amyhuangDesma9

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...

This week I went to the LASER (Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous) CNSI presentation. The event mainly focused on the relationship and connection between biology and history.  To start with, the lecturer compared and contrasted two concepts by giving examples: biology of history and history of biology. One thing that plays a crucial role in connecting biology and history from ancient times to the present is gum. Gum has been used as binders and adhesives for mineral pigments in artworks since 2600 b.c. during the Fourth Dynasty of Egyptian (Granzotto et al. 44538). Modern chemical analytical technologies can be applied to identify and analyze the plant gum used in cultural heritages (Pitthard and Finch 317).  Picture from the event 1: Emulsifiers, gums, clouding agents Gum can be further applied to food, which is another field that plays an important role in the intersection of history and biology. Food has always been intertwined with human history as it is crucial for s...

This week’s lecture talked about the relationship between math and art and their influences on each other. Math has always been thought of as logical and emotionless, being the opposite of art (Xu). However, they have lots of connections and the application of the combination is very common. The historical content of math and art connections can be traced back to ancient Greece where the golden ratio was brought up. The golden ratio (or portion) is now used as a modern aesthetic metric, and we can see people’s affection for it from various real-life applications since a very long time ago. The Parthenon is an example of the ideals of it applied to architecture (Jarvis, Adams 468).  The Parthenon (Graves) On the other hand, the Mona Lisa is the most famous art piece that draws connection between mathematics golden ratio concept and art. Artist is not the only occupation Leonardo Da Vinci has. He is also a scientist and an inventor. Therefore, knowing that he consciously applied gold...

This weekend, I attended the Zoom event Heritage at High Tide: archaeology and climate crisis in the Eastern Mediterranean and dived deep with the panelists into Cyprus’ and Greece’s Imperiled Treasures. The event is very meaningful as it calls for our attention to the protection of the beautiful history heritages in those Mediterranean countries and sheds light on the possibilities of using technology to preserve historical artworks. At the beginning of the event, the panelist showed a picture of a sculpture called “Support” by Lorenzo Quinn. The sculpture was created for the UN Climate Change Conference (Halcyon Gallery). The hands emerged from the Grand Canal in Venice to protect and support the historical building of the Ca' Sagredo Hotel which was under threat from rising sea levels (Halcyon Gallery). This is a good example of art being used to save art (from different times).   Support (Quinn 2017), #1 Picture from the event Moving on to the technology side, as shown in the p...

In the lecture by C.P. Snow, the idea of a third culture that will bridge the gap between art and science will eventually emerge was brought up (Vesna 121). In this week’s reading and lecture resources, discussions related to this argument inspired me to start thinking about the topic of the separation of art and science.  I have had opportunities to give campus tours to my family and friends. To make it easier to understand, I separated the campus by saying that our south campus focused on STEM subjects like the engineering building and life science buildings, and the north campus focused on art and humanity, for example, the film school and law school are both located in the north campus.  UCLA Self-guided Walking Tours of Campus (UCLA Undergraduate Admission) By doing so, I unconsciously separated art and science and it aligned with what I have been taught in my 14 years of education. In the country where I’m from, high school students had to choose between science and huma...