haileyessesDESMA9

A photo showing different viewpoints from the video, from outside of the galaxy to an atomic scale (de Albeniz)                Imagine zooming out to space 10^22 meters away from Earth; that is what the Powers of Ten video illustrated (Lewin). Every 10 seconds, the video zooms out 10 meters farther away from Earth, and once it reaches over a million light years away, it zooms into a person’s hand, 10^-9 meters, at an atomic scale. I have seen this video before, but it never fails to amaze me. One is able to see constellations and even outside of the Milky Way galaxy as well as the atoms in a person’s hand (Lewin). This week, we learned about the intersection of space and art, starting with Copernicus’ heliocentric model, where he suggested that the earth and other planets revolved around the sun (Vesna). During the Renaissance, science developed and advanced, such as Galileo Galilei’s telescope created in 1609, which was a significant achieve...

  A screenshot of xtine burrough and Margaretha Haughwout I attended an event with xtine burrough, and I learned a lot regarding connections between art and technology. burrough immerses audiences through the connections between media art, remix, and digital poetry and through art as a tool for examining the boundaries between technology and humans (“xtine burrough”). She is a Professor and Area Head in the School of Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communication at UT Dallas and also an author who has written, edited, and co-edited many books (“xtine burrough”). A photo of the cover of Art as Social Practice: Technologies for Change (“Art As Social Practice: Technologies for Change”) burrough discussed her books, Net Works: Case Studies in Web Art and Design and Art as Social Practice: Technologies for Change , and their meanings to her, others and the realms of art and technology (burrough). It was fascinating to hear directly from her and the other authors about the books. In...

               The material this week covered nanotechnology and art, which “go beyond everything we know” and “pushes us over the edge,” as Professor Vesna said (Vesna). I did not know very much about nanotechnology, so it was fascinating to learn about from Dr. Gimzewski.                Nanotechnology is technology, science, and engineering at the nanoscale, 1-100 nanometers (“What Is Nanotechnology?”). However, nanotechnology is “more a new science than technology” (Vesna and Gimzewski). A nanometer is 10 -9 or 0.000000001, which is very small. In his lecture, Dr. Gimzewski showed a scale of the sizes of different objects and particles, and it was crazy to me how small they could be. For example, a human is measured in meters, ants in millimeters, cells in micrometers, and viruses in nanometers (Gimzewski). Encyclopedia Britannica vs. a pin (Stern; “Straight Pin Images”) In Richard Feynman’s...

This week’s material discussed neuroscience and art. These topics stem from  consciousness, dreams, remembering, mental states, optical illusions, and more. I did not know very much about these topics, so I thought the material was fascinating. Neuroscience studies how the nervous system and the brain function (Nordqvist). The brain impacts cognitive functions and people’s behavior. As Professor Vesna notes, neuroscience does not only regard the brain, but it also includes how the brain functions when it is altered, by psychiatric disorders, the influence of drugs, and optical illusions (Vesna). A drawing of the brain by Ramón y Cajal (Smith) Santiago Ramón y Cajal, a pioneering neuroscientist, is considered the “father of modern neuroscience” (Vesna). He contributed to the microscopic structure of the nervous system and brain, and discovered evidence for the “neuron theory.” He also won a Nobel Peace Prize for his contributions and work regarding the structure of the nervous sys...

       This week’s material covered the intersection of biotechnology and art, which includes many controversial topics, such as experimentation with animals, breeding animals, GMOs, and much more (Vesna). Nature, and the manipulation of it, is a large part of Bioart. In fact, Joe Davis, a pioneer of Bioart, posed the critical questions of what is life and what it means to manipulate it (Davis). Many artists and scientists use, test on, and experiment with animals in order to make new discoveries. It is very controversial because many scientists and artists desire to perform experiments to learn, explore, or create a piece of art; however, many people, such as myself, think it is not ethical to and find it cruel to test and experiment with living animals. Kac’s fluorescent bunny named “Alba” (“Transgenic Bunny by Eduardo Kac”) Transgenic art, genetic engineering and art, is when genes are transferred into organisms (Vesna). For example, Eduardo Kac inserted genes...