Event 5 (Extra Credit): Dinosaur Hall at the National History Museum

For this event, I went to the Dinosaur Hall exhibit at the National History Museum. Generally, we don't think of the display of fossils as being related to art, but while at the exhibit, I saw how closely the fields of paleontology, medical technology, mathematics, and art are intertwined. Concepts taken from each of these fields are utilized to create the life-like fossil sculptures we commonly see at museums.

Typically, when we think of paleontologists finding fossils, we imagine them using pick-axes, meticulously uncovering fossils piece-by-piece. Though this image is correct for most paleontologists, new technologies such as enhanced X-ray imaging (medical technology), 3D printing, and electron microscopy (nanotechnology) are being used to re-create fossils as never before. With this technology, paleontologists are able to accurately re-create how ancient animals, such as dinosaurs, moved, ate, and behaved.

Additionally, applying mathematics to fossils helps scientists understand such as things as an animal's total wing span and leg length, all measurements that are necessary to accurately reconstruct a fossil.

  

Where does the "art" aspect come in? Well, in order for scientists to re-create fossils and present them to the public, they have to have an artistic eye. All the dinosaur fossils I saw were, essentially, sculptures. Just as an artist would take into account such things as proportion, perspective, shape, and form when creating a sculptural piece, so too did the people who had to put together these fossils for the public. Furthermore, fossils were typically accompanied with artists' depictions of what the animal looked like (picture below shows this). I actually learned from a series of paintings that prior to computerized images and X-Ray technology, artists and painters were responsible for depicting what they believed fossilized animals to look like.

A painting by the artist Charles Knight depicting what he believed an herbivorous dinosaur looked like prior to computerized technology

Me at the exhibit

Here again, in somewhere where I didn't expect to see art intertwined with science, I saw life-like fossils being recreated through a collaboration between artists and scientists.

Link to the event: http://www.nhm.org/site/explore-exhibits/permanent-exhibits/dinosaur-hall

                         

References:

Safford, Matt. "How New Tech for Ancient Fossils Could Change The Way We Understand Animals." Smithsonian. Web. 02 June 2016.  

"Using Mathematics in Fossil Reconstruction." Using Mathematics in Fossil Reconstruction. Web. 02 June 2016. <http://www.sedl.org/scimath/compass/v03n01/usingmath.html>

 "Art and Science of Fleshed-out Fossils." John Hawks Weblog. Web. 03 June 2016.

"What Does the Fossil Record Show?" BioLogos. Web. 03 June 2016.

"The Art of Natural History: Fossil Art!" Idaho Museum of Natural History. 2015. Web. 03 June 2016. 

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Event 4 (Extra Credit): Senses of Time: Video and Film Based Works of Africa at the LACMA

For this event, I attended the 'Senses of Time: Video and Film Based Works of Africa' exhibit at the LACMA museum. I have never really seen video/film utilized as an art form in a museum exhibit before, so it was really interesting to see how artwork translates to the viewer in this medium. Though I saw works that were really breathtaking, my favorite and by far the one that related most to this course was the work titled "Brave New World II" by the artist Theo Eshetu.

Me taking  a picture of myself looking into Eshetu's piece

Eshetu's Piece

The piece, named after Aldous Huxley's novel, is in Eshetu's own words "a film-based work that questions relationships between ritual and technological time through a compelling kaleidoscopic illusion, which blurs past, present, and future." Eshetu built the piece by surrounding a television with a pyramid of mirrors, their reflections creating a perfect globe.

Eshetu's piece is very closely related to our lecture on Mathematics and Art. In order to create his piece, which successfully creates an infinite like illusion, Eshetu had to know how to purposefully situate his 4 mirrors to create the illusion of a perfect globe. Specifically, his piece utilizes the mathematical concepts of fractals (defined as a curve or geometric figure, each part of which has the same statistical character as the whole), whose presence is explained by the Golden Ratio (Fibonacci sequence) we learned about early on in the quarter.

Fractals in nature, like the one Eshetu created
<http://www.advancedskinwisdom.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/golden-ratio-in-nature.jpg>

 Eshetu's piece was one that expertly linked the fields of mathematics, physics, optics, and art. By embracing the Golden Ratio, he has created a man-made fractalized piece that draws the viewer in (mathematics) while simultaneously blurring the distinction between past, present, and future (physics).                                                  

Me with my ticket at the LACMA

The following is a link to the exhibit: http://www.lacma.org/art/exhibition/senses-time-video-and-film-based-works-africa

References:

 

McNally, Jess. "Earth’s Most Stunning Natural Fractal Patterns." Wired.com. Conde Nast Digital. Web. 02 June 2016. 

 "Theo Eshetu." Dutch Art Institute. Web. 02 June 2016.

"Theo Eshetu | The Mirror Ball Constellation No.3 (2013-2015) | Available for Sale | Artsy." Theo Eshetu | The Mirror Ball Constellation No.3 (2013-2015) | Available for Sale | Artsy. Web. 02 June 2016.

"SEATTLE FRACTALS DIGITAL ART." What Are Fractals? Web. 02 June 2016. <http://fractalarts.com/SFDA/whatarefractals.html>.

"Fractals | World of Mathematics." World of Mathematics. Web. 03 June 2016.