Event 3 Art and Hammer Museum

Chairs which swiveled like tops (lots of fun).

For my third event I went to the Art and Hammer Museum, knowing it was a museum for modern art I expected to find art pieces that involved science or technology, and thanks to this class I found them everywhere.

Artistic bridge built after a past president of the museum.

Jeremy Deller's English Magic had a symphony covering David Bowie

One thing that pops out immediately is the way the whole building is really an art piece. This is sort of a mixture of art and technology, maybe beyond just architecture in that they really seem to put art into everything. There were odd chairs to sit in that swiveled like tops and make for a fun interaction, there was a small bridge built after a president of the museum that evoked many of the feelings of a modern art piece, as well as walls made like puzzle pieces, and ping pong tables in the most serine setting.

Mary Reid Kelly's take on the story of the Minotaur

Another surprising third culture feature was that many of the exhibits were movies. Ed Atkins' "Even Pricks" was a highly rendered animation of a number of surreal events including monkeys talking, thumbs inflating like balloons, and beds collapsing in flames, all thrown together haphazardly with intense sounds like knocks and explosions to try and express the craziness of anxiety and depression. Another movie by Mary Reid Kelly was a feminine take on the story of the Minotaur, which was beyond bizarre but strangely watchable with all women actors having fake eyes, curves, and hair to name just a few. A third movie featured beautiful shots of birds along with parade routes and other odd scenes, set to David Bowie covers (who doesn't love Bowie right?).

Even Pricks' highly rendered monkey that was more than a little freaky.

Even Pricks' surreal thumb deflation that gives the odd feeling of anxiety.

In all, it was an interesting and enjoyable experience that I would recommend to anyone, and it made me realize how much the third culture is really everywhere. To me it seems almost everything is art in some way, buildings, paintings, movies, cars even; and technology and science are really just subsets of the spectrum of art.

Selfie of me at the Hammer

Event 2: "Infinity Structures: Paradoxical Spaces" by Robert Gero

Styrofoam structures look to be expanding.

Robert Gero's "Infinity Structures: Paradoxical Spaces" was a pleasent and interesting look into the imagination of an artist who grapples with mathematical questions. His exhibit was a small room with highly angular styrofoam structures folding and protruding from all the walls. Projections of similar angular shapes flashed across the structures, walls, and people. An erie yet calming soundtrack played in the background consisting of white noise, long sustained tones, and odd clicks and bleeps. Pillows rested on the styrofoam structures and Gero stood in the middle of the room and explained his ideas. The room was supposed to feel like one of his mysterious infinity structures. As an art exhibit I thought it was interesting but mathematically, although raising interesting questions, I felt it was laking in structure.



His idea is an interesting one; he believes there exists the infinity structures which are paradoxical in that they have solid non-expanding walls while the insides have some sort of infinity expanding material. I'm not quite sure where he got this idea from, he seems to have drawn from something Libinez said, although he admits there is no proof or even tractable suggestion that these structures exist, besides apparently his own imagination. To me it seems to not be thought out very well; what are these structures made from? Where will we find them? But there are really two big problems I have with his idea, and maybe he has a response for these but I did not have a chance to ask him.

Gero (middle) explains his exhibit.

Pillows that are supposed to bring a sense of reality.

Firstly I don't believe it's wise to start with a mathematical idea and then extrapolate it to a physical reality. Mathematics and Physics work the opposite way, you start with an observation and then develop the Math to describe it. Math on it's own is not science, it's just a language, and those who study Math usually deal with abstract ideas for purely the purpose of developing abstract ideas, or describing some physical phenomena, not for discovering a new unobserved physical phenomena. The one exception I can think of is String Theory which is a mathematical theory (that the universe is made of super tiny objects that can be described by wave equations) which predicts the fundamental laws of physics. String Theory is far from being accepted by everyone and may never be confirmed because of it abstraction. Second, if this object does exist, then it's not a paradox. I suppose that's rather subjective, but I believe that calling something a paradox implies that the situation cannot exist in real life, other wise you would be breaking some physical or logical law (or our physical/logical laws are flawed, which would be a big stretch for him to imply based on the fact that we don't know if this structure exists). Besides all these gripes it was still an interesting exhibit and I would recommend it to a friend.

Event 1 Kathy High "Waste Matters: You are my future"

For me, Kathy High's "Waste Matters: You are my future" was an odd experience that left me feeling slightly alienated and a little sick. Her exhibit focused on the medical benifits of a procedure called a fecal transplanting which has been used to treat an intestinal disease called Clostridium difficile, and could be become even more useful in the future (possibly for treating her own case of Chron's disease) as the procedure as it is still a relatively new one and not completely understood. The idea is that there are certain beneficial microbes from a healthy person's intestine, contained in their stool, which could be beneficial to people with certain deficiencies in those microbes (usually a result of antibiotics).

A Photo of Kathy High Impersonating David Bowie on his Album Aladdin Sane

What High does in this exhibit however is display fecal matter suspended in honey in feces shaped jars in the center of the room, while also showing photos of herself imitating David Bowie and lecturing on the benefits of this new procedure. I believe the idea of showing us the poop is to desensitize us or alter our perspective on what most see as toxic waste so that we might be more inclined to accept this new procedure (and possibly related others) as beneficial. The David Bowie references might be a tribute to the way he changed people's views on gay and transgender people, and thus validation of her purpose of changing peoples mind on poop.

Fecal Matter Suspended in Honey

The problem with this exhibit is that she is trying to alter our perspectives on poop so we might think of it as beneficial, but poop is gross, hands down, it's literally toxic waste, and I don't need or want to change that view to realize the beneficial aspects of it. Just because it's gross medicine doesn't make it bad medicine, and I think that very few people would disagree, despite what High thinks. The scientists in the video she showed even admitted they find the procedure gross and wouldn't talk about it around the dinner table. Coincidentally as I watched that part of the video someone was bringing out appetizers. In the end I felt physically unconfortable and a little off put by how other students seemed so interested in this art exhibit.  
 

Another Art Piece Designed to Desensitize?

Week 9, Space + Art

Artistic Vision of a Space Elevator (Dvorsky)

The idea of a space elevator is a truly fascinating idea, of which I spent many hours

Physical Diagram from Wikipedia

pondering the feasibility. The basic idea is that there would be a “counterweight” or huge mass (like an asteroid) in space (twice the circumference of the earth in distance from the surface), attached to earth by an ultra-strong cable so that it would spin in line with the earth (same angular velocity), and there would be enough tension in the cable so that an elevator could climb up it like a rope (Aravind, 2007). Think of a balloon tied to the ground and an ant climbing up it, the balloon being the counterweight, and the ant being elevator and cargo. The buoyant force of the balloon is analogous to the centrifugal force experienced by the counterweight, which comes from an object being spun in circles and wanting to fly outwards (think of swinging a ball on a rope in circles and then letting it go). The impact of a space elevator would be unimaginable, as space travel would be much less costly and dangerous.

The issues in construction and maintenance of such an evaluator are numerous and not fully understood. The biggest issue and reason why it has been truly impossible for more than 100 years since the idea's conception is that there is no cable material strong enough to withstand the tension of supporting the counterweight, cable, and cargo/elevator system (and light enough to not compress itself) (Fleming, 2015). The reason for the interest in the idea of the elevator recently, has been the development of carbon nanotubes, which some believe could be strong and light enough to support the tension of the elevator system (Fleming, 2015). There are also similar structures being developed out of Penn State called diamond nanothreads that some believe could be strong enough as well (Kennedy). Both these materials can only be made in small amounts (~1m) and thus we are still many years from the possibility of a realistic cable (Fleming, 2015).

Other practical issues of serious concern, summarized well by Dvorsky, are waves and vibrations in the cable causing violent effects (possibly exaggerated in the video above), small perturbations from vertical causing feedbacks and divergent motion, huge shearing effects from wind and storms, grounding the entire atmosphere, impacts from debris and aircraft, terrorist attacks, and then of coarse the enormous cost and effort needed to construct and maintain a structure more than twice the circumference of the earth (never been done for any object). I also pondered the idea of whether it would pull the earth out of orbit slightly, but was unable to confirm or deny that with much certainty.

Given all these issues and concerns I would say that it is unlikely that we could ever build, maintain, and protect such an ambitious project, but I would love to be proven wrong.

Works Cited

Aravind, P. K. "The physics of the space elevator." American Journal of Physics 75.2 (2007): 125-130.

Dvorsky, George. "Why We'll Probably Never Build a Space Elevator." Io9. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 June 2015.

"File:Space Elevator Structural Diagram--corrected for Scale+CM+etc--regenerated as SVG.svg." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 01 June 2015.

Fleming, Nic. "Should We Give up on the Dream of Space Elevators?" BBC. BBC, 19 Feb. 2015. Web. 01 June 2015.

Kennedy, Barbara K. "Smallest Possible Diamonds Form Ultra-thin Nanothreads." — Eberly College of Science. Penn State, 21 Sept. 2014. Web

Week 8 Nanotechnology - Art

After digging through the “Art in the Age of Nanotechnology” link (John Curtin Gallery) for a while and pondering odd questions such as, “Can you hear the femur play?” reminiscent of other odd questions such as, “Can you smell what the rock is cooking?”, I stumbled upon our own Victoria Vesna’s collaborative project with guest lecturer James Gimzewski, which caught my attention both as an interesting art piece and one by familiar faces.

            Vesna and Gimzewski’s piece “Nano Mandala” featuring Tibetan monks from the Ghaden Lhopa Khangsten Monastery, projects images of Hindu artwork on a circular sand bed while allowing observers and artists to shape the sand during the experience. The images then begin to zoom in on themselves in a sort of mesmerizing and perplexing evolution as we go from the macro Hindu image to the molecular structure of a sand grain, and back again. The senses are further delighted as a dancer moves across the morphing table and is eventually thrown into a kaleidoscope like pattern where she appears almost like a nanoscale structure herself.  

            Another of Vesna and Gimzewski’s projects called “Zero@wavefunction” projects images of the chemical structure of buckyballs on the walls and the floor allowing users to deform them using their shadows and large physical balls that can be rolled around. Again the effect seems sort of surreal, with subtle actions causing large changes in the buckyballs that give the illusion of being a nanoscale structure yourself.

            In other news, there may be a paradigm shift in nanotechnology/art and technology in general, as engineers at the University of Utah have developed a photon beam splitter 1/50 the width of a human hair. This is potentially paving the way for computers that can run on light (faster than anything in the universe) instead of electricity, which could render computers millions of times faster than they are now. In today’s technology twice as fast is a big deal for a new computer, millions of times faster is a revolution.

University of Utah Engieneers develop nanoscale beamsplitter for speed of light computing. 

Works Cited

"Art in the Age of Nanotechnology." Art.base. John Curtin Gallery, 2010. Web. 25 May 2015. 

"Computing at the Speed of Light." Computing at the Speed of Light. University of Utah News, 18 May 2015. Web. 25 May 2015. 

Vesna, Victoria, and James Gimzewski. "Nano Mandala." YouTube. YouTube, 2008. Web. 25 May 2015. 

Vesna, Victoria, and James Gimzewski. "Zero@wavefunction, Responsive Environment/ Nano Art, 2001." YouTube. YouTube, 2001. Web. 25 May 2015.

Week 7 Neurosci + Art

The different ways in which we study human consciousness are fascinating to me, as many try to explain it through observations and personal experience (psychology), while others try and understand the mechanics of the brain as an organ (neuroscience). Throughout history there have been paradigm shifts in the study of the brain, with discoveries fostering great achievements in both science and art, as for example, the mental and artistic images of the brain that are currently shaped by modern technology (example below).

Screenshot from Professor Victoria Vesna's YouTube lecture on Neuroscience.

I feel that there could be another paradigm shift in the understanding of the brain, as the computer revolution has made computer modeling of complex systems an attainable goal (numerical weather prediction). The ability to model the brain with a computer program could have enormous consequences as for example AI could one day have conscious thoughts, we could tweak the brain model to simulate possible solutions to mental problems without having to test on humans, and in general we can make changes to the brain model to facilitate our understanding of process’ in the brain.  

Illustration of a climate computer simulation (Wikipedia).

Artistic rendering of a computer brain (Nature)

While all this sounds good in theory there are many people who doubt the ability of computers to be able to model the brain as it would require too much computing power, or simply that the human brain is “noncomputatble” (Penrose). Penrose believes that there are quantum feedback cycles happening in the microtubules in the brain that make the brain noncomputable and existing in some sort of chaotic, mystical, and unknown fashion, however there is very little work to support this and his argument seems to be rooted in intuition rather than science. While I agree that a model of the brain can't be perfect, “essentially, all models are wrong, but some are useful” (Box), there have been many people who have successfully modeled quantum effects.

In fact there have been several attempts at modeling the brain including a recent simulation of the human brain on a Japanese supercomputer computed a second of brain activity in 40 minutes (Sparkes), and the Human Brain Project spearheaded by Henry Markram recently received 1 billion euros from the European Union to construct a computer model of the brain (Honigsbaum). However this highly ambitious project has come under heavy scrutiny for its lack of governance, scientific direction, and polarization of the neuroscience community, which could spell the end for the project (Nature). That being said I believe modeling the human brain could still be a valuable project (maybe in smaller chunks) and one day it will be a reality.

Box, George E. P.; Norman R. Draper (1987). Empirical Model-Building and Response Surfaces, p. 424, Wiley. ISBN 0-471-81033-9.

Honigsbaum, Mark. "Human Brain Project: Henry Markram Plans to Spend €1bn Building a Perfect Model of the Human Brain." The Guardian. Neuro Science/ The Observer, 15 Oct. 2013. Web.

"Human Brain Project Needs a Rethink." Scientific American Global RSS. Nature Magazine, n.d. Web. 18 May 2015.

"Numerical Weather Prediction." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 18 May 2015.

Sparkes, Mathew. "Supercomputer Models One Second of Human Brain Activity." The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group, 13 Jan. 2014. Web. 18 May 2015.

Vesna, Victoria. "Neuroscience-pt1.mov." YouTube. YouTube, 17 May 2012. Web. 18 May 2015.

Week 6 Biotech + Art

The most interesting thing in this week’s material to me has been an abundance of trivial questions that make my head spin. It seems that the human need to label and categorize things sometimes obscures the real issues at hand. Is it art or science? Is it alive or not? Is it a genetically modified? Is it organic? Ellen Levy asks, “Is it property?” Chris Kelty asks, are they outlaw biologists, biohackers, DIY biologists or Victorian gentleman? I’d like to ask, “Who cares?”

We should really be asking the questions of basic morality: Is it just? Is it dangerous? Will there be psychological harm inflicted? Will a much greater number of people be benefited than harmed? And these are questions to ask of individual actions rather than broad categories of actions with similar themes because not every experiment/invention/art piece is the same.

A lot of people think that man made chemicals are more dangerous than natural (organic) chemicals and GMO foods and organisms are inherently dangerous but I’d like to assert that in fact labels like “man-made” and “genetically modified” only serve to stigmatize and obscure the true chemistry, physics, and psychology of what is really happening with individual inventions/experiments.

Here are a few examples that might confuse the assumptions than many people have about organic and genetically modified foods/organisms. The most toxic natural compound is 100,000 times more toxic than the most toxic synthetic compound (Reeser). 40% to 75% of the food in an American supermarket contains genetically modified food (Weise), yet the first person to ever get sick or die from GMO food since it’s incorporation into American food 20 years ago happened this year as a result of an allergy (Johnson) (in comparison around 150 people die each year from peanut allergies (howstuffworks)). A scientific study to determine whether death is possible from sleep deprivation involved prodding rats for 11-32 days until they all eventually died from mental exhaustion or were sacrificed because they were very close to death (Everson). This study received little attention or criticism but a glowing GMO Bunny that lived a relatively normal life was met with outrage.   

I’m not trying to suggest that all GMO organisms/food are safe or ethical but instead that you cannot clump them all together into the same group when determining if they are so. Instead we should all do the research in investigating specific situations of GMO’s or biotech experiments/inventions when determining they’re legitimacy.

Does being GMO have anything to do with the ethics of Alba? (Hoyt)

This graph shows the relative toxicity of natural and synthetic compounds (Reeser)

Are non-GMO's really safer or better for you, or it is a marketing ploy? 

Works Cited

Everson, Carol A., Bernard M. Bergmann, and Allan Rechtschaffen. "Sleep deprivation in the rat: III. Total sleep deprivation." Sleep 12.1 (1989): 13-21.

"How Many People Die Each Year from Peanut Allergies? - HowStuffWorks." HowStuffWorks. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 May 2015.

Hoyt, Dale. "Eduardo Kac Flunks the Rabbit Test." Eduardo Kac Flunks the Rabbit Test. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 May 2015.

Johnson, Barbara. "Doctors Confirm First Human Death Officially Caused by GMOs." World News Daily Report Doctors Confirm First Human Death Officially Caused by GMOs Comments. World New Daily, n.d. Web. 11 May 2015.

Kelty, Chris. "Meanings of Participation: Outlaw Biology?" N.p., n.d. Web.

Levy, Ellen K. "Defining Life: Artists Challenge Conventional Classification." (n.d.): n. pag. Web.

Reeser, Dorea. "Natural versus Synthetic Chemicals Is a Gray Matter." Scientific American Global RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 May 2015.

Weise, Elizabeth. "Genetically Engineered Foods Q & A." Genetically Engineered Foods Q & A. USA Today, n.d. Web.