Week 1 Two Cultures


Week 1: Two Cultures

Hello! My name is Claire Grover and I come from a very artistic and athletic family. From what I come to understand about the idea of Two Cultures, an idea introduced by C.P. Snow, there are the literary intellectuals the natural scientists. A prime example of this would be the division of the buildings of the science fields and the arts and humanities fields I notice on the UCLA campus.


The relevance of this course contributes very much to my academic career as I am very interested in the field and hope to get into a design field following college. Not only am I interested in this class, but I am also a more artistically driven person, as opposed to science. When it comes to technology, I am interested only to a particular extent, meaning I believe it can have great uses and is very helpful in certain ways, but not always.

One of the sources that influenced my understanding of this weeks topic was the RSA Animate: Changing Education Paradigms video provided by Professor Vesna. The speaker and artist were very descriptive. One point I found most interesting was what they called "divergent thinking". They stated that "creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value and is not linear or convergent." Based off of this reading, and this weeks topic, I have learned about these two specific ways of thinking and how they influence us and how we go about life (so to say).


Another source I found useful was the article The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, by C.P. Snow, where he discussed how he was a scientist during the day, but was with literature at night. From this arose the idea of there being two cultures, but something that came to mind from this was that very statement being supportive for there being a third culture, something further explained in Toward a Third Culture : Being in between, by Leonardo, Vol. 1. While there is a definite separation, artists are often working with technologies now.

Finally, in his article, Myths and Confusions in Thinking about Art/Science/Technology, Stephen Wilson notes that there is much confusion since artists approach technology so differently, seeking to use it to appropriate new contemporary art.

From this topic, I've gathered that there is a radical distinction between the two brains, and some seek to find a third culture.





 http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0024-094X%282001%2934%3A2%3C121%3ATATCBI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U   (RSA Animate Changing Educational Paradigms video provided on canvas)
The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution, by C.P. Snow (book provided on canvas)


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 6 BioTech & Art

Image
Week 6: BioTech and Art With biotechnology, genetics, and technology in general constantly expanding, it has reached a point of entry into work with our bodies, animals, and our environment. Artists have now entered into labs working with several different scientists delving into the body and what is life or art. What I cannot fully comprehend is how people working in labs on things such as butterflies or rats and changing their genes is considered art or them working as artists. By accessing the codes of DNA, scientists or artists have been able to insert another code and create something new, but "is life itself an expressive medium?" For example, to add a third ear to your body as Stelarc did, he considers this art on the human body. There are several theories or opinions on what art is, such as art as an expression or imitation or representation. But does that mean that experimenting with genes or animals is a way to express art in nature? Personally, I think not. ...
Read more
Image
Week 4: Medicine, Technology, & Art My knowledge of medical technologies today is rather limited as I personally have only experienced X-rays, MRI's and particular machines that I have only seen. But after watching the lecture videos, I would conclude that I have more of a broadened view of the advancements in medical technologies over the past several hundred years. While watching Professors Vesnas lecture video on this concept, it was interesting when she stated that "anatomy and dissection are at the intersection of art and science." I am still questioning that, as I do not fully comprehend. There is a wide array of things that incorporate both technology and art, but both work together to create one another, so to say. An article by the Medical Futurist discusses the most exciting medical technologies of 2017, and one in particular that goes hand in hand with the lecture videos is the "Narrow artificial intelligence" that has surfaced the United ...
Read more
Image
Week 3: Robotics and Art Industrialization is something that is constantly evolving due to the change in politics, economics, population, resources, etc, and has been especially in the last 100 years or so. It can have both positive and negative effects, as well as a great influence on things such as life as we know it, or things such as art and science. Walter Benjamin, a Jewish German philosopher and eclectic thinker during the 1900s, a time when technical reproduction had grown into something much bigger than what people thought it was, discusses that even with the ability to reproduce a piece of art, it is still lacking one major element, "its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be." It was interesting to read about Douglas Davis' view on art in the age of digital reproduction. As he discusses how there is not much of a distinction between something that is original, or that which is reproduced, I figured I would...
Read more