Week 4: Medtech and Art

The Hippocratic Oath
taken by doctors to do no harm

It is interesting how medicine is considered an art form, as it involves doctors having a human connection to their patients, causing for the introduction of technology towards medical practice to become seemingly unacceptable at first. Yet the practice of medicine is treated as an art, in the minds of doctors who take the Hippocratic oath. Drawing back to the two cultures we learned about, this seems to be another indication of how separation began, with technology and art. This concept also further emphasizes an understanding of art as a tool for human connection, distinguishing it from mere entertainment, although it can be said that the greatest forms of entertainment appeal to the human psyche.

In that sense, if human connection is the goal of art, what better method of representation is there than using the materials that make up the body itself? Through Body Worlds, human plastinates are placed in many different poses, yet this all serves a greater purpose of teaching about disease, physiology, the effects of living in poor health. This art connects people viewing it, to the systems taking place in themselves, bringing them to a deeper physical connection to their own bodies.

Body Worlds Art Exhibit:
Plastinated tissue used to convey
messages about human body

Sculptures seem to serve as another form of visual representation of the human condition. Tensegrity balances compression and tension, seemingly like the body’s own mechanisms in signaling cells to maintain homeostasis. Funnily enough, I seem to believe that this also plays a role in human life, which is not as deeply mentioned in the Architecture of Life article. Human life faces daily existing pre-stress, known as the social conditions in which they exist. Through changing social conditions, or unpredicted natural disasters, greater stress is placed onto societies and it moves in a direction to prevent the stress from overwhelming them.

Balance of shapes, based on their position
considering tension and compression

Sources:

“BODY WORLDS: Frequently Asked Questions.” California Science Center, 18 May 2017, californiasciencecenter.org/about/press-room/press-releases/body-worlds-frequently-asked-questions.

Online, UC. “Medicine pt2.” YouTube, YouTube, 21 Apr. 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=psjnQarHOqQ.

“The Hippocratic Oath Today.” PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/hippocratic-oath-today/.

Casini S. (2011). Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) as mirror and portrait: MRI configurations between science and the arts. Configurations 19, 73–99 10.1353/con.2011.0008

E. Ingber, Donald. (1998). The Architecture of Life. Scientific American. 278. 48-57. 10.1038/scientificamerican0198-48.

“BODY WORLDS: Frequently Asked Questions.” California Science Center, 18 May 2017, californiasciencecenter.org/about/press-room/press-releases/body-worlds-frequently-asked-questions.

Online, UC. “Medicine pt2.” YouTube, YouTube, 21 Apr. 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=psjnQarHOqQ.

“The Hippocratic Oath Today.” PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/hippocratic-oath-today/.

“BODY WORLDS: Frequently Asked Questions.” California Science Center, 18 May 2017, californiasciencecenter.org/about/press-room/press-releases/body-worlds-frequently-asked-questions.

Online, UC. “Medicine pt2.” YouTube, YouTube, 21 Apr. 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=psjnQarHOqQ.

“The Hippocratic Oath Today.” PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/hippocratic-oath-today/.

Event Blog 1

My experience at the Eco-Materialism and Contemporary Art symposium with Terrence Koh was interesting to say the least. Coming in, I didn't really know what to expect; as our speaker was a little late, we had a guest lecture with Linda Weintraub, connecting different mentalities towards art to the different modes of change relative to genes, which I found very intriguing. Homeostasis, evolution, and mutations are prominent in every day change, and it is up to us on what we strive to be. With eco-materialism, it is almost like mutations, coming out of nowhere, yet opening many new opportunities, redefining what one perceives as art. It was a change of pace, and relevant to the material to witness an artist connect the culture with such profound knowledge of both the scientific systems, and of how contemporary art was evolving.

Example of Terence Koh's Bee Artwork

A fragment of a beehive,
passed around during the
exhibit

From Terrence Koh, rather than focusing on specific systems, of evolution, or of attitudes towards the changing of art, I received a reminder of how intertwined the world was. He spoke of people forgetting how we are part of the universe, with particles vibrating, how we don't stop long enough to remind ourselves of the now, and either dwell on the past or rush into the future. As people, we do not recognize connection, or feel it, perhaps contributing to explanations on how the two cultures have seemed to diverge to the extent in which they have today. He specialized in artwork with bees, speaking of bee chapels which seemed to emanate this ideal; as people would feel the humming of the bees around them, they get to really delve into the now, and feel all of the connections to their surrounding, something in which people do not indulge themselves today in such a fast-paced society.

Photo evidence of me at
the sign in desk!

That seems to be what this class is about, connecting systems to a visual representation in which it can become even more appreciated, turning the practical into the beautiful.

Week 3: Arts and Robotics

Prosthetic art which can provide utility,
while capturing the wearer's beauty

There exists an interesting intersection between the worlds of art and robotics; robotics are often seen to provide tangible value, producing objects commonly used in daily life, versus art which is commonly seen as a means of portraying a message, with more value in its meaning rather than in the creation of some tangible product. Yet, there is no need to distinguish between the both purposes, and art and robotics can coexist while both providing this tangible value and through thought provoking message. One example of this is in prosthetics, where just because the robotic parts have utility, it does not prevent them from being a piece of artwork as well.

An audience becomes immersed in the
movie viewing experience

Walter Benjamin brings up some great points about the aura of a work of art, its unique existence in the time and space that it was created in. It seems like the ability to mass reproduce art, the authenticity becomes faded, the messages that are created through the careful production by the artist no longer exists in what can be easily made cheap copies, or photographs which bear not as much depth. I believe art lies ultimately in the message, not just in the final product, and each piece of art carries along the process with it. As mechanical reproduction becomes more and more prominent, and medium changes to something like film, the process and the messages held begin to shift. I believe that this new art style, doesn’t necessarily take away from the aura that Benjamin first mentions, but rather, creates an entirely new aura, given by the movies’ producers and directors, a message that can be shaped through realistic immersion, causing the audience to forget their existence and be sucked into one where the artists’ vision can be immediately realized

AI is developed to have human connection,
whether in looks, or in thought process

One movie that incorporates robotics in a very real sense is Ex Machina, where artificial intelligence is being tested on a subject, Caleb, to see if at any point, the distinction between computer and human becomes wiped away. Important commentary on robotics shows how people try harder and harder to create a final product like them, the artwork of robotics exists in the deception and the immersion which provides value to humans as they can relate the robots to something they may already consider beautiful themselves in their daily lives. I think artwork with robots, especially AI is important, just because films like these provide doors for verbal intercourse, into issues that may arise.

Sources:

Davis, Douglas. “The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction (An Evolving Thesis: 1991-1995).” Leonardo, vol. 28, no. 5, 1995, pp. 381–386. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1576221.

Benjamin, Walter.  "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" from Illuminations. New York, Schocken Books, 1968, Pgs. 217-251

The Alternative Limb Project, www.thealternativelimbproject.com/about/the-alternative-limb-project/.

Online, UC. “Robotics MachikoKusahara 1.” YouTube, YouTube, 14 Apr. 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=31&v=xQZ_sy-mdEU.

EX MACHINA. Film. Directed by Alex Garland. Distributed by Universal Studios, 2015.

Week 2: Math And Art

Drawing from my math classes, higher dimensions did not exist in the essence of space, but rather were used to represent abstract concepts that could not be simply represented in. From Henderson’s article, you can see that artists did essentially the opposite of this, rather than assigning dimensions to different elements in mathematic problem solving, they assigned different elements to further expand their artwork.

An inverted chess board, using perspective
and different aspects of mathematics

 In ways, the applications are parallel, where time can be a variable in equations, while in art, time can add the fourth dimension in terms of motion. In addition, mathematics adds to perspective in art, allowing for different tools to be used in terms of pyramids and such to recreate the notion of distance in their artwork and create a sense of realism, as if the viewer was that far away from the subject of the artwork. 

A picture of the houses in flatland, and some of
characters, serving as commentary on society

Finally in another sense, mathematics can be an inspiration in how to frame the world in the sense of Flatland, also serving as a metaphor that was used to provide commentary on society. As mathematics is representative, it can be used in many different forms of art to convey a message based on how the artist chooses to use that representation.

Mapping of facial patterns in accordance
with the golden ratio

One example of artwork using mathematics is the Marquardt beauty mask in which mathematics is used to define what different cultures defines as beauty, embodying the notion that phi or the golden ratio is present in everyday natural beauty. Mathematics can then extend to not only the creation of art, but can be used as a tool to define different aspects of beauty, which defines new constructions of beauty.

The juxtaposition of math, art, and science ends up showing how similar all these separate cultures are. Overall, one realizes that math and science are just different ways of using representative tools to define different laws about the world, while art in a similar fashion uses these tools to define what beauty may be, and can even be used towards commentary about how things are.

Sources:

FLATLAND: A Romance of Many Dimensions - E. Abbott. ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Abbott/paper.pdf. 

Online, UC. “Mathematics-pt1-ZeroPerspectiveGoldenMean.mov.” YouTube, YouTube, 9 Apr. 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMmq5B1LKDg.

Henderson, Linda Dalrymple. “The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art: Conclusion.” Leonardo, vol. 17, no. 3, 1984, pp. 205–210. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1575193.

Meisner, Gary, et al. “Beauty in the Human Face and the Golden Ratio.” The Golden Ratio: Phi, 1.618, 5 July 2018, www.goldennumber.net/beauty/.

The Mathematics of Art - Math Central, mathcentral.uregina.ca/beyond/articles/Art/art1.html.

The education buildings distributed among North Campus
and South Campus on the UCLA campus

The separate worlds of the two cultures has been extremely prominent throughout my education, and may continue to play a role in my life as I pursue a future career in education.

Math education, in my eyes, has a strange way of bridging the gap between the two separate worlds of art and science. Education, resides in a domain similar to those of the arts, while math is a fundamental building block for establishing the core sciences, yet both seem to be regarded as separate bubbles related to the corresponding worlds, not fully wrapped inside it.

Student cooperation facilitates stronger
understanding of topics

Because of my focus in the field of mathematics, I try to expand my knowledge and avoid CP Snow’s educational dilemma of specialization, taking interdisciplinary GE’s, to expand from teaching kids in math, to ensuring their academic success holistically. The way American education was noted by CP Snow to be more general than British education; this developing system of common core seems to be moving towards improving better methods of education to provide the most possible for students, through interdisciplinary motivations within the context of separate subjects.

The separate worlds inhibit mathematical education as the world of pure mathematics promotes the concept of mathematical anxiety, which incorporates the need to attend to psychology and teaching methods to promote success in mathematics. Education has now become focused on ingraining certain practices that draw from techniques used in other subjects, such as the ability to develop reasoning through words and verbal explanations, straying from the common practice of simply solving problems through repetition.

Sources:
Snow, C.P. "Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution." Reading. 1959. New York: Cambridge, UP, 1961. Print.

Vesna, Victoria. "Toward a Third Culture: Being in Between." Leonardo 34.2 (2001): 121-25. Web.

RSA, The. “RSA ANIMATE: Changing Education Paradigms.” YouTube, YouTube, 14 Oct. 2010, www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=zDZFcDGpL4U.

“Mathematics Standards.” Mathematics Standards | Common Core State Standards Initiative, www.corestandards.org/Math/.

Terada, Youki. “How Metacognition Boosts Learning.” Edutopia, George Lucas Educational Foundation, 21 Nov. 2017, www.edutopia.org/article/how-metacognition-boosts-learning.