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.