Andy Goldsworthy is an artist who lives in Scotland. He works exclusively in nature, using only natural resources and materials that he finds during his long walks, such as leaves, rocks, ice, reeds, and anything else you can think of that you may find in nature. The majority of the pieces he creates are temporary, and therefore cannot be sold. To overcome this, Goldsworthy takes photos of his work -a whole different piece of art in and of itself- and sells them. He also has released a few movies, that documents the construction of many of his pieces, and also gives him an opportunity to voice what his artwork and what it means to him. This I think is the most important part of Goldsworthy’s work. For him, creating his work in nature is self-gratifying. It is made clear that the work he does if for himself, and that the photography and movie sales are there because like everyone else, he needs to make a living for himself and his family. I find that this sets him apart from other artists. Certainly, other artists create art for self-gratifying reasons, but it doesn’t seem as genuine as Goldsworthy’s pieces do. With all other art, there is a feeling that in the back of these artists’ minds, they are ultimately wanting it to sell. Goldsworthy doesn’t come across that way, which I think is difficult to find these days. In Rivers and Tides, Goldsworthy’s most popular movie release, he talks about how his pieces keep him rooted and centered. The video clip following is the scene of Rivers and Tides where he is speaking about his work, and why he does what he does. It sums up Goldsworthy’s mission in a few short minutes.
None of Goldsworthy’s pieces make use of tools of any kind, outside of his hands. He uses no mortar, nails, or any substance or material that has been processed by man prior to its application. This gives a whole new meaning to his work, that his work is truly born out of nature. It offers the statement that all the resources we need to create such beauty are out there, and one just needs the right perspective and lens to see it through in order for that beauty to come out. I find Goldsworthy to be a visionary, in a very primitive way. People go out of their ways to find innovation through new materials, inventions and so on… but Goldsworthy is still able to find innovation and inspiration in what is older than mankind itself.
We witness today more than ever the natural selection of social status. Our society revolves around our class status the same way that Darwin discovered that a female finch chooses which male finch to mate with based on the size, appearance and survival skills of the finch. Social status is similar to Darwin's idea of natural slection because we still base our opinions on beauty and class. Compared with Darwin's idea of natural selection, we still judge one another based on our success and our status in life. Social status and class are important today since it is known that the class you are born into, either lower class, lower-middle, middle class, upper-middle class or upper class, is typically the class that you will remain in. "Natural selection is the process by which heritable traits that make it more likely for an organism to survive and successfully reproduce become more common in a population over successive generations. It is a key mechanism of evolution" (Natural Selection). These different social standards that we are born into segregate our world by income levels, which prevents some from moving up in the world the way that a finch with a smaller beak has a more difficult time attracting a female finch to mate with. Most people are middle class, making somewhere between fifty thousand and seventy-five thousand annually in the United States. Our government runs the United States, so that we are born into natural selection not only by our appearance and ability to attract another to reproduce with, but also through our income levels because it is common that the class that you are born into is the class you remain in. People who are born into a wealthy family are given oppertunities that people who are born into the lower income class are not given. They have security that the government protects by lowering the taxes for the wealthy and raising them for the middle class, which doesn't make sense and is the reason for why people have a difficult time becoming a part of a higher income level class. Darwin's theory of natural selection will always have an impact on our society because it is never going to disappear form our world. All species are going to have a certain "type" that is more common and popular and has more of a chance surviving than others in the same species. In humans we don't only see it through our physical appearance, but also with success and where we are placed within the set class status of the United States.
(Over and Out / 19" x 19" x 5" / hand-cut paper / 2008)
Jen Stark is a contemporary artist whose majority of work involves creating paper sculptures. She also works with drawing and animation. She gets her inspiration from fractals, wormholes, and MRI scans. All of her paper sculptures are cut by hand, Her work frequently reflects an object’s ability to appear bland on the surface, yet reveal a hidden system of patterning and color.
I was drawn to her artwork when I saw it online, I had never seen such a complex use for paper. Let alone any that were as interesting as these sculptures. It is very interesting to me to see how something so simple be used in such an uncommon way. Especially since all of her sculptures are cut by hand not with lasers or machines. I also loved her color choices, they are very bright bet they all seem to work well together. After looking at her website the sculpture I liked the most was Over and Out (pictured above). The overall shape is very unusual, the colors caught my eye immediately and I found it very aesthetically pleasing. I could not imagine cutting out all of those individual pieces of paper.
(Purple / 20" x 20" / hand-cut paper / 2009) I thought that this art was best represented in the formalist theory, it is a "manipulation of an artistic medium that is capable of producing a unique and arresting response in the aesthetically attuned audience member." I feel that this described the art the most, since it is original and not trying to represent something else. I feel that this would be considered art because of the creativity behind the artwork, and how it is something that is more original, seeing as how it is paper, which is a medium that is usually used as a base for art, not the art itself.
In class we talked about the revival of art, how it has progressed, and new ways of expressing oneself. I think that this definitely fits this description, I think that using paper as the art itself is very innovative and a very ambitious project to take on.
You've heard of milking cows and goats and sheep, but what about rabbits? The Netherlands-based biotech firm, Pharming, is "ready to start commercially milking rabbits." But this doesn't mean that you are going to be finding rabbit cheese on supermarket shelves. These genetically engineered rabbits are being milked to produce a potentially life saving drug.
These rabbits have been genetically engineered to produce a human protein called C1 inhibitor. A drug created from this protein can be used to treat people with hereditary angioedema. This is a rare, potentially fatal genetic disorder caused by a deficiency of the plasma protein C1 inhibitor. It is characterized by swelling of the extremities, face, trunk, abdomen and upper airway, which can cause severe pain and potential death.
One of the only treatments currently available is C1 inhibitor concentrate obtained from donor blood. While this is a useful treatment, complications can arise in the form of blood viruses and limited resources. One possible solution to these problems is developing a drug from the milk of genetically engineered rabbits. Because the protein is produced in the milk, there is no chance of contamination from viruses, and because you are not restrained by limited resources of donor blood, the protein is produced in nearly unlimited quantities.
A rabbit can produce on average 120 milliliters of milk a day, and in the modified rabbits, each liter contains 12 grams of human C1 inhibitor. This is a readily available, contaminant free source of the protein needed. Pharming has been milking rabbits for years, and they have recently developed the drug Rhucin as a treatment for hereditary angioedema. The company submitted the drug for market approval in September, and an official verdict is expected some time next year. If the drug is approved, the company would start milking a herd of about a thousand rabbits, which would produce around 1,440 grams of C1 inhibitor a day.
In regards to the ethics of this new discovery, the rabbits "stay relaxed and appear to suffer no discomfort during milking." They are milked using mini pump machines very similar to those used in milking cows, simply on a smaller scale.
These Dutch bunnies aren't the first animals milked in the name of human health. A farm in Russia recently milked mice to produce human breast milk substitutes, and are hoping to advance towards producing the protein in goats. But rabbits are well suited to producing complex proteins that can hopefully lead to other new medicines; transgenic bunnies are currently being investigated for potential treatments for stroke victims and organ transplant patients. The breeding processes are faster than goats and cattle, and, as mentioned above, the milk production is sufficient for the desired needs.
For more information, see the following sources used:
Group, Pharming. "Pharming Recombinant Human C1 Inhibitor: Results In Pre-clinical Ischaemic Reperfusion Model Confirm Potential For New Indications." 22 October 2009. Pharming Group NV. 1 December 2009 <http://www.pharming.com/index.php?act=medi>.
When Darwin worked his theory of evolution, and that the fittest survive, the notion of “Artificial Intelligence” was not even a whisper in the most radical scientists’ dreams of the time. Darwin and his peers were working with the natural world; the only world they knew of. However, that creation of artificial intelligence (AI) in the late 20th century brought along a fresh set of goals and dreams for scientists working with intelligent computers. For the last five decades, and possibly more, people have fantasized about computers being able to carry out human tasks; to be able to feel emotions, empathize with them, and relate to people on an emotional level. It is a thrilling prospect, but it also creates dangers that are for the most part unforeseen by people until it is too late. I plan to talk about what could happen if technology were to evolve too far, to the point where it could evolve itself. David Linden follows Darwin’s theory of evolution explicitly when he is discussing the evolution of the human brain in his book, “The Accidental Mind.” Linden uses an ice cream cone as a metaphor, stating that as time passed and the human brain developed, lobes and components were piled on top of one another while the less developed portions of the brain remained at the bottom, but still retain their usefulness. What would happen, if scientists and engineers were able to create an artificial mind so complex and self sustaining, that it would evolve on it’s own? Virtually, it would repeat the process that Linden described in “Accidental Mind” and be constantly building on itself to become a more intelligent, more technical organism? An example of this could be a robot or form of computer that is physically able to alter it’s processors and computing mechanisms, to ultimately raise it’s level of consciousness and comprehend more of it’s immediate environment. What if, in the distant future, a robot could teach itself to feel emotions? This is the concept that the movie I, Robot grapples with. Based on Isaac Asimov’s novel, the movie tells the story of what would happen in the future if robots (who were always used as servants to humans) were able to develop a conscious and rebel against and injustices imposed on them. The following clip is a key scene from the movie, in which a robot is being questioned for the murder of a scientist.
The clip here questions a robots capability to willingly commit murder. Even if they know it is wrong, Sonny makes the viewer think about the choice the robot would make. Would a robot follow its duty all the way to the end like it has been instructed, or will it be able to ethically say that it is not okay with following through with the instructions given? Philip K. Dick’s story To Serve The Master takes evolving AI to a different level. In the story, Applequist (the lead protagonist) meets a robot - who were long thought to have been systematically destroyed- and begins to make repairs at the robots request. During that time, the robot tells Applequist about how the war turned out centuries ago, how there was a battle between the Leisurists (those who believed in the right to own a robot as a companion and servant) and the Moralists (those who believe that owning a robot makes the whole world lazy and useless), and how the Moralists won, and robots were hence destroyed. However, later in the story, we find out from a human that the war was actually between robots and humans, and the humans defeated the robots after several years and thousands of lives. Dick infers that the robots have evolved to the point where they are capable of manipulation and deceit, characteristics that are never seen in artificial intelligence. William Calvin argues that humanity survived by getting smarter, by becoming more aware of their environment. “How did we cope? By getting smarter. The neurophysiologist William Calvin argues persuasively that modern human cognition—including sophisticated language and the capacity to plan ahead—evolved in response to the demands of this long age of turbulence. According to Calvin, the reason we survived is that our brains changed to meet the challenge: we transformed the ability to target a moving animal with a thrown rock into a capability for foresight and long-term planning. In the process, we may have developed syntax and formal structure from our simple language.” (Cascio, www.atlantic.com) But what if robots could develop the same emotional capacity to survive? In this lifetime, perhaps we’ll never know. But that hasn’t stopped people like Asimov and Dick from trying to figure it out.
Works Cited:
Dick, Philip. The Philip K Dick Reader. New York: Citadel, 1987. Print.
Cascio, Jamais. "Get Smarter." The Atlantic, July/August. 2007. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200907/intelligence
Linden, David. The Accidental Mind. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008. Print.
November 23rd it was discovered that a man named Rom Houben was misdiagnosed after a car accident that was thought to have put him into a deep coma. For 23 years he was actually conscious but unable to communicate. “I shall never forget the day when they discovered what was truly wrong with me, it was my second birth,” Mr. Houben, now 46, was quoted as saying (Castle).
Now, scientists are debating weather or not he was actually telling his story or not. Rom Houben’s account of his ordeal, repeated in news stories since appearing in Der Spiegel, appears to be delivered with assistance from an aide who helps guide his finger to letters on a flat computer keyboard. Called “facilitated communication,” that technique has been widely discredited, and is not considered scientifically valid. “If facilitated communication is part of this, and it appears to be, then I don’t trust it,” said Arthur Caplan, director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Bioethics. “I’m not saying the whole thing is a hoax, but somebody ought to be checking this in greater detail. Any time facilitated communication of any sort is involved, red flags fly” (Keim).
Houben has since proven able to answer yes-or-no questions with slight movements of his foot. It’s a tremendous accomplishment, and raises the chilling possibility that as many as four in 10 people considered utterly comatose may be misdiagnosed.
It was a lucky coincidence. Steven Laureys, a Belgian neurologist, had heard about the case. Laureys, who heads the Coma Science Group at the University of Liege, had long suspected that many patients who are in a coma are in fact conscious, at least intermittently, but that their awareness goes undetected. When Laureys pushed the man into an MRI tube, large areas of the brain were lit up on the monitor. The cerebrum, with its gray matter, was apparently only slightly damaged, leading Laureys to the conclusion that the mind of the man in the seemingly empty shell of a body was in fact largely intact (Dworschak).
However, although he can communicate with movements of his foot, people are still very skeptical "You see this woman who’s not only holding his hand, but what she’s doing is directing his fingers and looking directly at the keyboard. She’s pressing down on the keyboard, pressing messages for him. He has nothing to do with it.” Facilitated communication could only be considered credible if the facilitator didn’t look at the keyboard or screen while supporting Houben’s hand, and helped him type messages in response to questions she had not heard, thus ensuring that Houben’s responses are entirely his own (Dworschak).
Houben survived by learning to live with the small amount of information that had remained accessible to his senses. He studied the goings-on in his nursing home as painstakingly , the quirky mannerisms of his fellow patients in the common room, the doctors' appearances in his room and the chatter of the nurses, who had no qualms about saying whatever they wanted to in front of Houben, who was supposedly incapable of hearing them. "It made me an expert on human relations," Houben writes (Keim).
Sources:
Castle, Stephen. "Misdiagnosed With Coma, Belgian Man Communicates After 23 Years." The New York Times. The New York Times Company, 23 Nov. 2009. Web. 03 Dec. 2009. Link
Dworschak, Manfred. "'My Second Birth': Discovering Life in Vegetative Patients." SPIEGEL ONLINE. 25 Nov. 2009. Web. 03 Dec. 2009.
Throughout our class we have discussed many themes based on our studies of Charles Darwin. More specifically we have looked at the hot topic of evolution and creationism. During our classes I typically entertained the theory of evolution much more than I did creationism; Karl Sims describing evolution being the repeated cycle of reproduction with variation and selection of the most fit organisms (par. 2.1). Looking at this definition I began to ponder about our future. My revelation was that Darwin's theory of evolution has risen us up to a level of control where we produce technology that contradicts the evolutionary purpose of adapting. Based on our studies of Charles Darwin I wonder where evolution will take us in the future?
We, the human race, have evolved into the dominant species on Earth and have continued to grow to the point where we adapt our environment to ourselves rather than adapting to it. I found this thought very interesting because as De Candolle states in the book "Darwin", "all nature is at war, one organism with another, or with external nature" (82.) With exception to fighting with each other we have essentially dominated almost every conner of the globe using technological innovations. Humans have reached a height in evolution to the point where we can apply our knowledge and create technologies and equipment to adapt our environment to our own needs. Compare this short amount of time to to the thousands of generations it would take to adapt our bodies to a given place and you can say we have come a long way.
This technological crouch that we put on evolution is becoming more evident than ever. With globalization and the international merging of economies, not to mention the demand for mass communication, it is easy to say we rely heavily on technology, more specifically computers. I realized this when I was staring at my own computer in class when my screen saver popped up. The screen saver I have is called Electric Sheep which is a series pixels that morph into different structures, textures, and motions. I remembered someone describing this to me who said it imitates evolution. Looking into Electric Sheep I found that it uses "evolutionary techniques of variation and selection to create complex simulated structures, textures, and motions for use in computer graphics and animation" (Karl Sims, par. 1). More specifically the process involves the use of algorithmic and mathematical methods to generate complex models with nearly infinite levels of detail.
Similar to biological evolution, simulated evolution uses the same concepts of genotypes and phenotypes. It includes the same process of expressing phenotypes generated from genotypes, selecting the fittest phenotype, and reproducing it to generate new genotypes with respect to variation that are random as apposed to being general. What this means is an image (sheep) is produced from a genetic algorithm, or DNA in biological terms, and reproduces a variation of that information with another sheep which will entail the next image. As this process is repeated the image is varied based on those altered algorithms. Creating these fractal images is simply simulating evolution by interpolating/combining the sheep's fractal code with another sheep which is loosely called mating or breeding. Stated by Edward J. Bedwell and David S. Ebert,"This sketch presents a system that combines implicit surfaces, as modeling primitives, with genetic programming to facilitate automated generation of exceedingly complex models" (Artificial Evolution of Implicit Surfaces)
Since when were we able to mate or breed technology and what does that mean for our future? Apparently its been happening for a while says Jamais Cascio, "It’s visible in the hive mind of the Internet, in the powerful tools for simulation and visualization that are jump-starting new scientific disciplines." He had the same revelation I did, that no matter what happens in our future we now posses the tools to survive, "we don’t have to rely solely on natural evolutionary processes to boost our intelligence, we can do it ourselves" (Get Smarter). We have now evolved to be able to not only change our environment to suit our needs but also to where we can imitate evolution itself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1e7lPYTIaRQ
Work Cited
Bedwell, Edward J. "International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques." Artificial Evolution of Implicit Surfaces (1998). Print.
Carr, Nicholas. "Is Google Making Us Stupid? - The Atlantic." The Atlantic: Breaking News, Analysis and Opinion on politics, business, culture, international, science, technology, food and society. 6 Feb. 2007. Web.
Darwin, Charles. "Selections from Darwin's Work." pp 67-254 in Darwin. 3rd ed. Philip Appleman, ed. New York: W.W. Norton,2001.
Dick, Philip. The Philip K Dick Reader. New York: Citadel, 1987. Print. Lyell, Charles. Principals of Geology. New York: W.W. Norton, 2001. Print.
Insolentdragon. "You Tube- Electric Sheep." You Tube. You Tube, 28 Feb. 2007. Web. 1 Dec. 2009. .
Sims, Karl. "International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques." Artificial Evolution for Computer Graphics (1991): 319-21. Print.
