Week 8: Neuroscience + Art

This week’s module on nanotechnology and art revisits the intersection of technology and art, as well as our manipulation of the natural world to achieve some objectives of man. As a business student, I always assumed that the laws of physics were universally applicable at every scale. On finding out that at the nano level, they change as quantum forces dominate, I became curious about the artistic applications of this new basis of the laws of physics. Perhaps the art itself can be based on the new environment, using surface tension and thermodynamics in creative yet scientific ways.

The Fetter Nanoscience and Art Museum in Israel has dedicated itself to show viewers an experience based on the partnership between art and science. Through collaboration between researchers and artists, these transdisciplinary works has arisen that sends messages and displays learnings. Arabesque, by Mahmood Kaiss and Professor Adi Salomon is a construction of archers using carbon nanotubes, whose molecules change based on their exposure to sunlight. This displays the connection of the architectural design, a human idea, to nanotechnology. It makes the relationship between art and technology apparent to any observer.

 

Stretching the Limits by Vardi Bobrow and Professor Orit Shefi uses rubber bands to explore the neuroplasticity of neurons. The connection between growth in the size of our brain with neurons, and the stretching of a rubber band, and stagnant brains and idle rubber bands is used to display how theories can be demonstrated in indirect ways.

Sources;

1. “Art and Nano-Technology Beautifully Converge in New Museum.” The Jerusalem Post | JPost.com, https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/culture/art-and-nano-technology-beautifully-converge-in-new-museum-673433. 
2. “What Does Nanotechnology Have to Do with Art?” Israelhayom.com, https://www.israelhayom.com/2021/07/05/what-does-nanotechnology-have-to-do-with-art/. 
3. uconlineprogram. “Nanotech Jim PT3.” YouTube, YouTube, 21 May 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0HCNiU_108&t=215s. 
4. Gimzewski, Jim, and Victoria Vesna. “The Nanoneme Syndrome: Blurring of Fact and Fiction in the Construction of a New Science.” Technoetic Arts, vol. 1, no. 1, 2003, pp. 7–24., https://doi.org/10.1386/tear.1.1.7/0. 
5. Feder, Barnaby J. “The Art of Nanotech.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 25 Jan. 2008, https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/25/the-art-of-nanotech/.