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Space has been a point of interest of mankind for our entire existence. From the days of Galileo as he used his small telescope to try to prove the earth revolved around the sun, to our current world in which we have powerful telescopes able to see deep into space. We use all sorts of technology to explore space so its fitting that we end with this topic because it brings all the others full circle. Galileo and his telescope. In the video "The Pale Blue Dot" Carl Sagan gives us a reality check and shows us the furthest picture of Earth, which not surprisingly looks like a pale blue dot. He goes onto describe how insignificant Earth is compared to the rest of the universe and how "the earth is just a small stage in a vast cosmic arena". On our small stage however we have created a society that competes with each other to be the "momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. By taking a step back and looking at it this way we see how in the larger view of th

As technology evolves we are able to pack more into a phone or computer which means the space inside the object becomes more important. So as space becomes more important, the need for technology to be smaller also becomes just as important. The word "nano" is 10^-9 so a nanometer would be a millionth of a meter which is so small that work has to be done under a microscope. In this week I found "Making Stuff: Smaller", "Art in the Age of Nanotechnology" and Paul Rothemund's TED Talk to be the most influential resources that gave me a better understanding of the topic. The video "Making Stuff: Smaller" gave me a good grasp on how important nanotechnology is for our society. As we've seen over the last few decades technology has evolved rapidly and this nanotechnology allows for this tech to include more features while using less space. For example when the first flat screens came out they weighed about 85 pounds with thick glass pane

Optical illusions also known as "brain failures" is art created by our brain A big part of neuroscience is the study of the brain and how it perceives the world.   Semir Zeki, a neuroscientist at University College London says that art is governed by the laws of the brain. It is the brain that is able to see and comprehend art. Although our brain allows us to see art created around us  we can also create art from brain with "normal" images. These are optical illusions and they represent a triumph of art over reality. By using color, light and patterns optical illusions are able to mislead our brains into believing a perception that in reality doesn't match the true image. Most art we perceive isn't some tricky pattern that lets our brain fail us into believing a picture is there that really isn't, it's usually a well designed piece made to be aesthetically pleasing. But how do we decide what's "good art".  In a Stanford study scien

Me in front of 1 of the projections. On May 10th I attended Eli Joteva's event. I wasn't sure what to expect before I came but I was still surprised when I got there. As I entered there was a large room with 3 projections on the walls of something I had never seen before. There was also a dripping noise being played over a speaker that put me a little on edge. After talking to Ms. Joteva I found out that the dripping was coming from melting ice spheres that had small pieces of greenery like flower pedals infused into it. The purpose of the gallery was to show the rate at which the ice was melting, to give a representation of how global warming has affected the glaciers and how quickly they're melting. She made an emphasis on what her "glaciers" looked like before being subjected to the warming of the room and compared this to how the earth looked before global warming. Ms. Joteva then posed the questions "what is our role in nature" and "is i

BioTech can involve injections to change the genetic compositions. Biotechnology is a relatively new science and looks at the junction between life and technology. In previous weeks I have learned how other types of technology are related to art; this type is similar to MedTech in how it relates to the human body. The human body itself is a work of art and as the Anthony Atala TED talk showed, BioTech is allowing us to grow human body parts. One of the first successes in this was through skin replacement  because "its function is easier to mimic than that of more complex organs such as the heart or liver" said Robert Langer, a professor at MIT. Now scientists are taking it further and trying to replicate things like organs or tissue. They can do this b y taking out a small piece of an organ scientists can grow different cell types then use a scaffold shaped into the desired organ and with the newly grown cells added to it the cells begin working how they would in a

My  midterm .