April 28, 2019 Week 4: MedTech and Art

April 28, 2019

Week 4: MedTech and Art

           This class has widened my scope in understanding what art is. I had this perception of art as simply paintings or digital drawings, but I have realized that it is so much more. In Professor Vesna's lectures she goes in depth into how art originated out of medicine and now how the two disciples work hand in hand. 

           She broaches some breakthroughs in the medical community, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and the X-ray, that later influenced contemporary art. One such example that author Silvia Casini discusses in her MRI as Mirror and Portrait article is Justine Cooper's video animation, RAPT I (1998). Additionally, Yale graduate and bioengineer Donald Ingber promotes the idea of how architects utilize the tensegrity structure found in the cytoskeleton of cells. Not only does this particular shape "balance tension" and make life possible, but it has also led to some beautiful works, like geodesic domes popularized by Buckminster Fuller. 

Buckminster Fuller's Geodesic Dome

Stelarc's Third Hand

          

           Perhaps the most evolutionary artwork that changed the scope of modern medicine was rooted in the Renaissance. Leonardo da Vinci, who "dedicated himself to scientific studies in anatomy, biology, and physics," commissioned several artists to construct machines he had designed that resembled modern day surgical hands. This laid the foundation for Stelarc's Third Hand (1980). Stelarc was a performance artist that created a mechanical hand with the capacities to "pinch-release, grab-release, and rotate counter-clockwise." However, the question is: how does this lead to innovations in medicine?

Leonardo da Vinci's Crossbow Machine

Intuitive Surgical's Da Vinci Machine

           In 2015, Intuitive Surgical designed the first ever "self-performing surgical minimally invasive operating robot." The Da Vinci machine has steel arms, and so far has a surgical success rate of over 98%. To function, it must be controlled by an human surgeon who sits behind the patient, stares through a screen, and acts as the "eyes of the robot." The machine is able to reach tiny crevices in the patients organs that regular doctors cannot. 

           Other radical artists take their own approach to performance art. Diane Gromala's work with VR particularly resonates with me. She suffers from some unspecified chronic pain, and in my case I was recently diagnosed with chronic irritable bowl syndrome. Her way of coping with lifelong pain through art captivates me as it gives me mental strength in knowing that pain is only a disability if you make it one. Her work, along with others mentioned above, has made me broaden my definition of art. 

References

Sieb, Al. “The Da Vinci Robot: A Surgical Breakthrough - with Risks for Patients.” NBCNews.com, NBCUniversal News Group, 19 Dec. 2018, www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/da-vinci-surgical-robot-medical-breakthrough-risks-patients-n949341.

“Da Vinci: Machines.” LRMA, www.lrma.org/exhibition/leonardo-da-vinci-machines/.

Sterlarc. “THIRD HAND.” STELARC, stelarc.org/?catID=20265.

Casini, Silvia. “Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) as Mirror and Portrait: MRI Configurations Between Science and Arts.” (n.d.): n. pag. Web. 28 Apr. 2019.

Vesna, Victoria. “Medicine Parts 1-3.” Lecture. Web. 28 Apr. 2019.

Talks, TEDx. “TEDxAmericanRiviera - Diane Gromala - Curative Powers of Wet, Raw Beauty.” YouTube, YouTube, 7 Dec. 2011, www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRdarMz--Pw&t=519s.

Stelarc. Third Hand. Photograph. 1980. https://stelarc.org/?catID=20265

Ingber, Donald E. “The Architecture of Life.” Scientific American: Feature Article: The Architecture of Life: January 1998, time.arts.ucla.edu/Talks/Barcelona/Arch_Life.htm.

da Vinci, Leonardo. Crossbow Machine. Photograph. 1491. https://www.1st-art-gallery.com/Leonardo-Da-Vinci/Crossbow-Machine.html

Fuller, Buckminster. Geodesic Dome. Photograph. 2014. http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20140613-spaceship-earth-a-game-of-domes

Intuitive Surgical. Da Vinci Machine Model One. Photograph. 2015. https://www.davincisurgery.com/404

April 21, 2019 Week 3: Robotics and Art

April 21, 2019

Week 3: Robotics and Art

           It is hard to see how technology derived from art. However, when we dive a little deeper we find, just like Douglas Davis points out, that "there is no clear distinction now between original and reproduction in virtually any medium." Cameras, robots, computers, and most technology in general have roots that can be traced back to predecessors in the Renaissance all the way to World War II.

Turing played by Benedict Cumberland in The Imitation Game

           Perhaps the best example of this in recent history is Alan Turing's algorithm. Turing claimed he could visualize code, and while many contemporaries thought this was scary, we now see it as an artistic gift. In the movie The Imitation Game, a biography of Turing's life, he believed that the World War II Nazis were communicating in encrypted code using an "enciphering machine," which is a predecessor of the computer. In his mind, he was able to associate different symbols with words, which led him to be able to crack the "Enigma code" and eventually help the Allies defeat Germany.

           Of course there are other components besides Turing's algorithm that lead to how robotics and technology evolved from art. Professor Vesna cites some well known examples such as Henry Ford's assembly line, which began the stigma of a mechanized workforce. That is why many cultures, such as the Japanese, create humanoid robots in an to attempt to formulate, as Professor Machiko Kusahara calls it, a "soothing balance between people and machine." 

Henry Ford's assembly line production

           But even though technology and art have been intertwined for centuries, there is still one glaring problem that Walter Benjamin points out to us. He states that "even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking one element: its presence in time and space." Technology is desperately eager to combat this issue. I work with this company called TunesMap, which is just one solution to the problem Walter Benjamin describes. Music is a form of art, but when music is digitalized it loses its history, its purpose, and most importantly its meaning. TunesMap corrects this problem by "combining the music you listen to with live action events that happened during the artists' time." It brings back to life the world the artist lived in, and therefore the message of the song. Art, robotics, and technology are all connected. Our part, as an ever-changing society, is to recognize how to appreciate one in the context of the other.  

Visual representation of how TunesMap gives background and context to an artist's song

References

Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. London: Penguin, 2008. Print.

Vesna, Victoria. “Lecture Part 2.” Robotics + Art. 21 Apr. 2019. Lecture.

Davis, Douglas. “The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction.” The MIT Press, 1995. Web. 20 Apr. 2019. <http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1576221?uid=3739560&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21101286048881>.

The Imitation Game. Directed by Morten Tyldum. Performances by Benedict Cumberland and Keira Knightley. Anchor Bay Entertainment, 2015. 

“TunesMap.” TunesMap, www.tunesmap.com/.

Kusahara, Machiko. "Professor Machiko Kusahara on Japanese Robotics." Robotics + Art. 21 April

2019. Lecture.

Unkown. Assembly Line Production. Photograph. 1936. https://www.catalyst.net.nz/blog/agile-and-test-driven-development

Time Magazine. The True Story of Alan Turing Cracking Enigma Code. Photograph. 2015. http://time.com/3609585/the-true-story-of-the-imitation-game/

TunesMap. Inventum Design. Photograph. 2018. https://www.inventumdesign.com/tunesmap-1

Event 1: Linda Weintraub Workshops

April 20, 2019

Linda Weintraub Workshops

Me attending Jiayi Young's workshop

           I personally really enjoyed all the workshops, and getting to better understand the constant collaboration between art and science. I would definitely recommend attending this event because in these workshops we really can see the connection between the "two cultures." But Linda Weintraub also pushes artists to think bigger than just science. Linda Weintraub brings about this idea of “eco-materialism,” which in essence is a message to artists, and really people in general, to interact with their environment. 

           The perfect example of "eco-tistical" thinking is Terence Koh’s interpretation of the honeybee. He spoke of the beach apple, and how sometimes he notices people crying as they exit the “gates of eternal peace,” as he puts it. For context, a beach apple is essentially an enormous beehive that is usually around six feet tall and is lined with honey and beeswax. The honey and beeswax act as a coating, forming a mesh that keeps humans and honeybees protected from each other, yet they remain very close. The vibrations that the bees give off, resonate with humans at superior levels, allowing us to recognize the love that exists in our lives. Humans have this ingrained ability to communicate using these vibrations, but we are not as perfectly in tuned with our environment like the honeybees are, making it impossible for us to do so at this point in time. Recognizing that there is a higher level that we can tap into is our first step in reaching true peacefulness.

Bees are so connected with their environment that they can communicate at different frequencies

A visual representation of our phones literal attachment to ourselves

           Moving towards achieving this mindset is ridding ourselves of unnecessary distractions, which is the main point of Vera Wittkowsky’s discussion regarding our cell phones. Our phones have become part of us, and for me I consider my phone to be a close friend, someone who is always there. Sometimes I cannot fall asleep unless if I am passively listening to something on my phone. A study conducted by CNN shows that the same sort of sleep apnea that I suffer from, presumably because I have become so dependent on my phone to fall asleep, occurs in more than 35% of Americans. It keeps us from reaching higher levels and interacting with our environment.

           Iain Kerr helped us interact with our environment by literally absorbing it as we drank the water surrounding the stinging nettle plants. Stinging nettle plants, while they may seem like a nuisance, have many practical uses, such as in medicine or for cooking. Iain Kerr calls eating a "central motive engagement", and while most of us eat passively, eating is really an event. It is us humans consuming our environment. In this way we are embarking upon this realm of “neo-materialism.”

CO2 tubes being built into a cube

           Neo-materialism is a new way of thinking about our relationship to the environment. Jiayi Young provides the work of a visual representation of the carbon dioxide we emit as an example that represents this new idea. Humans emit carbon dioxide, so much so that they contribute to 27% of the annual CO2 released into our atmosphere per year, according to the Scientific American magazine. To represent this she had her participants blow into plastic tubes that we later attempted to assemble into a cube. The lesson of the exercise is not just in calibration, but also that we can affect our environment with both our physical presence and other intangibles, like our carbon dioxide emission. This is the world of neo-materialism.

 

       

     The human CO2 cycle

Sources

National Geographic. The Plight of the Honeybee. Photograph. 2013. https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/130510-honeybee-bee-science-european-union-pesticides-colony-collapse-epa-science/

Unknown. Slave to Your Phone. Photograph. 2016. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/697706167241197744/

Unknown. Human CO2 Cycle. Photograph. 2011. https://www.ck12.org/book/Human-Biology-Breathing/section/4.1/

Herzberg, Dov. “Are Volcanoes or Humans Harder on the Atmosphere?” Scientific American, www.scientificamerican.com/article/earthtalks-volcanoes-or-humans/.

Scutti, Susan. “Your Smartphone May Be Hurting Your Sleep.” CNN, Cable News Network, 23 June 2017, www.cnn.com/2016/11/09/health/smartphones-harm-sleep/index.html.

Snow, C. P. The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. New York, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1959. Print

April 14, 2019 Week 2: Math and Art

April 14, 2019

Week 2: Math and Art

Artistic representation of a six-dimensional space

           Mathematics and art have been intertwined for centuries. There has always been this aggressive push towards the more imaginative, which ultimately inspires the collaboration between the two disciplines. In Edwin Abbott's Flatland, we can see that even the simplest of realms seek more creativity in life. The emergence of artists learning from mathematicians and vice versa can be traced back to the discovery of the zero. This was a "paradigm shift," as Professor Vesna calls it, into a new world of creativity and realism.

           I never quite noticed how much artists needed to understand the rules of math until this week's lecture. Professor Vesna discusses the golden ratio, a concept that was first pioneered by the Egyptians in their Pyramids of Giza and was paramount to the use of geometry in art. In mathematics, "two quantities are in the golden ratio if their ratio is the same as the ratio of their sum to the larger of the two quantities." This idea was revolutionary to the creation of many famous pieces, such as The Last Supper (1494 - 1499) by Leonardo Da Vinci and Botticelli's The Birth of Venus (1483 - 1485). It was not until artists started using these techniques that artworks gained this sense of realism. This was the beginning of the shift from what Da Vinci calls an "artificial perspective" to a more natural one. We started to see the use of three-dimensional figures in a two-dimensional plane. As a result, artists like Cubists or Futurists continue to try and push the boundaries by simulating the use of a "four dimensional perspective" as Linda Henderson terms it. 

Botticelli's The Birth of Venus (1483 - 1485)

           These ideas have transcended their way into contemporary works. In M.C. Escher's wood engraving Stars (1948), he utilizes Brunelleschi's idea of the "vanishing point" to really capture a certain perspective of the observer. The observer's eyes key into the center of the frame in which all the lines seemingly connect. 

Maurits Cornelis Escher's Stars (1948)

          This discussion really broadened my perspective of many of the other ways that art can be related to science and math. In the modern day, we see this juxtaposition in technology as computers are using extreme levels of math to calculate algorithms, and the art reflected by these processes comes to us in the way of graphic design, digital imaging, and the like. With the digital age, the connection between math, art, and science is the most clear it has ever been!

References

Vesna, Victoria. “Mathematics-pt1-ZeroPerspectiveGoldenMean.mov.” Cole UC online. Youtube, 9 April 2012. Web. 11 Oct. 2012. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMmq5B1LKDg&feature=player_embedded

Henderson, Linda Dalrymple. “The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art: Conclusion.” Leonardo. 17.3 (1984): 205-210. Print.

Escher, MC. Stars. Photograph. 1948. http://www.mathacademy.com/pr/minitext/escher/big.asp?IMAGE=stars

Botticelli, Sandro. The Birth of Venus. Photograph. 1483-1485. http://www.italianrenaissance.org/botticelli-birth-of-venus/

Holster, Jacques. Six Dimensions. Photograph. 2011. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Computer-animation-and-the-fourth-dimension-A../abd87c55ba4148090ae9c80f71925993733dc20e/figure/1

Palmer, Lauren. “History of the Golden Ratio in Art.” Artnet News, 2 Oct. 2015, news.artnet.com/art-world/golden-ratio-in-art-328435.

“Of the Nature of Flatland.” Flatland: an Edition with Notes and Commentary, by Edwin Abbott Abbott et al., Cambridge University Press, 2010, pp. 2–4.

Meisner, Gary, et al. “Golden Ratio in Art Composition and Design.” The Golden Ratio: Phi, 1.618, 24 Sept. 2016, www.goldennumber.net/art-composition-design/.

April 07, 2019

Week 1: Two Cultures

               The concept of two cultures is one in which scientists are separated from "literary intellectuals," as Charles Percy Snow terms it. The idea gained traction during the Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution, but has transcended to today's culture, and now we find ourselves torn in what Professor Victoria Vesna calls a "transitional stage." Professor Vesna and C.P. Snow perceive it as one world split into two, but they are both optimistic of a third culture emerging out of "a triangulation of arts, sciences, and humanities," that could sew the divide sometime in the future. Possibly, that third culture could be one rooted in technology like Kevin Kelly, the executive editor of Wired, suggests.

Visual representation of science being portrayed as art

               Whatever this third culture may be, I could not agree more that soon there will be a bridge between the two. "Culture begets culture" as so wonderfully put my Steven Pinker (a Canadian-American cognitive physiologist), and we have started to see this new revitalizing pattern of the two disciplines colliding.

             Transitioning from high school to UCLA, I wanted to immerse myself in the world of finance. I knew I wanted to be an investment banker, which is why I chose economics as my major. However, I never quite understood how science and art could relate until I was posed a startling question in an interview: how is company valuation both an art and a science? This is when the debate of two cultures really came to light for me.

Presentation slides made by Rebecca Chang (CFA at RBC)

"There is art in understanding and designing certain things to appear the way they are. There is science in knowing how to digest and use that knowledge for financial benefit." - Warren Buffet (billionaire investor and founder of Berkshire Hathaway)

Our school system ensures that we are convergent thinkers,
but to be creative we have to adopt divergent thinking

               I gained more of a perspective into this issue when I took DESMA 19 last Spring. From that course, I first learned that the methodologies of individuals studying either art or science are fundamentally the same, but now I recognize that our education system forces us to believe that they are instinctively different. We as a student generation, have become cogs of our own education system in which we are entrapped in a continuous cycle, and the only opportunity for "divergent thinking," as Noelle Chiang (a social psychologist) puts it, to arise is with a break in this pattern.

             
           

               When I think of this debate, the term 'separate but equal' comes to mind. UCLA literally divides the two concentrations into opposite ends of campus, associating a dissimilarity between them. Economists, like myself, have the opportunity to play a vital role in becoming this third culture that Professor Vesna and C.P. Snow seek. I am excited for the challenge ahead!

Photo of me taken by Ray Filler

References

Snow, C. P. The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. New York, New York, Cambridge University Press, 1959. Print

Vesna, Victoria. "Toward a Third Culture: Being In Between." Leonardo. 34 (2001): 121-125. Print

Buffett, Warren E. “Warren Buffett: Annual Letter to Shareholders 2018.” Berkshire Hathaway, 23 Feb. 2019, www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/letters.html.

Noelle C. Chiang (2017) Benefits of Incubation on Divergent Thinking, Creativity Research Journal, 29:3, 282-291, DOI: 10.1080/10400419.2017.1360058

Kelly, Kevin. “The Third Culture.” Science, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 13 Feb. 1998, science.sciencemag.org/content/279/5353/992.full.

“Two Cultures with Steven Pinker.” Seed Magazine, 18 May 2010, www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BUbVc7qVpg. Accessed 7 Apr. 2019.

Bates, John. Science as Art. Photograph. 2011. https://www.fieldmuseum.org/blog/species-world-thinks-there-clear-division-between-basic-and-applied-science

Chang, Rebecca. The Art and Science of Valuation. Photograph. 2016. https://www.slideshare.net/SebastianHaworth/clipboards/my-clips?rftp=success_toast

Unkown. Divergent and Convergent Thinking. Photograph. 2016. http://thekhalstudio.blogspot.com/p/professional-practice.html