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DESMA 9 Event 5 ---- Fowler Museum

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Last week I visited the Fowler Museum on campus. I had a great time and I am thankful that this class coaxed me to go or else I may never have gone. I think this museum will definitely benefit a student of DESMA 9 because you can see both how ancient and medical technology can be incorporated into art.  I will definitely be going back in the future! While I enjoyed looking through all the exhibits, I think only a few truly applied to the concepts of the course.  I now want to show you a few pieces of art that I found especially applicable. The first is a mannequin with the spine exposed and no head included. I thought this was an interesting crossover between medicine and art. Just as Dr. Vesna stated in her lecture, dissection was the first connection between these two realms of study. This work uses dissection for a purely artistic purpose. The folded out torso exposing the spine conjures ideas of how simple humans are: just skin wrapped around a vertebral column.  Spine  20
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DESMA 9 Event 4 ---- Hammer Museum

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Below are photos from a Hammer exhibit of Heatherwick Studio's London-based designs.  Founded in 1994 by British designer Thomas Heatherwick, the studio now has 160 architects, designers, and makers.  International recognition was acquired for this studio after plans for the Rolling Bridge (directly below). This bridge is awe-inspiring for its modernistic beauty while unrolled, by which pedestrians can cross the inlet behind Paddington Station, and its perplexing ability to fold like a roll-polly, allowing boats to pass through.  The description plaque beside the small blueprint plan of the bridge (pictured below) states that it combines "Both infrastructure and public art...[and] captivates onlookers with its engineering and advances Britain's drawbridge tradition".  Above is an innovative plan for a biomass power station on the Tees River that will serve 2,000 new houses, but with a cultural function and an elegant form.    I think that engineering mixe
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DESMA 9 Week 9 Blog

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    I found Dr. Vesna's summary of Space in popular culture over time to be quite interesting. She discussed the history from Copernicus, to Galileo, to Arthur C. Clarke's space elevator, to sputnik, to Laika, to the first man on the moon, Neil Armstrong (Vesna). I was well aware of the impact of Star Wars and other more recent science fiction pieces due to growing up with them, however, I did not realize the impact of Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot or shows like Lost in Space until I watched this discourse.  Corpernicus' Heliocentric Model http://usercontent1.hubimg.com/4891706_f248.jpg     When I think of space and art overlapping, I think of the film Gravity that came out in 2013. It is a story about how an astronaut is able to return back to earth after a failed mission in space (Gravity 2013 Extended Trailer). I remember when I saw this in IMAX and the visuals were stunning. This allowed me to see space in a way I never had imagined it before. It is inter
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DESMA 9 Event 3 ---- LASER

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    Last week I attended Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous (LASER) on Thursday, May 25th. In this event, artists and scientists were together to promote collaboration between two fields. There were six speakers, each with a five minute presentation, each of which gave me unique ideas of how art and science come together as something better. Here I will write about the ones that impress me the most. {LASER website: http://artsci.ucla.edu/node/1321} Claudia Schnugg : As an independent researcher in intersections of art and aesthetics with science, technology, and business, and producer of art and science collaboration, Dr. Schnugg's recent work focuses on intertwining artists and art projects with new technologies and scientific research. She has explored effects of artistic interventions on social settings, especially framing artistic interventions and art programs in organizations. According to Dr. Schnugg, the interest in what art can do and which role aesthetics an
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DESMA 9 Week 8 Blog

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Since the digital revolution began in the latter half of the 20th century with the uptick of computing and communication technology, there has been a drive to make things faster, more efficient and smaller. Scientists have now reached a new frontier, using materials on the nano-scale for technological, medical as well as artistic applications. "Digital Revolution" http://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/media/assets/2010_podcast_global_digital_revolution.jpg It was interesting to hear the history of nanotechnology from the perspective of Dr. Gimzewski, a leader in the field and a presenter at the previous event I attended: Ecocentric Art + Science Symposium: Prophesies & Predictions. He discussed the impact of Richard Feynman's daring hypothesis that there is plenty of opportunity to manipulate things on the atomic level, the discovery of carbon allotropes by Smalley et al., the invention of the scanning tunneling microscope by Gerd and Heini, self assembling DNA structure
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DESMA 9 Week 7 Blog

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    The overlap between neuroscience and art is an interesting one, and definitely worth exploring. This relationship started rather recently, but is quickly evolving and becoming more and more prevalent. In Dr. Vesna's lecture we see that Santiago Ramon y Cajal was the founder of neuroanatomy and was specifically interested in the connection patterns of neurons by shape (Vesna). Drawing of Purkinje and Granule Cells from Pigeon Ceregellum by Santiago Ramon y Cajal, 1899. http://public.media.smithsonianmag.com/legacy_blog/neurons.jpg     One such modern extension of this interest is microetching. This is a technique where neural junctions are inscribed into metal such as gold with the aim of illustrating the connections of the brain (Drinker). The picture changes based on the position of the observer, which keeps the picture simple enough to analyze while still conveying the inherent complexity of the system.     My experience in the neuroscience world came
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Desma Week 6 Blog

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    This week's lecture touched on a number of different topics including physical and genetic manipulation of the human body for artistic purposes.  This idea rings true in Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr's Victimless Leather (depicted to the right), which is a work of art in which cells are not only living, but they are also multiplying.  In fact, they were producing at such a rapid rate that the machine would barely hold all of the newborn cells.  This is but one example of how Biotechnology can double as art. There is so much beauty behind science that people often forget about the art behind the innovation.     Another thing that was brought up in lecture was the issue of genetic mutation. Now, this is cause for great concern when it comes to the ethics behind genetic mutation.  In my opinion, we need to be very careful about how we allocate genetic mutation, because if we are not careful, we will end up creating a new race of beautiful, more intelligent, and not to me
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