Week 4: Medicine, Technology and Art

With the development of science and technology, medication and medicines have been improved to a very advanced level. We have already learned some of the knowledge of biology like human body. However, we normally do not have so much visual understandings of it. Drew Berry is one of the world's foremost animators working in biomedical visualization. He has visually employed the animation into the behaviors, dynamics and properties of human body.  He combines scientific and digital technology to create a different but amazing micro-image beneath our skin. By magnification of 100 million times shown in the anime, we can directly learn what our bodies beneath skin is like and how our bodies function everyday. This perfect combination of all medicine, technology and art offers us a great opportunity to learn about our bodies and become familiar to them.

Drew Berry-Body Code, 2003

In the light of technology, nowadays medications and art can be well integrated to serve as certain functions such as education. I went to the "Cardiac Dance" event held by Dr. Buckberg. In the "Cardiac Dance", choreography combined with light, music and media shows the spiral movement of our hearts. The dance was the artistic expression of Dr. Busckberg's new idea of heart surgery. This event is a very impressive lesson for me to know deeper about how heart moves and functions.

The Cardiac Dance, The Spirals of Life

Forrest Bess widely employed his knowledge of medicines into his work in his later life. He used symbols that he invented into his paintings to convey his understandings of sex and gender. His idea that males and females are united is so bold that he even operated on himself as an experiment. His knowledge of biology provided him a special perspective in his art creations. Painting is not just a form of artistic exhibition, but also an artist's expression of his or her particular understandings of science such as medicine.

Forrest Bess

Forrest Bess -The Noble Carbunkle 

Resources:

1. Forrest Bess. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Oct. 2013.

2. "UC HealthNews : Findings: College of Medicine Alumnus Develops 'Artistic' Way to Teach About Heart Function." UC HealthNews. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Oct. 2013.

3."drew berry." Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Federation Square, Melbourne - ACMI Homepage. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Oct. 2013.

4. "The Cardiac Dance | The Spirals of Life on Vimeo." Vimeo. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Oct. 2013.

5. "Forrest Bess | About Forrest Bess." Forrest Bess. N.p., n.d. Web. 26 Oct. 2013.

Week 3: Robotics and Art

Technology has been influencing and pushing the development of art and literature from ancient time to nowadays. According to Benjamin's essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, he mentioned how technology influenced art: while people invented lithography, the technology of reproduction reached a peak and graphic art was developing very fast. With a closer look in the World War II, human used most advanced achievements in technology and made technology become an irreplaceable element in a nation's development. The affect of technology and industrialization makes people realize to design something to improve efficiency and productivity. Here comes the robotics.

Japanese robot is picking strawberry for farmers

However, robotics not only are tools but also combinations of art and technology. Art is a special way of expression and robots are often endued with deeper meanings and become another form of expression. In Professor Kusahara's video, she mentioned that the famous Japanese anime Astro Boy was designed as a robot. The Boy was created with human emotions and ethics for the purpose of encouraging Japanese people to get rid of the fear of nuclear power and have hope for the future. He became the basis for future designing of robots in Japan. Art and technology are perfectly combined as robots to express emotions and feelings.

Assembly Line with robots

Since Henry Ford introduced assembly line mode of production, robots are widely applied in the manufacturing and automobile industry. But robots also can help elderly people with their daily lives and help rescue in disasters as Professor Kusahara said. Today robots are developed in the aspects of both art and technology. In the robot famous movie Wall-E, Wall-E is an old and discarded trash compactor robot. Eve, however, is more good-looking and advanced since "she" is created later. This shows the artistic and technological trend of robot development. 

The industrialization stimulates not only the development of technology but also the integration of art and technology. Robotics are the successful products of this amazing combination.

Wall-E and Eve

Resources:

1. "Robotics MachikoKusahara 1." YouTube. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Oct. 2013.

2. "Walter Benjamin." Marxists Internet Archive. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Oct. 2013.

3. "Japanese robot can pick strawberry fields forever for farmer | Space, Military and Medicine |    News.com.au." NewsComAu. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Oct. 2013.

4. "Wall-E Named Best Movie Of The Decade By TIME." The Pixar Times. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Oct. 2013.

5. "Astro Boy ~ Cartoon Image." Cartoon Image. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Oct. 2013.

6."DevFactory Discovers Elusive Secret to Software Excellence."Segment.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 Oct. 2013.

Event 1: The Cardiac Dance, The Spirals of Life

It was a really amazing and interesting experience. When I saw the title of the event "The Cardiac Dance, The Spirals of Life", I could not imagine the connection between heart and dance. Normally, we think that heart works as contraction and relaxation. However, in Dr. Gerald Buckberg' speech, he introduced an unprecedented approach, which he developed with Drs. Francisco Torrent-Guasp according their research on the heart movement, to dealing with congestive heart failure. Instead of contracting and relaxation, heart works by alternatively twisting and untwisting.

Dr. Buckberg showed us a short film inspired by his astounding idea and work, which is called "The Cardiac Dance, The Spirals of Life". This film is a perfect example that how art and science are combined. The dancers use a segment of fabric to form the heart movement. It is a very vivid form of expression that with some dancers and a segment of fabric, the process of "twisting and untwisting" was vividly performed in front of my eyes. I could actually feel the beat of the "heart". When the "heart" changed from a "football" into a "basketball", I felt the very pain of the heart failure in the terrifying background music and lights. The dancers were acting more exaggeratedly and they seemed to lose their senses. They were struggling and living death in the pain. This is a very impressive performance that would lead us falling into the world of the dancers.

Dr. Buckberg and me

The poster of "The Cardiac Dance, The Spirals of Life"

Recalling the discussion of "two cultures", I find that Kevin Kelly's idea of "third culture" really fits here. Kevin proposes that computer technology is the bridge between art and science; in the "cardiac dance", the heart movement was vividly expressed by modern-style dance, music and multimedia. With these modern technology, science was perfectly resolved into art expression and art was amazingly sublimated by the magic of science. The experience will make me more focused on the way of combination of art and science in the projects of this class. In addition, this event is really worth attending and the "cardiac dance" is really worth watching. You will find out how surprisingly the traditional view is changed by an art performance. 

Here is the link of the "The Cardiac Dance, The Spirals of Life". http://www.behance.net/gallery/the-cardiac-dance-the-spirals-of-life/954407


Resources:

1. Kelly, Kevin. "The Third Culture." Science. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Oct. 2013. <http://www.sciencemag.org/content/279/5353/992.full>

2. "UC HealthNews : Findings: College of Medicine Alumnus Develops 'Artistic' Way to Teach About Heart Function." UC HealthNews. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Oct. 2013. <http://healthnews.uc.edu/publications/findings/?/5109/5110/>

3. "the cardiac dance - the spirals of life on Behance." Behance. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Oct. 2013. <http://www.behance.net/gallery/the-cardiac-dance-the-spirals-of-life/954407>

Week 2: Math and Art

Math and art sound like two different cultures without intersection since math is mostly about solving problem and art is mostly about ways of expression and communication. However, they do have connections and the connections are exactly their "distinguished" characteristics. In the novel Flatland, the author,  Edwin A. Abbott, describes several worlds of different dimensions. It is the magic of mathematical graphs like triangle, square and circle inspires Edwin to criticize the society by using math graphs. It is a really bold and amazing combination of art and math; in some way, literature is also a kind of art. Applying math graphs into art work makes the work more intuitive and visual for readers to understand. 

Gateway Arch in St. Louis

The appliance of math not just exists in literature, but everywhere around us, architecture for example. The tallest man-made monument in the U.S., Gateway Arch, is designed and built according to the shape of parabola. The idea of combination of art and math always gives people inspiration to make some surprising things. The reason why Gateway Arch is so famous and popular in the world is that it maps a parabola line on paper to a huge architecture in the real world! In addition, the charm of math is also applied in the performance. In order to create different environment of scenarios, artists use various combinations of lines, triangles, squares and so on. These graphs combined give audience certain feelings with the music and lights in the auditorium.

                                                        Four Dimensions For Orchestra

                                                        

Furthermore, people often apply math into art automatically and unconsciously. In some way, people have the same standard to tell beauty and ugly. However, even artists did not know the rules behind the standard of beauty until they found the golden ratio. The golden ratio are widely used in the art and science; the ratio gives people a feeling of perfectness and comfortableness. From Nefertiti to Angelina Jolie, they are acknowledged as beautiful females in the world and both share a similar facial proportions in golden ratio. This provides a new orientation for scientist and artists to embed math knowledge in their works. Juxtaposition for math and art means that both are same important for artists and scientists to develop their work. Art and math always show as a highly combined group that makes them the distinguishable features and depth.

References:

"Four Dimensions for Orchestra, EWI and Electronics (new mix)." YouTube. N.p., n.d. Web.   8 Oct. 2013. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_d8pMxm8Ns#t=367>

"Flatland, by E. A. Abbott, 1884." ibiblio - The Public's Library and Digital Archive. N.p., n.d. Web. 8 Oct. 2013. <http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/eaa/FL.HTM>

"Gateway Arch." Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc, n.d. Web. 8 Oct. 2013.  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gateway_Arch>

"Four Dimensions - Real-time Audio-visual Performance." Nathan Selikoff. N.p., n.d. Web. 

8 Oct. 2013. <http://nathanselikoff.com/works/four-dimensions>

"A Model's Secrets: The Perfect Face - Golden Ratio Beauty Calculator." A Model's Secrets. N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Oct. 2013. <http://facethis.blogspot.com/2012/01/perfect-face-golden-ratio-beauty.html>

Week 1: Two Cultures

In Snow's work "The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution", he raised a concept of polarization of two cultures. In his opinion, science and literacy belong to totally two different cultures. These two cultures often stand against each other. While people are used to living in a non-scientific culture, their lives can gradually turn out to be anti-scientific. "The feelings of one pole become the anti-feelings of the other." The difference between north and south campus in UCLA is a great example. North campus is for art and literacy majors and the south is for science majors. So north campus has more sculptures, as a way of art expression, than south while the buildings of south seem more advanced in technology. When I walk from north campus to south, I can experience a obvious change of environment like the styles of the architectures. Also, the south students seem serious about the academic while north students are more social and conversable, forming two different cultures on campus.

Biomedical Library (South)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=st5Iq65ntXo

Murphy Sculpture Garden (North)
http://yylab.seas.ucla.edu/ismen/UCLAPhotos.html

However, this perspective is restricted to the social environment at that time; since Snow published this article in 1959, the world was not as advanced as today and it had not been developed into modern "computer-internet" time. People did not realize how to combine these two cultures with modern technology. Computer technology plays the most important role in the combination of the two cultures and in the formation of the so-call "third culture". The third culture, according to "The Third Culture" by Kevin, is based both on technology and art. This combination offers a new orientation of expression and communication. 

Compared to the old Mac released in 1984, nowadays Mac is not only a computing machine, but also a piece of art work. It looks more beautiful and comfortable.

http://www.slideshare.net/iterra/history-of-macintosh

This third culture revolution will spread in more places and fields in the world. I think all the productions that we make today will tend to be more artistic. Also, technology will not only enhance the efficiency and function but also the appearance.

This third culture perspective makes me find that every one on the planet is composed with two cultures. As a student, during the study from kindergarden to universities, I have discovered a lot of subjects that I am interested in. Although I am a math major now, I am still trying to take more art and humanities classes on north campus. I find that, as a member of this diverse society, every one has some contacts with the combination of arts and science such as sci-fi. These kinds of combination make our world a better place to explore and enjoy.


Resources:

Snow, C. P. “Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution.” Reading. 1959. New York: Cambridge UP, 1961. Print.

Kelly, Kevin. "The Third Culture." Science. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Oct. 2013. <http://www.sciencemag.org/content/279/5353/992.full>

"UCLA Biomedical Library Tour - 2012." YouTube. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Oct. 2013. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=st5Iq65ntXo>

"UCLAPhotos." ismen. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Oct. 2013. <http://yylab.seas.ucla.edu/ismen/UCLAPhotos.html>

"History Of Macintosh." Upload & Share PowerPoint presentations, documents, infographics. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Oct. 2013. <http://www.slideshare.net/iterra/history-of-macintosh>