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Showing posts from June, 2017

Week 9: Space and Art

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Since ancient times, space - the extraterrestrial - has been a source of interest and reflection for society. As Professor Vensa discussed in lecture, our initial interest in space began with Copernicus, who discovered that the Sun was the center of our solar system. Hundreds of years later, the Cold War between the United States and USSR sparked an arms race and a competitive space race to the moon. As a result, much of the propaganda or artwork in the media reflected the desire of these two countries to reach the moon first and fascination with the outer space, their fascination with the unknown. We also see in modern times, that books, television shows, and films (like Star Trek) often discuss or center around extraterrestrial topics - showing the extent to which space has intersected with art. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Exploring_Space_-_The_Science_Museum_-_geograph.org.uk_-_561168.jpg http://www.startrek.com/uploads/assets/db_articles/71f36e38828

Event 3: Chinese American Culture Night

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A few weeks ago, I had the honor of acting in UCLA's Chinese American Culture night (CACN). At UCLA, a Culture Night is composed of a play that discusses an important theme within a particular community, while simultaneously being interspersed with cultural performances. For CACN, these cultural performances included traditional dance, hip-hop dance, lion dance, and Wushu. While theater isn't what one typically thinks of in the conventional sense of art, I realized through this experience that the performing arts integrates many of the same concepts that we have examined in this class, concepts that are not necessarily more prevalent in conventional art forms like paintings and sculptures. Notably, theatrical productions embody C.P Snow's concept of the two cultures of science and the arts. Although in the context of this production I operate only from the artistic side, the technical, scientific aspect of the play lent itself to truly elevating the production value of th