EVENT 3 BLOG

Event 3
Karina Rodriguez

Reattu Museum - Arles, France

This was just a small portion of where the Pope
lived while staying in Avignon, France.

     For the past two weeks I have been in France playing soccer with the U20 U.S. Women's National Team. On the off days when we are not playing soccer we have been given the opportunity to see two of the cities around where I am staying. The main city closest to me is the city of Avignon. Here the Pope came to stay for a bit years ago and many of the buildings are older but very very cool to see as we do not really have anything like it in the U.S. We walked around the town and enjoyed the life of the people in Avignon.

Our coordinator bought us this ticket that allowed us entry
into multiple sight seeing locations.

     Another city that they allowed us to walk around and sight see was Arles, France. Although Avignon was very beautiful and unique in its own way, I enjoyed Arles much more. There were so many cool things to see. We were given an hour and a half to see the city and walk around where we pleased before we had to meet up again for a team dinner. We were given a ticket that allowed us to visit a few different buildings and locations in the city. First we stopped to see the amphitheater as it is nothing like anything that we have in the U.S. and only something you see in Europe. There we were also able to go up a high staircase that took us to a lookout spot over the whole city. The city view was breathtaking. We then stopped for gelato because who can resist gelato in Europe, I went for the classic chocolate and combined it with a scoop of coffee. Our final stop took us to the Reattu Museum where my friends and I viewed paintings from Pablo Picasso.

This photos was taken in front
of one of Pablo Picasso's paintings
in the Reattu Museum we visited
in Arles, France.

     It was a small museum as all the regular buildings are quite small as well but they had some pretty cool paintings from Pablo Picasso. The paintings are mostly of faces and the faces are very abstract. This reminded me very much of Neuroscience and Art from Week 7. Although Pablo Picasso may not have been under the influence of LSD or anything like that many of his paintings look as though he was. His brain reaches creative places that not many can do on their own. We can only assume that  his behaviors and personalities had an impact on his artwork as the brain ties together many different aspects of a person. Pablo Picasso's art also resembles Mathematics and Art from Week 2. We see the simplicity of mathematics in the portraits he created. The portraits are composed of different shapes and lines of all kinds, none crossing but all connecting to form the end product.

Arles Amphitheater 

          Works Cited

Arles Amphitheater https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/arles-amphitheatre

Avignon http://www.avignon-et-provence.com/en/tourism-provence/avignon

Museum Reattu http://www.museereattu.arles.fr

Picasso in Museum Reattu http://www.museereattu.arles.fr/pablo-picasso.html

Vincent Van Gogh in Arles http://www.vangoghroute.com/france/arles/

Week 9

Karina Rodriguez
Week 9

Space and Art

A Time magazine cover shows the
race between the U.S. and the Soviet
Union to reach space first.

     Space has always been a place that has caught the attention of everyone no matter what age. It is fascinating and the endless discoveries continue to amaze me and so many others. Space is so big that our minds cannot even attempt to try to understand its size. What this large space does is gives us the realization of how small everything truly is. We see this in the power of 10s video. A simple exponent can take something that is as small as an atom and expand it into something as large as a galaxy. This, as well as some other factors, cause for much interest and exploration in the mid 1900s. Space exploration became a two man race between the United States and the Soviet Union.

     Something that I feel the younger generation forgets is that the Soviet Union was the first to successfully put a person on the moon. Even though they were the first to put someone on the moon, before this lecture I had never heard the name of this person, and I don't think many people have. Yet Alan Sheppard, the name of an American astronaut, is a name many of us know and will not forget. This shows just how important it was for America to have superiority and maintain that image. 

The Millennium Falcon in Star Wars
is accelerating to light speed.

     Space is something that although raised a lot of curiosity, also raised a lot of doubt. For example, the Catholic Church challenging Galileos opinions about planets. There were also other scientists who disagreed with Copwenicuos rotation model. Yet people continued to come up with their ideas, and since we didn't have much information about space they needed to be very creative. We see a great example of creativity discussed in lecture. Jules Verne's 1865 novel showcases just how creative his mind is. Verne talked about weightlessness in space almost 100 years before humans actually entered the abyss. 

The image above is one of the many artistic
representations of what a Virgin Galactic
aircraft may look like in space one day.

     Space was also talked about in many movies and television shows; the Jetsons, Star Wars, Star Trek. These films grew the fascination of people, as well as mine. I grew up watching the Star Wars series and was always fascinated with light years, traveling space, the spaceships, and just the movie in its entirety. One of my favorite parts had to be the spaceships. Beautifully designed space ships have the potential to shuttle regular humans to space and back. I may not ever get to step on the moon and I may not be able to drive a rover, what may be possible is me hurtling around the Earth. I don't know about all of you, but that seems quite exciting to me. It is the creativity to come up with these ideas that makes the dreams we had as kids one day become a reality.

Works Cited

1) "Dragon Resupply Mission (CRS-11)." SpaceX. SpaceX, 29 Jan. 2016. Web. 04 June 2017.

2) History.com Staff. "The Space Race." History.com. A&E Television Networks, 2010. Web. 03 June 2017.

3) Langewiesche, William, and Jonas Fredwall Karlsson. "Everything You Need to Know About Flying Virgin Galactic."The Hive. Vanity Fair, 31 Mar. 2015. Web. 04 June 2017.

4) MARS PATENT: Welcome. The Mars Patent, 2015. Web. 04 June 2017.

5) Tate, Karl. "How Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles Work (Infographic)." Space.com. N.p., 2016. Web. 02 June 2017.