stellasDESMA9

Maybe regularly seeing Stephen Hawkins in his wheelchair when we lived in Cambridge as a young child got me used to the idea of machines supporting humans to be more effective. Since then I have become a gymnast and it is this that has brought me into continuous touch with medical technology, in particular scanning machines of all kinds – x-rays, CT scans, MRIs – as doctors have checked for injuries of all kinds.  I love the impossibility of what I do as a gymnast; when I was a child I called it ‘flying through the air’. I have to be curious about what is happening beneath my skin. To do the impossible I must train my body to achieve the strength, precision and reliability of a machine, but I do so to produce a performance that is beautiful and seemingly without effort.  I am sure that it is this daily familiarity with the mechanics of my body that is the ground of my ambition to be an orth...

When printing came to the west in the 1500s the mass production of books and newspapers led to the rapid spread of knowledge. Despite it's benefits this was also considered detrimental to good study habits with books reaching numbers that could not be read in a lifetime. Printing enabled dialogue that between science, technology and culture later led to the second industrial revolution with the mechanization of labor . This led to robots that mimic humans and are able to replace humans in production lines and develop empathetic responses. The theme of the inevitable de-humanization was perfectly portrayed in the science fiction movie, Blade Runner (1982) where bioengineered beings in a dark California, portray a bleak future which questions the effect of technological progress on mankind. Walter Benjamin had concerns and his argument was that art inevitably reflects the historical time in which it is created. With industrialization comes a new feature: the reproducibility of...

MAN MADE was a completely new and enlightening event for me. It was all about exploring the urban ecology of our built environment through Los Angeles female artists. It also explored mathematics and science through all of its pieces. The event featured 5 artists who took us around the exhibition and explained the thinking and work behind all their pieces. As the event started, we walked into the first main show room which featured pieces by Chelsey Dean and Jacqueline Bell Johnson. These were the two artists that stood out the most to me because they both, in their own ways, explored the world through a new perspective. Chelsey focused on photography and reflections of “our world” and went into detail about conflict between order and entropy. She achieved this by adding textures and dimension to her photographs to add beauty and weight to something as simple as a picture of an abandoned shed in the middle of nowhere. Moving on to the next room, we saw more pieces by...