Event 1 Blog: In Gallery Demonstration: Leap Before You Look at Hammer Museum

I was pleased to have the chance to visit Hammer Museum last Saturday. At the time of my visit, there was an in-gallery demonstration by professional weaver Cameron Taylor-Brown. Following by her demonstration, I had a initial and shallow understanding of the mechanism of loom together with some of the artworks created by loom weaving.

First of all, Mrs Brown introduced an brief history of Black Mountain College. This college brought together many of the artists, musicians, poets and thinkers who would become the practitioners of the postwar periods. When talking about her professional skills, she introduced the Shuttle-Craft practical loom from the Black Mountain College weaving workshop.



This is what the loom looks like from one side where the weaver sits. The wood stick on the thread is called "shuttle". The main use of this shuttle is to compactly store and carry thread while weaving.


Here is a more general look of the weaving loom. We can see that different colors of threads are arranged line to line to form a uniform and colorful pattern. By holding the handle above the two long wood bar in the picture forward and back, the weaver is hold the warp threads under tension and interweave the weft threads. After each weave, Mrs Brown ended up with a tighter sheet of thread work.

Mrs Brown only introduced the basic weaving principles and did not reach more on it. But for me, i feel really interested on the technology part: this "light machine". People back in the 18th and 19th century are so clever that they invent it. This loom is mainly composed of woods but it improved the speed of knitting and weaving significantly compared to just hand-weaving. By using vertical and horizontal work of the wood bar, this loom is able to weave large amount of threads at one cycle.

More surprisingly, weavers are able to create patterns using the shuttle I mentioned early. By holding and shifting the handle, weavers are able to create some basic stripes. Shuttles are used for their creation and innovation on the patterns. The gallery did offer some great artwork of Black Mountain College.I think this is the interaction between technology and art. Artworks can be and will be created both by hand and machine.

I think this is what I learned from this exhibition. People designed and created machine to save work. Moreover, artists use existing tools to explore possibility and create artwork. With the development of technology, artists would have more tools and wider perspective when they observe the world.



Photo with Hammer staff!

Week 4: Medicine+Technology+Art

During this week, we explore the human body and moreover, how science and technology effect medicine in particular. We learn about people's effort on exploration our own body and how new technologies help us know more about ourselves. There are two things that interest me the most: the first is about the debate on the classical and modern version of Hippocratic Oath in the reading, and the second is the topic of plastic surgery.

How Technology Has Improved Medical Breakthrough
http://www.technologyblogged.com/round-ups/how-technology-has-improved-medical-breakthroughs


Nowadays with the development of technology, people are facing the unprecedented challenge on revising old moral standards. To put a simplest example, the debate about abortion. Today the abortion surgery cause less damage to body. However, many people still treat "abortion as an idea of killing, which continues to be socially abhorrent". We can see that the Hippocratic Oath with its prohibition on performing abortions, "clearly conflicted with the new legal and ethical realities of medical practice. There are other surgeries like plastic surgery and euthanasia are also causing the direct conflict with the maxims in the Hippocratic Oath. Indeed, "a growing number of physicians have come to feel that the Hippocratic Oath is inadequate to address the realities of a medical world that has witnesses huge scientific, economic, political and social changes. From my perspective, I think the the old moral standards medically represented by Hippocratic Oath might be outdated because there are so many new forms of surgery emerging on the market. We cannot bind ourselves with our predesesors because they develop such oath based on their situation.

A Conventionalized Image of Hippocrates of Kors
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocrates

The second interesting topic is the plastic surgery. I could not agree more when Professor Vesna said
"it should be no surprise to any of you that all of this technology, including plastic surgery came out of war." I first learned this fact when I was watching the HBO show "Broadwalk Empire". There is a character in the show loses his nose during World War I. He has to wear customized mask covering his broken nose. Today some young female would choose to do plastic surgery to improve their defects on specific body parts, causing the debate between intrinsic and artificial beauty.
Richard Harrow(played by Jack Huston) in HBO show "Broadwalk Empire"



Citations

Willke, Jack C., and Barbara Willke. Why Can't We Love Them Both: Questions and Answers about Abortion. Hayes Publishing Company, 1997.

Vesna, Victoria. “Http://www.youtube.com/v/FIX-9mXd3Y4.” Lecture. Medicine pt3. Youtube, 22 Apr. 2012. Web. 25 Oct. 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIX-9mXd3Y4>.

 "Richard Harrow." Boardwalk Empire Wiki. Web. 24 Apr. 2016. 

 "Hippocratic Oath & Abortion." Home. Web. 24 Apr. 2016.

Ogden, Jack. "How Technology Has Improved Medical Breakthroughs." Technology Blogged RSS. Web. 24 Apr. 2016.

"Hippocrates." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Web. 24 Apr. 2016. 

Week 3: Robotics and Art

Recently, the public are attracted by the news that Alpha-Go, a super computer designed to be proficient in Go, beat Lee Sedol, one of the best human Go players during the ten years, in a five game match. "In fact, it played so well that it was almost scary." People started to worry that one day artificial intelligence would be advance enough take over the world. The popular discussion on the Alpha-Go has reflected people's concern about robotics and more over, the rapid development of robotic technology.

Google's AI won the game go by defying millennia of basic human instinct
http://qz.com/639952/googles-ai-won-the-game-go-by-defying-millennia-of-basic-human-instinct/

As introduced by Professor Vesna, since the invention of printing press, robotics and machines designed to help people have "made possible to wrap excursion of knowledge and the ideas of precipitated enlightenment", people have different responses when facing the development of machines and robotics.

In the early age of machines and immature robotics, the public treat them as tools that improves efficiency. For example, the famous "Abacus",  traders and clerks in Europe and China use it as a counting machine. The structure of abacus is simple, usually made of bamboo frame with beads sliding on wires.

A Chinese Abacus
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abacus

Machines designed for specific use since the industrialization era have begun to play significant role. For example, the "Enigma machine" designed by Alan Turing to crack coded messages of German military during World War II. The effort he put on codebreaking has been estimated to "shorten the war in Europe by as many as two to four years.

Recently, the faster and faster improved technology applied to machines and robotics has invoked some scare among the general public. The movie "I, Robot" described an apocalypse when the artificial intelligence controlled over the whole city. People stand and fight against robots controlled by the core artificial intelligence and gain to final success. Both the movie and the recent loss against Alpha-Go has showed people's concern over machine and robotics. We would continue to have the debate on the ethics over technology. It is like a pandora's box. With endless curiosity, we would continue on discovering it.

I, Robot.



Citation
Vesna, Victoria. 

"Robotics pt1.mov.” Cole UC online. Youtube, 9 April 2012. Web. 11 Oct. 2012. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRw9_v6w0ew>
"AlphaGo Shows Its True Strength in 3rd Victory against Lee Sedol." Go Game Guru. 2016. Web. 18 Apr. 2016.
Person, Joon Ian Wong, and Http://qz.com/author/jwongqz. "Google’s AI Won the Game Go by Defying Millennia of Basic Human Instinct." Quartz. 2016. Web. 18 Apr. 2016.
"Abacus." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Web. 18 Apr. 2016.

"Alan Turing." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Web. 18 Apr. 2016.

"I, Robot (film)." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Web. 18 Apr. 2016.

"What Did Turing Do for Us?" : Nrich.maths.org. Web. 18 Apr. 2016.

Week 2: Math and Art

We start to learn the relation and interactions between mathematics and art this week. From the lectures given by professor Vesna, I learn that artists pursue the perfection both artistically and mathematical, though they might not be aware of the latter. Also, artists have started to apply new perspectives and techniques with the development of a more complex and complete mathematics system.

Artists have been devoted to making realistic portraits, yet they may not know they are also approaching the geometry perfection of mathematics. In 13th century, Giotto, an Italian painter, "was able to create impression of depth by inclining the lines above eye level downwards as they moved away from the observer". This effort might not be strictly mathematical derived. But it is considered "pretty close to understanding linear perspective", according to professor Vesna. Based on this example, we can see that sometimes artists are somewhat vague or ambiguous on techniques and science behind their effort. There is one thing we can confirm: during thousand years of research and exploration, great artworks express the unity of math and art.


One of the Legend of St. Francisfrescoes at Assisi, the authorship of which is disputed
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giotto

Another excellent example of artwork emerging from mathematics is the golden ratio. Egyptian pyramid is one of structures that apply golden ratio. "One Egyptian pyramid is remarkably close to a "golden pyramid"". One thing interesting about the pyramids is that "whether the relationship to the golden ratio in these pyramids is by design or by accident remains open to speculation".  


Great Pyramid of Giza, Egypt with golden ratio proportion
http://www.goldennumber.net/phi-pi-great-pyramid-egypt/

Artists are also outstanding avant-gardes on applying new techniques with the developments of mathematics. For example in Linda D. Henderson's paper,  she introduced: "belief in a fourth dimension encouraged artists to depart from visual reality and to reject completely the one-point perspective system". In her paper, Linda D. Henderson went over the process of artists questioning the existing perspective and geometry system.

After reading the interaction of art and science during thousands of years, I begin to realize that they are more like two sides of more general form of culture. They just have different forms of expressions. Nowadays, art and science, especially math are more closely related, we can see golden ratio applied to design, paintings, buildings and everywhere.


Apple logo
http://www.fastcodesign.com/3044877/the-golden-ratio-designs-biggest-myth



Citations:
Vesna, Victoria. “Mathematics-pt1-ZeroPerspectiveGoldenMean.mov.” Cole UC online. Youtube, 9 April 2012. Web. 11 Oct. 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watchv=mMmq5B1LKDg&feature=player_embedded>

 Henderson, Linda Dalrymple. "The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art: Conclusion." Leonardo 17.3 (1984): 205. Web. 

 "Golden Ratio." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Web. 10 Apr. 2016.

Meisner, Gary. "Phi, Pi and the Great Pyramid of Egypt at Giza - The Golden Ratio: Phi, 1.618." The Golden Ratio Phi 1618. 18 Aug. 2012. Web. 10 Apr. 2016.

"Giotto." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. Web. 10 Apr. 2016.

 Brownlee, John. "The Golden Ratio: Design's Biggest Myth." Co.Design. 13 Apr. 2015. Web. 10 Apr. 2016. 

Week 1 - "Two Cultures"

On week 1, we learned the long-lasting conflict between art and science as two cultures. As C. P. Snow explained well in his words, "Literary intellectuals at one pole-at the other scientists, and as the most representative the physical scientists". 

We also had the chance to learn the effort scholars put to efface this gulf of mutual incomprehension. Different from Snow's perspective that the conflict is caused by the lack of understanding, Victoria Vesna thinks that we can think toward a third culture, which is being between those two cultures. Being an individual that experienced the influence of two cultures, I tend to agree with Vesna that "we are placed between these two cultures, which creates a triangle and promise the emergence of a third culture.


Doodle from google (artistic interpretation)
http://2012.zero1biennial.org/art-and-technology-behind-google-doodles

I was born in China, an ancient country with over five-thousand years of history. I started to feel the interaction of two cultures since I was small. I got in touch with ancient Chinese paintings and learned one of the oldest performing instruments in China: bamboo flute. In the meantime, I started to learn some scientific knowledges like mathematics, chemistry and physics. 

Chinese Bamboo Flute(Dizi)
http://www.chinaculture.org/gb/en_artqa/2003-09/24/content_39839.htm 

At the first time, I could hardly tell there were any interaction between these two cultures because those art classes and scientific classes are taught separately. However, As I grew over the years, I began to feel the frequent and close interaction of the two cultures. For instance, I a interested in design and Red-Dot design Award is a world-known award that attracts my attention. When I see the consumer electronics like iPhone and cameras, I began to realize that we are actually living in between the two cultures. We have the product that can combine both two cultures and present it to the world.


HTC RE(Camera)-2015 Red Dot Design Award
http://red-dot.de/pd/online-exhibition/work/?lang=en&code=29-05141-2015&y=2015&c=165&a=0


Citations:

Snow, C. P. The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. New York: Cambridge UP, 1961. Print.

Vesna, Victoria. "Toward a Third Culture: Being In Between." Leonardo 34.2 (2001): 121-25. Web.

"The Art and Technology Behind Google Doodles." The Art and Technology Behind Google Doodles. Web. 

 "History of Dizi (Bamboo Flute)." History of Dizi (Bamboo Flute). Web. 

"Work | Red Dot Award: Product Design." Work | Red Dot Award: Product Design. Web.