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Last login: 1 hour agoLaodan: laodan is a 56 year old guy from Wisconsin, USA.; Likes 1,590 pages, 24 videos, 8 photos • 217 fans • Received 65 reviews; Member since Aug 08, 2005

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Shedding Light on Life&&(May-June&2008): Apr 19, 1:27pm 2 reviews science, art, visualization, worldviews
http://harvardmagazine.com/2008/05/shedding-light-on-life.html; Shedding Light on Life in Harvard Magazine by Courtney Humphries
"The human brain is vision-focused," says professor of molecular and cellular biology Jeff Lichtman. "If we see things, then we think we know what they mean." To be able finally to see events that were known only in theory is incredibly satisfying for scientists. Even more important, this revolution also opens up the possibility of learning things about life that could never be studied before. \u201cWhat we hope to do at the end of the day,\u201d he says, \u201cis to understand biology as it unfolds in vivo rather than in snapshots.\u201d The resurgence in imaging excites biologists for two reasons: it allows them to see individuals, and it allows them to count the masses. Being able to watch and track a single molecule, cell, or process offers a much more complete picture of how life works. Tom Kirchhausen predicts that in the next few years, scientists will use imaging to better understand complex processes such as cell division and the paths that viruses take to cause infection. Shedding Light on Life via Harvard Magazine, Courtesy of Jeff Lichtman Laboratory Color-coded neural circuits in the brains of mice allow Jeff Lichtman to trace the fate of individual nerve cells over time and across distances.
via Harvard Magazine, Courtesy of Gene-Wei Li and Peter Sims, Harvard University Sunney Xie combines a transmission image of bacteria (blue) with a fluorescence image of molecules (yellow) binding to sites on the bacteria\u2019s DNA in order to create a complete picture of the interaction. This article is a useful follow-up on my post about Could Science and Art Become One and the Same? . The subject of my comment is thus visualization versus art. In recent years science has made a dramatic usage of visual imaging techniques to understand what is going on at the micro and macro levels. But the fact is that digital imaging are photos taken from various kinds of microscopes or telescopes that are then often reprocessed by pairing 2 or more of those initial cliches in order to try to catch the meaning of what is going on in those images. Those images are often stunning and offer a depth of meaning and beauty that puts to shame most modern art works. But for scientists it is only a question of making sense in what they observe. Visual imaging is no more than a tool. But what about the images they obtain? Are those art works? Those digital images are not art works in the traditional sense of the concept of art: the production of visual signs about the worldview of the men of knowledge of the day. Those images are tools for scientists to discover sense and they are only fragments of the ensemble of images and ideas that forms their worldview. Art should not be confused with scientific imaging. The mission of the artist is to illustrate the worldview of the men of knowledge of our days. And the men of knowledge in late modernity and early post-modernity are not the scientists. Those men of knowledge are the rare individuals who are succeeding to integrate scientific knowledge within the more globally encompassing realm of philosophy and history. Some are scientists, some are philosophers or historians and some are artists. The late-modern and early post-modern artist has thus to accumulate the widest possible knowledge-base in order to be able to pinpoint the rare true men of knowledge in his time. And his mission is then to render visual signs about their worldview for all to share.

Reality Sandwich | Could Science and Art Become One and the Same?: Apr 15, 6:05pm 2 reviews science, art, reality, worldviews
http://www.realitysandwich.com/could_science_art_become_one_same; Could Science and Art Become One and the Same? in Reality Sandwich by Greg Wendt
Reality encompasses that which is beyond science as we know it, or at least beyond that which the current scientific mindset can explain. Is it possible that art can be used in a scientific way to create a more accurate expression of reality and a greater understanding of human experience? Capra points out that Da Vinci's genius came from his ability to use art as a way to be scientific, hence throwing the whole distinction between science and art into question. Could Science and Art Become One and the Same? To answer our most fundamental questions, science needs to find a place for the arts. by Jonah Lehrer in Seed The Science of Leonardo new book of by Fritjof Capra Artsense by myself Acrylic n#39 of my "artsense collection". In summary Jonah Lehrer posits that "If we want to get an answer to our deepest questions - the questions of who we are and what everything is - we will need to draw from both science and art, so that each completes the other". Unfortunately this is a position that is founded on a confused understanding of what is knowledge and what is art. 1. Knowledge: Humans, since times immemorial, tried to understand reality in the sense of "the whole in which we are such tiny particles". We distinguish 3 ages in the history of human understanding of reality or of human knowledge and those 3 ages are driven by the sharing of a common "worldview" that is a vulgarization of the understanding attained by the men of knowledge of the day: - the animist age: all parcels of the whole are inter-related: the shaman is the man of knowledge. - the religious or philosophic age: god or wisdom: the priest or the wise man are the men of knowledge. - the modern age: the logic of capital and its ideology of rationality: the capital holder and the scientist are the men of knowledge. 2. Art: Since time immemorial visual arts served at giving visual signs of the understanding of reality by the men of knowledge of the day. This societal functionality of art was lost upon all sometime around 1900 when thinker-artists experimented in devising something else than the first degree image that projects on the retina. But those experimentations concluded in the absurd when everything the artist was positing as being art was deemed to be art. The societal functionality of art was lost because rationality and science don't offer a global model of understanding of reality. Rationality and science are following a path of questioning that pushes till later the discovery of the answer. This model does not supply the artist with a knowledge of everything to illustrate and the artist is most often in no position to devise his own knowledge base, for, he never was given the tools for such an exercise. I agree with Jonah Lehrer that science left on its own will never come to the end of its mission to understand reality. But I disagree that art has to produce knowledge. This should be left to the philosophers and researchers of humanity's early cultures and most importantly animism. As Fritjof Capra mentioned in his "The tao of physics" the most advanced physics, chemistry, and other sciences often rediscover the fundamental truths expressed in animism and the later philosophies built over it. My take is that a new worldview for artists to illustrate will emerge out of the contact between science and animism.

Treemaps | EagerEyes.org: Apr 14, 11:53am 1 review science, art, visualization
http://eagereyes.org/Techniques/Treemaps.html; Treemaps in EagerEyes by Robert Kosara
Treemaps are the single most used 'real' InfoVis technique there is. Interestingly, they have proven to be even more useful for unstructured data than for the hierarchies which they were originally developed for. Here is a brief history, discussion of current practical uses, and of the importance of treemaps for the adoption and understanding of information visualization. Treemaps The history of treemaps Beyond Treemaps Visualization has long been used by scientists to get a better grasp of what happens at the micro and macro levels. This has been extended to the field of information in order to make sense of what is going on amidst the saturation and overload that assails us daily. It's all about detecting the trends, rhythms, tendencies and patterns that operate within a given complexity. We can then zoom on a trend or a pattern and pick the information that has been accessed by the most people for example. Visualization let's us use our eyes to see something that our eyes normally would not see. It helps expand our visual range to deeper levels of knowledge and helps us transmitting to the brain a visual picture that sheds light on something the brain left on itself would have to labor in order to abstract an idea out of the complexity at hand. Visualization simplifies and orders the perceived chaos of multiplicity and complexity in a way that is similar to what the brain does normally.

The New York Times & Log In: Apr 8, 8:47am 2 reviews health, art
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/08/health/08brai.html; A Disease That Allowed Torrents of Creativity in The NYT by SANDRA BLAKESLEE
When artists suffer damage to the right posterior brain, they lose the ability to be creative, Dr. Miller said. Dr. Adams's story is the opposite. Her case and others suggest that artists in general exhibit more right posterior brain dominance. In a healthy brain, these areas help integrate multisensory perception. Colors, sounds, touch and space are intertwined in novel ways. But these posterior regions are usually inhibited by the dominant frontal cortex, he said. When they are released, creativity emerges. A Disease That Allowed Torrents of Creativity UCSF Memory and aging center Autistic savants: tune in and turn off Rita Carter Autistic savant Wikipedia Famous autistic savants Wikipedia Image of a migraine by Anne Adams Pebbles 2. Anne Adams 1998. gouache on paper. I have been absorbed yesterday evening by a program about " autistic savants" (sorry I did not pay attention to the broadcaster, for, I didn't know that I would land on this article this morning). They are children who become musicians, fine art artists, mathematicians as a consequence of a deficiency in some areas of the brain. The scientists specializing in their condition came to realize that the brain scans of those kids were intriguingly similar to the scans of demented patients who developed similar savants achievements as children autistic savants. The UCSF Memory and aging center notes that "... degeneration of certain areas of the brain is thought to release previously dormant cognitive abilities in other areas of the brain with amazing results." What is most fascinating is this idea that everyone is eventually doted with a similar exceptional potential as autistic or demented savants but unable to access it. Is there a way to catch up with that exceptional potential that lays buried deep in our brains? Some think that the practice of meditation could possibly unleash that potential... Hum.

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/03/top-0-amazing-k.html: Mar 11, 11:24am 3 reviews environment, science, art
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/03/top-0-amazing-k.html; Kinetic Sculptures in Wired by Aaron Rowe
Kinetic sculptures are simply breathtaking. Drawing green engineering and art together, they give a glimpse at what great beauty can emerge from an unconstrained mind. Perhaps the world will overflow with these spectacles in a time of better education and less strife. Amazing Kinetic Sculpture Videos http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMqftVhOuTw&feature=related Always amazing to see Theo Jansen's works. He succeeds in showing us that something else than the mechanical logic of capital is possible in shaping our daily lives: openness to nature and creativity. "The walls between art and engineering exist only in our minds" says Jansen. There are 30 videos available on YouTube presently about Kinetic Sculptures. Check here: Theo Jansen - Kinetic Sculptor

If Martians curated an exhibition, what would it contain? Adrian Searle finds ou…: Mar 6, 8:30am 1 review arts, art, reality
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/art/visualart/story/0,,2262458,00.html?gusrc=rss&f...; If Martians put together an exhibition of Earth art, what would it contain? in The Guardian by Adrian Searle
... the Martian view of things is curiously narrow. Perhaps it is the humans doing their bidding who are having the problem. Many people, including critics and curators, have as much problem with art as your average alien. I, for one, am happy to admit that I do not know exactly what art is: I know what is called art, but that's not the same thing. Talking about what's good and bad art gets us into even more trouble. Art performs different functions, and not only at different times and in different places. We squabble and quibble and fight over it, beat each other over the head with it, and shove it in places it was never meant to go. Art appears to be central to our various human cultures, but to frequently masquerade as marginal, uncategorisable, and even useless. If Martians put together an exhibition of Earth art, what would it contain? The curse of the blockbuster Meteorite Lands on Buckingham Palace, 1998, by Cornelia Parker. 54 x 69 cm. Maple boxed frame map of London revealing burn mark left by a meteorite Photograph: British Council I don't believe one instant that aliens reaching earth could be so dumb as humans not to know the function that art exercises in societies. At least Adrian Searle is honest to recognize that ".... I do not know exactly what art is: I know what is called art, but that's not the same thing." But an alien specie that reaches earth could not be so ignorant, for, without art it could not have survived the negative consequences of the rational and mechanistic thought otherwise necessary to devise the tools and machinery to reach earth. If humanity is to survive the totalitarian destructiveness of modernity I believe that this can only occur by solving the question "what is art". This question reflects on who we are and how we are interrelated with all life and everything under the whole in which we are such tiny particles... If interested to read more about my take on "what is art" click here: Artsense

The Graying of Modernism - artnet Magazine: Feb 15, 10:07am 1 review arts, art, painters, modernity
http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/features/kuspit/kuspit2-12-08.asp; THE GRAYING OF MODERNISM in Artnet by DONALD KUSPIT about "Jasper Johns: Gray," NYC Metropolitan Museum of Art professor of art history and philosophy at SUNY Stony Brook and A.D. White professor at large at Cornell University.
From Impressionism onward modernism has moved steadily away from reality testing into the deceptive wonderland of hallucination.(3) It has moved away from the real thing and towards the perverse reality of the hallucinated thing -- into the bizarrely timeless and spaceless limbo of "vision" where things are real and unreal simultaneously. What began as an epistemophilic adventure ends in epistemophobic stalemate, which is what I think we have in Johnsu2019 engulfing grayness. ... Suspending the reality principle, it becomes a realm of dubious pleasure -- pseudo-esthetic pleasure. It also loses moral value, however indirectly; if white and black have moral significance, as Kandinsky and innumerable others have noted, then mixing them together to form neutral gray renders art morally indifferent. ... Modernism was re-playing itself like a broken record, squeezing every last bit of enigma and insinuation out of the medium. ... I thought I was looking at the suicide of art in process. THE GRAYING OF MODERNISM Jasper Johns. Map. 1962. Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles Jasper Johns. 0-9. 1959-62. collection of Martin Z. Margulies The search for a reality that the eye can't see was at the heart of the artistic adventure of the artists-thinkers of high modernity (1910-1930). They were unfortunately followed by artists who never understood the artistic quest of high modernity and who then all naturally concluded the experience of modernity in the one way street of "whatever is art" which unmistakably is a total failure or the "Death of art" as Kuspit posits in other works of his.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8961434816683857494: Jan 28, 1:00pm 5 reviews art, reality, worldviews
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8961434816683857494; Entheogen: Awakening the Divine Within via my friend BurkinaFasoLove. 1 hr 9 min 54 sec video on YouTube
The film examines the re-emergence of archaic techniques of ecstacy in the modern world by weaving a synthesis of ecological and ... all \u00bb evolutionary awareness,electronic dance culture, and the current pharmacological re-evaluation of entheogenic compounds. Within a narrative framework that imagines consciousness itself to be evolving, Entheogen documents the emergence of techno-shamanism in the post-modern world that frames the following questions: How can a renewal of ancient initiatory rites of passage alleviate our ecological crisis? What do trance dancing and festivals celebrating unbridled artistic expression speak to in our collective psyche? How do we re-invent ourselves in a disenchanted world from which God has long ago withdrawn? Entheogen invites the viewer to consider that the answers to these questions lie within the consciousness of each and every human being, and are accessible if only we give ourselves permission to awaken to the divine within. automatic video embedding with GreaseMonkey's "video embed" script http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8961434816683857494 Excellent video about the emergence of a new "global worldview". It is as if the present cycle of societal evolution that is closing with late modernity were mutating into a revisiting of animism. Watch it.

The New York Times & Log In: Nov 29, 2007 10:18am 1 review evolution, art
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/27/science/27angi.html?_r=1&oref=slogin; The Dance of Evolution, or How Art Got Its Start in The NYT by Natalie Angier
... many of the basic phonemes of art, the stylistic conventions and tonal patterns, the mental clay, staples and pauses with which even the loftiest creative works are constructed, can be traced back to the most primal of collusions \u2014 the intimate interplay between mother and child. The Dance of Evolution, or How Art Got Its Start Art and Intimacy : How the Arts Began This article is about a symposium at the University of Michigan on the evolutionary value of art. Ellen Dissanayake's vision is interesting. It focuses on the reproduction of the individuals or the relationship between mother and child. The relationship between mother and child is also subtly reproducing societal mechanisms of inclusion which relate to the reproduction of societies but those aspects strangely are totally absent from Dissanayake's analysis.

Technology Review: The Technicolor Brain: Nov 1, 2007 7:44am 2 reviews science, art, visualization
http://www.technologyreview.com/Biotech/19652/; The Technicolor Brain via KurzweilAI.net in MIT Technology Review by Emily Zinger
Genetically engineered "brainbow" mice express random combinations of cyan, yellow, and red fluorescent proteins in nerve cells. The ability to paint individual brain cells with such a broad palette will allow neuroscientists to explore neural circuits like never before. Jean Livet, Jeff Lichtman, and their collaborators at Harvard genetically engineered mice to carry numerous copies of genes that code for fluorescent proteins of three different colors--yellow, red, and cyan--as well as an enzyme that can randomly block any subset of these genes from producing their fluorescent tag. When the mice are fed a compound that activates the enzyme, each cell undergoes a random molecular process in which subsets of the color-coding genes are knocked out. The remaining genes produce the three colored fluorescent compounds in different amounts, which combine to form a unique new hue. The Technicolor Brain

This is a follow-up of a post on the same subject yesterday. Those visualizations are meant to help neuro-scientists have a better grasp of what's going on in the brain. They are first and foremost scientific tools. But how beautiful they are and how sensical! Those images are challenging the visual artists. Meaning is indeed always beautiful. It reproduces what evolution retained as the best of all possibilities that were present at any "bifurcation" on the road of change towards the future... I believe that the challenge of scientific visualizations to the visual arts first and foremost relates to sense. I mean visual images can no longer be stuck in the realm of the absurd or the irrational. I don't mean to say that visual arts have to illustrate science. Let that be done by scientific visualizations. But artists have to come up with images that integrate scientific knowledge with philosophic knowledge in order to give visual signs of the meaning of life of the meaning of us being in the universe and so on... The visual arts are at a turning point. Or visual artists succeed to produce such signs of us being stuck as micro particles in the whole and the meaning of it all or scientific visualizations will simply become the visual arts of the future. Humanity is no longer going to accept much further "artistic" non-sense. The time is approaching fast when art sense shall again impose itself as the essence of the visual arts.