Week 8 Blog: Nanotech and Art

 This week, I learned about another way that science and technology intersects with art: nanotech. In my opinion, as shared by others, nanotech being used as a tool to create art is the most unique art type that we have learned so far, as it allows us to express artistic skill through the small, or nano, parts of our world that we typically would not focus on [Vesna]. In Lecture, Part 4, Professor Vesna also states that this type of art "challenges our perceptions, [and engages] viewers in a multi-sensory experience that transcends conventional artistic boundaries" [Vesna]. 

Vardi Bobrow's Work

https://www.israelhayom.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/rubber-bands.jpg 

The Fetter Museum of Art and Nanoscience provides visitors with a unique experience with nanotech while featuring equally unique artists, such as Vardi Bobrow. Bobrow's work displayed in the museum is one in which "15 thousand rubber bands are tied together following research on the growth of defective neurons" [ILH Staff]. After further researching this topic, many scientists and artists alike believe that nanotech will grow to take up more space in the art world, as the interdisciplinary area allows a place for engineers, biologists, chemists, biochemists, etc. to use their own expertise to demonstrate their artistic side.

For centuries, art has remained consistent as a manner for historians to better visualize the cultural world surrounding the artist at the time. For example, old English portraits of monarchal kings, queens, and families, tell us, in 2023, that the world surrounding the painting was one of monarchy and class. However, as we evolve into a world moved by AI, nanotech, and other technologies, our art will reflect as such. 

Artist Ella Goldman's installation "Here and There" at the Fetter Museum of Nanotechnology in Israel.

https://images.jpost.com/image/upload/f_auto,fl_lossy/c_fill,g_faces:center,h_537,w_822/479072 

In the early 2000s, artists Victoria Vesna and James Gimzewski collaborated to make a series of nanotech-related art pieces, all of which are under the MORPHONANO art exhibition. They describe their work as a discipline focused on the idea of "change and consciousness at the intersection of space-time and embodiment" [Nanowerk]. The artwork completed within this collaboration, specifically "Zero@wavefunction" also helps to engage viewers with "larger philosophical questions about the impact of this emerging science on the culture at large" [Vesna, Gimzewski]. I find it interesting how nanotech-driven art also allows the audience to contemplate what they are viewing even more than traditional art makes us think. I equally find it interesting how far back this area of art goes back, as someone who was not yet born in 2001, when Zero@wavefunction was created, I would have never thought that such art with such a complex tech and science background would have existed during this time.

Victoria Vesna and James Gimzewski - Zero@wavefunction, Responsive Environment/ Nano Art, 2001

https://youtu.be/_9bi-ExFzAs 

Sources

ILH Staff. “What does nanotechnology have to do with art?” Israel Hayom, 5 July 2021, https://www.israelhayom.com/2021/07/05/what-does-nanotechnology-have-to-do-with-art/. Accessed 26 May 2023.

Nanowerk. “MORPHONANO, an innovative nanotechnology art exhibition.” Nanowerk, 14 February 2012, https://www.nanowerk.com/news/newsid=24274.php. Accessed 26 May 2023.

Vesna, Victoria, and Jim Gimzewski. Zero@wavefunction, 2001, http://notime.arts.ucla.edu/zerowave/zerowave.html. Accessed 26 May 2023.

Vesna, Victoria. "Nanotech + Art, Intro." https://bruinlearn.ucla.edu/courses/160989/pages/unit-8-view?module_item_id=5946347. 

Vesna, Victoria. "Nanotech + Art, Part 4." https://bruinlearn.ucla.edu/courses/160989/pages/unit-8-view?module_item_id=5946347.