Tonight, April 25, 2011, you can attend the launch of Baba Brinkman’s (Vancouver-based rapper) new record label website, Lit Fuse Records, from the Home page,
Founded by Baba Brinkman in 2007, Lit Fuse Records is currently home to five solo acts or groups, and has released a dozen albums and counting. Our songs have appeared in feature films and on US Network television, and our artists tour the world and make music with a social impact.
The poster for the event at Baba’s blog, states that the launch will feature Baba Brinkman, Smoky Tiger, and Aaron Nazrul & the Boom Booms. It also states that the doors open at 8 pm ($5 at the door) with a music performance at 9 m at the Library Square Pub, 300 West Georgia (Vancouver, Canada). However, I also checked the Library Square Pub’s website and if you click on the event poster there, the times are listed as 10 pm to 2 am ($5 at the door).
Baba’s second Vancouver event is on Thursday, May 5, 2011, 9:30 pm ($10 at the door) at the Rio Theatre (1660 East Broadway). It’s a performance of Rapconteur, his Chaucer/Gilgamesh/Beowulf adaptation (scroll down the page to find the event poster).
Catch him before he leaves for the UK and the May 25, 2011 launch of his Rap Guide to Evolution DVD at the Prince Charles Cinema in Leicester Square (London) and an Off-Broadway run starting June 17, 2011 at the Soho Playhouse for live performances of his Rap Guide to Evolution. Baba has other events on his schedule as well, including TED East and the Science Festival in New York. It could be a long time before he’s back in Vancouver.
I’m fascinated with the ways in which data and scientific information is visualized. It’s a rich area for communication and, often, seriously undervalued. That said, the saying ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’ is pure bunkum. There are times when pictures are better than words and there are times when you absolutely must have the words and the pictures and there are times when all you need are the words.
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, … (Elizabeth Barrett Browning)
Do these words need a picture? I say, no. As for times when pictures are better than words, try putting together furniture or anything else in a kit using written instructions only. Well illustrated diagrams are all you need for something relatively simple.
Poetry and technical instructions are highly specialized instances and, in most cases, words and pictures together are best as they convey different information and reinforce each other. You need the words to supply context, while the visualization offers an experience. Take a look at this video featuring,
The winners of the 2010 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge, sponsored jointly by the journal Science and the National Science Foundation (NSF), share spectacular photographs, graphics, illustrations and video that engage viewers by conveying the complex substance of science through different art forms.
The video presents interviews with Science News editor Colin Norman and the first-place winners, produced by Natasha Pinol and edited by Carla Schaffer of the Science Press Package. (from Youtube).
and then imagine not having a single verbal (i.e., ‘word-ridden’) explanation.
(BTW, there is a nanotechnology reference towards the end of this video.) All of this is by way of noting that the 2011 competition has been announced. From the Feb. 18, 2011 news item on Nanowerk,
The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the journal Science created the International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge to celebrate that grand tradition–and to encourage its continued growth. The spirit of the competition is for communicating science, engineering and technology for education and journalistic purposes.
Judges appointed by NSF and Science will select winners in each of five categories: Photography, Illustrations, Informational Posters and Graphics, Interactives Games and Non-Interactive Media. The winning entries will appear in a special section in Science and Science Online, and on the NSF website, and one of the winning entries will be pictured on the front cover. In addition, each winner will receive a one-year print and on-line subscription to the journal Science and a certificate of appreciation.
You can find guidelines and entry forms here. Interestingly there was a Feb. 12, 2011 news item on physorg.com that focused on visualizing scientific data as part of the process rather than as a presentation of the results (i.e. the kind of work you’ll see in the video),
Peter Fox and James Hendler of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute are calling for scientists to take a few tips from the users of the World Wide Web when presenting their data to the public and other scientists in the Feb. 11 issue of Science magazine. Fox and Hendler, both professors within the Tetherless World Research Constellation at Rensselaer, outline a new vision for the visualization of scientific data in a perspective piece titled “Changing the Equation on Scientific Data Visualization.”
As the researchers explain, visualizations provide a means to enable the understanding of complex data. The problem with the current use of visualization in the scientific community, according to Fox and Hendler, is that when visualizations are actually included by scientists, they are often an end product of research used to simply illustrate the results and are inconsistently incorporated into the entire scientific process. Their visualizations are also static and cannot be easily updated or modified when new information arises.
And as scientists create more and more data with more powerful computing systems, their ability to develop useful visualizations of that data will become more time consuming and expensive with the traditional approaches.
I find this interest from scientists quite intriguing and mutual with the interest from other communities. I noted that Baba Brinkman included scientific data and visualizations as part of his performance of The Rap Guide to Evolution (Feb. 21, 2011 posting).
Recently, there was a local (Vancouver, Canada) theatrical performance that featured demographic data. Each individual is a visual, living, breathing representation of demographic data pulled from Vancouver’s most recent census. From the 2011 PUSH Festival web page for 100% Vancouver,
A Statistical Chain Reaction
One by one, 100 people enter the stage. These are not trained actors. These are everyday Vancouverites. The demographics of a city brought to life, with the stories and individuals that make up Vancouver 125 years after its official beginning. As questions are posed, the participants sort themselves according to opinions and political leanings, where they’re from, how they spend their time, car they drive, bus they take, peanut butter preference and so on. A living, breathing portrait of Vancouver emerges.
Each person represents 1% of the roughly 646,385 people residing in Vancouver. Casting starts with a single person. This first person has 24 hours to recruit the next person, who must then find the next, and so on. In just over three months, the full 100 are linked. Participants are chosen according to specific search criteria—gender, age, marital status, ethnicity, and neighbourhood in which they live—attempting to reflect the demographics of the last census.
100% Vancouver is based on an ongoing project of Berlin’s Rimini Protokoll, which has included 100% Berlin and 100% Vienna. With work like the interactive Best Before (2010 PuSh Festival), the company’s signature style draws on the perspectives of “experts in daily life” to create contemporary works where everyday people are the theatre’s real protagonists. (Note: They were last mentioned in my Feb. 1, 2010 posting [scroll down past the first few paragraphs].)
Last night (Feb.20.11) was Baba Brinkman’s first Vancouver (Canada) performance in a few years and it may be another two years or more before he’s back. His Rap Guide to Evolution shows (commissioned by a UK scientist in 2008/9) led to a soon-to-be enhanced DVD (he raised the $$$ by crowdsourcing his funding) and to an off-Broadway run in a few months (as he noted in an interview featured in my Feb.17, 2011 posting).
Couple the scarcity of local performances with the fact that Baba performs an acclaimed (sometimes controversial) peer-reviewed rap, likely the only one of its kind at this point, then throw in a legendary Vancouver music venue, The Railway Club, and you have what amounts to an irresistible invitation (in my mind anyway).
An account of events from the Feb. 20, 2011 The Rap Guide to Evolution performance at Vancouver’s Railway Club: The venerable Charles Darwin took the stage first. Dressed in clothing reminiscent of the Victorian period and carrying a book, the actor (?), gave a history of his (Darwin’s) life and his theory of evolution. (ETA Feb.23.11 via Twitter: The “actor” at my show was
Dr. Greg Bole, biology professor at UBC and sometime Darwin impersonator.)
Generally speaking I wouldn’t expect a crowd with a few beers under their collective belts to welcome a history lesson. Well, it was a friendly crowd in the first place. Many of them were friends, family, members of the Centre for Inquiry, associates of RadioFreethinker and/or CITR 101.9 FM, as well as, Aaron Nazrul & the Boom Booms’ fans, etc. Plus, the actor (sadly, I don’t know his name) was very good and, after a few minutes, he managed to get the audience’s full attention and the room grew quiet.
That all changed when Baba took the stage. Somewhere in there, Charles Darwin/the actor left and we embarked on The Rap Guide to Evolution. The performance’s organizing metaphor was that of a book (also, Darwin read from a book) and each chapter reveals a new rap, lecture, and/or visual. There is data, as well as, music and rhyme and, at the end, Baba provides a list of the reference books he consulted when creating the ‘guide’.
Amazingly, he pulled off a very good performance about creationism, religion, belief, social constructivism, poverty, violence, gender, dating and mating mores, and, memory fails, other stuff too. There were even graphs to illustrate his statistics along with lots of music and audience participation on such songs as ‘I am A African’ (originally by Dead Prez) and ‘Performance, Feedback, Revision’ (an original by Baba where he sums up evolution).
It’s thoughtful, provocative work.
As for Aaron Nazrul & the Boom Booms, I had to pass up the opportunity to hear them this time, I hope there’ll be another.
Peer-reviewed and rap music are terms that don’t usually go together unless you’re talking about Vancouver-based rapper, Baba Brinkman. (ETA Feb.17.11 Baba’s website) The performer has developed a rap about evolution that’s been extensively toured in the UK. Sunday, February 20, 2011, Brinkman brings his evolution rap home to Vancouver (Canada) for a performance at the Railway Club presented by the Centre for Inquiry and others. From the event webpage,
The Centre for Inquiry Vancouver, Radio Freethinker and CiTR 101.9FM are proud to present Baba Brinkman and the Rap Guide to Evolution!
Baba brings his rationalist rap back to his home for a special show of his popular spoken word rationalist rap – The Rap Guide to Evolution! The New York Times has said that this is the only hip-hop show to talk of mitochondria, genetic drift, sexual selection or memes. For Brinkman has taken Da rwin’s exhortation seriously. He is a man on a mission to spread the word about evolution — how it works, what it means for our view of the world, and why it is something to be celebrated rather than feared.
Baba’s work has been called:
“Brilliantly conceived and effervescently performed…not only is it factually correct, it’s also dazzlingly intelligent…after seeing this show, you’ll never look at a hip-hop music video in the same way again!” – The Scotsman
Event details:
Sunday, February 20th 2011 at 9:00 pm – 12 am
The Railway Club, 579 Dunsmuir Street, Vancouver BC
Tickets: $8 at the door
Special Guests: Aaron Nazrul & the Boom Booms
Prior to his Sunday performance, Baba very kindly answered some interview questions:
(a) Is this the first time you’ve given a performance of ‘The Rap Guide to Evolution’ in Vancouver? And how did this performance come about?
This won’t be the Vancouver première of the Rap Guide to Evolution since I was featured as part of the 2009 Vancouver Evolution Festival with performances at UBC, SFU, and at a club venue in Gastown, but the show has evolved considerably over the past two years and it is my first performance in Vancouver since achieving any recognition for the show. In terms of the show’s origins, I was performing a rap adaptation of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales a few years back and encountered a geneticist named Dr. Mark Pallen at the University of Birmingham in the UK who challenged me to “do for Darwin what I did for Chaucer”. Dr. Pallen had a grant from the British Council to organize a Darwin Day celebration in 2009 and he commissioned me to write the show for his event, and then after that I brought it to the VanEvo festival, the Cambridge Darwin Festival, the Edinburgh and Adelaide Fringe Festivals, and numerous college campuses, plus an off-Broadway showcase in New York, so it’s been a busy couple of years.
(b) I understand this ‘evolution’ rap was commissioned and is the only ‘science peer-reviewed’ rap in existence. How much research did you do on evolution before you started rapping about it? What did you learn that you didn’t know?
I got the commission officially in September 2008 so I had approximately five months to read-up on evolutionary theory before I started rapping about it. I read books by E O Wilson, Richard Dawkins, Jared Diamond, Joseph Carroll, Dan Dennett, D S Wilson, Geoffrey Miller, and Mark Pallen’s own “Rough Guide to Evolution”. There were other books as well but those are the authors that significantly influenced the writing. What I learned is that the explanatory power of Darwin’s theory is far more vast that I had imagined when first accepting the challenge. I was familiar with evolution from taking biology and human origins courses at University, but I had never heard of Universal Darwinism or Evolutionary Psychology or Costly Signaling or any number of key concepts that ended up featuring heavily in the show.
(c) How has your rapping practice (scientific and otherwise) evolved?
My rapping practiced has evolved in the same way that everything else evolves, gradually and haphazardly in response to changing environmental circumstances. For instance, I would never have guessed when I started rapping at the age of 19 that I would end up in a science rapping niche, but each step seems to have followed effortlessly enough from the last along the way. I still attend to the same stylistic and musical concerns as before so that I keep improving my skills, but the content has taken some surprising turns. There’s an apt expression in hip-hop for this process (also the title of a Too-Short album): Get In Where You Fit In.
(d) Is there anything you’d like to add?
The Rap Guide to Evolution will be transferring to New York for an off-Broadway run in a couple of months, so come see the show while you can, since I might not be back for another two years at this rate!
I’m hoping to get there for Baba’s performance and his last comment definitely provides motivation in addition to the incentive provided by the sweet sounds of his special guests, Aaron Nazrul & the Boom Booms.
I have featured Baba and his work previously in these posts:
The Vancouver-based rapper, Baba Brinkman, who sometimes raps about science is currently trying to crowdsource funding for an enhanced DVD of his Rap Guide to Evolution. Here’s a rough video of the rap from Brinkman’s visit to the Centre for Systems Biology, University of Birmingham, England,
I have a much posher video version of one of Brinkman’s evolution raps in my Aug. 4,2010 posting about him.
Pasco Phronesis (David Bruggeman) has been campaigning for Brinkman’s project (from his Jan. 7, 2011 posting),
The DVD is being produced, and the videos for the songs (which you can hear online for free, and download for naming your price) have been filmed. The Crowdfunder drive is to get 10,000 pounds to make the DVD better. As Baba describes it:
“The additional funding from Crowdfunder will allow us to produce original animation and digital effects and license high-quality nature footage from the BBC, to make the vision of each video really come to life.
If you donate 10 pounds (roughly $15.55 with today’s conversion in USD), you get a digital download of the DVD.
If you want a physical copy, that’s 20 pounds.
If you want your face in the DVD (as part of the digital animation the crowd money will cover), that’s 30 pounds.
If you’ve got a thousand pounds and enough to cover Brinkman’s travel, he’ll come perform for you sometime this year, depending on his schedule. Those of us without deep pockets will have to wait and see if his off-Broadway production of Rap Guide to Evolution takes flight.
The songs are peer reviewed, and with no slight to most of the science music I’ve promoted here, it’s Brinkman, They Might Be Giants, and the stuff Tom McFadden from Stanford has been involved with. Everyone else is too far back to eat their dust. (Bill Nye, of course, is in the hall of fame and not currently active)
The music is good, Brinkman is a compelling performer, and the science is sound. If you’re still stuck on a thirty pound donation, think about it as getting a high-quality DVD and donating to help science education. Because that’s what you’ll be doing. And if you’re looking for a little red meat in all of this, Brinkman has it for you (posted December 13):
“On Friday we filmed an epic breakdance battle with Darwin facing down his intellectual rivals, Michel Foucault (representing social constructivism), Sarah Palin (representing the christian right), and God (representing Himself, of course). It was a satirical reconstruction of the evolutionary culture wars on the dancefloor and Darwin reigned supreme!”
Baba Brinkman, the Canadian science rapper [ETA: Brinkman is really a rapper of diverse interests who also raps about science] has a new album, The Rap Guide to Human Nature. I found out about it thanks to David Bruggeman at Pasco Phronesis who offers some additional insight (and a video clip from the latest album),
Like with The Rap Guide to Evolution, this project emerged from the inquiry of a scientist. David Buss, author of Evolutionary Psychology, suggested the idea to Brinkman after listening to his Darwin album (Buss, along with others, shows up in a track). This album deals with five different hypotheses for human origins and behavior: creationism, spiritualism, social constructivism, biological determinism and evolutionism.
I found this clip of an earlier ‘evolution’ performance,
Brinkman is currently at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival presenting his new album. I took a look at the schedule on his website hoping to see a Vancouver, Canada performance scheduled. No such luck even though he lives here.
… Professor of Microbial Genomics at the University of Birmingham since July 2001. … is dually qualified as a scientist (PhD) and as a medic/clinical bacteriologist (MBBS, MRCPath), and benefits from Research-Council funding for both bioinformatics and laboratory-based molecular bacteriology projects. His interests focus on bacterial pathogenesis and the exploitation of sequence data, particularly genome sequence data.
to commission a piece of rap music but that’s just what Professor Mark Pallen did last year to honour Darwin’s anniversary (150 years since the publication of Darwin’s theory and 200 years isnce his birth). He contacted Baba Brinkman, a Vancouver, Canada -based rap artist, to commission a series of raps about Darwin and evolutionary biology. The project has become The Rap Guide to Evolution. You can find more about the work at Pasco Phronesis (thank you for the pointer) which also features a number of Brinkman’s videos. There’s also a Brinkman ‘evolutionary’ video on the CBC 3 (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) site. In that video, Brinkman spontaneously adds some lines to his rap. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to improvise while you’re presenting for any length of time but it’s not easy and Brinkman actually manages to do this while rhyming about evolutionary biology in front of an audience that’s somewhere between 200 and 500 people (I can’t be sure of the number).
There are some places I don’t expect to see any mention of the theory of evolution and quantum theory is one of those places. From the news item on physorg.com,
Physicists have found new evidence that supports the theory of quantum Darwinism, the idea that the transition from the quantum to the classical world occurs due to a quantum form of natural selection. By explaining how the classical world emerges from the quantum world, quantum Darwinism could shed light on one of the most challenging questions in physics of the past century.
The basis of almost any theoretical quantum-to-classical transition lies in the concept of decoherence. In the quantum world, many possible quantum states “collapse” into a single state due to interactions with the environment. To quantum Darwinists, decoherence is a selection process, and the final, stable state is called a “pointer state.” Although pointer states are quantum states, they are “fit enough” to be transmitted through the environment without collapsing and can then make copies of themselves that can be observed on the macroscopic scale. Although everything in our world is quantum at its core, our classical view of the universe is ultimately determined by these pointer states.
How researchers have used quantum dots to provide evidence of quantum Darwinism and the link from quantum physics to classical physics is covered in the rest of the news item. The researchers’ study is published here,
A.M. Burke. “Periodic Scarred States in Open Quantum Dots as Evidence of Quantum Darwinism.” Physical Review Letters 104, 176801 (2010). Doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.104.176801