Thursday, April 12. 2018Vlatko Vedral - Decoding Reality | #quantum #information #thermodynamics
More about Quantum Information by Vlatko Vedral and his book Decoding Reality.
Via Legalise Freedom ----- Listen to the discussion online HERE (Youtube, 1h02). ... Vlatko Vedral on Decoding Reality -- The Universe as Quantum Information. What is the nature of reality? Why is there something rather than nothing? These are the deepest questions that human beings have asked, that thinkers East and West have pondered over millennia. For a physicist, all the world is information. The Universe and its workings are the ebb and flow of information. We are all transient patterns of information, passing on the blueprints for our basic forms to future generations using a digital code called DNA. Decoding Reality asks some of the deepest questions about the Universe and considers the implications of interpreting it in terms of information. It explains the nature of information, the idea of entropy, and the roots of this thinking in thermodynamics. It describes the bizarre effects of quantum behaviour such as 'entanglement', which Einstein called 'spooky action at a distance' and explores cutting edge work on harnessing quantum effects in hyperfast quantum computers, and how recent evidence suggests that the weirdness of the quantum world, once thought limited to the tiniest scales, may reach up into our reality. The book concludes by considering the answer to the ultimate question: where did all of the information in the Universe come from? The answers considered are exhilarating and challenge our concept of the nature of matter, of time, of free will, and of reality itself.
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Culture & society, Science & technology
at
08:19
Defined tags for this entry: culture & society, research, science & technology, scientists, theory, thinkers, thinking
Tuesday, April 10. 2018I’m building a machine that breaks the rules of reality | #information #thermodynamics
Note: the title and beginning of the article is very promissing or teasing, so to say... But unfortunately not freely accessible without a subscription on the New Scientist. Yet as it promisses an interesting read, I do archive it on | rblg for record and future readings. In the meantime, here's also an interesting interview (2010) from Vlatko, at the time when he published his book Decoding Reality () about Information with physicist Vlatko Vedral for The Guardian.
Via The Guardian -----
... And an extract from the article on the New Scientist:
I’m building a machine that breaks the rules of reality We thought only fools messed with the cast-iron laws of thermodynamics – but quantum trickery is rewriting the rulebook, says physicist Vladko Vedral.
Martin Leon Barreto
By Vlatko Vedral A FEW years ago, I had an idea that may sound a little crazy: I thought I could see a way to build an engine that works harder than the laws of physics allow. You would be within your rights to baulk at this proposition. After all, the efficiency of engines is governed by thermodynamics, the most solid pillar of physics. This is one set of natural laws you don’t mess with. Yet if I leave my office at the University of Oxford and stroll down the corridor, I can now see an engine that pays no heed to these laws. It is a machine of considerable power and intricacy, with green lasers and ions instead of oil and pistons. There is a long road ahead, but I believe contraptions like this one will shape the future of technology. Better, more efficient computers would be just the start. The engine is also a harbinger of a new era in science. To build it, we have had to uncover a field called quantum thermodynamics, one set to retune our ideas about why life, the universe – everything, in fact – are the way they are. Thermodynamics is the theory that describes the interplay between temperature, heat, energy and work. As such, it touches on pretty much everything, from your brain to your muscles, car engines to kitchen blenders, stars to quasars. It provides a base from which we can work out what sorts of things do and don’t happen in the universe. If you eat a burger, you must burn off the calories – or …
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Posted by Patrick Keller
in Science & technology
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16:19
Defined tags for this entry: information, research, science & technology, scientists, theory, thinking
Friday, March 09. 2018The Generator Project | #smart? #protosmart #architecture
Note: a proto-smart-architecture project by Cedric Price dating back from the 70ies, which sounds much more intersting than almost all contemporary smart architecture/cities proposals. These lattest being in most cases glued into highly functional approaches driven by the "paths of less resistance-frictions", supported if not financed by data-hungry corporations. That's not a desirable future to my point of view. "(...). If not changed, the building would have become “bored” and proposed alternative arrangements for evaluation (...)"
Via Interactive Architecture Lab (at the Bartlett) -----
Cedric Price’s proposal for the Gilman Corporation was a series of relocatable structures on a permanent grid of foundation pads on a site in Florida. Cedric Price asked John and Julia Frazer to work as computer consultants for this project. They produced a computer program to organize the layout of the site in response to changing requirements, and in addition suggested that a single-chip microprocessor should be embedded in every component of the building, to make it the controlling processor. This would result in an “intelligent” building which controlled its own organisation in response to use. If not changed, the building would have become “bored” and proposed alternative arrangements for evaluation, learning how to improve its own evaluation, learning how to improve its own organisation on the basis of this experience.
The Brief Generator (1976-79) sought to create conditions for shifting, changing personal interactions in a reconfigurable and responsive architectural project.
It followed this open-ended brief:
The proposal consisted of an orthogonal grid of foundation bases, tracks and linear drains, in which a mobile crane could place a kit of parts comprised of cubical module enclosures and infill components (i.e. timber frames to be filled with modular components raging from movable cladding wall panels to furniture, services and fittings), screening posts, decks and circulation components (i.e. walkways on the ground level and suspended at roof level) in multiple arrangements.
When Cedric Price approached John and Julia Frazer he wrote:
Generator Project
They proposed four programs that would use input from sensors attached to Generator’s components: the first three provided a “perpetual architect” drawing program that held the data and rules for Generator’s design; an inventory program that offered feedback on utilisation; an interface for “interactive interrogation” that let users model and prototype Generator’s layout before committing the design. The powerful and curious boredom program served to provoke Generator’s users. “In the event of the site not being re-organized or changed for some time the computer starts generating unsolicited plans and improvements,” the Frazers wrote. These plans would then be handed off to Factor, the mobile crane operator, who would move the cubes and other elements of Generator. “In a sense the building can be described as being literally ‘intelligent’,” wrote John Frazer—Generator “should have a mind of its own.” It would not only challenge its users, facilitators, architect and programmer—it would challenge itself.
The Frazers’ research and techniques
The first proposal, associated with a level of ‘interactive’ relationship between ‘architect/machine’, would assist in drawing and with the production of additional information, somewhat implicit in the other parallel developments/ proposals. The second proposal, related to the level of ‘interactive/semiautomatic’ relationship of ‘client–user/machine’, was ‘a perpetual architect for carrying out instructions from the Polorizer’ and for providing, for instance, operative drawings to the crane operator/driver; and the third proposal consisted of a ‘[. . .] scheduling and inventory package for the Factor [. . .] it could act as a perpetual functional critic or commentator.’ The fourth proposal, relating to the third level of relationship, enabled the permanent actions of the users, while the fifth proposal consisted of a ‘morphogenetic program which takes suggested activities and arranges the elements on the site to meet the requirements in accordance with a set of rules.’ Finally, the last proposal was [. . .] an extension [. . .] to generate unsolicited plans, improvements and modifications in response to users’ comments, records of activities, or even by building in a boredom concept so that the site starts to make proposals about rearrangements of itself if no changes are made. The program could be heuristic and improve its own strategies for site organisation on the basis of experience and feedback of user response.
Self Builder Kit and the Cal Build Kit, Working Models
In a certain way, the idea of a computational aid in the Generator project also acknowledged and intended to promote some degree of unpredictability. Generator, even if unbuilt, had acquired a notable position as the first intelligent building project. Cedric Price and the Frazers´ collaboration constituted an outstanding exchange between architecture and computational systems. The Generator experience explored the impact of the new techno-cultural order of the Information Society in terms of participatory design and responsive building. At an early date, it took responsiveness further; and postulates like those behind the Generator, where the influence of new computational technologies reaches the level of experience and an aesthetics of interactivity, seems interesting and productive. Resources
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Architecture, Interaction design
at
10:27
Defined tags for this entry: architects, architecture, behaviour, cognition, digital life, experimentation, function, generative, history, interaction design, monitoring, research, robotics
Saturday, February 17. 2018Environmental Devices retrospective exhibition by fabric | ch until today! | #fabric|ch #accrochage #bookNote: a few pictures from fabric | ch retrospective at #EphemeralKunsthalleLausanne (disused factory Mayer & Soutter, nearby Lausanne in Renens). The exhibition is being set up in the context of the production of a monographic book and is still open today (Saturday 17.02, 5.00-8.00 pm)!
By fabric | ch ----- - All images Ch. Guignard.
Posted by Patrick Keller
in fabric | ch, Architecture, Art, Interaction design
at
12:51
Defined tags for this entry: architects, architecture, art, artificial reality, climate, conditioning, data, design (environments), design (interactions), devices, digital, engineering, environment, exhibitions, exhibitions-fbrc, experimentation, fabric | ch, interaction design, interface, interferences, monitoring, research, variable
Monday, February 05. 2018Research Through Art and Design, Fabio Gramazio in discussion with Patrick Keller, ECAL website (2018) | #design #research #experimental #architecture
Note: I had the great pleasure to be in discussion with Prof. Fabio Gramazio (ETHZ) during the Research in Art & Design Day that took place at ECAL last October. The session was moderated by Vera Sacchetti. I know Fabio since we were both assistants, him in Zürich (ETHZ), and me in Lausanne (EPFL). We did collaborate on projects at that time for CAAD-ETHZ (directed by Prof. Gerhard Schmitt at that time), and I know also all the art work Fabio did in the context of the fanous Swiss collective etoy. We didn't had time to talk about it unfortunately, even so it was planned... The recording of our discussion about academic research in architecture and design, its specificities in the case of Fabio, and their relation to practice in architecture and design, is now accessible on the Vimeo account of the School.
Via ECAL -----
ECAL Research Day 2017: Fabio Gramazio – co-founder, Gramazio + Kohler Architects, Zurich from ECAL on Vimeo. Research Through Art and Design: Materials and Forms Fabio Gramazio – co-founder, Gramazio + Kohler Architects, Zurich 10+10 Research in Art & Design at ECAL On the occasion of the 10 years since the moving of ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne to its current premises in Renens and marking the 10th anniversary of the foundation of EPFL+ECAL Lab, ECAL hosted a symposium on Research in Art and Design, featuring artists, designers and scholars in these fields from all over the world, in conversation with ECAL faculty members. ecal.ch
Posted by Patrick Keller
in fabric | ch, Architecture, Interaction design
at
15:41
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Monday, October 09. 201710+10, Research in Art & Design, ECAL | #research #bydesign
Note: I'll have the great pleasure to be in discussion tomorrow with Fabio Gramazio, Prof. & Head for Digital fabrication at ETHZ and partner at Gramazio Kohler, during the much-awaited symposium "Research in Art and Design", at ECAL. If you can attend, please do so! As we're expecting great presentations from the likes of Xavier Veilhan, Roel Wouters, Skylar Tibbits, Catherine Ince and several others... including Fabio Gramazio of course, who will speak about their rescent researches at the Swiss Institute of Technology / Department of Architecture in Zürich.
Via ECAL -----
10+10 Research in Art & Design at ECAL Tuesday 10 October 2017, 8.00–18.30 On the occasion of the 10 years since the moving of ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne to its current premises in Renens and marking the 10th anniversary of the foundation of EPFL+ECAL Lab, ECAL is hosting a symposium on Research in Art and Design, featuring artists, designers and scholars in these fields from all over the world, in conversation with ECAL faculty members. Admission is free upon registration through the online RSVP form at www.researchday.ch
--- Programme 8.00–8.30 Registration Introductory notes on Research in Art and Design in Switzerland Moderation Design Research: from Academia to the Real World 9.00–9.45 Alba Cappellieri professor, Politecnico di Milano, Milan 9.45–10.30 Sophie Pène vice president, Conseil National du Numérique, Paris 10.30–11.00 Coffee break Research Through Art and Design: Materials and Forms 11.45–12.30 Fabio Gramazio co-founder, Gramazio + Kohler Architects, Zurich - 12.30–13.30 Lunch - Research Practices in Curating Art and Design 14.15–15.00 Astrid Welter head of programs, Fondazione Prada, Milan/Venice 15.00–15.15 Coffee break The Future of Art and Design Research 16.00–16.45 Skylar Tibbits co-founder, MIT Self-Assembly Lab, Cambridge (MA) 16.45 Closing remarks, panel discussion --- 17.30 Exhibition openings at Cinema Studio, Gallery l’elac and EPFL+ECAL Lab
ECAL will launch the book Making Sense: 10 Years of Research in Art and Design at ECAL on the occasion of the symposium. --- 18.30 Cocktail
10+10 Research in Art and Design at ECAL Ecole cantonale d’art de Lausanne
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Posted by Patrick Keller
in fabric | ch, Architecture, Art, Design
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10:45
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Friday, May 12. 2017The World’s Largest Artificial Sun Could Help Generate Clean Fuel | #conditioning #energy
Note: an amazing climatic device. For clean energy experimentation here. Would have loved to have that kind of devices (and budget ;)) when we put in place Perpetual Tropical Sunshine !
-----
Don’t lean against the light switch at the Synlight building in Jülich, Germany—if you do, things might get rather hotter than you can cope with. The new facility is home to what researchers at the German Aerospace Center, known as DLR, have called the “world's largest artificial Sun.” Across a single wall in the building sit a series of Xenon short-arc lamps—the kind used in large cinemas to project movies. But in a huge cinema there would be one lamp. Here, spread across a surface 45 feet high and 52 feet wide, there are 140. When all those lamps are switched on and focused on the same 20 by 20 centimeter spot, they create light that’s 10,000 times more intense than solar radiation anywhere on Earth. At the center, temperatures reach over 3,000 °C. The setup is being used to mimic large concentrated solar power plants, which use a field full of adjustable mirrors to focus sunlight into a small incredibly hot area, where it melts salt that is then used to create steam and generate electricity. Researchers at DLR, though, think that a similar mirror setup could be used to power a high-energy reaction where hydrogen is extracted from water vapor. In theory, that process could supply a constant and affordable source of liquid hydrogen fuel—something that clean energy researchers continue to lust after, because it creates no carbon emissions when burned. Trouble is, folks at DLR don’t quite yet know how to make it happen. So they built a laboratory rig to allow them to tinker with the process using artificial light instead of reflected sunlight—a setup which, as Gizmodo notes, uses the equivalent of a household's entire year of electricity during just four hours of operation, somewhat belying its green aspirations. Of course, it’s far from the first project to aim to create hydrogen fuel cheaply: artificial photosynthesis, seawater electrolysis, biomass reactions, and many other projects have all tried—and so far failed—to make it a cost-effective exercise. So now it’s over to the Sun. Or a fake one, for now.
(Read more: DLR, Gizmodo, “World’s Largest Solar Thermal Power Plant Delivers Power for the First Time,” “A Big Leap for an Artificial Leaf,” "A New Source of Hydrogen for Fuel-Cell Vehicles")
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Science & technology, Sustainability
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08:49
Defined tags for this entry: artificial reality, atmosphere, devices, ecology, energy, environment, research, science & technology, sustainability, weather
Wednesday, September 21. 2016This is your brain on LSD | #perception #psychedelism
Via c|net (via @chrstphggnrd) ----- For the first time, a team of researchers have used neuroimaging to visualise the effect of LSD on the human brain.
A lot of research has been conducted into how psychedelic drug lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD, affects human behaviour, but what does it actually do to the brain? To find out, a team of researchers from Imperial College London gave some test subjects the drug, and documented the results using brain imaging techniques. This is the first time the human brain has been imaged while under the influence of LSD. The research has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Harry L Williams administers LSD 25 to Carl Pfeiffer, chairman of Emory University's Pharmacological Department, in 1955. The experiment was documented using the microphone. Bettmann/Corbis. LSD is known for its hallucinogenic properties and altered consciousness, and the results of the study revealed why. "We observed brain changes under LSD that suggested our volunteers were 'seeing with their eyes shut' -- albeit they were seeing things from their imagination rather than from the outside world," explained study leader Robin Carhart-Harris in a statement. "We saw that many more areas of the brain than normal were contributing to visual processing under LSD -- even though the volunteers' eyes were closed. Furthermore, the size of this effect correlated with volunteers' ratings of complex, dreamlike visions."
The top row shows the brains of the study participants on the placebo, the bottom row shows the study participants on LSD. Imperial College London.
The study involved 20 healthy participants, each of whom had previously taken some form of psychedelic drug. Each participant received either 75 micrograms of LSD or a placebo, and their brains were then imaged. The results revealed that the barriers between the sections of the brain that perform specialised functions break down under the influence of LSD. This means that, as mentioned, more of the brain is involved in visual processing, which causes the hallucinations, but it also contributes to the altered consciousness associated with LSD. "It is also related to what people sometimes call 'ego-dissolution', which means the normal sense of self is broken down and replaced by a sense of reconnection with themselves, others and the natural world. This experience is sometimes framed in a religious or spiritual way -- and seems to be associated with improvements in well-being after the drug's effects have subsided," Carhart-Harris said. "Our brains become more constrained and compartmentalised as we develop from infancy into adulthood, and we may become more focused and rigid in our thinking as we mature. In many ways, the brain in the LSD state resembles the state our brains were in when we were infants: free and unconstrained. This also makes sense when we consider the hyper-emotional and imaginative nature of an infant's mind." Adding music to the mix caused even more interesting changes in brain activity, causing the visual cortex to receive more information from the region of the brain associated with mental imagery and personal memory. Under the influence of both music and LSD, the study participants reported seeing even more complex visions, such as memories played out as scenes. "Scientists have waited 50 years for this moment -- the revealing of how LSD alters our brain biology," said senior researcher David Nutt , Edmon J Safra Chair in Neuropsychopharmacology. "For the first time we can really see what's happening in the brain during the psychedelic state, and can better understand why LSD had such a profound impact on self-awareness in users and on music and art. This could have great implications for psychiatry, and helping patients overcome conditions such as depression."
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Culture & society, Science & technology
at
14:11
Defined tags for this entry: artificial reality, culture & society, neurosciences, perception, research, science & technology
Thursday, June 23. 2016Platform of Future-Past by fabric | ch, architecture competition, (ex)1st price | #data #architecture #experimentation
Note: we've been working recently at fabric | ch on a project that we couldn't publish or talk about for contractual reasons... It concerned a relatively large information pavilion we had to create for three new museums in Switzerland (in Lausanne) and a renewed public space (railway station square). This pavilion was supposed to last for a decade, or a bit longer. The process was challenging, the work was good (we believed), but it finally didn't get build... Sounds sad but common isn't it? ... We'll see where these many "..." will lead us, but in the meantime and as a matter of documentation, let's stick to the interesting part and publish a first report about this project. It consisted in an evolution of a prior spatial installation entitled Heterochrony (pdf). A second post will follow soon with the developments of this competition proposal. Both posts will show how we try to combine small size experiments (exhibitions) with more permanent ones (architecture) in our work. It also marks as well our desire at fabric | ch to confront more regularly our ideas and researches with architectural programs. This first post only consists in a few snapshots of the competition documents, while the following one should present the "final" project and ideas linked to it.
By fabric | ch -----
On the jury paper was written, under "price" -- as we didn't get paid for the 1st price itself -- : "Réalisation" (realization). Just below in the same letter, "according to point 1.5 of the competition", no realization will be attributed... How ironic! We did work further on an extended study though.
A few words about the project taken from its presentation: " (...) This platform with physically moving parts could almost be considered an archaeological footbridge or an unknown scientific device, reconfigurable and shiftable, overlooking and giving to see some past industrial remains, allowing to document the present, making foresee the future. The pavilion, or rather pavilions, equipped with numerous sensor systems, could equally be considered an "architecture of documentation" and interaction, in the sense that there will be extensive data collected to inform in an open and fluid manner over the continuous changes on the sites of construction and tranformations. Taken from the various "points of interets' on the platform, these data will feed back applications ("architectural intelligence"?), media objects, spatial and lighting behaviors. The ensemble will play with the idea of a combination of various time frames and will combine the existing, the imagined and the evanescent. (...) "
Heterochrony, a previous installation that followed similar goals, back in 2012. http://www.heterochronie.cc
Download pdf (14 mb).
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Project: fabric | ch Team: Patrick Keller, Christophe Guignard, Sinan Mansuroglu, Nicolas Besson.
Posted by Patrick Keller
in fabric | ch, Architecture, Interaction design
at
15:56
Defined tags for this entry: architects, architecture, automation, behaviour, computing, data, fabric | ch, interaction design, interferences, monitoring, research, responsive
Tuesday, June 14. 2016Breatheable Food | #air #food #particles
Note: the architecture (of atmospheres) could become atomized into fine particles that aggregate in different manners along time, following different "rules" (these "rules" being the ones to be designed by the architect). While we digg into sensors than monitor elements of the atmosphere (physical and non physical elements), we're definitely looking for a kind of architecture that would "deal" with these elements/particles and recompose them.
Via Cabinet (Spring 2001) ----- By David Gissen
In the history of architecture and design there have only been a few "effects"—electric light, forced air—that have had the capacity to cause massive environmental and behavioral shifts. Last year at Barcelona's annual design fair, the Catalonian designer Marti Guixe presented another—breathable food. "Pharma-food, a system of nourishment by breathing," is an appliance that was developed by Guixe to explore the transformation of food into pure information.
Dust Food Muesli. Photos: Inga Knölke.
Pharma-food joins the work of other, primarily European, designers who are exploring alternative regimens for such activities as washing or eating. One of Guixe's Catalonian contemporaries, Ana Mir, is exploring a technology that allows one to wash without water. Like Guixe's approach, this project would allow washing to occur anywhere. In their work, these designers not only free regimens from their fixed location in relation to certain products; they also free these activities from their traditional engagement with the body. Unlike designers such as Philippe Starck or Richard Sapper, who strive to revise traditional technologies, Guixe has discovered that the problem of eating does not involve the design of a new type of stove, sink, or refrigerator—the problem of eating requires finding a new mouth.
Pharma-BAR. Photo: Inga Knölke.
Guixe, who has been studying alternative forms of eating for several years, realized that the breathing of "food" already occurs via the inhalation of dust that hangs in the air at work and at home. Guixe hypothesized that this form of eating, from which one gains a miniscule amount of minerals and vitamins, could be trans-formed into a more potent meal, a "dust-muesli," that would supply a powerful dose of nutrients. The Pharma-Food appliance, which sprays this ærosolized nutrition, connects to a computer and requires Microsoft Excel to enter exact values for such things as riboflavin, vitamin C, and protein. The combination of these nutrients are saved on the computer as documents with names such as "SPAMT," which has the nutrient "language" of tomatoes and bread, and "Costa Brova," a "seafood" dish that is heavy on the iodine and light on carbohydrates. Guixe imagines diners composing these "meals" and sending them as e-mail attachments to other owners of the Pharma-food emitter. "Like MP3," says Guixe. - David Gissen is associate curator for architecture and design at the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C. He is currently developing an exhibition on human conveyance (elevators, escalators and moving sidewalks) and one on flying buildings.
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Posted by Patrick Keller
in Architecture, Design
at
09:12
Defined tags for this entry: architecture, atmosphere, design, food, particles, research, speculation
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fabric | rblgThis blog is the survey website of fabric | ch - studio for architecture, interaction and research. We curate and reblog articles, researches, writings, exhibitions and projects that we notice and find interesting during our everyday practice and readings. Most articles concern the intertwined fields of architecture, territory, art, interaction design, thinking and science. From time to time, we also publish documentation about our own work and research, immersed among these related resources and inspirations. This website is used by fabric | ch as archive, references and resources. It is shared with all those interested in the same topics as we are, in the hope that they will also find valuable references and content in it.
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