Desma 9

       Because both of my parents work in the pharmacy field, I always held an impression that MedTech are distantly separated from arts. However, this weeks's assignment changed my understanding of correlation with MedTech and arts.         Currently, everyone seems to confuse about the relationship of MedTech and arts, when they encounter this theme on their first time. As Virgil Wong states medicine helps us live longer lives and arts is about why we live (para. 4), MedTech and arts enable each other to develop in diverse ways. MedTech makes humans' "INSIDE" body visible and how brain wave interaction works in a microscopic level. In return, arts advances the clarity of X-ray machines and medical apparatus.            Furthermore, MedTech itself can be used to be a part of arts.  David Cronenberg employs the horror of humans towards intangible transformation, which the slow fusion of humans and fl...

Last week, I was able to attend the Understanding Arts Based Research: Workshops: Work Out/ Tune-Up/Turn On in Board Art Center. I arrived at the last session that  The Phone in the Apple: Material Technology – Dissolving Bodies" presented by the artist  Vera Wittkowsky.  After Vera asked to put down our phones and turn them to mute mode, audiences started the three-minute contemplation. We were asked to feel the temperature and material of our phones, consider phones as the part of our body, and what we would do if our phones are "dead." The theme of this process was meant to help us to realize our emotional and physical entanglements with those electronic devices. After having my own cellphones, i t was really rare for me to just lay on the chair and separate myself from the noisy outside world to seriously consider my relationship with my "close friend." Then, we were divided by the attitudes towards our phones. Should we regard our phones as a ...

      After industrialization, our society develops in an amazing speed. While Robotics gradually change versatile, they also intertwine with arts. Additionally, since Ford put robotics in mass production and assembly lines, robotics became ubiquitous and convenient. However, in his "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,"   Walter Benjamin argues that   the amazing growth of our techniques make[s] it a certainty that profound changes are impending in the ancient craft of the Beautiful.         There are certain merits contained in Benjamin's argument that which withers  in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art. We can see that originality is rare among the mass production. In the  “the Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction," Davis lee also pinpoints that t here is no longer a clear conceptual distinction between original and reproduction in virtually any medium. Moreover,...

This week's materials give me an insight that mathematics actually intertwines arts and science in a complex way. Mathematic can be employed to enhance the understanding of arts and science, and verse visa. For example, when I studied the multiple integration of irregular shapes under non-horizontal planes, I realized the importance of drawing the corresponding graphs. In the picture below, it could be comparatively different to deduce the meaning of formula by itself. The figures, however, give more intuitive understanding of calculate the volume under the plane. Among those artists, I am mostly intrigued by Robert J. Lang's Origami, which combines the beauty of arts and the techniques of math.  Lang uses mathematical theory and code to design Origami states. For example,  TreeMaker utilizes  many algorithms for the origami design, incorporated a powerful numerical optimization code. The mathematical theories of symmetry lays the foundation of the code to build the Tr...

                                     Two Cultures and the Gap Erasing         The distinction between arts major and STEM majors appears on my first day here, which directly reflects in building structures on campus. Although  public discourse and educational structure has created the notion that the subjects are completely disparate (Green),  locations of buildings at UCLA further physically separate "North-campus" majors, arts majors, from "South-campus", stem majors. Moreover, even the building structure itself constrains students from accessing the different fields. On the picture below, Mathematical Sciences building is connected to the Boelter Hall. As a math major, it is not rare for me to stay in the same building to finish my classes for one day. Even if I can take a walk inside the building, the pictures hanging on the wall are famous mathematical pu...