Event 2: Vivarium

Human-less Capsule

The Vivarium was an exhibit designed by Maru Garcia that features one enclosed environment with plant life and some insects and one similar environment except a human was inside the encapsulated environment. Cameras within each environment then showed close ups on large projector screens of what was inside each.

Plant Life
What struck me most about the exhibit was the juxtaposition. These two very similar capsules, with one distinct difference, the presence of humans. The human-less environment was planted, filled with necessary soil and water, and sealed. The result was that the plants were able to grow undisturbed without the unsealing of the enclosure. The roots would take up the water, have it evaporated from their leaves, the water would condense on the sides of the dome, and run back down into the soil to be taken up the roots again. The system could continue almost endlessly without disruption. Contrast this with the other enclosure. The system is not closed so the plants must be tended to and watered to stay alive. In addition, the human in the enclosure periodically disturbs the plants.

Human Capsule
This exhibit for me represented a lot about human interaction with nature. The Earth has had life on it for 3.8 billion years (History of Life on Earth). Only in the past 250 years have humans industrialized and it has already caused significant effects (History.com). Species are going extinct at a 1,000 times faster rate than usually due to humans(Dell’Amore), and we are losing around 80,000 acres of forest daily (Measuring). 97 percent of scientists have agreed that climate change is in part due to humans (Scientists Agree…) . To me this exhibit really highlighted all of these impacts that humans have on nature.


Works Cited

Dell'Amore, Christine. “Species Extinction Happening 1,000 Times Faster Because of Humans?” National Geographic, 30 May 2014.


 “History of Life on Earth.” BBC, British Broadcasting Company, 2018, www.bbc.co.uk/nature/history_of_the_earth.

History.com Staff. “Industrial Revolution.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 2009, www.history.com/topics/industrial-revolution.

“Measuring the Daily Destruction of the World's Rainforests.” Scientific American, 2017, www.scientificamerican.com/article/earth-talks-daily-destruction/.

“Scientists Agree: Global Warming Is Happening and Humans Are the Primary Cause.” Union of Concerned Scientists, www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/science-and-impacts/science/scientists-agree-global-warming-happening-humans-primary-cause#.Wvj6logvxEY

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Neuroscience and Art

Image
Artistic Depiction of Human Brain I think that the study of art and the brain is particularly interesting because the ideas and creativity that spur artists to design their work originates in some way, shape or form from their brains. Whether they are inspired externally or internally, the action of shaping their work occurs within their minds. Similarly, humans experience art through their brain after it is perceived by their senses (Tucker). Carl Jung On a physical level, every human has the same physical makeup roughly, of their brains. They have the same types of cells, the same types of neurotransmitters, etc. It is fascinating that these same components can produce such a wide array of artists, and people in general. John Brockman believed that despite all of the science and math defining these components, that “conscious involves noncomputable ingredients” (Brockman). How then does one characterize the brain? Another school of thought believed that the brain couldn...
Read more

Event 3: Body Worlds

Image
Digestive System Display For my second event, I visited the Body Worlds exhibit at the California Science Center. The exhibit features human organs and organ systems separated and preserved, enabling viewers of the exhibit to view first hand the different structures and functions of different parts of the human body. Thought the exhibit showed primarily individual systems, it conveyed well the interdependence of the systems on each other. Ancient Egyptian Dissection Being at the exhibit made me realize how far the human understanding of the human body and the representation of the human body has come. The first instances of dissections of recorded trace back to Ancient Egyptians (Vesna). After the death of Egyptians, their bodies would be cut open and mummified. This process often entailed skilled morticians altering the bodies in ways that preserved them for thousands of years. This process has been captured in much Egyptian art and is well-known today. Art and science w...
Read more

Bio Art

Image
Joe Davis With the discovery of DNA and subsequent ability to manipulate it, it has arisen as a potential medium for art. Some artists like Joe Davis (Vesna) have seized the opportunity and pioneered it as a new canvas on which to paint. As a medium this calls into question the ethics of using DNA as an art form as well the value of the medium (Elsevier). Joe Davis noted that he is likely the most successful publisher in history because the E.coli. This highlights a key feature of art being encoded in DNA in that it can be replicated very quickly and efficiently. Thus his Microvenus symbol is within the DNA of millions of cells of E.coli. Another feature of art being encoded as DNA is the permanence and capacity of the data stored within in it. Supposedly all of the world’s data could be stored in it (Extance). Microvenus There are ethical concerns about using DNA as well. One such example is if using it as an art medium could continue into genetically modifying o...
Read more