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BioArt is an art practice where artists work with live tissues, bacteria, living organism, and life processes. The artworks are produced in laboratories, galleries, or artists' studio using scientific processes such as biotechnology. Even though BioArt has drawn attention to ethical issues, it is still a good example that life itself is a valid expressive medium. As an engineering student, I have taken life science course so I am quite familiar with the topics about transgenics, mutilation, mutation, recombinance or selective breeding. I would easily relate these topics to the scientific field but not artistic field. After viewing this week's materials, I realized that they are pretty similar if artistic medium follows the standards in manipulating living organisms and semi-living systems. Heliconius Melpomene butterfly, one wing has a "natural design", whereas the patterns on the other has been artificially modified In Lecture Part 1, Professor Vesna gave an...

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Being a mechanical engineering student, it was difficult for me to imagine how medical technologies can be linked to art. However, after viewing this week's course materials, I found that art is embedded in medicine, and vice versal. In Lecture Part 1, Professor Vesna mentioned that artists have been interested in human dissection since ancient period. They were trying to look into the body, understand how the human body works, and represent it as art forms. The art products, for example, an anatomical diagram, a small-scale artificial human skeleton, are generally used by doctors to help understand or analyze human diseases. This reminds me of Chinese medicine. The science of acupuncture and moxibustion is an important division of traditional Chinese medicine. For thousand of years, the Chinese people have taken advantages of it due to its nonpharmaceutical treatment, simple application, wide range of use, good curative effect, and low cost. Acupuncturists were usually...

For my first event, I went to Linda Weintraub's lecture based on "What's next? Eco Materialism and Contemporary Art". She believes that the current vanguard is propelled by environmental consciousness that is not only the defining characteristic of contemporary manufacturing, architecture, science, ethics, politics, and philosophy. It is delineating contemporary art. Group Photo taken after the lecture One interesting point Linda made during the lecture is that art is remoted. This is quite different from the traditional way of creating art. Compared to the traditional work of art, when an artist goes to google map and takes a satellite picture of a landscape then shares it through social media with detailed explanation, the artist himself has not visited the site that is the subject of his work of art and the imagine is not generated by himself. His physical organism has not connection with his work of art and he is not even the observer of the event itself....

Both of this week's readings talk about the impact of the industrial age on art, science, and technology. Douglas Davis argued that "the work of art in the age of digital reproduction is physically and formally chameleon and there is no longer a clear conceptual distinction between original and reproduction in virtually any medium". In Walter Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the age of Mechanical Reproduction", he stated that even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking its presence in time and space. The mass production of art removes the creativity and originality from an artwork. This explains why a collector would spend millions of dollars for an auction to win an original artwork rather than purchasing its reproduction. Moreover, I want to point out that sometimes the modern industrial technologies are unable to reproduce ancient technologies. The Sword of Goujian, an archaeological artifact of the Spring and Autumn period (771 to 403BC)...

The Golden Section was used extensively by Leonardo Da Vinci. In online lecture of Math + Art, Professor Vesna gave an example based on the Golden Ratio and the Vitruvian man, which described how mathematics influences art. Linda Henderson introduced the fourth dimension in her article “The Fourth Dimension and non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art”. She stated that the fourth dimension was considered as higher dimensions that would take art further than it had before. Artists began to include higher dimensions such as time in their work and created more vivid artwork.  In Da Vinci's "The Annunciation" that the brick wall of the courtyard is in golden ratio proportion to top and bottom of the painting www.goldennumber.net/art-composition-design/ Origami is another example that links mathematics and art together. Origami artists create lines by folding paper. According Julie, mathematicians recently found that it is possible to divide an angle into three eq...

On 7 May 1959, C.P. Snow introduced the ideal of two cultures in his famous Rede lecture at Combridge. He identified the two cultures as those of literary intellectuals and natural scientists. As a student majoring in Mechanical Engineering, the existence of two cultures has influenced my school life at UCLA. Every time I introduced myself to others, I said I am a science major. However, when thinking deeply, I cannot say that Mechanical Engineering is a pure science major. Being an engineer student, giving a presentation to the class is common. The presentation skills are considered as art skills! Engineering students use art skills to present scientific concepts all the time. Similarly, the internal structure of the building was usually designed by engineers but the outlook was design by artists. LA's Space-Age Icon http://newsroom.ucla.edu/stories/ucla-engineers-help-fix-l-a-s-158066 I am an international student from mainland of China. Before I went to high school,...