Roger Malina isea keynote 2012

Big DataNew Senses

and the Avatar as Otherin Cosmology

Roger F Malina

Distinguished Professor of Arts and HumanitiesAnd Professor of Physics

University of Texas at DallasExecutive Editor, Leonardo Publications MIT Press

What would motivate a move fromProvence to North

Texas

And What’s an Astrophysicist doing in a School of Arts and Humanities ?

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The University of Texas at Dallas Arts & Technology

ATEC > ASTEC• In School of Arts and Humanities

•Joined at the hip with Computer Science and Engineering

•My Art-Science appointment seeks to develop cross link with Natural Sciences and Mathematics

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.•Arts and Technology, Emerging Media and Communication

•BA, MA and MFA , Ph.D.

•Currently 630 undergrad, 160 Graduate

•Program being sized for 2000 students

•New ATEC Building opens 2013

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.•Cluster Hire of 9 positions

•Research Areas •Games, Serious Games• Virtual Humans• Simulation, Animation

•MY FOCUS•Art-Science Research•And Experimental Publishing and Curating

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U. T. DallasArts & Technology

• 2nd New Endowed Chair• Joint appointment ATEC and CS• modeling and simulation

research, virtual environments, scientific modeling, ..social network acquisition interfaces

• Aesthetic Computing Research in application of arts

and design to advance CS

• Data MobilisationArrives January 2013

• .

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Dr Paul Fishwick

“post digital’ humanities ?• Dr Max Schich• Ph D Art History

• Postdoc in Laszlo Barabasi’s Network Science Lab at Northeastern

• Use of complex network science in the arts, sciences and humanities

• Reception and Visual Citation as Complex Networks

• .

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.• Scot Gresham Lancaster• Prof of Sound Design• sonification, game audio,

new media, network music, sound art, educational technology

• Sonification of scientific data

• Navigation through large and big data

• Eg terrain maps, Plasma expt, microscopic phenomena

• .

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Virtual Human Research > Intelligent Avatars with Senses we don’t Have ?

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Back to …And What’s an Astrophysicist

doing in a School of Arts

and Humanities ?

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From one galaxy at a time to 500 million at a time

Sloan Survey (SDSS) :

PAN-STARRSThe whole sky will be observed 3 times /night

1,5 Gigapixel Camera

.

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2020: EUCLID AND WFIRST SATELLITES

•2-5 billion galaxies

•Will plot the evolution of the Universe’s structure over three-quarters of its history.

•1000 scientists from 100 institutes

•.

DATA• We have moved from a world of

data scarcity to a world of data plenty

• 1992: • Historian Daniel Boorstin:

150 years ago: Meaning rich and data poor

Today : Data rich and meaning poor.

« Epistemological Inversion »

Issues as Data Becomes Plentiful• Not Just more data- Modifies Epistemology

• New ways of doing science• New Mathematics, New Kinds of Theories• Simulations• Pattern Recognition

•New research questions can be asked•New Blind Spots

•Quantitative vs Qualitative Data

Some Issues as Data becomes Plentiful

•New Kinds of Technical problems•Parrallel Computing• “Cloud’ technologies • Interactive data analysis/hand-held devices

•Data as Objects vs Data as Flows•Immersion in Data vs Illustration of Data

•Open Data transitions•“ Open” Observatories• Citizen Science

A Crisis in Representation ?• Double Explosion of “visualisation”

•1990s scientific visualisation•2010s info vis, data journalism, bio vis

•Systems of Representation• Data Mobilisation

•Which data do you hide

Donna Cox, MFA: Leonardo/ISAST Prize 1989

• Director, Advanced Visualization Laboratory

• National Supercomputing Center.

• “Rendering the First Star in the Universe – A Case Study

• Black Holes: The Other Side of Infinity”, NSF funded planetarium show

• Data fly-throughs, multi site collaborations

• .

Allosphere UC Santa Barbara• Housed in Nano Systems

Institute• Director JoAnn Kuchera-

Morin, Professor of Music

• Experimental Visualization Lab, Simulation and Animation Lab and the Center for Research in Electronic Art Technology (CREATE).

• .1990s/2000s: Visualisation Facilities

• 2000/2010s: Big Data transition, Internet 2….

• 2010s/2020s: tablets, hand-held, ….

Art and Science in the Same Facility

• Multimodal Representation of

Quantum Mechanics• Generating Audible Tones from

Coherent Electron Spin Precession in a Quantum Dot.

• Sonifying the Cosmic Microwave Background

• Interactive artists visualisations– Data mobilisation on mobiles

• Technologies of Attention

• .

What happened to Astronomy after it entered the big data era ?

• We discovered that 95% of the content of the universe is dark

• It emits no light of any kind

• It is of an un-known nature– Dark Matter– Dark Energy

The history of the universe in 8 seconds

The sound of the first 100 million years

Modern Science Doesnt Make Sense

• Most knowledge about our world now comes through scientific instruments not the senses

o Few people have experience of mediated senseso Much science is now done by experiments on data rather

than experiments on the world

• Most of the world is’nt on human “scales”

• Our intuition, languages, metaphors, are built training on the wrong data

• How to guide mathematical modelling• How to develop new ontologies, languages,

systems of representation

Intimate SciencePigeon Blog ( B Da Costa) Inside Outside Handbag (Katherine Moriwaki )

A New Sublime in Art and Science ?• What if the human body is so

badly designed that it is incompatible with understanding the universe ?

• Un-translateables ?• Un-Knowables ?• Un-Commensurables ?• Do we need to design virtual

humans with other senses ?• And collaborate with them

to understand the world

Creating New Connections between the Arts and Sciences

Provence to North Texas

Background Observation• Over the past 15 years the US NSF and

European Funding organisations have been receiving increasing numbers of research proposals from Schools of Art and Design, and Schools of Arts and Humanities.

• Usually in close collaboration with researchers in science and engineering

• The content of these proposals is sometimes indistinguishable from those received directly from Schools of Engineering and Natural Science

Observation• The Rhode Island School of Design has a Director

of Research– Eg Re-Imagining Medical Communication research

• Dramatic growth in number of professionals with ‘hybrid” careers

• The Art and Technology Program at UTD is housed in the school of Arts and Humanities

• Second wave if institution building after ‘new media”

What is Going On ?• Lisa Randall Collaboration

with Composer Hector Parra and Multi-media artist Matthew Richie

• Hypermusic; A Projective Opera in Seven Planes

• Premiered Centre Pompidou

• « Translating the world of theoretical physics in a way that appeals to scientists »

2001: Go Commission a Report

• In the 1990s the phenomenon was IT centric

• Emergence of computer graphics and animation

• Scientific Visualisation• Human Computer Interface

Design• Emergence of new

industries ( creative industries)

• .

2003: NAS/NRC report with Rockefeller Foundation

• . • Beyond Productivity:• Information Technology,

Innovation and Creativity

• Documented critical mass of research practice

• Led to new funding mechanisms such as CREATIVE-IT at NSF

Observation

• About 10 years ago the phenomenon began to spread beyond IT

• Bio, Medical, Ecology…• Example :artist Diane

Gromala (Univ of Vancouver)

• Establishing Institute for the Study of Chronic pain

…..Go Commission A Report

• NSF and NEA have been convening the art/sci/tech research community over the past two years

• NEA developing programs with the NIH• Interest in Multiple Divisions of US NSF• Establishment of CREATIV grants:

– Requires approval NSF program directors from at least two intellectually distinct divisions or programs. Includes social science, education….

Network for Science Engineering Art and Design

• Pi Carol Lafayette, Texas A and M, EAGER grant

• Co I’s Carol Strohmaker, Univ N Carolina

• Gunalan Nadarajan, Dean, Univ Michigan

• Roger Malina, Chair, Advocacy White Paper Working group– Develop a study to be delivered to NSF June 2013– Motivate the convening of a new NAS/NRC Study to

follow on from Beyond Productivity (2003).

SEAD White Papers

• Modelled on the Astronomy Decadal Survey Process

• Open international call for community white papers– 90 abstracts approved, papers due Nov 15

• Steering Group develop synthesis report

• Identify obstacles to useful collaboration between SE-AD

• Identify Emerging Research Opportunities

• Suggested Actions

STEM TO STEAM MOVEMENT

• International Movement to integrate arts, design and humanities into STEM.

• Innovative ways to attract young people to careers that require STEM skills and education

• Pathways for careers that bridge Science/Engineering to Art/Design/Humanities

• Check out John Maeda’s Rhode Island Testimony– US House of Representatives STEAM Resolution

Is Science in Trouble ?• 1945 « Science the Endless

Frontier » report, Vannevar Bush

• "New frontiers of the mind are before us,

• and if they are pioneered with the same vision, boldness, and drive with which we have wagedthis war

• we can create a fuller and more fruitful employment and a fuller and more fruitful life."--

 FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT November 17, 1944.

Common Science does not Make Political Sense ? ?

• .• 2012: Alan Leshner, President of

the American Association for the Advancement of Science:

• « The link between science and the rest of society is a little fragile these days »….

• « ..must engage with the public on the issues and seek common ground »

• - Encroaching on values• - Integrity of the scientific

enterprise• - Need for ‘public engagement » in

the setting of priorities

Towards « socially robust science « ?  

• Helga Nowotny, President European Research Council:

• « ..Society is moving into a position where it is increasingly able to communicate its wishes, desires and fears to Science »

• Harold Vasselin artist in residence at the Provence Climate Change Observatory

• .

Thank you for inviting me

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