Week 4: Medicine + Technology + Art

Just as Vesna said, the medical industry would not be as advanced as it is now if it were not for art. Even in the 15th century, artists like Leonardo Da Vinci was fascinated by human anatomy, as shown in his anatomical drawing of the male body. It was interesting to think about how before technology, medical illustrations were pieces of art and critical for medical care. Doctors relied heavily on art to represent the body correctly. Just as Vesna said, artists had a “critical role in documenting the progress and understanding the body.” In the article by Ingber, he describes how nature is art and how art creates the patterns and structures of living things. I think this is interesting because when you dissect a body or another living organism, the bone structure and placement of organs are often very symmetrical, artistic, and tends to consist of patterns. The creation of nature and life is genuinely a work of art.

What was interesting to me was that art was not only important in recording medical history, but it plays an important role in treating illnesses. In Gromala’s Ted Talk, she discusses how someone who suffers from immense chronic pain can help relieve themselves by creating art. I found this to be interesting because practices like these show the importance of the connection between art and medicine: creation of art can help heal the body and mind, which is an important part of medicine.

Before this week’s lesson, I did not realize just how connected medicine and art were. But when I think about it, plastic surgery is a form of art. Although it is a medicinal practice, it is purely cosmetic and allows people to redesign the body as if it were a sculpture.

I think for people to not recognize art, medicine, and life are all intertwined would be ignorant of them. Based on the history of medical practice and the continuing importance of innovation and breakthroughs in the medical world prove that art and science should be taught together.

Sources:

“TEDxAmericanRiviera - Diane Gromala - Curative Powers of Wet, Raw Beauty.” YouTube, 7 Dec. 2011, youtu.be/cRdarMz--Pw.

Ingber, Donald. “The Architecture of Life”. Scientific American, January 1998. Pp. 48-56.

Stelarc. “Stelarc.” Med in Art, www.medinart.eu/works/stelarc/.

Vesna, Victoria. “Medicine + Technology + Art.” Lecture part 2. April 29, 2018.

Vesna, Victoria. “Medicine + Technology + Art.” Lecture part 1. April 29, 2018.

Comments

Week 7: Neuroscience + Art

This week’s topic was by far the most interesting topic so far because the brain is a field of science that is very unexplored even though our brains and our consciousness makes up who we are. One idea I thought was interesting was the art project FMRI by Suzanne Anker and Giovanni. They superimposed butterfly wings onto 15 different MRI brain scans, and even though the butterfly wings were identical on all scans, the differences in the brain images made each picture look different. I thought this was interesting because just like how no two people are alike, every brain is completely different too even when the same thing is done to each one of them. Another thing I found to be interesting was the discussion between Freud and Young about dreams and discussion of how the conscious and unconscious function. Although Freud argues that the unconscious is simply “a reservoir of repressed thoughts and motivations,” I agree with Young’s idea that the unconscious is actually...

Event 2

In tonight’s LASER event, I listened to five artists/scientists talk about the integration between art and technology in their lives, research, and in history. The presentations I found to be most interesting were by Robert Raffeatá, Maru García, and Ariel Levi Simmons. Raffeatá's culture community In Raffeatá’s work, she studies how culture interacts with how people think about their health. She discussed how our body is more microbe than human, in fact 90% of our body’s composition comes from microbes. I thought her presentation was interesting because she combined medicinal science to art and more abstract concepts of how humanity interprets and interacts with nature which creates the environment, a variable that she claims must be included i n the study of microbiology. Her ideas of how our health is a community was something I never heard before and to me further proved the point that medicine and art are very closely related like we learned in week 4. She also...

Event 1

Tonight I went to an event called "Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick" at the LACMA. This event was a presentation about the 2001 science-fiction movie Space Odyssey and the origins of the idea, creation, and audience's reaction to the film when it premiered. Michael Benson, an author and artist who recently published a book about the creation of this film, discussed specific shots in the movie, such as a repetitive scene where the Jupiter-bound astronauts run on an artificial gravity centrifuge and how the perspective of the shot smoothly transitions from halfway up the wall to on the floor, which was a phenomenal and, according to the audience, boring segment of the film. This segment of the discussion reminded me of lecture 2 in week 2's topic of math in art. Because the perspective of the shot changed, it caused me to recall the golden ratio rule and made me wonder what t This event was pretty much exactly what this course's topic is about: technology and art. I...

liafDESMA9

Search This Blog