As the fall semester is starting from my second year at Goldsmiths University of London, I cannot help but notice a difference in the way I approach my study's as I gain confidence in my coding capability. Considering I have being pushing myself within and beyond the require course work by working on data science and data visualisation projects:
In neuroscience, by collaborating with Charlotte Maschk from the Biosignal Interaction and Personhood Technology Lab at McGill University and her research on consciousness disorder by mapping functional connectivity data with slime mould on the project brain mapping 1 and brain mapping 2.
In the field, by working for Kave a kinetic, audio and visual studio on the communication between the ideation and the physical computing, by learning engineering standard protocol like Modbus RTU for RS485 cabling system and implementing it on Openframework to make a user friendly API. all ready for an exhibition for Coventry City of Culture. As for the installation we'll have to wait a bit more before I can share more informations.
In economy, by learning Python and ML for the project transparency a visual tool that allows consumers to assess the environmental, social and economic credentials of a company by placing the company's logo over a phone or by using the web extension for online purchasing.
With the help of machine learning the consumer will be able to check, not only who owns the company, but also support them to make a decision about purchasing from the company based on how the company responds to environmental, social, and economic issues.
In service design, by collaborating with Xiaolin Yang master student in service design at Goldsmiths, where we created a sculptural work to be used as an ice breaker. The piece detect people distance (from their cellphone) and their voice level.
In fashion, by working with Miriam Griffiths master student in fashion and textile at UAL. I used R, (a statistical programming language) to explore covid related data and make visuals in P5.js. They are then knitted on a personal protective equipment (PPE) by Miriam.
Next projects?
Now comes the question of what to do with a full year ahead to focus on one project. Well, call it force of habit from last year but I cannot only focus on one.
Transparency: This year I am taking a data visualisation class with the amazing Jamie Forth where I can focus on my transparency project. I am currently working on a survey to find out if such an application would be appreciated. Then I would like to update the data my work is build on, as it is, the AI I trained is based on a web-scraped text based on key words, which, when we do a PCA, seams to be almost as good as taking them at random.
Brain mapping 3: Following last year's work, it is absolutely necessary to have a fMRI of the brain into the slime mould simulation. This would be near the final version and could offer informative temporal visuals. To do so I will need to learn to work on the GPU with the help of Andy Lomas to exponentially increase the number of particles for a better visual. I am currently going through the book of shaders.
The aperiodic signal: As a follow up project to my collaboration with Charlotte, her research now is looking at the aperiodic signal of the brain. This newly rediscover piece of information could uncover the secret to consciousness and help predict if a comatose patient will get out of his consciousness disorder state. This offer the opportunity to be within the first to interpret such data. While creating a 2D tool to do so with the prospect of being used by the scientific community is quite appealing, my interest lies with exploring electromagnet with ferrofluid or metal particles.
For me the idea of having a literal interpretation of an electric current resonate quite well with what is happening when a neurone is firing, or what the EEG is picking up. Thus, the output would be a fluid like motion or intricate iron sculpture. While how exactly the data will be interpreted and analyse is the next part, as I am currently waiting for part to do a test.
What's next?
I'll forget any social life event and hope for the best. As I still have my work with Kave and a couple of other small project with Neurolive and Xiaolin Yang. Thus, I will use the same strategy as I did last year: working a bit at the time on each project with a 10-15 work hour a day, and switch as I get bored or stuck on a particular one with an eye open for deadline. The key with this method is to keep time for daily sports activity and meditation while maintaining a regular sleep schedule.
ON Y VAS!
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