Category Archives: Music

Chill Brain-Music Interface: Using Brain Signals to Enhance the Emotional Power of Music

I was expecting blue and/or green but pink is very popular these days,

Maximizing Pleasure Derived from Listening to Music
Image Caption: The proposed system’s small size makes it a powerful tool to combat stress in daily life using optimized playlists tuned to the user’s current emotional state. Credit: Shinya Fujii from Keio University, Japan

A January 26, 2026 Keio University Global Research Institute press release (also on EurekAlert but published on January 30, 2026 with minor edits) announces some new research into brain-music interfaces, Note: A link has been removed,

Researchers develop an electroencephalography-based system that provides real-time music suggestions based on the user’s current state.

Musical chills are pleasurable shivers or goosebump sensations that people feel when they resonate with the music they’re listening to. They reduce stress and have beneficial side effects, but they are difficult to induce reliably. Now, researchers from Japan have developed a practical system that uses in-ear electroencephalography sensors to measure the brain’s response to music in real time and provide music suggestions that enhance chills.

Most people are familiar with ‘musical chills’—a sudden, involuntary shiver or goosebump sensation that occurs when a song resonates perfectly with one’s emotions. These chills are not just a surface-level feeling, but a profound neurological event. When we experience intense musical pleasure, parts of the brain’s reward system activate in a manner similar to how they would respond to life-affirming stimuli, such as beloved foods or positive social connections. However, despite the universal nature of the experience, musical chills are difficult to trigger reliably. This limits our ability to harness their psychological and physiological benefits, even with today’s on-demand access to vast libraries of music.

The issue lies partly in how ‘personalized’ media streaming algorithms are designed. These systems are essentially blind to a user’s current internal state and rely instead on historical data, genre preferences, or acoustic features like tempo to suggest content. Therefore, they cannot detect whether a listener is actually connecting with a specific track at the moment to improve suggestions. But what if our earphones could read the brain’s response to music as it happens?

In a study recently published in Volume 29, Issue 1 of iScience, a research team led by Dr. Shinya Fujii (Associate Professor, Corresponding author) and Dr. Sotaro Kondoh (JSPS Research Fellow, first author) of the Faculty of Environment and Information Studies at Keio University, Japan, has developed a novel solution to bring real-time brain monitoring into everyday music listening. Their paper, published on January 16, 2026, introduces the ‘Chill Brain-Music Interface (C-BMI),’ a system that employs compact in-ear electroencephalography (EEG) sensors to decode pleasure from the listener’s brain and use that data to build an optimized playlist in real time.

The methodology involved a multi-phase approach comprising recording, modeling, and evaluation. Initially, each participant listened to self-selected songs (high pleasure) and songs selected by another participant (low pleasure) while their brain activity was monitored via the in-ear sensors. From this data, the researchers built two personalized models for each participant. The first model predicted pleasure based on the acoustic features of the music, while the second decoded the listener’s pleasurable state from the EEG signals. Finally, these models were combined in closed-loop systems that generated playlists designed to either augment or diminish pleasure, with real-time neural decoding incorporated in some playlists but not others.

The results conclusively demonstrated that the EEG-updated playlist for augmenting pleasure was more effective than the other generated playlists. In other words, participants reported the highest number of chills and superior pleasure ratings when the system was allowed to adapt to their brain activity. The researchers found that C-BMI successfully captured neural markers of pleasure with high accuracy and, when using them to suggest music, outperformed the ‘acoustics-only’ methods that mimic current commercial streaming services.

A critical advantage of the proposed system is its size, especially when compared to brain-computer interfaces with more conventional EEG recording setups used in laboratories. “Using an in-ear EEG device with earphones offers a practical, comfortable, and accessible alternative, opening new possibilities not only for neuroscience research investigating music and the brain—which is fundamental to understanding human nature—but also for future daily applications in entertainment and human–computer interaction,” says Dr. Fujii.

Notably, the research team explored how this technology could impact broader psychological well-being. Participants using the EEG-informed playlists reported higher scores in categories such as stress reduction and a sense of life purpose, showcasing the benefits of aligning music selection with a person’s fluctuating internal state. “If this non-invasive system could be integrated with in-ear earphones equipped with EEG sensors and wellness and music streaming apps, it could offer emotional support during commutes, before sleep, or in daily life,” remarks Dr. Kondoh.

As mental distress becomes increasingly prevalent, especially among young people, C-BMI may prove effective as a low-barrier intervention, ideal for those who might hesitate to seek traditional psychiatric care. The researchers will continue to refine the C-BMI and similar interfaces, hoping to develop systems that enhance the positive effects of the simple and universal act of listening to music.

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About Keio University Global Research Institute (KGRI), Japan

The Keio University Global Research Institute (KGRI) was established in November 2016 as a research organization to bridge faculties and graduate schools across the university. KGRI aims to promote interdisciplinary and international collaborative research that goes beyond the boundaries of singular academic disciplines and national borders. It also aims to share research outcomes both in Japan and worldwide, further promoting engagement in joint research. To enhance these activities, in 2022 Keio University set its goal of becoming a “research university that forges the common sense of the future.”

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About the Research Center for Music Science

The Research Center for Music Science (RCMuS) is a research center dedicated to the scientific study of music. Guided by the principle “For the Future of Music, For the Music of the Future,” RCMuS aims to scientifically elucidate the origins and evolution of music; its universality and diversity; the principles underlying the perception, cognition, generation, and creation of music; the effects of music on the brain, mind, and body of living organisms; and the impact of music on individuals, groups, and society. The center seeks to advance research and education in music science and to disseminate the knowledge gained to the broader public.

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About the Neurosciences and Music Laboratory at Keio University, Shonan Fujisawa Campus

The NeuroMusicLab at Keio SFC is dedicated to research in neurosciences and music (NeuroMusic), seeking to understand the fundamental role of music in human life. The research is founded on the premise that music provides a unique probe for identifying higher-order brain functions, including skilled motor control, learning, perception, cognition, memory, emotion, and creativity. The laboratory aims to elucidate the neural origins of human musicality, thereby enhancing the potential of music to contribute to a harmonious future. While interest in the neurosciences of music has surged globally in recent decades, Japan has historically lacked laboratories in this field. Recognizing the growing need to explore the neural basis of human musicality, Dr. Shinya Fujii founded the NeuroMusicLab at Keio SFC to fill this gap.

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Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

A chill brain-music interface for enhancing music chills with personalized playlists by Sotaro Kondoh, Takahide Etani, Yuna Sakakibara, Yasushi Naruse, Yasuhiko Imamura, Takuya Ibaraki, Shinya Fujii. iScience Volume 29, Issue 1 114508 January 16, 2026 DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2025.114508 E Published online December 18, 2025 Copyright: © 2025 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc.

This paper is open access.

Science Literacy Week (October 4 – 11, 2026) in Canada + a University of British Columbia food harvesting event

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Where science events are concerned, this has been a very busy Fall season and I’m running to keep up.

Science Literacy Week, October 4 – 11, 2026

From the Science Literacy Week homepage,

Curiosity, unleashed.

Science Literacy Week is a week-long invitation to notice, wonder, and explore the science woven through everyday life. This year, that’s 153 events and counting.

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My focus is British Columbia (especially Vancouver). There are three events in BC, Note 1: I have reformatted some of the information; Note 2: The Biosonification Exchange Project is being offered over a series of days stretching from October into early December 2026 and, according to another source, one date in February 2027,

Biosonification Exchange Project, presented by Ginalina

October 5 [2026] @ 11:20 am – 11:40 am

Event Series (See All)

Free with Admission

Biosonification* Exchange Project is a new series at Science World presented by multi-disciplinary singer-songwriter, Ginalina, that invites us to explore ways of connecting with the natural world through plant sounds, science, stories and art. Two themes will inspire us throughout the fall: Nature’s Signals and how we are Interwoven.

Details

Date: October 5 [2026]

Time: 11:20 am – 11:40 am

Cost: Free with Admission

Event Category: In-Person

Website: https://www.scienceworld.ca/event/folk-musician-ginalina-performance/

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Spooky Halloween Magic Potions

October 6 [2026] @ 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Mix, fizz, stretch, and discover! In this hands-on Science Literacy Week program, school-age kids will create colourful bubbling “magic potions” and make their own stretchy slime that’s super gooey. Ages 5-12 years old. Caregiver supervision required. Costumes optional. Prepare for icky spooky fun!

REGISTRATION REQUIRED.

Details

Date: October 6

Time: 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm

Event Category: In-Person

Website: https://virl.bc.ca/event/science-literacy-week-halloween-magic-potions/

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Venue

Vancouver Island Regional Library – Comox

1720 Beaufort Ave
Comox, BC V9M 1R7 Canada + Google Map

Phone (250) 339-2971

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Science Literacy Week at the Okanagan Science Centre: Free Admission

October 6 – October 11 [2026]

oin us at the Okanagan Science Centre for Science Literacy Week, October 6–11, with FREE admission all week! Explore the wonders of science through daily planetarium shows exploring our universe and beyond, exciting gyro chair rides, and various hands-on activities for youth and families of all ages. Visit okscience.ca for a complete list of events and workshops. Unleash your curiosity, discover something new, and explore the science all around you!

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Details

Start: October 6 [2026]

End: October 11 [2026]

Event Category: In-Person

Website: okscience.ca

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Venue

Okanagan Science Centre

2704 BC-6
Vernon, British Columbia V1T 5G5 Canada + Google Map

Biosonification at Vancouver’s Science World in French

This is from the Cultures Scientifique website,

Projet « Biosonification Exchange », présenté par Ginalina

novembre 23 [2026] @ 11h20 – 11h40

Gratuit avec le billet d’entrée

« Biosonification Exchange Project » est une nouvelle série proposée par Science World et animée par Ginalina, auteure-compositrice-interprète aux talents multidisciplinaires, qui nous invite à explorer différentes façons d’entrer en contact avec le monde naturel à travers les sons des plantes, la science, les récits et l’art. Deux thèmes nous inspireront tout au long de l’automne : « Les signaux de la nature » et « Comment nous sommes intimement liés ».

Détails

Date : novembre 23 [2026]

Heure : 11h20 – 11h40

Coût : Gratuit avec le billet d’entrée

Catégorie d’Événement: En personne

Site Web : https://www.scienceworld.ca/event/folk-musician-ginalina-performance/

Lieu

Science World

1455 Quebec St
Vancouver, British Columbia V6A 3Z7 Canada + Google Map

Science World does offer a bit more about the Biosonification series of events and a bit more about Ginalina, Note: There is some repetition,

Biosonification* Exchange Project is a new series at Science World presented by multi-disciplinary singer-songwriter, Ginalina, that invites us to explore ways of connecting with the natural world through plant sounds, science, stories and art. Two themes will inspire us throughout the fall: Nature’s Signals and how we are Interwoven.

* Biosonification, also known as Plant Music, is a process that takes electrical data from living matter such as ferns, flowers, fruit or mushrooms, and translates them into music.

Recommended for Ages 0 – 7. Come ready to make music and explore STEAM! Free with admission.

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Dates & Times

Monday, October 5, 12, 19, 26 [2026]

Monday, November 16, 23, 30 [2026]

Monday, December 7 [2026]

Friday, February 12 [2027]

Times for daily show: 11:20am

About Ginalina

Ginalina is a 5x Juno nominated and 2x Canadian Folk Music Award artist with a deep wonder for the natural world. She is the author of a trilogy celebrating rivers, forests, and mountains. Biosonification Exchange Project is an investigation of sounds, ideas, field recordings, and music with the intention to provoke ideas and inspire connection to the land.

A former Professional Industrial Engineer, she now nurtures a fulfilling career rooted in music, nature, cultural heritage preservation, and community celebration. She lives, works, and plays from the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples: Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh, and Musqueam Nations.

I last featured a biosonification event (a performance) in my July 13, 2026 posting “Acoustics and the colo(U)r of the theatre and a Vancouver (Canada) Indian Summer 2026 ‘plant music’ event” (scroll down to the ‘Another sensual crossover …’ subhead). Tarun Nayar (Modern Biology) was the musician.

Harvesting food at the University of British Columbia (UBC) cafeteria

An October 5, 2026 University of British Columbia (UBC) media release (received via email and available here for now) announces a new indoor food growing ‘pod’ at the UBC Orchard Commons dining hall, Note: This media release is puzzling as it has some of the elements of a media-only event but seems to be functioning as both a media advisory and a standard news/media release,

UBC students are getting a taste of the future of local food production. On Oct. 6, [2026] UBC Food Services will harvest leafy greens from a compact indoor growing pod at the UBC Orchard Commons dining hall and serve them through campus dining.

The transparent chamber looks futuristic, but its purpose is practical and educational. The pod uses stacked hydroponic trays and precisely tuned LED lights to grow plants all year round. A standard electrical connection powers the portable, modular Building-Integrated Agriculture (BIA) pod, making it easy to install in any building.

The pod is more than a source of salad greens. It’s a full-scale research prototype, a living laboratory for exploring how food production can be integrated into buildings and city infrastructure, and support year-round growing in remote communities.

Dr. Anubhav Pratap-Singh inspecting the plants in the pod. Photo credit: Duncan McHugh/UBC.

“It’s not simply a greenhouse, it’s a smart, digitally connected food production system that also allows us to study the nutritional and sensory quality of the produce and consumer response, and could become part of future buildings and urban infrastructure,” said Dr. Anubhav Pratap-Singh, research project lead and associate professor in the faculty of land and food systems.

The project brings together food-systems research, campus dining operations, architecture and agricultural technology in a place where ideas can be tested at full scale and in public view.

Perkins&Will, a global architecture firm and a UBC architecture partner, designed the pod, in collaboration with FORM3, to understand how environmentally controlled agriculture could be integrated into existing and future buildings. QuantoTech Ltd., a Vancouver agri-tech company and UBC Food Services vendor, developed the hydroponic growing system and optimized LED lighting to support year-round production and reduce the need to transport greens into the dining hall.

“We tend to think of cities as places that consume resources. This project asks us to imagine them differently, as productive ecosystems where buildings can help grow food and strengthen community resilience,” said Dr. Mohamed Imam, senior research lead and senior associate at Perkins&Will. “The pod turns that big idea into something everyone can see, touch and taste. Just as importantly, it gives us real-world evidence about yield, energy, carbon, cost and space, the trade-offs designers and operators need to understand if building-integrated agriculture is to scale responsibly.”

Photo credit: Tom Kwok Photography, Perkins&Will.

Photo credit: Mariam Al Roujuleh/UBC, courtesy Perkins&Will.

The demonstration brings Perkins&Will’s Resource Circularity research off the page and into daily campus life. The project explores how buildings can do more than provide shelter by contributing to food production in urban settings.

UBC researchers will compare produce grown in the pod with similar products available in grocery stores. The research will examine nutritional quality, growing conditions and perceptions of food produced within residential buildings or community infrastructure, such as universities, community centres or hospitals.

“The larger question we’re trying to answer around food security is: Why should cities only consume food? Why can’t cities and rural communities actually grow their own food?” said Pratap-Singh.

The project also explores whether cities can play a greater role in food production while reducing reliance on lengthy supply chains, improving food security and climate resilience. Researchers hope to better understand how local growing systems can support more resilient food networks in an increasingly urbanized world by bringing food production closer to where people live.

“Vertical farming is going to become essential as climate change continues to impact traditional agriculture and the global population increases,”said QuantoTech founder and CEO Alycia van der Gracht. “We hope this prototype produces evidence about distributed growing systems supporting a more resilient, localized food system, especially for regions with decreased access to land and water, or for climates with a very short growing season from deserts to the Arctic. So this demonstration will test the flexibility to be used inside a building, under-utilized community spaces or alongside traditional farming operations.”

Left to right: Dr. Mohamed Iman, Alycia van der Gracht and David Speight. Photo credit: Mariam Al Roujuleh/UBC, courtesy Perkins&Will.

For UBC Food Services, the project offers an opportunity to explore how hyperlocal food production could complement existing dining operations.

“What we learn through this project could help inform future decisions. We may possibly install more of these pods in existing locations and new buildings,” said David Speight, staff project lead and executive chef and culinary director at UBC Food Services.

“We’re excited about the potential for future growth in on-campus food production,” said Speight. “If we can do more year-round growing on campus to support our needs during the winter and reduce our dependency on imported produce, that could be a real win for us.”

The pods will also provide students with an opportunity to learn about local food and climate-friendly food systems, including screens displaying real-time growth and resource circularity data. Produce from the pods will support chef demonstrations, food literacy activities, and student research and engagement around healthy, plant-forward eating.

“Any time we can engage students around local and plant-based food, that’s a huge opportunity for us to talk about climate-friendly food systems, plant-based eating, local supply chains and supporting B.C.-owned businesses,” said Speight.

The installation can also help students have a deeper appreciation for the work put into producing food,said Speight. “Students will see produce go from a tiny seedling to a fully grown plant, then harvested directly for their dining experience.”

The BIA pod is expected to move to additional locations on and off campus next year. The team will continue to study crop quality, public perceptions and how small food-growing systems may empower communities and serve schools, hospitals or remote areas.

This project is supported by funding from UBC’s Campus as a Living Lab competitive grant, MITACS, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s Agricultural Clean Technology (ACT) Program and the BC Centre for Agritech Innovation (BCCAI).

Multimedia assets: Dropbox [Note: Link removed]

Event: UBC to celebrate first harvest from innovative indoor growing pod

Date/Time: Tuesday, Oct. 6, 9-11 a.m.

Location/Map: Orchard Commons Student Residence, 6363 Agronomy Rd., Vancouver; Room #1116 by Open Kitchen dining hall. (MAP)

Parking:

UBC B4 Lot, 6365 Agronomy Rd., Vancouver. (MAP)

UBC West Parkade, 2140 Lower Mall, Vancouver. (MAP)

Assignment editors: Media are encouraged to register by emailing luixia.lee@ubc.ca. Please arrive by 8:40 a.m. to allow enough time to set up.

Event details:

UBC Food Services will harvest the first crop of lettuce and herbs from the new Building-Integrated Agriculture (BIA) Pod at Orchard Commons residence. The pod, illuminated by vibrant LED lighting and equipped with custom-made, compact vertical hydroponic growing systems, is part of a research project exploring how buildings can become hubs for hyperlocal, low-carbon food production.

There will be a live harvest of the produce, demonstrations of the pod’s technology and growing environment and sampling of freshly harvested produce.

Interviews:

Golshan Matinfar, Mitacs student researcher and food science PhD candidate at UBC faculty of land and food systems

David Speight, staff project lead and executive chef and culinary director, UBC Food Services

Hayley Simpson, Mitacs student researcher and graduate student at the UBC faculty of arts and Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability

Dr. Mohamed Imam, Ph.D., senior research lead and senior associate at Perkins&Will

Alycia van der Gracht, founder and CEO, QuantoTech Ltd.

You can find Perkins&Will here, Form3 here, and QuantoTech here.

Vancouver AI Community Meetup on September 30, 2026: AI Safety & Transparency

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Before getting to the event details, it might be useful to give an overview of the situation regarding AI safety and transparency and the response from this British Columbia AI community to a federal government consultation that closes tomorrow, September 23, 2026, from the event page,

What BC told Ottawa. The AI transparency takeover.

If an AI system makes a decision about your life, you should be able to question it, reach someone responsible, and get a bad decision fixed. Pretty reasonable things to ask. Much harder to deliver than a little label saying AI was involved.

We’re bringing a piece of work this community made together: our response to Canada’s consultation on AI transparency. We’ll look at what people asked for, how those ideas became a submission, and what we should expect from the people receiving it.

Bring your questions. Bring your disagreements. Bring the example from your own life that keeps getting left out of these conversations.

Together we worked through Canada’s five AI transparency questions as part of the Canadian federal consultation that closes September 23.

For anyone who wants to read ahead:

The full AI transparency response, with findings, responses to the five consultation areas, and the public source record.

What Twenty People in a Studio Told the Federal Government About AI, the story of the people and work behind the submission.

The AI Trust Gap Is Not an Education Problem, our earlier response to Canada’s AI strategy and the assumption that more familiarity automatically produces more trust.

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A September 21, 2026 notice (received via email) for Vancouver’s next AI community meetup promotes the upcoming September 2026 meeting listed on this event page, Note: There is likely some redundancy in the information included below,

You’re invited to

Vancouver AI Community Meetup: AI Safety & Transparency

Date:
Wednesday, September 30 [2026]
Time:
6:00 PM – 10:00 PM
Place:
H.R. MacMillan Space Centre
Vancouver, BC

[Earlyworm tickets $50 CAD available until 11:30 PM PT September 21, 2026
$60 CAD standard tickets available until 12 am PT October 1, 2926]

September [2026] Program

September 30 is the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Jonny Williams opens for us. He’s been part of this since the very first gatherings, his family too, and he starts us off in a good way every time. We’re glad the night falls when it does and that he’s the one who begins it. Wear orange.

This summer, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada [ISED] asked Canadians what greater AI transparency should look like. Its consultation covers five areas: identifying AI-generated content, knowing when you’re interacting with AI, understanding AI systems, tracking serious incidents, and keeping a record of what AI agents do on our behalf. The deadline is September 23 [2026], one week before we gather at the Space Centre. Read the federal consultation →

On August 4 [2026], about twenty of us sat down at Parker Street Studios to work through those questions together. Tanya Slingsby opened the studio. Peter Van Garderen facilitated. People brought experiences from their work and their lives, and the conversation kept getting into the difficult stuff underneath the survey: consent, responsibility, and who has the power to say no.

We didn’t finish every survey question. We did leave a public record of the conversation: the recording, transcript, and facilitator’s notes.

Sara Taherzadeh turned that material into the collective report. The Lab reviewed it in September, and BC + AI emailed the submission to ISED on September 11. We also documented where AI tools helped and where people made the decisions. A submission asking for transparency ought to show its own work. Read how it was made →

The demand running through it is practical. Tell people what a system is doing and what information it used. Give them someone to contact. Keep a record they can challenge. Make correction and repair possible. Disclosure should leave a person able to do something with what they’ve learned.

People also questioned whether taking part would change anything. BC + AI is asking ISED to publish which recommendations it accepts, defers, or rejects, with reasons. Giving your time to a public process should come with a way to see what happened next. Read the findings →

At Meetup #33, Peter Van Garderen will talk through how the August session worked. Sara Taherzadeh, a registered nurse turned governance architect, will walk us through the submission and what accountability could mean in practice. Then we’ll open the floor.

You don’t need a policy background or a stack of finished opinions. Come curious and willing to hear somebody else’s experience. The useful part of Vancouver AI has always been what happens when people who would otherwise never meet start thinking together.

The Lineup

Jonny Williams

Jonny opens Vancouver AI the way this room has learned to start: locate the night in place before anybody demos a model. Squamish Nation. Cultural consultation that turns fat impact assessments into something a Nation can actually use.

He’s put AI to work on that paper mountain, and he keeps asking the ugly ownership questions out loud: who holds a model trained on Squamish language, and what happens when fluent speakers are still a small circle.

Sep 30 is National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.

Sara Taherzadeh: Governance Architect & Enterprise OCM [organizational change management]

Sara is a registered nurse turned governance architect who has spent more than 25 years making healthcare technology work better for the people it’s meant to serve. She helped establish what became HealthLink BC 811 and has worked across British Columbia’s digital health systems — from frontline care to provincial technology infrastructure governance and change management.

Sara knows how institutions work, where they fall short of the people they serve, and why the hardest questions are usually the ones most worth asking together. She brings that human-centered, lived experience to AI governance, championing accountability, inclusive decision-making, and real authority for the people affected by the systems being built around and for them.

Peter Van Garderen: Archivist & AI Researcher

Peter spent decades on digital archives (Archivematica, AtoM), the unglamorous stack that keeps records findable and contestable. Then he pointed that same provenance brain at AI.

He ran the Ethical Futures Lab room that answered Ottawa’s transparency questions as one group, posted the recording and notes the next day, and will not treat “AI-assisted” as a free pass on receipts.

Kris Krüg: Executive Director, BC + AI Ecosystem

Straight back from Montréal. ALL IN week. Centres of excellence by day. Ministers and the techno-power-broker set by night. And the citizen resistance that shows up when “innovation” forgets who pays the bill. Kris isn’t here to recite talking points.

He’s here to report what those rooms actually sound like when you hold critique in one hand and curiosity in the other. What that means for Vancouver on a night about transparency, trust, and receipts.

Demos from Metacreation Lab for Creative AI

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Get ready to bring your thoughts to the meetup.

MUTEK Festival: August 25 -30, 2025 and its MUTEK Forum: August 26-28, 2026 in Montréal, Canada

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MUTEK = musique/c technologie/y That seems a pretty safe guess given this from MUTEK’s Mission page,

Launched in the year 2000, MUTEK is dedicating itself to the presentation of live electronic music and real-time audiovisual performance, making it one of the rare outlets in North America for such innovations. After 20 years, the festival’s future-seeking mandate has matured—and while the promise has in many ways caught up with the present—its commitment to the ongoing mutations and variations of contemporary digital creativity remain, with its eyes and ears still fixated on what comes next.

The festival extends now to 6 days and nights—and integrates the professional Forum into the architecture of the week to enrich conversations and encounters with current technologically driven practices and philosophies. Plugged into a global circuit since inception, creating an international rendezvous for artists and publics alike, the festival thrives on creating a context for discovery and exchange. Faithful to its values of inclusion and accessibility, MUTEK is committed to a more equitable and representative programming of all diversities, in particular through the Amplify initiative.

It also magnifies Montréal, not just as its urban backdrop, but as the source of so much of its creative soul; the local is always elevated in dialogue with exceptional artists from around the world.

MUTEK has built a unique model over the years that has proven seductively exportable. Tentacles stretch across 4 continents, to 6 other cities now, with each satellite adapting the festival’s template of values as a means to inspire new ways of engaging with the richness of electronic and digital artistry.

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I have two Wikipedia entries for MUTEK. Bear with me, the contrast is striking, first the English language version, Note: Links have been removed,

MUTEK is a Montreal-based festival dedicated to the promotion of electronic music and the digital arts.^[1] Its central platform is an annual six-day event in Montreal that takes place in late August.^[2] Alongside the Montreal edition, MUTEK also hosts international versions of its festival.

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Now, the French language version, Note: Links have been removed,

MUTEK est un festival de musique électronique et de créativité numérique qui a lieu annuellement à Montréal depuis 2000. La plateforme centrale de l’organisme constitue le festival qui se tient chaque année à la fin du mois d’août dans le Quartier des spectacles à Montréal^[1].

La mission principale du festival est d’offrir aux artistes les plus originaux et visionnaires du domaine, un tremplin visant à les faire connaître et les propulser le plus loin possible dans leur concept de création tout en visant la sensibilisation et le développement de nouveaux publics. L’engagement continu envers l’innovation et la promotion de la créativité contemporaine fait de MUTEK une organisation majeure dans le monde de la musique électronique en direct et de la performance audiovisuelle en temps réel^[2].

I especially like the part where the festival offers artists, who are the most imaginary and visionary in their domains, a springboard … . So much more ebullient than the English language version, which collapses two paragraphs into one.

MUTEK Montréal Festival 2026

From the Montréal MUTEK organization Welcome homepage,

Edition 27: Amplify & Resonate

MUTEK Montréal Festival returns to the Quartier des spectacles from August 25 to 30, 2026, for six days and nights dedicated to electronic music, audiovisual performances and digital creativity.

This 27th edition brings together international artists, leading figures of the current scene and emerging voices in a program focused on live performance, sonic experimentation and immersive audiovisual experiences. In the heart of downtown Montréal, the festival unfolds across a network of venues connecting concert halls, immersive spaces and outdoor stages.

Over five distinct series, the Festival moves through different energies, aesthetics, and ways of experiencing sound, image, and space.

Explore the Schedule

Artists

A Guy Called Gerald | Abulzooz | Ah! Kosmos and Hainbach | Alan Harman | Arbor and Tzu Ni | aria | ArtSaves | Barker | BelleyFERRIS | Ben UFO | chiquitamagic | Cleo Leigh | con secuencias + Milo Reinhardt | Cry (Kilbourne & Relaxer) | CUERPOS | Dana Ruh | Dave Huismans (ex_libris) | Debit | dustbunny | ebb | El Ángel Exterminador & Anastasiia Vorobiova | ELECTRONICOS FANTASTICOS! | Elsewhere in India ft. Murthovic & Thiruda | Estelle Schorpp & charline dally | Evicshen | Facta | Fennesz & Lillevan | Florence-Delphine Roux | gyrofield | Hermanos Riffo Gómez | Honeydrip | Hot Sleepers | Ida Toninato | Istanbul Ghetto Club | JakoJako | jamvvis + YFBOB | Jeff Mills | Jenn Mong & Trevor Van de Velde | Jordan Gardner | JS Baillat & Mateo Murphy | Julian Sartorius | Jump Source | Kali Malone | Kara-Lis Coverdale | Korea Town Acid & Ajeebsir | M Salaciak | Marc-Antoine Barbier | Marie Delprat | Matt & Mark Thibideau | Matthew Herbert | Matthew Herbert & Julian Sartorius | Mia Koden | Monsieurmadam | MOORE + SALAS | Nazar | Nelly-Eve Rajotte | NGL Flounce | Noémi Büchi | NVST | Patche | Paul Vivien | Pick a Piper | pliq | Poirier | Polygonia | Purelink with Mika Oki | Rival Consoles | Sara Persico & Mika Oki | Sarah Rossy | shn shn | Super Galaxy Meow Meow | Tristan Perich & James McVinnie | Violent Magic Orchestra | Voices From The Lake | wetdogg | Zora Jones | 16:9 ratio

[Note: I apologize to the artists but with such a large number of names {over 50 of them} I will not be adding their names to the tagging for this posting.]

Discover the artists

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If you go to the Montréal MUTEK organization Welcome homepage and scroll down past the excerpts included here, you’ll find a a SoundCloud playlist for Edition 27. Enjoy!

MUTEK Forum 2026: Symbiotic Frequencies

Here’s a description from the MUTEK website’s forum page,

For 26 years, MUTEK has supported Montréal’s leadership in digital arts by promoting its culture, creators, and fostering local and international collaborations, as one of the world’s first festivals native to digital culture.

Within this context, MUTEK Forum serves as a dynamic platform bridging digital art, electronic music, and cutting-edge technology. Through its curated programs, the Forum addresses critical global challenges and supports artists, thinkers, and innovators in developing transformative ideas and projects. By partnering with leading research institutions, cultural organizations, and industry leaders, the Forum is a recognized marketplace for experimentation and exchange, nurturing new (and existing) alliances and collaborations within the digital arts.

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Now, from the MUTEK Forum website’s Symbiotic Frequencies webpage,

MUTEK Forum returns for its 12th edition with a renewed sense of ambition. New venues, an expanded program, and a theme that sets the tone for three days of radical imagination and curated exchange.

This opening session welcomes attendees, introduces the week’s trajectory, and unpacks the ideas at the heart of Symbiotic Frequencies, a theme exploring the entangled relationship between technology, creativity, ecology, and human connection. Expect an overview of the key moments to catch, the people shaping them, and the threads that will run through it all.

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The Symbiotic Frequencies for MUTEK Forum 2026 has an Acttivities Schedule page, which lists a number of intriguing presentations. Here are a few that particularly interest me,

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Does an AI God Have an Ass?

From Wednesday, August 26, 2026
2:15 pm_3:00 pm

Zach Blas is an artist, writer, filmmaker, and Associate Professor at the University of Toronto whose practice contends with computational technologies, their industries, and the powers that that constitute and animate them. In this lecture performance, he traces an intriguing arc from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel to the techno-religiosity of Silicon Valley, exposing the religious unconscious lurking beneath contemporary AI fantasy and the systematic erasure of embodiment it requires. Through encounters with AI gods, Blas reveals what the divine machine mythology conceals: the bodies, labour and invisible workers who actually make the system run.

Part of his Silicon Traces trilogy which contends with the histories, beliefs, and fantasies shaping Silicon Valley’s visions of domination, the performance connects to CULTUS (2023), a moving image installation probing tech industry belief systems, and the artist book Ass of God (2024), published by the Vienna Secession and Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König. Irreverent, meticulous and pointedly in tune with Symbiotic Frequencies: a reminder that every network has a body and every god has a supply chain.

Content warning: for adult audiences and contains explicit sexual material, including graphic descriptions of sexuality and AI-generated images of nudity.

Please note: this activity will be in English, with live transcription available.

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Cosmos to Quanta in 10 Terms: Curators’ Take

From Thursday, August 27, 2026
10:00 am_10:30 am

Opening the day, curatorial duo Auronda Scalera and Alfredo Cramerotti, known for projects including Art Dubai Digital, Noor Riyadh, Web to Verse at Manchester Metropolitan University/MODAL, and Cosmotechnics at Fondazione Querini Stampalia in occasion of the Venice Biennale, deliver a keynote that traces how curatorial practice has been fundamentally transformed over the last decade by technology, co-creation, and new modes of perception and knowledge production.

The talk unfolds as a constellation of ten key concepts that have shaped and continue to shape our thinking and practice : some drawn from thinkers including Yuk Hui, Donna Haraway, Félix Guattari, and Hito Steyerl; others coined within their own practice, among them Hyper-Imaging, Oneironaut, Quantum Curating and Nachleben Digitalis.

Each term marks a moment where curatorial thinking expanded and reinvented itself in dialogue with art, technology, and philosophy. Together, they form the vocabulary of a practice built on co-inhabiting, co-imagining, and co-becoming with artists, machines, and publics.

Please note: this activity will be in English, with live transcription available.

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Brainless : How the World Thinks

From Thursday, August 27, 2026
1:00 pm_1:30 pm

What if intelligence was never located in the brain to begin with?

Claire L. Evans is a writer, artist, and cultural critic whose work sits at the intersection of technology, science and human imagination – best known as the author of Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet and as a member of pop group YACHT.

In this keynote, Evans invites us to look beyond the human brain to explore purely embodied modes of intelligence. Drawing on diverse manifestations of intelligence in the natural world, she considers the potential of biological computing and asks what nature’s own systems grown rather than mined can teach us about the future of AI and the many shapes intelligence can take.

This talks sits close to the heart of Symbiotic Frequencies, a reminder that the most sophisticated networks on Earth predate the silicon chip by billions of years.

Please note: this activity will be in English, with live transcription available.

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Build it Or Buy it? Creativity and Intellectual Property (IP)

From Thursday, August 27, 2026
3:30 pm_4:20 pm

Immersive creation moves in both directions. Sometimes it starts as something specific, built by a team of collaborators chasing an idea, and only later has to figure out how to scale, tour, or license without losing what made it worth experiencing in the first place. Other times, it starts from an existing intellectual property (IP), a story, a universe, a character, and the challenge is the opposite: how do you adapt something that already exists into a memorable immersive experience, rather than just repackaging it?

Either direction raises the same underlying question: what makes original IP a real strategic asset, not just a single work, but a universe, a clear authorship, a concept with enough depth to open doors to financing, partnerships, adaptations, and wider audience reach?

This panel brings together IP specialists, performing arts centers, LBE venues, and creative studios, including The Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, PHI, Mance Communications, and Supply + Demand, to talk about that pressure point. Can you adapt interdisciplinary, experimental work into something that travels and sustains itself without sanding off its edges? Can an adaptation of an existing IP still feel like a genuine immersive creation, rather than a licensing exercise? Is there a version of “successful” that doesn’t mean “safe,” especially now, when AI can generate a thousand versions of “safe” in seconds?

Rather than treating scale and commercial viability as the enemy of creativity, this conversation looks at how the best studios build IP, adapted or original, as a foundation for long-term creative and business development, without losing the strangeness, and the human point of view, that made the work worth building in the first place.

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Symbiotic Frequencies / Symbiotic Futures : A Worldbuilding Workshop presented by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB)

From Friday, August 28, 2026
10:00 am_1:00 pm

Advance registration is sold out. Extra spots available 15 min before, first come first served.

Calling all artists, musicians, designers, writers, filmmakers, creative technologists, and curious future-builders.

What kind of world would give rise to entirely new forms of music, instruments, and creative expression?

In this collaborative 3-hour workshop, participants will use worldbuilding as a creative design process to imagine and build a shared future civilization. Together, we’ll explore how values, technologies, ecologies, cultures and social systems shape everyday life—and how changing one part of a world transforms everything else.

Inspired by MUTEK’s 2026 theme, Symbiotic Frequencies, the workshop invites participants to question our evolving relationships with artificial intelligence, living systems, artistic practice and technological infrastructures. Rather than predicting the future, we’ll collectively imagine one that is guided by curiosity, care and creativity.

Working with natural and found materials, participants will craft a physical artifact from this imagined world—an experimental musical instrument that reflects the world’s cultural identity, a tangible expression of the world’s history, values and way of life.

As the world evolves through conversation and collaboration, facilitator-led AI visualization will create an evolving visual backdrop that brings the participants’ ideas to life in real time. These visual interpretations serve as a shared environment for reflection and discussion, while participants remain focused on the collaborative process of worldbuilding and hands-on making.

By the end of the workshop, participants will have co-created a richly imagined world, contributed to its visual identity, and leave with a handcrafted artifact from the future—a unique piece of the civilization they built together.

This workshop is a collaboration between worldbuilding facilitator Paisley Smith and Vincent McCurley, Designer, Creative Technologies at the National Film Board of Canada’s Innovation Lab.

No prior technical knowledge required.

Visual references are created by the facilitators using locally run, open-source AI tools. Participants do not use AI directly; they create their artifacts by hand using physical materials. AI is used only to visualize the group’s evolving world and support discussion.

Please note: This activity will be in English only, without live transcription nor translation. During the event, no interpreter for the Deaf will be present.

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Listening at the Edge: Sound, Quantum Physics, and the Act of Attention

From Friday, August 28, 2026
1:30 pm_2:15 pm

Pauline Oliveros’ Deep Listening practice asked us to expand our awareness to include all sounds, inner and outer. Quantum physics, in a strange parallel, describes a universe where observation itself changes what is observed. This session brings those two ideas into dialogue, gathering quantum physicists, composers, sonic healers, and curators to ask: what is listening? and does the physics of uncertainty change the answer?

The conversation moves between registers. Alexandre Blais, professor at Universite de Sherbrooke and co-creator of circuit quantum electrodynamics, brings the science that underlies these institutions, while sound artist and composer France Jobin finds ways to make that science felt rather than simply understood, most recently with Lueurs quantiques and The Fluctuation of Emptiness. Composer and performer Kara-Lis Coverdale approaches the same territory from a different angle, working across electronic music and pipe organ to build sonic environments that dissolve the boundaries between musical systems and languages. And Rena Anakwe, interdisciplinary artist and NEW INC [New Museum’s cultural incubator] cohort member, grounds the conversation in the body, weaving sound, scent, and traditional healing to ask how reconnecting to nature, and to one another might itself be a form of listening.

Moderated by Eva Fischer of CIVA [Contemporary Immersive Visual Art] Festival and presented by NEW INC

Please note: this activity will be in English, with live transcription available.

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That first one about whether or not an AI god has an ass reminded me of a programme (Culturama) I watched on RadioCanada, Les fesses (although I remembered the title as L’univers des fesses),

Les fesses

Accompagnée d’Elkahna Talbi, Catherine Trudeau et de Thomas Leblanc, Chantal Lamarre se penche sur la représentation des fesses dans la culture. De l’oeuvre de Spencer Tunick à la Vénus de Willendorf, en passant par Deux femmes en or et le French cancan, nombreuses sont les fesses qui ont marqué notre imaginaire.

The rest of the items relate to one or other of topics covered here: brains, quantum science, sound, intellectual property, etc.

h/t to Kris Krüg for mention of MUTEK in one of his communications to the community.

Finally, If you happen to be in Montréal, perhaps you’ll be able to catch some of presentations..

Data for Good! Vancouver AI Community Meetup on August 26, 2026

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An August 12, 2026 notice (received via email) for Vancouver’s next AI community meetup promotes an upcoming August 2026 meeting on this event page,

You’re invited to

Vancouver AI Community Meetup: Data for Good!

Date:
Wednesday, August 26 [2026]
Time:
6:00 PM – 10:00 PM
Place:
H.R. MacMillan Space Centre
Vancouver, BC

[Earlyworm tickets $50 CAD available until 11:30 PM PT August 19, 2026
$60 CAD standard tickets available until 12 am PT August 27, 2926]

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This month moves from community service to public policy to live art.

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Data for Good will bring real nonprofit data challenges into the room.

Taleeb Noormohamed will join us for a candid conversation about Canada’s AI direction.

And Misagh Azimi will perform a live audio-visual work using an AI instrument trained on his own music.

One night. Three very different encounters with AI. One question underneath it all:

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FEATURED CONVERSATION: TALEEB NOORMOHAMED

Member of Parliament for Vancouver Granville · Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation

Taleeb Noormohamed sits at an unusually relevant intersection of technology, public policy and community consequence.

Before entering Parliament, he built companies and held senior executive roles with global technology businesses. Today, he represents Vancouver Granville and serves as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Innovation, helping shape Canada’s response to one of the fastest-moving technological shifts in generations.

Taleeb joins us for a candid conversation about what responsible AI innovation should mean for Canada, for British Columbia, and for the people who will live with the choices being made now.

DATA FOR GOOD: AI FOR GOOD, FOR REAL

Data for Good connects skilled data volunteers with nonprofits that have valuable information, difficult problems, and rarely enough internal capacity to bring the two together.

Their work is practical: understand the organization, scope the right problem, build something useful, transfer the knowledge, and leave the nonprofit stronger than they found it.

Gordon Hamilton, Fraser Uitdenbosch, Amanda Calvo and Dhavide Aruliah will give us a rapid 15-minute tour through real projects, lessons, failures and opportunities. Then they will put their open questions to the room for a 10-minute working session.

Bring recommendations, collaborators and constructive troublemaking. This is not a panel about how AI might theoretically help somebody someday. These are live problems looking for useful people.

Gordon Hamilton: Chapter Lead, Data for Good · President, DAMA Vancouver [Data Administration Management Association (DAMA)]

Gordon Hamilton is a data quality evangelist who has spent years building communities where data professionals donate their skills to nonprofits and public-interest organizations.

He leads Data for Good and serves as president of DAMA Vancouver [Data Administration Management Association (DAMA)], connecting the technical discipline of data management with the practical realities of organizations doing difficult work on limited budgets.

Gordon keeps returning to the unfashionable question beneath every shiny AI project: Can we trust the data underneath it?

He will frame the session, share what Data for Good has learned, and put the team’s most useful unresolved questions to the room.

Fraser Uitdenbosch: Data and Analytics Leader, National Bank of Canada · Chapter Lead, Data for Good

Fraser Uitdenbosch brings enterprise experience in analytics, data strategy, business transformation and performance to the decidedly less tidy world of community organizations.

As a chapter lead with Data for Good, he helps turn broad ambitions into projects that can actually be scoped, staffed, delivered and sustained.

His work connects two worlds that rarely meet often enough: the discipline of large-scale organizational data and the ingenuity required when the budget is smaller but the stakes are not.

Amanda Calvo: Technology Portfolio Specialist, TransLink · Project Lead, Data for Good

Amanda Calvo is a data and business analyst who works at TransLink and helps lead Data for Good’s community of project leaders.

Originally from Brazil, Amanda has built a new professional life in Vancouver while becoming one of the people who makes volunteer data work actually move. She coordinates cross-functional teams, translates organizational needs into clear projects, and helps nonprofits turn analysis into decisions they can use.

Her recent work includes leading a Data for Good project with Special Olympics BC. She brings the human translation layer every technical project needs: between the data people, the organization, and the community the work is supposed to serve.

Dhavide Aruliah: Principal Scientist, MKDA Consulting · Project Lead, Data for Good

Dhavide Aruliah is a data scientist, educator and former professor of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science.

Across three decades in academia and industry, he has taught and mentored thousands of learners, led training programs supporting the scientific Python ecosystem at Anaconda and Quansight, and helped people move from mathematical ideas to computational work they can reproduce and trust.

Today, Dhavide runs MKDA Consulting and leads several Data for Good projects. He brings unusual technical depth, a teacher’s instinct, and a stubborn commitment to making complicated work understandable and useful.

Vanessa Gonzales & Makaidea Gonzales: Squamish Nation

chiyakselut (Venessa Gonzales) opens the night with a Squamish West Coast welcome, song and blessing, alongside her daughter Makaidea.

Her lineage bridges three nations: Squamish, Musqueam, and Cree from Saskatchewan, the same territory beneath the Space Centre.

Venessa harvests traditional medicines, makes healing salves, and works in glass etching, wool weaving, and cedar weaving, and she teaches traditional games so the knowledge keeps moving to the next generation.

LIVE AUDIO-VISUAL PERFORMANCE
Misagh Azimi: Collective Consciousness

Interdisciplinary Artist · Creative AI Researcher · Creator of Fragmenta

Misagh Azimi joins us for a live audio-visual performance from his Collective Consciousness series.

Lines from Misagh’s own writing are used to prompt personalized diffusion models trained on his own music. The models return fragments of sound and projected imagery. Misagh cuts, orders, develops and answers those fragments inside a structure he has composed, then performs the result live using Ableton and Fragmenta, the open-source AI instrument he built himself.

The model does not write the piece. It supplies material. The artist decides what survives and what it becomes.

Misagh is an Iranian-German interdisciplinary artist and AI researcher completing his PhD in Creative AI. His compositions, installations and performances have appeared in Germany, Australia and New Zealand. His research examines authorship, artistic labour and the development of ethical, artist-centred technologies for music.

Fragmenta runs locally, keeps artists’ recordings on their own machines, and allows musicians to train generative models on work they actually own.

This is AI not as an autonomous author, but as a strange new instrument in human hands.

Kris Krüg: Executive Direcotry, BC + AI Ecosystem Assocation · Curator, Futureproof Festival of AI

Kris Krüg is the founder of Vancouver AI and executive director of the BC + AI Ecosystem Association, the nonprofit that grew out of these monthly gatherings.

A photographer and creative technologist by trade, he has spent two decades documenting culture and building rooms where people actually talk, and he now curates the Futureproof Festival of AI, October 28 to 30, also at the Space Centre.

He hosts these nights the way he wants the future built: curious, a little irreverent, and allergic to hype.

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Taleeb Noormohamed, eh?

This description of M. Noormohamed seems a little generous,

Before entering Parliament, he built companies and held senior executive roles with global technology businesses … [emphases mine]

Which global technology businesses? VRBO (American online marketplace) and Farfetch (a global luxury marketplace) are the two mentioned in his Wikipedia entry and there is no mention of what he did. As for his education (also from Wikipedia), there’s a Bachelor of Arts degree from Princeton University,, along with an independent concentration in International Relations and Islamic Civilizations, and a master’s degree from Harvard University. No mention of the academic specialty for the Harvard degree. Also, he “attended Oxford University for his doctoral studies,” with no mention of the academic specialty and he doesn’t seem to have gotten along very far in those studies. Failure to complete a PhD is not unusual but if he’d completed his studies, they could have used the ABD (all but dissertation) designation.

His tech experience seems a little scant but M. Noormohamed’s exploits don’t end there. Journalist Bob Mackin adds some intriguing detail in a September 19, 2021 posting on his news website (The Breaker), Note: Links have been removed,

In his filing with Elections Canada, Liberal Vancouver Granville candidate Taleeb Noormohamed describes his occupation as “CEO.”

On Sept. 20 [2021], he could become MP [he did win the election] in the riding won twice by Jody Wilson-Raybould, the independent who blew the whistle on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s SNC-Lavalin scandal.

Noormohamed’s campaign has been the most-controversial of any Liberal west of Ontario (where candidates Raj Saini and Kevin Vuong were dropped due to sex scandals).

The revelations of Noormohamed’s secret career as a real estate flipper only got worse with a cringe-inducing interview with CTV News Vancouver and a photo of him hiding in the passenger seat of a car while an assistant knocked on doors [emphases mine]. Both went viral.

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Many unanswered questions remain about Noormohamed. Here are 10.

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5.

Your campaign bio on the Liberal website omits the time you spent with The Stewart Group, a lobbying and procurement consulting firm that has represented SNC-Lavalin, Bombardier and Compass card provider Cubic Transportation. Lobbyist Lecia Stewart was the bid strategist behind SNC-Lavalin’s troubled Ottawa Confederation Line.

The Stewart Group’s clients also included Southern Rail of B.C., whose tracks are used for hauling coal. Fraser Surrey Docks was eyed as a terminal to export thermal coal from Wyoming’s Powder River Basin.

How do you reconcile your past with a firm that represented a company involved in shipping dirty coal with the Liberal promise to ban thermal coal exports from Canada no later than 2030?

6.

The International Olympic Committee had policies in 2007, when you joined the Vancouver 2010 organizing committee, that required executives to avoid conflicts of interest. When you were buying and selling real estate in Downtown Vancouver near Olympic venues, did you disclose those activities to your superiors at VANOC, as per the ethical policy?

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9.

You are skilled at buying and selling real estate for profit. You live in the Vancouver Centre riding. Why did you not buy a residence in Vancouver Granville, the riding you have sought to represent since 2019?

10.

If you win Vancouver Granville in the Sept. 20 election, will you quit all corporate executive and board positions and divest any such holdings, so you can focus solely on being an MP? Will you sell your remaining real estate properties or put them in a blind trust?

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Scant (technology-wise) and sketchy (otherwise). Perhaps there’s more that hasn’t made its way into his Wikipedia entry but as it stands, Norrmohamed’s record seems to provide a contrast with the topic at hand “Data for Good.” Still, people can surprise you.

Back to the event

Here are the details again from the event page,

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Event Details

Date: August 26, 2026

Time: 6:00 PM to 10:00 PM PDT

Venue: H.R. MacMillan Space Centre, 1100 Chestnut St, Vancouver, BC V6J 3J9

Format: Community talks, demos, conversation, and open networking

Who This Is For

People building with AI and people trying to understand what it is changing.

Creatives, technologists, researchers, organizers, founders, students, educators, and public-sector teams.

Anyone who wants a local, grounded, human room for sorting through the hype, the useful parts, and the hard questions.

What To Bring

Bring your questions, demos, doubts, experiments, and projects in progress. The point is not to clap for every new model. The point is to learn in public, notice what is real, and build relationships with people who can help make the work better.

It Takes a Village To Raise a Meetup

Big thanks, and please support our sponsors and partners including Internet Archive Canada, HR Mac Millan Space Centre and Intellomx AI Drug Discovery CEO Simon Haworth.

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Enjoy!

Male pregnancy, seahorses, Amanda Vincent, and Iconic Fishes (an art/sci project?)

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Amanda Vincent’s name has become part of something larger (so to speak), it is included in the name for a new species of seahorse, Hippocampus amandavincentae.

Hippocampus amandavincentae by © Daniela De Angelis / Doubledeepdiving.com [downloaded from https://projectseahorse.org/news-hippocampusamandavincentae/]

Elana Shepert’s August 11 (?), 2026 article for Vancouver is Awesome charms almost as much as the seahorses do,

Seahorses. These petite ocean dwellers are the stuff of dreams. They look like aquatic, mythical mini horses. And, to top it off, males are the ones who give birth.

Recently, a University of British Columbia [UBC] professor who has dedicated her life to the study and preservation of the unique fish had one named after her — but it isn’t found in Canadian waters.

Amanda Vincent says she’s honoured that the new species has her name, but hopes more can be done to bring the animal she loves from the brink of extinction.

“A third of seahorse species are threatened with extinction. And another third are data deficient, meaning we don’t even know enough to calculate their status,” she tells Vancouver Is Awesome.

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Do we have seahorses in Metro Vancouver waters?

The short answer is: it’s complicated. All “true seahorses,” as Vincent puts it, are designated by the Ancient Greek word hippocampus, and none of these are found in the Pacific Northwest. You may have recognized the word “hippocampus” as the seahorse-shaped part of the human brain. It’s named after these seafarers.

But members of the overarching “seahorse family” are located in Metro Vancouver waters (science is complicated). This group is called Syngnathidae and includes other fascinating creatures such as pipefish and seadragons, in addition to seahorses.

The Vancouver Aquarium often has exhibits with seadragons, but otherwise you won’t find those locally. To spot those mind-bendingly cool aquatic fish, you’ll have to visit the Land Down Under. …

Attention B.C. divers: You can spot pipefish here, which is the closest thing to a seahorse locally. The most-common species is the bay pipefish, slender beauties with curious faces found from California up to Alaska. They are roughly 40 centimetres long and camouflage with their habitats.

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But Canada does have one “true” seahorse, located in Nova Scotia: the lined seahorse (Hippocampus erectus).

A new species named after a Vancouver professor

Vincent was recently honoured with a new seahorse species in the Indian Ocean, Hippocampus amandavincentae, named after her.

The new species is a real beauty, says Vincent, often silvery-white through to golden, and may even change colours to match its habitat, “as many species do.” Its range stretches from the Western Indian Ocean to East Africa, up to the Red Sea and down to Western India.

“And it’s a very elegant-looking seahorse, I’m proud to say,” she says happily, but adds they only have a few specimens so far.

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Studying Hippocampus: How seahorses save the world

Vincent says she chose to study seahorses because they’re so unique.

“In seahorses, only the male gets pregnant [emphasis mine]…. So I started studying them way back when I was doing my PhD, because I was so interested in male pregnancy and what that meant for the evolution of sex differences in general. And then I fell in love with these crazy fishes, which are just different from almost anything else,” she explains.

The whimsical creatures also help stir up conversations around conservation.

“If we talk about the fact that bottom trawls drag up everything in their path when they’re fishing, people are like, ‘Well, OK.’ But when I say, ‘Well, there’s seahorses in the bottom of those nets’ … people get a lot more interested,” she says.

Seahorses transformed global export regulations for marine life, and now 185 countries have agreed on export regulations for them. In the wake of this movement, scientists and advocates secured similar regulations for sharks, rays, angelfish and other species, Vincent explains.

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Shepert’s August 11 (?), 2026 article is a good, short read that includes more images.

An August 6, 2026 Project Seahorse news release (also on the UBC science website in a mildly edited version dated August 12, 2026) provides more detail, Note: Links have been removed,

An international team of scientists has named a seahorse species from the Indian Ocean, Hippocampus amandavincentae, in honour of Prof. Amanda Vincent, director and co-founder of UBC’s Project Seahorse, for pioneering seahorse science and advancing marine conservation.

This magical seahorse was found by researchers among heaps of fish bycatch at Tuticorin harbour in southern India. This elegant-looking fish measures about 16 cm long and has a short snout, five spines forming an elevated crown on top of its head, and more spines running along its body and tail. Scientists had encountered this iconic fish for more than a century without realizing it was a distinct species. They now believe its range extends across the Indian Ocean, from Mozambique to the Red Sea to India.

Now it finally has a name of its own, Hippocampus amandavincentae, one that is rooted in conservation. The study describing it was published in the leading taxonomy journal Zootaxa.

The naming is the latest recognition of Prof. Vincent’s work in seahorse and marine conservation. Prof. Amanda Vincent was the first biologist to study seahorses underwater, the first to document the extensive trade in these fishes, and the first to initiate a seahorse conservation projec

t–Project Seahorse– [sic] which has put seahorses on the global conservation agenda. In 2021, she became the first marine biologist to receive the Indianapolis Prize, the world’s leading animal conservation award.

“We have named this seahorse, Hippocampus amandavincentae, for Amanda Vincent, whose work established seahorse conservation as a field,” said co-author Graham Short, Focal Point for Taxonomy and Evolution in the global expert group for conservation of seahorses and their relatives.

“This honour makes my heart glow. It’s amazing that such a wonderful creature was hiding in plain sight. I surveyed the array of fishes dragged up by trawlers in Tuticorin, India, where this new species was first found, and missed it completely. Now I have yet another special reason to push hard at ending bottom trawl fishing,” said Prof. Vincent.

“The timing is especially meaningful as it coincides with celebrating 30 years of Project Seahorse achievements. I’m deeply grateful to my friends and colleagues for this kindness,” she added.

By looking closely at their snouts and spines, studying their DNA, and revisiting specimens preserved in museums, the researchers were able to resolve this supposed species into three distinct species: Hippocampus amandavincentae,Hippocampus histrix and Hippocampus jayakari.

“Many museum specimens and online biodiversity records of spiny seahorses in the Indian Ocean have been assigned to Hippocampus histrix for decades. Our findings now reveal that these records actually represent multiple species, with practical consequences for global conservation decision-making and policy implementation” said senior author Rajeev Raghavan, an assistant professor at Kerala University of Fisheries and Ocean Studies.

“Accurate species identification is a crucial first step towards understanding distribution, population status, and developing effective conservation strategies,” said lead author Shalu Kannan. “This discovery reveals the hidden biodiversity of the Indian Ocean and highlights the importance of documenting and protecting its unique species and the ecosystems they depend on,” she added.

The findings are particularly important because seahorses are globally recognized flagship species threatened by unsustainable fishing, exploitation for traditional medicine and the aquarium trade, and habitat loss. All seahorse species are listed under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora Appendix II, meaning their international trade is regulated to ensure it does not threaten their survival. In India, they receive the highest level of protection under the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972.

“Knowing that Hippocampus amandavincentae exists as a separate species, recognizing what makes it unique and understanding where it lives is obviously critical for its conservation. Our team at Project Seahorse will do everything we can to support healthy populations of this and other seahorses,” Vincent concluded.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

A new species of spiny seahorse, Hippocampus amandavincentae, with redescription of H. histrix and H. jayakari (Teleostei: Syngnathidae) by Shalu Kannan, Graham Short, Rateev Raghavan, Ghos Ramvilas, Kutty Ranjeet. Zootaxa Issue: Vol. 5862 No. 2: 5 Aug. 2026 Page range: 271-292 DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5862.2.4 Published: 2026-08-05

This paper is behind a paywall.

Iconic fishes

This is a joint effort, which flirts on the edge of art/science, between two groups according to the Iconic Fishes About page,

About Inspired by #IconicFishes

Inspired by Iconic Fishes is a global art movement inviting people of all ages, from anywhere in the world, to explore, create, craft, share, or tell stories that celebrate the wonders of our iconic fishes: seahorses, pipefishes, seadragons, and their quirky cousins like trumpetfish, cornetfish/flutemouth and bellowsfish. In doing so, we hope to spark curiosity, inspire creativity, and encourage action to keep them and their habitats healthy.

Meet the conservation leaders behind Inspired by #IconicFishes

Project Seahorse

Project Seahorse is a leader in marine conservation, making discoveries & collaborating globally to take effective action for seahorses and their seas.

Project Seahorse works to protect seahorses, for their own sakes and to support ocean conservation more broadly, generating cutting-edge research and using it to prompt and guide highly effective conservation interventions.

Directed by Professor Amanda Vincent, a global expert in marine conservation, Project Seahorse has won many international awards and honours for scholarship and for front line conservation, emphasizing our distinctive blend of skills, experience, and credentials.

Project Seahorse works in collaboration with researchers, governments, conservation groups, and local communities worldwide. Project Seahorse is hosted at The University of British Columbia, Canada, and the Zoological Society of London, UK.

Learn more: www.projectseahorse.org

IUCN SSC Seahorse, Pipefish and Seadragon Specialist Group

Project Seahorse hosts and leads the global Seahorse, Pipefish and Seadragon Specialist Group (SPS SG) for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Species Survival Commission (SSC). Our SPS SG is tasked with – and dedicated to – the conservation of seahorses, pipefishes, pipehorses and seadragons — as well as near relatives such as trumpetfishes, cornetfishes/flutemouths, and bellowsfishes/snipefishes.

The SPS SG leads on assessing, planning and acting for these iconic fishes. We provide independent technical and scientific advice to governments and other groups to improve the conservation status of these species. We assess their threats of extinction, undertake research that can make a difference, plan for management and policy change that will benefit the species, and act to ensure survival of their wild populations… all while networking with a host of agencies and organizations. A key element in our work is communicating to improve support for these wonderful animals.

Learn more: www.iucn-seahorse.org

Here’s more from the Iconic Fishes homepage,

Calling on artists, makers, and dreamersto join a global arts movement that celebrates the wondrous lives of truly #iconicfishes: seahorses, pipefish, seadragons, and their quirky cousins like ghost pipefish, trumpetfish, cornetfish, and bellowsfish.

Because to know them is to treasure them.

…

Why this matters?

In treasuring iconic fishes, we champion the health of our oceans
By celebrating these remarkable species, we ignite curiosity and rally action to protect the ecosystems they call home. Their beauty inspires a creative movement that shines a light on marine life, its wonders, and its threats. And inspires action to keep our oceans healthy.

The unique power of art
Art in all its forms moves us in ways facts cannot – it connects, inspires, and transcends barriers. Through creativity, we spark hope, passion, and meaningful action for the ocean’s future.

So, let’s dance, sing, create or craft for these iconic fishes!

…

I find the seadragons particularly fascinating,

Common Seadragon Aquatic – Free photo on Pixabay (pixabay.com)

It looks ‘leafy’ to my inexpert eye; the Iconic Fishes website offers this seadragon description,

Seadragon

There are three species of seadragons, all belonging to the same family (Syngnathidae) as seahorses and pipefishes: the weedy seadragon, the leafy seadragon, and the recently discovered ruby seadragon. They are found exclusively off the southern coast of Australia.

Fun Fact

Seadragons have a long tube snout and leaf-like appendages that extend from their various nobs and ridges, resembling the flowing costumes of dancers. These delicate “leaves” not only give them a graceful, decorative appearance but also help them blend seamlessly into the seaweeds they call home. Just like other fishes in the family, they also have the ability to change colours.

Dive into our inspiration kit, to learn more about the seadragon!

…

To end this back with a seahorse, here’s an image of one in Canadian waters (along with text) from a May 22, 2014 Project Seahorse news release,

The University of British Columbia’s Project Seahorse announced today a rare documented sighting of a seahorse in Canadian waters.

The sighting comes to light as a result of iSeahorse.org, the new citizen science initiative created by Project Seahorse. Two divers recently uploaded a photograph of the lined seahorse (Hippocampus erectus) that they spotted off St. Margaret’s Bay, Nova Scotia.

“This is a thrilling discovery,” says Amanda Vincent, director of Project Seahorse. “These charismatic and mysterious animals are so highly cryptic – and, in many places, so threatened – that we often have to be very lucky to find them.”

The divers, Nédia Coutinho and Martin Roy, owners of UW Distribution, an underwater imaging company, spotted the seahorse during a routine dive.

“I was obviously not looking for a seahorse but when I saw it I could not believe my eyes,” says Coutinho. “I was so excited, even without knowing that it’s not common around Nova Scotia. I have dived on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and in the Caribbean and this is the first time I have ever seen a seahorse.”

Seahorses are found in coastal waters around the globe, from northern Europe to the Indian Ocean and from Korea to New Zealand. They are threatened by harmful fishing practices and overfishing, with tens of millions of animals caught and traded for use in traditional Chinese medicine, aquarium display, and as curios. Loss of their habitats also poses problems.

“Seahorses face so many challenges that they desperately need new allies,” explains Vincent. “Globally, there are fewer than 15 scientists studying seahorses in the wild, which is why citizen science initiatives like iSeahorse are so important, and why divers like Nédia and Martin are so integral to their conservation.”

…

Amanda Vincent and seahorses have been mentioned here before (way back in 2013). It’s nice to catch up on the latest seahorse news and on Vincent’s more recent work.

“Science and Sensibility: Method Meets Art,”a transdisciplinary conference from October 17-18, 2026 at the University of Oxford, UK and online

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Somehow, I must have missed the earlier notices but, on the upside, the folks at the London Arts-Based Research Centre (LABRC) have extended the deadline to September 1, 2026 for anyone wanting to submit a proposal in response to the Call for Papers. Here’s more from an August 13 2026 LABRC notice (received via email),

We would like to announce that the proposal deadline for our Science and Sensibility transdisciplinary conference has now been extended to September 1. Kindly find the conference details below, or visit the conference webpage on https://labrc.co.uk/science-and-sensibility-2026/

For further queries, kindly contact our conference team on conferences@labrc.co.uk

We look forward to receiving your proposals.

Kind regards,

The LABRC Team

“Science and Sensibility: Method Meets Art”
A Transdisciplinary Conference

When: October 17-18, 2026
Where: University of Oxford, UK and online

Fees (for both attendees and presenters):
£180 (In person participation)
£100 (Online participation)
Prices exclude Eventbrite fees

Proposal Submission Deadline: September 1, 2026

Proposal form on: https://forms.gle/xyGsPLShekVkNtZ29

Call for Papers

“Art and science bear intrinsic similarities in their attempts to illuminate aspects of the human condition. Grounded in exploration, revelation, and representation, art and science work toward advancing human understanding”, Patricia Leavy, Method Meets Art.

According to Richard Dawkins, “There’s real poetry in the real world. Science is the poetry of reality”. So why are art and science sometimes considered as two separate fields, rather than two different sides of the same coin? And who says that scientists, engineers, and medical researchers take interest only in matters within the boundaries of the laboratories and hospitals? How might the perspective of art provide fresh avenues for understanding and contribute significantly to the enrichment of scientific knowledge? For poets, writers, and artists there are no such boundaries, for there is poetic wisdom in scientific knowledge, beauty in anatomy, and concepts worth celebrating in writing. And for biographers and memoirists, the medical humanities offer experiences that are worth preserving in prose. Our forthcoming conference seeks to deconstruct the common divide between two seemingly distinct disciplines of art and science, building bridges instead of boundaries, and showing the importance of creatively contemplating, cherishing, and preserving the beauty of what we learn and experience.

This conference, therefore, aims to bring together scholars, creatives, and other arts-based researchers from different disciplines working on topics related to transdisciplinarity, with a focus on the bridging of science with the arts. You may be a scientist or a medical practitioner who writes poems and stories or takes on another art (such as music, sculpture, the visual arts, etc.) or alternatively, you may be a creative inspired by science, or a practioner [sic] in a field that utilises creative approaches for scientific purposes—so the intertwining of your thoughts, ideas, and creativity are welcome, and we can’t wait to hear about your work that combines your creativity with science!

Send us your proposals by August 31^st.[extended to September 1, 2026] Presenters can either share academic papers and/or creative work (poetry, prose, photography, music, painting, etc.), as we highly encourage arts-based research. We welcome proposals from scholars (of all disciplines), creatives, graduate students, practitioners and professionals.

So whether you are working on research bridging art with creativity, or you have a piece containing astronomical images, eco-poetry, aesthetic reflections on chemicals and substances, lunar photography, artistic depictions of the human body, alchemical musings, art and arithmetic, psychological fiction (or non-fiction), an ode to omicron, or any other creative pieces arising from “scientific” inspiration, please share them with us!

We welcome 15-minute presentations on topics related (but certainly not limited to) the following fields:

Fiction as a mode for knowledge

Transdisciplinarity in its various forms

Music-based practices

A/r/tography

Physics as an inspiration in literature

Chemistry and the culinary, literary or visual arts

Astrophotography

Alchemy as an art and science

Psychology and the arts

Symbolic healing

Ecopoetics

Anatomy in painting

The medical humanities

Poetry and medicine

Photography and medical technology

Ruminations based on scientific theories

Space poetry

Art therapy

Music and mathematical formulas

Viruses and philosophy

The human body

Mental illness and the arts

Quantum physics and artistic expression

Technological advancements and their impact on artistic creation

Mathematical patterns in visual arts

Neuroscience and creativity

Climate change and environmental art

Data visualization as an art form

Ethical considerations in scientific art collaborations

Evolutionary biology and literature

Augmented reality and immersive storytelling

Artificial intelligence and its role in creative processes

Bioart and biotechnology in artistic practice

Intersection of robotics and performance art

Astronomy and music composition

Psychology of color in visual arts

Medical imaging techniques and artistic interpretation

Intersection of archaeology and art history

Cognitive science and theater/performance studies

Genetics and contemporary art practices

Philosophy of science and its influence on artistic discourse

Ecological activism through artistic interventions

Anthropology and the representation of cultures in art

Social sciences and documentary photography

Nanotechnology and its implications for artistic materials

Ethnomusicology and cultural expressions of scientific knowledge

Marine biology and marine-inspired art forms

Kindly fill out the proposal form by September 1, 2026.

For further queries, please email us on conferences@labrc.co.uk, and kindly allow us at least 2-3 working days to respond.

Want more inspiration? Check out our recently released issue of our literary and arts journal, Indelible, with the special theme of “Science and Sensibility”!

Conference Webpage

Lots of options. Good luck with your submissions.

Math rock from Québec: Angine de Poitrine

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Math rock group Angine de Potrine has an album that moved from the long list to the short list of nominations for 2026 Polaris Music Prize,

A June 11, 2026 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) news online article by Natalie Harmsen offer this “The Polaris Music Prize is awarded to the best Canadian album of the year, regardless of genre or album sales. It has been handed out every year since 2006 to past winners such as Jeremy Dutcher, Kaytranada, Feist, Arcade Fire and more.”

Harmsen and her colleagues Kelsey Adams, Holly Gordon, and Melody Lau followed up with a July 9, 2026 CBC article about the long list along with embedded videos, Note: A link has been removed,

The short list for the 2026 Polaris Music Prize has been announced, with 10 different albums competing for the $30,000 grand prize.

…

The full short list, powered by FACTOR is below:

Angine de Poitrine, Vol. II

Aquakultre, 1783

Begonia, Fantasy Life

Beverly Glenn-Copeland, Laughter In Summer

Bibi Club, Amaro

Charlotte Cornfield, Hurts Like Hell

Les Louanges, Alouette!

Peaches, No Lube So Rude

Rochelle Jordan, Through the Wall

Tanya Tagaq, Saputjiji

This year, there is more cross-country representation compared to the 2025 short list: Angine de Poitrine, Les Louanges and Bibi Club make up the Quebec albums, while Begonia represents Manitoba and Aquakulture is based in Nova Scotia. Tanya Tagaq is from Nunavut, while Rochelle Jordan, Peaches, Charlotte Cornfield, and Beverly Glenn-Copeland make up Ontario’s nominees.

Starting July 19 [2026], the CBC Music radio series The Ten will return for another summer. The special takes an in-depth look at each of this year’s shortlisted albums leading up to the Polaris Concert and Award Ceremony on Sept. 22 [2026].

The Ten will be hosted by Odario Williams, with episodes broadcasting each Sunday on CBC Music and CBC Listen at 6 p.m. (6:30 p.m. in NL) until Sept. 20 [2026].

…

I have a little more about the upcoming Polaris Music Prize announcement, from the 2026 Gala webpage,

…

2026 Polaris Concert & Award Ceremony Event Details

$40-$125 Concert | Sep 22 [2026], Doors 7 PM, Show 8 PM – 10 PM | Massey Hall, Toronto
19+ | Accessible

The 2026 Polaris Festival culminates in the Polaris Concert & Award Ceremony, presented by CBC and powered by FACTOR, on September 22, 2026 at Massey Hall in Toronto. Doors open at 7 PM and the show runs from 8 PM to 10 PM. Tickets starting at $40. This event is 19+ and accessible.

Join us for a one-night-only celebration of Canadian music, featuring live performances by the 2026 Polaris Music Prize Short List nominees. Over the course of the evening, audiences will also discover the winners of the Polaris Album Prize, the SOCAN Polaris Song Prize, and this year’s two Heritage Prize designations.

Get Your Tickets Now

…

For anyone curious about math rock, here’s more from its Wikipedia entry, Note: All links have been removed,

…

Math rock is typified by its rhythmic complexity, seen as mathematical in character by listeners and critics. While most rock music uses a ⁴
₄ meter (however accented or syncopated), math rock makes use of more non-standard, frequently changing time signatures such as ⁵
₄, ⁷
₈, ¹¹
₈, or ¹³
₈.^[4]

As in traditional rock, the sound is most often dominated by guitars and drums. However, drums play a greater role in math rock in providing driving, complex rhythms. Math rock guitarists make use of tapping techniques and loop pedals to build on these rhythms, as illustrated by songs like those of math rock supergroup Battles.^[21][22]

Lyrics are generally not the focus of math rock; the voice is treated as just another instrument in the mix. Often, vocals are not overdubbed, and are positioned less prominently, as in the recording style of Steve Albini.^{[citation needed]} Many of math rock’s best-known groups are entirely instrumental such as Don Caballero or Hella.^[23][24]

…

ETA September 23, 2025: Angine de Poitrine won the 2026 Polaris Music Prize as per a September 22, 2026 article by Kelsey Adams for CBC news online.

Weird things you can turn into a memristor

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Perry Thaler’s November 27, 2025 article on unusual sources for memristors was published in the IEEE Spectrum magazine, Note: Links have been removed,

Source images: iStock [downloaded from https://spectrum.ieee.org/memristor-materials]

From the honey in your tea to the blood in your veins, materials all around you have a hidden talent. Some of these substances, when engineered in specific ways, can act as memristors—electrical components that can “remember” past states.

Memristors are often used in chips that both perform computations and store data. They are devices that store data as particular levels of resistance. Today, they are constructed as a thin layer of titanium dioxide or similar dielectric material sandwiched between two metal electrodes. Applying enough voltage to the device causes tiny regions in the dielectric layer—where oxygen atoms are missing—to form filaments that bridge the electrodes or otherwise move in a way that makes the layer more conductive. Reversing the voltage undoes the process. Thus, the process essentially gives the memristor a memory of past electrical activity.

Last month [October 2025], while exploring the electrical properties of fungi, a group at The Ohio State University found first-hand that some organic memristors have benefits beyond those made with conventional materials. Not only can shiitake [mushrooms] act as a memristor, for example, but it may be useful in aerospace or medical applications because the fungus demonstrates high levels of radiation resistance. The project “really mushroomed into something cool,” lead researcher John LaRocco says with a smirk.

Researchers have learned that other unexpected materials may give memristors an edge. They may be more flexible than typical memristors or even biodegradable. Here’s how they’ve made memristors from strange materials, and the potential benefits these odd devices could bring.

Mushrooms

LaRocco and his colleagues were searching for a proxy for brain circuitry to use in electrical stimulation research when they stumbled upon something interesting—shiitake mushrooms are capable of learning in a way that’s similar to memristors.

…

Honey

In 2022, engineers at Washington State University interested in green electronics set out to study if honey could serve as a good memristor. “Modern electronics generate 50 million tons of e-waste annually, with only about 20 percent recycled,” says Feng Zhao, who led the work and is now at Missouri University of Science and Technology. “Honey offers a biodegradable alternative.”

…

Blood

Considering it a potential means of delivering healthcare, a group in India wondered if blood would make a good memristor in 2011, just three years after the first memristor was built.

…

Fascinating, eh?

Citations and links to the papers

Blood

Human blood liquid memristor by S.P. Kosta, Y.P. Kosta, Mukta Bhatele, Y.M. Dubey, Avinash Gaur, Shakti Kosta, Jyoti Gupta, Amit Patel and Bhavin Patel. International Journal of Medical Engineering and Informatics Vol. 3, No. 1 Published Online::March 16, 2011 pp 16-29 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1504/IJMEI.2011.039073

This is new to me. There is a No Access notice but if you click on the PDF button, you will see what appears to be a purchase option although if you check here, you’ll see it’s an Open Access Only journal.

Honey

Memristive synaptic device based on a natural organic material—honey for spiking neural network in biodegradable neuromorphic systems by Brandon Sueoka and Feng Zhao. Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics (J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys.) 2022 Volume 55, Number 22 55 225105 DOI 10.1088/1361-6463/ac585b Published 7 March 2022 • © 2022 IOP Publishing Ltd. All rights, including for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies, are reserved.

This paper is behind a paywall.

I have more about this paper in a September 27, 2022 posting “Honey-based neuromorphic chips for brainlike computers?“

Mushrooms

Sustainable memristors from shiitake mycelium for high-frequency bioelectronics by John LaRocco, Qudsia Tahmina, Ruben Petreaca, John Simonis, Justin Hill. PLoS One 20 (10): e0328965. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0328965 Published: October 10, 2025

This paper is open access.

Thaler’s November 27, 2025 article is a good and short read..

Mushrooms can also be musical

I have two stories about Tarun Nayar (Modern Biology), a musician who collaborates with mushrooms There’s my May 27, 2022 posting “The sound of the mushroom” with an embedded video and an update under the “Not quite related (mushroom music)” subhead, scroll down about 50% of the way down my October 10, 2025 posting about Ars Scientia’s Quantum Studio Art/Science Residency at the University of British Columbia.

Acoustics and the colo(U)r of the theatre and a Vancouver (Canada) Indian Summer 2026 ‘plant music’ event

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Caption: Image stills from the various colors of concert halls that were tested on listeners. Credit: Drouzas et al.

A February 24, 2026 American Institute of Physics (AIP) news release (also on EurekAlert) showcases some intriguing research into how colour affects us in unexpected ways; it seems that sight and sound are linked,

Live music can engage more than just one sense, despite it being an auditory medium. Lighting and visual effects can enhance the listening experience, but it is unclear if they can also affect the impression of the sound.

In JASA [Journal of the Acoustical Society of America], published on behalf of the Acoustical Society of America by AIP Publishing, researchers from Germany’s Technical University of Berlin found that the color of a concert hall has an impact on the sound perception of a listener.

“Room acoustics perception is multidimensional,” said author Stefan Weinzierl. “So, we perceive halls as more reverberant or less reverberant; we perceive them as louder or softer, but we also perceive different timbres of a hall — a hall can appear warm, [or] it can appear bright or metallic in sound.”

To test the effects of a hall’s color on sound perception, participants listened to a recorded concert in red, green, and blue venues that varied in hues, brightness, and saturation, creating 12 different-colored environments. Creating multiple venues with chairs, curtains, stages, walls, and decor wasn’t viable, so the researchers used virtual reality platforms to simulate the various concert halls. To make the experience as authentic as possible, participants watched the performances using headphones with binaural technology that could adjust the sound as they moved their heads.

The participants listened to four different music performances — two on violin and two on clarinet — with compositions of varying tempo and time periods and were asked to rate the performances based on liking, strength, reverberance, and timbre.

The researchers discovered a clear correlation between the visual design of the hall and the perceived timbre of the music. Timbre, sometimes understood as the “sound color” of music, was most affected by the visual color. More saturated colors, which appear visually cooler — especially in green and blue — evoked a colder sound color. The participants also tended to have higher “liking” scores of music in darker concert halls. Both effects were enhanced by the participants’ personal music experience.

There was no influence on perceived loudness based on the color of the concert hall, confirming other psychological studies.

“Considering the effort that is done to improve acoustical properties — all the money that is spent for making a concert hall sound well — I think it should not be overlooked that the visual appearance makes its contribution [to] the sound of the hall,” Weinzierl said.

Weinzierl wants to encourage architects and acousticians to consider all elements of space when designing places where music will be enjoyed, down to the fabric of the chairs.

“If you design a concert hall, don’t forget to think about the visual appearance,” Weinzierl said. “It will have an effect on how the sound is perceived.”

Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,

The influence of the color design of auditoriums on room acoustic impression by Christos Drouzas,
, Stefan Weinzierl. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. volume 159, Issue 2 February 2026 1674–1684 (2026) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0042275 Published online February 24, 2026

This paper is open access.

Another sensual crossover and a July 14, 2026 event in Vancouver (Canada)

It seems sound and taste are linked. A local musician Tarun Nayar (Modern Biology and purveyor of ‘mushroom music’), collaborated with Burdock & Co. restaurant for a series of special dinners, from my October 10, 2025 posting,,

The talk of music, visual art, physics, and “… a continuous process of translation, where each medium reconfigures the other” reminded me of Tarun Nayar (Modern Biology) and his work as described in my May 27, 2022 posting “The sound of the mushroom,” where he sonifies data he collects from mushrooms and other plants,

…

I have a Modern Biology update, which takes the music to an unexpected place, from a June 23, 2025 article by Barb Sligl for MONTECRISTO magazine, (Vancouver, Canada-based)

In the cocoon-like interior of the restaurant Burdock & Co, [emphasis mine] headphone-clad diners focus intently on the plates before them. Forks pause midair between bites as people don’t just taste, they also listen to the food. I watch the gleam of neon-illuminated earcups—like blips on an amplifier—and tune in to the warbles emitting from a DJ setup, where a tangle of cables is plugged into a Buddha’s hand citron.

Behind the deck is Tarun Nayar, the Vancouver-based musician known as Modern Biology. He’s performing here for the first of a new series of Taste Sound dinners. Tonight, the theme is “Citrus-Scented Rain Under a Snow Moon,” a sensory meld of electronic and organic that’s a collaboration between Nayar and Andrea Carlson, the chef-owner of the Michelin-starred restaurant.

As I sample each dish, Nayar plays ambient music that is textural, moody, atmospheric—a trippy translation of the plant ingredients’ bioelectricity. The Buddha’s hand is murmuring. The Japanese sudachi fruit [a citrus found in Japan] is singing. Kind of. Nayar is channelling their fluctuations of energy—via electrodes and clips attached to the fruit—into a sonic composition at the intersection of music and biology.

The latent life force of the diminutive sudachi sphere is literally amplified in Nayar’s interpretation of its electrical currents. And its yuzu-like flavour intensifies in my mouth. …

This isn’t a tasting event but should you be in Vancouver (Canada), there is a July 13, 2026 performance by Tarun Nayar at Vancouuer’s Van Dusen Botanical Garden at 7 pm as part of the 2026 Indian Summer programme. Elena Massing’s July 8, 2026 article for CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) news online website describes proposed performance,

… Tarun Nayar performs electronic music under the name Modern Biology, merging his classical training with synthesizers and other tools.

Nayar left his bioinformatics career at the Genome Sciences Centre — which does life sciences research — about 20 years ago to pursue music full time, playing in the Vancouver-based world music band Delhi 2 Dublin. As a pandemic project, he started building synthesizers and hooking them up to plants to turn their electrical fluctuations into sound. Though he didn’t invent plant music, he’s one of the genre’s better-known artists. He started posting his experiments on social media and now has almost half a million followers.

Modern Biology is ever-changing. Like Ramani, [Shruti Ramani, a vocalist fronting jazz fusion ensemble Raagaverse, also part of Indian Summer 2026] Nayar grew up learning Indian styles of improvisation. “Indian classical music is heavily influenced by time of day, by season, by emotion, by flavours,” says Nayar. “Those are the kind of things that colour our performances.”

The plants themselves are unpredictable. For his July 13 [2026] performance at VanDusen Botanical Garden, he’ll be plugging into the native plants of B.C., and it’s hard to know what will happen until the day arrives. “Plants are a lot less active at night,” Nayar says, “or playing in the rain and summer when plants are just blasting with electricity because they’re photosynthesizing like crazy. So it’s also heavily dependent on nature.”

…

John Lucas’s July 6, 2026 article for Stir offers more details and advice such as this,

…

As part of this year’s Indian Summer Festival, Modern Biology will perform at VanDusen Botanical Garden’s Great Lawn. For this picnic-style event, attendees are invited to bring their own blankets, cushions, and festival chairs and immerse themselves in a meditative headspace.

…

A general admission ticket for Nayar’s July 13, 2026 event is $55.70 + tax.

Science Literacy Week, October 4 – 11, 2026

Curiosity, unleashed.

Biosonification Exchange Project, presented by Ginalina

Details

Spooky Halloween Magic Potions

Details

Venue

Science Literacy Week at the Okanagan Science Centre: Free Admission

Details

Venue

Biosonification at Vancouver’s Science World in French

Projet « Biosonification Exchange », présenté par Ginalina

Détails

Lieu

Dates & Times

About Ginalina

Harvesting food at the University of British Columbia (UBC) cafeteria

Event: UBC to celebrate first harvest from innovative indoor growing pod

What BC told Ottawa. The AI transparency takeover.

The Lineup

​Jonny Williams

​Sara Taherzadeh: Governance Architect & Enterprise OCM [organizational change management]

​Peter Van Garderen: Archivist & AI Researcher

​Kris Krüg: Executive Director, BC + AI Ecosystem

​Demos from Metacreation Lab for Creative AI

MUTEK Montréal Festival 2026

Edition 27: Amplify & Resonate

Artists

MUTEK Forum 2026: Symbiotic Frequencies

Does an AI God Have an Ass?

Cosmos to Quanta in 10 Terms: Curators’ Take

Brainless : How the World Thinks

Build it Or Buy it? Creativity and Intellectual Property (IP)

Symbiotic Frequencies / Symbiotic Futures : A Worldbuilding Workshop presented by the National Film Board of Canada (NFB)

Listening at the Edge: Sound, Quantum Physics, and the Act of Attention

Les fesses

FEATURED CONVERSATION: TALEEB NOORMOHAMED

​DATA FOR GOOD: AI FOR GOOD, FOR REAL

​Gordon Hamilton: Chapter Lead, Data for Good · President, DAMA Vancouver [Data Administration Management Association (DAMA)]

Fraser Uitdenbosch: Data and Analytics Leader, National Bank of Canada · Chapter Lead, Data for Good

​Amanda Calvo: Technology Portfolio Specialist, TransLink · Project Lead, Data for Good

​Dhavide Aruliah: Principal Scientist, MKDA Consulting · Project Lead, Data for Good

​Vanessa Gonzales & Makaidea Gonzales: Squamish Nation

​LIVE AUDIO-VISUAL PERFORMANCEMisagh Azimi: Collective Consciousness

​Kris Krüg: Executive Direcotry, BC + AI Ecosystem Assocation · Curator, Futureproof Festival of AI

Taleeb Noormohamed, eh?

6.

9.

10.

Back to the event

Event Details

​Who This Is For

​What To Bring

​It Takes a Village To Raise a Meetup

Do we have seahorses in Metro Vancouver waters?

A new species named after a Vancouver professor

Studying Hippocampus: How seahorses save the world

Iconic fishes

About Inspired by #IconicFishes

Project Seahorse

IUCN SSC Seahorse, Pipefish and Seadragon Specialist Group

Why this matters?

Seadragon

2026 Polaris Concert & Award Ceremony Event Details

Mushrooms

Honey

Blood

Citations and links to the papers

Blood

Honey

Mushrooms

Mushrooms can also be musical

Another sensual crossover and a July 14, 2026 event in Vancouver (Canada)

Jonny Williams

Sara Taherzadeh: Governance Architect & Enterprise OCM [organizational change management]

Peter Van Garderen: Archivist & AI Researcher

Kris Krüg: Executive Director, BC + AI Ecosystem

Demos from Metacreation Lab for Creative AI

DATA FOR GOOD: AI FOR GOOD, FOR REAL

Gordon Hamilton: Chapter Lead, Data for Good · President, DAMA Vancouver [Data Administration Management Association (DAMA)]

Amanda Calvo: Technology Portfolio Specialist, TransLink · Project Lead, Data for Good

Dhavide Aruliah: Principal Scientist, MKDA Consulting · Project Lead, Data for Good

Vanessa Gonzales & Makaidea Gonzales: Squamish Nation

LIVE AUDIO-VISUAL PERFORMANCE
Misagh Azimi: Collective Consciousness

Kris Krüg: Executive Direcotry, BC + AI Ecosystem Assocation · Curator, Futureproof Festival of AI

Who This Is For

What To Bring

It Takes a Village To Raise a Meetup