EXHIBITION │ Culture and technological change: heritage UPV
September 20 to October 27, 2023
Space N-1, General Library UPV (building 4L, first floor)
Brochure_exhibition.pdf
The Art and Heritage Fund Area of the UPV is planning this exhibition with the aim of enhancing the value of the funds that make up its collections and exploring new approaches and readings to establish convergent dialogues around art, science and technology.
The great impact of science and technology on culture and society is unquestionable and has been taking place since the beginning of humanity, with the invention of the simplest instruments to the most complex and modern technologies. As a result of the practical use of scientific knowledge throughout history, the thread of the exhibition uses the diverse historical-artistic and scientific-technological heritage housed at the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) to identify the most significant technological instruments and reflect on the conflicts generated by scientific progress in relation to the social individual and the phenomenon of globalization.
Artistic creation, in its quest for beauty and idealized representation, has often been inspired by mathematics to establish balanced and harmonious compositions. In turn, nature itself, where organizational patterns that respond to geometric dispositions or canons reside, has revealed laws and models for artistic, scientific and technological progress.
The rhythm generated by natural elements in the form of spheres and other solids of revolution, waves, polygons, helices and spirals, catenaries or fractals, responds to a motif that is not random. Their beauty is essentially functional, so that natural arrangements are designed, among other missions, to protect, envelop, grasp, emit, move or colonize. In art, these morphologies and concepts have served as sources of inspiration, under the belief that mathematical nature contains the perfect proportion; at other times, the artistic work has contravened the logical pattern and, defiantly, has arranged impossible figures and entelechies.
Fibonacci’s sequence, the golden ratio or Polyclitus’ canon help to understand the works of the most important artists and architects in history, but in the same way, many other mathematical functions and equations explain certain states of biology and botany, the astral movement, the organization of the universe according to numerical relationships, the ordering of quantum systems or even the condition of other realities linked to the economy and social relations.
Following logical reasoning, taking advantage of scientific knowledge and ordering effective applications of fundamental research, applied science made the development of technology viable. Advances in all fields activated globalization processes that allowed interaction between peoples, markets and cultures.
The emergence of trade routes and naval powers, especially during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, favored mercantile exchange, cultural connection and the clash of civilizations. And later, the unstoppable ecumenical interference brought with it the intensive construction of infrastructures for globalization, the appearance of large cities and the means and roads that made their communication possible.
The topographical transformation of the world by a technified society has ended up generating spaces of precise coexistence, where natural landscapes are doomed to yield ground in order to understand, dialogue and coexist with human structures that, like a network of conurbations, extend in an integral and connective manner to provide different possible scenarios.
Technological acceleration allowed the development of globalized communities, which reaffirmed their progress and connection thanks to the social implementation of communicative and operational devices. The flow of electrical and electromagnetic signals made possible the invention of the telegraph, radio and telephony, which became essential means for both unidirectional transmission and mass communication. In turn, computers, with their processing module made up of logical arithmetic and control units, facilitated information processing and later enabled mass access to Internet services and protocols.
Capitalist society, with considerable productive development and significant consumption of goods and services, has enabled popular access to these devices and to other realities such as cinema, television, multimedia content and social networking services. But this prosperity of the accelerated world, which often clouds traditional and identity structures and forges contradictory processes, ends up modifying human behavior models and generates new challenges in relation to personal interactions and the environment.
The new way of understanding socialization can end up generating dehumanizing complexes and the isolation of the individual from the collective, while technological obsolescence and the abandonment of spaces and buildings at the end of their useful or productive life cause a significant environmental footprint. For this reason, contemporary development, science, art and technology must redirect their purposes towards sustainable progress and adaptability, based on the hope that emerges from cooperation and alliances for a conscious and responsible evolution.