Akshaya J- DESMA 9

         I attended the watch party for the movie Metropolis.              The movie was a silent black and white sci-fi movie and was produced in 1927. When I was watching the movie, I was marveled at how imaginative the creators were. They were able to visualize robots and the utilization of robots for industrialized jobs even before anything remotely that advanced was created. It made me connect to Prof Vesna’s reference on how movies depict certain technologies even before they existed and how that could have led to the invention of these technologies.        Additionally, I could see that the robots/ technology that they were depicting were not necessarily very advanced compared to the possibilities today. This reinforced Prof Vesna’s comment on how older sci-fi movies now seem tame compared to the new inventions that are present today.  Furthermore, th...

        Art and medicine are constantly interacting with each other; however, it was not until this week’s course that I become more consciously aware of these interactions.          In the age of the covid pandemic, we witness a lot of vaccine hesitancy. While vaccine hesitancy is a complex issue, a key component of it has to do with the lack of understanding of medical technology. Mike Steyels speaks in length about how art can be used as a tool to raise awareness about vaccines. Artistic work helps demystify science and eases the fear of the unknown that people may have.  Steyels, Mike. Using Art to Raise Awareness About Vaccinations , 28 Mar. 2016, www.vice.com/en/article/9anmmp/vaccination-awareness-art .     Research suggests that artistic study can also be utilized to help doctors “become more thoughtful and listen carefully to a patient's narrative of his/her symptoms, and this a...

      Smith, Danni. “Robot Illustrations.” Danni Smith Art , www.dannismithart.com/robots.          When I think of art I think creative, flowy, and colorful; however, when I think of robots I think rigid, mechanical, and grey. It did not occur to me that robots could be used to create art or artistic knowledge could be used to enhance the features of robots. Art to me was painting, sculptures, and so on. This perspective changed when Walter Benjamin introduced the concept of “mechanical reproduction of art.” I realized then that the cameraman was just as much an artist as a painter. Gijs van Bon takes it a step further to give examples of modern-day artistic tools through his example of a “StreetRover”, which is “ This computer-controlled high-pressure cleaner writes and draws on the street by purposefully and precisely removing the dirt from paving stones or asphalt.”   Bon, Gijs van. “StreetRover.” GIJS VAN B...

       I now realize that mathematical principles can be and have been used to create some of the most beautiful art in the world.  Some of the mathematical concepts that have been used for the purpose of art are the fourth dimension, the concept of perspective, vanishing point, and the golden rule.       Henderson’s analysis made me recognize that many of the three-dimensional artworks paintings that you see today are a product of artists adopting the mathematical concept of a fourth dimension. Keith Lay through his performance “Four Dimensions” shows how the concept of the fourth dimension is continued to be utilized to create amazing visual and auditory works of art (Selikoff).  Selikoff, Nathan. “Four Dimensions.” Nathan Selikoff , 2012, nathanselikoff.com/works/four-dimensions .           Additionally, I found Edwin A. Abbott’s explanation of how the shape of a pe...

              C. P Snow states that society places “Literary intellectuals at one pole - at the other scientists” (4).  This separation is something I largely accepted as the norm from seeing distinctively separate classes for science and arts in elementary school to having north and south campus at UCLA. Hence, it was surprising to learn from the videos and the texts that this separation was about as recent as 1959.              TAK, NITYA, and Noah Danesh. A Campus Divided , Daily Bruin, 2021, prime.dailybruin.com/justinnorth&southcampus.  Episode 3: The ‘Mad Scientist’ Trope , Medium , 24 Apr. 2019, medium.com/inspire-the-mind/episode-3-the-mad-scientist-trope-f9370ea5fe83.           I am a STEM major and have aspirations to become a life science researcher in the future. However, I find that I do not fit into the societal expectations o...