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Extra Credit Event 5: Ken Wells: The Center Cannot Hold

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Recently, I attended the Ken Wells: The Center Cannot Hold conference that was hosted by Elyn Saks, Professor Vesna, and Kenneth Wells. During it, they discussed the translation of the difficulties with dealing with mental health into a form of expressive art such as music. In particular, they discussed the process of transitioning Elyn Sak's memoir, The Center Cannot Hold, into an opera. The memoir follows Elyn through her early life and how she is living with and surviving mental illness. Kenneth Wells translated this personal and empowering story of Elyn into an opera in hopes of not only bringing light to the difficulties but also empathizing with the struggles of mental health. Image of Elyn Saks and Kenneth Wells  Art, and in this case, opera, provides a platform to tell the stories of individuals who may not be able to express themselves otherwise. Art has the power to move people, while science and law help understand individuals' needs and desires. Elyn's experienc...
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Extra Credit Event 4: Pop Up Exhibition by Joy Yang at the UCLA Art Sci Gallery at CNSI

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  A few weeks ago, I attended an exhibition held by Joy Yang at the UCLA Art Science Gallery. The art piece that was put on display was unlike any other I have seen. The basis of the art piece was to create the ability to perceive sound frequencies that humans cannot naturally hear. As explained by Joy and her partner in creating the art piece, James, they used capacitors, which filtered and distorted the sound frequencies, changing them from frequencies we are able to hear to frequencies that we are unable to hear. Then these frequencies were filtered through a vector network analyzer to then project the frequencies onto a graph where they could be visually seen through a graphic display.   Image of the capacitor and vector network analyzer The art work integrates science and art through the use of capacitors, which are typically used in the study of current and resistance and are more particularly used for blocking direct current while allowing alternating currents to pass ...
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Event 3: LASER: De-colonizing AI

  I recently attended the Leonardo Art Science Evening Rendezvous that was lead by Professor Vensa, Karamjit Gill, Satinder Gill, Amir Baradaran, and Mashinka Hakopian who all gathered to bring more attention to AI and put in the context of art and humanity as well as showcasing the importance of decolonizing AI.  Aican's recreation of "Birth of Venus" One aspect of the presentation that I was captivated by was the introduction Mashinka Hakopian gave on the AI known as Aican. Aican, which is artificial intelligence that can replicate and produce art was developed at the Rutgers AI lab, exemplified the limitations of AI's understanding of art. Trained on a dataset of 80,000 images primarily from the Western canon, Aican can determine whether something is art or not based on this limited exposure. However, its judgment is confined to Western art, limiting its comprehension of art forms beyond this scope and limiting its ability to properly imitate non-Western features t...
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