Event 3: Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous [LASER]

After Joyce Cutler-Shaw's exhibition, the Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous (LASER) proceeded in an adjacent room. This event showcased a number of speakers with brief, five minute long presentations of their artwork or projects.

I really enjoyed speaker Ping Ho, Founding Executive Director of the Arts and Healing Initiative at UCLA. She believes offer accessible and universal tools for facilitating mind-body health and they are easy to implement in medical, educational, and recreational settings. Arts also has a therapeutic aspect that focuses on the process of expression and the self that is revealed through it. She compares art to a drug without any side effects. Studies have been done to show how art was able to reduce pain, depression, and anxiety. Ho carried out an activity at the end where we express stress on a blank sheet of paper, as an example of art as therapy.

Dr. Hanna Chusid was another speaker who is a psychologist and art therapist. She had the same ideas as Ping Ho, as she believes art and healing are very much connected.She uses storytelling, meditation, and sharing dreams as psychotherapy. Dr. Chusid and Ho's speeches relate to our art and medicine unit, as they believe in the use of art as a form of medicine for ailments.

                    

I would definitely recommend LASERS because it was interesting and it covered a variety of other relations between art and the sciences. All of the speeches contributed more to my knowledge of just how influential and important art is, not just in sciences, but in the world.

Event 2: What Comes to Mind - Memory Traces | Engrams

Joyce Cutler-Shaw is a visual artist hailing from UCSD who exhibited her current project: What Comes to Mind - Memory Traces | Engrams from the Anatomy Lesson at the UCLA Art|Sci Center. Her exhibition was multifaceted with a different aspect on each wall of the room. As you enter, there are a series of photographs, each with an image depicted from Shaw's past superimposed on a head shot of a woman (supposedly Shaw?) She includes a description of her memories of her childhood living and growing up with her mother in New York.

On another wall, she projected a slideshow of various images of the brain and body.

On the last wall, on a table, she displayed paper cutouts of images of the brain anatomy. Additional photographs that showed memories superimposed on a head were hung above.  

Shaw explored the brain on the function of memory and the history of anatomy as it is a history of human representation. By framing her own memories and brain scans, she shows how the brain accumulates images from the past, becoming a storehouse of personal and cultural memories. It provides a visual representation of how our memories can look like physically. I thought that this really related to our neuroscience and art unit as art is used to explore and explain our brain and how it functions. This exhibit was fascinating and definitely worth the visit. Shaw, herself, was very friendly and extremely intelligent to converse with. Her work provided a greater understanding on the phenomena of memory and the relationship between art and the brain.

Event 1: Hammer Museum

Though its close proximity to UCLA, it was pleasure visiting the Hammer Museum for the first time. Immediately upon entrance, I was greeted by large, vibrant murals of Maya Hayuk that spanned across the walls of the lobby room. In stunning colors and intricate patterns, Hayuk makes references to outer space, traditional Ukrainian crafts, airbrushed manicures, and mandalas. She weaves together pop culture and painting practices to a psychadelic art experience. Thus already, you can say my attention was captured.

Me pictured above.

Maya Hayuk's murals

Walking past the lobby and up the stairs, I made my way towards the first exhibition, Forrest Bess: Seeing Things Invisible. His paintings and works were.. very abstract. In a sense, I didn't really understand them until I conducted further research on his background. Accordingly, he was a man who lived in a very small community that had no museum and no tradition of art. He was also a homosexual that believed if he made an incision at the base of his penis, it would lead to the unification of the conscious and subconscious mind, and therefore to immortality. There are a display of the pages of his actual thesis and Polaroids of his self-surgery that was disturbing yet fascinating. In all his paintings, he used symbols that came from his visions, the unconsciousness he hoped his surgery would help him better access. These symbols are recorded and decoded in his writing "Primer of Basic Primordial Symbolism" which is included in the exhibition. 

Forrest Bess - Untitled (The Spider), 1970

Forrest Bess - The Penetrator, 1967

After Forrest Bess's exhibition, I visited James Welling: Monograph. Undoubtedly, I enjoyed James Welling's exhibition more. He created ridiculously beautiful photos to address an array of ideas: personal and cultural memory, realism and transparency, abstraction and representation, optics and description, and the material and chemical nature of photography. He redefines our definition of a photograph and offers a new paradigm for contemporary art. Out of all his projects, the two that captured my eyes were "Light Sources" and "Flowers". "Light Sources" marked his first use of digital technology. They were a series of images that would be united by their dissimilarity from one another. In "Flowers", Welling exposes blooms onto film and exposed them to light. He uses color gels behind the negative and then prints it onto chromogenic paper, creating these beautiful, dream like image.

James Welling - Light Sources

James Welling - Flowers

Overall, I really enjoyed my time spent at Hammer. It's a perfect museum for those who aren't particularly interested in art, but still has some appreciation for it. It is pretty small for a museum, but it was still impressive with the quality of presented works of arts. Each gallery was different, which offers something for everyone. Additionally, it has a lovely outdoor seating area to relax with couches and ping pong table. I definitely recommend Hammer Museum as I will be back too!

Works Cited

Boyd, Robert. "Forrest Bess: Seeing Things Invisible." Glasstire. Glasstire, 23 Apr 2013. Web. 12 Dec 2013 <http://glasstire.com/2013/04/23/forrest-bess-seeing-things-invisible/>

"Forrest Bess: Seeing Things Invisible." Hammer. Hammer, n.d. Web. 12 Dec 2013. <http://hammer.ucla.edu/exhibitions/detail/exhibition_id/242>

"Hammer Projects: Maya Hayuk." Hammer. Hammer, n.d. Web. 12 Dec 2013. <http://hammer.ucla.edu/exhibitions/detail/exhibition_id/238>

"James Welling: Monograph." Hammer. Hammer, n.d. Web. 12 Dec 2013. <http://hammer.ucla.edu/exhibitions/detail/exhibition_id/241>

Knight, Christoper. "Review: The Hammer's Forrest Bess retrospective a commanding vision." Arts&Culture. Los Angeles Times, 16 Oct 2013. Web. 12 Dec 2013. 

Mizota, Sharon. "Review: James Welling searches for beauty." Arts&Culture. Los Angeles Times, 18 Oct 2013. Web. 12 Dec 2013. <http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-review-james-welling-at-the-hammer-20131001,0,7280691.story#axzz2nFHdgEQZ>

Space + Art

We end our journey in Desma 9 at space, the final frontier. Space exploration has helped us address the fundamental questions about our place in the Universe and the history of our planet Earth. Though landing on the moon had been a monumental event in our history, virtually nothing of space has actually been explored. Carl Sagan reminds us about our humble existence: the Earth is just a pale blue dot in the sea of stars and dust that makes up our Universe. I highly recommend you to visit the site:  http://scaleofuniverse.com/ an interactive flash animation that provides a scale and information of different objects in our universe.

The Earth, dubbed 'Pale Blue Dot', taken by Voyager 1.

So how do we go about understand the vast unknown and unexplored that is space? What is the relationship between art and space? Well, art has the potential to expand our comprehension of the universe. Artists and writers transform this scientific mystery into images and and scenarios that introduce space to the general public as a broader form of understanding. Artist Arthur Woods created the Cosmic Dancer to investigate the properties of sculpture in zero gravity and to examine the integration of art into space. This sculpture is characterized by twisted geometric shapes that enabled it to perceived from an infinite number of perspectives and allowed them to "dance"in space.

The Cosmic Dancer

Richard Clar is another artist that brings together art and space. He transforms state-of-the-art technology into contemporary art that encompasses environmental issues ranging from space environment issues and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). I was most intrigued by his Space Flight Dolphin (SFD), an art-in-space SETI sculpture deployed in low-Earth orbut from the cargo bay of the US Space Shuttle. The sculpture transmitted a signal modulated by dolphin voices that may be sensed by extraterrestrial intelligence. As it orbits the Earth, the dolphin voices are monitored around the world, providing a link between different people and cultures and transcending the boundaries of time and culture.

Space Flight Dolphin

Space is truly marvelous to me. There are no firm boundary where it begins and ends. The Earth is just one little planet in our solar system in only one of the many solar systems in the milk way galaxy and there are countless galaxies out there. Exploration of space allows us to realize the importance of our planet and its history. While we may be small and insignificant in the Universe, the Earth is still our home.

  

Works Cited

Car, Richard. "Space Flight Dolphin." Art Technologies. N.p.,n.d. Web. 1 Dec 2013. <http://www.arttechnologies.com/site-2005/projects/space-dolphin.html>

Dorneanu, Lucian. "Did You Know How Insignificant the Earth Really is in the Universe?" Softpedia. Softpedia, 7 Jul 2007. Web. 1 Dec 2013. <http://news.softpedia.com/news/Did-You-Know-How-Insignificant-the-Earth-Really-Is-in-the-Universe-59306.shtml>

"Solar System Portrait - Earth as Pale Blue Dot." Visible Earth. NASA, 6 Jun 1990. Image. 1 Dec 2013. <http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view.php?id=52392>

Watterson, Bill. "There's Treasures Everywhere." Calvin and Hobbes. Calvin and Hobbes, March 1996. Image. 1 Dec 2013. 

Woods, Arthur. "Cosmic Dancer Project Information." Cosmic Dancer. Cosmic Dancer, 22 May 1993. Web. 1 Dec 2013. <http://www.cosmicdancer.com/cosmic_dancer_project_information.php>

Woods, Arthur. "Art in Space." Cosmic Dancer. Cosmic Dancer, 22 May 1993. Image. 1 Dec 2013. <http://www.cosmicdancer.com/art_in_space.php>

"Why We Explore." NASA. NASA, 30 Sep 2013. Web. 1 Dec 2013 <http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/whyweexplore/why_we_explore_main.html>

NanoTech + Art

Nanotechnology is a relatively new field of science that is already starting to change the world. It is an inescapable part of modern everyday life as it provides the solutions to many long-standing medical, social, and environmental problems. However, it remains a difficult concept to understand as we are dealing with the manipulation of matter on atomic and molecular scales. Thus, artists and scientists have come together to present new ways of seeing and connecting with this matter so miniscule and abstract.

With the invention of the scanning tunneling microscope, we were able to not only physically see the atomic structures of objects but also create incredible images of art out of these atomic structures, such as the Quantum Corral. It reveals not only the atoms on the surface but the interference patterns of electrons moving back and forth along the surface creating a rippling pattern.

The Quantum Corral

Professor Vesna and Dr. Gemzewski merged together art and nanotechnology through an exhibition at the Los Angeles Country Museum of Art called "Nano" in 2004. It allowed visitors to experience nanotechnology by sensing it, even though they cannot see it. One installation, the nanomandala incorporated a 15 minute video projected onto a disk of sand. Images of a grand of sand are projected in evolving scale from the molecular structure of a single grain to a recognizable image of a complete mandala, then back again.

Nanomandala

Before this week's lecture, I never given much thought about nanotechnology. I had no idea of its importance on the world around us. Controlling matter at the atomic scale is being hailed as the next "Industrial Revolution" because it can help solve everything from world hunger to energy shortages. In the field of medicine, scientists are developing nanoparticles that can deliver drugs directly to infected cells to treat cancer, cardiovascular problems, and neurodegenerative disease. In conclusion, from the words of Dr. Gimzewski, "Nanoscience will eventually revolutionize and  impact upon every single aspect of our lives, including the arts."

Works Cited

"Art in the Age of Nanotechnology." Artabase.net. Artabase,  30 Apr 2010. Web. 24 Nov. 2013. <http://www.artabase.net/exhibition/2104-art-in-the-age-of-nanotechnology>

Deardorff, Julie. "Scientists: Nanotech-based products offer great potential but unknown risks." Chicago Tribune. Chicago Tribune, 10 Jul 2012. Web. 24 Nov 2013. <http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-07-10/health/ct-met-nanotechnology-20120710_1_nanoparticles-sunscreens-chad-mirkin>

Gimzewski, Jim. "Nanotech Jim Pt 1-6." YouTube. YouTube, 21 May 2012. Web. 24 Nov 2013.

Heller, Eric J. “Electrons in Two Dimensions: Quantum Corrals and Semiconductor Microstructures.” nanoHUB.org. NanoHUB, 4 Dec 2007. Web. 24 Nov 2013. <http://nanohub.org/resources/3253>

Lovgren, Stefan. “Can Art Make Nanotechnology Easier to Understand?” National Geographic News. National Geographic, 23 Dec. 2003. Web. 24 Nov 2013. 

<http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/12/1223_031223_nanotechnology.html>

Tsuzuki, Takuya. “Commercial scale production of inorganic nanoparticles.” International Journal of Nanotechnology. N.p,n.d. Web. 24 Nov 2013.

Neurosci + Art

This week's topic immediately reminded me of artist Bryan Lewis Saunders and his series of self-portraits done under a different drug everyday. His art gives us visual representation of how the brain interprets and transmit information while under the influence. When looking at the resulting images, one can make a connection between the drug and the output. Sanders points out that if he did not factor in the preconceived notions of cognitive impact of each drug, then he would be denying his conscious and subconscious impulses. Thus, he lets the drugs drive his creativity including the preconceived notions within.
                            
Under 10 mg of Adderall, Saunders transforms into an adder (right). His portrait under bathsalts was hacked in with pen jabs (middle). Psilocybin mushrooms has Saunders looking thrilled with his eyes bulging and mouth in a grin (right).

Another topic Professor Vesna delved into was dreams. The father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud believed dreams provided a glimpse into unconscious mind through acting out impulses and desires one cannot normally act out while conscious. Freud's influence can be seen in Salvador Dali's painting "Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening." The painting shows us a moment in time, literally one second, before a bayonet blade awakens the woman, Dali's wife, from her dream. This image is open to multiple interpretations just like dreams and it is left up to us to decide what they truly mean or represent.

I believe that though the brain is what perceives and creates art, art is able to aid us in the understanding of the brain. For example, the technique Brainbow helps us distinguish individual neurons from neighboring neurons using fluorescent proteins. This method allows scientists to construct specific maps of neural pathways and investigate how these relate to various mental activities and their connected behaviors. 

Works Cited

Dali, Salvador. “Dream caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second before Waking up.” 1944. Image. <http://www.museothyssen.org/en/thyssen/ficha_obra/352>

Cox, Laura. “This is your brain on drugs: Adventurous artist draws dozens of bizarre self-portraits while high on various powerful narcotics.” Mail Online. 1 Sept 2012. Web. 16 Nov 2013. <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2203634/Artist-draws-dozens-bizarre-self-portraits-high-drugs.html>

Sanes, Joshua. “Brainbow 2.0.” Harvard University.24 May 2013. Image. 16 Nov 2013. <https://www.mcb.harvard.edu/mcb/news/news-detail/3677/brainbow-20-lichtman-and-sanes-labs/>

Saunders, Bryan Lewis. “Drugs.” Bryan Lewis Saunders. 2008. Image. 16 Nov 2013. <http://bryanlewissaunders.org/drugs/>

Silver, Curtis. “This is You Face On Drugs: An Artist Explores Creativity Under the Influence.” Co.Create. Web. 16 Nov 2013. <http://www.fastcocreate.com/1681475/this-is-your-face-on-drugs-an-artist-explores-creativity-under-the-influence#2>

Vesna, Victoria. “Conscious/ Memory.” YouTube. 17 May 2012. Web. 16 Nov 2013. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzXjNbKDkYI>

BioTech+Art

The field of biotechnology has really contributed to the collaboration and integration of artists and scientists.  Through the manipulation of living organisms and their genomes, scientists and artists both contribute towards a greater understanding of humans and the world around us. It is arguable, however, that scientists use biotechnology to help advance current human conditions while artists use it as an expressive medium of their artwork. But I believe we can learn a lot from an artists’ interpretation of biotechnology.

An artist that really captured my attention was Eduardo Kac, a transgenic artist who implants the Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) gene into a rabbit. He uses Alba not as a genetic object, but instead as a social object. If one had no prior knowledge that it was GFB bunny, then they would not be able to the tell difference under most lighting. The inter-species social communication should not be affected and the rabbit should experience treatment similar to that of any other rabbit. The project highlights the fact that he was not trying to make the bunny meet specific requirements, but rather to have her be accepted with her genetic difference.

                                                      

If we begin by looking at the technologies that go into the genetic manipulation of transgenic organisms, we should also see how these can be applied to human genomes. Artist Adam Zaretsky addresses the advances in human recombinant possibilities through the Human Germline Gene Therapy. This therapy isolates and alters the offending gene, then introduces it into the embryo before it has differentiated.  This alteration is permanent and capable in effecting subsequent generations. However, the manipulation of the human germline in inducing genetic changes to possibly stop lethal birth defects or diseases creates an ethical problem. It allows human the potential to create a “perfect” species in regards to aesthetics. Yet, what traits or qualities are considered aesthetically superior to another? I believe this is the limit to human creativity as we simply cannot determine what aesthetics is better as no individual is better than another.

                            

Works Cited

Clark, Josh. “Bottlenecks Made Humans Less Diverse.” Discovery News. 23 Oct 2009. Image. 10 Nov 2013. <http://news.discovery.com/human/genetics/human-diversity-bottlenecks.htm>

Kac, Eduardo. “GFP Bunny.” Kac. 2000. Web. 10 Nov 2013. <http://www.ekac.org/gfpbunny.html>

Kac, Eduardo. “GFP Bunny.” Kac. 2000. Image. 10 Nov 2013. <http://www.ekac.org/gfpbunny.html>

“The Stem Cell Debate: Is It Over?” Learn.Genetics. The University of Utah. Image. 10 Nov 2013. <http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/tech/stemcells/scissues/>

Zaretsky, Adam. “The Art of Germline Mutagenesis.” Emutagen. Web. 10 Nov 2013. <http://emutagen.com/germline.html>

Vesna, Victoria. “BioTech Art Lectures I-V.” YouTube. Web. 10 Nov 2013.