Desma9 assignment4 Medicine and Art

Before this week’s lecture, I will hardly relate medicine with art because they seem two things totally different and never should be related. However, after taking the lecture, I really have a new appreciation about the undivided relation between medical technique and art work.

Among all the topics discussed by Professor Vesna, plastic surgery seems most interesting to me. Nowadays, this word is more and more popular in the world because with the development of life, people pay more attention to their outlook than before. In this case, those people need a way to make them more beautiful or handsome and that is plastic surgery. However, with more and more beauties are “produced” under the scalpel, the conception of beauty seems changed and the discussion about that becomes more intense.

To give an example, the artist Orlan discussed in the lecture, did operation many times in order to tell people what is the real beauty. She got different face features from the famous artwork and made it her own body. However, in my opinion, what she did is meaningless because with the period changed, the conception of beauty actually changed. Moreover, those features may look nice separately on each painting, but when they get together it seems so wired and disharmony.

Another example would be the recent Korean beauty contest that all the participants all look the same! Some of friends talked to me about this event and they joked that they may come out of the same hospital.

I think it is no faults that people seek for beautiful. However, we should always follow a simple rule that “The natural one is the most beautiful one.” Plastic surgery, a technique rose during World War I, should still take an important role in medical word but not the work of art and beauty.

Sources

Orlan- Carnal Art (2001), documentary, Dir. Stéphan Oriach. Perf. Orlan. N.d. Film. YouTube.  Web.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=no_66MGu0Oo

Vesna, Victoria. “Medicine and art ” Lecture. Web.

Better2ask, “Aesthetic Plastic Surgeon in Israel, Dr. David L.”,web, November 15, 2012

http://www.better2ask.com/aesthetic-plastic-surgeon-in-israel-dr-david-leshem/3045

Listal, photography, web, http://www.listal.com/viewimage/3431813

Miss Korea 2013, photography, web, http://photogallery.navbharattimes.indiatimes.com/beauty-pageants/world-pageants/miss-korea-2013/articleshow/20535174.cms

Desma9 assignment 3, Robotic and art

In this week’s class, professor talked about the robotic and art. More specifically, the interaction happened between robotic and art in their evolution. My interested points are about the industrialization and cyborgs.

As for industrialization, I think everyone is familiar with it because without it, our life cannot improve so much and still growing rapidly. The industrialization started in 1860's, quickly after the invention of steam engine and grew much faster following the application of electricity. Although industrialization helped to improve our society and made technology grew so rapidly, there is still critique about it. For example, Walter Benjamin claimed in his book “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, “Namely, the desire of contemporary masses to bring things “closer” spatially and humanly, which is just as ardent as their bent toward overcoming the uniqueness of every reality by accepting its reproduction.”(III) By this, he thought that the mass reproduction from industrialization actually destroyed the creativity and uniqueness in art. Moreover, in Chaplin’s “Modern time”, the mass production made workers like a machine on the assembly line and even influenced their life.

                                 Industrialization in German

Chaplin's Modern Time    

Cyborg is a fashion word in many great sci-fi movies. I, Robot, in my opinion, is one of the best I have seen. In this movie, the robots finally evolve too rapidly that they want to control the human beings and found their own world. The story could be seen as a classic example of the disadvantage of industrialization that human beings made technology grow too fast due to desires and finally we cannot control them at all. Though the condition appeared in the movie is kind of ridiculous now, it might happen one day in the future.

I, Robot

To give a conclusion, I think industrialization itself has more positivity than negativity and donated greatly to the development of our society. What caused many damages is actually our desire. If we can control our desire correctly, I think we can gain more benefits and less negative effects.

Sources

Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, Marxists, web, http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm

Ian Adler, Harrison S, Industrialization in Germany & Russia, apworldquig, web, https://apworldquig.wikispaces.com/Industrialization+in+Germany+%26+Russia

Dr. Macro's High Quality Movie Scans, photography, http://www.doctormacro.com/Movie%20Summaries/M/Modern%20Times.htm

Amanda Peraza, Dystopian Fiction-I Robot, 2011. 3, photography, http://amandaaperaza.blogspot.com/2011/03/dystopian-fiction-i-robot.html

Vesna, Victoria, “Robotic and Art”, Lecture 3

Desma9 assignment 2, Math and art

As a student of applied mathematics major, it is pretty fun for me to take this week’s lecture, which is about the relationship between math and art. In this week’s lecture, I learned that with the improvement of mathematics, artists make their paintings more realistic and beautiful. To be more specific, Brunelleschi discovered the rule of vanishing point in 1413 and attributed greatly to the development of art. And with the appearance of idea of perspective, painting was never simply of drawing and coloring but needed a step of proportion. Moreover, Golden ratio, which can be expressed by 1/x=x/1-x in formulation, was largely used in sculpture, architecture and painting. The famous artist and scientist as well, Da vinci, was a “fan” of the golden ratio.

                       

              Brunelleschi, famous Italian architect and engineer

Parthenon, one of ancient buildings in the world, is a perfect example of how mathematics can influence art and science. Parthenon was built in about 400.AD and I think the main reason it can still be complete after more than a thousand years is the structure in golden ratio. (The Roof was lost in the war between Turkish Empire and the ancient Greece, which is unavoidable.) The Golden ratio not only gives the building a strong structure but a wonderful outlook as well. 

                 

                                  Parthenon in golden ration, 400.AD

For artist who uses mathematics in his art work, we should think of a person Da Vinci. His famous work, Mona Lisa, the women portrayed was also in golden ratio. Moreover, his work named Vitruvian man is a great example of combination of art, science and mathematics. The man’s position can be seen as a circle and it gave the idea that human proportion can be used in architecture as well. This is well used by the famous French architect, Le Corbusier.                                 

                              Mona lisa, the most famous painting in the world 

With all of the above, I’d like to say that the juxtaposition of math, art and science is that on one hand, without math, science and art cannot develop so rapidly and math should be seen as the base of art and science. On the other hand, without the desire to develop art and science, math will not develop as well and many great discoveries may never happen.                                    

                                  Vitruvian man, great combination of art and science

Resources

Oracle Education Foundation, Photography, web, http://library.thinkquest.org/08aug/01151/filippo.html

Gary’s school of art, photography, web, http://www2.rgu.ac.uk/subj/ats/teachingweb/teaching/t26-DesignPrinciples/TheGoldenSection/TheGoldenSection.htm

Mona lisa Golden selection, JTV, photography, web, http://storyality.wordpress.com/2012/12/30/storyality-50-3-the-golden-ratio-the-golden-spiral-the-fibonacci-sequence/mona-lisa-golden-section-da-vinci/

Robert M, Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man, 2000, web, http://thealchemicalegg.com/VitruviusN.html

Vesna, Victoria.  “Math + Art.”  Lecture 2.

The First blog assignment by Tiancheng Lin(704203383)

Before taking this course, art and science seem two totally different things to me. Science as Kevin Kelly said in his article “The Third culture”, “is a lofty term. The word suggests a process of uncommon rationality, inspired observation, and near-saintly tolerance for failure.” However, art is a word stand for craziness, more freedom and creativity. I think this is because of the influence of stereotypes that scientists are all like Einstein and artists as van gogh. After reading some articles and watching the lectures, my view has changed a lot.

My major in UCLA is applied mathematics and in this case, most of my classes will be in south campus where most scientific major students study. Before this course, I hardly had chances to the north campus and I thought north campus buildings should all be in retro artistic style and named after great artist. However, after my tour, it is surprising that most buildings there are all modern and with a normal name. Moreover, every building there has the influence of both science and art. For example, some buildings are old but the equipment inside are all high-technique. This is just what professor talked in the lecture, the third culture.

                                UCLA north campus, Royce Hall

                           

                     UCLA south campus, student center 

The third culture, called nerd culture by Kevin Kelly, is a concept first mentioned by C. P. Snow in his “The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution”. In these two articles, the writers all gave the idea that art and science are compatible. It is necessary for us to make a combination of art and science, or one of them will definitely decline.

For me, with the inspiration of the idea, I might spend more time on literacy or art staff than before. This is because I had known that although they seem to be unrelated, there are still some aspects of art that can benefits to my science study. To give an example, a lot of researches need good skill of drawing and observation, which requires sense of art. In this case, an artistic mind can give you better chance of correct drawings and careful observation.

                             

          The famous picture drawn by the da Vinci in the Renaissance which needs high skill of drawing and knowledge of anatomy.

                       

      The successful corporation between famous space suit designer,Moiseev and material scientist Ted southern, make the space suit design firm called Final Frontier Design.

Resources

Snow, C.P. “Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution.”Cambridge University. 1959. Print

Kevin Kelly, “The Third Culture.” Science Magazine(1998.1) Web. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/279/5353/992.full

Wekepedia, photograph, web http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Janss_Steps,_Royce_Hall_in_background,_UCLA.jpg

Webpage aboutRenaissance,photograph,web http://www.csupomona.edu/~plin/ls201/renaissance2.html

Mark Crawford, “The Final Frontier of Art and Science”, 2013.4, ASME.org Web. https://www.asme.org/engineering-topics/articles/aerospace-defense/final-frontier-art-and-science