The other day, I was at my new co-working space, Frontier Tower, and I saw the RoboRoach control kit by Backyard Brains on the table in my new home in the bio lab. It allows you to electronically control a cockroach. It’s even app-controlled through Bluetooth. This technology has been around for a while, as […]
Rise of the Cyanobacteria Imagine an Earth that was dark, hot, and devoid of oxygen, thick with volcanic gases: mainly methane (CH₄), carbon dioxide (CO₂), nitrogen (N₂), and hydrogen sulfide (H₂S). There was no ozone layer (O₃) to block ultraviolet radiation. These compounds scattered and absorbed sunlight, especially in the visible range. The planet’s surface […]
I was formally introduced to Purple Bacteria very recently, when I began collecting samples with a microbiologist friend of mine, near the shores of the Salton Sea. I wanted to see if they produce any meaningful data. Well, they do, but that’s for next week’s article. Today is more sciency, where I want to share […]
About 10 years ago, I worked at the Exploratorium as a New Media Exhibit Developer for a couple of years. My job involved working on a team in the East Gallery — the living and biological systems. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this job would change the course of my art-making. […]
I recently watched “The Listers” (free on YouTube), an extreme bird-watching documentary, which was both hilarious and eye-opening. The main character has a revelation while he is high on weed to begin bird-watching, and joins the Big Year: an annual bird-watching competition in the United States. We watch him and his friend as they go […]
I’ve been hooked on YouTube videos about biology these days. It’s an excellent format: about 20 minutes is all you need to digest a topic. The content is often well-produced, it’s free, and personal. I don’t know why I started getting curious about Dragonflies, but I loved this one by PBS Terra. Dragonflies, or […]
Until a couple of months ago, I thought of maggots only as disgusting creatures. I would unexpectedly discover them somewhere odd, like a backpack where I had left an apple a couple of weeks ago. And ick! And then they’d turn into flies that are buzzing everywhere. It felt like a horror movie. How Composting […]
Once again, after reading Ed Yong’s Immense World, I was inspired. This time, it was the classic predator-prey relationship, a sort of arms race of sensory evolution. I began thinking about a specific relationship between the wolf spider and the wood cricket, and it stuck with me. The super-sensing of the wood cricket is utterly […]
On a recent large campout, I met a new friend (Andy) who was equally fascinated by the hidden world of biology as I am. We talked about many things, including animal perception. He was both excited and repulsed by the eyes of spiders, especially with the ones that don’t use webs, such as Jumping Spiders […]
When I was a kid, I’d play with my friends in our little clubhouse in the backyard, which was a dirt crawlspace behind the shed and the fence that bordered our neighbors. All sorts of creepy-crawlies were back there. My curiosity won over any sense of disgust, and I’d pick up rolly pollies, pincher bugs […]
I love reading sci-fi, not because I’m an obsessive nerd, but because the ideas I glean from those books inspire me. I recently finished Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky after it had been sitting in the virtual dust of my Kindle for a few years. Wow. The premise is that humanity is destroying […]
The corn plant (Zea mays) is a tall, grass-like crop that provides us with sweet corn, tortillas, popcorn, and more of our staple foods. First domesticated in southwestern Mexico nearly 10,000 years ago, its symbol of abundance now adorns many brands. But did you know that the corn plant is also intelligent, in its own […]
I tell this to my college-level design students in the first class. They have been well-trained in color theory and are about to go into the professional world, where every color has meaning. To humans, that is. I don’t say this to make a smug scientific point, but rather to emphasize a subjective way […]
We are well aware that dogs have an ultra-keen sense of smell. They’re sniffing everything: the floor, plants, and most awkwardly, the crotch of your houseguest. But each inhale they take is more than just a smell. It’s a massive download of data. When we look at how dogs process scent, we quickly see how […]
Everything is Alive Seaweed, Mycelium, and Fern Soundscapes We don’t think about the vibrations of seaweed, or a fern, or mycelium. But we should. Every organism, no matter how still or silent it may appear, emits an electrical field, ever so subtle. These signals might be nuanced, but they tell a fascinating story of energy, […]
I recently read The Hidden Half of Nature, and was captivated by the first third of the book, where the authors talked about soil and harvesting a healthy microbial ecosystem. Starting with a “dead” dirt backyard in Seattle, the couple slowly transforms it into a vibrant ecosystem where their outdoor plants soon thrived after their […]
Inside or Outside In October 2023, San Francisco had another bad air day. Smoke from Northern California fires pushed the AQI into the 200s, which are dangerous levels, especially for exercise. Public warnings urged people to stay indoors and avoid cardio activity. I had a workout session scheduled with a physical trainer on a breezy […]
This week was Macros. Pretty straightforward stuff, and definitely something to figure out after doing a lot of other things in Ableton. A Macro is a UI knob that you can map to any instrument control or effects control in its group. One reason to do this is that you save on UI space — […]
This week, I worked on Chain Selection in Ableton. I didn’t spend too much time on it, what with a lot of projects and other life stuff going on, but fortunately, it’s not all that complicated. What this can let you do is create different instruments / synths as one instrument, with a separate MIDI […]
I should have tackled this one earlier, but this week I went through Ableton presets, file management and keyboard shortcuts. Presets are essentially like a file format, which contains your entire instrument, any effects, etc. You can save these out for future use. So, let’s say you have a Kick drum that you really like […]
In my ramblings through my 100 day project of designing a data-based soundscape in 20 minutes, I kept on running into various Operator synths. I had looked at these last year when I was first getting into Ableton, and sort of understood it. It’s still confusing! Operator is a pretty complex synth to understand everything […]
I rushed through this week, since I have other projects. *And* I’ve also been starting a 100-day project to do quick compositions in Ableton, so my time is being diverted from systematic learning. Delay and Echo effects….these are pretty essential to any sound composition, with Echo being a more sophisticated iterations of the delay. […]
I thought the Wavetable synth would be a lot easier to experiment around with, but it turns out that making something that sounds good harder than the other instruments so far. It has a synth sound, not an instrument sound and has tech underpinnings that are key to understanding it. Instead of a sine wave, […]
Week 4: Simpler and Sampler This week, I wanted more fun than last. I dove into Ableton’s Simpler and Sampler effects. I hadn’t taken these too seriously before, relying on Ableton’s built-in instruments to make my data-based soundscapes. What this exploration revealed was the ability to convert any audio sample into an instrument. With millions […]
Week 3: EQ and Compressors This week, was about the fundamentals of EQ and Compressors. I reviewed what I kind of already know about EQ-leveling and delved into compressors. Not super exciting, but hey it felt like I should know this next in my weekly self-taught Abelton class. The YouTube vids often get jargony and […]
Week 2: LaunchKey Keyboard This week, I chose to to focus on learning all about the Launchkey 37 keyboard / MIDI controller that I purchased last fall. At $200, it’s an affordable keyboard, and offers tight integration with Ableton. And, I hardly knew how to use it before this week. I puttered around YouTube videos […]
Learning Ableton My knowledge of Ableton is spotty, but this laptop application is now in my essential toolkit for my ongoing Sensors and Soundscapes artwork. During my winter session at Mars College, I’m setting up a structure for learning, which is that every week, I will tackle a new core feature of Ableton and try […]
This is the 3rd year in a row that I’ve spent the three winter months at Mars College. What is Mars College? On the website, we describe it as this: Mars College is a three-month educational program, R&D lab, and off-grid residential community dedicated to cultivating a low-cost, high-tech lifestyle. We are in our sixth […]
Desert Ecology Citizen Science & Fields Trips by Seamus (Scott) Kildall What it is Mars College is situated in a striking landscape beside the Salton Sea, an odd lake with an even stranger history. The Desert Ecology program invites you to step away from the computer screen for a day and explore this fascinating […]
Fungtiopia opens at Four Chicken Gallery: 432 Cortland Ave, San Francisco on June 27, 6-9pm. This will be a new version of this artwork, which I developed this year and presented at the Bombay Beach Biennale a few months ago. Inspired by scientific research that mycelium may have their own language, I developed this installation, […]