Extra Credit - Event 4 | Griffith Observtory | Telescope + Aztec

Event 4 | Griffith Observtory | Telescope + Aztec

Griffith Observatory is an icon of Los Angeles and a national leader in public astronomy, the observatory is located on the southern slope of Mount Hollywood in Griffith park with an elevation of 1,134 feet above sea level.  The observatory represented knowledges about the universe and the corresponding development, history.  

For a long time, universe is the great unknown to human beings.  Ancient people learned their ways of determining the time by observing stars.  The aztec calendar stone is one of the very special art work done by Aztec people.  Misleading by its name, the stone is actually the combination of 20 symbols that set out the 20 day names in Aztec 260-day cycle.  The stone is painted in colorful graphic patterns with a sun like figure in the middle.  

And thank to the inventions of telescope which changed universe from unknown to the great mysterious.  Telescope is the device invented by Galileo Galilei in 1609 to magnify the view of distant objects.  The later astronomers are able to explore the universe deeper and broader.  The observatory provides me with better understanding of the universe in terms of art.  Universe itself is the most complex art work done by the great nature.  On the other hand, ancient people, as well as contemporary astronomers and artists create giant volume of works based on the mystery and nature of universe.  The creation of constellation is also created by imaging the star allocations and connected corresponding stars into creative shapes.  By visiting the observatory, the understanding about the relationships between astronomy, technology and art are strengthened and broadened.  

References:

http://www.griffithobservatory.org/general.html

inventors.about.com/od/gstartinventors/a/Galileo_Galilei.html

www.constellationspecial.com/Energy

www.aztec-history.com/aztec-calendar-stone.html

www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/9-12/.../telescope_feature_912.html

http://www.telescopeking.com/guides/constellation-map/

Event 3 | Natural History Museum | Dinosaur and Maya

Event 3 | Natural History Museum | Dinosaur and Maya

The natural history museum of Los Angeles is located beside University of Southern California, and the museum presents variety of exhibitions range from dinosaurs time till the history of Los Angeles.  The museum consists of different categories of exhibitions, from large mammals to insects, from ancient Maya civilization to the contemporary history of California.  The Maya exhibition and the newly decorated dinosaurs hall clearly defined two basic categories of history, namely human civilization and animal evolution.  

The Maya exhibition represented art works from Maya culture, which is originated around 3,000 years ago at Yucatan, Southern Mexico and Honduras.  The Maya culture established writing systems and the culture is eventually collapsed due to draught and perhaps economic pressure.  A large portion of portraits are exhibited, which clearly described the daily life of Maya people and the corresponding religion.  For instance, a weaver figure is represented.  It’s a ceramic art work made around A.D. 600-900 in Mexico and depicts daily life of a weaver in Maya society; and the weaving technique is still applied in Mexico.  By inspecting variety of art pieces within that period of time, it’s becoming more obvious that the art is universal.  Each civilization in the history contains certain kinds of portraits about the daily life in terms of art.  On one hand, it could be summarized that art is the nature of human beings and is carried all the way from the start of civilization; on the other hand, there is similarities between different civilizations, as the human portraits from Maya is similar to the figures discovered in China; and thus proved that art is universal.  

The dinosaur hall represented skeletons of dinosaurs from Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, and the scale of the skeletons range from tiny bird size to huge building size.  It’s surprising and shaking to see the completeness of the skeletons and how real the simulations are.  And all the visual impression made me think about the technology that helped excavating, protecting and simulating all these dinosaurs’ skeletons.  The movie Jurassic Park is one of the typical example that assemble the history, art and technology.  The advanced technologies  helped us better understanding the nature of the world and the civilizations that are essential to us.  Technologies created art pieces that could not be done without these techniques.  

References:

http://www.nhm.org/site/explore-exhibits#

Feduccia, A. (2002). "Birds are dinosaurs: simple answer to a complex problem". 

dsc.discovery.com/video-topics/other/dinosaur-videos

paleobiology.si.edu/dinosaurs/

Hopson, James A. (1975). "The evolution of cranial display structures in hadrosaurian dinosaurs". Paleobiology 1 (1): 21–43.

Event 2 | Getty Museum | Abelardo Morell

Event 2 | Getty Museum | Abelardo Morell

Abelardo Morell ’s exhibition is represented by Getty Museum in Los Angeles.  Abelardo is an American artist born 1948 in Cuba.  He is famous for pushing boundaries of medium while exploring visual surprise and wonder.  Abelardo and his family fled Cuba in 1962 and moved to Boston in his young age, which made his style of works.  There are basically three categories of photographs he created that impressed me dramatically, namely Camera Obscura, Tent Camera and Books and Maps.  

For the Camera Obscura series, which is the early works done by Abelardo, he photographed large scale images of inside of household and superimposed the photo with upside down outside scenes.  The collections create strong visual conflict from in terms of inside to outside and upright to upside down.  The supper imposition created uncanny effect in terms of visual impact, as Freud would say, “Unhomelike.”  One of the most impressive photo would be the Ocean fills an Attic.  The background of the photo is the sea view, and the remaining is the display of attic of the place he lived in.  To me, the art work depicted the thought of a teenager, who is eager of the outside world, and the world is some what distorted to some extent by his illusion.  

Another breath taking collection is the Tent Camera series created in 2010.  Abelardo was intend to present the grandeur of the American wilderness, and the first work was done in Big Bend National Park, located in Texas.  He placed periscope lens on top of the portable tent and took photo of the scene outside reflected onto ground.  The image is therefore composing photograph of outside underfoot.  The collections lead me reflecting about the topic of robotics and art, as well as two cultures.  Through different aspects of viewing things, Abelardo created ground breaking works accompany with various mediums and technologies.  Beside black or white ordinary films, Abelardo used the distorted or transmitted outside scenes as background to display the enlarged scale of relatively small objects.  

References:

http://www.abelardomorell.net

www.abelardomorell.net/photography/cameraobsc.../cameraobsc_01.html

www.artnet.com/awc/abelardo-morell.html

http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/morell/

www.bonnibenrubi.com/Abelardo-Morell_artwork.html

Event 1 | Hammer Museum | James Welling

Event 1 | Hammer Museum | James Welling

James Welling’s exhibition is represented by Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.  James Welling is a post modern artist born 1951 in Hartford, Connecticut, and creates art pieces through realism, transparency, description, personal, cultural memory and material nature.  James started his career around 1980’s, and is still participating in art creations.  

“Drapes” series is one of the earliest works done by James Welling, which is focusing fabric.  Blank paper is shred into desired shapes and placed on a piece of velvet fabric, and James photographed the fabric with paper in different allocations and shapes.  Another early series of works is the “Degrades” Series, which depicts graded color backgrounds for different TV decor and product photo during that age.  One of the work is called ZEPES, which is created in 1986 on chromogenic print and the work depicted the color of dark read and orange.  This very piece of art, along with others in the series enlightened me to the topic of two cultures.  During that age, television is one of the most popular and welcome medium.  TV ads, as the most interacting and combined arts, are intensively played on television.  And the artist on the other hand used other robotics, such as camera, recorded the stereo type of the special display of art.  

James Welling’s recent art works including “Flowers” series, created from 2004 to 2011, also has the idea of robotics with art embed.  Pressed flowers are placed on 8*10 inches black and white film, the photographed is taken, and different colors are added to the original photo through shaped color films layer by layer.  All the techniques applied strengthened the idea that art could be well displayed by robotics, and robotics is not only used for robotic copying.  Generally speaking, James Welling’s exhibition is abstract but meaningful, and it could provided people with more direct feelings about how robotics could be applied to actually create arts that could not be done through ordinary ways.  

References:

http://jameswelling.net

www.blindspot.com/store/page4.html?edition_id=welling_turtle_creek_pa

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDYBJV4ylzw

www.hammer.ucla.edu/watchlisten/watchlisten/show_id/568479

http://www.aperture.org/2013/02/james-welling-monograph/

Week 9 | Space+Art

Week 9 | Space+Art

Space is the most mysterious subject to us based on its scale and complexity.  Our passion and curiosity keep pushing us to discover the unknowns of the world beyond earth.  Technologies such as telescope, space shuttles and finders are developed to help us better understand the universe we are living in.  Nowadays, the space related subjects fulfilled every aspect of our daily lives and aesthetics.  

Constellation is an internationally defined area of the celestial sphere, the constellations are patterns formed by prominent stars within apparent proximity to one another on Earth’s night sky.  There are total of 12 constellations, which are distributed through for the whole year.  Based upon the emergence of constellations, the art and technologies related to the space or astronomy are utilized.  By applying telescopes, people were able to better observe the night sky of the Earth, and therefore determined certain patterns that formed sets of stars.  And along with corresponding aesthetics, each set of stars are pictured with imagination into different meaningful figures and thus the beauty of the space is highly appreciated by people throughout the history.  

Plenty of projects have been launched based on the astronomical knowledge, and movie industry is inevitable the most flourishing field for imagination of the universe.  Currently, the film “Gravity” is launched.  The movie told a story of how an astronaut struggled in the universe and trying to get back to earth.  The astonishing views of the universe is the consequence of advanced technologies related to astronomy.  Other films like “Star Wars”, “Star Treks” are all based on people’s imaginations about the universe based on established information of the space.

References:

The story of the stars: New desscriptive astronomy. Science series. American Book Company. p. 220

James Kennedy, The Real Meaning of the Zodiac.

International Astronomical Union. ”

http://www.space.com/15722-constellations.html

http://www.universetoday.com/105410/how-could-we-fix-gravity/

http://www.npr.org/2013/06/20/193496493/translated-into-navajo-star-wars-will-be