Event Three - Fowler Museum

Source Fowler

The Third Event that I attended was in deep North Campus, farther than I had ventured in years, although I suppose that was the point. The Fowler Museum’s “Making Strange: Gagawaka + Postmortem” by Vivan Sundaram was an incredibly interesting exhibit, showcasing a number of very interesting dresses, and other clothing, made from non-traditional items.

Many of the dresses were made from industrial materials, car tires, chain mail, corrugated plastic. It was a very interesting discussion of just what could be made into clothes if no other materials were available.

I found it to be a really interesting comparison to the fashion trends currently sweeping the world. Although ‘real’ fashion never used medical breathing masks, or shoe leather as building materials, much of what is considered ‘haute couture” seems (to me, the uninitiated) similar.  A random assortment of odds and ends, poufy here, tight there.

The juxtaposition of that fashion trend with these dresses which were made by grabbing items intended to be strange, is a powerful parody of the current fashion world. I attended the event with a friend, and there were several (though not many) moments where she concluded “I might wear that.”

Source Fowler

Another of the interesting commentaries on contemporary fashion was how many of the dresses seemed to be incomplete, or at least far too expository that I would have preferred. Its possible that the artist was casting a future look into the next century of fashion, with lower decency standards.

All told, this made me think of the discussion of Orlan and MedTech in Art. I’m still not sure how comfortable I feel with body modification, expression and display being an art form, given that it has a objectification component of the subject, but they are similar in style. Both Sundaram and Orlan are using art to show the human body in ways it had never been shown before.

Source Me

"Making Strange: Gagawaka + Postmortem by Vivan Sundaram."Fowler.ucla.edu. The Fowler Museum, n.d. Web. 08 June 2015.

Event Two - UCLA Meteorite Gallery

The second event that I attended was a little closer to home, for me at least, the UCLA Meteorite Gallery in the Geology Building.

Me at the Meteorite Gallery - Source Me

 For anyone who hasn’t seen it, it’s a fantastic, if intimate, exhibit space, filled with all kind of interesting specimens that are not from this world.

4.6 Billion Year old Meteorite - Source Me

I had the opportunity, at one point, to hold a meteorite, a rock really, that was utterly unremarkable to look at. I would have tossed it aside without a second thought had I come across it in the road, at least until I learned an astounding fact. That rock was 4.6 billion years old, meaning it was older than our planet. Think about that for a moment.

Rock ages are measured by the time since they last melted. Hawaii, as an island, is only about 30 million years old; meaning the dinosaurs never got a vacation on the islands (USGS).  The oldest surface rock that we can find is still only 3.5 billion years old (Tapani) meaning some of these meteors were very old even then. They go back to the very formation of the solar system.

Basalt Meteorite - Source UCLA

One of the other fantastic parts of the collection was a few Martian Meteorites.  These rocks were blasted off of the surface of Mars by impacts, and then slowly made their way to earth in the intervening millennium.

These kind of facts truly astound me, much like Carl Sagan’s view of the Pale Blue Dot. It says something truly amazing that we as a species were able to collect all of these disparate elements, rocks from different pieces of the solar system that made their way to us on Earth on their own, and put them in a single room on the UCLA Campus.  If that isn’t art, I don’t know what is.

"Hawaiian Volcanoes." Usgs.gov. USGS, n.d. Web. 08 June 2015.

"Meteorite Collection." UCLA Meteorite Gallery. UCLA, n.d. Web. 08 June 2015.

Tapani, Mutanen. Bulletin of the Geological Society of Finland, Vol. 75 (1–2) Pp. 51–68 The 3.5 Ga Siurua Trondhjemite Gneiss in the Archaean Pudas- Järvi Granulite Belt, Northern Finland (n.d.): n. pag. Http://www.geologinenseura.fi. Geological Society of Finland, 2003. Web.

Event One - Hammer - This is the End

The first event I attended was Ed Atkins movie feature “Even Pricks” in the collection “This is the End.” While the exhibit featured a number of interesting visuals, the one I found most interesting was his depiction of a talking chimp.

Talking Chimp from "Even Pricks" - Source Hammer

The chip appears several times, speaking enigmatic phrases, most centering on a kind of connection between the chimp and his addressed. This is reminiscent of the discussion of biotech an art, where we asked “what is intelligence?”. This is a question that I became interested in earlier in the course, where we were asked to consider how genetic manipulation could be considered an art form in itself.

By some people’s definitions, human’s ability to create art is what separates us from a purely animal being, therefore art and the expression of creativity is precisely necessary in order to be considered intelligent. And while talking animals have long been a part of the cartoon media, this was the first one done in a realistic enough manner to make me question whether a chimp could talk, given the right artistic push.

Thumbs Motif - Source Hammer

 A motif throughout Atkins movie is a human hand giving its thumbs up or thumbs down to various stimuli. However, at the end it does something very interesting, and we see, just for a moment, the camera view pan back and picture the human hand we have been looking at connected to a chimp body.

I love this particular image, as it ties together so well the ‘dystopian’ imagery of the rest of the piece. No matter how ‘intelligent’ we are, we are still evolved from chimps, and at levels we cannot even comprehend all of our motivations come from that animal part of us.

Proof of Attendance - Source Me

"Is There a Unique Human Quality That Separates Us from Animals?" Debate.org. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 June 2015.

"Schedule." The Hammer Museum. UCLA, n.d. Web. 07 June 2015.