Event - Coachella

The Coachella Valley music and Arts festival is one of the most awaited events of the year in Southern California. Popular artists from a variety of genres including rock, electronic dance music, hip hop, indie etc. perform in the desert in the California desert in a spectacle that is a true oasis for music fans. In addition to the performances the entire valley has several modern art sculptures and installations that truly are a wonder.

The festival is truly a reflection of modern art in terms of the music, the art of performing live, and the spectacularly designed sculptures. While most artists good performers some were clearly better than others. I learned that there is so much more to performing live than getting the music right. The more experienced artists were engaging, they interacted with the crowd a lot more, the lights complimented the music very well, and most importantly they had a surprise element. Great performers often played a mix of their most popular songs that had never been played before.

The festival illustrated how science can be applied to enhance art. Light and screen displays for some performances were truly spectacular. Even the art installations were enrapturing. My favorite one was the balloon chain. It really looks like a string of stars that have gravitated around the festival. It must have been challenging to align the balloons in such a manner without any support base on the ground. Occasionally, parts of the string would be released and design would be altered. Looking at it from down under, really makes you feel like you are in paradise.

It was also really amazing to see how diverse and subjective art can be. I often heard people talk about their favorite artists, and range in selection was very interesting. Even within the same genre people just preferred different artists. When somebody in the restroom line asked me which artists I was going to see that night, he was quite surprised. His list was completely different, yet he was just as excited. 

Event - Getty Villa

Have you ever seen a scene from a movie or TV show set in a beautiful garden in ancient times? In a recent episode of the popular HBO series, Game of Thrones, the beautiful princess Myrcella is shown walking in the gardens of Dorne. A few weeks back I visited the gardens at the Getty Villa, and I truly felt that I had been transported back in time. There was splendid artwork on the pillars and walls that mimicked the rich decorations of ancient times. There were multifarious flowers and a sort of tunnel of leaves that made me feel like I was in a royal palace when I was really in a museum.

Apart from the gardens the museum also has up for display precious treasures of ancient civilizations, including a real mummy. The Mummy of Herakleides, is particularly interesting as it combines the Egyptian custom of mummification of the dead with the Roman tradition of individualized portraiture. The face of Herkleides is painted on the mummy and even after 2000 years one can see the subtle lines of shading for the contours of the face. The mummy also has painted on it the Egyptian symbols of protection and rebirth which gives a lot of insight into why Egyptians mummified important people of ancient times.

Having taken a class on Greek History, I learned about how Greek Pottery provides a valuable insight into the diverse cultures and practices of ancient Greeks, as well as Greek Mythology. The image below is that of a ritual vessel, portraying the scene from the Illiad, when Menelaus found Helen at Troy. Helen originally married to Menelaus had eloped with Paris, a prince of Troy. Menelaus had intended to kill her when he found her at Troy but he dropped his sword at the sight of her beautiful body. Standing between Menelaus and Helen is Aphrodite, the goddess of love, and the source of Helen’s erotic power. Greek mythology heavily features divine intervention in the affairs of humans and this ritual vessel is a great illustration. 

Event - 24th Annual Santa Monica Sustainability Festival

Many would consider ‘sustainable’ to be a scientific term. The 24^th Annual Santa Monica Festival held at Clover Park did a fantastic job of using art to convince people to adopt simple sustainable practices. The recent heat wave in India killed 2300 people, making it the 5^th deadliest heat wave in history. Climate change is not a myth; it is a threat to future life on earth. Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases do not allow heat from the sun to escape the earth’s atmosphere. While this insulation is necessary to keep the planet warm, excess carbon dioxide emissions due to burning coal and driving gasoline-powered cars, are trapping excessive heat within the earth’s atmosphere. The result is an increase in global temperatures that could cause deadly droughts and floods. As part of its Save a Ton campaign, at the festival, EcoMotion inflated a large balloon to simulate what a ton of carbon dioxide looks like. Greenhouse gases are invisible and we can see the dangerous amounts we are emitting every day. The balloon is so big that it would dwarf a large double-decker bus. Yet it is a month of emissions for the average Californian. This is an extremely innovative way to bring about awareness as physiologically, once one has a visual frame of reference it is much easier to comprehend the scale of the problem.

Another sustainable endeavor that would prevent pollution, preserve depleting natural resources and restrict the release of greenhouse gases, is using solar energy in our very homes. There were several stalls at the festival with easy and convenient solutions to use solar energy. The HERO program for example, is a very affordable way to make renewable energy upgrades to your home. It facilitates the installation of under floor insulation, small wind turbine, roof solar panels, etc. that allow households to harness renewable energy, in a manner which is sustainable and energy efficient.

In order to promote recycling, one of the stalls displayed bottle cap art. It is elaborate art work made from recycled bottle caps. While everybody knows that we should recycle plastic bottles, we often forget or don’t bother. Yet such displays of art illustrate that even seemingly useless things like used bottle caps can have value, and we should really endeavor to preserve and reuse things.

Week 9 Space + Art

I have always been fascinated by space. However, it was only when I visited Iceland last summer that I got to witness the artistic beauty of space. The dancing lights of the aurora, better known as the northern lights or Aurora borealis, are formed due to collisions between gaseous particles in the earth’s atmosphere with charged particles from the suns atmosphere. I had only seen pictures of the northern lights before, but as we were in our car driving the sky began to turn green, and I felt like I was in a painting. The northern lights were a natural occurrence of art and science and it was truly beautiful.

It was not until 1960 that an actual image of earth was captured by a Russian satellite (Miller, 2013). It is extremely interesting to look at artists depictions of what earth looked like before an image of earth was widely available for people to see. Everyone knew what the shapes of the continents were but artists still had to accurately depict earth’s cloud cover to make their paintings realistic. The similarity between the paintings and what earth looks like is truly remarkable.

Painting by Chesley Bonestell, 1956

Anthropocentricity is a philosophical viewpoint that argues that humans are the center of the Universe. Looking back through history to analyze how theories about space were accepted, teaches us a lot about our anthropocentric nature. The Church believed in geocentricism, implying that the earth was at the center of the universe. Aristarchus (c. 310-230 B.C.) was probably the first to suggest that the earth orbits the sun. Copernicus (1473-1543) then begun the Copernican revolution, seriously challenging the geocentric paradigm (Benett, 2010). However it was not until 1822, that the Church officially agreed with the heliocentric theory (Long, 2008). It is extremely interesting to note that evidence for a heliocentric world had been there for over two millennia, yet an authority figure like the Church could suppress an idea so revolutionary.

The geocentric model of our solar system

 References

Bennett, Jeffrey O. The Cosmic Perspective. Boston: Addison-Wesley, 2010. Print.

Long, Tony. "Sept. 11, 1822: Church Admits It's Not All About Us." WIRED. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 May 2015. <http://archive.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/09/dayintech_0911>.

Miller, Ron. "How Artists Once Imagined the Earth Would Look from Space." Io9. N.p., Mar. 2013. Web. 29 May 2015. <http://io9.com/how-artists-once-imagined-the-earth-would-look-from-spa-455728227>.

"Northern Lights." Or Aurora Borealis Explained. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 May 2015. <http://www.northernlightscentre.ca/northernlights.html>.

Vesna, Victoria. "8 Space Intro 1280x720." YouTube. YouTube, July 2013. Web. 29 May 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dPAmpBiVHY>.

Week 8 Nanotech + Art

The Almighty Artist created the world with several shades and colors. The intricacy of nature is both enrapturing and enigmatic. Today, advancements in nanotechnology have helped us better understand the art we see in nature everyday. While the image below looks like a painting of an erupting volcano, it is actually an image of the underside of a single scale on a butterfly wing (Carstairs, 2012). The scale is approximately 60 microns wide, and the image is taken by a scanning microscope. Structurally, the  design provides both strength and flexibility to the butterfly wings. Yet, it is also an artistic masterpiece. The scale allows visible light to pass through, enabling it to appear transparent. Even through there are thousands of overlapping scales, with a network of nerves and veins, the entire thing looks invisible.

Single scale on a butterfly wing

The applications of understanding unique nano structures in nature are remarkable. In his online lecture, Professor Gimzewski, talks about the nano structure of a Gecko’s foot hair. The feet hair have spectacular adhesive structure. One square meter of gecko tape could support the weight of 1 kilogram (Gimzewski, 2013). Scientific applications of this are still evolving, but who knows; maybe one day humans will actually be able to climb walls.

A greater introspection of nanotechnology and art may be very relevant on a philosophical level. Dan Brown’s infamous novel, Angels and Demons, entails a riveting plot about nanotechnology experiments being conducted at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), and the discovery of anti-matter has great implications for both religion and science. While the story is entirely fictional, CERN is not. Experiments being conducted at CERN currently, can help answer big questions about hidden forces in nature (O’Luanaigh, 2015) that both religion and science have speculated about for centuries.

CERN Particle Accelerator

References

Brown, Dan. Angels & Demons. New York: Atria, 2003. Print.

Carstairs, Iain. "When Nanotechnology Meets Art." ScienceAndReligioncom. N.p., 20 Apr. 2011. Web. 21 May 2015. <https://iaincarstairs.wordpress.com/2011/04/20/when-nanotechnology-meets-art/>.

Gimzewski. "Nanotech Jim Pt3." YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 21 May 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=425&v=X0HCNiU_108>.

O'Luanaigh, Cian. "CERN Accelerating Science." CERN Researchers Confirm Existence of the Force. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 May 2015. <http://home.web.cern.ch/about/updates/2015/04/cern-researchers-confirm-existence-force>.

You, Jia. "Gecko-inspired Adhesives Allow People to Climb Walls." N.p., n.d. Web. <http%3A%2F%2Fnews.sciencemag.org%2Fbiology%2F2014%2F11%2Fgecko-inspired-adhesives-allow-people-climb-walls>.

Biotech + Art

Biotechnology has the potential to both uplift mankind and destroy it. As per a NIH report, half a century ago, very little was known about the genetics behind disease. In 1990, the Human Genome Project was initiated to sequence and map the complete set of DNA in the human body. On a scientific level, if the specific genes responsible for particular diseases can be identified and altered; humans would be able to cure deadly diseases like cancer. Yet this poses a philosophical problem; is it fair for parents to ‘design’ their own babies?

The HGP aims to map the complete set of DNA in the human body

Biotechnology’s direct application to art is also a controversial topic. Joe Davis’ work on creating and using an audio microscope that would enable us to hear living cells is very commendable. Likewise, the project to encode bacteria with a symbol of human intelligence and send that into outer space is a proud achievement for the fields of art and science (Vesna, 2013). However, subjecting animals to zygote microinjection to use them as a piece of art is unethical. According to a Wired article, the death of the GFP bunny Alba, was mysterious, and could be caused due to the GFP gene. In my opinion, risking animal life without the potential to benefit society is not keeping with the true spirit of art.

Alba the GFP Bunny

An application of BioArt that greatly benefits society is the field of prosthetics. On the functional side, as per a Vanderbilt University publication, advancements in robotics technology have led to the creation of prosthetics that can mimic the natural movement of human legs (Salisbury, 2012). On an artistic side, The Alternative Limb Project, creates prosthetics that either look like real limbs or stand out as unique pieces of art. Losing a limb, or not being born with all four limbs can handicap a person’s body and identity. Advancements in the field of prosthetics today are remarkable.

artful prosthetics by the The Alternative Limb Project

"About." The Alternative Limb Project. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 May 2015. <http://www.thealternativelimbproject.com/about/>.

"NIH Fact Sheets - Human Genome Project." NIH Fact Sheets - Human Genome Project. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 May 2015. <http://report.nih.gov/NIHfactsheets/ViewFactSheet.aspx?csid=45&key=H#H>.

Philipkoski, Kristen. "RIP: Alba, the Glowing Bunny." WIRED. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 May 2015. <http://archive.wired.com/medtech/health/news/2002/08/54399?currentPage=all>.

Salisbury, David. "Robotic Advances Promise Artificial Legs That Emulate Healthy Limbs." Vanderbilt Research. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 May 2015. <http://news.vanderbilt.edu/2013/11/robotic-legs-healthy-limbs/>.

Vesna, Victoria. "5 Bioart Pt1 1280x720." YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 11 May 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=631&v=PaThVnA1kyg>.

Week4 Med, Tech + Art

The web of medicine, technology and art, is not entirely symmetrical. While medicine and technology almost go hand in hand these days, the overlap between art and medicine is less obvious. I was 11 years old when I slipped and chipped my front four teeth. While the impact did hurt, I rushed straight to the closest mirror, and it was after I saw my face that I burst into tears. I thought I would look like that forever. However, it took my dentist all of 30 minutes to perform some sort of laser treatment, and my teeth were as good as new. I was convinced that my dentist was also a professional artist.

The power of dentistry and art

Applications of medicine and art are extremely valuable. Plastic surgery for example, can go a long way in increasing ones visual appeal, or even restoring a woman’s feminine identity, in the case of breast cancer patients. According to a study performed at Georgetown University Medical Center, facial plastic surgery even can improve social skills extroversion (Reily et al., 2015).

Diane Gromala’s TED talk sheds light on applications of medicine and art that can help tackle diseases that medicine alone cannot. Gromala’s use of immersive virtual reality with meditation is proven to be effective in relieving short term pain in patients suffering from chronic pain.

The ability of medicine and art to contribute to human wellness is not a recent discovery. Yoga has been known to cure diseases ever since it emerged in the Indian Civilization 3000 years ago, as per The Health Site. Yoga poses are a natural manifestation of art and medicine, and are capable of curing dangerous diseases like Asthma (Anwesha, 2013).

"When you interact with something it interacts with you" Diane Gromala on immersive VR

While it would benefit many to monitor their health and fitness regularly through a fitness wristband, people refrain from wearing such devices due to their lack of an aesthetic appeal. With a very strong focus on design, the Apple Watch hopes to solve the problem through art. My friends and I visited an Apple store earlier this month and were enraptured by the Apple Watch. While none of us own a fitness band we were convinced we wanted the Apple watch because it looked so good. According to a Business Insider article, even the chief of the luxury watch brand Tag Huer, called the Apple Watch a ‘fantastic product.’

The $17,000 Apple Watch

"10 Diseases That Can Be Cured By Yoga." Www.boldsky.com. N.p., 05 Mar. 2013. Web. 27 Apr. 2015. <http://www.boldsky.com/health/disorders-cure/2013/ten-diseases-that-can-be-cured-by-yoga-032485.html>.

"Can Yoga Cure Diseases?" N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Apr. 2015. <http://www.thehealthsite.com/diseases-conditions/can-yoga-cure-diseases/>.

Colt, Sam. "Tag Heuer Chief Calls Apple Watch 'A Fantastic Product' Just Months After He Said It's 'Too Feminine' And 'Has No Sex Appeal'" Business Insider. Business Insider, Inc, 20 Jan. 2015. Web. 27 Apr. 2015. <http://www.businessinsider.com/tag-heuer-jean-claude-biver-vs-apple-watch-2015-1>.

Georgetown University Medical Center. "Facial plastic surgery improves perception of femininity, personality, attractiveness." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 9 April 2015. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150409120253.htm>.

Gromala, Diane. "TEDxAmericanRiviera - Diane Gromala - Curative Powers of Wet, Raw Beauty." YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 27 Apr. 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRdarMz--Pw>.