Lauren McCabe DESMA9

This week's focus was on the connection between medicine and art. From what I've saw and learned is that there are many applications of art in scientific technology and it come in a variety of forms. Diane Gromala's TED Talk really helped shape my understanding of some examples like the MRIs, virtual reality, and art and technology relating to senses.  She explained how she was trying to create a multi media application to invoke inner sensations. One of the coolest examples Gromala gave was when she took an MRI of her torso and used the 3D visuals in virtual reality. I thought this was pretty cool because in my mind it felt maybe this is the future of medical exploration. If there were a way to create more virtual reality maps of the human body or cells in the human body to understand what is going on, using different senses and a new approach of exploration. Personally, I feel I've had very little exposure to inventions combining medicine and art other than a few MRI ...

Over the past few decades, our world has made several exceptional advancements in technology due to industrialization and mechanization. Specifically in this weeks lectures and readings, we are referring to robotics. Maša Jazbec, our guest speaker this week, made a great point on how many people believe robotics are more of a futuristic idea, but in reality, we are surrounded by all sorts of robotic inventions already. For example, robots are found in all sorts of movies like Metropolis , at home appliances like a Roomba, and surveillance robotics; these are only a few to name. It is important to look at the impact of robotics and technology advancements on modern day art. Walter Benjamin in his article "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" takes a closer look at this idea. He explains how original works of art lose their authority along with their quality being deprecated by the easiness of modern day technology. It not hard to instantly download an image o...

 The Origami Revolution event was very eye opening. I guess I never really saw how folds in origami correlated to the real world. I thought it was very interesting how the video demonstrated multiple ways in which origami can be utilized. For example, in the video they mentioned models for insects, nature, robotics/machines, DNA or protein structures, aircraft design, the human brain, outer-space, and many more. I was impressed on how innovative thinkers can use such a basic idea of folds, apply universal math ideas, and come up with such great ideas: new proteins, police force shields, and even skeletons for dark matter.  While this video was very inspiring, a part of me also felt as if maybe I have lost some of my creative side that I had more of when I was younger. I would never think that art like origami could have such an impact on science. The video really resonates with me because I would like to get tapped back into that creative side and try to think of things in a m...

This week's lecture, articles, and videos focused on math and art with a heavy emphasis on how the two are so closely associated. For art and sciences, math helps to explain the basic concepts and rules of what actually works. At the same time, art can help demonstrate or explain some of the phenomenons as well as investigate and explore new ideas of math or science. Kate McKinnon, this week's guest speaker,  explained it well and said how art can be used to answer life's questions while incorporating math, a language that describes patterns that already exist.  For artists who bead, math influences the design and geometric shapes that are possible to make. The origami event this week showed similarities in which origami also uses basic geometric and other math laws to create folding patterns, altogether forming a sort of 2D map to become a 3D object. Henderson relates the desires of 1920's artists and mathematicians of how both "[shared] the goal of giving visual ...

This week’s articles’ focus is the idea behind two cultures: intellectuals and scientists. Moreover, the scientists are described as being mainly physical scientists who are more practical, versus the creative intellectual artists. Snow believes that the two are polar opposites and that because of their differences there is a “practical and intellectual and creative loss,” to our society (Snow 12). Snow later states how it would not be fair to only make two categorized cultures, and mentions a third consisting of more contemporary scientists in the middle ground.   From my own experience, I have noticed this divide between the sciences and arts. From a young age as early as elementary school, my classmates and I declared whether we preferred a language arts or math class. From there on I have noticed people around me getting deeper into educational specialization which Snow discusses where some students lose their creativity in the science path, but the other students may never ful...