Week 8: Nano Tech + Art

NanoTech & Art 

"The art challenges technology and technology inspires the art" - John Lasseter


The world of NanoTechnology plays a much bigger influence on Art than most people might assume. This week's lectures were taught by Dr. Gimzewski, where we learned about the intricacies of Nanotechnology and the way that NanoTechnology is practiced and how it's integrated with art. NanoTechnology according to Dr. Gimzewski, is not just in the micro level but in many cases takes place in the microbiological level. When conducting my research on NanoTechnology, I found that there are many cases of NanoTech in nature that I was unaware of. The lotus leaf, for example, is an example of nature utilizing NanoTechnology, this is because of the physical and chemical conditions on the microscale of the lotus leaf allowing to effectively self-clean itself (NNCI 2019). I found this to be very fascinating and inspired my continuing research on this topic. 
Just like we have talked about throughout the entire quarter art, biology and technology are all connected. I began to wonder what activities or lessons I could bring into my classroom when teaching art and science and Paul Rothemuds TED talk inspired me. He speaks on many different ways that art and science (DNA) connect. One example was of DNA origami, utilizing an artistic activity like origami but to create DNA strands was really fascinating. I am always interested in different activities that incorporate art with different subject because I am a firm believer that an artistic mind is a mind that has been trained to grow and learn. Therefore, art just is an included component in everything we do. 
I found this section to be particularly interesting because something that is microscopic would not be the first thing that comes to mind when we think of something being artistic. However, the first image I used in this blog post was an artistic rendition of a microscopic material that is smaller than a period in a sentence (Lilley, 2010). I found this to be fascinating because the image is beautiful and it leads you to really think about what other mundane smaller aspects of life would make a gorgeous drawing. 


Sources
Grimzewski, Vesna, V. UCLA Lecture: DESMA Week 8. The University of California Lost Angeles. 2019. 
Nature Helps NanoTechnology. NNCI. https://www.nnci.net/nature-helps-nanotechnology
Rothemund, P. TED Talk. 2008. https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_rothemund_details_dna_folding#t-320076
Lilley, M. The Art of Nano-Technology. 2010. NOVA https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/art-nanotech.html
Lasseter, J. Quote.

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