I found this week's subject to be the most broad and ambiguous of all of our topics. That being said, there are a few individual projects that I found particularly interesting, starting with the film, Powers of Ten (1977). Space has always served to give us perspective on our existence. As Carl Sagan said, the entirety of our entire history - all the lives, memories, and concepts that have ever existed - has taken place on a pale blue speck in the Universe. The film gives us a great way to appreciate this scale. We might think that traveling from Los Angeles to Beijing is far, but that distance is microscopic as compared to any cosmic distance. Below is an updated video of Powers of Ten, which has some more smooth animation. Furthermore, here is a link for an interactive slider, courtesy of Htwins ("The Scale of the Universe 2").
Another fascinating part of space exploration and its merger with art is the very images that we get from our powerful space observation tools, especially telescopes. The Hubble Telescope's Deep Field (1995) is the most iconic of these. This image was taken using the Hubble telescope, at the time the most powerful imaging tool available to man, and is technically a composite of 342 separate images taken across a 10 day period. In this falsely colored image, there are over 3000 galaxies represented. The field of view is so small, that only a few of the many points of light are actually stars ("Hubble Deep Field"). There have been two updates to this: the Hubble Ultra Deep Field in 2004 and the Hubble Extreme Deep Field in 2012.
The Hubble Ultra Deep Field (2004)
Updates to the optic capabilities of the telescope have resulted in significantly improved photos, like the one below. These images have produced hundreds of citations in astronomy papers and are hung on the walls of scholars around the world. Though they were intended to serve a scientific purpose, their artistic quality has lead to their widespread popularity.
The difference in resolution between Hubble images due to optical improvements
The final way I want to discuss that space and art have merged is in the involvement many young people have in space nowadays. The space industry looks to be moving towards privatization, and many young people are becoming increasingly interested in the field of study (Autry & Huang, 2013). As such, an entire market has been created for people interested in space, but who have not necessarily received the education to immediately pursue work in the field. Thus, Kerbal Space Program, the massively popular rocket science simulator, was born.
A view of an orbiting space station in Kerbal Space Program
Kerbal Space Program (KSP) was created by a disgraced worker at Squad, a marketing company. The game has since exploded in popularity. The point of the game is design your own space program. The player has full control over every aspect of things; you actually have to build your spaceships piece-by-piece. The game has a renowned physics simulator, which accounts for gravity (which changes with altitude), air resistance, and crash impacts (Emanuelli, 2013)). Though it is not an art project (it is really a commercial video game) KSP has allowed millions of users to create, fly, and crash simulated rockets all over the planet. It has sparked an extensive modding community, wherein users make edits to fabric of the game itself, generally to improve the user experience, suggesting a great amount of collaboration. It also costs much less than testing actual rockets, which has allowed many young people to see if the industry is something they could ever see themselves doing. I believe that KSP represents the perfect union between science, art, and popular media: it is an interactive and engaging game, based on scientific principles, that excites and inspires each of its users.
References
Autry, Greg, and Laura Huang. "Houston, We Have a Market: Privatizing Space Launches Pays Off Big." Forbes 2 Oct. 2013. Web.
Emanuelli, Matteo. "Kerbal Space Program, the Spaceflight Simulator that Conquered JPL." Space Safety Magazine. 12 Aug. 2013. Web.
"Hubble Deep Field." HubbleSite. NASA. Web. 30 May 2015.
Powers of Ten. Cuisenaire Co. of America, 1977. Film.
"The Scale of the Universe 2." The Scale of the Universe. Cary & Michael Huang. Web. 30 May 2015.
The Hubble Ultra Deep Field In Optical Light <http://new-universe.org/zenphoto/albums/Chapter4/Illustrations/Abrams42.jpg>
The Hubble Deep Field Difference <http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/12/Improvement_in_Hubble_images_after_SMM1.jpg/1920px-Improvement_in_Hubble_images_after_SMM1.jpg?1433012296072>
Kerbal Space Program Orbit <http://seriousgamesresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/kerbal-space-program.jpg>
Again at Professor Vesna's suggestion, I attended the Making Strange Exhibit by Vivan Sundaram on Thursday, May 28th. The exhibit is located in Fowler Museum, right on the UCLA campus. The exhibit has two basic sides: Gagawaka and Postmortem. The two differ dramatically, both visually and in intent.
A lengthy description of the exhibit, visible at the entrance
Gagawaka consists of 27 wearable garments made from recycled materials. It offers a friendly, artistic connection to fashion. Postmortem is made up of mannequins, tailor's models, wooden props, and anatomical models used to present the human body in rather disturbing ways.
Spine, 2 13, an example of Postmortem
Simply put, the Postmortem exhibit is terrifying and unsettling. Sundaram has eviscerated numerous mannequins and models, mounted parts of each on wooden bases, then added other pieces to create disturbing chimeras. In the above image of Spine, 2 13, the spine is actually upside down, meant to create the illusion of a face at the top. The pictures below of Echo, evoke a similar unsettling emotion. The front contains the inscription, a head facing downwards, and feet (not visible in the photo). The back contains shelving with various organs placed on a few levels. These pieces really served to unsettle me, which made me more open to the other side of the gallery.
Front view of Echo, part of Postmortem
Back view of Echo, part of Postmortem
Probably the most disturbing piece is Coffin, which is a giant wood and glass coffin with two dismembered mannequins inside. The two seem to be embracing, but lack arms and their inside legs. One arm is placed askew on top of the female form, suggesting that she is pitifully attempting to embrace the male. They lay on a bed of vertebrae, the components of the spine, and other random organs. It perfectly represents the Postmortem half of the exhibit: disturbing and almost ugly.
Coffin, a particularly disturbing entry in Postmortem
The Gagawaka portion of the exhibit is starkly different. Here, Sundaram has used various materials to create outfits for whole (or nearly whole) mannequins. The art borders on fashion, as many are visually attractive and similar to modern fashion pieces.
Liberty, the dress is made of rubber and iron. This reminds me of the Ancient Roman Nike of Samothrace
One of my favorite outfits is shown below. This suit is made entirely of recycled lycra athletic wraps, like Ace bandages an athlete would use for an ankle injury. Though the color is relatively mute, the outfit itself is very lively and aesthetically pleasing. I could definitely picture a high fashion model walking down a runway in something like this.
Pinofore, a suit made of recycled lycra wraps
My definite favorite is the suit below. This is a plastic suit full of pills, suspended from the ceiling. One of the tour guides explained that most pills cannot be flown across borders, so most of the pills are just aspirin or NSAIDs, readily available in every drugstore in the world. Regardless, the rainbow effect is captivating and somewhat haunting. This gives the image of an addict, trapped inside a horrifying straightjacket of his own vices. This is not accidentally located next to the Postmortem pieces, and I believe it serves as a sort of transition between the two exhibits.
Pill-Fill, made of plastic and pills
The most exotic piece can be seen below. This outfit is made from recycled surgical masks, which give it much more color than almost any other piece (the zipper dress is much more vibrant, however). The style emulates a conservative Arabic dress (especially the headwear), whose culture dictates that women be shielded from the eyes of men. Accordingly, it is made from material meant to shield the wearer from particles in the air.
Immunity Cover, made from micro-dot surgical masks
I really enjoyed this exhibit, especially because of the contrast between the two bodies of work. By placing the medically disturbing alongside the fashionably beautiful, I was forced to think about the relationship between our bodies and our appearance. I also was asked to think about the line between beauty and illness, between happiness and pain. The tour guide mentioned the fragility of the human existence as well, though I did not reach that point of inner reflection personally.
A selfie with the girl at the front desk of Fowler Museum
At Professor Vesna's suggestion, I attended the art exhibit by Jane Chang Mi in the MFA exhibit here on UCLA's campus on Wednesday, May 27th. The exhibit is located in the Wight Gallery, which is in the first floor of Broad Art Center. Her artwork primarily focuses on Antartica, especially the means by which it has become populated and, effectively, conquered.
Descriptions of each piece of art from the artist herself
The exhibit contained a number of different pieces, each made differently. There was one large printed image, five smaller printed images, a projection on a wall, a projection on a circular disk, and translated copy of the Antarctic Treaty.
Te Tai-uka-a-pia, a large inkjet print
A closer view of Te Tai-uka-a-pia
My second favorite part of the exhibit was the manuscript below: a translated copy of the Antarctic treaty. The document is written in Hawaiian, English, Russian, French, and Spanish. It simultaneously allows for inclusion by multiple parties, while speaking about sovereignty in the region. It outlines various articles that state how the land in Antarctica is to be used. Importantly, the land can only be used for peaceful actions, but relates to Hawaii's long and troubled history with the United States. Hawaii was an independent state, but was essentially taken over by the US. The militarized occupation was entirely illegal and has been the source of continued discord between native Hawaiians and the US. Nowadays, Hawaii is used for scientific research. Such scientific occupation is similar to what we see in Antarctica, where the environment is disregarded and often destroyed in the name of science.
Ka Palapala 'Aelike no 'Ane'alika, a Hawaiian translation of the Antarctic Treaty
Mauna O Wakea, 5 inkjet prints
A closer view of three of the five Mauna O Wakea prints
The entire exhibit was located in a recessed room. The floor of the room was made of black rocks, likely meant to represent Hawaiian igneous basalt. I had to walk over the rocks and hear them crunch under my shoes in order to see the artwork.
A bird's eye view of the Hawaiian basalt rocks on the floor of the exhibit
The most scientific aspect and my favorite part of the exhibit is shown below: Black Ice, a generative animation projected onto a disk on the floor. The animation illustrates the icebergs of Antarctica as seen from the South Pole. Data is collected from the Brigham Young University Iceberg Tracking Database, allowing for gorgeous glowing outlines of ice movement. I attempted to capture the glowing lines, but the light was not favorable. If you look closely, they are more visible in the second picture. I really like this exhibit because it makes scientific data incredibly beautiful. The merger between the science and art is what this class is all about, and I would recommend that everyone go see this in person!
Black Ice, a generative animation
A Bird's Eye view of Black Ice. It is possible to see the glowing lines that show ice movement.
What should have been Deception Island. The photo was taken before the video was loaded. This is just Google's homepage.
Although it was very difficult to photograph, the final piece of art was a projected single channel video, showing landscapes of Antarctica. The above picture was actually taken before Jane Mi set up the video, thus the Google homepage. Below is a faint image of an Antarctic landscape. You can barely make out the penguin in the center, but it was much more visible in person. This is meant to illustrate man's attempt to be first in discovery.
Deception Island, a constantly running projected single channel video
Unfortunately, I was only able to speak with Jane Mi briefly, as she had to leave shortly after I arrived. As such, I took a selfie in front of the room. Note how the black rocks extend across the entirety of the room!
I attended the LASER Art & Science exhibit last Thursday, May 21st. I was able to hear from a number of speakers about projects they were involved in.
Professor Vesna introducing the speakers!
There were a large number of presentations, but I will focus on two that I particularly liked. The main exhibit was also very interesting, but I figured that others would focus on that, which dealt with the concept of infinity. Those photos are included at the end.
My second favorite artists focused on collaborative art projects, meaning they required participation from observers. For example, they had an exhibit on pink sound where observers would listen to pink sound and the artists would record reactions. Pink sound is very similar to white sound, but is largely more natural. In white sound, all frequencies of sound are played at the same intensity, but pink sound has an inverse ratio between intensity and frequency. Thus, the deeper sounds are played at a higher volume and the high sounds are played at a low volume. I loved their picture of two individuals in the desert listening to shellphones, which was just two sea shells worn like a headset.
My second favorite artists, who dealt with collaborative art projects
My favorite exhibit was by scientist turned artist Tamila Elul, a biology professor from UC Berkeley. She was looking at the similarities between Sam Francis's, an abstract painter, different works of art and histological stains. She was mentored by Peter Selz and conducted morphometric analysis of the cells. She was able to measure and compare both the aspect ratio and circularity of human cells as compared to Francis's paintings. The results were interesting: his paintings matched up extremely well to various different types of cells!
The main exhibit dealt with types of infinity, which I found very interesting, but very confusing. Although the artist did a great job explaining things, it definitely seemed like subject matter I would have to research to fully understand.
A picture of the installation. The lines are made of foam and wire
Another picture of the installation
A selfie in the installation! I had to leave quickly, so I snapped this picture shortly before leaving.
Overall, I definitely enjoyed the exhibition. Some of the speakers were talking about some very abstract or very philosophical concepts that were difficult to wrap my head around, but I enjoyed being exposed to so many different types of art. I would definitely recommend it to anyone looking for exposure to some non-traditional art projects. I enjoyed the way some of the artists approached their work, like it was a science experiment. That methodical approach is very interesting and something I would be interested in seeing more of.
I really enjoyed the article by Professors Gimzewski and Vesna this week, as I feel that it highlights a fascinating subject in art and science: the distortion of our visual reality. We have gotten to the point in science that we are not directly observing many things; we use instruments to assist our eyes. Nanotechnology and astronomy are the polar extremes of this phenomenon. We are probably at a plateau in terms of macro observation in science. This directly influences how we perceive things and how we choose to portray those things (Gimzewski and Vesna).
An electron microscope image of HIV, which we cannot hope to see without modern technology
One of the most artistic elements of using powerful visualization tools comes in how we present the findings. The image above is true color. That is, the image a computer produces is entirely in greyscale, as electrons do not produce color wavelengths (viruses are actually smaller than color wavelengths) (Pivarski). Instead, artists choose to falsely color these images to produce beautiful contrasts (Wolfe).
A beautiful falsely-colored image of quasicrystals, which are microscopic structures
Another powerful direction that art can take with nanotech will eventually be experiments dealing with the human body, much like we discussed earlier this quarter with medicine and art. Scientists hope to one day use nanobots to monitor people's internal statistics, like blood pressure, Sodium levels, and oxygen saturation ("Google Nanobots"). Recently, a cockroach was injected with DNA nanobots, which respond to specific chemical signals in order to correct or augment a biochemical process (Amir et al.). This could lead to nanobots that can change our skin tone, hair color, or even eye color in response to different environments. A talented artist would be able to use their entire body as a canvas for such reactions.
Google X Nanoparticles, which may be used to monitor our health one day
All in all, the important thing about this marriage of nanotech and art is the visual barrier that it is breaking. Art will always have more of an emphasis on what we can see, so I look forward to the creative ways artists will display that which we cannot really visualize.
References:
Amir, Yaniv, Eldad Ben-Ishay, Daniel Levner, Shmulik Ittah, Almogit Abu-Horowitz, and Ido Bachelet. "Universal Computing by DNA Origami Robots in a Living Animal." Nature Nanotechnology9 (2014). Print.
Gimzewski, Jim, and Victoria Vesna. "The Nanomeme Syndrome: Blurring of Fact & Fiction in the Construction of a New Science." UCLA Arts (2004). Online.
"Google Nanobots: Early Warning System for Cancer, Heart Disease inside the Body." RT USA. 28 Oct. 2014. Web. 21 May 2015.
Pivarski, Jim. "Viruses Have No Color." Coffeeshop Physics. Web. 21 May 2015.
Wolfe, Alexandra. "NanoArt's Tiny Masterpieces." The Wall Street Journal 12 Sept. 2014, Exhibit sec. The Wall Street Journal. Web. .
HIV Electron Microscopy <http://histology.leeds.ac.uk/what-is-histology/assets/HIV_EM.gif>
The relationship between neuroscience and art is fascinating to me because we must understand how we think in order to understand how we create. No art can exist without a great deal of thought and different art exists because all people think differently. In today's world, we are surrounded by games, movies, books, and even drugs that all claim to positively change the way we think. This neuroculture is unavoidable and its influence on our society cannot be understated (Frazzetto and Anker).
An advertisement for Lumosity, a popular "brain-training" website
It comes to the point where many people actively alter their way of thinking in order to produce something that they normally would not. Professor Vesna addressed this in her discussion of the use of mind-altering drugs and their affect on artists.
The Beatles, presumably about to partake in recreational drug use
The effects of psychoactive drugs on artists and musicians is well documented, especially the use of LSD (The Art of Tripping). This includes people from Picasso to Jimi Hendrix to Salvador Dali. In the case of Dali, in addition to using various psychoactive drugs, he also devised unique ways to alter his way of thinking. The most notable of these was the "slumber with a key" trick (Eveleth). This is otherwise known as hypnagogic sleeping. Dali would hold a small key in his hand when he was very tired just above a small metal tray. When he fell asleep, he would release the key and it would clang on the tray. This would wake him up just a fraction of a second after falling asleep, jogging his mind. A similar technique was also used by Thomas Edison, though he used a steel bearing (Warren).
Thomas Edison's mind altering napping technique
I think this points to a very interesting way that many people choose to influence their art: using novel, mind-altering techniques. Hypnagogic sleeping has been championed as a way to increase productivity and overcome creative hurdles, though many such sleep schedules have been devised. The most dramatic of these is polyphasic sleep, in which an individual sleeps for brief periods throughout the day, eliminating the need for a long period of sleep at night (Polyphasic Society).
I think all of this points to the fascinating ways we can change our physical brain chemistry and subsequent way of thinking. It is very likely that much of the great art we enjoy today would not exist without it.
I am a microbiology major here at UCLA, so this week was really interesting to me. The one artwork that I really enjoyed was the glowing rabbit, Alba. This was accomplished via genetic modification to a zygote, which then multiplied into a full rabbit. The gene used is called GFP, for green fluorescent protein, which was taken from a luminescent jellyfish (Tsuji, 2010). In research, GFP is one of the most ubiquitous genetic markers; we use it to easily identify cells all the time. As professor Vesna mentioned, this was first done in mammals in rats. Funnily enough, you can actually order glowing mice online, in both green and red. All of these mice are genetically identical, meaning they possess the exact same genes (JAX Mice Database). Most of this is because a given stem cell was altered, and the company simply harvests the same stem cells that are produced from this. In 2009, a South Korean lab did the same thing in a dog.
Aequorea victoria, the luminous jellyfish GFP comes from
Importantly, this experiment was not done as an art project. Rather, the scientists wanted to show that transgenic dogs were possible. Dogs provide difficult animals to work on, as there is considerable difficulty in obtaining fertilized eggs and embryonic stem cells (Hong et al, 2009). This is because dogs are more protected under laboratory animal laws, whereas mice and rats are more easily manipulated and euthanized (Laws and Regulations, Animal Use in Research).
Ruppy, the world's first transgenic dog
I feel that this shows how murky the lines between research and art can be. Much like how Joe Davis implanted his genetic element in E. coli, there is not a clear distinction between science and art. So how do we begin to understand the distinction between a science and art experiment? I like to think about the different classifications from Chris Kelty. The idea of outlaw biology is very attractive; we all like to imagine zany scientists working out of their garages. Kelty describes them as the "gadfly scientists, the kooks, the ones with the slightly nutty ideas," (Kelty, 2010). The example he gives is how to do things yourself: the DIY version of real science. I feel that this is probably the murkiest territory we can explore, because it sometimes feels like education or fun projects, not art. Yet, that might be exactly why such science is artistic.
DIY Biospheres, which are both beautiful to look at and educational
Works Cited
JAX Mice Database - 004353 C57BL/6-Tg(UBC-GFP)30Scha/J. (n.d.). Retrieved May 8, 2015, from http://jaxmice.jax.org/strain/004353.html
Kelty, CM. Outlaw, hackers, victorian amateurs: diagnosing public participation in the life sciences today , Jcom 09 (01) (2010) C03
Hong SG, Kim MK, Jang G, et al. Generation of red fluorescent protein transgenic dogs. Genesis. 2009;47(5):314-22.
Laws and Regulations | Animal Use in Research. (n.d.). Retrieved May 8, 2015, from http://www.neavs.org/research/laws
Tsuji FI. Early history, discovery, and expression of Aequorea green fluorescent protein, with a note on an unfinished experiment. Microsc Res Tech. 2010;73(8):785-96.
