week 4

Of all the resources provided for this week’s unit on medicine, technology, and art, Mission Eternity from the etoy art group intrigued me and helped me further understand the topic the most. The ongoing art project utilizes both the living and the dead to investigate the legacies, great and small, that we leave behind when we die. By becoming an Angel, a living person can contribute to the project by donating 50mb of their computer space to hold the memory of Pilots, volunteers who allow their life to be forever archived through the data Angels store.

Data collected from Pilot Keiser.

I like this project because it allows the Pilots to live on indefinitely. As seen through the lecture, the body is crucial to the human experience, and it’s almost impossible to divorce the mind from the body. However, with Mission Eternity, life is represented through what we produce. Our souls leave our bodies when we die, but the information our souls collected and created can carry on infinitely while our bodies decay. This project gives history back to the common people – one doesn’t need to be a famous thinker or artist for one’s work to be valued for the rest of time.

Inside an ARCANUM CAPSULE, acting as a bridge from the living to the dead.

I initially thought the entire thing was a joke when I first saw the website, but going through the website, and researching further, proved that this is a very real project. My initial reaction that this project can’t be real was a result of the sublime aspect of art that focuses on modifications of the body. Each one of the projects discussed in Dr. Vesna’s lecture stirred in me feelings of both interest and terror. Body Worlds and The Visible Human projects are simultaneously a celebration of life and impending death. It is fascinating to see our bodies for what the tendons and bones that they are, but it also fosters a hyperawareness of death and triggers our instinct of self-preservation, as explained in the video below on Edmund Burke's sublime.

Tying together both the sublime and technological advancements in medicine are prostheses. The eerie new faces for soldiers after World War I were often crafted by true artists, such as Francis Derwent Wood, who "trained at several art institutes, cultivating a talent for sculpting." Artists like Wood were responsible for masking the brutality of war on living soldiers, the same way doctors and scientists create new limbs for soldiers today. Protheses are extremely useful and astounding achievements in medicine as well as constant reminders of the frailty of life.

A prothesis sculptor with his clients' molds.

            Alexander, Caroline. "Faces of War." Smithsonian.com. Smithsonian Magazine, Feb. 2007. Web. 21 Apr. 2015. <http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/faces-of-war-145799854/?no-ist=&page=1>.

            Edmund, Burke. The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke. Vol. 1. N.p.: Project Gutenberg, 2005. The Project Gutenberg. 27 Mar. 2005. Web. 20 Apr. 2015. <http://www.gutenberg.org/files/15043/15043-h/15043-h.htm>.

              "MISSION ETERNITY / PILOTS." MISSION ETERNITY / PILOTS. Etoy.CORPORATION, 2007. Web. 21 Apr. 2015. <http://www.missioneternity.org/pilots/>.

              Regine. "Mission Eternity." We Make Money Not Art. N.p., 15 Aug. 2006. Web. 21 Apr. 2015. <http://we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2006/08/mike-kuniavski.php#.VTWn_K3BzGc>.

              Vesna, Victoria. “Http://www.youtube.com/v/FIX-9mXd3Y4.” Lecture. Medicine pt3. Youtube, 20 Apr. 2015. Web. 25 Oct. 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIX-9mXd3Y4>.

week 3

“Only war makes it possible to mobilize all of today's technical resources while maintaining the property system. The destructiveness of war furnishes proof that society has not been mature enough to incorporate technology as its organ, that technology has not been sufficiently developed to cope with the elemental forces of society.”

            -- Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1936)

One of my favorite movies ever made is Brad Bird’s The Iron Giant. In the animated film, a giant Soviet robot lands in a small town in Maine and is befriended by a young boy. The boy, Hogarth Hughes, teaches the Iron Giant that the robot is more than what he was created to be – the robot is not a gun, but whoever it chooses to be. And, over the course of the film, the giant chooses to be Superman – a hero rather than a villain. The film gives the robot agency to leave its sinister roots.

The Iron Giant meets Magritte.

Integral to the plot is the paranoia and general fear of Soviet technology during the Cold War. During the Cold War, Americans’ greatest fear was that the USSR had technology, particularly weaponized technology, greater than that of the United States. This fear speaks to what Benjamin discusses above; that industrialization, which has bled into all aspects of life, including war, has not been used to its potential of providing good for mankind.

An actual educational video used during the Cold War, 

instructing students to duck and cover in the event of nuclear attack.

I also find it interesting that, according to Dr. Vesna’s lecture, “robot” comes from “robota” in Slavic languages, which means “laborer.” The origin of the word, paired with the Iron Giant’s own Slavic origin, suggest a correlation in how laborers are often poorly treated and compensated to ensure capitalistic gain and how robotics and other means of war are produced with little thought of future implications to ensure imperialist gain. Furthermore, the use of robots to replace people, just as the Iron Giant replaces soldiers, is usually a product of faster, cheaper labor rather than a means of actual technological progress.

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

Polo, Susanna. "This Is Not a Gun: The Pop Culture Art of Jason Liwag."This Is Not a Gun the Pop Culture Art of Jason Liwag Comments. The Mary Sue, 29 Apr. 2013. Web. 13 Apr. 2015.

Vesna, Victoria. "Robotics + Art." UCLA, Los Angeles. 4 Apr. 2015. Lecture.

First image: http://static.rogerebert.com/redactor_assets/pictures/5406099acd3b56bbca00021a/Iron-Giant-Superman-1024x500.png

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKqXu-5jw60

week 2

This week’s lecture was enlightening because, first of all, I had no idea perspective was influenced by math. Al-Haytham and Book of Optics influencing Renaissance painters to use perspective hundreds of years after publication is amazing. To harness the ideas of someone in a completely different field than your own to influence your work is inspiring. I also had never heard of a vanishing point before Dr. Vesna’s lecture, though I have seen it in action and used it in my own doodles and drawings before. A vanishing point lets the viewer feel they are inside the art, as the foreground seems big enough to inhabit while the point where the lines converge seem to end the image as well as suggest it may go on forever.

Through the link to Robert Lang’s TED Talk, I learned that origami nowadays is a direct result of mathematics used to unlock the power of folding one sheet of paper over and over again. Lang even uses a computer program to design his origami pieces before he ever even touches paper, based on the basic four rules of the art. This allows for precise and limitless work.

Assyrian Bull, opus 493 by Robert Lang

When I think of math and art, my mind immediately jumps to Frank Lloyd Wright. The prolific architect used math, such as the Golden Ratio, to create his sleek designs of iconic buildings such as the Guggenheim Museum in New York City.

The Guggenheim Museum by Frank Lloyd Wright

FLW also used math to create gorgeous geometric stained glass windows. As you can see in the images below, FLW utilized the Golden Rectangle to create clean lines and visually stimulating space within his windows. Comparing FLW’s work to the other (more boring) buildings and stained glass windows illustrates how critical math is to creating aesthetically pleasing art that stands out in a crowd.

 

Frank Lloyd Wright's Tree of Life window from his Darwin D. Martin house.

Through this week’s lecture, I learned that art isn’t just something you can jump into without a breadth of knowledge and expect to make an impact. The artists featured in Dr. Vesna’s lecture are all people who had interest, experience, and knowledge in math and who were able to use numbers to their advantage.

Assyrian Bull, opus 493 by Robert Lang: http://www.langorigami.com/art/gallery/gallery.php?tag=mythical&name=assyrian_bull

Dent, Huntley. "Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward - Guggenheim Museum, New York, May 15–August 23, 2009 - New York Arts." New York Arts. New York Arts, 15 July 2009. Web. 7 Apr. 2015. <http://newyorkarts.net/2009/07/frank-lloyd-wright-from-within-outward-guggenheim-museum-new-york/>.

Robert Lang: The Math and Magic of Origami. Perf. Robert Land. TED, 2008. Film.

"Studio Colombia 3 The Vanishing Points." Walk the Arts Living through the Arts. 24 Feb. 2013. Web. 7 Apr. 2015 <https://walkthearts.wordpress.com/2013/02/24/studio-colombia-3-the-vanishing-points/>.

Tree of Life by Frank Lloyd Wright: http://ketubah-arts.com/founders-hall-ketubah/

Vesna, Victoria. "Math + Art." UCLA, Los Angeles. 4 Apr. 2015. Lecture.

week 1

Starting the quarter with Two Cultures couldn’t be more perfect for me. As a Filipino and white woman, the relationship between the two cultures I have always straddled is something I think about often. Recently, I have realized the space I occupy as a mixed race person of color is in entirely liminal – I exist in the inbetweeness of inbetweeness. I have explored this aspect of my identity, and how others react to my ambiguous racial identity, through a piece I performed last spring on Bruin Walk. I chose to exploit the way my phenotype is scrutinized by strangers on a daily basis by making my race even more of a performance than it already is and having people guess my race to win a prize. 

Connecting cultures is critical to my existence, but being critical of binaries is difficult when it’s so engrained in our day to day lives. Even as students at UCLA, as mentioned by Professor Vesna in the lecture, we are divided by North and South Campus majors, as if the sciences and humanities exist as opposites of one another. Binaries like this are so common because they are much more simple to push onto people then a nuanced ways of viewing things. News media very often reduces complex issues down to a question of something being either “good” or “bad.”

The Daily Show
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Those who embark on what John Brockman calls the Third Culture work outside of this binary system. Rather than focus on simply work in the arts or in science, they bridge the gap in efforts to end the gap. By doing so, artists and scientists are able to, as Kuhn says, “shift the paradigm” of the current dichotomy that is art versus science.

As Professor Vesna noted, the idea of Left Brain and Right Brain is problematic.

Now, the question is, is this a good thing or a bad thing?

Graham-Rowe, Duncan. "John Brockman: Matchmaking with Science and Art (Wired UK)." Wired UK. Wired UK, 3 Feb. 2011. Web. 01 Apr. 2015.

Stewart, Jon. "October 29, 2013." The Daily Show. Comedy Central. New York, New York, 29 Oct. 2013. Television.

Vesna, Victoria. "Two Cultures." UCLA, Los Angeles. 30 Mar. 2015. Lecture.

Graham-Rowe
Guess Martina's Race Photo: my personal archive
Left Brain, Right Brain photo: http://claritics.com/claritics-to-host-a-panel-on-the-art-vs-science-of-game-design-at-gdc/