Event Blog 3

My friend (left) and me (right) at the LASER talk

For my third event, I attended the LASER talk hosted by Prof. Vesna on May 9th. This talk featured four speakers: Rebecca Raffaeta, Maru Garcia, Kelly Nipper, and Ariel Levi Simons. Rebecca focused on culture and health interactions, as well as our interactions with nature. Maru focused her artwork created using chemical compounds and scientific practices/innovations. Kelly described her work in photography (and its technicalities), and her work with dancers to convey geometric ideas. Ariel talked about his research into light pollution and its effects on different ecosystems (besides our own). Lastly, Prof. John Hood talked about David Bermat Collection and David’s passion for art. I found Maru's artwork and Ariels' technical work fascinating and will be focusing on those in this blog.

Maru was an undergraduate student in chemistry and was working on characterizing compounds in plant membranes when she noticed the beautiful images created during her analysis. Some of the work that Maru presented reminds me of a lot of the artwork related to nanotechnology field.

Image of a molecule created by Maru Garcia

Maru went on to work in the pharmaceutical industry after her undergrad, but always wanted to integrate her work in the science field with art. To pursue this, she decided to collaborate with a microbiologist from Mexico. Her petri dish art was the product of this collaboration. In the image below the yellow bacteria is the bacteria that grows around corn, a staple of Mexican diet. Through this work, Maru combined her passion for art and science while reaching back to her roots. She mentioned that she has Mexican roots, and it was very important for her to express her heritage through her work. She is obviously a trained Chemist and has been trained to conduct experiments etc. Through her experiments, she has created works of art to share the beauty of science with everyone.

Petri Dish by Maru Garcia

My favorite work by Maru were the chromatography landscapes. These landscapes were created using a molecule/compound separation method known as chromatography. This method is commonly used by pharmaceutical companies during research and development phases of their drugs (Keller). Her chromatography art is absolutely beautiful and looks like an abstract watercolor landscape. This once again proves Vesna’s point that science and art are closely linked (Vesna). Maru truly showed us that scientists can be artists, and that scientific methods can produce objectively beautiful art. 

My favorite piece by Maru Garcia: the chromatography landscape

While Maru showcased the intersection of art and science, Ariel showed us the more technical side. Ariel’s research focuses on light pollution and its effect of ecosystems. He mentioned that with the advent of industrialization, light pollution has become an omnipresent issue. At the beginning, only the astronomers were concerned about light pollution because they could not see the stars through their telescopes. Now that light pollution has gotten out of hand, biologists are starting to care because it affects sleep cycles and navigation abilities of animals. Due to these concerns, VIIRS project was started. VIIRS is a satellite whose purpose is to map out long term lumination (NOAA). Ariel’s research project is essentially measure the light pollution on the ground and to compare the data to VIIRS. His research is vital, because VIIRS does not take into account the reflected and refracted light. While Ariel’s presentation was very technical, it showed that science creates beautiful art without trying (as shown by the data from VIIRS below).

 

Light pollution data showed by Ariel Simons

Bibliography

Keller, Roy A. Chromatography. 17 November 2016. Web. 5 June 2018. https://www.britannica.com/science/chromatography.

NOAA. Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS). 29 December 2017. Web. 5 June 2018. https://ncc.nesdis.noaa.gov/VIIRS/.

Vesna, Victoria. "Lecture 1: Two Cultures." Los Angeles: uconline, April 2018. Web.