Week 5 - Midterm Project

Week 9 - Space + Art

In this week's lecture, we focused on space exploration and how our endeavors has inspired works of fiction and various art. Contemporary space-age development really started after WW2 during the Cold War. When the Spudnik satellite was hurled into orbit by the Russians in 1957, the famous "space race" was kicked off between the US and the Soviet Union. NASA was even created in effort to invest more research in a competing military space program, along with more funding towards scientific education (uconlineprogram). This tense competition resulted in a stream of scientific achievements, leading up to placing a man on the moon in 1969. (NASA) Neil Armstrong during the moonwalk, working at an equipment storage area ( NASA ) From the 50s on during this time, many science-fiction TV shows were released that influence pop culture on space, such as Planet Stories , Jetsons , and Star Trek (uconlineprogram). The creators of these shows popularized scientific concepts suc...

Week 6 - BioTech + Art

As artists enter into laboratories and also collaborate with biologists, a lot of interesting pieces have been fabricated. One particular project that struck out to me was Jason Davis' audio microscope that transforms light information into sounds and allows you to hear living cells. The idea itself is deeply interdisciplinary that I could see it exhibited in both a science and an art museum, especially in an educational setting for the latter option. Joe Davis' audio microscope (geneticsandculture.com) Biotech art like this validates life as an expressive medium, as it gives a deeper perspective into organisms on the cellular level. Davis' other project on inserting a map of the milky way into the ear of a transgenic mouse with DNA base pairs exposes how intricate but modifiable genetic material is. Inherently, using transgenics or selective breeding as an artistic technique can bring out the scientific beauty that is embedded within life. These type of artistic end...

Event 2: Brainstorming - Empathy

I was extremely intrigued by Professor Vesna's and Cohen's project as it explored communication through brain waves, or electrical signals that can be detected on surfaces of our heads. Since all of our emotions stem from this organ, it makes sense that we'd be able to indirectly compare our mental processes with another person using electroencephalograms. Due to the fact that cephalopods are able to communicate through flashing colors on their body, an octopus was sort of like a "mascot" for this event. Initial set up for the exhibit Octopi crowns were used as electrodes to detect the brain activity and measure waves that are processed wirelessly through a computer program. This technical background ties in with themes from Week 2 (Math + Art), since programming requires mathematical algorithms when completing the task of comparing two different waves in hertz by type and strength. After processing, the computer sends back information to the crowns and...

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