Extra Credit

 Me 

One afternoon on a rainy day I decided to once again go to the Hammer museum. Thanks to this class I have found a new place to spend time studying, spinning on chairs, or looking at art. That day I saw Jeanine Oleson's Conduct Matters. Out of all of the exhibitions I have seen, this was by far the weirdest one. In the background, different man made sounds were playing while a clip of four people wearing similar clothes were standing in a line with one hand raised and a strange headband. In the middle of the room there was a huge plaid blanket. 

On a different screen, there was a clip of an ice-like block with wire running through it. Upon further research, I learned that the blanket was hand woven and that the piece played around with copper as it is something that is in our everyday lives that we take for granted. While I do agree that a metal like copper is in many things we use such as our phones and computers I still cannot fully grasp how this is all tied into the blanket and the video I experienced. Perhaps it may be because as a STEM major I don’t think my mind processes works of art in the way someone more in tune with their creative and artistic side would, but I was not very impressed by this work. Even doing more research on this work did not satisfy me because the artist herself never really explained what point she wanted to convey was. Rather, it was a broad description of what the art itself was and how it was creative. On the other hand, I think maybe this piece is not exactly a piece with a direct message but rather one that is left up to the interpretation of the viewer without any persuasion from the artist on what you are to take away from it.

This exhibition did change me in that now I do not think all art needs to have a message right away. Some will sometimes just take a while to settle in and maybe one day I will be strolling through the park and look at something that unlocks a message about this work. It does frustrate me not to know what this work means to me but this only makes me want to think more about it which in the end may be the artists mission.

Works Cited

Oleson, Jeanine. Conduct Matters. 2017. Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.

Week 9

Milky Way Galaxy

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9e/Milky_Way_IR_Spitzer.jpg

Space. The one subject in science that frightens me beyond no extent. While many fields in science have an element of the "fear of the unknown", space is millions of light years of unknown. In the video of The Power of Tens for example, the office of Charles and Ray Eames takes a look at a man laying on grass while zooming out in powers of ten. At about 10^9 meters the earth itself looks like a speck of dusk. By the end the whole galaxy seems like a particle. This makes me feel so insignificant when the earth is scaled in this way and it terrifies me. 

Copernicus

https://www.biography.com/.image/t_share/MTE1ODA0OTcxNTk1OTU3Nzcz/nicolas-copernicus-9256984-1-402.jpg

On the other hand I have a lot of respect for the scientists invested in this field. The idea that Copernicus could have begun thinking of the stars and the orbits as early as over 500 years ago is incredible! The logistics of the space elevator was another point of interest to me. With the crazy news we have daily on earth the idea of being able to transport people out is something I think is absolutely necessary. With this technology there is no telling where it may lead. In the future elevators may be able to transport people much like highways do today. 

Star Wars

http://a.dilcdn.com/bl/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2015/10/tfa_poster_wide_header-1536x864-959818851016.jpg

Lastly, I believe by realizing that space is an interdisciplinary science advances in space travel may reach the lengths of movies such as Star Wars, Interstellar, and The Martian may be ancient ideas. 

Works Cited

Donahue, Michelle Z. "People Are Still Trying to Build a Space Elevator." Smithsonian.com. Smithsonian Institution, 21 Jan. 2016. Web. 02 June 2017.

The Office of Charles and Ray Eames. "The Powers of Ten". 03 June 2017. Film.

"A Pale Blue Dot." The Planetary Society Blog. Web. 03 June 2017.
"POWERS OF TEN AND THE RELATIVE SIZE OF THINGS IN THE UNIVERSE." Eames Office. 15 Sept. 2016. Web. 04 June 2017.

  Vesna, Victoria . "Space+Art" 03 June 2017. Lecture

Event Three

 Me in front of artwork

For the last and final event I decided to once again head to the Hammer museum. Here I found the intricate exhibition of Judith Hopf. At first glance I was very confused. In a quick overview the room was filled with four different types of pieces. On the walls there was a tv showing different clips, while on the other walls there were pictures of dancing computers. On the floor there were brick statues of body parts and every day objects. Lastly, there were ropes hanging from the ceiling. Upon further research I discovered that this artist, Judith Hopf from Berlin aims to personify objects as a means to give it purpose and a greater touch of art.

Full image of artwork

Perhaps it was because I have taken this class for nine weeks now and see art in a different perspective that I believe this art shows how life and art are interconnected. For example the foot and arm as statues made from bricks to me depict the necessary building blocks of life. On the other hand the robot, wall and ball being made of the same material while being non living things show the connectedness between the two. The dancing computers on the walls show technology and the direction science may one day be able to take. You see, for years now people have been fearing that computers will one day take on human like characteristics and perhaps even take over the world. This is something we learned in this class during the robotics and art section. In these lectures Dr. Vesna explained how in the east robots are being used to have human like characteristics to treat sick people in a caring way. Next, the multicolored ropes hanging from the ceiling reminded me of DNA. The way the strands go from single lines to a bunches up rounded shape at the bottom reminded me of the way DNA strands wrap around together too form the chromatin in cells. Lastly, the clips of a girl flooding her apartment or a car flipping on its side may symbolize the complicated way life can be. By displaying it on a TV infront of a picture of other technology contrasts each other perfectly.

More artwork

In all, this art work was very intricate and confusing to me at the beginning but by doing a little research and sitting around this art for about an hour the ideas listed above slowly began unraveling.

Works Cited

https://hammer.ucla.edu/exhibitions/2017/hammer-projects-judith hopf/#gallery_5a7ad3a22100d6f78272d011bce000b74abf6fd8

Penguin,           2008. Print.

Vesna,Victoria. “Lecture” Robotics + Art. 12 April. 2017. Lecture. 

Nanotech and Art

Medicine and art has been a topic for many weeks now. This week’s topic again touched upon this idea. Gimzewski’s lecture this week touched upon the idea of Dexler’s Vision. This was very fascinating to me as it was a foundation for nanotechnology. While these lectures touched upon many fields that nanotechnology is involved in, I too have a couple of interesting ideas. For a couple of quarters now I have been taken both organic chemistry and life science 3 and 4 which involve studying the basic structures of life and applying them to bigger ideas. By learning the basic building blocks of everything I think you truly get to learn how not only that object works but how it compares, differs and interacts with other items.

                  An application of nanotechnology that encompasses art is jewelry making. In high school jewelry class was a required class in the art department, however, I never knew that would also have so much science behind that. Taken all of the chemistry classes I now know that many stones are creates by a lattice which makes it sparkle from its many edges. In short, the jewelry I was creating in highschool was just tiny little molecules on top of the other creating great masterpieces. I think artists that choose to study art and nanotech have an advantage as they are able to create art from building blocks to great creations.

"Art in the age of nanotechnology." Art.Base. N.p., 11 Mar. 2010. Web. 28 May 2017.

Feder, Barnaby J. "The Art of Nanotech." The New York Times. The New York Times, 25 Jan. 2008. Web. 28 May 2017.

Gimzewski, Jim, and Victoria Vesna. "The Nanomeme Syndrome: Blurring of fact & fiction in the construction of a new science." N.p., n.d. Web. 28 May 2017.

Maynard, Andrew D., and Robert J. Aitken. "Safe handling of nanotechnology ten years on." Nature Nanotechnology11.12 (2016): 998-1000. Web.

"Protecting Human Health: Nanotechnology-Enabled Sensors, Diagnostics, and Therapeutics." United States National Nanotechnology Initiative, n.d. Web. 28 May 2017.

Pictures:
https://vintagejewelrysupplies.com/9115-large_default/smoked-topaz-glass-octagon-jewelry-stones-14x10mm-.jpg
http://s3.amazonaws.com/libapps/accounts/54020/images/Nanotechnology.jpg
http://blog.labroots.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/nanotechnology.jpg