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Showing posts from April, 2017

Week 4- Medical Technology and Art

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        On thing that I have not has a lack of in my life time has been injuries. And with these injuries have come lots of tests including x-rays, MRIs, CT Scans, and likely others I was not even aware of.    My first memory of such tests was an x-ray I had taken of my wrist after a hockey accident. As explained in the lecture, Rontegen’s early testing paved the way for doctors to have the ability to see my hand without actually making an incision. The thing that stuck with me more however was when Professor Vesna described Rontegen’s wife’s reaction to seeing her X-Ray, which was, “I can see my death”. When skin is removed, the bone is all our hand is left with While I’ve looked at pictures of x-rays probably hundreds of times, never before had I considered it a preview of what was to come in life.           While X-rays was my first memory of medical technology, it was certainly not my most striking. That title belongs squarely in the corner of the CT

Event 1 - What's Next Lecture

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        The term “What’s Next” could refer to a lot of things. However, Linda Weintraub used it to describe the future of art during her symposium.  In it, Weintraub describes art as “all encompassing”. It is in every aspect of our life even when we don’t expect it to be there. Whether it be science, history, math, or so on, art plays a roll in one way or another.  One thing that a lot of people do realize is that art does a good job of allowing us to slow down and take a breath to actually appreciate something for once in the world of constant movement. It also allows us to tap into the part of our brain that is responsible for intelligent thought.  Weintraub  describes how a  person is able to use their sensor details to describe information even if they don’t have full access to it. For example, if there is an object in a box, we are able to use the creative portions of our minds to think of generalities, and then narrow it down to certain specificities. So if a person were to

Week 3- Robotics and Art

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        This idea of the combination between robotics and art is a multifaceted concept with multiple nuances, but in essence can be boiled down to a single idea. Art affects the advancement of robotic technology, and robotics in turn effect the creations of art work. It’s possible that no one understood this better than Walter Benjamin, who wrote The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction in 1936.   In it, one of his comments is that “Mechanical reproduction of art changes the reaction of the masses toward art”.   Essentially, it seems as if he is describing how the robotics of our generation can transform the way we as a society see art. It is no longer just a pretty and enjoyable thing to look at, but people can see the function and the purpose in it more clearly. This allows for a greater understanding of how these two fields are intertwined rather than separate.  A perfect example of this would be in military robotics. In a book by PW Singer, he explains the

Week 2-Mathematics and Art

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Week 2- Mathematics and Art            Undoubtably, mathematics has played a major impact on the influence in art (and as I discussed last week, science) in our lives. When things are created, there are very rarely done so in a care-free manner, but rather with extremely precision and focus to a task at hand.   One prime example of this could be Filippo Brunelleschi, who was an Italian architect, and a person that many considered to be the first modern engineer. In his mind, "there should be a single vanishing point to which all parallel lines in a plane, other than the plane of the canvas, converge". This belief is one that has been taken to heart by many which lead to some of the most revolutionary changes in the way we live our lives. Primary, the smart phone. The "iPhone" or what we now know as the iPhone 1, was revolutionary in its design Never had there been a device that was oriented around a single point. But that it what the engineers

Week 1- Two Cultures

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       Week 1: Two Cultures       JP Snow’s introduction to the idea of two cultures gave me immediate flashbacks to senior year of high school.  My art teacher, Ms. Nock, from day one insisted that the faculties at our school, district, state, and country had gravely overlooked the power that art provides in many aspects of life.   Like Steven Pinker, she too would very much agree that “the parts of humanities that have been influenced by post modernism that deny that there is any such thing as human nature…” have become a major flaw in education, as well as society.   That’s why many of the projects in our art class were focused not solely on design, but how it connected to mathematics, architecture, physical sciences, and so forth. Astronomy and the study of the universe is often an intersection between art and science    In one project, my friend and I took two drastically different approaches to my teachers’ instructions to take a monocratic photo and add colo