Week 1: Two Cultures

    I found this week's topic of two cultures an interesting one! Before transferring to UCLA as a communications major, I was pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Studio degree from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. I decided to drop out of SAIC because I saw many artists, including my professors at SAIC struggling financially. Many of the professors there made sure to remind their students that the stereotype of the "struggling artist" was not just a stereotype. C.P. Snow mentions in The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution that “It is also, to be brutal, that the young scientists know that with an indifferent degree they'll get a comfortable job, while their contemporaries and counterparts in English or History will be lucky to earn 60 per cent as much” (Snow 19). Although many people think of art and science as two separate cultures, "both artist and scientist are involved in the work of intuiting change in perception and materializing it for others to experience, see and ultimately change”  (Vesna 122). 

 

                                           

       (One of the portfolio pieces I submitted to SAIC)

(One of the sculptures I made while I was at SAIC)

        As a transfer student of UCLA during the COVID-19 pandemic, I have only been on the UCLA campus a handful of times. During the times that I spent on campus, I felt a divide between the North and South Campus. The North Campus has a more relaxed and calm feel to it, while the South Campus has a serious and cramped feel. At SAIC, I never felt this divide because there wasn't a physical or mental carrier between the two cultures. Many of the professors there agreed with Bohm that “scientists (have) to create the new overall structures of ideas, which are needed to express the harmony and beauty that can be found in nature” (Bohm 138). Although SAIC, is an art school, they offer and require science, math, and technology courses for all their students. They embrace all three types of cultures and acknowledge the fact that they all are connected! "While science and art generate truth and beauty, technology generates opportunities: new things to explain; new ways of expression; new media of communications; and, if we are honest, new forms of destruction" (Kelly).  I personally think that the cultures influence one another, equally. Contrary to Stephen Wilson's argument that "while there are some notable exceptions of artists influencing technological research, there is much more influence going the other way" (Wilson).

    Although I am no longer attending an art school or pursuing a degree in art, I will never stop making it! I believe that in one way or another, everyone has the ability to be an artist and that almost anything can be viewed as art in a creative mind!

Works Cited

Bohm, D. "On Creativity." JSTOR. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Oct. 2013.

 

Kelly, Kevin. "The Third Culture." The Third Culture. N.p., n.d. Web. Feb. 1998

Snow, C. P. The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. New York: Cambridge UP, 1959. Print.

Vesna, Victoria. "Toward a Third Culture: Being In Between." Leonardo. 34 (2001): 121-125. Print.

Wilson, Stephen. “Myths and Confusions in Thinking about Art/Science/Technology.” 2000.