Nano+Bio+Art

Today we got to delve into some concrete science. We started the day with a lecture on waves. There wasn’t a lot of the science about waves that I didn’t already know, but since my mind’s been oriented to think a little differently about the material I’m learning, I started vaguely analyzing the connections to art [...]

http://edge.org/documents/ThirdCulture/images/tc.cov250.jpg Day 1 was essentially an explanation of the purpose of the Sci|Art NanoLab course. It served as a kind of mental orientation in which we were asked to explore the concept of the “third culture,” which is, to me, an abstract blend of the sciences and the humanities. To be frank, it baffles me [...]

We worked on our projects all day today. It was the manifestation of all that we learned this week. We were able to incorporate some of the science of what we learned over these two weeks in our project, but more importantly, we were able to incorporate some of the philosophy of it. We were able [...]

Today started out with lectures on tons of optical illusions. Optical illusions occur because the brain perceives certain things based on the visual information it is receiving and basically makes assumptions about what should be happening. In other words, it’s like reading a word in different contexts — the word “cool” can mean slightly cold or [...]

Miu and Romie started the day off with a lecture on DNA in relation to nanotechnology. They explained how using nucleic acids was most effective for building nanoparticles and nanostructures for practical applications. Although proteins seem to be more versatile, they are much more complicated to operate with and they are more expensive. This is a [...]

Methodology, although helpful for small-scale and short-term endeavors, cannot and should not apply to long-term intellectual vision. That, in a nutshell, was the underlying message of the day. We have to think outside the orderly, structured box in order to make innovations and advance not only technologically, but intellectually as well. We must perceive everything we [...]

Day number 6 was entirely museum based. We first went to the California Science Center. The most striking part of this museum was the engineering and structures area within it — by modeling the mechanics of architecture in various hands-on displays, the museum (probably inadvertently) manages to create a link between science and art. It shows [...]

Day five was one of the most interesting days so far, mainly in that it incorporated clearly and beautifully direct connections between science and art. John Carpenter started off our day by giving a presentation on ideas and images about the spinal cords in animals. One of the most striking images in his presentation was that [...]

We continued our exploration of the connections between science and art today by examining optics. Two major points of the lecture that stood out to me were bio-optics and the explanation of LEDs and lasers. Bio-optics deals with patterns, colors, etc. that certain life forms display. A particularly interesting natural phenomenon is bio-luminescence, which is the [...]

On our third day of exploring the connections between science and art, we examined art forms in nature. The day started off with a lecture about various patterns found in nature. These are formed by morphogens, which are essentially entities that govern the formation of natural objects. (a) Morphogens, in my eyes, are a fundamental [...]