentions a lot on the subject of science of numbers.  The golden ratio was mentioned as well as Jewish mysticism relating the number 212 which was brought up that was the magic number from God to explain all things.  In the movie the De Divina Proportione showing the golden ratio on a human face is represented when the main character is studying his own face because of his genius and insanity.

Which made me think of surrealism and the fourth dimension.  "the n-dimensional non Euclidean geometries were a stimulus to go beyond traditional oil painting to explore the interrelationship of dimensions and even to reexamine the nature of three dimensional perspective" (Henderson).  Which had me think about Surrealism and of course Dali.

Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus) depicts the moment of Jesus on the cross as a hypercube, known as a tesseract.  

The Metropolitan Museum of Art describes the painting as a "new interpretation of an oft-depicted subject. ..[showing] Christ's spiritual triumph over corporeal harm."

Dali is quoted saying in response to what the painting is about.

"I don't know yet. First I have ideas, I explain them later. This picture will be the great metaphysical work of my summer."

Once completed, Dali defined it as "metaphysical, transcendent cubism”: "

I spend some time as well listening to

Varese's composition Ionsitation which are definitely on the avant grade side of things.  The fundamental side of all the music is it sending off vibrations on the smallest level that is sending a message and a feeling which can be measured mathematically.

Works Cited

Henderson, Linda D. "The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art Linda Dalrymple Henderson."         Leonardo 17.3 (1984): 205-10.JStor. Web. 12 Apr. 2015.

Dalí, Salvador; Gómez de la Serna, Ramón (2001) [1988]. Dali (Print). Secaucus, NJ: Wellfleet 

Press. ISBN 1555213421

Livio, Mario (2002). The Golden Ratio: The Story of Phi, The World's Most Astonishing Number. New York: Broadway Books. ISBN 0-7679-0815-5.

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

"Salvador Dali: Painting the Fourth Dimension." Salvador Dali: Painting the Fourth Dimension. Web. 13 Apr. 2015. <http://www.philipcoppens.com/dali.html>.

Pi. By Darren Aronofsky. Dir. Darren Aronofsky. Protozoa Pictures, Inc., 1998.

Edgard Varese - Ionisation -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9mg4KHqRPw. N.b.d April 12.

Week One The Connection of Two Cultures

My focus is on music.  As I continue on the new journey of putting more time into creating music through different sounds based out of synth and electronics, I consider the two cultures of science and arts as one form.  From the different programs being created such as Ableton Live, Pro Tools, and Logic, to the different guitar pedals being made that are now midi controlled, everything feels like it is in a big mush pot of science and arts.  The different algorithms different technicians have to make to be able to adjust live audio is a science in itself.  All of them wrap around each other.

I look forward in this class to see other ways in which these two categories have become partners.  

John Brockton says its a spectacle to discover someone “who can take the materials of the culture in the arts, literature, and science and put them together in their own way…”  To me as an artist the only way to make now is to use every tool at your disposale to create the ultimate art.  This video is a great example of different mediums to create a statement.

The idea of the "Two Cultures" of science and artists, or literary intellectuals, had never really dawned on me.  I have always viewed them in a similar category of creating.  As I read through Snows writings, and other peoples point of views on the separation, I don’t know if I can agree on the thoughts in my personal experience.  On campus, sure there are people that have their strengths and they tend to focus on that, thus the north and south campus majors don’t come across each other very much.  But what gathered more of my attention was the writing of D Bohm.

“Thus, he wishes to find in the reality in which he lives a certain oneness and totality, or wholeness, constituting a kind of harmony that is felt to be beautiful.”

I sit well with this idea that everyone is creating.  As well I have a few friends who are scientists and part of the arts, and it seems second nature.  The concept Vesna brings up of the "/," where it is a blend makes most sense to me.

                                                                              Works cited

Photo 1:http://www.vitalvoiceanddata.com/partnership/

Photo 2: http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/ed1f/

Bohm, David. "On Creativity."  Leonardo 1.2 (Apr., 1968): 137-149. Web. 2 Apr. 2015.

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

Vesna, Victoria. "Toward a Third Culture: Being In Between." Leonardo. 34 (2001): 121-125. Print.

Brockman, John. “Introduction: The Third Culture.” Edge. John Brockman. 1 Jan 1996. Web. 4 Apr 2015.

State of the Art. Dir. Greg Sharp and Ivan Dixan. Youtube. Wally De Backer, 13 Aug. 2011. Web. 3 Apr. 2015.