Lauren McCabe DESMA9

For my fourth and extra credit event, I attended the Noise Aquarium. This event was very insightful as well as relaxing. I learned that 80% of our oxygen is produced by plankton, and right now many countries are facing a crisis regarding lack of oxygen. The presenters explained how everyone's breath is connected to one another and that breathing is essential for life. After the background information was given, we were invited to all take a few minutes to breathe, meditate, and practice mindfulness. In these moments, there was a satisfying video playing of the ocean and sea life. The video was a demonstration of how art, or a visual display, can represent the earth and the beings within. The video was very relaxing to watch. Along with visual images, the produces created a soundtrack to the video of calming ocean noises along with breaths. This was interesting because it proved the combination of technology and art to create such noises for meditation. Overall, this event was very ...

For my third event, I went to the watch party where we viewed the 2011 action-packed movie,  Contagion. This movie hit very close to home because it is about a pandemic that struck causing global panic and a lot of chaos. In the movie, scientists and doctors try to figure out who or what caused the pandemic. This showed similarities to real-life because when COVID-19 started, world leaders tried putting blame on groups of people in the world when in reality it is very hard to pinpoint the cause of one person. It was very interesting how an artistic approach, cinema, could capture and demonstrate the traumatic events of something as severe as a pandemic. The movie also demonstrated how the arts and sciences can be related to the medical field. When the doctors were trying to analyze and come up with a vaccine for the virus, they had a screen where they developed what the virus looked like and used it to explore the components of the disease. I thought this was cool because I know th...