Émilie Wouters - DESMA9

  Extra Credit Event 4 Joel Barish getting the memories of Clementine erased in the film      The film “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” raises several philosophical and neuroscientific questions. I will focus on philosophy, as I have already done an event blog that looked at medical accuracy. I will admit that I am doing this blog almost a month after seeing the film, so I jogged my memory and rewatched it. This movie is about a couple who erases their memories of the other person to forget about the hurt the relationship caused them. Memory Erasure      Should memories be erased? What are the pros and cons of this invention? A memory eraser could be good for treating trauma related problems that cannot be helped by the usual methods. However, your brain naturally does that with repression. For example, a huge indicator of childhood trauma is that someone doesn’t remember their childhood, or are missing chunks of memory associated with a certain...

  Event Blog 3: Contagion For this event blog, I will be discussing the (now all too relatable) film Contagion. It follows the spread of an infectious and deadly virus, and how the world dealt with it. It’s eerily similar to what happened with the COVID-19 pandemic, from its bat origin to the conspiracy theorists who think it’s all a hoax, to its method of spreading, to the general government response/strategy. However, I will not focus on the ties between this movie and the COVID-19 world. Anyone who hasn’t been in a coma for the past year and two months can see how they’re connected. And those off the grid. And the Amish. Anyway, I’d like to discuss the medical accuracy/plausibility of the movie.                    Bat eats food             Bat drops food into pigpen                 ...

 U9: Space + Art      When I saw that this week’s theme was space and art, I immediately thought of astrophotography. I thought that was what the lecture was going to be about. Boy, was I wrong. What I love about this week is the variety of ways an art piece can interact with space. The guest speaker, Richelle Gribble, sent her work into space. Chelsey Bonestell does work depicting sci fi versions of space. Arthur Woods takes pictures of people dancing in space. Many photographers (including myself, though astrophotography isn’t exactly my main domain) and astrologists take pictures of space.      Elena Soterakis Yoko Shimizu Richelle Gribble      I want to come back to Richelle Gribble, because we cannot just glaze over the fact that she sent a work of art she made into outer space. The furthest my work has gone is out of the country, and even then it wa...

U8: NanoTech + Art      In the article, Art in the Age of Nanotechnology, a project is mentioned that made me look into another idea. Boo Chapple has been trying to make an audio speaker out of bones using nanotechnology. Bone speaker      This made me think about the possibility of using this on the ossicles (ear bones) to help with hearing loss. I then looked into whether or not this idea was being studied, and came across something different. Scientists are looking into using nanotechnology to regenerate damaged stereocilia, which are the microscopic fibers in the cochlea that help convert pressure waves of audio into electrical signals. Stereocilia      A lot of hearing loss, especially old age hearing loss, is due to the loss or damage of these little hair-like fibers ( sensorineural hearing loss). In a study on guinea pigs, they found that nanoparticles could deliver RNA that regenerates some of the hair cells. Ossicles    ...

U7: Neurosci + Art This week, the reading I’d like to discuss is the one about Jonah Lehrer. Memory is an interesting topic of neuroscience. It varies between people, it’s pretty unreliable, and there are so many things that can positively or negatively affect it. Its unreliability can be dangerous in the case of modified memories, and when dealing with manipulation and gaslighting, but the article doesn’t go into depth for those two things. On a personal note, I have a few mental illnesses that affect my memory, so I do try to learn as much as I can about it when I can. Lehrer studied both English and neuroscience, and this crossover proved to be a good one. Remember the third culture from Unit one of the DESMA class? Well, Lehrer perfectly mixes literature and neuroscience. He discovered that writers/musicians lead scientific discoveries with inspiration, and scientists follow up with tests and experiments. Art can teach us about our brains. Now, the article mentions something that I...

  Event Blog 2 For this event blog, I attended the midterm showing. I found a few things to talk about. First of all, it was incredible to be there to listen to all the different ideas people had. Everyone is so creative. I noticed a few trends. First, quite a few of the projects had a larger impact, a problem they’re trying to help solve. Many of the products and ideas, if they existed, would contribute to society in some way. I also loved how people’s varying backgrounds helped them come up with different ideas. Some even brought in an extra piece of expertise from their fields. Chart from Green's presentation Someone named Joseph Green actually went ahead and made some AI music, which was quite impressive, and reminded me of the robot art authenticity debate. Yet another trend was that for many of the projects, I could either imagine it integrated into our society, or imagine it as a Black Mirror episode. I know I have mentioned that show before, but this class as a whole is alr...