Freedom of senses

Lygia Clark (Belo Horizonte, October 23, 1920 – Rio de Janeiro, April 25, 1988) was a Brazilian artist best known for her painting and installation work. She was often associated with the Brazilian Constructivist movements of the mid-20th century and the Tropicalia movement. Even with the changes in how she approached her artwork, she did not stray far from her Constructivist roots. Along with Brazilian artists Hélio Oiticica, Ivan Serpa, and Lygia Pape, Clark co-founded the Neo-Concretist art movement. The Neo-Concretists believed that art ought to be subjective and organic. Throughout her career trajectory, Clark discovered ways for museum goers (who would later be referred to as "participants") to interact with her art works. She sought to redefine the relationship between art and society. Clark's works dealt with inner life and feelings.

Experiments:
Caminhando- The participants are each invited to take a pair of scissors, twist a strip of paper and form a Mobius loop out of it and continuously cut alone the plane. This is the art experiment in which Clark commented that the meaning of this particular experience lies in actually engaging in the activity.

1966: Air & Stone- A small plastic bag was filled with air. A stone is then placed on the bag and the participant squeezes the bag to experience the heft of the space and the weightlessness of the air inside the bag. The rock begins to show qualities of a living organism. In this experiment, Clark played with the concept of opposites such as emptiness and fullness and air versus solid.

1967: Sensorial Hoods- This experiment involved eye pieces, ear covers, and a small bag that would be affixed over the participant's nose. The participants would also have helmets with small mirrors affixed to them. The purpose of this experiment was to utilize all of the senses at one time. The outcome of this experiment might be that a participant would use his senses in a way he would never have thought possible.

Abyss-Masks- The participant's eyes were blindfolded and large bags of air weighed down with stones could be touched giving off the sensation of empty space from within the body.

The I and the You: Clothing/Body/Clothing- A man and a woman wear hoods over their eyes and a full body suit and during this experiment, each would come to understand their own gender by feeling through their pockets

radio twenthe and beyond

For buying electronic components and motors there are few shops in Holland as fascinating as Radio Twenthe. Some interesting surplus things you can buy in this online place too:

http://www.voti.nl/winkel/catalog.html

cati vaucelle

in resonse to the project idea of Alfredo, here some info about one of the projects Cati Vaucelle did for her graduation at MIT:

here is a paper on it:

http://web.media.mit.edu/~cati/WIP546_Vaucelle.pdf

here some info from her site:
http://www.architectradure.com/?s=bracelet

and here a documentation video of the project:
http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/22/mits-emf-detector-bracelet-takes-all-the-fun-out-of-radiation-p/

some links about visual depth perception effects

an interesting visual phenomenon is the Pulfrich effect, used in some of the films and performances by experimental filmmaker Ken Jacobs:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulfrich_effect

His patents are here:
http://www.patents.com/Kenneth-Jacobs/New-York/NY/238576/inventors/

and a reflection on this work:
http://academichack.net/jacobs.htm


Bela Julesz did a lot of very interesting research into depth perception without object cues, in random dot stereograms:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bela_Julesz
http://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/~mroz/sirds/history.html
http://www.skidmore.edu/~flip/Site/Julesz/Julesz.html

He wrote a classic book on the subject:
"Foundations of Cyclopean perception",
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1971.

This book has recently been republished by MIT press:
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=10888

and this brings us to the intriguing subject of 'Random Dot Cinematography':
http://www.usd.edu/coglab/RDCIntro.html

sonification

International Community for Auditory Display

Bob Sturm - Music from the Ocean

Thomas Hermann

Auditory Display for Synthetic Vision

Jens Brand - G player

Arts & Sciences Night

Theater group CREW will present his new performance W (Double U) at this event.

On 13 June 2009, the whole city of Groningen will be devoted to the theme of arts and science during the Arts & Sciences Night, which will be organized by the University of Groningen and the Groninger Museum . A wide range of activities will be organized between the Museum Bridge and the Broerplein and at the Harmonie complex, and there will be a lot to do, to see and to experience. How about a haunted house in the UB? A writers’ workshop by Ronald Giphart in the Groninger Museum? A huge stage with well-known artists on the Vismarkt? The Arts & Sciences Night is a night filled with concerts, stand-up comedy, lectures, debates, music, dance, exhibitions, guided tours, workshops, night lectures and much, much more!
http://www.rug.nl/lustrum/de_nacht/index

Theater group 'CREW' - art and technology

"Hoi guys here I send you a nice text about my idea to combine theater and technology "

CREW is a Belgium-based performance group. Eric Joris being its key figure, this production team has brought together people from different domains depending on the projects that were being made. On the whole, CREW has insisted on making performances at the melting point of live art and technology.

CREW's activities are situated in between art and science and are focused on creation and research. Both activities are strongly connected and mutually influential. But creation and research both also have their own logics and respond to different patterns. The rhythm of research hardly ever parallels the pace of creation. Budgets and working circumstances of creation and research are not the same, etc. Therefore, CREW, as a structurally subsidized theatre company, has set up a parallel structure called CREW_lab that mainly concentrates on research. CREW_lab enables us to look for extra (non-artistic) means to organize and finance research, research that is not only valuable in its own right but also supports and feeds the artistic production via an intensive reciprocity.

Finding in experimental theatre a laboratory where they can test the progress of their own work, researchers from different universities develop original technologies for CREW to use in the performances. Permanent dialogue with the developments in robotics and computer sciences triggers the theatrical imagination of design and production, text and sound.
The artistic outcome tends to be hybrid; technological live art troubles installed categories of theatricality. CREW wants to explore how these hybrid ties can be operated, both on a theoretical and on a practical level. What happens when digital technology really merges production and reflection within the context of the stage - insofar as one can still speak of a stage?
The birth of new technologies always provokes new questions and deeply influences our perception of man and reality. Our relationship with current technology is of a tense nature; we find ourselves attracted and repulsed at the same time. These tensions can be extrapolated to a relation between technology and theatre, in which man is traditionally at the center.
CREW is a collective wanting to face the new technological condition of man. This 'pool' of artists wants to be a pioneer in setting up experiments that blur the border between theatre and technology. This investigation resulted in a series of performances showing an evolution from a cautious exploration of possibilities to a radical symbiosis with sophisticated technology.
http://www.crewonline.org/

90min blinfolded enhances your hearing

Ninety minutes blinfolded enhances your hearing
article at BPS Research Digest

In blind people, the part of the brain usually used for vision can be commandeered by other senses, resulting in improved hearing and touch. It’s an amazing testament to the brain’s ability to adapt. But now, Jorg Lewald reports that prolonged blindness isn’t needed for this kind of adaptation to occur – just ninety minutes blindfolded can enhance your hearing ability!

Twenty participants donned a blindfold and were surrounded by a semi-circle of 21 stereo speakers. Each time one of the speakers made a noise, the participants’ task was to turn their head, and to face the speaker that made the noise as accurately as possible. As has been shown before in tasks like this, the participants tended not to turn their head far enough, underestimating just how far around each noise had originated.

Next the participants spent 90 minutes sitting quietly with the blindfold on. Crucially, when they repeated the task after this, their accuracy was improved as they no longer underestimated the location of the sounds as much, especially when the sound was from a more central speaker. In fact their performance had become more typical of a blind person performing this kind of task. However, the enhancement was easily reversible - 180 minutes without the blindfold returned their performance back to normal.

A control group of twenty participants who were only blindfolded during testing, showed no such improvements from one session to the next.

Lewald argues his finding is consistent with the idea that the visual cortex is actually a multi-sensory area, with short-term light deprivation serving to jump-start the auditory circuits found in this brain region.

“Processes of short-term crossmodal plasticity may thus be based on rapid enhancement of these pre-existing neural circuits that, possibly, play a role also in the development of long-term plastic changes with blindness”, he said. The current finding is consistent with earlier research showing enhanced touch after short-term sight deprivation.
_________________________________

Lewald, J. (2007). More accurate sound localisation induced by short-term light deprivation. Neuropsychologia, 45, 1215-1222.

God Helmet

God Helmet:
>developed by Michael Persinger
>an experiment in neurotheology.
>it stimulates the brain with magnetic fields.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_helmet
http://health.howstuffworks.com/brain-religion2.htm
http://www.shaktitechnology.com/god_helmet.htm

ghosts camera

phantasmagoria
a modified type of magic lantern used to project images onto the walls, smoke or semi-transparent screens.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantasmagoria
http://www.visual-media.be/visualmedia-index.html
http://www.printsgeorge.com/ArtEccles_Phantasmagoria.htm
http://www.ici-exhibitions.org/exhibitions/phatasmagoria/phantasmagoria.html

modern uses:
Teresa Margolles
http://www.culturebase.net/artist.php?1013
Rosângela Rennó 'Experiencing Cinema'(2004)
http://www.artesmundi.org/artistProfiles/artistProfileRenno.php

data visualization
Radiohead 'house of cards'
directors:
Aaron Koblin
http://www.aaronkoblin.com
Aaron Meyers
http://www.universaloscillation.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nTFjVm9sTQ
http://code.google.com/creative/radiohead/viewer.html
http://videos.antville.org/stories/1816215/

google code
http://code.google.com/

Mehmet Akten
http://www.memo.tv/
http://memo.tv/radiohead_house_of_cards_openframeworks_processing_templates

Is The Visual World a Grand Illusion?

An extensive review of a book by Alva Noë on visual perception, the one I mentioned in class on April 27th (the story about the man in the gorilla suit)

One note I have to make, mistakenly I was talking about cascading, but the term is actually saccading.... sorry, kYra

http://www.human-nature.com/nibbs/03/noe.html

Galvanic Vestibular Stimulation

We can post here content related to this research, anyone interested is welcome to join our group!

Good explanation on how our vestibular system works and how it's influencing other things in our body(f.e. eye movement):

http://www.physpharm.fmd.uwo.ca/undergrad/sensesweb/L10Balance/L10Balance.pdf

A paper describing how this technique works:

http://jp.physoc.org/content/517/3/631.full

Another research paper about MRI(brain imaging) of GVS - gives more details about equipment, signals etc:

http://jn.physiology.org/cgi/content/full/80/5/2699

Sensory illusions in aviation - there is a section on vestibular/somatogyral illusions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_illusions_in_aviation

And of course the thing that started it all(blame Edwin for showing it to us) - Save Yourself by Junji Watanabe:

http://www.junji.org/saveyourself/index.html

Please feel free to post new stuff in comments if it's not possible to edit this post.

Sight by Skin: dermo-optical perception

One of the ideas I've mentioned has to do with the supposed reading of colors by the fingers. Below are two links:

1st link:

http://novomeysky.genealogia.ru/papa/tm63_4e.htm

....
FINGER PERCEIVES THE LIGHT

Rosa feels the colour of the light, penetrating through light filters and falling onto her fingers. Rosa says: " This ray is red, that ray is green; that one is orange, and the other one is blue". Moreover, she is able to identify not only a bright ray of light, but a weak one as well. She can even better identify coloured rays, let through the lens filled with water and then reflected on her hand with a mirror....

(a more critical) 2nd link:

http://www.creatic.fr/cic/B043Doc.htm

Abstract

....From 1960 to the present, research conducted in the USSR, United States, England and France, have showed that the skin is sensitive to far infrared invisible radiations of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Dermo-optical sensitivity refers to the human organism's capacity to respond to colored surfaces, hidden from sight by being placed under screens, even when the latter are held at some distance in the dark.
Dermo-optical perception refers to the ability of subjects to succeed in consciously differentiating these surfaces through their hands by non-visual subjective impressions. It is estimated this can only be done by one in six subjects. Controlled studies indicate support for the theory of dermo-optical sensitivity and perception. This finding provides a new potential confounding variable in color research. (int j Biosocial Res., 7(2); 76-93,1985.)....

Steve Heimbecker - Wind Array Cascade Machine

http://www.fondation-langlois.org/html/e/page.php?NumPage=369

Tactile Lens

I hope this drawing will better illustrate my idea of the Tactile Lens device.

It would involve something like Bach-y-Rita's tactile actuator, except that the source would not be the image but another array of the pressure sensing thingies.

If we use different sizes of pressure sensing device, we can scale those sizes to the surface of a palm(hand).

Left-Right Ear Swap

What would be good keywords for googling such experiments?

Anyways, it would be cool to try this out and see what happens:)

lecture Ben Knapp

Tuesday afternoon we will visit the following guest lecture that is taking place at the Media Technology MSc programme of Leiden University:

Speaker: Ben Knapp of SARC of Queen's University Belfast
Topic: controlling music and sound using the recognition of physical gestures and emotional state
Time: Tuesday April 28, 2009, 14h00 - 15h30
Place: Snellius building, Niels Bohrweg 1, 2333 CA Leiden, room 413

The Sonic Arts Research Centre of Queen's University, Belfast, is dedicated to the research of music technology. This interdisciplinary institute unites internationally recognized experts in the areas of musical composition, signal processing, performance, internet technology and digital hardware.

Ben Knapp leads the Music, Sensors, and Emotion (MuSE) research group at SARC. His research at SARC focuses on the understanding and measurement of the physical gestures and emotional states of musical performers and their audience.

He will speak about controlling music and sound using the recognition of physical gestures and emotional state. His talk explores the broad area of using kinematic and physiological sensors (e.g. EMG, EKG) for interacting with sound. The details of the measurement and recognition of these signals and the patterns within them during performance are discussed. The talk will focus on three areas:
1) Understanding gestures and emotion
2) Simple pattern recognition techniques
3) The SARC Eyesweb Toolkit

Read about SARC at http://www.sarc.qub.ac.uk/main.php
More about Ben Knapp at http://143.117.78.181/main.php?page=people&pID=53

((( bone conduction interfaces )))

I would like to start using this blog to throw more specific ideas about projects we might undertake in the coming weeks... being interested as I am in the exploration and extension of our listening and sound perception, I find the border between hearing and touch as an attractive area to investigate (check bone conduction of sound)... also after a couple of conversations these days I found we are several people in our group interested in tactile sound... therefore I´m posting here the topic, illustrated with some artworks I know which make use of this phenomena... please, add more that you might know...



Laurie Anderson’s Handphone Table. 1978 Visitors were invited to perceive sound through the bones in their arms by placing their elbows on the table.


touched echo from Markus Kison on Vimeo.

Touched echo (2007, by Markus Kison) is a minimal medial intervention in public space. The visitors of the Brühl's Terrace (Dresden, Germany) are taken back in time to the night of the terrible air raid on 13th February 1945. In their role as a performer they put themselves into the place of the people who shut their ears away from the noise of the explosions. While leaning on the balustrade the sound of airplanes and explosions is transmitted from the swinging balustrade through their arm directly into into the inner ear (bone conduction).


...experienced in the latest edition of ArsElectronica too.


music for bodies
<< terrestrial and virtual research into new ways of making and listening to music >>
(ongoing project since 2006) directed by Kaffe Matthews



music for bodies is a research project to make new 3D music and physical interfaces for enjoying it directly through your body rather than just your ears.

music for bodies is currently researching the effect of certain frequencies on specific areas of the human body, coming to an understanding of the human body’s response maps in this process. Combined with an exploration into mapping structures for scores through architectural perspectives, it is making music to feel rather than listen to.

STiMULiNE is an audio-tactile performance by the artists Lynn Pook and Julien Clauss in which the group of participants wears futuristic seeming suits equipped with acoustic activators that transmit sound as an impulse on skin and bones. Sounds are thus not perceived through the outer membrane of the ear but are transmitted as the finest of vibrations through the entire body to the inner ear. It is a form of fictional concert without narrative structure that starts from the assumption that public sites for culture in real space will increasingly be replaced by virtual communication. STiMULiNE departs from the traditional concert situation and experiments with forms of perception of space and body. The participants lie relaxed on the floor while the two artists let the sounds move along and through the bodies. The presence of the public and the social interaction between the participants thereby becomes a central creative element.

acoustic space / aural culture

some rapid thoughts about one of our latest meetings on which we discussed McLuhan´s theories:

....regarding his visual vs acoustic space categorization, I remember some doubts expressed in class comments about the meaning of his 'acoustic space' idea regarding our (well... this was a while ago) cultural and media environment, arguing certain lack of validation in the real world .... as I understand it, its not something to be taken literally (in terms of regarding it as a proliferation of sound-based media or 'real' sound), but more as a metaphor for the 'new mediascape' appearing during the last century, on which media and technologies surround us, being multisource, intangible and global and becoming pervasive... elements pertaining to sound physiology, hearing and according to him characteristic of previous iliterate oral cultures... these characteristics as opossed to the previous model generated by the apparition of printing based for example in a limited amount of sources of information, frontality, textual linearity.... pertaining more to the eye and geometry of vision...bla bla bla



...I think that notion of the 'acoustic space' presented by McLuhan even if could be related, should be differentiated from the several branches of works, concepts and theories (also appearing in the second half of 20th century) that claim for the construction of alternative knowledge models based in sound, denoting the hegemony of vision in our Western culture.

Without entering now into regarding this hegemony of vision as problematic or not, neither speculating about its possible causes, consequences and effects, I think its evident the fact that it exists, even if I still find sometimes people who doubt about it. Its just obvious to me if we take into account the lack of sound-based studies and theories in lots of disciplines... note for example how we have in the world maybe only ¿4? academic programs devoted to 'Sound Studies' (also of very recent creation), in contrast with the widespread 'Visual Studies' discipline.. in addition to the lack of sound education and the marginality of sound-based music and artworks, to name a few examples.. the list could go on and on... of course this is something relative and it is changing rapidly, being evident the proliferation (small the scale but definitely a good number of projects) of sound-based inquiries and works within a lot of fields dealing with sound and most importantly, a great amount of interdisciplinary work dealing with it, caused also by the increasing accesibility of technologies to work with this medium, that became imprescindible in order to analyse aspects of it due obviously to its time-based nature.

Anyway, I think in general we are currently very hard-wired because of our culture, education and our mediascape and environments to think in visual terms... somebody was pointing out the other day to the pervasiveness of mobile music devices (ipods and so on) as a sign of the changing times... that´s a fact, but I would doubt if it as a sign of an increase in sound awareness or maybe works doing the oppossite, I see more the use of this devices as another manifestation of power and identity and actually when used in public spaces this technologies dramatically shut up the sounds of the environment, not to mention the hearing loss problems which sometimes cause. Anyway these kind of sound mobile technologies have also great potential por sound and mdia-art and actually are bein explored by several people...check mobile sound blog for example..

On this issue of hegemony of vision and the rediscovering of sound awareness I would like to share the recording of a recent short lecture by Murray R. Schafer, whose life-long pioneering work within the fields of acoustic ecology, soundscape studies, sound education and towards the promotion of aural culture at large is very remarkable... his book 'The Soundscape. Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World' , published in 1977 is very recommendable and I feel listening to himself (like in this recording) as quite inspiring.

The lecture was given in Mexico the last month and has the title 'I HAVE NEVER SEEN A SOUND'.

sonic weapons

Daan posted this nice history of sound weapons a few days ago. For those interested in further information, I would like to share a project developed by my friend Chiu Longina, who has been for a while into acoustic technologies used for social control, doing research, lecturing and organizing workshops.

A couple of years ago he created an online project compiling info about sonic weapons and physiological effects of sound. The site is in Spanish but most of the sources are in English... there is also an automatic translator in the right sidebar if you want to read any of the Spanish texts.

http://www.artesonoro.org/sonicweapons/

One of the latest works of Chiu (in collaboration with Juan Gil) related to this topic was a radiophonic work comissioned by Kunstradio (AT) for the Art’s Birthday 09 celebrations last February.

LISTEN TO IT

The physical dimension of sound, its potential to become a source of corporal pleasure, its invisibility, its immateriality, its power to generate emotions or affect our bodies without passing through the barriers of reason and without leaving traces… All these aspects have turned particularly important in the context of a society of control, where the different discourses of power need technologies to perform their dominance, or simply to attack and defend themselves. This is the role of sonic weapons.

The sound work proposed by Escoitar.org, a radiophonic short tale placed somewhere between a documentary and a radio-art piece, is based in the remix of audiovisual documents found across a long and deep research about certain uses, developments and technological implementations of sound. The work proposes both a conceptual approximation to this subject matter and a revealing sonic experience, carried out through an analysis of the impact and the effects of these technologies, their uses and their abuses.

Digitally processed sounds from interviews, recordings of sonic weapons, fragments of works by different artists and recordings of acoustic signals and control devices (such as bells, sirens…) made by Escoitar.org are mixed and intertwined in “Sonic Weapons”. A radiophonic work that pursues a double goal: on one side, to make the listener aware of a problem that affects sound and listening, conceived as control devices, and, on the other, to create a passionate sonic gesture in order to maintain sound safe and to keep working for its freedom.

human echolocation

Ben Underwood, who had his eyes surgically removed when 2 years old. (in the video he is 14) uses echolocation to "see".By clicking his tongue he is able to navigate around objects, identify objects, play games and more.

article at CBS News

mcluhan´s wake

This is a film documentary about McLuhan´s theories and his biography. I think it works quite well as a an introduction to his work.

It must be available in the torrent world and I got the dvd version released by Disinformation a while ago, which could be worthy because it contains a good amount of extras in the form of interactive tetrads, audio lectures, extra interviews, etc... so if someone is interested let me know, I can bring it to KABK.

As far as casual viewers go, it’s hard to go wrong with McLuhan’s Wake. It offers an impressive introduction to McLuhan’s four media laws, which are a bit out of date but still useful in developing a fundamental knowledge of media and cultural studies. If you are already well versed in cultural theory, it won’t be very useful unless you teach media studies, in which case it could prove to be a valuable resource. Some of McLuhan’s ideas and concerns have become even more relevant since his death, even though he hasn’t been able to update his own writings to incorporate these new mediums and technologies. Like anything, McLuhan’s Wake needs to be approached with caution and a critical eye. McLuhan would have wanted us to approach his own theories like that, I think. If only the creators of this set had done that a little more. Reviewed by Judge Joel Pearce

visual perception in darkness

Saskia & Pim choose to reseach ‘night vision’, an invention of William Edward Spicer -engineering professor at Stanford University-, being first used by the U.S. Army during WW2.
Night vision is the ability to see in a dark environment. Whether by biological or technological means, night vision is made possible by a combination of two approaches: sufficient spectral range, and sufficient intensity range. Humans have poor night vision compared to many animals, in part because the human eye lacks a tapetum lucidum.

Following McLuhan’s tetrad: night vision devices do not enhance really; instead they add a visual quality. It makes electric light obsolete and pushed to extremes one’s biorhythm can be disturbed due the absence of day and life. The medium probably retrieves the yearning for ‘normal’, polychrome perception with the bare eye.

blog about new ways of sensing/enhancement of sensing

This is a nice blog about new ways of sensing or enhancing our senses:

http://www.susannahertrich.com/notes/

e&s -Evolution and Senses-

About comments from last session yesterday the Tuesday 21th, I would like to refer to the cyanobacteria as an example of organisms that base their existence on the ability to cooperate effectively at oposition to development of the senses for survival, giving a clear example of the get right. The complexity of evolution as the exciting results in future to merge biology and technology (Cyborg) it doesn´t owe to the brain or the development of our senses in some other species. In fact just the opposite has happened.
As suggesting Gary F. Marcus, professor of psychology at the University of New York, just going through the experience of basic memory, decision making, language and happiness we can see the thousand and one flaws of evolution in all of the senses developed to survive.

The most dramatic and far-reaching innovations in the history of evolution, survival of the species, when everything pointed to a close, it was the intuition of some microorganisms newcomers two billion years after the formation of the Earth and the Solar system. It was a biomolecular feat, made it a pact between a bacterium and a host cell of the plant kingdom.

Chloroplast with which plants make food for themselves are actually housed in cyanobacterial cells of plants.


Cyanobacteria image: universe-review.ca

So I think it is grat, remembering that the greatest discovery we owe to these microbes called cyanobacteria with which plants make their own food is the partnership between a bacterium and the plant allowed photosynthesis; 'live from air', literally, instead of preying on the more complex or simple organisms.
An example of that is than in nature cooperation is a force more powerful than the competition and the development of the senses. Its success depends on knowing just cooperate.

To be sure, if there will be salvation in the future we have to understanding the possibilities of the molecular world.

Evolution of the ear ongoing

Our ears are still adapting to human speech, says anthropologist, who discovered that genes associated with hearing have changed in the most recent thousands of years.

“We’re still genetically adapting to language,” says John Hawks, an anthropologist and specialist in human evolution at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Wisconsin, in the USA. Hawks has discovered that eight genes associated with hearing show signs of having evolved over the most recent 40,000 years. Some of the gene changes took hold only two-three thousand years ago.

Speech a recent phenomenon

According to Hawks, the changes in the hearing genes indicate that our ears are still adapting to human speech, which evolution experts believe first developed about 50,000 years ago. At that time, humans had existed for more than two million years, making speech a relatively recent development. Speech is worthless without ears able to sense and discriminate sounds at the sound frequencies of speech. Our ears are still improving these abilities, according to Hawks. Hawk’s analyses of a data base with gene information from different continents indicate that many human genes besides the hearing genes have changed in recent human evolution.

Seed: www.hear-it.org

Music for Solo Performer (Alvin Lucier)

About last session -April the 20th- here are a re-interpretation of Alvin Lucier's sound piece using human brainwaves sensors and also I think that could be another clear example for coming thursday assignment

Kevin Warwick: I want to be a cyborg and I know I am not the only

This is from an interview I found on the web. The guy actually took a ultra-sonic sensor and fed the signals down on to his nervous system.

Kevin Warwick is the world’s first cyborg. The English scientist says that it’s time for us to overcome our human “limitations”. In the future and thanks to chip in our brains we will be able to use more than our 5 senses as the implants will stretch our ways of communicating with people and objects. Without any doubt, Warwick is a brave, charismatic borderline-scientist, but he has also risen a lot of criticism. In an interview he reveals why he thinks that humans will become a subspecies in a cyborg world.




The full interview can be found here:
http://www.nowpublic.com/health/kevin-warwick-i-want-be-cyborg-and-i-know-i-am-not-only

Mutsugoto

and a lot less off-topic, but also the BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/highlands_and_islands/8004769.stm

sousveillance

This is off-topic, but today I briefly mentioned Steve Mann, one of the existing Cyborgs we will talk about on thursday. And here he is on the BBC site, today, with his concept of 'sousveillance':

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8010098.stm

buying arduino boards

We talked about buying a bunch of arduino boards together. Now is the time if you were thinking of buying one anyway.

here an overview of the types:
the Duomilanove This is the basic board. € 22,-
the Arduino Mini same number of connections as the basic board, but less memory. € 35,- (including USB-serial converter)
the Arduino Nano even smaller than the mini, but less connections too. € 44,-
the Arduino Mega many more connections, larger memory. € 49,-
the Arduino Lilypad an arduino version made to be incorporated into clothing (more fragile, however) € 21,-

if you have no preference, get a Duemilanove or a Arduino Mega.
Prices mentioned exclude VAT (BTW) and shipping.
To be 100% sure about pricing, check the information given by the manufacturer. Please let me know if you are aware of cheaper options: there are much more providers now than there were last time I ordered. Also please let me know if I made a mistake in summarizing the specifications.

You can order by commenting on this post; please mention which type. I will order on wednesday evening.

McLuhan references and assignment for thursday 23rd

the fragments we read in class today came from these books:

Marshall McLuhan, "Understanding Media, The Extensions of Man",
Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd. London, 1964.

Marshall and Eric McLuhan, "Laws of Media, The New Science",
University of Toronto press, 1988.

Marshall McLuhan & Bruce R. Powers, "The Global Village, Transformations in World Life and Media in the 21st Century", Oxford University Press, 1989.

there is a good wikipedia page about McLuhan's 'Tetrad':
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrad_of_media_effects

and there are zillions of sites about him and his theories ofcourse:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan
http://www.marshallmcluhan.com/



the assignment for thursday the 23rd is as follows:

In groups of two students, choose an existing project that tries to achieve an 'extra sense' in some way. Can be art, can be a scientific research project or something else.

Start a debate about this project with the two of you, where you reflect on the following questions:
- what does this extra sense communicate ? What is the content of this sense ? What is excluded by this sense ? (Think about the microphone example given by Edwin, the microphone captures airpressure changes, but through that is able to transmit speech, language and concepts)
- how would having this sense affect our sensorial balance ? What is the 'message of this medium' ? How would it affect our behaviour ? A good way to approach this question is by answering the four questions in McLuhan's 'Tetrad' (see link above).

Give a presentation together where you briefly present this project and your reflections on it. In total 10 minutes, so prepare what you want to say. A partial goal of this assignment is also to give you more experience in giving such a short presentation.

Consciousness

Yesterday we there was a small discussion about consciousness. One of the great names in consciousness is Daniel Dennet. On google there are a lot of interesting lectures from him. So if your interested in learning more about this subject. This is one of the video's:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9115535893922064429&hl=en

Also I watched a very interesting documentary about the Atom a while ago. It really made me think on how we perceive the world around us. It is very interesting that we have come so far in understanding the world despite our very primitive senses.

Here is the documentary:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7694154455816736507&hl=en

There are I think 3 parts!

hole in the head

-

Trepanation is an antiquated medical intervention in which a hole is drilled or scraped into the human skull, thus exposing the dura mater in order to treat health problems related to intracranial diseases.
(...)
Although considered today to be pseudoscience, the practice of trepanation for other purported medical benefits continues. The most prominent explanation for these benefits is offered by Dutchman Bart Huges (alternatively spelled Bart Hughes). He is sometimes called Dr. Bart Hughes although he did not complete his medical degree. Hughes claims that trepanation increases "brain blood volume" and thereby enhances cerebral metabolism in a manner similar to cerebral vasodilators such as ginkgo biloba. No published results have supported these claims.

(from Wikipedia)

Primitive cyborg? Wanted to expand his awereness by drilling a hole in his own head, and he died at the age of 70 (heart failure)

bodymonitor + urbansync

http://www.bodymonitor.de/

Our mission is to provide tools for real-time monitoring of body and mind responses in everyday life contexts.

As an efficient and cost-cutting tool we developed the smartband .

The smartband is a wearable textile band, with unobtrusively embedded microelectronic and sensors.

This smartband 'sense' a lot of things about the body and its context: electroderermal activity, puls volume, skin temperature, tri-axial acceleration , magnetometric direction, ambient light intensity, ambient sound intensity, infrared ambient detection of human body and ambient temperature... 10bit of resolution and ASCII recording to a 1GB SD-Card... its not clear its connectivity for realtime transmission of data to other devices...

Created by Georgios Papastefanou, it seems a quite experimental device, but already being used in some projects... I found it some time ago through UrbanSync, an ongoing project of multimodal signals gathering within urban contexts which is using it... in this case the physiological+context data are recorded on sync with other three streams: sound, sonification of the ghz range and gps trails. further sonification, visualization and data mining processes of the data collected are still on development in a collaborative way... the sync streams of data collected during three weeks of sessions in Porto last October have been made available online for those who want to experiment with them.

newham sensory deprivation map

Rechecking those emotion maps created by Christian Nold I found interesting one of the variations of the project, based on sensory deprivation of sight and hearing.

from the project background:

Normally we perceive our surroundings using 5 senses: Sight Sound Smell Touch Taste What happens when we explore our environment without Sight and Sound?

The Newham Sensory Deprivation Map (2007) is the result of an intensive workshop with 34 students from Newham Sixth Form College in London. The students were divided into pairs, one of whom was blindfolded and given ear defenders so that they could not see or hear. The other student was given a Global Positioning System as well as pen and paper. Together the two explored the local area around the college for up to an hour. The idea being that the blindfolded and deafened student verbally relates their sensory experience to the other student who is taking notes and making sure they are safe during the journey. On their return the geographical data from the GPS is downloaded and all the sensory observations made during the walk are spatially recorded. The final map combines all the annotations of the students and forms an alternative sensory map of Newham.

emotional cartography

Related with the lively discussion about 'emotion measurement' at the end of our Monday meeting, its a fun coincidence that I just stumbled upon a fresh new book (officially launched this coming Friday) called Emotional Cartography.

It is 'a collection of essays from artists, designers, psychogeographers, cultural researchers, futurologists and neuroscientists, brought together by Christian Nold, to explore the political, social and cultural implications of visulising intimate biometric data and emotional experiences using technology'.

Christian Nold is the guy who developed the community project Bio Mapping. During four years, this project created several 'Emotion Maps', registering the Galvanic Skin Response (an indicator of emotional arousal) of more than 1500 participants on sync with their geographical location.

Best thing is that the book has been published under CC license and it is freely downloadable (.pdf 44mb).

Vía: Infosthetics

The Adventures of the Nasal Ranger

Nasal Ranger is apparatus helping to measure intensity of smell.

In this silly video, an reporter tries to measure intensities of various smells on a fair:

http://blog.syracuse.com/video/2008/08/the_adventures_of_the_nasal_ra.html

acoustic location

Acoustic location is the art and science of using sound to determine the distance and direction of something. Location can be done actively or passively, and can take place in gases (such as the atmosphere), liquids (such as water), and in solids (such as in the earth)

Starting in 1880 with the Topophone, there is a bizarre collection of acoustic location experiments and artifacts, including hilarious wearable artifacts, some of them of doubtful precision.

1960 : Jean Auscher´s maritime acoustic locator

During WW1 and until the early years of WWII this technologies were developed by different countries for militar purposes, until its abandon when the sonar and radar came up, making them obsolete.

1921: USA - 2horn locator

Czech locator , test at Waalsdorp

Probably the most known example are the British acoustic mirrors, declared national landmarks recently.

+++ more info and historical survey on this site.

chicken head tracking

Chickens have a great ability to keep their heads stable. Our bodies use a gyro-like mechanism in our ears which has 3 mutually orthogonal inertial measurement devices. Modern motion processors use something called an Inertial Measurment Unit (IMU). These devices provide movement data which can be used to compensate for the movement. Chickens apparently have the same type mechanism only with a higher update rate.

comment on thursday

Last Thursday we talked about a way to compare our senses: space (distance). This was interesting, but on the other hand I found it a very subjective and a blurry comparison (it was scientifically seen just not right and not precise) . The result of such a schedule really depends on what you take as a reference. For all of the senses, I think the best reference is the place where the receptors actually are. So for touch is that the skin, and then the range wouldn’t be the radius of your arms, but the length of the hairs on your skin.

This was something I would like to add for now, more research information/personal development later! (otherwise I will influence my classmates too much regarding the fact that we had to do the assignments for Monday individually)