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  For the first Event of the class, I chose to visit the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, which definitely offered an inspiring experience. The museum, just as its name suggests, focuses on the natural and historical events in the area of Los Angeles. On the side of nature is the abundant fossil records of extinct animals as well as detailed explanation of the possible causes of their extinctions. I was surprised by the huge number of animals that have lived on this land that are now extinct, and many of them are close relatives to animals that are widely known today, such zebras, black bears, and horses. On the other side of the museum is the show room of all kinds of historical records and artistic works narrating the origin and development of Los Angeles as a metropolitan city, incorporating a wide range of aspects including economics, ecology culture, and politics. Coming from an ancestry of Mexican and Latin American culture and developed during the boom of indust...

This week, we focused on discussing the intersected relationship between the field of medicine/medtech and arts, which is highlighted by their shared nature of creativeness and abundance of pioneers that help push forward and evolve their respective fields.   One example of such intersection is the concept of design thinking, which stems from the creative process of art making, but has also been more and more widely used in the field of medtech to improve user-friendliness in the medical devices that are been developed. Moreover, there has been a stronger emphasis on the aesthetics of these devices, making them less intimidating and thus easier for the patients to use them. The influence of arts is not only shown in the improvement of medical devices,   but also the increased effectiveness in patient treatments.  Arts therapy, for example, is a well established phychological treatment through which the patients’ emotional and cognitive traumas are relieved. Additionally, ...

This week's topic is about the relationship between robotics and art as well as the societal impact of industrialization, which is argued by Walter Benjamin in his inspiring work, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction", in which he propounded the theory that "mechanical reproduction strips the 'aura' from an artwork —its unique presence in time and space" (Benjamin, 1935). His perspective is thought-provoking, especially with the advancement of technologies such as artificial intelligence, and makes me ponder: does the occurrence and development of industrialization and robotics reduce the sparks and creativity in art? One example of such consequence is represented by the movie Ex Machina, in which the main character, a humanoid girl, creates an amazing drawing, indicating the potential future where robots participate in and alter the landscape of artistic creation. Such instances challenge the future of art in terms of originality and i...

Mathematics is a fundamental part of science that is closely linked to the creation of art works, serving as a common language that both disciplines use to express and decipher complex ideas and phenomena. Such intersection is brilliantly demonstrated in Edwin A. Abbott’s "Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions," where mathematical dimensions are used to represent societal structuring and visual perception. His discussion applies mathematical concepts to the social fields and illustrates how higher-dimensional thinking aids our understanding of the visual reality. Likewise, artists like M.C. Escher utilize mathematical rules to create art works that visually challenge our perceptions of space and reality. His artwork "Relativity" uses physically unachievable structures and explores different visual and gravitational orientations, adeptly using the principles of geometry to promote viewers' meditation over the flexibility of space and reality. On the forefront of...

  Professor Vesna's article "Toward a Third Culture: Being in between" signifies a harmonious incorporation of the technologies, humanities, and arts, pointing out a new multidisciplinary archetype in which technology and art act as medium connecting fields that are often considered opposite or irrelevant in the traditional sense. This "Third Culture" is in accordance with C.P. Snow's vision, which stresses the equally significant and unique role of artists and technologists in promoting cross-disciplinary conversation and collaboration.                                                             Using UCLA campus as an example, the traditional notion to separation between the arts and sciences can be shown by the intentionally distanced parts of campus where departments related to arts and humanities ar...