Event #5 - Art + Brain & Morpho Nano Launch

For my fifth event, I attended the Art + Brain & Morpho Nano Launch put on by Professor Vesna, James Gimzewski, David Familian, and Linda Weintraub. As we waited for the event to begin, we were given the chance to explore the room. I immediately came across Professor Vesna's book, Morphonano. In collaboration with scientist James Gimzewski, the infusion of science and art in the pieces was evident. My personal favorite was the Zero Wavefunction work which explores the concept of slow movement. Through the projection of ball like images called "buckyballs," participants are drawn into an active shadow play, creating a sense of bodily awareness as every movement affects the image.

Once the presentation began, each artist and scientist briefly introduced themselves and spoke a bit on the current state of nanotechnology and art as well as their role in the field. One of the professors spoke about how government funded science projects are not doing as well as they used to be. In fact, tax payers continue to show an increasing distaste with tax money going towards scientific research. As a result, government funding of research projects has slowly been cutting down over the years.

Despite the cut in funds, the professor appeared optimistic for the future of science due to the profound effect that art has had on the field. He talked about how the use of art in science has made it much more accessible to the public. Reflecting the general theme of our class, the presentation consisted of talking about how art and science have had such beneficial impacts upon one another. By fusing the two together, they are able to accomplish more than they ever could on their own.

Together, Gimzewski, Familian, and Weintraub helped to enforce everything that Professor Vesna has been teaching us for the last quarter. Science is an inherently difficult subject, deterring a large amount of individuals from studying it. However, with the application of art, science becomes much easier to understand and relate to. Similarly, science has helped art by fostering a whole new subject for creativity and expression of thought. Together, art and science open doors for each other that would never be available on their own. I would have highly recommended this presentation to anyone in the class because it served as an excellent conclusion to the course.

Zero Wavefunction

Event #4 - Staring in the Age of Destruction -- S.A.D.

For my fourth event, I attended the Staring in the Age of Destruction exhibition. S.A.D. consisted of many different works with many different artists. After looking around for a fair amount of time, I came across Lydia Gu's "The Melting Pot." Initial sticking out because of the intriguing progression of the piece, I later found it to be the most interesting and relevant to our class due to the meaning behind it.

"The Melting Pot" is a series of images beginning with what appears to be a bountiful and varied arrangement of food, and ending with a metal tray filled with white shapes. After talking to Lydia about the piece, I learned that it was inspired mostly by the recent presidential campaign of none other than Donald Trump himself. Lydia explained that so much of American food is influenced by the many different ethnic groups in the US, making our food a, "melting pot." She also explained how Trump has made assertions to ban certain ethnic groups, should he come into presidency. Taking these together, Lydia's piece is meant to show what would happen to the future of our cuisine should we lose our ethnic diversity.

I really enjoyed this specific work because I felt it to be the most relevant to what is going on in the world today. It is no secret that Trump's election has stirred up many undesirable feelings across the globe. By using food, Lydia is able to comment on an extremely touchy subject in a relaxed way. Though the piece only shows the progression of American foods, it also serves as a metaphor to what could happen in other areas. One of America's greatest strengths is that it is a melting pot and that there is huge amount of diversity everywhere you go. It is diversity that makes not only our food amazing, but also our schools, our community, and our day to day interactions.

I believe Lydia's "Melting Pot" ties in perfectly with our class because it utilizes art to discuss and portray something that is not normally easy to discuss. However, rather than making a scientific concept more easily understandable, it makes a huge social issue present in modern society more easily understandable. As we have seen time and time again, art can serve as an excellent vessel for bringing more complicated subjects to the attention of the public, making it invaluable to many aspects of our lives. As with my other events, I would also highly recommend the S.A.D. exhibition to anyone in the class. It took the concept of art helping science and applied it to social norms, reinforcing everything we have been discussing for the past quarter.

Food with diversity -> Food without

 

Event #3 - Sam Wolk Presentation

For my third event I attended Sam Wolk's presentation on phenotypes, genes, and predator-prey interactions. Having not studied anything remotely related to biology since high school, I walked into the event thinking it would be a bit over my head. However, I soon found that the graphical representations Wolk created made it easily understandable to even non-science majors like myself.

For the first portion of the presentation, Wolk provided a graph to help us not only understand, but visually conceptualize why stronger phenotypes of genes are passed down while weaker ones die out. The graph used genes as columns and individuals with different phenotypes as rows. Wolk added red dots over the portions of the screen where the phenotype helped the organism survive. The dots began to cluster around certain phenotypes as time elapsed, helping the audience to visualize what exactly happens as certain phenotypes pass on while others die out. Tying in perfectly with our class, the artistic simulation helped serve  to explain a difficult scientific concept.

Next, Wolk ran a simulation on what happens in a predator-prey situation. In the simulation, the prey were represented by blue dots while predators were represented by red dots. The most amazing aspect of this portion of the presentation was that a computer program was able to simulate a real life predator-prey scenario. Once the simulation began, the blue dots immediately formed groups upon learning the presence of the red dots. However, unable to reproduce and defend themselves adequately, the red dots eventually formed large enough clusters to overtake the blue dots.

Sam Wolk's presentation echoed the common theme throughout our class that art and science can be used together to accomplish something greater than when they are taken on their own. By utilizing an artistic representation of phenotypes, genes, and predator-prey interactions, Wolk was able to make the scientific concepts both fascinating, and easily understandable. Wolk appealed both to our sense of logic as well as our sense of aesthetics. The combination of art and science reflects the essence of our desma class, serving as a perfect culmination of everything I have learned over the past quarter. I would have highly recommended Sam Wolk's presentation to anybody both in and out of the desma 9 class.

Red Dots clustering around phenotypes