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  "Powers of Ten (1977)".  YouTube , uploaded by Eames Office. https://youtu.be/0fKBhvDjuy0 The vastness of space inspires awe, curiosity, fear. The apparent absence of life in that vastness is something so foreign and unfamiliar to us inhabitants of Earth that we can't help but fantasize about alien civilizations lurking behind our blue sky, perhaps occasionally visiting us in the form of UFOs. With the development of adequate technologies to probe space and the resulting scientific knowledge about space, it is now easy for us to imagine seeing our home planet as a pale blue dot against the backdrop of darkness sprinkled with glowing dust. Despite more than 70 billion fellow human beings populating this planet, contemplating the possibility that we may be alone in the solar system, the galaxy, or the visible universe as intelligent life induces something that might be called cosmic loneliness.    "Arrival Trailer (2016) - Paramount Pictures".  YouTube , uploade...

  "A Boy And His Atom: The World's Smallest Movie".  YouTube , uploaded by IBM. 30 Apr. 2013 https://youtu.be/oSCX78-8-q0 Nanoscience indeed gives us a shift in our perception of reality, when we can visualize individual atoms whose sizes are hard to even grasp.  Even though Jim  Gimzewski and Victoria Vesna characterized the shift as "from a purely visual culture to one based on sensing and connectivity" (Gimzewski and Vesna 1), focusing on the mode of perception, I would like to focus on the significance of the shift in the content of perception, or more precisely the interpreted content of perception since while our perception changed over time reality stayed the same.  “Scanning Tunneling Microscope.”  IBM100 - Scanning Tunneling Microscope , https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/us/en/icons/microscope/. Much like inhabitants of Flatland, for majority of human history, we could only see the surface of things at only our particular arbitrary human scale...

"What is Consciousness - Michael S. A. Graziano".  YouTube , uploaded by TED-ed. 11 Feb. 2019 https://youtu.be/MASBIB7zPo4 The problem of consciousness is widely known to be one of the hardest, if not impossible, problem of science and philosophy for humanity to solve. That we are even able to ponder this problem with sufficient self-awareness is astonishing, given the improbability of the evolution of intelligent life in the visible universe. Consciousness, on one hand, is something very personal and dear to us: our experiences that make up our memory and our whole life, including the anticipated or dreaded future, including the smell of coffee, the warmth of sunlight, the fuzzy feeling of love. On the other hand, it leads to questions about the relation between mind and matter, between reality and consciousness: what leads to consciousness? Can silicon chips be conscious? Are we in a simulation? Am I the only consciousness dreaming the whole world? Is reality just conscious...

  Jay, Daniel. “Cryoart.” Dan Jay Art, http://danjayart.com/. Dr. Daniel Jay gave an interesting talk touching on various subjects including art, neuroscience of visual perception, and the interaction between art and science. With much experience in both science and art, and having produced art using elements of science, Dr. Jay bridges the gap between art and science and contributes to the Third Culture as described by Professor Vesna. Contrary to my unjustified expectation that works of art heavily featuring scientific elements would be abstract and esoteric rather than emotional, I was struck by poignance of the piece shown below which was made using ingredients of gunpowder on the theme of gun violence. Jay, Daniel. “Gunpowder.”  Dan Jay Art , http://danjayart.com/. Dr. Jay's brief exposition of the neuroscience of visual perception in relation to art was very fascinating as well. How layers of neurons perceive different aspects of the visual field, lower layers processing...

I am an atheist, but I still get the impression that we are playing God when creating some pieces of art using biotechnology. Then I quickly come to my senses and maintain that there is no God (Dawkins 1986) and we are capable of creating anything possible. On one hand, that we are not bound by divine restrictions gives us an unlimited supply of creative possibilities and artistic mediums, including life itself. On the other hand, it leaves us with potentially devastating consequences, both practically and ethically.  “Ear on Arm.” STELARC , http://stelarc.org/?catID=20242. If one decides to put an extra ear on one's arm, as Stelarc did, then people would regard it as a form of artistic expression, albeit quirky and unoriginal after Stelarc's. If one decides to create a virus with a particular genetic structure, out of some strange aesthetic standards, that turns out to aid dangerous viral proliferation, then people would be outraged especially in the aftermath of Covid 19 pand...