Unit 4 - MedTech + Art

The Art of Medicine: Mapping the Body in 2,000 Years of Images and Imagination by Maria Popova.

It was amazing to see so many examples of art in medicine and medical technology. But there was a factoid mentioned in this week's lectures that intrigued and showed me how drastic the changes of a paradigm shift really are. In Professor Vesna's Medicine pt2, she stated that technology was actually not incorporated in hospitals until the beginning of the 20^th century. This was due to the belief that medicine was considered art; if you used tools or technology, you were not considered a doctor. That view is totally different from our view of medicine. We see technology in almost all kinds of medical practices nowadays and the art produced by medicine is subject to the viewer. I rarely saw art in medicine; I usually saw science. The achievements in modern medicine were beautiful to me, but solely for their scientific contributions to society. Today I will be discussing some uses of human medicial procedures that are considered art.

 Man's face slowly rebuilt following 1997 shotgun accident by Sarah Brumfield.

Plastic surgery was always considered art to me. Essentially, a plastic surgeon shapes a person's appearance to something the person considers beautiful. Plastic surgery was created during World War I after the technological advancement of military weapons. Survivors of the war suffered and had to go through facial reconstruction to try to return to a normal life. Eventually plastic surgery developed into a high standard procedure to look a certain way. It's a beautiful process though and I consider the human body a piece of art. I go to the gym to keep my body at my expectation of beauty. Plastic surgery is a short-cut.

Plastic Surgery as Performance Art? by K. Gould.

Some uses of plastic surgery worry me. Orlan is a prime example of this. She does body performance art to show to the audience what it means to be beautiful. She performed nine surgeries so far, each with a theme while reading philosophical excerpts. While I applaud her for merging medicine and art and it's her own body to manipulate, the question is when does it stop? At what point does the doctor performing the task stop the artist with the vision? Peter Tyson's The Hippocratic Oath, an ancient morality code for doctors, brings things into perspective. A doctor helps the patient but has to account for safety. However, without pushing boundaries, there would be limited development. The issue of ethics is beautiful yet complicated and will influence how we each view these daring artworks.

The Hippocratic Code Today by Peter Tyson.

Yours truly,
Calvin Cam



Works Cited
Brumfield, Sarah. "Man's face slowly rebuilt following 1997 shotgun accident."  The Associated Press. Lebanon Daily News, 28 Jun. 2013. Web. 26 Oct. 2013 <http://www.ldnews.com/ci_23555944/mans-face-slowly-rebuilt-following-1997-shotgun-accident>.

Gould, K. "Plastic Surgery as Performance Art?" Serendip Studio, 7 Feb. 2011. Web. 26 Oct. 2013. <http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/9145>.

Popova, Maria. "The Art of Medicine: Mapping the Body in 2,000 Years of Images and Imagination." Brain Pickings. Web. 26 Oct. 2013. <http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/02/03/the-art-of-medicine/>.

Tyson, Peter. "The Hippocratic Code Today." NOVA. PBS, 27 Mar. 2001. Web. 26 Oct. 2013. <www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/hippocratic-oath-today.html>.

Vesna, Victoria. "Medicine pt2." Cole UC online. Youtube, 21 Apr. 2012. Web. 26 Oct. 2013. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psjnQarHOqQ>.

Vesna, Victoria. "Medicine pt3." Cole UC online. Youtube, 22 Apr. 2012. Web. 26 Oct. 2013. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIX-9mXd3Y4>.

Unit 3 - Robotics + Art

Robotics is an important part of the assembly line, a process embraced during the Industrial Revolution. The assembly line produces products efficiently and uniformly. Economically, production costs would reduce because of the mass production to the optimal amount, thus causing net profit to increase. In business, consistency increases and supervision decreases because of automation. The use of robotics, however, from the theory of Taylorism, also known as scientific management, has been viewed negatively due to the belief of mistreatment of human workers. Nonetheless, robotics is the art form of industrialization.

In Professor Vesna's Robotics + Art lecture part 2, she went more in depth with Taylorism. Machines were difficult to stop and turn on frequently so workers had to work in rhythm with the machine. Essentially, the workers were a part of the machine and people saw this as dehumanizing. Some societies, like the West, viewed robotics as a threat to humans while others embraced it. For example, Professor Machiko's Japanese Robotics lecture, she described that the Japanese are making the machines more humanoid to accept the modernization. In the first picture below, we can see humans working in a cold drone-like atmosphere with robots while in the other, we can see humans working along side the future.

The Fallacy of Software Factories and the Importance of Talent by Glenn Gruber.

The Future is Here: A New Industrial Revolution by AJ Artemel.

In the video below, we can also see directly see how robotics influenced society and industrialization. Can you see the positive and negative sides?

The Automated Japanese Restaurant Without Waiters by World News.

Walter Benjamin, author of “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, stated that “to an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility” (Benjamin, IV). In our case, robots will become unoriginal and simply used for their industrial purposes rather than an art-form. A good example of Benjamin's theory is the movie I, Robot. It is about a future where anthropomorphic robots are used as servants for public services. Although movie watchers find the robots beautifully created, people in the movie view them as tools, not art. This is the effect of the assembly line and mass production on art to society. I, Robot is also a good example of how society responds to industrialization. The main protagonist, Del Spooner, holds resentment towards the robots, but after working with Sonny, a rogue robot, throughout the movie, Spooner begins to appreciate robots and eventually become their savior. Essentially, society will eventually accept change and adjust accordingly to reap the benefits.

I, Robot - Official Trailer [HD] by VikiTrailers.

Yours truly,
Calvin Cam



Works Cited 
Artemel, AJ. "The Future is Here: A New Industrial Revolution." Archizer. Web. 19 Oct. 2013. <http://www.architizer.com/blog/the-future-is-here-a-new-industrial-revolution/>.

Benjamin, Walter. "The Work of Art in Age of Mechanical Reproduction." Marxists. N.p.. Web. 19 Oct. 2013. <http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm>.

Gruber, Glenn. "The Fallacy of Software Factories and the Importance of Talent." Software Industry Insights, 25 May, 2010. Web. 19 Oct. 2013. <http://www.softwareindustryinsights.com/2010/05/the-fallacy-of-software-factories-and-the-importance-of-talent/>.

Machiko, Kusahara. "Robotics MachikoKusahara 1." Cole UC online. YouTube, 14 Apr. 2012. Web. 19 Oct. 2013. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQZ_sy-mdEU>.

Vesna, Victoria. "Robotics pt2." Cole UC online. Youtube, 15 Apr. 2012. Web. 19 Oct. 2013. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAZ8bo9T_Pk>. 

VikiTrailers. "I, Robot - Officer Trailer [HD]." Youtube. Youtube, 17 May 2012. Web. 19 Oct. 2013. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rL6RRIOZyCM>.

World News. "The Automated Japanese Restaurant Without Waiters." Youtube. Youtube, 17 Oct. 2013. Web. 19 Oct. 2013. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oT4B_e40pWo>.

Unit 2 - Math + Art

 

The Virtuvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci

I can't avoid mathematics. In engineering, I have witnessed the beauty of math through derivations of equations relating to the scientific theories explaining the world; I never really thought about math's influence on the arts though. I created works of art using math before. For example, in CS131, Programming Languages, I had to use OCaml, a functional programming language, to write an ML program to evaluate equations and create fun images from expressions (see Figure 1). But the scope of math's influence on the arts runs deeper than I could imagine. Originally, I thought some concepts like perspective didn't involve math but some artists actually calculated the correct proportions as explained in Professor Vesna's lecture and in Lynda Henderson's “The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art”.

 Figure 1. CS131 HW3 OCaml Expression Images by Calvin Cam

The golden ratio fascinates me. In EE103, Applied Numerical Computing, I first learned about the golden ratio as phi, a supposedly beautiful number that solves 1/x = x/(1-x). I didn't realize the beauty until I witnessed the Parthenon. It's a monument built in Athens by the ancient Greeks from 447 to 438 BC. The Parthenon was constructed using few parallel lines to make it appear more visually pleasing. It uses golden rectangles with a golden spiral to overlay the entire face (see Figure 2). The Parthenon had more interesting uses of the golden ratio in architecture like the columns, beams, and etc. Although the golden ratio wasn't used intentionally, the ratio still represent the natural proportions and influence on nature and the arts. This is a strong factor in saying that the golden ratio influences what we perceive as aesthetically pleasing. One number created this magnificent artwork and influenced other artworks to follow this style of proportions.

 

Figure 2. The Parthenon and Phi, the Golden Ratio by Gary Meisner.

I learned this week that art can be more than one would see at first glance. In Edwin Abbott's “Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions”, a dimensional world can be created with geometry. In art, a world can be created using many tools like zero, proportion, and the golden ratio. There is strong evidence to support that mathematics is an essential part of the arts and sciences. Without math, science would be unproven and art would not have another dimension to it. So at the next glance of an artwork, one should consider these factors deeply... and then derive the mathematical equations that created this new world!


Yours truly,
Calvin Cam



Works Cited
Abbott, Edwin. “Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions.” N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Oct. 2013. <https://cole.uconline.edu/content>.

Henderson, Lynda. “The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art.” N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Oct. 2013. <https://cole.uconline.edu/content>.

Meisner, Gary. “The Parthenon and Phi, the Golden Ratio.” 20 Jan. 2013. Web. 12 Oct. 2013. goldennumber.net <http://www.goldennumber.net/parthenon-phi-golden-ratio/>.

PBS. “Secrets of the Parthenon.” PBS.org. Web. 12 Oct. 2013. <http://video.pbs.org/video/980040228/>.

Vesna, Victoria. “Mathematics-pt1-ZeroPerspectiveGoldenMean.mov.” Cole UC online. Youtube, 9 April 2012. Web. 12 Oct. 2013. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMmq5B1LKDg&feature=player_embedded>.

Unit 1 - Two Cultures

 Right Brain or Left Brain by Sheila Connolly.

I am an engineer. My degree will display “Calvin Cam - Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering” to the world. Although I find digital systems and electromagnetism mind-stimulating, I am also interested in how business concepts and law history affect emerging technology.

C.P. Snow, author of “Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution”, would look at my degree and define me as a scientist. In his lecture, he mentioned that there are two cultures, the literary intellectuals and the scientists. The two cultures are similar in intelligence, race, social origin, and income, but had so little in common that “hostility and dislike, but most of all lack of understanding” separated them drastically (Snow 3-5). He would profile Calvin Cam as an individual who displayed an optimistic drive, high social skills, and strict morals, but could not communicate with literary intellectuals even if his life depended on it. People are not so two dimensional though. In Professor Victoria Vesna's segment, “Towards a Third Culture: Being In Between”, she believed that “because our work and tools are in constant flux... this creates room for an active dialogue with both humanists and scientists... which creates a triangle and promises the emergence of a third culture” (Vesna 121). This third culture is especially prominent at UCLA.

UCLA campus color coded by Vending Services.

In a physical sense, UCLA is a divided campus. The geography is logical to save time for both the professors and students. This separation, however, labels students as “North” or “South” campus students, the former majoring in the humanities while the latter in the sciences. Students would tease each other about how different they are and because of this, the culture of North and South campus students can be seen as, in theory, similar to Snow's two cultures. But as I stated before, people are not two dimensional. Past the teasing, there is an underlying respect. UCLA is a top university and I believe the reason is because UCLA admits well-rounded diverse students. I have met South campus students pursuing the arts and vice versa, each with no problems in collaborating. UCLA debunks Snow's two cultures and supports the Vesna's third culture. The third culture is seen with new majors like Digital Humanities in which art and science are combined.

 UCLA Center for Digital Humanities Logo by Digital Humanities.

I enjoyed reading Snow's entertaining lecture. I believe it is too shallow though. Intellectuals in any culture are more complex, especially living in a constantly evolving world.


Yours truly,
Calvin Cam




Works Cited
Connolly, S. "Right Brain or Left Brain." poesdeadlydaughter.blogspot.com. Blogspot, 3 May. 2013. Web. 6 Oct. 2013. <http://poesdeadlydaughters.blogspot.com/2013/05/right-brain-or-left-brain.html>.

Digital Humanities. "What is DH?" cdh.ucla.edu. Center for Digital Humanities, Jun. 2012. Web. 6 Oct. 2013. <http://www.cdh.ucla.edu/about/what-is.html>.

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

Vending Services. "Vending Machine Services." vending.ucla.edu. UCLA Housing, 2013. Web. 6 Oct. 2013 <http://www.vending.ucla.edu/housing_site/vending/vendingmap.htm>.

Vesna, Victoria. “Toward a Third Culture: Being in Between.” Leonardo 34.2 (2001): 121-25. Web. 6 Oct. 2013