Skip to main content

Week 8


This week in particular, I had a hard time picking a topic that I wanted to focus on. Even after watching all of the video lectures I still had a hard time connecting the idea of nanotechnology to art, as I felt many of the topics covered didn’t completely relate to the art sector. Then after I read more about art and nanotechnology I found Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau’s work of creating an invisible sculpture. The way they were able to achieve this was with a wireless magnetic force-feedback, which let viewers interact with invisible nanoparticles in order to create a malleable sculpture that changes as people interact with it. They must wear a magnetic ring that allows them to physically feel the repulsions, attractions, and sometimes even shock to help them discover the foundation of the sculpture. The shape of this invisible sculpture changes based how people interact with the magnetic rings and how many people are viewing it (John Curtain Gallery).


There are many different kinds of waves in the world, and the ones that make up visible light on the electromagnetic spectrum are just a small part of what there is in the world (Krug). Many waves are invisible, but still present and many scientists are working on making these waves visible to us (Markoulakis).



            Another way that nanoparticles can be used directly in art is in the process of making paints. Kate Nichols attempted this process by using silver nanoparticles (Ouellette). She put the solutions she created into glass tubes and watched as the nanoparticles changed color, and she was able to use this solution and make it stick to glass, as shown in this piece of art (Miller).


Krug HF and Wick P. “Nanotoxicology: An Interdisciplinary Challenge.” Agnew Chem.

“John Curtin Gallery.” Art.Base, 11 Mar. 2010, art.base.co/event/2104-art-in-the-age-of-nanotechnology.
Markoulakis. “Seeing the Invisible.” Journal - Elsevier, 6 Feb. 2018, www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-magnetism-and-magnetic-materials/highlighted-articles/seeing-the-invisible.
Miller, Anita. “Science as Art.” Science as Art | Galleries of Winning Images from Past MRS Meetings, www.mrs.org/science-as-art.
Ouellette, Jennifer. “This Artist ‘Paints’ With Nanoparticles Inspired by Butterfly Wings.” Gizmodo, Gizmodo.com, 18 Dec. 2015, gizmodo.com/this-artist-paints-with-nanoparticles-inspired-by-but-1746583925.
Roper, Will. “Rise of Nanoscience among UNL Community Promotes Creativity.” The Daily Nebraskan, 15 May 2018, www.dailynebraskan.com/arts_and_entertainment/rise-of-nanoscience-among-unl-community-promotes-creativity/article_10f8d55a-8616-11e7-b3e0-a35783900d08.html.
Rugani, Lauren. “Kate Nichols: Color by Physics.” Symmetry, 1 Aug. 2010.
“Silver Nanoparticles on Glass.” KATE NICHOLS, www.katenicholsstudio.com/#/in-them-we-see-ourselves/.






Comments

  1. I agree that it was difficult to connect nanotechnology and art even with the materials provided. Good job finding something that was intriguing and doing some extra research about it!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Maddy, I really enjoyed the examples you found of nanotechnology in art, they are very unique from the examples I found--especially the interactive invisible sculpture. I found the topic of nanotechnology difficult to grasp, but your post helped me think about it from a different approach.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 6

The topic this week was Art and Biology. I don’t think I have ever learned much about this cross-section of fields, so I was really intrigued in a lot of different topics presented. However, I really wanted to focus on and learn more about Marta De Menezes work, specifically her project “Nature?” Marta is originally from Portugal and her work Nature? Was done in 1999 (Nature? 2012). I found this work to be extremely interesting, because I have never heard of artwork that literally lives and dies. Although this was her most well received project, it did have some controversy, which Marta is quick to dismiss. She explains that just because the butterfly is manipulated there is no reason to call it man-made or artificial (Silva, 2008). The way in which Marta does the modification is with an extremely thin needle paired with heat to redesign the wing when they are still in their cocoons (Reinert, 2004). Since the genes remain unchanged the new design of the wings is no...

Week 4

Reflecting upon the video lectures from this week, I found it very interesting to recognize how true it is that most scientific and medical advances are made as a result of war. Usually when we think of prosthetic limbs we think of people who lost an arm or leg. However, with the Third Hand Project that was talked about in lecture, they weren’t replacing any limbs but instead adding addition help. Upon researching this further, the researcher was disappointment with the lack of accuracy that this robotic arm had and its lack of precision when receiving the muscle contractions from the hand. This is how I feel that prosthetic limbs vary whether they are supplementing or replacing a body part. My uncle had a prosthetic hand, because of medical complications when he was born. However, he always was so grateful for everything the mechanical hand could do and appreciated it even if it wasn’t perfect. The expectation that comes with the mechanical hand depends on the...