Week 9: Space + Art


Human’s fascination for the universe is always so outstanding throughout history. Back to the times of ancient Greeks and Romans, people began to construe about the out world. The universe is given such romance that the stars are named after Gods. During the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, the heliocentric system was first introduced by Copernicus, contrary to the church’s belief at that time. Despite such a systematic mathematical formulation of the solar system, our knowledge about the universe was nothing but too little. Hence mankind started to think about going into the space, and this was achieved in the 20th century. The most notable among the excursions to the space was made by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the Moon. After that, the space has been extensively explored by the human race.



The beauty and mystery of the space has inspired artists a lot. Back then to the 19th century, Van Gogh created the famous masterpiece The Starry Night, which was an artistic depiction of the starry sky. As our exploration of the space increased, movies with the theme of space came into play. Among them, my favorite one is Avatar, which depict a different world on planet Pandora. The marvelous creatures and the spectacular scenes in the movie really blow my mind. It is in fact the mysterious nature of the space that allows artist to employ their imaginations. In the unknown realm, the deepest elegance must lie somewhere.
















References
Vesna, Victoria. Lectures in Space and Art Part 1. N.p. N.d.
       https://cole2.uconline.edu/courses/684222/pages/unit-9-view?module_item_id=11226181
Vesna, Victoria. Lectures in Space and Art Part 2. N.p. N.d.
       https://cole2.uconline.edu/courses/684222/pages/unit-9-view?module_item_id=11226181
Vesna, Victoria. Lectures in Space and Art Part 3. N.p. N.d.
       https://cole2.uconline.edu/courses/684222/pages/unit-9-view?module_item_id=11226181
Unknown. Earth Planet Space. N.p. N.d.
       http://wallpapershome.com/space/earth-planet-space-10121.html
Unknown. RQE. N.p. N.d.
       http://cdn.drinkingcinema.com/uli/rQE.jpeg
Unknown. Avatar. N.p. N.d.
        http://theredlist.com/media/database/settings/cinema/2000-2010/avatar-/022-avatar-theredlist.jpg


Comments

  1. UnknownJune 5, 2017 at 1:40 PM

    Great post! I really liked the images you chose, especially the screencap from Avatar. I remember seeing that movie for the first time when I was in middle school and it blew me away with how beautiful the extraterrestrial scenery was. I agree that space is still really mysterious and unknown. Perhaps this is why we have so many different variations and ideas from artists about what other planets might look like. Still, it's interesting how a lot of these illustrations share the same motifs, such as huge, weirdly shaped plants and animals.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 1: Two Cultures

Image
The idea of “two cultures” has been increasingly involved in my life as I continue my academic career. As was identified by C. P. Snow in his lecture, two cultures refer to the literary and the scientific. At a certain point of history, these two areas became isolated and antithetical. Even though recently a “third culture”, one that is technology oriented, has emerged, we can still feel the estrangement of science and liberal arts. Science and art separated Take my experience at UCLA as an example. The campus is divided into two parts, the north and the south campus, where the north represents liberal arts and the south means science. This is a clear indication that these two areas are to some extent incompatible and students identify themselves based on which area they come from. Moreover, there is little chance that students from the north and south campus to communicate, at least in my perspective, since the geographical distributions make us harder to interact people fro
Read more

Week 2 Math and Art

Image
Artists, making use of the concepts of mathematics, are able to represent the world better. The first idea I learned from this week’s lecture is the formulation of linear perspective, which allows   artists to represent three dimensional objects on a two dimensional canvas. The idea is based on the mathematical principles of optics and associated with a “vanishing point”. By proper scaling of objects at different distances, we are able to create a visually three dimensional image. The second concept is the golden ratio or the divine ratio, which is obtained by dividing a line so that the ration of the shorter part to the longer part is the same as that of the longer part to the whole line. This idea has been implemented widely throughout history, including the pyramids, ancient Greek sculptures and da Vinci’s paintings. The golden ration produces a harmonic effect that is also existent in nature. The third aspect is about dimensions. Artists became intrigued by the idea
Read more