Seed Media Group: Blog
Thursday, March 25, 2010 • Events • by Eva Wisten • #
HEADSPACE: on Scent as Design
Today Friday, March 26, Parsons, MoMA, IFF, Coty, and Seed has teamed up to present Headspace: On Scent as Design.
Headspace is a one-day symposium on the conception, impact, and potential applications of scent. It will be a day full of surprises, discussions, more surprises, presentations of commissioned design projects, and - of course - smells.
Read an interview with the organizers on SEEDMAGAZINE.COM
Read more about the program and speakers on Headspace2010.com.
Logo and web design by Mike Pick.
Friday, March 05, 2010 • Events • by Eva Wisten • #
Mapping of Science and Semantic Web
Seed’s Joy Moore attended the NSF/JSMF Workshop on Mapping of Science and Semantic Web at Indiana University on March 4 and 5.
Organized by Katy Börner (Victor H. Yngve Professor of Information Science, SLIS, Indiana University and Director, Cyberinfrastructure for Network Science Center & Curator of Mapping Science exhibit), Ying Ding (Assistant Professor, Information Science, SLIS, Indiana University), and Peter Fox (Tetherless World Constellation Chair, Professor, Earth and Environmental Science and Computer Science,Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute), the workshop brought together 35 leading experts in the semantic web and science mapping from around the world.
Some of the participants had collaborated with each other before, some were meeting for the first time, and all came with a wide variety of personal research successes, obstacles, and views on how emerging technologies hold the potential to dramatically improve the accessiblity to and analysis of scientific information.
Day 1: Understanding the landscape, exploring the issues
The first day started with each of the participants giving a brief overview of their own work, providing context for the discussions to follow. Shortly thereafter, Peter Fox chaired a session with more in depth presentations by three of the attendees.
Jim Hendler gave a comprehensive overview of the emergence of the semantic web and raised some provocative points about where web 3.0 might take us. Whereas web 1.0 gave rise to Amazon.com, web 2.0 brought Facebook, web 3.0 is here and its killer apps, using semantic technology to add value to traditional web apps, are still to be developed – huge opportunities lie ahead.
Next, Frank van Harmelen predicted the end of the scientific paper as we know it, what it means for mapping science, and how semantic web makes it possible. His talk focused on data extraction from scientific papers (only necessary because the data had first been buried in the document format! “A journal paper is a state-funeral for your results”). Should we do away with the paper altogether and just publish “facts” in the form of triples, i.e., nanopublications that collectively form a vast web of knowledge? While this would improve access to targeted, structured bits of information, would the context of the findings (and importantly, the experimental conditions) be obscured? What are the practical, useful tools? His talk clearly outlined the challenge of balancing the need to structure, automate, and scale information with the needs of researchers (both as authors and readers).
Katy Börner ended the session with her presentation on interactive maps of science and technology. Maps can help us navigate different areas of science, find collaborators, identify trends, and serve as useful tools for funding agencies, researchers, industry, publishers, and for society. Not only can these maps help people access what we collectively know, forming bridges, they are also quite beautiful and inspiring – see examples here.
The final session was a group Challenges & Opportunities exercise. What can we do next, and what are the obstacles holding us back?
The day concluded with a group dinner at a nearby Thai restaurant. It was noisy, fun, and a great way for everyone to relax and talk in smaller groups. With good food and wine and a roomful of brilliant, enthusiastic people, it’s no surprise that for the next couple of hours ideas were flying and debates ensued, and it’s safe to say that everyone got the most out of the day.
Coming up next, Day 2: Figuring out what can be implemented in the next five years
Friday, February 05, 2010 • Events • by Eva Wisten • #
Joy Moore speaking at PSP conference
Joy Moore, VP Global Partnerships at Seed, spoke at the PSP 2010 Annual Conference today.
The conference, arranged by the American Association of Publishers Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division, addressed the new reality of scholarly publishing. It raised issues and opportunities brought on by the open access movement, the culture of free, social media and new forms of collaborations.
Seed’s Joy Moore talked about the evolution of social media in the context of our products ScienceBlogs, ResearchBlogging, and ScienceWide. The panel, Scientific Research and Social Media, explored the benefits of social media for researchers, how to engage communities, and the consequences for publishers that arise from this change.
Rachel Burley, Vice President and Publisher with John Wiley & Sons, moderated the panel, which also included Alpheus Bingham, Founder of InnoCentive, Inc and Darrell W. Gunter, EVP and Chief Marketing Officer at Collexis Holdings, Inc.
The conference took place at the Renaissance Mayflower Hotel in Washington, DC.
Tuesday, February 02, 2010 • Events • by Eva Wisten • #
The value of waste
Andrew Dent from Material ConneXion, recently alerted us to an important perspective for understanding sustainability.
Andrew Dent, who holds a PhD in materials science, came by the Seed office and gave a lecture on design through the lens of materials and their availability. He showed how much longer common materials will last at our current consumption speed, before they will become so scarce, that the price will skyrocket.
To really determine an object’s sustainability and design responsibly, the material factors to consider are these:
- How plentiful is the material that the object is made of?
- What’s the impact of mining, processing, and transporting the material?
- Is the material recyclable and do we have a use for it in its recycled state?
- Does the design allow for the materials to be recycled (Can the object be taken apart? Are the materials possible to separate from each other, or covered with paint etc)?
According to these principles, looks not considered, Dent points to Crocs, the plastic clogs, as an example of excellent design. They are produced through injection molding, which generates no waste from cut away material. They are made from one material, which is recyclable. The material is died, not painted. And, best of all, they are durable, and will most likely last as long as the wearer wants to use them.
As we are depleting our natural resources, materials are becoming more and more valuable commodities.
“Like gold. No one throws gold away,” Dent says as he foresees a future where more companies adapt to the strategy that Coca-Cola and others already operate by: they see their waste - their plastic bottles - as part of their assets, and makes sure to get them back. The customer buys the content, not its delivery vehicle.
“Companies will want their own waste.”
Material ConneXion’s library on 60 Madison Avenue in New York.
Saturday, December 12, 2009 • Events • by Eva Wisten • #
Neurolaw-lecture at Seed
SeedAM speaker Mike Gazzaniga talked about how neuroscience impacts the justice system.
“Our sense of self is reflected in the law. If we come to think of ourselves differently than we currently do as a consequence of modern research, then the law will change to match our new feelings about justice, retribution and punishment.”
Dr. Michael Gazzaniga is the Director of the Sage Centre for the Study of the Mind at the University of California, Santa Barbara, founder and editor-in-chief, emeritus of the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, a past member of the President’s Council on Bioethics, and founder of the Law and Neuroscience Project.
In the ‘60s, Gazzaniga worked with neurobiologist Roger Sperry, whose advancements in split-brain research would award him the 1981 Nobel Prize in medicine. The groundbreaking idea at the time was that the left and the right side of the brain operated as two systems that could respond independently of each other, without knowing what the other was doing.
One of the most famous experiments from the Sperry/Gazzaniga collaboration was performed on patients with split brains; their corpus callosum had been surgically severed as an attempt to treat epilepsy. The scientist team would flash an image of an apple to the patient’s right field of vision. Registered by the verbal left side of the brain, the patient would correctly identify that he saw an apple. When the image was flashed to the left visual field, the right side of the brain was unable to express what it had seen: The patient claimed to have seen nothing. But when asked to with their left hand choose what they had seen from a bag of objects, the patient was able to reach down and pick out an apple.
On this foundation, Gazzaniga went on to study concepts such as free will and neuroethics. He named the function in the left brain “the Interpreter”, observed its task of constantly narrating acts that are already committed and raised the question: how responsible are we for our actions?
“Do we have to have a guilty mind in order to be convicted?” Gazzaniga asked as he sat down in the lobby of Seed.
Gazzaniga heads the Law & Neuroscience Project, a committee formed to investigate how our new knowledge of neurobiology can be used and misused. Among other issues, Gazzaniga looks at the use of brain scans to determine a mental state. It’s about the idea of going “straight to the brain” to look for answers, and how neuroscience can be used to probe deeper than we can with behavioral psychology.
Surprisingly, public acceptance is currently way ahead of the science:
“Show Joe Six-pack a brain image of a criminal and they often quickly conclude it proves the legal argument being made at the time,” says Gazzaniga.
Neurolaw provides a lens through which we can see criminal acts as functions of a specific brain state, called forth by preceding and current situations. So do the notion of guilt rest in the intent? It’s a tricky question when experiments show that even the feeling of intent - and the memory of having had intent - can be induced in patients to the patients’ full conviction, much like the split- brain patients’ left halves would construct logical narratives explaining what the disconnected right brain was doing and why.
The philosophical challenge for the field of neurolaw is daunting. Fully integrating what neuroscience research imply into our understanding of human behavior, would have massive consequences. As Seed editor Joe Kloc asked at the end of the talk:
“The notion of determining what went wrong, fixing people, and letting them out would change law as we know it?”
“That’s right on the money,” says Gazzaniga.
Gazzaniga is now on his fifth decade surrounded by examples of the malleability of consciousness, of free will as an evasive concept. So how is neuroscience affecting our sense of self?
“We definitely see this march toward accepting the idea of determinism. My own way of thinking about the issue can be summed up by saying Brains are determined, but people are free. If you think about that, you will see what I mean.”
Thursday, December 03, 2009 • Events • by Eva Wisten • #
Seed at SciCafé
Naughty vs. Nice was the theme of American Museum of Natural History’s SciCafé last night.
Biologist Lee Dugatkin from University of Louisville and the AMNH’s Rob DeSalle, Curator of Invertebrate Zoology, were on stage to discuss the mechanisms behind our behavior with a fun audience that just wouldn’t stop asking questions.
We did a give-away of books we like.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009 • Events • by Eva Wisten • #
Connecting places
Scottish, London-based artist Katie Paterson was our SeedAM speaker this morning.
Ever since she was a student at London’s Slade School of Fine Arts, Katie Paterson has teamed up with scientists and engineers to realize her ideas. For ‘Ancient Darkness’, her recent piece in the Performa festival, she collaborated with astronomers at the Mouna Kea Observatories; for Earth-Moon-Earth, where she transmitted the Moonlight Sonata from earth to moon and back to see what remained, she tapped in to the underground radio community.
With her work, Katie draws attention to nature or space phenomena from far away or long ago by connecting them to the here and now.
Today, Katie told us about when she submerged a microphone in the glacier Vatnajökul and set up a phone number you could call to hear it melt. She once designed a map of dead stars and manufactured 3000 light bulbs that emulate moonlight. Her next project is a pier in England that will flicker in cue with light storms all around the world.
“I’m planning to build a smaller window-version as well,” says Katie. “One you could take home.”
Another piece in the works employs nanotechnology. Katie is looking to make nano-sand.
“It will make ordinary sand grains look enormous,” she says.
‘All the dead stars’
Tuesday, November 17, 2009 • Events • by Eva Wisten • #
Young scientists to watch
Last night, the New York Academy of Sciences awarded eight extra-ordinary young scientists at the Academy’s annual Science & the City gala at Cipriani 42nd Street in Manhattan.
“Far out.” So began Blavatnik Awards winner Ben Oppenheimer his acceptance speech, which continued with a diction that alluded to Oppenheimer’s field of research: solar systems other than our own. Oppenheimer is an associate curator and professor with the department of Astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History.
Among the other winners were Carmala Garzione of the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at University of Rochester who studies the connection between mountains and climate and Eva Pastalkova at Rutgers University who studies internal brain activity, neural firing that is not prompted by external cues.
Read about all the winners and finalists here:
The Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists rewards significant accomplishments of scientists and engineers born in 1967 or later, and residing in New York, New Jersey, or Connecticut.
Sunday, October 25, 2009 • Events • by Eva Wisten • #
Why you feel like falling
It was one of those talks - someone comes in and shows a bunch of slides of things you are familiar with: The Bird’s Nest Stadium, the Sydney Opera House, Tate Modern, but the stories they tell are from such a different angle, that you feel like for the first time, you see them in color.
Raj is head of Arup Acoustics. At the heart of his talk was this: Acoustics is architecture and architecture is acoustics. Every detail in a space, down to the shape of the light switch, will absorb, reflect, or diffuse sound.
Raj talked about how the approach from Arup is to think of architecture from the inside out: how do people behave, how do they perceive things, what are their needs. In the process of realizing a building, this is balanced against the architect approach of viewing architecture from the outside in – the building in relation to its environment.
And here are some other pieces of stories that came up during the presentation:
How with cave paintings by early man, the best drawings are always found in the parts of the caves with the best resonance, alluding to an early relationship between art and music….
....How cutting an apple inspired Arup-founder Ove Arup in the process of building the Sydney Opera House and made him realize that you can construct the curved shells out of straight line radii of a sphere.
...How the soundscape of cities in America are much louder today than in Europe where, thanks to noise legislation for building and transport design, sound levels haven’t risen since the mid 1970’s…
...And how when Arup collaborated with artist Stephen Vitiello on “The smallest of Wings”, his geodesic dome structure over the Broadgate Arena in London, and infused the structure with the beating of moth wings and the buzzing of humming birds, flocks of birds would arrive to listen to the show, then disappear when the sounds stopped…
Raj was also touching on the very now and some roads the field of acoustics may explore in the future.
How at the SoundLab at Arup you can simulate the acoustics of any piece of architecture, real or imagined.
A few new projects: A 3D recording of the audio edition of Nick Cave’s new novel, a live recording of Lou Reed that actually sounds like the real thing.
How there are countless visual illusions but only five known auditory illusions. But could the few auditory illusions that do exist be manifested through architecture to add flair to a building?
Raj also explained the reason why we sometimes feel like we’re falling just when we fall asleep. When we are awake, we know where we are in the world because our brains and eyes register the distance relative to your feet. When you fall asleep, your brain cuts of your visual cortex and now relies solely on auditory input. Sometimes there’s a gap in the handover between the senses, and you think that you just lost your position in the world.
Thursday, October 01, 2009 • Events • by Eva Wisten • #
Raj Patel speaking at SeedAM
Raj Patel, head of Arup Acoustics, will lecture at Seed on October 23.
Raj has worked on the design or redesign of concert halls and performing spaces such as David H. Koch Theatre and Alice Tully Hall of the Lincoln Center, Princeton University Center for Creative and Performing Arts, The Kitchen in New York, the BBC Music Centre in the UK, Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, Athens, Greece, and the Sage, in Gateshead UK.
This is our favorite item in his resume:
“He has developed tools for real time visualization of acoustics and in conjunction with his colleagues developed the pioneering Arup SoundLab, a unique tool for the creation of auralizations (accurate audio renderings of 3D space) in which designers can listen to buildings before they are built and use acoustics proactively as part of the design process.”
SeedAM is our internal lecture series. The concept is food + ideas, which means that we simply invite interesting people to come talk to us over breakfast.
Previous speakers include cosmologist Martin Rees, physicist Geoffrey West, information scientist Katy Borner, computer scientist Erik Demaine and physicist Brian Cox.
If you want to know more about SeedAM, email me at wisten@seedmediagroup.com
Thursday, September 17, 2009 • Events • by Eva Wisten • #
Michael Gazzaniga talking at SeedAM
On December 4, Michael Gazzaniga, professor of psychology and Director for the SAGE Center for the Study of Mind at the University of California Santa Barbara, will visit our New York office and give a SeedAM talk.
SeedAM is our internal lecture series to which we invite interesting people to come talk to the staff over breakfast.
Previous speakers include cosmologist Martin Rees, physicist Geoffrey West, information scientist Katy Borner, computer scientist Erik Demaine and physicist Brian Cox.
It’s always fun… If you want to know more about SeedAM, email me at wisten@seedmediagroup.com
Wednesday, September 09, 2009 • Events • by Eva Wisten • #
New modes of architecture
Overlap - extending beyond edges and boundaries in art and architecture is open August 27 - September 19. Opening reception this Wednesday, 6-9PM at the Elga Wimmer Gallery in Chelsea.
Among the featured artists are our friends from The Very Many, Skylar Tibbits and Mark Fornes.
Earlier this summer, Skylar and Mark produced a honorary prize for the State of Innovation Summit, a conference we produced together with the Council on Competitiveness in DC. It’s a 3D-printed approximation of the human mind that pushed the boundaries of what can be done with 3D printing updated the concept of a statue, and raised the question all over the room where the reception gala was held: “Is it real coral?”
Wednesday, August 19, 2009 • Events • by Eva Wisten • #
Lisa Randall visiting Seed
Physicist Lisa Randall just came by the office.
Lisa recently translated her theories of an extradimensional universe into a libretto for an opera. Hypermusic Prologue: A Projective Opera in Seven Planes, by the Spanish composer Hèctor Parra, premiered in Paris this summer.
The sets are designed by artist Matthew Ritchie.
See some visuals from the opera here.
Read the article by Seed’s Culture Editor Elizabeth Cline here.
