Event 2: The Hammer Museum

My second museum of choice was the Hammer Museum. The Hammer Museum was relatively small but nothing short of stunning.

This was a bit different from LACMA in that many of the art pieces were not quite as self-explanatory. One that I particularly liked was a piece simply titled “Calculations,” by Gaines.

 Looking at it from a few feet away it appears to be some sort of symmetric tree.

Upon closer examination, however, you begin to see that it’s built with an array of ordered numbers. There is a positive side, a negative side, and an unbroken sequence of numbers. I have no idea what the purpose behind this work is (and the plaque did not help either) but I do see it as an interesting take on our perceptions. It reminds me of our study of nano-science and how everything seems to change when you go to a smaller and smaller scale. This may seem simple but we easily forget that just like getting closer to the artwork reveals numbers, we can get close to the numbers to see nanoparticles. Everything is made up of something else, and the scale upon which we examine it determines what exactly we perceive.

I then proceeded toward the Provocations: The Architecture and Design of Heatherwick Studio exhibit and came across the question: “Can you squeeze a chair out of a machine, the way you squeeze toothpaste out of a cube?” I thought this was a mildly interesting and a bit silly thing to ponder, and didn’t think much of it. Then I turned around and much to my amazement there it was – someone had actually squeezed a chair out of a machine in the same way you squeeze toothpaste out of a tube. I had to look at it carefully because I simply could not believe it, and I also had to resist the temptation to sit on it.

The bench itself was not particularly extraordinary, but the fact that it was literally squeezed out of a machine made it so much more. It was no longer just a bench – it was now a work of art. I believe this goes back to the first weeks when we studied about the reconciliation of art and science because it gave me a bit more perspective on the issue. You cannot simply have science as questions such as the aforementioned one are not found in nature -- they are artistic wonders that push the limits of our technological capabilities and turn ordinary objects into things that are much more desirable.

Everything in this exhibit thoroughly amazed me. The glass bar holding up a 56lb weight.

The bridge that could be rolled up into a wheel like object.

As someone studying physics, I would one day very much like to work alongside such artists to create things that will inspire others.