HRS177|Spring2012

Luke week 4

This week we saw Noa's pollen exhibit as well as her dust bunny sculpture in progress.  I don't really have much else to say as I'm working on the midterm this week.  I did have some ideas for the pollen exhibit.  On a practical level, it must cost something to replace all that honey that gets used. A shallow glass bowl could be placed under the pollen allowing the honey to be recycled, rather than just make a mess on the floor.  I think it would also look cool to see the pollen floating in a pool of honey as it begins to fill up.

Noa Kaplan Exhibition

This week during lecture we saw an exhibition by Noa Kaplan, a graduate student at UCLA.  Her work was perticularly interesting becaue it played with space and size and questioned the things we take for granted.  One of her works was a large model of a dust bunny.  A larger than life model, this work forces you to take a closer look at what is normally seen as insignificant.  However, the model was incredibly complex and had a lot of thought put into it to recreate something as close to the actually as possible.

Blog Week 4- Sophie Jing Xia

Noa Kaplan’s works focused on texture and bringing awareness about diets and microscopic structures. My favorite piece of her art work is the “Pollen”, in which she magnified one single piece of pollen and dripped honey from an illuminated bottle above the pollen. It explored the relationship between the fruitful honey that bees make and the great amount of effort that it really takes to create such delicious honey.

Noa Kaplan and Medical Technology--Shiwei Huang

Noa Kaplan’s work explores the relationship between texture and structure. Her works also involve the relationship between nanoscale images and macroscopic images. I think the most interesting piece is “Pollen.” The part that stands on the ground is an enlarged sculpture of a grain of pollen. I like the idea that she did not simple take a picture of a grain of pollen and let the computer do all the work. She  created several pieces of the pollen and put them together by herself.

Week 4 -- Art & Medicine

I loved Noa Kaplan’s art, especially her large-scale representations of coffee, sugar, dust bunnies, and pollen. In my mind, these did exactly what she had hoped – to “re-enchant things we take for granted” and make them on a massive scale so that we can actually interact with them.  I greatly admire the time she puts into her work, and cannot imagine having as much patience as she seems to possess.

Animal Heartbeats Electormagnatic signals and Factory Farming

According to the Heartmath Institute, the heart not only generates the largest electromagnetic field in the body, but encoded in our heartbeats (or rather the space in between beats) are our emotions.   These emotions, which are registered in the heart, are then signaled to the brain and therefore impact a person or body’s ability to think clearly.  As you might have suspected, according to the Heartmath Institute anyway, happiness and upbeat emotional states produce the best environment for your mind to think clearly.  All pretty interesting stuff but thus far kin

The Influence of Biotechnology

I found Noa's artwork to be unique and intriguing. She magnifies micro objects in hopes of raising awareness of the audience. For example, the dust bunny and the pollen. From her presentation, I was able to see her interest in art evolve and become part of her life. As Professor Vesna has said, from what Noa has learned for her artwork, she has also modified her diet. Thus, her artwork is also becoming a lifestyle, a way of life. This concept is empowering and I find it inspiring.

Food and Labor

 

I really enjoyed both Noa’s presentation and the gallery viewings. My favorite piece was the large pollen grain with honey dripping over it. I eat honey all the time, but I never think about the work the bees put into producing it. By bringing attention back to the pollen component of honey, Noa’s piece really made me pause and remember the labor that goes into a very common product, and also made me remember the importance of bees and the interconnectedness of the eco system.

Robotic Artist

To me, biotech and art is being able to make a statement about biotechnology and science through artistic expression of some sort, and I believe that Noa Kaplan did just that through her recent exhibition. Noa’s exhibition was the first that really blatantly tied together biotechnology and art for me. The past three weeks I had definitely gotten the grip of the scientific and biotechnological aspects of the course, but Noa’s pieces were clearly artistically driven though still scientifically motivated.

Poop Burgers

Even though I do not agree with agree with doctrines of veganism, I liked Noa’s presentation. The concept of her works is very interesting. It fascinating to actually be able to see and feel the things that are only seen under the microscope. Noa’s works are inspired by her life style. That is why it was a unique experience to observe the works of this artist. I liked the recreation of a dust particle the most. It is a great idea, which was accomplished with detail and precision.

Texture of Art and the Brain

Noa Kaplan's presentation showed how interesting science can be at a microscopic level.  As humans we interact in our space with a macro perspective, often focusing on the implications or symptoms of things rather than the core of the problem itself.  We overlook the small because it is irrelevant to most daily life activities.  I enjoyed the different subjects that she pursued for her pieces and I think it was illumnating to see how fascinating small things can look, despite being largely unseen.

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