20 Hz observes a geo-magnetic storm occurring in the Earth's upper atmosphere. Working with data collected from the CARISMA radio array and interpreted as audio, we hear tweeting and rumbles caused by incoming solar wind, captured at the frequency of 20 Hertz.
Generated directly by the sound, tangible and sculptural forms emerge suggestive of scientific visualisations. As different frequencies interact both visually and aurally, complex patterns emerge to create interference phenomena that probe the limits of our perception.
While the nuclear power plants in Japan are still releasing radioactivity, the media in Europe has stopped the coverage mostly...
There is a great site, put together by volunteers, to measure and bring together measured radioactivity levels with highest possible transparency. The funds to do that have been raised online. This is good and important: safecast.org.
There is always something beautiful about scientists analyzing highly emotional events, like this "state of the art" simulation of the events on September 11, 2001.
A video illustrating a typical practical magnification range of a scanning electron microscope designed for biological specimens. The video starts at 25x, about 6 mm across the whole field of view, and zooms in to 12000x, about 12 μm across the whole field of view. The spherical objects are glass beads with a diameter of 10 μm, similar in diameter to a red blood cell.
Very often, people refer to ants system as a role model of society. But here is the proof, they do the very same stupid stuff we do: the infamous ant death spiral:
It's a circular mill, first described in Army Ants by Schneirla (1944). A circle of army ants, each one following the ant in front, becomes locked into a circular mill. They will continue to circle each other until they all die.
Lovely documentation from 1930, with some good British narrative.
The BFI writes: This classic film from the long-running 'Secrets of Nature' series shows the birth, life and reproduction of sweet peas - as shown via an enthralling combination of close-up and time-lapse photography, occasionally interspersed with stop-motion animation, narrated by a somewhat florid commentary that has dated rather more noticeably than the still-astonishing images.
Visualization of a hypercube in perspective projection rotates first around the XW plane, the YW plane, the ZW plane and then around all the planes at once. By Eva Schindling.
German biologist, naturalist, philosopher, physician, professor and artist Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) is not considered a household name by any means. His varied and extensive work gave rise to the terms ecology and First World War, the rise of Darwinism as a valid theory and the discovery and proposal of the Protista kingdom of organisms within biology. Perhaps his greatest and most enduring work is found in his artistic endeavors, in which he sought to combine his creative vision with his desire for scientific accuracy. More over here: www.thisrecording.com/...
Stephen Wolfram, a British Mathematician and Physicist, is the founder of the computable knowledge engine Wolfram Alpha, which we use a lot for geometrical calculation lately. Via Myriam.
Ernst Chladni, born 1756, was a German physicist and musician. He's the first known person doing research on vibrating plates leading to the "Chladni Patterns". Have a look at this video to explain.
If you're interested in this matter you should also have a look at Alexander Lauterwasser's documentary Water Sound Images (German Language).
Ex-physicist Tom Beddard created a 3D Mandelbulb Ray Tracer as a Quarz Composer and Pixel Bender plugin that will allow you to generate 3D Mandelbrot fractals. Unlike many other 3D fractals the Mandelbulb continues to reveal finer details the closer you look. The scripts run on the GPU which makes real-time interactive exploration possible.
Shock waves that occur in traffic flow are very similar to the waves produced by dropping stones in water. A shock wave propagates along a line of vehicles in response to changing conditions at the front of the line. Shock waves can be generated by collisions, sudden increases in speed caused by entering free flow conditions, or by a number of other means. Basically, a shock wave exists whenever the traffic conditions change. Read more.
These excerpts of their beautiful scan processor studies have just been published. Brian O'Reilly explains:
The source materials were generated by Woody using a Rutt-Etra Scan Processor in the 1970's and sat on a shelf for years, having been recently digitized. Woody came into my studio one day and asked me if I would be interested in using them to work on a collaboration, and the project began from there...
The works use sources excavated directly from the output of the Scan Processor, as well as further manipulations using Tom Demeyer's ImX software, developed with input from Steina. Extensive editing and layering and additional augmentations were done using Phil Mortons IP. The Sound was generated (mostly) by custom software developed by Chandrasekhar Ramakrishnan and myself called NETHER GENERATOR, which sets up a number of complex real time feedback networks filtered and processed by various means.
Eva Schindling is Austrian. What you see here is one of her studies, 300 spheres, attracted to a center in space, rubbing against each other (following relatively fake physical rules) end up rotating in an interesting way. She doesn't know why.
