Week Eight: Nanotechnology and Art
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).
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| Encyclopedia Britannica vs. a pin (Stern; “Straight Pin Images”) |
In Richard Feynman’s talk called “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom,” he suggested that we have the potential to manipulate things on an atomic scale (Gimzewski). He proposed a challenge to write 25,000 pages of Encyclopedia Britannica on a pin head; we can actually write 260 million pages, which is insane for me to think about (Gimzewski). Feynman realized that the laws of physics change as objects decrease to the nanoscale.
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| Lycurgus Cup housed at the British Museum (“Drinking-Cup”) |
Nanoparticles have existed for a long time, even before people discovered them (Gimzewski). For example, the Lycurgus Cup, a piece of Roman pottery, pictured above, is green in the daylight, but it is red if there is a light source inside of it; this change in color is due to specific processes with nanoparticles instead of changes in pigment (Gimzewski).
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| Nanoparticles producing different colors (Moran) |
In addition, nanoparticles behave differently when on different scales; for example, black dots will not stay black when they become on a nano scale as they can become different colors like red or yellow depending on the size (Gimzewski). Nanoparticles exist in many places and have many purposes: the feet of geckos, plastic beer bottles, tennis balls, self cleaning fabrics, glass, and concrete.
The exhibition “art in the age of technology” includes nano_essence, the work of Paul Thomas and Kevin Raxworthy (“art in the age of nanotechnology”). In nano_essense, an interactive audio-visual installation, an Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) an alyzes a single cell to examine life and death, as well as the connection between the scientific and metaphysical worlds, at a nano level.
Works Cited
“art in the age of nanotechnology.” Art, 11 March 2010, https://art.base.co/event/2104-art-in-the-age-of-nanotechnology#3. Accessed 19 May 2022.
“Drinking-Cup.” British Museum, https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/H_1958-1202-1. Accessed 19 May 2022.
Gimzewski, Jim. (2022). “Nanotechnology Introduction.” DESMA 9. Class lecture at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, May 16, 2022.
Moran, Barbara. “What Are Quantum Dots?” Boston University, 5 June 2017, https://www.bu.edu/articles/2017/quantum-dots-breast-cancer-tumors/. Accessed 19 May 2022.
Stern, Joanna. “Encyclopaedia Britannica Kills its Print Edition.” ABC News, 13 March 2012, https://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2012/03/encyclopaedia-britannica-kills-its-print-edition. Accessed 19 May 2022.
“Straight Pin Images.” Shutterstock, https://www.shutterstock.com/search/straight+pin. Accessed 19 May 2022.
Vesna, Victoria. (2022). “Nanotechnology for Artists” DESMA 9. Class lecture at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, May 16, 2022.
Vesna, Victoria, and Jim Gimzewski. “The Nanomeme Syndrome: Blurring of fact & fiction in the construction of a new science.” http://vv.arts.ucla.edu/publications/publications/02-03/JV_nano/JV_nano_artF5VG.htm. Accessed 19 May 2022.
“What Is Nanotechnology?” National Nanotechnology Initiative, https://www.nano.gov/nanotech-101/what/definition. Accessed 19 May 2022.
Hi Hailey, I really enjoyed reading your blog post. Prior to this week, I also did not have much knowledge on this topic, and this week's lectures showed me how much nanotech and nanoscience really are a part of our daily lives. I like how you draw a clear connection to the artistic side of nanotechnology, with the applications it has dating back to Roman times, and also with current exhibitions such as the one by Thomas and Raxworthy.
ReplyDeleteHi Hailey,
ReplyDeleteGreat post this week! I love the background you give to this topic and how you introduced it in your post. The way you connected the nanotechnology with art was really intriguing and introduced a new way to view both of these topics for me.
Hello, I really enjoyed your blog for this week. Just like you, I did not really know anything about nanotechnology. I did not know it was a thing until the topic came up in Marvel movies. Different superheroes used nanotechnology, but even after watching the movies multiple times I still did not understand what it was that nanotechnology is. With that aside, I found it interesting that nanotechnology has only become more talked about recently even though it has been around for ages as you pointed out in your blog. This technology can date back to the fourth century but modern scientists only ‘discovered’ it in the 1900s.
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