Week 4: Medicine, Technology, and Art

              The human body is doubtlessly a highly complex and intricate system, and the challenging endeavor of exploring it has allowed us to gain insight on what we’re made of and where we come from. I found Donald E. Ingber’s The Architecture of Life fascinating in its discussion of the cells. What stood out most to me was the explanation of what he called “molecular geodesic domes,” which are in essence the result of “tensegrity”. This idea resonated with me almost immediately because it occurred to me that it is the biological analog to the Principle of Least Action in physics. The Principle of Least action, which led to Lagrangian mechanics and Calculus of Variations, seeks to determine the path a mechanical system will take by minimizing the “action” of the motion. In Ingber’s terms, this would be similar to “offering a maximum amount of strength for a given amount of building materials” for the geodesic domes. It was amazing to me that life on a molecular scale is also ruled by the same principles that guide a rolling ball.

The Principle of Least Action will minimize the "action" of a mechanical system. Any path taken other than the red one in the center will be less efficient, similar to the mathematics behind the geodesic.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1c/Least_action_principle.svg/2000px-Least_action_principle.svg.png

                When technology meets life we get things like MRI machines, reconstructive surgery, heart transplants, cures for diseases, vaccines, among countless other things. I find MRI machines especially interesting because they perform a task that would once be considered witchcraft. Silvia Casini describes her surreal experience in such a machine and claims looking at the examination photos was like standing in “front of a mirror.” This forces me to think just what kind of “mirrors” we’ll have fifty or a hundred years from now.

Is it possible that scientists and engineers will invent technology similar to an X-Ray (but less harmful) that can be implemented in a phone for everyday people to use? There are already simple apps for smartphones that allow users to measure their heart rate and blood pressure.
http://culturax.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/on2_16655ced2.jpg

A slightly different but equally fascinating technological innovation is mitochondrial DNA (henceforth mtDNA) lineage tracking. You can now send in your sample of mtDNA and soon thereafter receive information regarding where your ancestors are from and in which migrations groups they belonged to. One setback of mtDNA, however, is that it only includes DNA from the maternal side, so the ancestral history of the father are non-existent in the tracing of the lineage. While not perfect, this is nevertheless a prime example of technology coming together with the bio-medical field to help us better understand who we are as humans and how we got here. 

Shows the various migration "haplogroups" by maternal lineage as discovered through mtDNA, a 21st century work of art as well as science.
https://www.ancestrybydna.com/library/images/map-maternal-zoom.jpg

Works Cited:

Engelking, Carl. "DNA Test Can Trace Your Ancestral Origins Back 1,000 Years - D-brief." Dbrief. 02 May 2014. Web. 26 Apr. 2015. <http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2014/05/02/dna-test-can-trace-your-ancestral-origins-back-1000-years/#.VT1gpCFViko>.

"Euler-Lagrange Equation: Chapter 2"  Web. <http://mathsci.kaist.ac.kr/~nipl/am621/lecturenotes/Euler-Lagrange_equation.pdf>.

Feynman, Richard. "The Feynman Lectures on Physics Vol. II Ch. 19: The Principle of Least Action." The Feynman Lectures on Physics Vol. II Ch. 19: The Principle of Least Action. Web. 26 Apr. 2015. <http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/II_19.html>.

Groleau, Rick. "Tracing Ancestry with MtDNA." PBS. Web. 26 Apr. 2015. <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/neanderthals/mtdna.html>.

"Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)." Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). Web. 26 Apr. 2015. <http://www.nibib.nih.gov/science-education/science-topics/magnetic-resonance-imaging-mri>.

Week 3: Robotics and Art

It is difficult to think of many historical events more impactful than Industrialization. The growth of machines and industry brought about city life and affected the lives of just about anyone it came near. It’s easy to talk about the great things this did for the masses, but it’s also critically important to observe the negatives. William Blake writes in his poem The Chimney Sweeper:

                                That thousands of sweepers, Dick, Joe, Ned, & Jack,

                                Were all of them locked up in coffins of black;

This is one of many literary works lamenting the cruel child labor and nasty soot that followed industrialization. A great amount of rebellion was found among the masses as well, namely the Luddites, who fought against the automation of the early 19^th century. Juxtaposing the tribulations of the population dealing with early industrialization with the idea that it was industrialization that paved the way for the modern technological revolution, one may have a difficult time forming a hard and fast opinion on the matter.

The dark and gloomy gases of early Industrialization filling the city.
https://www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hist255/la/smokestack2.jpg

A secondary topic on technology involves Walter Benjamin and reproduction of art. Aside from the political motivations and his apparent distaste for capitalism, Benjamin writes about the unavoidable loss of “aura” that is inherent in mechanical reproduction of art. A better understanding of the “aura” is supplied by Ludwig Klages (the German philosopher who coined the term for this context), and this entails seeing the “true meaning” of a given object in its “presence.” This is something that transcends the physical object and ultimately cannot be duplicated by any means.

Does an "aura" exist for art made by a robot, which can be remade exactly over and over again?
http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/wow/vuedessus2.jpg

Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige (a 2006 film) gives a different yet intriguing perspective on this topic by questioning the normative element attached to duplication. In short, the film follows two magicians who figure out how to duplicate themselves by using a machine created by Tesla. There are numerous times in the movie where the viewer is unsure of whether the person on screen is the original or not. In one of their illusions, the ‘magician’ would enter a box and seconds later appear at the other side of the venue. The magician, Angier, said near the end of the movie that it took immense courage to do this since he had no idea if he had to be the magician in the box or the one that appeared on the other side (the man in the box always drowned). The disturbing idea here is that not even the magicians knew who the original was – there was no original. As soon as the duplication occurred there were now two identical people with the same memories and experiences, and neither had any right to be the “original” or argue about “aura.” 

The Prestige. In the end we see all the containers of water Angier drowned his "duplicates" in to perform his trick, never knowing which was the original.
http://dailycaller.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/the-prestige-e1382993890627.jpg

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Works Cited

" A Brief History of Our Craft" History of the Chimney Sweep. Web. 18 Apr. 2015. <"http://www.ruchalachimney.com/history.html>.

"ArtBots Gent, the Robot Talent Show 2011." ArtBots: The Robot Talent Show. Web. 19 Apr. 2015. <http://artbots.org/2011/>.

Blake, William. "The Chimney Sweeper: When My Mother Died I Was Very Young." Poetry Foundation. Poetry Foundation, Web. 18 Apr. 2015. <http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172910>.

"Ludwig Klages: Biocentric Metaphysics." Ludwig Klages: Biocentric Metaphysics.  Web. 19 Apr. 2015.

Poets.org. Academy of American Poets, Web. 19 Apr. 2015. <http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/paul-val%C3%A9ry>.

The Prestige. Dir. Christopher Nolan. Perf. Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale. Buena Vista, 2006.

Week 2: Math and Art

Asking people how closely related math and art are, one might say they are worlds apart. An analysis of early 20^th century science and literature, however, reveals a tremendous nexus between the two. In The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art, Linda Darlymple Henderson discusses a strange obsession that arose among artists and scientists alike in the early 1900's – the 4^th dimension. Was this a scientific phenomenon or an artistic one? As Henderson elegantly explains, it was both. Duchamp, for one, found something “deliciously subversive” about the new geometries of the 4^th spatial dimension and how it challenged long standing truths. This is a highly imaginative and social perspective on the topic. When Einstein revealed Relativity to the world people found out that ideas of the 4^th dimension could be entirely explained by mathematics.

A Tesseract: The four dimensional analog to a cube. 

But even before Einstein, mathematics was found in literature. Edwin Abbot’s (A Square’s) Flatland delved into the puzzling the world of dimensions and became very well known when Einstein caused a resurgence of interest in dimensions. In addition to being a quirky piece of social commentary, it boldly asserted that there must be more dimensions than the three in which we live, and it did this with reasoning and logic by taking us on a journey through the eyes of a two dimensional figure that discovers the third dimension.

Movies are another art form that can be found to have mathematical bases. Good Will Hunting, for one, follows the tribulations of an un-ambitions and lost genius trying to discover what role mathematics is going to play in his life, and more importantly, what role he, as a mathematician, can play in society at large.

Looking at pieces of art and how they changed over the centuries one can easily see hundreds of ways mathematics is ingrained into them (such as vanishing point geometry). One that I found especially interesting is de Vinci’s Vitruvian Man.

The Vitruvian Man: A mathematical model of the "perfect" proportions of a man. 

Is this a work of art or math? Cases can be made for both, but clearly it is an exquisite example of the interplay of both fields.

The ultimate lesson I learned this week was that scientists and artists are not very different at all. In fact, they are both making an attempt to understand reality. Scientists are merely trying to reconcile mathematics with the external world they perceive and artists are trying to reconcile the laws of mathematics with an internal – a social and psychological – world they want to understand. 

What appears to be an intricate artistic design can actually be drawn in a matter of seconds by someone who knows very little about drawing. This is done with the help of mathematics and symmetry encoded into a web program, and about 15 seconds of  my time. With the aid of math, the limits of what a more talented artist can do are even more boundless than before. 

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Sources:

Abbott, Edwin Abbott. Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions.

De Vinci, Leonardo. Vitruvian Man. 

"Gustav Mahler." Bio. A&E Television Networks, 2015. Web. 12 Apr. 2015.

Redd, Nola Taylor. "Einstein's Theory of General Relativity: A Simplified          Explanation." http://www.space.com/17661-theory-general-relativity.html. Web. 13 Apr. 2015.

"Silk – Interactive Generative Art." Silk – Interactive Generative Art.  Web. 13 Apr. 2015.

"Tesseract." -- from Wolfram MathWorld.  Web. 13 Apr. 2015.

Week 1: Two Cultures

The current state of academia is one of separation and disconnect. One seldom questions the reasons for why the humanities and sciences are so divided, but evidence of it is widespread. In our very own campus we see this separation by comparing North and South campus. Not only are the science and humanities buildings physically in differing locations, they are also of different architectural styles. Walking north from the physics and astronomy building, it almost feels like entering a different campus altogether.

A common oversimplification of the issue is people merely thinking some of us are "left brain" while others are "right brain."

In The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution C.P. Snow laments the division between the literary intellectuals and the scientists. Snow takes on the perspective of a middleman as his ultimate goal seems to be to rekindle a flame between the two sides and end the nasty segregation. He attributes this issue primarily to the education regime. Comparing the British system to the American and Russian systems, he delineates the problems present in all three, but notes that at the very least the Americans and Russians are more active in fixing their systems.

Victoria Vesna’s Toward and Third Culture: Being In Between, carries a similar tone to Snow’s writing in taking a non-inflammatory stance on the topic. Vesna, however, provides a bit more insight on the scientific perspective of the issue by providing the example of the Sokal Affair, which, while humorous, is both a sad and upsetting reflection of an academic journal’s (Social Text) irresponsible and careless handling of submitted content. Did the editors really read that “physical reality is at bottom a social and linguistic construct” and decided that it was anything other than nonsense? Sokal satirically invited those who were content with that statement to transgress the social conventions of physical reality from the windows of his apartment. While this hoax may not allow anyone to draw realistic conclusions about the current state of affairs, it does corroborate the idea that there is real divide and miscommunication between the scientific and literary community.

Finding the overlap between science and art is an important part of the Third Culture and bridging the gap between the two sides. 

As a physics student, this brought to my attention the reality of this division and the importance of playing a positive role in fixing it. Just as the editors of the journal cannot be blind to what’s happening in the scientific world, I cannot be blind to social realities, as both factions are intimately connected whether we accept it or not. 

Oppenheimer talking about the social consequences of scientific achievement, viz. the bombing of Hiroshima.







Sources:


Gross, John, The Oxford Book of Parodies, Oxford University Press, 2010, pg. 307

Shalmor Avnon Amichay/Y&R Interactive Tel Aviv, Israel Mercedes Benz: Left Brain - Right Brain, Paint. 2011.

Snow, C.P. The Two Culture And The Scientific Revolution. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1961.

"Student Artwork Competition." Arts Education. Arizona Department of Education, 08 July 2014. Web. 05 Apr. 2015.

Vesna, Victoria Toward a Third Culture: Being in Between. Leonardo, Vol. 34, No. 2. (2001), pp. 121-125. 

Hello

My name is Vazgen Ananyan and I'm a second year physics student here at UCLA. My goal in taking this course is to gain insight on the relationships between art, science, and technology. My daily activities primarily take place in South Campus and as result I am entirely isolated from North Campus. However, I thoroughly enjoy enrolling in humanities courses and learning about things not related to my major. The idea of two cultures is very interesting to me and I believe learning about this separation will help me maintain a significant amount of both in my life.