Week 4: MedTech + Art

Hippocrates 

Working with the human body is an art in itself and I believe people have had this perspective for a long time, but lately it has changed. Based off of the classic version of the Hippocratic Oath it is apparent that doctors used to see science and art as the same thing. The practice of medicine was an honor for doctors and an art form. In the discussion of how the Hippocratic Oath has changed over time the stance that science is an art has not changed within the Oath, but doctors no longer believe in the oath.

MRI Brain Scan

Science has always been an art form and while practicing medicine an artist’s canvas is the human body. The different imaging machines that have been created to study the body have an artistic way about them. Silvia Casini “argue[s] that MRI has a “look” in the same way that the portrait has” and I agree with her. There was a campaign recently that used an x-ray machine to show that love is love no matter who you are. This movement is called “Love Has No Labels” and they have different campaigns to spread acceptance and inclusion, but the one that really stood out to me is when they used an x-ray machine. The point of the machine was to show people as their bones so that there could not be any judgement; We are all the same underneath our skin. The practice of medicine has a viewpoint of the world in the same way that every human is the same and our bodies work the same way. There should not be a discrimination within the practice of medicine.

Sources:

“About.” Love Has No Labels, lovehasnolabels.com/about/.

“The Hippocratic Oath Today.” PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/hippocratic-oath-today/.

Casini, Silvia. “Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) as Mirror and Portrait: MRI Configurations between Science and the Arts.” Configurations, vol. 19, no. 1, 2011, pp. 73–99., doi:10.1353/con.2011.0008.

“Emily Watson | Metal & Enamel Jewelry | Home Page.” Emily Watson | Metal & Enamel Jewelry | Home Page, www.metalemily.com/.

“Driessens & Verstappen, Home.” Driessens & Verstappen, Home, notnot.home.xs4all.nl/.

Week 3: Robotics + Art

Society has always had a weird relationship with the progression of technology. It is kind of the same as any generation has when they watch the world change around them and they are not sure if they should accept the change at face value. People have always been scared of technology and there is a ton of evidence of this fear with all of the movies and books written about robots taking over the world. I believe people have started to accept technology because it is an inevitable progression to our lives even though it terrifies them. Industrialization has been a constant theme for centuries because humans are constantly learning and growing and creating new things and having new ideas. That is the natural progression of life and it is hard to stop that.

Robot used for surgery

Walter Benjamin talks about how technology changes the way that we view the world and the way we interact with other people. He wrote about this in 1936, but over time his words have continued to bring light to what is going on. His comparison of magician and surgeon to painter and cameraman has only become more prevalent as more and more technology has been created. Now we have movies that are completely animated and made almost solely by a computer and we have machines that perform surgeries with the surgeons barely touching them. People might be uncomfortable by this fact and it can change the way we view the world, but it is how we have adapted and changed to the world around us.

Walter Benjamin

We are still producing the same content that we were producing before take Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse for example. People went from drawing Spiderman comics, to filming Spiderman movies, and now we are creating animations of Spiderman. Society is continuing to do the same thing it has always done, but applying its new advancements in technology to keep the content up to date with the world around it.

Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse

Sources: 

“Introducing The Da Vinici Robotic Surgical System.” Robotic Surgery | Georgetown Community Hospital, www.georgetowncommunityhospital.com/our-services/minimally-invasive-robotic-surgery.

Benjamin, Walter, and James Amery. Underwood. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Penguin Books, 2008.

Solomon, Charles. “How the 'Spider-Verse' Animators Created That Trippy Look.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 25 Dec. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/12/25/movies/spider-man-into-the-spider-verse-animation.html.

Micromagic Systems Robotics Lab, www.hexapodrobot.com/index.html.

Lipson, Hod. “Building ‘Self-Aware’ Robots.” TED, www.ted.com/talks/hod_lipson_builds_self_aware_robots.

Week 2: Math + Art

Salvador Dalí

Math has always had some sort of influence on artists throughout the years. In the 20th century the fourth dimension started to resonate with many artists as the next natural development within art. The fourth dimension is beyond our reach. It is on another plane of existence so there has been a lot of discussion as to how this dimension can be expressed. A lot of artists found this new dimension to be spiritual and something that would transcend our physical universe. It has become in a way a new “language” because the art shows surreal, idealistic, and utopian views.

Corpus Hypercubus

I stumbled upon Salvador Dalí and his painting Corpus Hypercubus while I was looking into the fourth dimension within art. Dalí originally looked towards Sigmund Freud for inspiration during the Surrealist period, but over time he has been drawn towards Dr. Heisenberg and physics. He worked on a painting heavily influenced by science and the fourth dimension for five years trying to perfect his vision and in 1954 he revealed Corpus Hypercubus. This painting is how he envisions the fourth dimension. It consists of Jesus on the cross but there aren’t any nails and the cross is a tesseract. A lot of people feel that the painting has drawn connections between religion and science.

Tesseract

Math is very straightforward and simple if you know how it works. Art is very interpretive and doesn’t necessarily follow any rules. You would think that the two would not mix well but it is these differences that make them work together. The juxtaposition between the two fields draws out creativity from both sides.

Sources:

Vesna, Victoria. “Mathematics-pt1-ZeroPerspectiveGoldenMean.mov.” Cole UC online. Youtube, 9 April 2012. Web. 11 Oct. 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMmq5B1LKDg&feature=player_embedded>

Henderson, Linda Dalrymple. “The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art: Conclusion.” Leonardo. 17.3 (1984): 205-210. Print.

Macdonald, Fiona. “Culture - The Painter Who Entered the Fourth Dimension.” BBC, BBC, 11 May 2016, www.bbc.com/culture/story/20160511-the-painter-who-entered-the-fourth-dimension.

Abbott, Edwin A. Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. Detroit: Gale, 2004.

Ouellette, Jennifer. "Pollock's Fractals." Discover Magazine. November 1, 2001. Accessed April 14, 2019. http://discovermagazine.com/2001/nov/featpollock.

Event 1: Biomimicry in the Garden

Me with Dr. Gonzalez behind me

I had the opportunity to listen to two different speakers talk about how plants have influenced their understanding of the world around them. They both used their knowledge of plants to change their field of work. I listened to Dr. Nestor Gonzalez talk about how the botanical garden at UCLA brought beauty into his life and changed the way that he processed things. I heard from Dr. Siobhan Braybrook about how her research group tries to understand how shapes and patterns grow in plants and how a self-moving building has been created based off of plants structures.

Diagram of the arteries in our brains

I found what Dr. Nestor Gonzalez talked about to be really fascinating. He is a neurosurgeon who specializes on the arteries surrounding the brain. He has been working on a way to increase blood flow to the brains of patients with high risk of strokes. He fell in love with the botanical garden when his visited it for the first time following his grandmother’s passing. He has watched how the plants thrive and the ways they find water in the ground. He was able to use his knowledge of the roots of plants and apply it to the arteries in our brains. He has discovered that we have to ability to create new arteries so that our blood flow improves. There is still a lot to learn about how this works and it is not an easy process to begin, but Dr. Gonzalez has had a huge breakthrough in helping stroke patients.

Dr. Gonzalez's logo using the tendrils he saw in the garden

It is crazy to think that if Dr. Gonzalez had not fallen in love with nature that we might have never found out that we had the ability to branch arteries off to other arteries. Dr. Gonzalez is a perfect example of how if we collaborate with different subjects we could have huge breakthroughs. Dr. Gonzalez has also created the symbol for his trials, which are called ERSIAS, based off of a plant stem that he saw and thought looked like an E. There is a lot of crossover in life, but a lot of people do not notice until it is pointed out to them directly. Dr. Gonzalez took his love for plants and for science and applied it to different aspects of his life and it turned out for the better. This has opened my eyes to how many different places and things in my life are affected by each other and how I can take advantage of this crossover.

Week 1: Two Cultures

Growing up I could always feel the divide between the two different intellectuals. My mom always told me that I was ADD and that I was right brained. I was raised in an environment that did not encourage me to use the non-dominant side of my brain, it just made me feel like I wasn’t smart because that wasn’t my first instinct. Schools do not support real learning, instead they medicate the kids and force information into their brains. Ken Robinson brings up this issue with medication in his talk at the RSA and how schools are supporting real education.

Playing at UCLA

I have always had an issue with my self identity because I grew up in a creative environment, but also an athletic environment. There was always a divide between the two just like there is a divide between the scientists and the artists. I play beach volleyball at UCLA and I am also trying to study film but they might as well be two completely different worlds. I know plenty of athletes who are sociology or psychology majors and they have never been to the south side of campus.

Photoshoot from high school

Our societies thrive off of collaboration and working together and we see the most growth and change in the world when people come together to work on projects and issues. On top of that I believe that everything can be connected some way or another. I agree with C.P Snow that there is a divide between the science side of the world and the literary side, but I think that we need to focus on bringing together the two cultures instead of waiting around for a third culture to arise. There is so much overlap in the world and it would be beneficial to the scientists to have a creative side and it would be beneficial to the artists to understand why things work the way they do. Vesna talks about in Toward a Third Culture how the scientists are mad at the artists because they are talking about things they do not understand and the people listening are receiving false information. These two groups of people could be helping each other if they would communicate and share ideas instead of isolating themselves.

References

1. Vesna, Victoria. “Toward a Third Culture: Being in Between.” Leonardo 34.2 (2001): 121-25. Web.
2. Snow, C. P. “Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution.” Reading. 1959. New York: Cambridge UP, 1961. Print.
3. “C. P. SnowThe Two Cultures.” C. P. Snow - The Two Cultures Debate Controversy Rede Lecture 1959, www.age-of-the-sage.org/scientist/snow_two_cultures.html.
4. SAlsberry, Christina. “Left Brain, Right Brain: Ms. Resillez and Mrs. Bock.” Somerset Sentinel, 16 May 2018, somersetsentinel.com/1758/features/left-brain-right-brain-ms-resillez-and-mrs-bock/.
5. RSA, The. "RSA ANIMATE: Changing Education Paradigms." Youtube, Youtube, 14 Oct. 2010, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U