UCLA SCI|ART NanoLab

We started the day off with a lecture from John Carpenter, who used to be a part of the Art|Sci course. He shared with us a recent project that he worked on, which was an immersive and interactive exhibit where “waves” ebbed and flowed around you, and your presence realistically affected the movement of the waves. (1) Another project he mentioned was about a building in Shanghai that had a very unique design, as well as an eco roof. (a) He was able to really break down the building structure using a program or process he referred to as “morphosis”, and with this program he was able to create a virtual 3-D representation of the building that he could manipulate and get a better view of specific sections of structure. (2) He is also currently involved in the planning of a nature and science museum that is being built in Dallas, Texas. (3) The structure itself is extremely aesthetically pleasing, and lots of models and drawings of the museum have already been created. But to get an even better look at the inside of the building, John Carpenter created new software which allowed him to virtually move through a virtual model of the museum.

Our presentation today went fairly well, though my group did not answer some questions to the accuracy that we should have. A very basic summary of my group’s idea is to use nanotechnology to destroy or modify the T-cells that your body naturally produces. (4, b) The T-cells are what basically “receives” the AIDS virus, and eliminating these AIDS receptors would eliminate the possibility of AIDS being contracted. (5, c) But with the great feedback that we got, I feel that we have formed a solid idea, with a good vision on the end result, as well as our next move.

The last presentation of the day was about a project that two college students made called “social sqncr” or social sequencer. What they were trying to achieve was an interactive program that could be used by people of all ages. (6)They wrote a computer program which enabled the user to control the program using their movements (via a motion-sensing camera). The user starts out by creating their own “creature”, whose attributes are essentially chosen at random. (d) Now I can’t help but be a little bit critical at this point, because I really didn’t see why they couldn’t have made it so that the user actually knew what attributes they were giving their creature. Instead, they have it so that you are randomly picking attributes. But after this stage, the user’s picture is taken, and is tagged to that user’s creature, which then roams around, interacting with other creatures created by previous users. I think that it’s generally a pretty cool idea that uses science and is presented in a very artistic and fun way, but I’m didn’t really get where the social aspect of their program was. For more information, I also took a look at one of the creators’ blog. (7)

Links:

1. http://www.johnbcarpenter.com/recentWorks/thesis.html
2. http://www.johnbcarpenter.com/recentWorks/morphosis.html
3. http://www.natureandscience.org/default.asp
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T_cell
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS
6. http://bruzed.com/2010/05/22/social-sqncr/
7. http://nickhardeman.com/blog/

Images:

a. http://twistedsifter.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/house-with-grass-roof.jpg

b. http://uhavax.hartford.edu/bugl/dendritic-tcells.jpg

c. http://www.cellscience.com/aids.jpg

d. http://nickhardeman.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/Picture-1.png