Event 3: Contact (1997)

Attempts at communicating with alien species have been made since 1959, initially through listening for and sending radio transmission signals, much like Dr. Ellie Arroway’s attempts in the film Contact. But what makes us think that these potentially intelligent aliens would recognize our signals? If we discovered intelligent aliens, how would we communicate with them? We wouldn’t be able to use human speech, assuming they haven’t decoded any of our languages at the time of our encounter. Is there any universal method of communication?

As a mathematics major, one of my favorite aspects of Contact was the discovery of the mathematical-like alien writing in the extraterrestrial signals. After decoding, the researchers in the film discovered the writing was instructions to build what might have been a transportation device. The ability to decode an alien message would imply the existence of some logical system. Mathematics relies on symbols and logic – anyone, regardless of their native language, can learn the notation and make logical statements.

According to Plato, mathematics is independent of human language, thoughts, and practices. As in, mathematical theories are truths of the universe. Carl DeVito, an emeritus faculty in the department of mathematics at the University of Arizona suggests that mathematics might be understandable to alien civilizations. Assuming this alien species has a version of science, it would hard to imagine, according to DeVito, a science without calculus – the mathematics of motion. However, this assumes our alien friends have a quantitative study of their world and have some fundamental system of logic.

Images from top to bottom: scene from Contact, the decoded transportation device, mathematical symbols

Works Cited:

David, Leonard. “Talking to E.T.? Why Math May Be the Best Language.” Space.com, Space, 7 June 2017, www.space.com/37109-making-contact-aliens-language-math.html.

“Home.” SETI Institute, www.seti.org/.

Petricek, Tomas. “Would Aliens Understand Lambda Calculus?” ? - Tomas Petricek, 22 May 2018, tomasp.net/blog/2018/alien-lambda-calculus/.

Nation, J.B. How Aliens Do Math. www.math.hawaii.edu/~jb/four.pdf.

Wikipedia contributors. "Contact (1997 American film)." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 4 Jun. 2021. Web. 5 Jun. 2021.

Week 9: Space + Art

You can’t talk about outer space without entertaining the idea of intelligent extraterrestrial life. If we could give them a sneak peek into the human world, what would we show them? What would we want them to know about us? Surely, we would boast about our advanced knowledge in subjects such as infinitesimal calculus and quantum physics. We would also show them what we look like and the many Earthly wonders of the Himalayas, the Sahara, the Amazon, etc.

While there is a good chance that our habitats are vastly different than alien habitats (and this diversity may pique some alien interest), I believe the feature that makes us such incredible creatures is our shared ability to make music. Some of the greatest works of Earthly music are floating around in interstellar space aboard Voyager 1 and 2. In 1977, NASA launched the Golden Records onboard the Voyager spacecrafts with the message from President Jimmy Carter: “This is a present from a small, distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours.” The Golden Records are phonograph records containing carefully selected sounds and images that were thought to best portray the diversity of cultures on Earth. Included in the capsule is music from around the globe and across time: Pygmy girls’ initiation song, Louis Armstrong, Navajo night chants, Stravinsky, Azerbaijani folk bagpipe, Chuck Berry, and over twenty-five more diverse tracks.

The Voyagers also included a collection of 115 images ranging from fetal diagrams to mathematical quantities to a lady in a supermarket to DNA. Carl Sagan, the renowned astrophysicist who sent these tangible messages to outer space, believed these records could only be found and played by “advanced space-faring life.” Today, Voyager 1 is the farthest traveling human-made object in space, giving us hope that maybe one day an alien will discover the human culture.

Images from top to bottom: cover of the Golden Record, demonstration of licking, eating and drinking (downloaded onto the Golden Record), astronaut in space (downloaded onto the Golden Record)

Works Cited:

Andrews, Travis. “NASA Launched This Record into Space in 1977. Now, You Can Own Your Own Copy.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 29 Apr. 2019, www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/11/27/nasa-launched-this-record-into-space-in-1977-now-you-can-own-your-own-copy/.

Ng, David. “Voyager 1 Exits Solar System, Takes Bach with It.” Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Times, 12 Sept. 2013, www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-xpm-2013-sep-12-la-et-cm-voyager-1-music-in-space-20130912-story.html.

“Voyager - Music on the Golden Record.” NASA, NASA, voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/golden-record/whats-on-the-record/music/.

“Voyager - Images on the Golden Record.” NASA, NASA, voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/galleries/images-on-the-golden-record/.

Wikipedia contributors. "Voyager Golden Record." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 10 May. 2021. Web. 29 May. 2021.

Event 2: Midterm Presentations

While I enjoyed viewing each midterm presentation, the two that were of particular interest to me were about scent memory and harnessing dreams.

I spent many summers of my youth in my mom’s homeland, and while I remember much of the landscape, people, and food, the first thing I always observe upon recollection of my time there is, oddly enough, the scent of the streets. This iconic smell is one you would probably experience in a construction zone, so every time I walk by one in Westwood, the images of my experiences there flood my brain.

When we recall memories, most of us tend to focus on the visual aspects while scents and textures are often forgotten, unimportant, or uninvolved in memory making. But our sense of smell is tightly linked to memory and is an underrated memory mechanism. The olfactory bulb, which is located in your head and sends information from your nose to your brain, is one of the first areas to sustain brain damage in Alzheimer’s disease.

Turning now to the dream chip, while everyone is believed to dream during sleep, many people don’t remember, so having one of those individuals watch a product of the inner machinations of their mind on a screen would be enlightening but potentially frightening. I like to think of dreams as a visual into a person’s subconscious, and this is not usually a desired experience for some people. Though it has a different purpose, the dream chip reminded me of another dream technology called Dormio. It delivers audio signals during particular times of a person’s sleep cycle in order to alter their dreams. Dormio isn’t exactly like the dream chip since it induces rather than captures dreams, but experiments may shed light on how to determine what someone dreams about.

Images from top to bottom: smells inducing memories, the dream device Dormio, the dream chip

Works Cited:

Beckmann, Sarah. “A New Way to Control Experimentation with Dreams.” MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 21 July 2020, news.mit.edu/2020/targeted-dream-incubation-dormio-mit-media-lab-0721.

Kreisl, William. “Can a Smell Test Sniff Out Alzheimer's Disease?” Columbia University Irving Medical Center, 10 July 2019, www.cuimc.columbia.edu/news/can-smell-test-sniff-out-alzheimers-disease#:~:text=The%20olfactory%20bulb%E2%80%94which%20sends,affected%20early%20in%20the%20disease.

“Psychology and Smell.” Fifth Sense, www.fifthsense.org.uk/psychology-and-smell/.

Walsh, Colleen. “How Scent, Emotion, and Memory Are Intertwined - and Exploited.” Harvard Gazette, Harvard Gazette, 27 Feb. 2020, news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/02/how-scent-emotion-and-memory-are-intertwined-and-exploited/.

“Why Can't I Remember My Dreams?” Medical News Today, MediLexicon International, www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/why-cant-i-remember-my-dreams#what-else-do-we-know.

Week 7: Neurosci + Art

I dream every night, and my dreams are vivid to a degree where I often find myself unable to distinguish dream-life from real-life. While I’m not particularly spiritual, the lucidity of my dreams makes me wonder if there exists a connection between individuals as a sort of cosmic linkage that manifests in dreams, much like the Hungarian film On Body and Soul. In the film, a psychologist is hired to test the personalities of a company’s employees following a workplace incident. As part of the test, employees recount their dreams, and the psychologist quickly realizes that two workers report the same dreams. An unconventional love story ensues between the connected dreamers, and while I don’t believe in the concept of “soulmates”, it would nevertheless be epic if there was someone somewhere experiencing the same nightly visions.

This potential connectivity between the minds of separate individuals reminds me of Carl Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious. He believed that this is part of the mind housing memories and impulses that are shared by all of mankind. According to Jung, the universality of religions as well as archetypes appearing in dreams represented symbols that meant similar things to separate individuals.

While neuroscience and spirituality seem to be at odds, we may discover insights into both realms while studying one. Scientists have researched parts of the brain used in dreaming with significant implications of the purpose of dreams and ultimately consciousness, noting that the dreaming brain and waking brain are more similar than once imagined.

Images from top to bottom: dreamers from On Body and Mind, Carl Jung, a visualization of the collective unconscious

Works Cited:

Blackmore, Susan. “What Happens When We Dream?” BBC Science Focus Magazine, www.sciencefocus.com/the-human-body/what-happens-when-we-dream/#:~:text=The%20whole%20brain%20is%20active,(rapid%20eye%20movement)%20sleep.&text=The%20limbic%20system%20in%20the,is%20especially%20active%20during%20dreams.

Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Collective unconscious". Encyclopedia Britannica, 28 Feb. 2020, https://www.britannica.com/science/collective-unconscious. Accessed 13 May 2021.

Davis, Nicola. “Scientists Identify Parts of Brain Involved in Dreaming.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 10 Apr. 2017, www.theguardian.com/science/2017/apr/10/scientists-identify-parts-of-brain-involved-in-dreaming.

Mcleod, Saul. “Carl Jung.” Carl Jung | Simply Psychology, 1 Jan. 1970, www.simplypsychology.org/carl-jung.html.

Wikipedia contributors. "On Body and Soul." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 10 May. 2021. Web. 15 May. 2021.

Week 6: Biotech + Art

Humans are constantly pushing the limits of their power in genetic engineering in an effort to circumvent natural processes. Are these efforts motivated by a desire to acquire Creator-like abilities? The scientists in films on the topic are often portrayed as having god complexes.

There are plenty of films about cloning: Replicas, Gemini Man, Closer to God, and so on. Many of us have seen Jurassic Park, where scientists figured out how to re-birth dinosaurs. While growing dinosaurs seems far in the future, researchers today have been successful with certain artificial cloning experiments. In 1996, Dolly the sheep, the first successfully cloned mammal, was born.

But what does cloning say about the sanctity of new life? If you clone your dead dog, is the clone truly the same as your original companion? The idea of cloning is somewhat analogous to Benjamin Walter’s concept of that art loses meaning in the age of reproduction. If you can keep replicating your dog, does the original retain any significance?

These questions remind me of the novel The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer in which a young boy discovers that he is the clone of a powerful drug lord El Patron. The boy, treated like an animal through much of the novel, realizes that his organs will soon be harvested to be transplanted into the aging El Patron. The ethical issues here are obvious, and it could be where reality is headed. With the growing power of scientific knowledge in the field, we must be cautious of what should and should not be done.

Images from top to bottom: cloning fact sheet, Dolly the sheep, House of the Scorpion book cover

Works Cited:

Ayala, Francisco J. “Cloning Humans? Biological, Ethical, and Social Considerations.” PNAS, National Academy of Sciences, 21 July 2015, www.pnas.org/content/112/29/8879.

Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, 1936.

“Cloning Fact Sheet.” Genome.gov, www.genome.gov/about-genomics/fact-sheets/Cloning-Fact-Sheet.

“Dolly the Sheep Becomes First Successfully Cloned Mammal.” History.com, A&E Television Networks, 9 Feb. 2010, www.history.com/this-day-in-history/first-successful-cloning-of-a-mammal#:~:text=On%20July%205%2C%201996%2C%20Dolly,the%20Roslin%20Institute%20in%20Scotland.

Farmer, Nancy. The House of the Scorpion. Simon & Schuster Children's, 2013.

“Organs Made to Order.” Smithsonian.com, Smithsonian Institution, 1 Aug. 2010, www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/organs-made-to-order-863675/.

Spielberg, Steven, director. Jurassic Park. 1993.

Wikipedia contributors. "Dolly (sheep)." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 5 May. 2021. Web. 8 May. 2021.

Event 1: Metropolis

Though this seems like a dramatic expression of worker’s conditions, it’s not too far from how some Amazon employees feel today. Emily Guendelsberger recounts her experience as one of the company’s warehouse workers where she felt like she was “being held to the productivity standards of a robot.” In her article, she describes the strict time constraints workers like her were expected to follow. You could liken Jeff Bezos to Joh Frederson, both men who seem to value productivity over humanity in their labor practices.

During the first scene of the film, workers with their heads down are packed like sardines into an elevator. We knew Metropolis had something to do with robots based on the film’s posters and the week’s topic, so several students in the Zoom chat, including myself, guessed that the workers must be robots. They looked like robots, and they were treated like them. The most telling scene, in my opinion, is the one where Freder sees a worker manning a clock-like machine. The man falls into Freder’s arms in exhaustion and says “…the machine!... Someone has to stay at the machine!” He is clearly worked to the extent of his physical capacity yet is concerned with the penalty of leaving his workstation, the penalty we saw in earlier scenes where workers are stripped down and fed into machines to be crushed and killed.

Despite the portrayal of worker’s conditions that seem increasingly relevant in industrial society, Metropolis was unsuccessful in its original German release. Its length was cut down in length to remove scenes deemed inappropriate by the Nazi government. It seems like Benjamin Walter was right when he said, “the conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion.”

Images from top to bottom: Metropolis workers in an elevator, an exhausted worker at the clock-like machine

Works Cited:

Guendelsberger, Emily, and On the Clock: What Low-Wage Work Did to Me and How It Drives America Insane. “Amazon Treats Its Warehouse Workers Like Robots: Ex-Employee.” Time, Time, 18 July 2019, time.com/5629233/amazon-warehouse-employee-treatment-robots/.

Martin, Nick. “Amazon Warehouse Workers Knew Someone Would Get Sick.” The New Republic, 19 Mar. 2020, newrepublic.com/article/156967/amazon-warehouse-workers-knew-someone-get-sick.

“Metropolis.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., www.britannica.com/topic/Metropolis-film-1927#ref286759.

“Metropolis (1927) Full Movie 1080p.” YouTube, YouTube, 31 Aug. 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BBnMCAIuQg.

“METROPOLIS [2010 RESTORATION].” Roger Ebert's Film Festival: Metropolis, archive.ebertfest.media.illinois.edu/thirteen/metropolis.html.

Wikipedia contributors. "Metropolis (1927 film)." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 22 Apr. 2021. Web. 24 Apr. 2021.

Week 4: Medicine + Technology + Art

Does art determine the standard of female beauty? Perhaps it has always been art. In the past and still to this day, people have fixated on the Mona Lisa’s quiet face and on Venus’s posing form. It was the painting that set the standards, though today it seems like the main influence is photography, particularly on social media sites like Instagram.

Heightening one’s physical looks to comply with current standards of beauty is a product of evolution aimed at attracting mates, and this is seen not only in humans but all over the animal kingdom. Some humans reconcile their looks with makeup according to standards of their societies and cultures. But thanks to the advancement in medical technologies, we now have the artistic license to reconstruct our bodies. While plastic surgery has been around for thousands of years, purely cosmetic procedures are more accessible today than in the past when it was most commonly used to reconstruct the bodies of soldiers maimed from war.

The French artist Orlan this to an extreme by Frankensteining the facial features of some of the classically beautiful female figures in art, such as the forehead of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and the chin of Botticelli’s Venus. Her surgical procedures are all directed as a performance, where participants are dressed in costumes according to a theme while she reads literary work. From her documentary Carnal Art, many feel she has lost her anonymity, but she instead has gained a reputation for her high-risk theater.

Images from top to bottom: The Birth of Venus(1485–1486), Orlan prepping for a procedure, Orlan with facial implants, Orlan's 4th surgery performance (1991) Works Cited:

“The Birth of Venus.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 20 Apr. 2021, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birth_of_Venus.

Bright, Richard, et al. “The Future of the Body with Performance Artist ORLAN.” Interalia Magazine, 27 Aug. 2015, www.interaliamag.org/blog/the-future-of-the-body-with-performance-artist-orlan/.

BuzzFeedYellow, director. Beauty Standards Around The World. YouTube, YouTube, 28 June 2014, www.youtube.com/watch?v=RT9FmDBrewA.

Hollander, Alyssa. “ART 206 Peoples UFA.” ART 206 Peoples UFA Orlan Comments, 27 Feb. 2014, sites.lafayette.edu/art206-sp14/2014/02/27/orlan/.

MutleeIsTheAntiGod, director. Orlan - Carnal Art (2001) Documentary. YouTube, YouTube, 13 Mar. 2011, www.youtube.com/watch?v=no_66MGu0Oo.

O'Neal, Taylor. “The Body as Costume; ORLAN’s ‘Omniprésence’ and the Standard of Taste.” Yiara Magazine, 29 Jan. 2019.

ORLAN OFFICIAL WEBSITE / SITE OFFICIEL D'ORLAN, www.orlan.eu/.

Uconlineprogram, director. Medicine pt3. YouTube, YouTube, 22 Apr. 2012, www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIX-9mXd3Y4.

Wikipedia contributors. "Mona Lisa." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 17 Apr. 2021. Web. 24 Apr. 2021.