Event 1: Art & Technology at LACMA

The first museum I visited was the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), as it was the museum I know and love and have gone to countless times on previous occasions.

At the Ahmanson Building in LACMA.

The focus of this post will be on an exhibit being displayed conveniently called “Art & Technology.”

Displayed prominently at the Art & Technology exhibit.

It is unfortunately that this exhibit was confined to a small room because I found it immensely interesting. This whole idea came about in the late 60’s when artists were paired from professionals from aerospace, scientific research, and entertainment industries. Some of the companies that braved this journey include IBM, Lockheed Aircraft, and General Electric.

The first work I saw was titled Five Plates, Two Poles.

"Five Plates, Two Poles"

 This did not strike me as anything of value at first. They seemed to be a bunch of metal plates welded together with some rods near the bottom. But of course, this was not the case. As it turns out, the plates are not welded together, they are carefully balanced. It should also be noted that these metal plates are very large in size! Indeed, this display is an intricate control of mass, force, and balance. A closer look at the poles even reveals grooves that have been cut into them to allow for deliberate placement of the plates. I found this very clever – you must first appreciate the laws of physics being used here before you can truly appreciate the work of art.

Another very interesting physics-artwork at the exhibit.

The second installation was a mirror contraption created by Robert Whitman along with Philco-Ford. 

Robert Whitman's mirror artwork.

This consisted of a wall of corner cube reflectors and floating above the wall, large cylindrical mirrors made from reflective Mylar. The resulting affect was that viewers who entered the space would see their faces inverted and reflected back a myriad times in the corner reflectors. In the large mirrors they could also see seemingly random household objects that were floating (like a clock or a piece of cabbage). I found this one to be both a funny yet engaging take on perception. It’s always interesting to me to see the human brain become confused when something is a bit out of the ordinary. I believe it is a sobering reflection on just how much of our understanding of the environment is merely the result of the light that is reflected into our retina.