wenhaolDESMA9

    In this week's material the artwork that interests me the most is the Nano Mandala created by Professor Victoria Vesna. The artwork consists of a video projected to a disk of sand. The video depicts a recursive scale of view ranging from the nano-structure of a grain of sand to the entire graph of a mandala pattern. The video can be watched below:     The Nano Mandala (from YouTube)     What I would like to investigate further into the artwork is the resonance between eastern and western culture about one common philosophical idea it conveys. The images of nano-structure of a grain of sand clearly makes use of modern science, which originates from the western culture. On the other hand, the symbol of Mandala in Buddhism is a famous representation of a universe in the eastern culture. Thangka painting of Mandala     Also, it is apparent that the artwork aims to ...

In this week's material the idea that interests me the most is Roger Penrose's claim that the human consciousness must contain some non-computable ingredients. The idea of the world not being real can be traced back in the ancient times, from Zhuangzi's Dream of Butterflies in the eastern culture to Descartes' external world skepticism. Due to the advancement in modern technology, especially in the invention and rapid progression of computers, a lot of people have hypothesized further that our own consciousness may well not be true but is oply part of a computer simulation. Roger Penrose refutes the idea by pointing out that due to Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem our consciousness cannot be part of a computer simulation. Roger Penrose Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem merely states that in any logic system of the first or higher order that permits the representation of Peano Axioms (which defines natural numbers), there must be some statement compati...

In this week ’ s material the topic that interests me the most is the Workhouse Zoo project initiated by Adam Zaretsky and Julia Reodica. The project explored issues associated with biotechnology in various aspects. Adam Zaretsky The Workhouse Zoo project is an 8 foot by 8 foot biosecure container which contains ten different types of living organisms that forms a small biosphere. The living organisms include bacteria, yeast, worms, fruit flies, frogs, mice, fish, and human beings (which is Adam Zaretsky himself). The project was open to public and displayed on a 24 hours webcam, thus becoming part of the mass media comsumption. Information about the origins and behaviors of the displayed species were given to educate the public, and Adam Zaretsky himself worked throughout the time to feed the animals and keep the entire biosphere running.   The project have various other goals besides public education. On the artistic level Adam Zaretsky ’ s presence can be regarde...

This Tuesday I attended Eli Joteva's show Mnemoawari . The title of the show is composed of two words: mnemo, which means memory, and awari, which means awareness. Since the show overall is pretty abstractive, my feelings and understandings of the show are only personal, and may not accurately reflect the author's intentions of creating it. The Event Outline The show is consisted of four parts. The first part of the show is a futuristic style painting of a ball full of light , titled "The Dream Auger".  Dreams have surreal powers over the reality, and the light ball appears to me to have spiritual essence. It is also worth noting that the subtitle of this part of the show is “ Can you remember a future? ” . W hile a "memory about the future" seems contradictory in itself, the idea behind such concep t can be justified by a view of reversing the time axis which all of us experiences. Such a view could also guide us to understand other parts of the sh...

Link to Midterm Project