week 8

My own first brush with nanotech came in the form of The Magic School Bus. 

Nanotechnology is a common branch of science to use in fiction, as seen by the well-used “Fantastic Voyage” trope. The plot of shrinking a submarine with people inside down in order to enter a human body and, usually, fix something inside the person is used throughout all genres.

The idea, originally stemming from the 1966 sci-fi movie of the same name, is so popular to use within narratives, especially on television, because it bridges the gap between the present and the future. It blurs the line between what technology is currently capable of and what it may one day be capable of. Nanotech itself has advanced technology to such a point that tiny things feel futuristic. “Nanotechnology in fiction” has its own Wikipedia page because of how much its used for its fantastical futurism.

In the video above, the 2014 Samsung Keynote explores the nanotechnology of an extremely thin and bendable plastic screen. One of the speakers bends the screen back and forth as the video on it continues to play. While Samsung is laying the groundwork for bendable phones and tablets today, the products are still currently years away from the market. But the technology is there. With advancements such as this happening at top speed, it isn’t surprising that nanotechnology is used within fiction to explore the both the present day and the future.

""Fantastic Voyage" Plot." TV Tropes. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 May 2015. <http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FantasticVoyagePlot>.

"Fantastic Voyage." TV Tropes. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 May 2015. <http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/FantasticVoyage>.

"Nanotechnology in Fiction." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 22 May 2015. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanotechnology_in_fiction>.

Rubin, Ben Fox. "Ahead of the Curve: Samsung, LG and the Bendable Phone - CNET." CNET. N.p., 29 Dec. 2015. Web. 22 May 2015. <http://www.cnet.com/news/ahead-of-the-curve-samsung-lg-and-the-bendable-phone/>.

week 7

In my second year of college, I switched from majoring in Political Science to English. I was worried about my decision, fearing I made a mistake, until I took a literary theory class and finally understood the value of an English degree. While we covered many theorists, it was psychoanalysis that stood out to me as an interesting and effective way to analyze literature. Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Jacques Lacan are three psychoanalysts who have shaped the way I view not only literature, but all media.

Dr. Vesna’s lecture refers to David Cronenberg’s 2011 film A Dangerous Method, which details the relationship between Freud and Jung. The film uses the father of transference, the concept of unconscious displacement of past trauma upon other people, to further explore what transference truly is. Throughout the film, Jung befriends Freud, already an established psychoanalyst, and begins an extramarital relationship with Sabina Spielrein. In the scene below, you can see the end of transference between Sabina and Jung as he breaks off their sexual relationship and she realizes their relationship was based on a projection of her past abuse from her father onto Jung.

The act of transferring past trauma onto a person is obviously not a healthy basis for a relationship, and often vacillates between love and hatred. However, Jung argues that all relationships are based in transference and should not be given up on when the transference feels broken – that relationships are made stronger by working with transference. This kind of narrative can be seen in any story about the relationships between employees and their bosses. My favorite example is in the AMC series Mad Men (which ends its final season tonight). Peggy Olson, a young woman from Brooklyn, begins her career as a secretary at an ad agency and moves her way up to become an ad executive, through the ups and downs of transference with her boss, Don Draper. Peggy, at the beginning of the series, has lost her father and attempts sexual advances with Don. However, he rejects her advances and they continue their relationship as platonic, with Don standing in for her father and Peggy standing in for his own shortcomings as a father. Their transference grows rocky in later seasons as they grow apart during Peggy’s success and Don’s downfall, mirroring the reality of transference perfectly. Their reconciliation comes in the scene below as the two share a platonically intimate moment. Don and Peggy, as opposed to Sabina and Jung, are more healthy and Jungian portrayal of navigating transference.

While Freud, Jung, and Lacan were all scientists who contributed to the field of psychiatry, their research and ideas have also contributed to art through Freudian, Jungian, and Lacanian theory. One can apply the methodology they created to explore themes of the human mind through all aspects of art.

A Dangerous Method. Dir. David Cronenberg. Perf. Michael Fassbender, Viggo Mortenson. Paramount, 2011. DVD.

Braungardt, Jurgen. "Transference in Freud and Lacan." Philosophical Explorations. N.p., 17 Nov. 2014. Web. 17 May 2015. <http://braungardt.trialectics.com/philosophy/my-papers/transference-in-freud-and-lacan/>.

"Movie Review: “A Dangerous Method.”." BrightestYoungThings. BYT Productions, 16 Dec. 2011. Web. 17 May 2015. <http://brightestyoungthings.com/articles/movie-review-a-dangerous-method.htm>.
"Transference." FrithLutoncom. N.p., n.d. Web. 17 May 2015. <http://frithluton.com/articles/transference/>.

Weiner, Matthew. "Mad Men - Peggy and Don Share a Dance." YouTube. Salvador Parada, 20 May 2014. Web. 17 May 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Zp3qMGN-8U&spfreload=10>.

week 6

This week’s lecture made me consider the idea of life in a way I hadn’t before. My first instinct was to ask why should humans feel entitled to have anything to do with modifying life? Upon further consideration, I realized humanity has been modifying life for ages. Plant breeding dates back to prehistoric times, the Romans practiced selective breeding of domesticated animals, and modifying life has stretched through almost all aspects of life today. Genetically modified foods are everywhere and genetically modified animals are used for research.

An example of selective breeding in roses.

Though my initial reaction to this week’s lecture was that humans should never place themselves in the position of a god, I realized we’ve been doing that any way throughout history. Beyond genetic modification, humans have made decisions, small and large, that have dramatically altered the lives of other humans, plants, and animals. If men can sail ships to foreign lands and carry over their diseases to the indigenous people there, or create flourishing cities in unsustainable barren deserts, why can’t artists like Joe Davis experiment with bacteria?

King of The Hill briefly explores the way decisions have effected human life.

While motivations for experiments and conquests throughout history have been motivated by greed or arrogance, artists experimenting with life come from a less sinister and more idealistic place. There should not be limits on what artists can do with genetics if there are not equal limits placed upon industry.

Let's just hope no one goes so far as to recreate Jurassic Park.

Brown, Nino. "History of Plant Breeding." PlantBreeding. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 May 2015. <http://plantbreeding.coe.uga.edu/index.php?title=2._History_of_Plant_Breeding>.

Buffum, B. C. Arid Agriculture; a Hand-book for the Western Farmer and Stockman. Worland, Wy.: n.p., 1909. Print. 

McKenna, Phil. "Joe Davis: The Mad Scientist of MIT?" New Scientist. Culture Lab, 3 Mar. 2012. Web. 10 May 2015. <http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2012/03/the-mad-scientist-of-mit.html>.

 Vesna, Victoria. “https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL9DBF43664EAC8BC7&v=2qSc72u9KhI.” Lecture. Medicine pt3. Youtube, 2 May 2015. Web. 17 May 2012. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL9DBF43664EAC8BC7&v=2qSc72u9KhI>.

<http://www.wageningenur.nl/en/Expertise-Services/Collaboration-and-partnerships/Plant-Breeding.htm>

midterm

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