Tag Archives: Rimini Protokoll

No! A picture is not worth 1,000 words

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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].)

rimini-protokoll.de

Theatre Replacement builds performances that speak to contemporary existence and investigate the events that fill our lives.

theatrereplacement.org

While the theatrical companies producing this show weren’t overtly interested in visualizing data, I find the approach quite appealing.

Window sunglasses; insect microids; open access to science research?; theatre and science

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Having windows that can darken or lighten according to the amount of sunshine would save money and energy. Such windows have been around for over two decades but they haven’t worked very well. Researchers at the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) are working on a new, more successful generation of such windows (electrochromic windows). From the article by Joe Verrengia on physorg.com,

Insulated windows are made from multiple layers of glass. Typically the spaces between the panes are filled with a gas. Electrochromic windows are made with a very thin stack of dynamic materials deposited on the outside pane.

The dynamic portion consists of three layers: active and counter electrodes separated by an ion conductor layer. NREL researchers are experimenting with electrode layers made of nickel and tungsten oxides; the ions are lithium.

The window changes from clear to tinted when a small electric field is applied and the lithium ions move into the working electrode layers. The change can be triggered by sensors in an automated building management system, or by a flick of a switch. Electrochromic windows can block as much as 98 percent of the direct sunlight. Reversing the polarity of the applied voltage causes the ions to migrate back to their original layer, and the glass returns to clear.

It sounds exciting to someone like me who doesn’t handle the heat or air conditioning well. I just hope they can get the costs down as it’s about $1000 per square metre at this point.

While it’s not strictly speaking nanotechnology, a researcher (Jason Clark) at Purdue University is working on an insect robot, a microid.  From the news item on Nanowerk,

His [Clark’s] concept, a sort of solid-state muscle for microid legs and mandibles, would allow the robot to nimbly traverse harsh environments such as sand or water. The concept appears to be the first to show such insectlike characteristics at the microscale, he said.
“The microids would be able to walk, run, jump, and pick up and move objects many times their own weight,” Clark said. “A microid can also do what no insect or other microrobot can do, which is continue walking if flipped on its back. Who knows, maybe flight is next.”
He also envisions the possibility of hordes of microids working in unison and communicating with each other to perform a complex task.
“You can’t underestimate the power of having thousands of microids working together, much like ant colonies,” he said.

Those last bits about flying and working in unison bring Michael Crichton’s 2002 nanotechnology novel, Prey, to mind. Crichton conceptualized a swarm that was intelligent, voracious, and almost unstoppable. As I recall, Crichton included aspects of insect behaviour, network theory, neuroscience, and self-assembling nanotechnology to describe his swarm. It caused a bit of a kerfuffle in the nanotech research community as scientists were concerned that it might set off a controversy similar to  ‘frankenfoods’ or GM (genetically modified) foods but nothing came of it at the time.

Techdirt had an interesting bit last week about open access to science research,

Via James Boyle, we’re pointed to an editorial that supposedly is all about improving access to research via open access policies for the public — and just so happens to be locked up behind a paywall itself. Apparently, the publisher doesn’t necessarily agree with the authors’ conclusions.

I did check out the link to find the publisher is the journal Science and they require a free registration or a subscription  for access to the editorial. Either Techdirt made a mistake or the editors at Science changed access to the editorial.

Combining insects with the journal, I found a news item on physorg.com about a theatre review published in Science,

Typically science doesn’t bed down with theatre, much less mate with artistic vigor, but the accord between the two is explored in the recent production Heuschrecken [The Locusts] developed by Stefan Kaegi of Rimini Protokoll. “And why not?” asks Arizona State University’s Manfred Laubichler and Gitta Honegger who review the production in the Jan. 29 issue of the journal Science.

…

The marriage of theatre and science is not new. The Greeks, starting with Aristotle embraced a more integrated relationship of the two. “But a divide came when we associated science with the brain and the arts with emotions,” Honegger says.

The news item goes on to discuss the particulars of the production such as a 60 square metre terrarium of 10,000 locusts, actors, scientists, video cameras, interwoven narratives, and locust music. I am quite inspired by it.

Coincidentally, Rimini Protokoll, the German theatre arts company mentioned in the news item, has a production here in Vancouver (as part of PUSH International Performing Arts Festival 2010 [Jan. 20 to Feb. 6]) which integrates video games and theatre. From the Canwest article by Peter Birnie,

Tim Carlson is a Vancouver playwright who was in Berlin in 2006 for a production of his play Omniscience. Carlson was so impressed by a Rimini Protokoll production of Friedrich Schiller’s Wallenstein trilogy in the German capital that, when he subsequently learned the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival was bringing Rimini Protokoll here, asked to work with them.

“I knew that they shape their shows for particular cities,” Carlson explains, “and they would want to do research here. I had them meet [former city councillor] Jim Green, they visited In-Site and had an architecture tour with [noted critic] Trevor Boddy. One thing that really captured their interest was the video-gaming industry in town, so that kind of turned the light on.”

Electronic artist Brady Marks was hired to find a way that 200 people could game together, and other electronic designers were brought on board to do the 3D modelling. As it does in other productions, Rimini Protokoll then hired local experts — not actors — to perform as themselves.

Marks is the electronic artist directing things, with animator Duff Armour as a game tester, former politician (and Railway Club owner) Bob Williams as a politician and traffic flagger Ellen Schultz as, well, the traffic flagger for the show. Carlson explains that Williams will be something of a political commentator when the audience holds its own presidential election.

You can phone 604.251.1363 to inquire about tickets for the production (Best Before) at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre.