Nano+Bio+Art

Bittersweet.  The perfect word to describe today, our last full day together as friends, group members, and Sci|Art Nanolab students.  My entire experience at UCLA has been truly spectacular and I will never forget all the interesting people I met here that opened my mind to the possibilities of the third culture and the fusion of [...]

C o l o r.  It’s literally everywhere.  That is, if you aren’t colorblind.  I can’t imagine going through a whole day without seeing color.  I’d miss the big blue sky , green grass , and   brightly colored clothing that is in fashion these days.  The world would be a boring place in black and white.  Color is [...]

After an exciting weekend, I was absolutely exhausted when I got to class this morning. However, Rita and Mattia’s interesting insight into the world of biowaves kept me wide awake. First, we covered the basic form of biowaves: sound, color, and smell. Rita then commented on the way that animals can detect earthquakes before they [...]

Biological origami .  When I first heard this phrase, I wondered why in the world anyone would try to make a crane out of biological material.  Paper cranes are cool but a crane made out of sulfur, now that’s just pushing it.  Fortunately, I came to realize that the term “biological origami” didn’t mean actually trying to [...]

After an exciting weekend, I was absolutely exhausted when I got to class this morning. However, Rita and Mattia’s interesting insight into the world of biowaves kept me wide awake. First, we covered the basic form of biowaves: sound, color, and smell. Rita then commented on the way that animals can detect earthquakes before they [...]

Our trip to the California Science Center was more exciting than I ever could have imagined.  Not only were the interactive exhibits very engaging, but there were a lot of ery artistic people to look at due to the event going on across the street, the Electric Daisy Carnival .  This event brought out some of the most [...]

Friday. During the regular school year, I couldn’t wait till Friday. Friday meant the end of a long week, going to a school sporting event (especially football games), and the beginning of a fun weekend. Today however, I was slightly saddened that this Friday meant that half of my time at UCLA was already over. However, [...]

This morning during the “Optical Properties of Materials” lecture, Pinar challenged us to find a species that demonstrated a very interesting optical quality.  The mandarin duck has one of the most spectacular displays of colors I have ever seen.  The colors are so vibrant that they look unnatural.  A male mandarin duck, shown in the picture, uses [...]

Natural beauty is a form of pure beauty that we explored this morning in an “Art Forms in Nature” lecture with Miu Ling Lam and Romie Litterll.  During this presentation, we explored the different patterns found in nature and the mathematical roots of this natural beauty.  Many animals used patterns to protect themselves form potential predators but [...]

I am enamored with waves. That being said, I’m not talking about the electromagnetic waves or mechanical waves we learned about in our first lecture of the day, but rather ocean waves that, as I found out today, are both longitudinal and transverse. As an art student, my favorite subject to draw and paint is the ocean [...]

My first sight of the California Nano Systems Institute on the UCLA campus this morning left me breathless, literally. This could have been attributed not only to my anticipation to start the course I had been dreaming about for months but also to the modern architecture of the building itself and all the hills we climbed to get [...]