In The Dark at the Folly

On Friday I attended the latest In The Dark listening event which was held at the Folly for a Flyover venue (a peculiar pop-up cinema / art space) in Hackney, East London. What was particularly exciting about this event was that I was having one of my very own pieces exhibited / played and it was very humbling to hear my work alongside those from well established and respected radio producers!

If you've never heard of In The Dark, it's a fantastic organisation which champions and commissions experimental radio pieces. They basically encourage producers to play around with the radio format to create weird, yet wonderfully original audio pieces. If you're a fan of  WNYCs RadioLab then this is definitely something for you.

The organisation regularly holds 'listening events' across London, bringing together a community of producers and listeners to hear a selection of audio shorts, curated by founder Nina Garthwaite. Although sitting 'in the dark' with a bunch of people, listening to radio may sound like an unusual way to spend the evening, it really is a great experience and I must say something very unique! Each of the pieces played are stylistically distinct and certainly always thought provoking, so you can never be sure what you might end up listening to.

On Friday, the night was arranged into three parts:

• Fables,
• Structures
• Fragments, Apparitions & Visions.

My piece, entitled 'Adam as machine' (you can read more about it here), fell into the 'Structures' category and followed Leo Hornak's  'All You Can Hear is Breathing' - which explores the insane Empire State Building 'Run-Up' race. Favorites of the night included a piece by Sarah Cuddon called 'The Books' (an extended edit currently available on iPlayer) and the latest Hackney Podcast entitled 'Wild Hackney', produced by Francesca Panetta and Russel Finch (listen to it here).

I've re-posted my piece below if you want to have a listen...

[soundcloud width="100%" height="81" params="" url="http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/19409214"]

Audio tour: Hospital mortuary

Continuing with the rather morbid theme is another short audio piece based around a hospital mortuary, taken from my ongoing radio project which is probing contemporary attitudes to death. What's interesting is that mortuaries are notoriously hard to find within hospitals, they're rarely signposted and often kept out of sight from patients and staff. It is almost as if death, through an act of denial, is banished from all walks of hospital life, forcing it underground where it remains out of sight and out of mind.

This is perhaps understandable when we consider the way in which modern medicine deals with death. So often is it concerned with prolonging life and keeping a patient alive that death has come to be seen as 'failure' - the inability to sustain life. As such death represents medicine's limits, it reminds us of our own mortality and as such is buried away within the hospital. This isn't just medicine's fault, it's a product of society and our own collective inability to accept death, we seem to live very much in denial, avoiding the 'd' word at all costs.

As a result those who work in hospital mortuaries take on an almost ghost like or gothic quality, whose activities remain in the shadows and unknown to the majority who dwell in the wards above. So what exactly goes on in a hospital mortuary? What do these places look like and who would we commonly meet in such a place?

It is perhaps only through the heavily stylised perspective of television and film that we gain any sort of insight into such places. Programmes such as CSI and Silent Witness are famous for their representation of pathology and post-mortem procedures, but they depict a world which is somewhat detached from the reality of such work. These programmes are slick, full of drama and entertaining to watch; they do little to challenge our relationship with death and present a very skewed image of those who work with the deceased. Instead they seem to maintain a common perception that death is something quite perverse, that mortuaries are dark gothic places and that pathologists run around solving murders (and of course that all bodies end up in the mortuary because of hideous murders).

Obviously these programmes shouldn't to be re-written to reflect reality (probably wouldn't make for very entertaining viewing), but it's interesting none the less to look at how they deal with death and the contrast between fiction and reality.

So the hospital mortuary remains a place largely unknown and unless you were unfortunate enough to visit one (dead or alive), it's unlikely that you'd ever get a chance to peer inside. I certainly had no idea of what to expect when I recently visited the mortuary at Sunderland Royal Hospital. In the end it was perhaps not surprising to see just how normal mortuary life was, from sitting around drinking tea in a staff room to the usual 'office banter' being thrown about as the day went on. Pathologist Dr Stuart Hamilton was my guide for the day and he very kindly showed me round, you can listen to a brief audio tour below:

[soundcloud width="100%" height="81" params="" url="http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/20493361"]

Adam as machine

Audio piece

I'm currently in the midst of producing a 30 minute radio piece on the subject of death. To be more specific, I'm exploring contemporary attitudes towards death and doing so through the perspective of those who deal with death on a daily basis.

Part of my project took me to the basement of the Royal Sunderland Hospital where I spent the day exploring it's mortuary with pathologist Dr Stuart Hamilton. Recently, as I was listening back to his interview I begun to find myself fixated on a particular section, in which he discusses the way in which he views the human body. He describes his view of life as being very 'mechanistic' and as I listened to him talk about the body as 'pumps' and 'shunts' I was inspired to compose a short piece from his words.

As a biologist myself, I have always considered the human body to represent a beautiful feat of natural engineering. From the minute intricacies of the inner ear to the extent of the circulatory system, pulsating to the rhythm of a beating heart - the human body is living machine. Our consciousness and everything that makes us, 'us' is a product of this machinery and when the machine stops - so do we.

The title of this piece toys with the idea of Adam and Eve and how this throws up a very different view of the human body. However which ever view you take, both are unified in the fact that they find certain beauty in the human form.

[soundcloud width="100%" height="81" params="" url="http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/19409214"]

Soundcloud's audio compression has reduced the quality of the piece somewhat so please get in touch if you'd like a copy of the original file.

Space Transportation System (STS-1 / STS-135)

I'm posting two little audio pieces to mark the end of NASAs space shuttle program which will (with any luck) enter its final mission today with the launch of Atlantis (STS-135) in a few hours.

The first was produced for the latest Imperial College I,Science podcast and features science writer and producer Piers Bizony speaking on the history of the space shuttle program at a Super/Collider event in May.

[soundcloud width="100%" height="81" params="" url="http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/18609588"]

The Second is a short piece extracted from the first, imagining what it might sound like to be inside the shuttle during take-off. The radio chatter you hear comes from Columbia (STS-1), the very first shuttle launch which blasted off over 30 years ago on 12th April 1981. The eventual winding down towards the end symbolises the ending of the project's 30 year run.

[soundcloud width="100%" height="81" params="" url="http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/18609682"]

The BBC has produced an excellent interactive history of the space shuttle program here and a friend from my course has also written an excellent article on the future of manned spaced flight here

Sounds of Science #04

Dark Energy

So most of our universe (over 70%) is made up of something called Dark Energy. We can't see it and we don't really know what it is...

Matter - everything that makes up me, you, planets and stars - appears to make up only a very small fraction of the universe, about 4%. Instead, the universe seems to be filled predominantly by a very strange material known as dark energy and it is this material, with it's anti-gravity properties, which seems to speeding up the expansion of our universe. We've known that the universe was expanding since Edwin Hubble made his observations in the 1920s, however it's only in the last 20 years that we've realised that this expansion is actually speeding up! The problem is that we can't directly detect dark energy and this makes it very difficult to understand what it is and whether it really does exist.

Instead we must rely on indirect observations, looking at light travelling from the far reaches of the universe to determine whether the properties of this light has changed during the time it has taken to reach us. A good way to measure the expanding universe is to make observations of distant supernovae (huge explosions which follow the death of large stars) which act as 'standard candles' or 'lighthouses' because we know how bright these object should be. Measuring light from distant supernovae has allowed us to see that it is different to what it should be if these objects were positioned within a static universe. Instead what we see is changes in this light which indicates that these objects are being flung outwards and away from us via some sort of cosmic expansion.

A nice analogy to describe the expansion of the universe is what happens when two points are drawn on the surface of an inflating balloon. As the balloon is inflated, the two points begin to move further and further away from each other and as the material expands outwards, the distance between the two points also increases. Applying this analogy to the cosmos, we could imagine the same happening with two galaxies being pulled apart from each other as the space they exist in expands.

As dark energy is so difficult to detect, scientists have recently been looking for new ways to independently verify its presence within the universe. Whilst at the BBC I was lucky enough to interview cosmologist Dr Chris Blake from Swinburne University, Australia who has recently published two papers reconfirming dark energy via a new set of methods. Blake and his colleagues produced a galaxy map of over 200,000 galaxies and used this information to look at how these galaxies were distributed and how they grew relative to each other. Through this work Blake and his colleagues were able to reconfirm the presence of dark energy and perhaps most importantly were able to determine some of its properties.

I thought I'd use the audio from this telephone interview and spruce it for the next sounds of science episode:

[soundcloud width="100%" height="81" params="" url="http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/18436704"]

It probably sounds better with headphones (or obviously decent speakers).

Useful links:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13462926

 http://preposterousuniverse.com/writings/cosmologyprimer/faq.html#dmde

http://supernova.lbl.gov/PhysicsTodayArticle.pdf

Three Dimensional Consciousness

Looking into the unconscious mind

Using a new imaging method scientists from the University of Manchester have constructed a three-dimensional sequence of the brain as it loses consciousness. The small study used a new technique called 'functional electrical impedance tomography of evoked response' (fEITER), which is basically a new way of measuring changes in the brain's electrical conductivity. This is useful because changes in electrical conductivity are believed to reflect changes in the brain's electrical activity and by knowing where abouts in the brain this activity is occurring, we can better understand how the brain operates under different conditions; in this case unconsciousness. What's great about this new method is that it has an extremely fast response, performing it's imaging process 100 times a second, allowing the team to monitor the brain's activity in real time!

The team used fEITER to scan the brains of 20 healthy volunteers as they were administered an anaesthetic and imaged changes in the brain's electrical conductivity as it moved from a conscious to an unconscious state. The team found that a loss in consciousness corresponded with changes in electrical activity deep within the brain. The findings support a theory proposed by Professor Susan Greenfield which suggests that consciousness is formed from the unhindered communication between groups of brain cells called 'neural assemblies'. The findings appear to show that when someone is anaesthetised, these small neural assemblies either work less well together or inhibit communication with other neural assemblies.

The use of fEITER is a great advance and a first for neuroimaging, allowing scientists to witness the brain's transition into unconsciousness in real-time. However there is still a lot of work to be done to understand exactly how and why the brain behaves differently in an unconscious state. The fEITER device used will also have a significant impact in many areas of medical imaging, but will be particularly useful in helping us understand anaesthesia, sedation and unconsciousness. Perhaps the most useful application of this device will be in diagnosing neuronal changes which occur in head injury, stroke and dementia patients.

You can watch a video of the fEITER scan here.

Painting with Video

Content is Queen

Below are two very novel and dynamic video portraits generated by artist Sergio Albiac. He has come to call the technique used to create these pieces 'generative video painting'.

http://vimeo.com/24065726

You can see in the movie above, that the portrait is constructed from a 'collage' of different video clips, similar (but wonderfully more complex) to the effect seen in a photo mosaic image.

Albiac describes that his technique...

 “...uses regions of video content to effectively represent or “paint” heterogeneous regions of the image. Both the partial content of the videos and the whole image are fully visible at the same time, widening the possibilities to deliver meaning in a contemporary aesthetic language.”

The effect creates a duality in the work; presenting an un-synced mish-mash of partially visible video content which is used together to construct a more complete, unified form, in this case portraits of two very famous women.

http://vimeo.com/23974393

Portrait of a legacy

I mentioned in a previous post that no space shuttle has ever been fully photographed whilst docked with the International Space Station. However NASA has released today landmark portraits of Endeavour and the ISS taken by Italian astronaut Paolo Nespoli on the 23rd of May whilst returning to Earth in a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

This image was made possible by rotating the returning space craft 130 degrees so that Nespoli could take photos and video footage at a distance of about 600m from the ISS. It's amazing to see the relative size of the space shuttle in comparison to the space station and I must admit, I didn't realise how big it was! This photo I'm sure will come to represent the lasting legacy of NASAs space shuttle programme and will no doubt be one the most remembered space images of recent times.

You can view more of the images here and additional video footage will be released once it has been processed by NASA.

I'd also recommend having a look at some of Nespoli's other photos on his flickr account, which hosts a beautiful and diverse collection of shots.

Putting the Higgs on paper

Physicist Lily Asquith recently wrote an interesting and accessible piece on quarks, which was featured on Jon Butterworth's excellent Life and Physics blog. Included within the post was an interesting depiction of physicist Murray Gell-Mann, as provided by illustrator and artist Toya Walker. Toya also happens to be the individual behind the imaginative and colourful imagery associated with the LHCsound project  – many of which are used to help explain some of the complex concepts behind the process of sonification and particle physics.

When attempting to communicate complicated ideas and concepts we often turn to visual aids to help translate information into an easily digestible format. We perceive the world from a predominantly visual perspective, meaning that illustrations and diagrams are an often more effective mode of communication, especially when dealing with higher levels of complexity. For example, an annotated diagram of the heart is often much easier to understand than a detailed description of it's anatomy. However such 'diagrams' can be uninspiring and do little to engage with those not already interested or familiar with the subject concerned.

The use of visual metaphor and analogy can thus be very helpful in reaching out to a wider audience; for example one of Toya's images depicts the Higgs Boson as the ‘Golden Snitch’ (as found in Harry Potter) in a humorous and accessible reference to the elusive nature of the particle. As such visual imagery is tasked with the responsibility of translating specialist information into a language that is easily comprehendible but also appealing to non-specialist audiences. This is what I appreciate in Toya's work. Even in a project that is primarily concerned with conveying information through sound, there is still significant emphasis dedicated to the use of visual imagery to explain key concepts. As a result, the project opens up the Large Hadron Collider (and the excitement associated with it), to those who may have once been alienated by it's complexities (like me!).

I obviously really like the work Toya has produced for the project, so I got in touch with her to find out a little bit more about how she got involved and developed her illustrations. You can check out her website and blog to have a look at of her artwork, but in the mean time she was kind enough to answer some of my questions and provide some early sketches; you can read her responses below:

Do you have a background in science?

I always enjoyed science at school and took physics at A-level, but not beyond that.

How did you come to work on the LHCsound project?

I met the initiator of the project, physicist Dr. Lily Asquith. The project, of course, was fascinating but what really made me want to get involved was Lily’s passion for communicating the ideas of the project, and indeed the work going on at the LHC, with as large and diverse an audience as possible.

Did your perception and understanding of the LHC change as you developed this work?

Yes, definitely, I did quite a lot of reading to try and understand as fully as I could some of the concepts we were trying to communicate. Learning more really ignited my sense of wonder, its almost like magic, but real. I think physics is often seen as difficult and therefore dull, part of the reason for doing the project was to communicate how exciting it actually is.

A lot of the science and ideas associated with the LHC are quite abstract in nature; did this make it easier or more difficult to create a visual aesthetic? 

A great deal of my working practice involves images drawn from observation so the abstract nature is definitely challenging, but in some ways liberating too. With the project, there were so many approaches that sprang to mind, the real difficulty was choosing a direction. I felt my role was to realize the artwork in the way Lily would visualize it, as she has a very unique and approachable way of talking about particle physics.

In one of your images you’ve depicted the Higgs Boson as the ‘Golden Snitch’ (from Harry Potter), what was the reason for this?

To add humour, I guess, and a reference that might communicate the idea of the search for the elusive Higgs in an accessible way.

Your work in this project has been important in helping to communicate complex ideas in a simpler manner – how do you think art and illustration can help communicate complex ideas and allow people to engage with them?

I think its fundamental, particularly if the goal is to communicate to as large an audience as possible. I’m involved in education work, including the Picture It project run by The House of Illustration. The aim of the project is to use illustration as a learning tool in the classroom for cross-curricular benefit. They’ve done some wonderful work including sessions where primary school children made their own books, with every page showing a different stage of the process of a volcano erupting. Or secondary students used collage to show the effects of different forces. I think it’s such a brilliant and effective way of learning.

In science information is often communicated graphically in visual form. Scientists would often see this as an objective representation of information – but as an artist do you think such representation can take on an additional expressive form?

I find data visualization really interesting and I often look at the work at http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/. There are brilliant ways of communicating vast amounts of information.  None of the imagery made for LHCsound was trying to communicate data, just ideas and we definitely made a conscious effort to develop the pictures in a different way, or a style not traditionally associated with science textbooks for instance.

Toya Walker is an illustrator and artist who lives and works in South London. A graduate of Edinburgh College of Art she has an eclectic approach to image making but drawing and painting form the basis for all her work. Her illustrations have been used by The  Viral Factory, Atlantic Records and the LHCsound project and work has been shortlisted for The Jerwood Drawing Prize, The Dulwich Picture Gallery Summer Exhibition and The Mall Galleries Royal Society shows. 

Endeavour: An Ending (Ascent)

Earlier today, the US Space Shuttle Endeavour launched successfully on its final mission - it is now currently en route to the International Space Station where it will be delivering the $2bn Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer. It will also be carrying a bunch of baby squid.

After 30 years of the US Space Shuttle programme, the Americans will have to rely on the Russians to ferry their astronauts to and from the ISS. Atlantis will be the final shuttle to launch in the programme - expected sometime in July.

Interestingly NASA has never been able to obtain an 'all inclusive' photograph of the ISS docked with one of its shuttles. NASA had hoped that the Russians would perform a flyabout of the station in one of their Soyuz modules in order to obtain historical images of the station docked with Endeavour. However these plans were later rejected amidst safety concerns regarding the re-docking of the module to the station. Unfortunately for NASA, there will only be one more chance to document the shuttle's legacy; after the next and final mission the US shuttles will be placed into retirement permanently - never to feel the cold emptiness of space again.

Here's a webcast produced by NASA which sums up Endeavour's legacy perfectly (if a little cheasily):

http://vimeo.com/23221452

Super Collider also put on a charming retirement party for Endeavour tonight at the Bookclub in Shoreditch; speakers included photographer David Ryle and author Piers Bizony - I recorded the event and hope to be podcasting it soon - lets wish Endeavour and its crew a safe trip!

-Ed

Playing in the Key of Science

An Interview With Jeff Oster

After discovering the LHC sound project last year I've been on the look out for artists who have taken these sounds and used them to make music. So recently I was very excited when I came across a track called "Particles of God" because not only did it feature these bizarre and abstract sounds but it also sounded awesome!

The man behind the track is Jeff Oster, an American trumpet/flugelhorn player whose work frequently crosses over into electronic and ambient terrain. After hearing this track I delved deeper and found that this was not the first piece Jeff had created using audio samples from scientific sources. On another track entitled “Saturn Calling” he had sampled the eerie sounds of Saturn’s auroras (as captured by the NASA Cassini spacecraft) and it won him the ‘Best New Age Song’ at the 2008 Independent Music Awards.

I decided to get in touch with Jeff to find out a little bit more about how these cosmological and subatomic soundscapes had been influencing his work...

What was the inspiration behind these tracks? (Saturn Calling & Particles of God)

"I have always been interested in the cosmos, space exploration and mankind's need to reach beyond this world. From watching the mars rovers landing on mars via NASA TV, or the space shuttle launches, even back to Apollo and the moon missions, I have always been amazed at what these scientists have accomplished.

I am always searching for new sounds as i create my music. For "Saturn Calling", I was working on the music for a song, and had been watching the Cassini mission, and its amazing pictures of Saturn and its moons. The name of the song at that point was "Sounds of Saturn", and I just typed that phrase into Google. Lo and behold, up came the recording of the auroras of Saturn, and I incorporated them into the song.

One of the best things that has come from that music has been the way NASA and JPL [Jet Propulsion Laboratory] have embraced it - they currently host a feature on the song on the NASA and JPL websites, and I was invited to perform the song at the Cassini "end of prime" celebration at JPL in 2009, for the scientists that worked to make that mission a success. It was quite moving, to be able to stand in front of these amazing scientists who make the seemingly impossible a reality.

The inspiration for 'Particles of God" came from an article I was reading about the Large Hadron Collider, and of the way they are trying to capture the decay of the subatomic particles in sound. Since they can’t take a picture of these events (no camera can shoot that fast). They had posted some of these sounds, and I was inspired to choose a few of them and incorporate them into a new song, to which I added some beats and my trumpet using Apple's Garageband program.

As it turned out, the scientists involved with these sounds (found here) were open to hearing music made from these sounds, so that’s how it came into the world. You gotta love the www...."

How did the sounds influence the way in which you composed the tracks?

"The way I create my songs is very much the way a painter paints a picture. Sounds are the colors on the palette, and I spend a lot of time building the bed tracks, mixing sound together and feeling which fit together best. In the case of "Saturn Calling", I had a lot of the track already created, and the "wind" sound that the auroras made was a wonderful addition to the already created track.

That track was inspired by the Cassini program, and it was a lovely accident that these sounds added so much to the song. The fact that NASA and JPL took such a keen interest in the music because of those sounds was just the icing on the cake.

"Particles of God" was a bit more intentional - I chose the sounds I thought would work well in a song from the various sounds they have posted, and then built the music around them. These sounds actually have tone to them, so that drove the choice of instrumentation and then I added the beats, and of course the horn part. I usually create the horn part last, after the bed track has been established."

When you heard the sounds of the Large Hadron Collider what went through your mind – how did they make you feel?

"The concept of the work is brilliant. It’s almost the opposite of reaching out into the universe in search of the unknown - it’s reaching in with the same goal - discovery of the unknown (or the search for what we think can be known)

It is amazing that sound can be used in an attempt to "see" these particles. For me, sound has always represented the embodiment of our inner selves, and it’s no accident that sound will be the tool to represent the smallest most fundamental particles of matter.

The feeling around the sounds is always a subjective thing - what's beautiful to me might not be so for someone else. When I create music, first and foremost I please myself. If I love it, then that’s all that matters. The world will come to its own conclusion!"

Writing a song inspired by particle physics is slightly different to say writing a piece inspired by love or a romantic relationship – do you think a track like “Particles of God” can still have a similar emotive impact on the listener?

"I think that there’s a "coolness factor" in this song, partially because it actually includes these sounds. Songs resonate emotionally with the listener for various reasons, and in this case, the basics of song structure still need to be there. A cool beat, some kind of melody, a certain overall experience of the music as a song has to be there, some familiarity. Just the random collection of the sounds wouldn’t have the same level of impact on the listener in my opinion."

Do you think science can be emotive or invoke emotion in others? – Should scientists be encouraged to share their passion with non-scientists / members of the public?

"Scientists need to know how important their work is, and the impact that it has on the layman. I was a science major in school before I turned to music, and I spent many hours in the lab, taking notes, running experiments, creating research papers and helping with presentations of the findings. It is very meticulous work, and it is very easy to get lost in the work itself.

One of the most moving aspects of my performance at JPL was when I was able to speak to the scientists assembled there. I told them that the impact of their work was massive, the inspiration for some little kid that experiences the results of their very technical work (it is rocket science after all) is an emotional one, not cerebral.

Every scientist needs to remember that there is a real world emotional impact in what they are doing - that science reveals deep truths that resonate in all of us. It is noble work"

Do you think music and art are an effective way of sharing some of the excitement and wonder in science to an audience who might otherwise not be interested?

"I think that it is the bridge between the brain and the soul."

Do you think it’s beneficial for scientists to work with artists; or do you think they should be left to get on with their work?

"It takes a special scientist, and a special artist, to bridge the gap between those worlds. It is very easy to get lost in the specifics of each environment, and they sometimes seem mutually exclusive.

And yet, both are involved in creating something out of nothing, aren’t they?

Music is "captured", and turned into song. Science takes a hypothesis, and endeavours to prove it, for all of us to taste, feel, see, hear, touch. They both make the unreal real, and that commonality can only lead to greater knowledge and understanding.

That’s what we all want, isn’t it..."

If you could pick one sound which represented something in the scientific world that has inspired or interested you what would it be and why?

"When the SETI project picks up the sound of another world, that will truly be inspirational. I tend to be inspired by the sounds in the world - water, animal sounds, a child laughing. And of course, the sound of a well played horn :)

The scientific world is really the exploration of the entire world, and beyond. And what we discover will forever be inspirational to me.

Onward!!!"

--

Jeff's is currently putting the finishing touches on his latest album 'Surrender' which will be released later this year - check out his website for more information! 

You can check out 'Saturn Calling' here and I highly recommend listening to the original NASA recordings here.

Vue Lumière No 765 - Serpentine Dance, 1896

One interesting piece of media I came across today (whilst reading about the origins of cinema) was an early piece of footage shot by the Lumiere brothers in 1896: http://vimeo.com/20209451

The silent film depicts an unnamed dancer quite hauntingly perform Loie Fuller’s Serpentine Dance. Each frame was hand coloured to help vividly depict the striking motion conducted by the dancer.

Auguste Lumière and Louis Lumière were among the earliest filmmakers in history and produced some of the most pioneering and influential films of their time. The brothers are best known for producing their series of short ‘actuality’ films, which captured everyday events on film. These ‘actuality’ films are considered by many to represent the earliest incarnation of the documentary film.

Dazed Live show now on Mixcloud

We had a great time playing our hand picked sounds of science at Dazed Live on Saturday - thanks to Chris from Super/Collider for inviting us on!

The show has now been uploaded to Mixcloud so give it a listen! - also on the show is music from Bright Star Catalogue and interviews with the likes of Jay Cousins (buy this satellite) and Magnus Larsson !

Check it out at this link: http://www.mixcloud.com/dazed/dazed-live-super-collider/

For some reason the embedded player below refuses to work.

http://www.mixcloud.com/media/swf/player/mixcloudLoader.swf?v=106

Dazed Live: Super Collider by Dazed & Confused on Mixcloud

DAZED LIVE

I will be appearing alongside course mate Rosie and Chris from Supercollider on Dazed Live radio at 1pm this Saturday as part of the DAZED LIVE festival to discuss our favorite sounds of Science!

Not sure exactly how you can tune in, but I'll update you when I find out!

The lineup for the festival looks pretty snazzy, with a nice mix of music, talks and exhibitions - hopefully I'll get a chance to check some of these out - to find out more and to see the full lineup for the festival go on down to their website: http://dazedlive.com/

Here's a track I recently came across entitled 'Particles of God' by Jeff Oster which I hope we'll get a chance to play, it's inspired by and incorporates samples from the LHCsound project which I covered in my first Sounds of Science episode here

Alder Hey's Dawn Chorus

Our response to sound and noise are influenced heavily by the psychological associations we have with them. Hospitals and their internal soundscapes obviously carry very negative connotations and in the case of young children these negative associations can lead to increased levels of distress and fear. However the reverse of this is also true, certain sounds can have very positive associations and the effect of listening to these sounds can be very positive and powerful.

Several weeks ago, I was walking down the central corridor of Liverpool’s Alder Hey children’s hospital when I became aware of the sound of birdsong. As I continued down I could hear quite clearly the sound of a single blackbird gracefully chirping through the din of the chaotic hospital. As I focused on the sound I found that it brought with it a sense of calm and I begun to lose the feeling of unease that I tend to experience inside hospitals. However, there was no sign of this little bird or any other wildlife inside the hospital, save from the colourful murals adorned across the corridor walls. I quickly realised that what I was listening to was a very special sound installation; playing out the wonderful recordings made by BAFTA award winning sound artist Chris Watson.

I’d come to Alder Hey specifically to talk with their Arts Coordinator Vicky Charnock to find out how the hospital had been experimenting with sound to improve the experiences of their young patients. I also got chance to speak with Chris Watson, the creative talent behind the installation and he explained to me why he chose to bring the sounds of a local park within the walls of this hospital.

The Dawn Chorus installation forms part of the larger Sonicstreams project which is a creative collaboration between Alder Hey and the Foundation for Arts and Creative Technology (FACT); the project aims to creatively explore the impact of sound on the human body.

You can listen/download the radio piece below:

[soundcloud width="100%" height="81" params="" url="http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/12781881"]

Sounds of Science #03

EchoBank

In this Episode I visit Dr Kate Jones at the Zoological Society of London to find out about a bat call reference library they're developing called 'Echobank' which is being used in conjunction with the iBats monitoring program. Scientists at the Zoological Society of London are using Echobank to teach a neural network to identify specific bat species from the acoustic properties of their calls.

Although this may sound pretty niche, it's really cool stuff because the technology has much wider applications. Firstly the team are using it in combination with a smart phone app which can be used by anyone to take bat call recordings. In doing this the team hope to collect global distribution data for bat populations, which Dr Jones is hoping to use to determine whether bats can be used as a 'heart monitor' for the state of the environment. As bats represent one fifth of all mammalian species and exist in a huge range of habitats (from your local park to the tropics), changes in their global distribution could be used to monitor the impact of climate change on the natural world.

Secondly, the team are doing a lot of really important science engagement, working with ‘citizen science’ networks across Europe to gather data on bat populations. The team have been helping groups across Europe to develop and carry out their own monitoring programs, which feed data back to the iBats program. What’s great about this work is that it’s not only efficiently collecting distribution data, but also getting people interested in the state of their local environment. Standardisation is obviously an important factor when collecting data from multiple sources and with this in mind the team have developed the smartphone apps which can be used easily to take recordings and GPS data.

Finally (and what really excited me) was the suggestion that this ‘digital infrastructure’ could one day be adapted to identify any sound producing species from a recording taken on a smartphone. So imagine going out to your local park, taking a recording of a bird on your iPhone and getting probability results back on the identification of the species!

You can listen to the episode here:

[soundcloud width="100%" height="81" params="" url="http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/11704888"]

Download it here

Or listen to the edited version as part of Short Science episode 89

Special thanks to Katie Draper who helped out with this episode!

Rendezvous with Rama

Rendezvous with Rama (written by Arthur C. Clarke) is widely regarded as a Sci-Fi classic, winning both the Hugo and Nebula literary awards after it's release in 1972.

Roberto Tenance talks to Alex, a member of the Imperial College Sci-Fi society, to find out why this book is particularly special to him.

Listen here

Not bad for an old man... (Apollo 14)

Continuing the Apollo 14 coverage - I was inspired to create a short radio piece on the mission which was broadcast on our 'Science @ 1' show earlier today. Check it out: [soundcloud width="100%" height="81" params="" url="http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/13521655"]

[Update 03/05/11]

This segment was included on Short Science_89

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhXsjENGrk0&feature=related]

"It looks like you’re about on the bottom step... and on the surface."

"Not bad for an old man."

- Mission Control referring to Alan Shepard as he first stepped out onto the moon's surface. At the age of 47, Shepard was the oldest man to ever walk on the moon.

14

I went to a very interesting night (run by Super Collider) on Monday evening which celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 14 lunar mission with a talk from Dr Christopher Riley – a broadcaster and expert on all things Apollo. Dr Riley also launched his new video installation entitled ‘Cone Crater’ - which I believe is showing throughout February at the Book Club in Shoreditch.

I must admit I knew very little about the story of Apollo 14, which turns out to be pretty interesting so I'll fill you in on some of the details...

Apollo 14 was the eighth manned mission in the Apollo program and the third to take men to the moon. The nine day mission took Commander Alan Shepard, Command Module Pilot Stuart Roosa and Lunar Module Pilot Edgar Mitchell to the moon after taking off from the Kennedy Space Centre on January 31st, 1971. Five days later Shepard and Mitchell landed on the moon in their Lunar Module whilst Roosa remained alone in orbit, aboard the Command Module.

The lunar landing was slightly stressful...

1) Firstly during the descent the Lunar Module computer went a bit squiff doo and started to receive an ABORT signal, which nearly initiated an auto-abort of the landing. This would have separated the ascent component of the Lunar Module from the descent component taking the crew back into orbit and thus cancelling a very expensive trip to the moon (not ideal). This was only corrected at the last minute, with Mitchell having to manually persuade the computer (inputting a software patch) to ignore the erroneous signal.

2) As if that wasn't enough, the Lunar Module radar altimeter (I definitely know what this is) failed to lock onto the moons surface, which would usually be pretty hard to miss – this was determined to be a consequence of the earlier software updates (was Microsoft involved?). To remedy this, the crew basically did what you might have done when your computer breaks - they unplugged it; then plugged it back in; only it actually worked.

During their stay on the moon (clocking in at about 33 hours) Shepard and Mitchell went out on two moon walks, the second of which they got very lost on. They attempted to navigate to the rim of a 300m wide crater but instead spent most of the time not actually finding it, so in the end they had to turn back - it turns out they got within 3om of it! In addition to this they also found time to fit in a spot of golf and with a make shift six-iron, Shepard managed to single-handedly (the suits were pretty cumbersome) dispatch two golf balls into the moon’s horizon.

The crew returned to Earth safely, dropping down in the Pacific Ocean on February 9th. During the mission Roosa had brought with him several hundred seeds which on return were planted as commemorative ‘moon trees’ across America. Apollo 14 also clocked up the longest distance traversed by foot on the lunar surface and was the first to utilise colour TV on the moon.

I left the talk in a state of wonder and with a sense of awe at the achievements of the Apollo missions - we'd put men on the moon (and filmed it!) before an age of portable computers, mobile phones and digital cameras. However, I couldn't help but feel slightly dejected by the current state of space exploration, especially with the planned retirement of NASAs shuttle program later this year. I wonder whether I will ever see images beamed back of someone walking on the surface of another world - sadly I very much doubt it.

I'll finish this post with one of my favourite videos - a live performance of Brian Eno's Apollo music (which was created specifically for the documentary 'For All Mankind' - check it out!) this, if anything is enough to keep me wishing for a future in space.

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/13914151]

-Ed

Focal Power

A short film I found whilst browsing Vimeo this morning, I recommend watching in HD and with some boomy speakers: http://vimeo.com/18495371

Although the aerial shots would be interesting in themselves, the film has been manipulated to give the impression of 'miniaturisation' which transforms the film into a collection of enchanting scenes. The miniaturisation of these scenes provides an interesting contrast against the true scale at which power generation and consumption occurs across the planet. The poetically conceived caption for the video describes the scenes as 'examined, microscopically, zoomed in from afar. Dimensions without scale.'

If you look at the film closely you will see that there is a short depth of field with a narrow band of sharp focus running across the image. This false 'miniaturisation' effect can be obtained through a method known as tilt/shift (although it usually only involves tilt) and can be produced optically using specialist lens adaptations or through post-production trickery. In essence, it works by employing the Scheimpflug principle in which the lens plane is 'tilted' relative to the image plane (e.g. the sensor on a digital camera) and produces images similar to those taken at close range with a macro lens.

Usually the point of focus lies parallel to the subject, which means that objects which lie at the same distance from the camera all appear in sharp focus (in other words these objects lie within the 'plane of focus'). By employing the Scheimpflug principle it is possible to orientate the plane of focus so that it passes through the subject creating a much shallower depth of field, which reduces the area of the subject in focus. This can be achieved by 'tilting' the lens (for example upwards) which moves the plane of focus relative to the image and subject plane; a much smaller region of the subject now exists in focus. The diagram below illustrates how the lens plane is no longer parallel to the image plane after the lens tilt.

If you were to shoot a high-rise building face on, with the camera parallel to the building you would obtain an image in which all of the building within the frame was in focus. When employing the Scheimpflug principle and the camera lens is tilted (e.g. upwards), the camera lens and building are no longer parallel. The lower portion of the building is now closer to the lens and the higher portions are now further away, this creates a shallow depth of field and as the plane of sharp focus is tilted the lower and upper portions of the building fall out of focus.

The photo I took below demonstrates the effect of which tilt/shift photography attempts to achieve. This photo, with its shallow depth of field, is taken at close range and involves objects which are very small in size.

Tilt/shift photography is able to recreate this 'miniature' aesthetic in much larger compositions such as those involving stadiums, cities and landscapes. These types of images are most effective when taken at a high-angle and can be shot using specialist tilt lenses or created by applying a false focal gradient in post production (simply with the selective addition of blur).

-Ed