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Da Vinci's Anatomical Drawings When I saw this week’s lecture title, the only person I could think of was Leonardo Da Vinci, and more specifically his drawing, the Vitruvian Man, comes to mind. However, outside of that it is hard to imagine a connection between medicine and art. So, I found this week’s lectures to be very surprising, especially regarding the history of medicine. Medicine in the modern society is so heavily reliant on technology, that it is hard to imagine that artists were the pioneers of the field. The artists mentioned in this week’s lecture were heavily involved in using the human body as a form of art. Although this form of art has come up in the past lectures, these artists really took it another level. A great example of this would be the Body World exhibition.  This art is definitely fascinating, but on some level I find it unsettling. Although the art is meant to celebrate the beauty of the complexity of the human anatomy, I f...

Technology pervades almost every aspect of our lives. So it is only natural to assume that the field of robotics would have a deep impact in the field of art. However, this week’s lecture made the interesting point that once again there is a two-way dialogue between art and sciences, and in this instance art and robotics. Walter Benjamin discussed one interesting influence of robotics on art in the essay “The Work of Art in Age of Mechanical Reproduction”.   He talks about how technology can help us replicate a work of art perfectly, but in this process the artwork loses its authenticity or its “aura”. Benjamin rights points out that with an artwork there is attached element of “time and space” which lends to its uniqueness and worth and is lost when reproduced. A cybernetic kinetic sculpture Robotics has also had a massive positive influence on art, such as the emergence of cybernetic art. According to a paper written by Michael Apter, cybernetics has influenced art i...

Photo 1: Photo with Linda Weintraub. I am the furthest right person in the photo. On April 18 th , I had the pleasure of attending a lecture by Linda Weintraub called “WHAT’S NEXT? Eco Materialism and Contemporary Art”. In this lecture, Linda talked about the impact of mankind on nature and about her adoption of a sustainable lifestyle. However before getting to this larger discussion, Linda explored some other concepts.   One very interesting concept that Linda explored was the different expectations of mankind from nature. She herself was directed towards this discussion when she was visiting a beautiful place with her friend. Upon her expressing the beauty of nature with great excitement, her friend asked her the question “Is that all?”. Linda took it upon herself to explore this question and use work by different artists to explore their viewpoints on this topic. Two particular artists that Linda explored that really jumped out at me were Frederic Church and Claude Mon...

I came across the golden number in high school when I had to come up with a topic in mathematics to explore. Our book was exploring the common misconception that Nautilus shell is a golden spiral (a spiral that gets wider with the factor of the golden ratio). Nautilus Shell Golden Spiral Although this is an example of a misconception, there are indeed many examples of mathematical patterns in the nature. One great example would be the fractal geometry of snowflakes. So it is only natural to assume that art, which often takes inspiration from nature, would have a deep influence from mathematics. However, the progression of this influence, which was explored in this lecture, is something very interesting to learn about. Marc Frantz lecture on vanishing points is one of the best examples of math in art. The use of “vanishing points” to accurately represent three-dimensional shapes in paintings is amazing. The video about the presence of the Fibonacci se...