amyhuangDesma9

In this week’s lecture, we talked about the edge-breaking technology - nanotechnology, its influence over society, and its wild applications. Picture 1: 9 Camels (Wigan) Nanotechnology, manipulating matter on an atomic scale, has fascinating implications for art. Richard Feynman, in his 1959 Caltech lecture, highlighted the potential at this level. He later on created a 25,000-page encyclopedia inscribed on a pinhead. The 1980s marked the rise of nanotechnology. Eric Drexler proposed precise atomic assembly, and the 1985 discovery of buckminsterfullerene (C60) revealed carbon's third allotrope. This led to nanotubes and the Nobel Prize-winning work on graphene. Picture 2: Buckminsterfullerene (Kon) Nanotechnology's artistic lineage traces back centuries. The Lycurgus Cup (circa 400 AD) changes color due to nanosized gold particles. Renaissance pottery from Deruta used nanoparticle glazes, and stained glass windows showcased vibrant hues through similar techniques. Today, nanote...

This week the professor talked about the overlap of bio-tech and art. At first, I thought the topic might be similar to what we discussed in the last lecture (med-tech + art). In fact, biotechnology and art had a more profound application, not just limited to the medical field. The combination of biotechnology and art requires scientists to work together with artists and the collaboration alone brings benefits. For example, New-media art, a genre of interdisciplinary practices, employs various techniques and scientific methodologies and allows scientists to recontextualize their experiments within the context of the humanities and social sciences to promote a better public understanding of the sciences (Ahmedien). Enhanced understanding sheds light on broader topics like individual’s natural well-being, conservation of environmental heritage, and human comradeship and welfare (DaSilva).   Since the early 1990s, one of the trends in contemporary art has been the intertwining of...

This weekend, I joined the Zoom event Color Light Motion, featuring Ryszard Kluszczyński. The event discussed the works of Wen-Ying Tsai and the role of cybernetics in contemporary art. Although cybernetics is not a heated topic nowadays, it brought fascination to lots of artists and intellectuals in the 1950s and 60s (Pearl). The terms cybernetics and contemporary art are brand new concepts to me and they seemed to be not related as cybernetics refers to the approach for exploring regulatory systems, their structures, constraints, and possibilities. After taking this class (Desma 9), I started to be aware of the connection between science and art but this topic truly surprised me. After the Zoom event, I learned that the application of cybernetics in contemporary art is a great example of exchanging information across lines of discipline and discovering common patterns (Dixon).  Take the work by Wen-Ying Tsai, Upwards Falling Fountain, as an example, the art piece organically comb...

This week the professor talked about the overlap of med tech and art. I have never thought about the intersection between the two fields so this week’s material is truly inspiring.  At the very beginning, the presence of art in medical technology starts in anatomy. The anatomical illustration of the human body resonates with art in terms of the texture of muscles in human bodies and gives us a sense of how our bodies look underneath our skin (Saenger). Leonardo da Vinci drew the human body in his work, The Vitruvian Man , and is a perfect example of how art entered the medical space (Thomas). Studies have shown that in modern medical education, interdisciplinary courses like “art in Anatomy” could better engage with students and stimulate their creativity and thus better understand the concepts in anatomy (Chun).  Picture 1: The Vitruvian Man (da Vinci) One useful application that combines medical technology and art is the prosthetic limbs. The development of prosthetic limbs ...

This week the professor talked about the combination of art and robotics. She discussed the influence of art in the context of the Industrial Revolution. I like the example she mentioned in the lecture recording of Ford. Henry Ford first created automobile assembly lines and revolutionarily changed the way factory production worked by increasing efficiency. This resonated with what I read from Walter Benjamin’s work and the replication of automobile’ art (Benjamin). The assembly line exploited the workers and the replicated production of vehicles changed workers' attitude to car-making.   Picture 1 Ford’s Assembly line (Ford Media) Industrial revolutions are closely related to changes and replacements and art forms also evolved as technology developed (Mokhtar 153).  In 2019, the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation launched a robotic art program, inviting robotic artists to sit together with robotic engineers at a forum and discuss the future of robot...