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Last week, I attended Claudia Schnugg’s pop-up lecture, “Creating Fertile Ground: ArtSci Collaboration”. Schnugg studied anthropology and psychology and describes her position now as a translator between big corporations, artists, and scientists. (I am seated in the second-to-last row in the black shirt) She began by answering the question of why try to collaborate science, art, and big corporations. This included advancements in new perspective and imagination, new technologies, societal/ political/ ethical implications, and communication. Claudia showed multiple examples of projects that collaborated the three fields such as Anouk Wipprecht’s “Agent Unicorn”, in which an artist created a unicorn shaped head piece with a camera that turns on whenever someone’s attention rises. This is intended for children with ADHD and used to record and display what is triggering these child’s attention. I thought this was such a cool idea and it actually led me to do more resea

Space is something that has always been a fascinating mystery to me. I also enjoyed this week’s topic because I am currently taking an Astronomy class and I felt I could relate a lot of what I have already learned in that class to the readings and videos in this class, such as the topics I will discuss in this blog post. Copernicus, an expert in the field of math and science, discovered the “heliocentric theory” which was that the sun was the center of our universe. His discovery made a big step in developing the visual aspect of space. In order for people to see the theories that were being discovered, the telescope was invented by Giovanni Demisiani. This was a game changer in astronomy because people were able to actually have a visual of our mysterious universe. Galileo was the first to view an actual object through the telescope: the phases of the moon. He used a different convex and concave lenses, which inspired many others to begin gaining pictures of the outside

I found it interesting how nanotechnology is primarily based on sense and feeling because we are unable to physically see any proof of its existence. This is a different way of thinking for scientists, who are known for usually only believing things that they can physically prove or visualize (The Nanomeme Syndrome). Nanotechnology was a difficult thing for me to grasp because I usually have a “seeing is believing” mindset, however the development of this technology and its importance in our society helped me to understand its existence. This picture above helps to show the size of nanomaterials in comparison to other objects. Something that stuck out to me in this week’s lectures is that we actually consume nanoproducts. It kind of freaked me out that there are these tiny products within some of the food we eat that can make such an impact. The personalized food idea, such as flavorless vitamins within bread, struck me as a really cool idea (Vesna). However, I still don’t r

Because of my passion for psychology, I was very interested in this unit and learning how it was able to interact with art. I found the discussion about “wonder drugs” such as LSD and Cocaine especially interesting. It is hard to believe that, when first discovered, these drugs were actually prescribed by doctors. Cocaine was and is used to create a temporary state of happiness, and even influenced some of Freud’s work including his book on the interpretation of dreams. LSD is a hallucinogen and allows people to form an alternate reality through the extraordinary images and kaleidoscopic colors displayed in their mind. The father of LSD, Albert Hoffman, expressed that LSD made him more passionate towards nature and gave him a whole new perspective on the world that surrounds him. This allowed for the creation of new art forms and influenced him to create new pieces that resembled the hallucinations that he experienced in his head. Neuroscience and art have been combined to a

On May 5th, I attended and participated in Professor Vesna and Dr. Mark Cohen's project, "Octopus Brainstorming: Mind to Mind Conversation". This performance art piece was aimed to discover the connections between two people by using the Electroencephalogram (EEG) to measure their brain waves. Each participant wears a head piece that resembles an octopus and contains electrodes. Different colored lights will appear depending on the brain waves detected. The participants were meant to have a common color of light on their head pieces if they were on the same wavelength, and have a more disorganized array of colors appear if the participants were not on the same wavelength.   I got the chance to participate in this event and wear the EEG octopus hat, which was a very cool experience and helped me better understand the performance. I noticed that when I did not fully engage and follow the directions to look into my partners eyes or hum to myself, we were not able to r

The development and research of biotechnology is seen as one of the most controversial topics in our world today. While things such as animal testing, GMOs, and genetic screening are seen as beneficial to some, there are also a great number of protestors. While I believe that there must be a firm moral line on what is acceptable in biology experimentation, I also know that no great discoveries can be made without risk taking. Joe Davis is a prime example of a bioartist who pushed the limits to help make positive change in our society, by using living organisms to create art. He researched how sounds can affect bacteria and what sounds create stress for bacteria in order to discover a way to create the “Audio Microscope”. He also created “Microvenus”, a symbol of femininity and life, and placed it into an E coli bacterium. His wish was to send them into space as a message to extraterrestrials. In Chris Kelly’s essay he explains the dangers of experimenting with biology