calc@media

Internet Wind

2012-01-28T16:52:00.001-08:00

Final piece exhibited at the Holden Gallery MMU

Internet Weathervane

2011-05-25T15:17:00.000-07:00

I built this weathervane to transmit environmental data across the web. It just spends its life gently swinging in the breeze, aimlessly broadcasting the information that it collects....day in....day out

I made this little gizmo to sit at the bottom of the weathervane. Its responsible for converting the kinetic/wind direction data into a digital signal ready for broadcast. Its quite a beautiful little object really.

The Internet of Things

2011-05-16T04:06:00.000-07:00

This 'telepresence' project that I'm working on is closely linked to current debates surrounding "The internet of Things" - Here's a bit of information about that...

The Internet of Things (or IoT) describes the revolution already under way that is seeing a growing number of internet-enabled devices that can network and communicate with each other and with other web-enabled gadgets. Things (e.g. objects, environments, vehicles and clothing) will have more and more information associated with them and may have the ability to sense, communicate, network and produce new information, becoming an integral part of the Internet. A widespread Internet of Things has the potential to transform how we live in our cities, how we move, how we develop sustainably, how we age, and more.
-http://theinternetofthingg.eu

-Nick Appleyard, Head of Digital at the Technology Strategy Board:
The Internet of Things is one of the next major developments of the Internet and has the potential to unleash large scale investment, create jobs and bring substantial economic growth to many sectors of the economy. In some ways more and more information about ’things’ within buildings, transport systems, cars or cities is produced. But if these were both widespread and able to share information with each other and with us at large scale a world of opportunities would open up, leading to products with additional capabilities, more efficient processes and innovative business models.

-John Naughton from the observer:
Those whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first make infatuated with their own ingenuity. Witness the heady talk about "the internet of things". The basic idea is that we are moving from an era when the network connected human beings to one where a majority of the nodes on it will be devices: printers, cameras, monitoring devices, domestic appliances – yea even unto the humble toaster.

Two forces are driving this trend. The first is that sensors and actuators are increasingly being embedded in physical objects – from phones to roadways to pacemakers – which are linked via the internet. "When objects can both sense the environment and communicate, they become tools for understanding complexity and responding to it swiftly. What's revolutionary in all this is that these physical information systems are now beginning to be deployed, and some of them even work largely without human intervention." Full article here

How to: Connecting and receiving data from remote environmental sensors

2011-05-16T02:44:00.000-07:00

This weekend I finally managed to complete my interface that will allow an anemometer (wind sensor) to control kinetic sculptures which could (theoretically) be placed on the moon. This post acts mainly as a log/set of instructions for myself and also for my own troubleshooting when I come to set up my installation at the gallery!! - those interested in using arduino and processing however, may find it useful...

1) download the Firmata arduino library for processing from here and put inside the libraries folder in the processing sketchbook.

2) upload OldStandardFirmata to the arduino board. I’m using an Arduino uno and find that this version of firmata works best. Note that arduino uno installs as '/dev/tt/usbmodem621' not 'dev/tt/usbSerial' as the older arduinos do...

3) Test that processing can access the serial data sent from arduino by running a sample processing sketch of a graph controlled by a simple arduino potentiometer circuit. I had a bit of trouble at this point – processing version 1.5 seemed to have trouble communicating with the serial port. I was getting all kinds of strange RXTX library conflict errors. There is a way around this by apparently deleting RXTX.comm.jar and librxtxSerial.jnilib from /library/java/extensions and replacing them with the same files from the arduino directory /Application/Arduino.app/Contents/Resources/Java. I could’t be bothered spending any more time on this problem so I simply reverted back to processing 1.2.1 and everything worked fine.

4) Now comes the tricky bit, I had to configure my Sky (netgear) router to allow for port forwarding for all traffic attempting to connect to my server (mac pro) on port 5210 - since my ip address was a local network address (beginning 192.168.x.x) and not the actual address that external site can see (http://whatismyip.com) . More info on configuring netgear routers to enable port forwarding can be found here you could of course use dynamic dns

5) Once that was set up it was time to test my feed. I setup a simple arduino/potentiometer ciruit and used processing to read the value of the potti. Make sure the EEML library for processing is installed at this point, this is the Extended Environments Markup Language and is a protocol for sharing data between remote responsive environments. Processing then broadcasts this data in a simple xml format. Providing the port forwarding works correctly, you can access this xml file, and subsequent potentiometer reading from your browser http://localhost:5210 - amazingly, this worked first time for me!!

6) If that works its time to setup the internet stream. A processing sketch reads the serial data and uploads this to the remote site. Test the feed works in the browser.

7) Once the feed is tested and working ok, its time to build the system that is to be controlled by the remote sensor. To test this I used a simple servo connected to arduino. I uploaded the ServoFirmata that is included with the Arduino IDE. Another processing sketch runs on the remote machine (again using both the firmata arduino library and EEML library) which pulls down the data from the live feed and moves the servo accordingly. The code for this sketch took aaaages to write and was really really messy. Thats the hard bit done woohooooo, all thats left to do now is make my kinetic sculptures.

If you like anymore info on this please leave a comment or email me.

Convoluta

2011-05-04T23:54:00.000-07:00

My good friend and colleague, Martin Greaves, of dinosaurmuseum.com Illustration & Design and author of Exhausted Renegade Elephant has written this amazing piece for my blog - cheers mate!

"I find your latest concept beautiful, poetic even. As a natural phenomena, the wind has not made such an impact on the art and poetry of mankind as, say, the sun, the moon, fire or water, the forests and trees, the animals; and yet it could be argued that our very future, the future of the planet lies in its hands. Wind is a form of solar energy. Winds are caused by the uneven heating of the atmosphere by the sun, the irregularities of the earth's surface, and rotation of the earth. Wind flow patterns are modified by the earth's terrain, bodies of water, and vegetation. Humans use this wind flow, or motion energy, for many purposes: sailing, flying a kite, and even generating electricity.

The terms wind energy or wind power describe the process by which the wind is used to generate mechanical power or electricity. Wind turbines convert the kinetic energy in the wind into mechanical power. This mechanical power can be used for specific tasks (such as grinding grain or pumping water) or a generator can convert this mechanical power into electricity. So how do wind turbines make electricity? Simply stated, a wind turbine works the opposite of a fan. Instead of using electricity to make wind, like a fan, wind turbines use wind to make electricity. The wind turns the blades, which spin a shaft, which connects to a generator and makes electricity.

I like to think that such a concept as wind turbines can be seen as the whirligig writ large! Reading your proposal, Steve, and thinking about your new project has attuned me to a new way of thinking about turbine-generated power. For when someone switches on their light in a household powered by electricity from a wind turbine, is not that light a direct result of the activity of wind power in a distant location, harnessed and transferred to your home? Now whilst I realise that this is not the exact purpose of your project, it has shown how your idea and your new work-in-progress has directly led me to look at something that is relatively common in a new and exciting way, which is traditionally the aim of any form of artistic expression worth its name. Your proposal seeks quite beautifully to transpose the soft blowing of a natural breeze in a distant field directly into a city gallery, in real time, through your automated whirligigs. This alone is worth the price of admission, and as an artist I can appreciate the lovingly crafted pieces of folk-art through which you seek to demonstrate your ideas. It is a combination of craft and idea, and the poetic nature of your concept that I really appreciate myself, it is one that speaks to me directly.

To finish, I'd like to quote an anecdote from Rachel Carson's 1961 essay "The Sea Around Us". It concerns the movement of the tides and their effect on a marine worm, the Convoluta roscoffenisis, a creature found in northern Brittany and the Channel Islands. In an abstract way, I think it kind of echoes your experiments with wind automota and shares that aura of the poetic. It highlights the idea of the actions of one distant natural force having a tangible significant effect in another, completely different environment, one that is far away from the original source.

Convoluta has entered into a remarkable partnership with a green alga, who's cells inhabit the body of the worm and lend its tissue their own green colour. The worms have become so dependent upon the plant for means of nutrition that they must enable the algal cells inside them to carry on their function of photosynthesis, which is dependent on sunlight. Therefore, Convoluta rises from the damp sands of the intertidal zone as soon as the tide has ebbed, the sand becoming spotted with large green patches composed of thousands of worms. For several hours while the tide is out, the worms lie thus in the sun, and the plants manufacture their starches and sugars; but when the tide returns, the worms must again sink into the sand to avoid being washed away, out into the deep water. So the whole lifetime of the worm is a succession of movements conditioned by the stages of the tide - upwards into sunshine on the ebb, back downward on the flood.

What I find most unforgettable about Convoluta is this: sometimes it happens that a marine biologist, wishing to study some related problem, will transfer a whole colony of the worms into the laboratory, there to establish them in an aquarium, where there are no tides. But twice a day Convoluta rises out of the sand on the bottom of the aquarium, into the light of the sun. And twice each day it sinks again into the sand. Without a brain, or what we would call a memory, or even any clear perception, Convoluta continues to live out its life in this alien place, remembering, in every fibre of its small green body, the tidal rhythm of the distant sea.

The Artistic Garden

2011-05-04T13:34:00.000-07:00

This is a nice little piece by Claudia Brownlie, author of 'The Artistic Garden' offering a bit of historical context to the automata that I'm making reference to in my project...

"Whirligigs, and their cousins – weathervanes - evolved from the very simple and practical wind vanes of ancient times. These wind indicators played an important function for farmers, sailors and anyone else affected by the weather. In researching them, I have not come across the exact date of their "invention", however have found mention to the fact that in the 1440 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary "whyrlegyge" is defined as "any spinning toy".

Who knows who really got the great idea of adding a propeller or pinwheel to a weathervane, however I'll focus on what evolved here in North America with these garden art objects.

There is mention of them being used in early colonial times, solely for their function as a wind determining instrument.

Move forward to the mid-to-late 1880's and references are made to whirligigs appearing in the Appalachian Mountains region. These new folk art objects were made from scrap materials and possibly helped folks while away the idle time they had during the cold winter months. While traditional design themes depicted activities of rural life or common characters, these circa 1880 creations began to be whimsical in nature.

I've found reference made to "old-timers" calling them "comic weathervanes". Comical because the faster the wind blew, the more furiously the poor figures had to move.

There is even mention of whirligigs having the extra "feature" of driving away moles, due to its vibrations. I would be interested in seeing exactly that design of whirligig and how it was mounted that would allow it to accomplish such a useful garden feat. :-)

During the Great Depression of the 1930's, they regained popularity. Farmers were able to make some desperately needed extra money by making and selling them.

Unfortunately, because the materials used were normally not weatherproof, remaining antique specimens are few and far between. You can imagine how these are now coveted by serious folk art collectors. (I recently saw a circa 1930's-40's wooden whirligig up for auction. The figure's hat spun around. The propellers that should have been in each hand were missing; it was only 12" tall; and the asking price was $950.00.)"

Just started making the whirligigs....

2011-05-04T13:22:00.000-07:00

In keeping with true folk art methods, I'm making the automata from reclaimed wood and found materials. This propeller (above) is made from scrap wood that I found lying about in our Fine Art Dept. at Huddersfield Uni - I love the blade on the left MMmmmmm

2011-05-04T13:04:00.000-07:00

I designed the pin wheels in illustrator and cut them on a laser cutter (i know, cutting parts on a laser cutter is hardly sympathetic to folk art methods!!) In the background you can just make out the motors and arduino that are going to transmit the windspeed data to the automata (whirligigs). I've pretty much got all the programming and wiring sorted for the arduinos, its just the building of the wooden sculptures that I need to concentrate on now.

Pages from my sketchbook

2011-05-04T12:57:00.000-07:00

Page from my sketchbook - the image on the left shows the design for the wooden pin wheels that are going to transfer the movement of the motors to the blades etc.

Mock-up of the installation

2011-05-04T12:44:00.000-07:00

Rough sketch of installation in the gallery space. The automata are placed upon plinths and all move in synchronisation. The audience are free to walk through and between the works (but must be careful not to trip over the wires!!)

Video of digital telepresence project

2011-05-03T14:11:00.000-07:00

Data collected from outside (in my garden) is send to a computer which controls the speed of a digital whirligig. I'm not planning to exhibit the digital work, I'm going to build the models (which will be influenced by early American Folk Art) and use a micro-controller to command motors which will allow the whirligigs sway in the 'telepresent wind' that blows through the gallery ...more on this to follow...

2011-05-03T04:20:00.000-07:00

First of all apologies for not posting anything for such a long time, it seems I've been away for ages!! I've not had anything new to post for a while as all of my time has been spent developing an interface for my latest work (telepresent element)... an interface that can read incoming analogue data (such as that from a wind speed anemeter, or the intensity of light through a Light Dependent Resistor etc) and output this to an increasing numerical scale from 0 to 255. The importance of such an interface is that once I have these values, its then possible to do almost anything with them (in a digital sense of course!)

The numerical values 0 to 255 are significant numbers when we think of the web: Hexadecimal notation, for example, is particularly important in computer programming, since four bits (each consisting of a one or zero) can be expressed using a single hexadecimal digit. Two hexadecimal digits represent numbers from 0 to 255, a common range used to specify colours in the HTML language of the web. Not to mention the numerical range of IPV4 addresses (starting at 0 and also ending at 255) With this, the interface that I've developed can read the analogue data and translate this as a 'digital' grey-scale value which can be, in turn, uploaded to a webserver and viewed from any browser.

So what's so great about this then? Well, in terms of my research into telepresence, this interface can be used to ping data across the globe at break-neck speeds - data that can be read by any computer at any location. So, in theory, with this interface we can create artwork that not only responds to changing environmental conditions, but also environmental conditions at remote locations. In a previous post I quoted the Brazilian artist Eduardo Kac who wrote “The shortest distance between two points is no longer a straight line, as it was in the age of the locomotive and the telegraph. Today, in the age of satellites and fiberoptics, the shortest distance between two points is real time” My interface will connect two or more locations and allow my project 'Telepresent Element' (below) to be realised.

Telepresent Element

2011-02-17T02:29:00.000-08:00

This project is currently a working interface of a ‘virtual telerobot’ - virtual in the sense that the robot exists only on screen, and not in the physical environment. I have named the project Telepresent Element - its aim is to create a context whereby the viewer experiences an aspect of a particular remote environment through the images displayed on a screen. Telepresent Element measures the outdoor wind speed and relays the information to a central computer. Software running on the machine interprets this information and uses it to control the speed of a digital, animatronic whirligig. The whirligig, as an iconic garden ornament, was chosen for this project not only for its beautifully coloured and slightly comedic kinematic potential, but also to highlight their role in the development in some forms of kinetic art and wind-powered sculpture.

Exactly where whirligigs originated isn’t clear, although some weathervanes date back to 1600 BC, with the first known visual representation of a European whirligig being illustrated in a medieval tapestry that depicts children playing with a whirligig consisting of a hobbyhorse on one end of a stick and a four blade propeller at the other end 19. By the 1900’s the construction of whirligigs had become an art form and what had begun as the simple turning of propellers in the wind had progressed into fully realised kinetic sculptures that produce motion and sound.

Telepresent Element makes a connection between scientific instruments (motion sensors and accelerometers etc), natural forces (such as the wind), and contemporary art. The characterisation of the whirligig on screen acts as a metaphor for a door or bridge between two separate locations. It is more concerned with the notion of perception and simulations of telepresence rather than scientific investigation - the scientific apparatus used in collecting the data is in this case applied as a means of understanding the multiplex of emotions of being simultaneously present and absent.

Telepresent Art: A Brief Study

2011-02-17T02:14:00.000-08:00

**Excerpt from my Masters Journal Jan 2011**

An important example in the development of telepresent art is Gene Coopers Thundervolt, 1994, where real time recordings of lightning strikes in the United States were relayed to a central computer that was, in turn, wired to Coopers body. Once registered, the strikes were translated into electrical signals that caused muscles in his body to twitch.

Masaki Fujihata’s Light on the Net, 1996, is another significant telepresent art work. In this piece a grid-like web interface represents forty-nine light bulbs in the lobby of the Gifu Softopia Center, Japan. Viewers on the web can click the bulbs to turn the physical light on/off.

In 1997, Austro-Hungarian artist collective Association Creation developed Bump, where two footbridges were connected - one in Linz and the second in Budapest. When a person stepped onto the bridge in Linz, the corresponding board on the bridge in Budapest would rise and vice versa.

Nancy Patterson’s Stockmarket Skirt, 1998, is a telepresent media work that utilizes a webcam to capture and display real-time images of a skirt which raises its hemline according to fluctuations in the stock market. Stockmarket Skirt partakes in the myth that skirt length is an economic indicator - the better the economy, the shorter the skirt.

Above the sky in Mexico City, Rafael Lozano-Hemmers Vectorial Elevation, 1999/2000 enables viewers to control lights and influence the patterns that they create above the Central Square. This artwork effectively bridges the gap between the very public space of the town square and the public domain of the internet.

Another telepresent work that bridges the public spaces of the internet and physical places is Eduardo Kac’s series of installations titled Ornitorrinco. The structure of this work is fashioned by a wireless telerobot, telephone lines and remote/physical spaces. The viewers become participants as they navigate the distant environment by pressing the buttons on a telephone’s numeric keypad. The remote spaces in the Ornitorrinco series were always built to the scale of the robot, a process that Kac says “invited viewers to abandon the human scale temporarily and to look at a new world from a perspective other than their own”

Many of these examples make use of the internet, but it is important to note that the web did not herald the advent of telepresence, though its use was demonstrated by artists such as Ken Goldberg, Eric Paulos, and Eduardo Kac of how to exploit the internet within a more expansive context and engage a greater number of participants. For me, however, the significance of the internet in telepresent art relates not only to the interface which allows control by a remote agency, but also references the philosophies of Thomas Hobbes in his book Leviathan (1651) on a single, self-organising system and artificial intelligence. The interesting point to note about artworks such as Masaki Fujihata’s Light on the Net and Rafael Lozano-Hemmers Vectorial Elevation, is not just about enabling individuals to control robots in remote places, but more about Hobbes’ therories - taking the result of the individuals actions and considering them as one. If we were to ignore the fact that telerobots are controlled by separate clients sitting at workstations in various locations across the globe, then we could perhaps suggest that such robots are controlled solely by one sovereign intelligence - the internet.

Telepresence and Interactive Net Art:

2011-02-17T02:04:00.000-08:00

**Excerpt from my Masters Journal Jan 2011**

“The shortest distance between two points is no longer a straight line, as it was in the age of the locomotive and the telegraph. Today, in the age of satellites and fiberoptics, the shortest distance between two points is real time”
- Eduardo Kac

It is impossible to calculate the number of machines on the internet. Research suggests that nearly 30% of the world’s population has access to connected computing with at least 58% of European and 77% of North American citizens having a permanent connection. Add to that the number of educational establishments and enterprise facilities such as cyber cafes, and handheld/mobile devices such as tablets and smart phones, then the quantity could well run into the billions. Yet, what does this global network of inter-connectivity represent to individuals? For many, the internet can be a medium for entertainment, or an avenue for research, or perhaps a gallery in the public domain in which to display their images. For artists however, the internet provides a unique opportunity to integrate their work with the remote interactivity of others, moving from continent to continent with the simple click of a mouse. It allows artists to create hybridised works that go far beyond the web page, art that combines the interactivity of users in cyberspace with that of robots - connecting them to the world wide web and other such networks that act as vehicles for their telepresence. Artists that explore this technology scrutinise the perception of distance, examining the connection of being present in one space, yet making a contribution and exercising physical control in another.

Discussion on Pseudorandom by Martin Greaves

2010-10-14T04:04:00.000-07:00

Once again my colleague, Martin Greaves, has emailed in a very interesting text discussing my latest work Pseudorandom. Enjoy....

This is indeed a fascinating experiment in the Nature of creativity and the "randomness" that may or may not be found in a computer simulation of the creative act. One aspect of this that I find particularly interesting is (again) the exclusion of emotion in all aspects of computer simulation. No “creative” endeavor undertaken by a computer can, by its very nature, be described as Art; because there is that fundamental absence of theURGE to create. I think all art stems from either the irresistible urge to make your mark or the conscious decision to produce a piece of work that stuns, informs, shocks, educates or attempts to present aspects of the world and Man’s experience within it, in a new and enlightened way. A computer simply cannot feel such an urge; it will always mechanically reproduce its programmer’s ideas. Even if it is a computer of unimaginable complexity, capable of generating billions of random actions and marks per-millisecond, the ultimate spark that begins this chain of randomness will always stem from an outside (organic) thought process instilled by the human creator. A computer can create an ocean of complexity, but the spark that ignites that “Big Bang” of complexity will always be lit by the hand of Man.

Jackson Pollock underwent months of tortured thought and experimentation before alighting on his “drip” paintings and effectively forming Abstract Expressionism. Van Gogh, as you know, was so consumed with his art and his attempts to represent the world around him in paint, that he ultimately took his own life. I cannot foresee an age in which a computer will experience an emotional breakdown brought on by its inability to create a perfect sunflower; or one where an extremely complex mechanism destroys itself because it cannot adequately represent its thoughts in images. Can you imagine a robot that, consumed with jealousy, assassinates another robot and steals its work to claim it as its own? Jean Arp told the story of how, in 1915, when he was notified to report to the German consulate, he avoided being drafted into the army. He took the paperwork he had been given and, in the first blank, he wrote the date. He then wrote the date in every other space as well, and then he drew a line beneath them and carefully added them up. He then took off all his clothes and went to hand in his paperwork. He was told to go home. I cannot ever comprehend a computer thinking up such an act as this. This was randomness with a purpose, a complex act of subversion that at once attempted to show unbridled madness, but at the same time also displayed devious logic inasmuch as it successfully enabled Arp to avoid the military Draft.

Of such thoughts and feelings is true art created; this, I think, is where the urge lies. And it is exclusive to Man’s consciousness.

Martin Greaves

Analogue is the New Digital: Launch event

2010-10-03T02:23:00.001-07:00

The 'Analogue is the New Digital' exhibitions (staged across various locations across Manchester) opened at the weekend. For more info on the exhibition click here. You can also get further info on the Manchester AND festival here.

Below are some images of my work, Pseudorandom, taken at the opening night...feel free to leave comments...

Analogue is the New Digital: Launch event

2010-10-03T02:13:00.000-07:00

The Death of Contemplation (by Martin Greaves)

2010-08-27T11:58:00.000-07:00

In response to my post entitled 'The Virtual Body' June 2010, my colleague at dinosaurmuseum Martin Greaves sent me the following text via email (as it was too big for the 'comments' box. Excellent work on this mate - a really well researched text!!

The Death of Contemplation

A very persuasive argument in reply to my question there Steve, but I have another few points to make regarding the development of computer interfacing and its effects on human development. Ofcom recently found that Britons spend an average of seven hours a day interacting with some form of media (television, computer, mobile phone etc.) and that smart phones especially are an expanding fixture of an increasing number of our lives (for “smart phone” read “mobile computer”). In fact, television accounted for a relatively small proportion of this time, especially within the 16-to-24-year-old age groups (i.e. the group that can be classed as the future of this country). The dominant media choice for this group is mobiles and computers, and of this group, two-thirds were found to be multitasking by operating up to two digital tasks at once.

Academics in the field are beginning to associate such fixation with digital interfacing as tantamount to an addiction (ever found yourself constantly checking email or updates on your phone?), and a development of a kind of twitchy anxiety at the need to remain “plugged in” to this ever-increasing, constantly updated cyber world of information and entertainment. Moreover, it is becoming obvious to many in the medical field that this relatively new form of digital interfacing has shown to be responsible for effectively rewiring the human brain to become accustomed to this constant flow of data and information nuggets in their briefest form. The brain, as you know, is an organ operated electrically as well as chemically and people who suffer brain damage in some form of accident can often benefit from their brain’s capacity to rewire the neural highway to bypass any dead or damaged synapses in order to increase its functioning capacity (this is termed neuro-plasticity). If the road is blocked the brain creates a diversion around the blockage so the traffic can keep moving. If you think of it this way, then the physical rewiring of the brain to accommodate this new development of data flow and information gathering can have potentially negative effects on human development, ironically depriving the human race of the very talents that drove our journey from caves to PC terminals.

The negative effects I am citing here are the oft-quoted effects of “dumbing down”, or to put it another way, the rewiring of our brains and the way we interpret news and information will, it has been said, become biased towards the quick-fix soundbite, the three-minute YouTube video and the eventual inability (or desire) to study in-depth analysis of any given event, the wish to invest days of time on a large novel or the enjoyment of watching a three-act play. In short, the very act of contemplation and deep thinking may be a trait (and a very human trait) that becomes lost to future generations, like the ancient rite of some long-dead pagan religion.

In his book, “The Shallows” author Nicholas Carr writes:

“If, knowing what we know today about the brain’s plasticity, you were to set out to invent a medium that would rewire our mental circuits as quickly and thoroughly as possible, you would probably end up designing something that looks and works a lot like the internet.”

The timescale for this “redesign” of the human brain is not as long as some may think. In 2008 at UCLA, psychiatrists, led by Dr. Gary Small, researched the effects of digital interfacing on the human brain by obtaining two groups made up of 12 experienced web users and 12 digital newcomers. These groups used Google whilst their brains were scanned. The results, published under the (humorous, I think) title Your Brain On Google pointed up a key initial difference between the two groups. In an area of the brain called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which deals with short-term memory and decision-making, the newcomers showed hardly any activity, whereas the web veterans displayed plenty of activity in this area of the brain scan. Six days later, after the novices had been asked to spend just one hour a day online, the two groups’ brains were re-scanned. The activity in the same area of the brain was now very nearly identical. Five hours of digital interface had effectively been enough to begin to rewire the brain.

Dr. Small also cites the digital revolution as being a central cause for the decline of human-contact skills in younger people. This can be seen in the lack of maintaining eye contact during conversations and the increasing inability to read non-verbal cues (or body language) when socializing within a group. He fears texting and instant email are also dampening our ability to be creative and think outside the box by ourselves because we are constantly vetting our thoughts and ideas through instant and regular contact with friends and peers. The effect of digital multitasking is not an increased skill in coordination (as previously cited) but a tendency to do things faster but, crucially, sloppier and without due consideration. Indeed, this is a problem that big US corporations like the engineering company Boeing are seeking to address in their new young apprentices.

The effect of the 24-hour news, the laptop, the mobile phone; the constant interference of digital media and interface in our modern consumer lives, can have wonderful, information-sharing benefits, where an experienced doctor might instruct a novice surgeon a thousand miles away, and guide him through a step-by-step procedure to repair a damaged artery via a satellite computer link. But the rewiring of the brain as a result of all this might be to our detriment. As Carr states it in his book, “We are welcoming the frenziedness into our souls” and as the years go by and we routinely ping-pong from blog to website to Twitter in a matter of minutes, there shall be no-one sitting somewhere on a melancholy beach, watching as the sun slowly goes down. The horizon turning from yellow, to orange and finally to blood red, as day turns to night.

Proposal for Pseudorandom at the AND festival

2010-08-20T03:02:00.000-07:00

This is proposal that I sent off to Andrea and Simon for the catalogue of the Analogue is the New Digital festival in October...hope they like it!!!

Title: Pseudorandom

Pseudorandom is a series of autonomous drawings that have been produced by a mechanical robotic device. These generative images display the aesthetic qualities of digital code that allows a computer to act with varying degrees of freedom, choice and randomness.

These original pen and ink drawings attempt to visualise the process of pseudorandom number generation by creating a visual landscape and sense of physicality from the otherwise entirely digital nature of code, machine consciousness and artificial intelligence.

Similar to the way Jean Arp produced his ‘chance collages’ as a method of relinquishing control, the drawings of pseudorandom can be seen as a depersonalization of creative practice. By instructing a computer to make the important decisions of composition the drawings are experiments of digital spontaneity and irrational artistic creation. Acts of computational randomness and choice are merely a simulation – a pseudorandom process that originates from an arbitrary starting point. To what extent can this be described as a ‘random’ process may be addressed by the drawings of Pseudorandom, as it maps out a physical representation of a computers ability, or inability to think in a truly random fashion. Just as Arp’s collage ‘According to the Laws of Chance’ appear relatively ordered, (which suggests that the artist retained a certain degree of authority) these drawings are an examination of the contrast between control and chaos.

The drawings of Pseudorandom have been created by means of a robotic appliance that interprets and responds to a computer which is programmed to display colour in an apparently random order. The element of choice is given to the computer by means of a programmed loop that instructs the machine to randomly choose and display a colour on its monitor. The device that plots this event watches the screen using its color sensor, which in turn drives a mechanical arm holding a pen. The movement of the pen is dependant on the hue and saturation of the colour that it sees.

Background on pseudorandom numbers

2010-08-20T02:58:00.000-07:00

A pseudorandom number generator (PRNG), is a computer program algorithm for generating sequences of numbers that appear random in their inception. Pseudorandom numbers are an important practice for simulations (e.g. of physical systems with the Monte Carlo method - such computer simulation methods are especially useful in studying systems with a large number of degrees of freedom, such as fluids, disordered materials, strongly coupled solids, and cellular structures), and are central in the practice of cryptography (practice and study of hiding information) and procedural generation.

A Pseduorandom number can be started from an arbitrary starting state using a seed. It will always produce the same sequence thereafter when initialized with that state. The maximum length of the sequence before it begins to repeat is determined by the size of the state, measured in bits. However, since the length of the maximum period potentially doubles with each bit of 'state' added, it is easy to build Pseudorandom numbers with periods long enough for many practical applications. Although PRNGs will repeat their results after they reach the end of their period, a repeated result does not imply that the end of the period has been reached, since its internal state may be larger than its output.

Most pseudorandom generator algorithms produce sequences which are uniformly distributed by any of several tests. It is an open question, and one central to the theory and practice of cryptography, whether there is any way to distinguish the output of a high-quality pseudorandom number from a truly random sequence without knowing the algorithm(s) used and the state with which it was initialized. The security of most cryptographic algorithms and protocols using PRNGs is based on the assumption that it is infeasible to distinguish use of a suitable PRNG from use of a truly random sequence.

Pseudorandom

2010-08-20T02:32:00.001-07:00

This is a new piece that I'm working on at the moment. Its called Pseudorandom and it will form part of the AND festival (Analogue is the New Digital) curated by Andrea Zapp and Simon Blackmore. The Exhibition opens at the Mad Lab (Manchester Digital Laboratory) on 1st October and will run throughout the month at various venues (TBA). These drawings are merely prototypes at the moment, as I'm still to put the artwork together.

The piece is about how computers can attempt to think in a random and disordered fashion, in contrast to their natural purpose of machines that make accurate, ordered and literal calculations. With this being an 'Analogue' festival, I had to think of a way of representing this digital process in an analogue fashion. The way it works seems a little long winded, but I think it'll be sympathetic to the brief in the end - its basically a drawing machine that watches a computer screen as the computer chooses colours at random (I'll get on to how it does this later). Once the device has 'seen' a colour on the computer monitor (by means of its colour sensor that is pointing at the screen) the machine moves its mechanical, pen holding, arm around a piece of paper. Depending on what colour the machine sees, determines how the arm moves. What we should end up with is a beautiful generative algorithmic drawing, and not a big mess that looks like a spider has walked all over it!!

The drawings at the top are sketches of the machine that I plan to build, and the circular patterns below them are simulations of how I think the end result may look. It is a 'random' process though, so we'll just have to wait and see.

2010-07-14T05:58:00.000-07:00

Here's some images taken at our end of year show on Wednesday 7th July. The show was held at 52 Princess St, Manchester and featured the work of MA Media Art and MA Photography. The photo on the top left shows part of Katy Suggitt's installation that makes use of glass vase's and sound and other stuff to explore domestic spaces (you may also be able spy some of Lucy Ridges photography in the background).

The photo on the top right is a shot of the gallery space...and a jolly nice space it is too.

My work is seen in the bottom left and middle. The picture on the left is me attempting to calibrate the movements of the puppet prior to the show (which isn't that easy when you're using a £20 webcam from PC world in really poor light). The picture in the bottom middle is of a visitor looking, in what seems to be a rather confused manner, at my work. Perhaps if she had stood in front of the webcam and jiggled her arms to operate stooge, she would be confused no more.

Stooge - Video

2010-07-05T02:14:00.000-07:00

Here's a small video of stooge in action. Its the first prototype of what I hope is going to be a larger scale work - possibly with more puppets, and I'd like them to be operated through the web via the audiences own webcam.

Stooge was recently exhibited in Marmara University, Istanbul in June 2010 where he formed part of the The 5th International Triennial (more photo's of this coming soon)

Stooge (the telerobotic puppet) 2010

2010-06-19T10:35:00.000-07:00

Meet stooge - I created him in February 2010. Stooge is a computer generated puppet who responds to visual movements (a human-machine interface of sorts). The name Stooge relates metaphorically to the subservient nature of computers within the complex symbiotic relationship between man and machine: Stooge is the viewers henchman or willing sidekick who waits patiently before being called into action. The gestures are captured via a webcam and interpreted by software to control the appendages.

Initial investigations with Stooge at the development stage were focused around the technical or practical questions relating to the project - typically “how on earth do I create a remote interface that allows a machine to be operated at a distance?” In the case of stooge, computer vision was employed as the interface, with the role of the machine being fulfilled by a computer generated (Adobe Flash) puppet. Computer vision can be broadly defined as the science/investigation of machines that can see, and it is this area of science and technology that appeared most sympathetic with the concept for stooge - since vision has played an important role in the techno-organic theories of the late twentieth century. We only have to refer to the achievements of artificially enhanced vision enterprises (such as the development of sophisticated surveillance systems and apparatus similar to the Hubble space telescope) to realise its importance to Western hypothesis concerning man/machine transformations.

Reflecting critically on the achievements of stooge results in a number of questions surrounding the debates into cyborgs/human-machine interfaces/teleoperators. Stooge was designed to comment on the human interface with machines across distance (we have already defined the principles and concepts of a teleoperator) It is a fundamental assumption that teleoperators always have man at the centre of the control loop - Stooge, however, appears to turn on its head this anticipated dominance by the human participant. Instead of mirroring the viewers kinematics (as one would presumably expect from an installation of this type) stooge grins defiantly in the face of the audience as he responds to the movements but interprets them in apparently random and unorthodox manner. The irony being that in contrary to Stooge mimicking the ‘puppeteer’, it is stooge who emerges as the master. The audience, apparently confused and somewhat frustrated by the rogue movements of the puppets apparent disobedience to carry out its instruction, begin to replicate Stooge’s projected activity. The machine has manipulated itself into a position of control and just as N. Katherine Hales wrote in her essay The life Cycle of Cyborgs: Writing the posthuman “Humans are becoming more like androids, just like androids are becoming more like them”

Perhaps more alarmingly, the resulting scenario of a machine influencing the decisions of man is not a far cry from what many feel will herald the apocalypse - as the denizens of the Sci-Fi realms will testify by citing cyborg bodies such as the Terminator and the artificially intelligent machine consciousness’ of Larry and Andy Wachowski’s Matrix. I am not convinced for one moment that Stooge will be a harbinger of the Four Horsemen, but there are important debates that are (albeit incredibly simplistically) raised through this relatively unsophisticated puppet.

Teleoperators and Human Augmentation

2010-06-19T10:10:00.000-07:00

Thats right, I said "Teleoperators and Human Augmentation"

“These machines perform as appendages of man, particularly his hand, arms, and legs. Radio links, copper wires, and steel cables replace nerve fibers and muscle tendons...weather they are the tongues used by the old fashioned grocer to retrieve a cerial box from the top shelf or the mechanical hand that may repair some future nuclear-powered space vehicle...the prefix ‘tele’ in teleoperator describes the ability of this class of man-machine systems to project man’s innate dexterity not only across distance but through physical barriers aswell” - Edwin G. Johnsen and William R. Corliss in their essay published in the Cyborg Handbook, 1995

The Virtual Body

2010-06-19T09:44:00.000-07:00

“The Virtual body is a body of great potential. On this body we can reinscribe ourselves using whatever coding system we desire. We can try on new body configurations. We can experiment with immortality by going places and doing things that would be impossible in the physical world. For the virtual body, nothing is fixed and everything is possible. Indeed, this is the reason why hackers wish to become disembodied consciousness flowing freely through cyberspace, willing the idea of their own bodies and environments.” Flesh Machine: Critical Art Ensemble 1998.

If you've not read the book Flesh Machine you can download it for free from the Critical Art Ensemble's website. It's definitely a must if you're interested in Cyborg/Posthuman theory (along with other issues such as Eugenics, Pancapitalisn, and the Net)