THE SCIENCE MAGAZINE OF IMPERIAL COLLEGE
DESIGN SPRING 2018
PHARMA GIANTS & TECH MESSIAHS Conscious and unconscious bias
BLURRING THE LINES
Reimagining the lab as art studio
IT TASTES RED, IT SOUNDS WARM Blending the senses in design
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Editors-in-Chief Poppy-Jayne Morgan Christopher Richardson Magazine Editor Claudia Cannon Pictures Editor Taryn Kalish Web Editor Pedro Ferreira Online Features Editor Joe Hincks News Editors Jordan Hindson Meesha Patel Radio Editor Shivani Dave TV Editor Lina Kabbadj Business Manager Luke Cridland Marketing and Social Media Rachael Smith Events Manager Josh Sucher Sub-Editors Hilary Guite Rachel Kahn Bridie Kennerley Sarah Leach Jonathan Neasham Mariam Shafei-Sabet Cover Illustrator Nicolas Baird / nicolasbaird.com
Hello and welcome to our spring term issue. With the winter solstice well behind us, the days are becoming brighter, longer. And as the fresh grass of Queen’s Lawn approaches peak plushness, we welcome the warmth with open arms. In the spirit of the season, we’re excited to bring you fresh print content alongside our usual online features and radio packages. In this issue we turn our gaze toward Design. While there are elements of design present in science - in natural selection’s outcomes, say, or the construction of experimental studies - we often overlook it where it exists in its most beautiful forms. We also live in one of the world’s most beautiful design capitals, and must remember to step back and appreciate the spaces we inhabit. With this in mind, we bring you a set of features that fuse scientific thinking with concepts from the design world. How can we better create our urban spaces to improve well-being? What can nature teach us about improving our own design in order to stay relevant alongside the robots, instead of slipping
into obsolescence? Is it possible to forge a better world through cross-disciplinary thinking? In the spirit of collaboration, we wish to thank our friends at the Royal College of Art and Central Saint Martins for their stellar contributions to both visuals and words. Several features have been co-developed by writers and artists working in tandem. Meanwhile some have stripped back the words to focus more on aesthetics. Our centrefold throws away words entirely and lets you generate your own article. Get in touch with your interpretations: we’d love to hear them. We have tried to be bold in attempting something new and have thoroughly enjoyed putting this issue together. We hope that you enjoy pulling it apart. Chris and Poppy-Jayne Editors-in-Chief For further information on the artists and artwork featured in this issue, please visit: isciencemag.co.uk/ features/iscience-issue-39-artwork
I,SCIENCE We’re always on the lookout for new contributors for both the magazine and the website. If you would like to get involved as a writer or illustrator please don’t hesitate to get in contact. You can email us at i.science@imperial.ac.uk, tweet us @i_science_mag or contact us directly through our website: www.isciencemag.co.uk
I, Science, c/o Liam Watson, Level 3, Sherfield Building, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ Email: i.science@imperial.ac.uk Printed by:Leaflet Frog, 38 Britannia Way, Bolton BL2 2HH
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I, Science is a publication of the Science Communication Unit, Centre for Languages, Culture and Communication, Imperial College London. However, it is a student publication, and as such the views expressed in I, Science do not reflect the views of the Unit, Centre or College.
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Blurring the lines Reimagining the laboratory as art studio
CONTENTS
ARTificial intelligence The rise of the machines threatens the very essence of the creative professions Turn to the left, turn to the right Nature and tech collide in the fashion world Don’t run with scissors Pondering the implications of CRISPRbased gene editing technologies Concrete jungles redesigned Bringing sustainable design principles to urban planning The incompetent watchmaker Overcoming natural selection’s suboptimal designs Visual essay isciencemag.co.uk/podcast-video/ audio/shoshin Landfills to a standstill Practical solutions to the problem of plastic It tastes red, it sounds warm Blending the senses in design Pharma giants and tech messiahs Conscious and unconscious bias in STEM Unorthodox substrates Generating stunning visuals with mathematical and microbial materials Cunning linguistics How language shapes experience Bach to basics How mathematical approaches solved the riddle of the piano Multispectral satellite image London and its surrounding area
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Driving into the university car park every morning might be the only thing an art lecturer and neuroscience PhD student think they have in common. They pass each other on the dull, grey concrete, almost coming within touching distance as they walk up the central path. They diverge to their respective departments, breathing a sigh of relief at the lack of awkward exchanges or polite glances. Yet these two people don’t differ that much in their daily work. The artist mixes paints on a palette to form unique colours, carefully positioned on a canvas to create a beautiful picture that can change ideas and reveal new things about the world. Meanwhile, the neuroscientist injects combinations of fluorescent proteins into brain tissue to colour individual cells, also producing stunning pictures, which reveal much about the world of undiscovered neural networks. Thus, in their methods and in their goals, the line between art and science is blurred.
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Whilst art has enjoyed a rewarding relationship with colour, biology has had a more difficult one. When growing microbe cultures on a petri-dish, a variety of colours can be indicative of contamination. Many biologists joke about their day-to-day activities consisting of pipetting clear liquids into other clear liquids, with colour only added to images captured from microscopes artificially. Created by researchers from Harvard University in 2007, the Brainbow began the start of a new colourful relationship between neuroscience and art. The Brainbow is the final visual result of an array of colours, using coloured protein markers in brain tissue. Many neuroscientists have refined the genetic tools to make the Brainbow. Using the same system as a television screen to create a full spectrum of coloured light, researchers made a piece of DNA with the code for a red, green and blue fluorescent protein alongside promoters that would express these three proteins in random combinations. Expression of the resulting code in the entire population of cells in a brain area resulted in a confetti effect, where every cell is a different colour to the one next to it, allowing individual, tightly packed cells and their axon pathways to be distinguished.
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Vision is arguably the most powerful human sense. Using colour in this way has given researchers the power to map and decipher the brain in a manner that was previously impossible when using a single colour protein for a large area or sparsely colouring cells within a tissue. Furthermore, these images have captured the imagination of the rest of the world, engaging others with neuroscience and how much of the brain we have left to discover. So perhaps, as the PhD student and the art teacher cross paths in the car park again on their way home, they ought to look up and catch each other’s eye, laugh nervously at the awkward encounter, and think ‘maybe we’re not that different after all’. Author: Izzy Sturt Images: “Brainbows” mouse brain Livet J, Weissman TA, Kang H, Draft RW, Lu J, Bennis RA, Sanes JR, Lichtman JW. Originally published: Nature, 2007. Sources: cellimagelibrary.org / cell.com
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What if I told you that an artificial intelligence wrote Hamlet? Would it enhance or diminish your appreciation of Shakespeare’s classic? Such questions have the potential to revolutionise our ideas about creativity. A major talking point about the rise of AI and automation is that it will result in the loss of a huge number of jobs. Manufacturing, retail and service jobs are all at risk, and whether or not new jobs will take their place is an unresolved debate. Regardless, it is often assumed that creativity will remain untouched. Creativity, it is thought, requires a spark, an X factor that is inextricably bound up with whatever it is that makes us human. The ever-growing list of projects exploring the potential use of AI in creative fields casts doubt on this assumption. We now take it for granted that AI can vastly exceed us in calculating and computational tasks. After all, this is difficult to deny in a world in which AI programs can humiliate our chess grandmasters and humble our Go champions. But, what about music, film and literature? In 2017, the supercomputer IBM Watson was used to produce the first ever AI-created film trailer for 20th Century Fox’s thriller, Morgan. Fed hundreds of film trailers, IBM Watson absorbed their contents and used the lessons learnt to compose Morgan’s trailer. A human added the finishing touches, but the supercomputer radically streamlined the speed at which a trailer can be produced. Other examples have included programs that can compose classical music, pen sonnets or write Harry Potter fanfiction. 2017 saw an AI program, impatient with George R.R. Martin’s delay, attempt to write the long-awaited sixth instalment of A Song of Ice and Fire. The results of such experiments have been uneven, based as many of them are on AI digesting large chunks of pre-existing material such as past novels or symphonies, recognising patterns and spitting out crude combinations. At least for the foreseeable future, human–AI collaboration looks set to transform artistic industries, but this compromise is unlikely to deter those fascinated by the tantalising prospect of art authored solely by machines. In this newly created field, AI programs are improving briskly and may provoke tough questions about who we are and how we derive meaning from life. Is there some element of creativity that our computational creations will never be able to grasp, or will our greatest artistic feats be mimicked and ultimately surpassed by AI? “Such questions Author: Jordan Hindson have the potential to revolutionise our ideas about creativity.”
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Artwork: Rose Zhou The rise of the machines threatens the very essence of the creative professions. How can humans coexist?
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“Art has existed for thousands of years as an extension of human expression, something that will not entirely vanish because we now have company.�
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Last year a team of scientists working at the Art and Artificial Intelligence Lab at Rutgers University developed an AI capable of creating artwork indistinguishable from human-made art. After using thousands of art pieces to learn different artistic styles, the AI was able to produce its own creations, which members of the public found they preferred to art painted by the human hand.
and ideas, whereas an AI can merely copy existing works. Additionally, our brain endows us with the faculty to experience emotion, something that leaves AI at a disadvantage. When humans engage in creative endeavours, irrespective of competition from their computerised counterparts, they can acquire an individual sense of satisfaction and pride from their work.
With such advancements in AI, the machines are no longer merely satisfied with taking our jobs but are now prying our creativity away from us as well. Considering this, the argument that we will delve more into creative careers in a future where machines have rendered us otherwise unemployable might now seem overly optimistic.
Art has existed for thousands of years as an extension of human expression, something that will not entirely vanish because we now have company. So even in a future where AI governs jobs and encroaches on more art, humans can still find individual happiness in the pursuit of their own creativity.
However, the immediate future of creativity does not appear to be one wholly overtaken by machines where humans are entirely excluded. Though artwork made by AI will continue to improve, the human brain endows us with a significant advantage (at least for now), offering us greater creative thinking than an AI currently possesses. At present, AI is outmatched by the human faculty of making inferences, allowing humans to create new art styles, mediums,
Finally, while initially seen as a competition between humans and machines, the two can actually work together. Though AI may indeed impact the field in years to come, the artist that learns to work alongside AI will find plenty of opportunity in doing so. Author: Jonathan Neasham
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turn to the left Author: Charlie Jones Artwork: Sabrina Hasan - www.sabrinamumtazhasan.co.uk
Sharkskin swimwear
Clothing is a key form of human expression where innovation is the key to success. Whether trying to represent the cutting edge of style, or modify the body to achieve the otherwise impossible, the fashion industry relies upon its ability to find new sources of inspiration. As we continue to push the boundaries of both function and aesthetic, could we find that some of the best new ideas have been previously hidden in plain sight?
Having evolved 450 million years ago, the shark is a veteran predator, famed for its slick and speedy pursuit. These two characteristics are likewise conveniently desired by the competitive swimming community, as they strive to increase their distance and slash their times. Could it be possible to combine the human form with the adaptations of an ocean native? Speedo thought so.
3.8 billion years of evolution has resulted in some of the most intricate and efficient systems imaginable. Humans have figured out a way to catch up, through the science of biomimicry, in which designers produce materials, structures and systems that are inspired by biology.
On the surface of a shark’s skin, dermal denticles form a layer of tooth-like projections which flex with the movement of the fish. These act to reduce drag by disturbing the water closest to the skin, whilst creating small areas of low pressure swirling water, propelling the shark forward. Speedo took inspiration from these qualities, and attempted to construct a suit mimicking the shark skin. In 2000, after extensive research and development, Speedo introduced their FASTSKIN swimsuit. Its effect was undeniable. In the Sydney Olympics, wearers bagged 13 out of 15 world swimming records set and 83% of the swimming medals won. To Speedo, this was only the beginning. Over the next decade they introduced the FASTSKIN FSII in 2004 and the LZR Racer just in time for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Combining the dermal denticle technology with body compression and position support, athletes wearing the LZR Racer captured 92% of all Beijing swim medals, sparking accusations of ‘technological doping’ from critics and raising the question of whether equipment improvements were distorting the nature of sport and competition. In 2010 the swimsuit technology race was halted by a FINA ban, forcing a reversion to the traditional textile suit, limited to above the knee shorts and shoulder straps. Despite their impressive statistics, critics have pointed out that Speedo had provided suits to the large majority of the world leading swimmers, who would likely have won medals without their assistance. Another blow to Speedo arose when biologists at Harvard University claimed their material to be nothing like shark skin at all, thwarting their biomimetic claims while also concluding that the LZR Racer has no significant effect on reducing drag. Instead, they highlighted that athletes are squeezed so tightly into the suits that they took fifteen minutes to put on. This compression makes the athlete more streamlined and can even increase deoxygenated blood return to the heart. They also suggested that performance could be assisted by structural support, helping the swimmer to maintain an ideal posture, even when tiring. Whether successful or not, even the intention of emulating the shark had catapulted Speedo into a swimsuit revolution. Could this pave the way for a biomimetic future in sport?
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turn to the right Squid-inspired camouflage In terrestrial and marine environments, creatures use aesthetic to give them an evolutionary edge and a remarkable example of this is the ability to alter colour. Cephalopods are masters of camouflage and pattern, allowing them to visually display dynamic changes in mood and stress levels, as well as to communicate with potential mates. The ability to alter appearance on demand would also be useful to humans, and researchers at Bristol University are trying to emulate the squid’s skin using smart materials. Within the cephalopod’s skin, there are tiny sacs called chromatophores filled with pigment. These cells are attached to muscles, which can stretch and contract in response to environmental stimuli, altering both the texture and the colour of the cephalopod’s skin. The research team have attempted to mimic these biological patterns by creating an artificial version of the specialised cells using dielectric elastomers, a soft smart material, which can change shape in response to an electrical charge, producing a mechanical pull. When scientists programmed these cells to sense and copy the movement of adjacent cells, the invention was able to mimic pattern displays found on real cephalopods, with waves of colour moving across the surface of the skin to divert and confuse any threatening predators. As they continue to develop the smart material, the team aim to increase the skin’s pattern repertoire whilst gaining more control over the way it spreads across the material. Their eventual goal is to create an artificial skin with almost magical functions, such as a cloaking suit and clothing that can dynamically change its illumination. This will allow the wearer to blend into changing environments, and may in the future replace the textile camouflage suits worn by the military, more effectively protecting servicepeople. Furthermore, using colour displays to draw attention to emergency services in search and rescue operations could also prove to be a safety application of the technology. Although the path to these ambitions is riddled with unknowns, the cephalopod has provided the mechanisms with which we can pursue what was previously unattainable.
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Concrete jungles redesigned Bringing sustainable design principles to urban planning Architecture not only involves designing an aesthetically pleasing structure, but also needs to consider functionality and practicality. An architect’s designs are their mark on the world, and their buildings will be around long after they are gone. Therefore, we could say that every architect already looks to the future. This is fortunate as we now expect them to consider the sustainability of communities and the planet in their designs. This article explores some mistakes of the past, and ways we can make our cities more sustainable in the future.
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Much of London is an old city, with old customs, old roads and old architecture. It’s what I’ve found so charming about most of Europe’s cities, especially when you’ve come from Asia where I am used to rapid and large-scale development. Despite that, it goes without saying that with the old systems, the old problems still influence the present day, with architecture both responsible for these problems, but also the solutions.
Keeping a house cool during the summer and warm during the winter is always a challenge for architects. Air conditioners and radiators work well but consume too much energy and cost a lot of money to run long-term. Architectural techniques that allow for airflow and cross ventilation dissipate or spread heat efficiently throughout the building, allowing for passive heating and cooling throughout the day and night.
Imagine long, intertwining rows of cheaply-built terrace houses snaking for miles. The suburban sprawl we recognise all too well today is the direct result of efforts to house too many people in our cities. These low-density areas spring up on the outskirts of the city, leaving insufficient people to create a sense of community, support services and amenities to meet their needs. Or imagine squeezing people into densely populated central areas in monolithic, anonymous tower blocks like sentries along main roads. These urban spaces can impact badly on the environment, in addition to the health and social well-being of residents.
The ideas for sustainability do not stop with new technologies and building materials. A book by German-born economist, E.F. Schumacher entitled Small is Beautiful, written as long ago as 1973, details his ideas on sustainable economic practices and living. The book was inspirational at the beginning of a largescale project by architect Paolo Soleri to create an experimental town to demonstrate how sustainable development and design is indeed possible. The town, known as Arcosanti, located in Arizona, has 50-150 permanent residents and incorporates ideas such as efficient heat containment and dissipation under the hot Arizona sun through the orientation of buildings and the design of specialised roofing. The layout of the town is organic and intertwining, helping to increase a sense of community and social bonds, while still retaining privacy and safety for residents. To this day, the town is still growing, with students and volunteers being its main population and construction workforce, with the goal to reach a population of 5000 soon.
The most immediate threat these kinds of developments pose is to the environment. Habitats and biodiversity are among the first things to go when urban sprawl sets in. Each time housing extends into the countryside, the flora and fauna are cleared. Other environmental effects include pollution from emissions due to increased traffic, and from waste generated from the new households. Residents are well acquainted with the environmental problems in the middle of the city. The emissions from cars driving on nearby highways can be detrimental to people’s health. Small particulate matter from cars sets up inflammatory responses putting people at risk of lung and heart disease. Noise from traffic is now thought to impact not just sleep but may also increase the risk of dementia.
With the population density and age of the cities, it is difficult to apply such measures without disturbing the already aged and delicate infrastructure and architecture. There is hope for sustainable architecture and urban planning, however, with the rapidly developing cities in Asia and the Middle East leading the way. Perhaps one day, we’ll all be living in an Arcosanti. Author & artwork: Leong Jin Ean
An often-overlooked effect of large-scale urban development is residents’ quality of life, such as the feeling of being safe when walking the streets at night and the feeling of belonging to a friendly community. Each of these plays a role in the mental well-being of residents. Methods of sustainable architecture have been available for some time. However, the need for cheap and quick housing has diminished their use in large-scale urban developments. It is a common misconception that sustainable architecture is expensive. With rapid advances in technology and research, sustainable architecture has become cheaper than, if not, costing the same as conventional design. From renewable energy and new building materials to more efficient ventilation and heating, architecture has a role to play in the design of sustainable cities. Solar panels and wind turbines have been the mainstays of green technology for a long time. Advances in technology have made these even cheaper to incorporate into sustainable design, allowing the occupants to save money on energy costs. In relation to building material, on the one hand, buildings can reduce their environmental impact by using recycled materials or at least low-impact materials in construction. On the other hand, there are specialised materials that end up saving on energy costs such as low-emissivity glass that limits the amount of incoming heat from the sun, keeping the interior cool while also saving money and energy on air conditioning.
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Spaghetti junction in the human male reproductive system: Evolution is not always perfect, and organisms are not the embodiment of perfect design or even optimally adapted. Is the male reproductive system perfectly designed? Some would argue yes. These people could be termed adaptationists. Adaptationism is part of a rather heated debate among evolutionary biologists. It is the view that every trait belonging to an individual is an optimal solution, in other words, that every characteristic displayed by a species is an adaptation which increases that organism’s reproductive fitness. But it is worth considering characteristics which are not optimally designed for their function. In the human male reproductive system, the testes are stored outside the body. Internally the vas deferens, a tiny muscular tube that carries sperm, connect the testes to the urethra which takes urine from the bladder to the outside. The route that the vas deferens take is complicated. They travel over the ureter which connects the bladder to the kidneys, meaning the vas deferens go up the body and then loop back down again. This is hardly the most efficient route, but it is a prime example of how there are constraints on evolution.
“changes to improve an individual’s fitness don’t need to be the best, they just need to be better than the last.”
So why such a circuitous route? Our mammalian ancestors were previously cold-blooded, also known as ectothermic. They used external sources to heat their body - think of reptiles warming themselves in the sun today. When mammals were cold-blooded their testes were stored internally and as they evolved to become the warm-blooded mammals we recognise today, their testes descended. This is because sperm survives better at cooler temperatures. The vas deferens of the first mammals whose testes descended, took the complicated route over the ureter. These individuals then had a better chance at reproducing than their counterparts, and so, the trait was passed on. This is an example of a historical constraint. Evolution can only work on what is present. It is a step-by-step process and to take a step back in order to take the more efficient route, would be detrimental to that individual’s reproductive fitness.
Overcoming natural selection’s suboptimal designs
There is no reverse evolution. Once a species has become specialised it is hard for it to go back, but it is possible to evolve an entirely new adaptation. Bears developed flat feet to carry their heavy weight when walking, and as a result lost the use of their opposable thumbs. Pandas have evolved to eat bamboo, and to have retained their opposable thumbs would have been a great advantage for grasping bamboo stalks. However, evolution can’t go backwards. Pandas instead evolved a new ‘thumb’ which is an abnormally enlarged wrist bone. In the case of pandas, adaptations luckily skirted around these evolutionary constraints to improve their fitness but not perfect their design. Overall, organisms are not optimally designed nor perfect. Evolution is a gradual process of step-by-step changes. These changes, to improve an individual’s fitness, don’t need to be the best, they just need to be better than the last. Author: Chloe Slevin
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The incompetent watchmaker Using technology to overcome unintelligent design flaws in the human body – is this what we really want?
Artwork: Tere Chadwick - www.terechad.com
If the argument for the origins of life was set in a boxing ring, intelligent design would sit squarely in the opposite corner to natural selection. Where natural selection champions chance and chaos as the chief propellants of life’s evolution, intelligent design argues that the scale of complexity and design in organisms can only point in one direction, a creator. Here, a designer must preclude a design. There are many natural examples where the arguments for intelligent design are found lacking, including in humanity itself, and this has consequently resulted in us taking matters into our own hands. The human race constantly strives for progress and perfection, whether internally or externally to itself. However, it is only relatively recently in our history that technology has allowed us to apply this to our own evolutionary flaws, with the push for cyborg technology at the forefront of the transhumanist movement. Neil Harbisson is a famous example. Harbission was born with a rare visual disorder called achromatopsia, which is complete colour blindness. Instead of having difficulty distinguishing certain colours, all he can see is grayscale. In his early twenties, however, he met Adam Montandon, a cybernetics expert at Plymouth University who installed an antenna to the back of his brain which interpreted colour as sound. Being an artist, this revolutionised Harbisson’s perception of the world around him, to such an extent that he didn’t see the antenna as an accessory at all - it had become a part of him, an extension of his physical self. And in 2004, his viewpoint was legally shared by the British government, as he was allowed to wear the antenna in his passport photo and thereby legally was recognised as a cyborg.
“there is a real distinction between saving a life and preferentially altering it.”
Harbisson is not alone in the push for intertwining biology and technology. Transhumanism doesn’t simply perceive flaws to correct, it strives to add onto the human model rather than ‘fix’ it. Just as the physical tools of early human life extended our capabilities as a species, the push behind cybernetics possesses the same principle of addition to enhance human life. However, there are many legitimate concerns over such progression. Ironically, probably the biggest concern is that by attempting to overcome the flaws that define us, we in the process become the intelligent designer we had previously denounced. It could technically be argued that we play God already through the very concept of medicine, but there is a real distinction between saving a life and preferentially altering it. In doing so you imply there are some forms of life that need ‘improving’, which is a very dangerous school of thought to enter. In the end it boils down to the choice of the individual involved. If an individual wants to enhance their own experience of life, not to the detriment of others, they should be allowed to do so. However, we must be ever vigilant with the term improvement, because something so subjective will always pose real dangers if left unchecked. Author: Luke Cridland
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W M “We are reaching a breaking point with our attitude to plastic, but it’s not too late to make changes“ 18
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Artwork: Pod Hughes - www.podhughes.com
ith its waterproof, malleable and versatile structure, plastic has revolutionised industries from transportation to film to packaging. At this point it’s difficult to imagine what a world without plastics would look like, given that everything from plumbing pipes to computers are made with it. But this cheap, convenient invention has become a global crisis. We have produced 9.1 billion tonnes of plastic over the last seven decades, and almost 80% of that ended up in a landfill or the natural environment. The main culprit is plastic being produced for a single use, including water bottles and coffee cups. They are used once and then thrown out, wasting the resources used to create them and - ultimately damaging ecosystems. This issue was the focus in Blue Planet II’s final episode. The sight of turtles becoming tangled in fishing lines and whales attempting to eat plastic buckets are becoming disturbingly-normal images.
Author: Olivia Mulvahil ost plastics are simply not designed to degrade, making it difficult to remove them from the environment completely. And even if we eliminated every single piece of visible plastic, traces would still linger in the form of microplastics. Microplastics are tiny particles that are created in two ways: from the breakdown of larger pieces of plastic, and deliberately for products such as face wash in the form of microbeads. Microplastics arguably pose more dangerous problems to wildlife than conventional plastics. However, as they have only recently been discovered, the extent of the damage that microplastics can cause is only beginning to be understood. One of the most worrying discoveries is the ability of microplastics to bind to toxic compounds. This not only harms the aquatic life that eats them, but the compounds accumulate to much more dangerous levels when they’re eaten by animals higher up in the food chains, such as birds, bears and humans. There are most likely severe consequences for humans ingesting microplastics, but we are yet to fully understand them. It has been suggested that certain compounds which microplastics bind to can cause hypothyroidism as well as disrupting sperm production in humans.
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LANDFILLS TO A STANDSTILL
Anthropogenic activity has had some negative consequences. Yet a rethink in the use of cheap plastics - in particular government policy and personal behaviours - can help reverse and rectify our mistakes while we still have a chance.
Practical solutions to the problem of plastic
But it is not only governments and large businesses that can make a difference to plastic waste. A number of inspiring projects have been set up by individuals to combat the problem. 4Ocean was set up by two American surfers who employ sea captains to fish trash out of the ocean: for each recycled bracelet sold they remove one pound of trash from the ocean. Beach clean-ups are organised across UK, including the Plastic Tide project, which harnesses the power of drone technologies and machine learning algorithms to survey beaches and identify hotspots ripe for cleaning. There are simple changes we can make in our everyday lives to reduce plastic wastage. Buy a reusable water bottle and coffee mug, use products with less plastic packaging, and put all recyclable plastic in the recycling. These small actions do make a difference when scaled, and signal to government and business that this is an important issue.
Artwork: Lois Bentley - lois.bentley@icloud.com
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e are reaching a breaking point with our attitude to plastic, but it is not too late to make changes. Companies and governments are now beginning to combat plastic pollution. The supermarket chain Iceland recently announced that they would stop using plastic in their packaging by 2023, meanwhile pub chain Wetherspoons have stopped stocking plastic straws in a bid to reduce their contribution. SaltWater Brewery now use biodegradable six-pack rings, created from by-products in their brewing process, so that if they end up in the ocean they can be safely consumed by wildlife. On a larger scale, the UK government has implemented a microbead ban, following the successful 5p charge for plastic bags, and the UN member states have supported a series of actions to stop plastic from ending up in the ocean. Policies are being designed to reflect our plastic crisis. These measures are preventing plastic waste, increasing reuse and recycling while also avoiding the unnecessary use of plastic. These are the positive steps that we need countries to take in order to stop more plastic from ending up in our oceans. Then we can tackle the problem of removing what is already there.
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Blending the senses in design Design is often easy to view as just something that affects one or two senses – visuals certainly, perhaps touch? But it often pays for a designer to consider every sense when creating, tailoring their work to the multitude of ways we experience, understand, and explore the world around us. The way we look at food can influence how much we desire it, or even affect our perception of how it tastes. One popular idea suggests that red packaging can appeal to us because it has connotations of sweetness, energy and ripeness. In contrast, a colour like bright blue would be an odd choice for a lot of foods, due to it being rarely seen in anything edible from nature. These might be innate, or even have some evolutionary benefit (think avoiding rotten meat), but it’s possible these associations are entirely due to our social surroundings, or the context in which the colour appears. So, someone designing food packaging needs to think very carefully about the associations they want to create to lure in a buyer. A chef plating up in a Michelin-starred restaurant would want to consider their choices too as colour can affect our perception of taste to the extent that red colouring in white wine has fooled expert wine tasters in several tests. But it’s not just restaurant and supermarket customers for whom the design of food is important. There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that patients with dysphasia (swallowing difficulties, often due to stroke or dementia) hugely benefit from thoughtful food presentation. To prevent choking, patients are prescribed finely chopped
or pureed food, but this often appears bland and uninviting, leading to a loss of appetite and potential malnutrition. As an initial solution, moulds were used to shape purees to resemble the foods they were originally created from, but now research groups are looking to build on this. Using new techniques including 3D printing and molecular gastronomy, it’s possible to create foods with a great taste, texture and appearance, whilst keeping patients safe and well-fed. There are plenty of other ways that design can allow people to access things they might not otherwise be able to. One great example is the use of tactile graphics. These are images reworked so that they can be experienced through touch. There are several practical uses for this, including the creation maps of buildings that can be used by blind and visually impaired people. Some galleries and museums have begun to use tactile diagrams that allow a visitor to feel the outline shapes of normally-flat art. Even better, new computer technology can develop this further by creating 3D versions of artworks that have depth and texture, allowing observers to experience the painting in a way that goes beyond a description or flat tactile diagram. The concept of design generally makes us think of specific products, but design work is also useful in the creation of a space, such as landscape or garden design, an area requiring thought for all the senses. A visitor’s attention would likely be caught visually first, so the choice of plant colour becomes incredibly important. In fact, considerable plant breeding is carried out to create the array of colours and shapes you might see
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at Chelsea Flower Show. Beyond this, many people’s first instinct coming across a flower is to smell it and scent is an important consideration in breeding garden plants too. So, a garden designer might choose to create a calm space with the cool colour and soothing smell of lavender, or to ignite the senses with a vibrant and sweet-smelling rose garden. When it comes to considering the senses in architecture or interior design, we’d probably consider visual features, touch perhaps, maybe even a more debatable sense such as balance, but what about sound? The creakiness of floorboards, the shutting of cupboard doors and (certainly in Britain) the sound of rain on the roof are all elements that could make or break a newbuild or refurbishment. The field of architectural acoustics is based around this idea, seeking to create an ideal sound in whatever building is being designed. High ceilings and hard surfaces make for a reverberant (and likely, chilly) room, whilst a snug room full of soft furnishings and plush carpets will dampen down sound significantly. Additionally, a good architect would take into consideration noise sources such as boilers, showers and kitchen appliances, and ensure that they are situated where they will cause the least disturbance to the occupants of the house. But these concepts are not just for houses: sound design is crucial for crystal clear sound, whether in an opera house or a recording studio.
Artwork: Becky Lyon - www.elasticfiction.co
sounds warm...
Sound is also important in design in other surprising ways. Car brands such as Mercedes even put effort into creating car doors with a distinctive closing sound. Whilst this might sound like a waste of a designer’s time, car designers point out that whilst a buyer might not be ready to take a car right out on a test drive, they’re much more likely to open and close the doors to take a look inside. So, this small detail forms a fundamental part of a buyer’s first impression. Contrastingly, kitchen furniture design was revolutionised (slightly) with technology allowing doors and drawers to shut silently. We can think of design and how it impacts us in myriad ways, but it’s often easy to forget how well designed much of our world is to cater to all of our senses. The best design uses our senses to be functional, beautiful or both and can help us to explore the world in new and exciting ways. Author: Bridie Kennerley
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“As humans become fundamentally unemployable, we must turn our conscious bias into conscious awareness.” The fact that big pharma has an inherent profit-seeking bias should come as no surprise. This makes perfect sense ideologically, and has been exposed by prominent figures such as Ben Goldacre, who covered the topic exhaustively in his book Bad Pharma. While it is counterproductive to paraphrase his entire book, it is worth reiterating its main message. Pharmaceutical companies are blinded by profit, resulting in the distortion of drug development, limited product innovation, and questionable marketing practices. And this bias is perhaps less forgivable than the unconscious bias pervading artificial intelligence, for it is intentional, celebrated, optimised.
PHARMA GI TECH ME
Conscious and u
As we mark the 200-year anniversary of Mary Sh light on some monsters of our own creation: the companies, and the unconscious bias already emb studies illustrate how suboptimal design and incen how some innovative approaches are being emplo
However, pointing out big pharma’s flaws is simply a starting point. It is worth remembering that these companies have alleviated suffering across the world on a massive scale. Without them we would have few, if any, of the medicines on which millions of patients now rely. Innovation of new medicines is a costly endeavour, and one unlikely to ever be fully undertaken by a government. In other words, big pharma provides an invaluable service to humanity. And given that these are shareholder-controlled, profit-driven organisations, they are working as intended. It therefore makes little sense to vent frustration at the way things are. It makes more sense to channel that energy into creating a set of frameworks that incentivise desired behaviours. The distortion of drug development is already being tackled by initiatives such as AllTrials.net, which encourages transparency throughout the clinical trial process by making data available to the public. The issue of limited product innovation, however, is yet to be solved. Drugs cost £1.1 billion to bring to market, and only one in 5000 compounds explored will make it through the regulatory hurdles to eventually become a product. It is unsurprising that profit-driven companies avoid being truly innovative, instead remaining in a comfortable realm of familiar, predictable molecule classes. Innovation needs to display commercial viability to be worth considering. Roger Stein, a Professor at NYU and MIT, has been trying to tackle this problem by appropriating concepts from finance to mitigate risk while providing an attractive offering for investors. Stein has performed calculations on what he terms “long shots” – long-term, low-success investments offering titanic returns. Applying securitisation structures to drugs in development – pooling risk across several drugs – makes it commercially viable for big pharma to explore new molecule classes and treat diseases beyond those affecting rich, western demographics. While this approach shows some promise, it is just like many new drugs being developed. It addresses a symptom, rather than the underlying cause - the set of frameworks that encourage such profitseeking behaviour in the first place. This is why - despite the sometimesunsettling uncertainty – the anticipated rise of artificial intelligence presents us with great opportunity. It is a ripe time in which to reconsider meaning and redefine our values, to reassess structures that are rarely questioned. This includes the entanglement of human health and the private sector, and profit-seeking more generally. As humans become fundamentally unemployable, we must turn our conscious bias into conscious awareness.
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unconscious bias
helley’s magnum opus, Frankenstein, we shine the e conscious bias of profit-seeking pharmaceutical bedded in machine learning algorithms. These case ntive structures can lead to poor outcomes, but also oyed to defeat these monsters.
“Algorithms aren’t going away and neither are the biases that they alarmingly amplify.” A credit scoring platform that streamlines your loan application process. Cognitive healthcare support that diagnoses you. Facial analysis software that unlocks your phone. Artificial intelligence is already shaping our individual experiences of reality and making increasingly important decisions for us. As technology spreads to areas such as the justice system and medicine, the risk of opaque mathematical models reproducing our society’s inherent biases in pervasive and harmful ways is becoming critical. By training systems using biased data, we enable algorithmic discrimination and implicit prejudices in computerised decision-making processes. The danger with algorithms, as opposed to biased human-enabled operations such as pharmaceutical drug development, is that they tend to be held less accountable for negative, life-altering outcomes. Automated decision-making systems have nonetheless become necessary to many industries and exist in almost every facet of our everyday lives, from filtering our emails to finishing our sentences. Algorithms aren’t going away, and neither are the biases that they alarmingly amplify. If the victims of this silent war are those lacking economic power and well-funded political organisations to fight their battles, then failing to address this dilemma could allow for the worsening of societal disparities. How then can we overcome the fact that the most complex flaw of algorithms designed to simplify our lives is that they were designed by us, the humans? Currently, efforts aimed at mitigating algorithmic bias mainly focus on transparency, diversification, regulation, and sensitivity analysis. Researchers, such as Maya Gupta in the Google GlassBox team, are advocating for building less opaque black-box systems that designers can actually understand. Others are addressing the lack of diverse and representative data, with projects such as MIT Media Lab’s Moral Machine focussed on self-driving cars, which crowdsources information about people’s choices between morally ambiguous outcomes, allowing society to determine its own ethical system. Additionally, government oversight and social responsibility of institutions can be achieved through search commissions to oversee how engines rank and rate citizens. Beyond exposing the inner workings of machine-learning systems, researchers such as Sandra Wachter at the Oxford Internet and Alan Turing Institutes have focused on analyses to determine which variables from an initial data set are most important to the final outcomes. Altogether, working towards algorithmic accountability first requires tech companies and corporations to accept ethical and social responsibility for their roles in maintaining and perpetuating bias. These approaches show that we have the power to make algorithms fair, accountable, and transparent, but understanding our individual responsibility is even more urgent. Discriminatory impacts emerging in the virtual world are based on inherent biases that still exist in the real world. Many new computerised decision tools are being built to optimise complex human models, such as the effectiveness of an employee or teacher, but this requires subtlety and context. Even in the age of big data and automation, it remains a problem for humans to solve. Disarming algorithmic bias begins with addressing human bias.
Author & artwork: Flora Weil - @florawl www.isciencemag.co.uk
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UNORTHODOX SUBSTRATES
The art of science - A. Marta Ferreira Beatriz is a fourteen-year-old girl facing the first crossroad of her academic path – choosing the area of studies she will pursue in secondary school. Is she an artsy or a literary person? Is science or technology a safer road? This choice feels like a life sentence. We are encouraged to put ourselves and our interests neatly into one box and to not stray from it. Thankfully, many interesting projects experiment with multiple areas of study to reach results that one single approach couldn’t achieve. I’m going to talk about one such project in one such area: BioArt.
Artwork: A. Marta Ferreira / amartaferreira.com
BioArt, the use of scientific techniques applied to artistic endeavours, was established during the ‘80s. In an article in Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology artist and writer Francis Stracey described it as “a crossover of art and the biological sciences, with living matter, such as genes, cells or animals, as its new media.” Arguably, but reasonably, scientists have pragmatic objectives when conducting their investigation. Aesthetics isn’t normally top priority (although I’ve heard a PhD student once declare, “this plot looks beautiful!”). Therefore, it’s interesting to see how these techniques can be used when the purpose is, simply put, to make art.
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As a graphic designer myself, and having gone down the typical study path, the sciences are an intriguing but somewhat alien area. But, with a neuroscientist brother, it’s not surprising that when I needed to create a project for my MA, I turned to BioArt. During my research, I came across a variety of intriguing projects. In the world of fashion, Donna Franklin and Gary Cass create dresses where “living microbes will ferment a garment”. Artist Marta de Menezes explores the possibilities of modern biology methods, from selfportraits made with proteins, to butterflies with modified wing patterns. Eduardo Kac creates artist’s books with petri dishes, nutrients, and other materials, allowing the spectator to literally give life to the piece. The possibilities are endless. In my case, I wanted to use biological processes to create typography, generating semi-autonomous letters that would represent me in several conceptual ways – the shape of the letters drawn by hand; the use of my own bacteria; and the meaning of the word itself. I took saliva samples and used them to draw letters on petri dishes with a brush. I then recorded the growth of the bacteria and used that material to develop dynamic letterforms. The result was immensely fascinating and somewhat unexpected. In the end, I created a visual language that was a multiple representation of the self. These projects are only possible through opening our ideas to processes and techniques that aren’t typically in our wheelhouse. Natural sciences might not be the most obvious source of materials for art, but when used with purpose and ethics the results can be truly fascinating. And so, Beatriz can safely choose her future study area knowing that no discipline is inexorably closed onto itself. Doors can be opened, weird mixtures can be made, and fascinating things can come out of those endless intersections.
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Believe it or not, the images displayed on this page are not the creation of an artistically gifted graphic designer, but a mathematical equation. Many of us would perhaps consider the worlds of art and mathematics to be mutually exclusive disciplines. Art is the expression of human emotion, whereas maths deals in the laws of nature - rules and equations with right or wrong answers. Images of the Mandelbrot set are one of the most fascinating ways of challenging this notion; they are an undeniably engaging expression of the mathematical realm, and have even toured art galleries. Benoit Mandelbrot, a Polish-born American mathematician, was the first to produce these visualisations of numerical data points which either satisfy a chaotic equation (exist within the set) or don’t. In mathematics, chaos describes how over time, from seeming randomness and unpredictability in values, patterns can begin to emerge. The images created from the Mandelbrot equation are psychedelically elaborate, exhibiting complex fractal boundaries where self-similarity of shape is replicated at an infinite number of scales. Computer programming enabled Mandelbrot and other mathematicians working on the set to magnify the fractal boundaries up to millions of times. With enough computational power, the repeating fractal swirls and flourishes can repeat onwards into infinity. What is perhaps most astounding is that these beautiful images aren’t designed; the apparent complex order and structure is not specified from the start by a creator. Their ‘design’ arises out of complex chaotic dynamics. Taking a closer look at the maths involved shows how infinite complexity can arise from simplicity. The points are plotted by using a formula that applies iteration, in which a value being tested is substituted in and then the result is inputted back into the same formula. This can then be repeated for up to thousands of times. If the output of the equation remains between 1 and 2, then the complex number being tested is part of the Mandelbrot set. If, however, the value of the output tends towards infinity, then the initial number being tested does not fall within the realm of the Mandelbrot set.
This is a perfect example of mathematical computation that is best understood when visualised. The images are produced from the formula that describes the Mandelbrot set. It demonstrates how at multiple levels of magnification the same patterns are repeated, not with exactness, but with a striking resemblance to one another. The Mandelbrot set prompts us to question what we mean by the definition of ‘design’ — these images are not found in nature, but equally their shape is not controlled by the human hand, they are a pure product of mathematics and technology.
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Artwork: Dr. Wolfgang Beyer, Wikimedia Commons
So how are these colourful patterns produced? The values are plotted in a colour corresponding to the number of iterations of the formula it took for output to become greater than 2. If the equation looped for 10 times before the answer became too large, then the initial value would be coloured blue, whilst those which were iterated for 100 times might be coloured orange. The values which are established to satisfy the Mandelbrot set are coloured black.
Generating stunning visuals with mathematical and microbial materials
The fractal art of Mandelbrot sets - Millie Marsden
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U C N N Written, spoken and gestured - language permeates our existence and is an important part of what makes us human. Research has shown that language both reflects our thoughts and shapes them, from artistic choices to financial and political decisions. Humans speak over 7,000 different languages and there are important differences between languages and within them. In art, linguistic differences have been associated with the way ideas are represented. When concepts like death, sin, or victory are personified, the human figure representing the concept will often reflect the grammatical gender of the artist’s native language. For example, according to researchers at Stanford University, sin is more likely to appear as a male in Russian art and female in German art.
Although most linguistic differences are innocuous, others can be more insidious. In 2013, Dr Keith Chen at UCLA revealed how language might be influencing economic decisions. He compared money-saving behaviours between people speaking languages that grammatically distinguish between future and present tenses (e.g. English) and those whose languages have fewer of these distinctions (e.g. Norwegian or German). Fewer distinctions mean that speakers use the same (or very similar) words to talk about future and present events. Chen found that people who spoke languages with fewer grammatical distinctions are more future-oriented in their behaviours (they save more for retirement, smoke less, and exercise more). These activities all involve some level of putting off present pleasure for future benefit. Does this mean that people who talk about the future as nearly indistinct from the present are more likely to act with future self-interest because it seems less distant? Whilst this doesn’t prove that distinguishing between future and present tenses causes people to be worse at saving and preparing for the future, it does highlight that our use of language may have far-reaching side effects. If our language influences how we think, what does this mean for instances when a language simply doesn’t contain the words to describe certain concepts? Although it developed in the 18th century, British Sign Language (BSL) was missing words for many STEM concepts until the early 21st century. This absence made it difficult for students with an interest in STEM fields to pursue further education or careers
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How language shapes experience
in those areas – the words for key concepts simply didn’t exist in their language, so they had to rely heavily on finger spelling and lip reading to learn them. A team of scientists and linguists worked together to create a collection of physics signs, which have recently been added the BSL glossary. This makes it easier to teach STEM subjects to deaf children in their native language. The new BSL signs help remove confusion about words with subtle but important differences (e.g. ‘exothermic’ and ‘endothermic’). They also help users understand the ideas they represent. Some signs even build on each other in a way that is connected to their meanings. For example: ‘mass’ is a fist, ‘density’ is a hand around the fist, and ‘weight’ is the hand and fist moving downward. These new BSL signs help connect interested students to educational opportunities, but language can also be used to confuse and divide people. Researchers at the University of British Columbia examined language use in the polarising American presidential primaries. The researchers analysed Republican primary candidates’ speeches with qualitative techniques and text analysis software. They found that Trump’s communication style was significantly different from the other Republicans in his grandiosity, informality, and vocal dynamics. The other candidates varied in their success based on how similar their communication style was to Trump’s (those who were more similar were more successful). The researchers suggested that differences in surface-level stylistic choices made it easy for voters to develop their thoughts about Trump, compared to understanding the well-reasoned political platforms of other candidates.
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Author: Naomi Clements Artwork: Priya Odedra - pdotart.com
One linguistic shortcut often found in politics is the use of metaphor. While welldesigned metaphors make it easier to communicate complicated issues, they can lead to over-simplifications. Researchers from Stanford University and Trinity University, San Antonio asked participants to recommend solutions to a city’s crime problem, framed either as a viral infestation or as a predatory beast. The different metaphors elicited different solutions. Participants who heard the beast metaphor suggested harsher laws and punishments, while those who heard the virus metaphor suggested investigations into root causes. The researchers concluded that metaphors can play a powerful role in reasoning and may sway voters by encouraging them to think about a problem in a particular way. While language can be manipulated to leverage listener laziness, it can also reveal implicit biases. As gender balances are shifting in previously male-dominated professions, linguistic choices are increasingly under scrutiny. At work, implicit biases in language reinforce gender stereotypes with detrimental consequences. A recent article by doctors from the University of Michigan and the University of Bristol examined the effect of gender-biased language on female surgeons. According to the authors, female surgeons are predisposed to face conflicts between their gender identities and professional success, making career advancement more difficult. Small differences in the way male surgeons are talked about compared to female surgeons make it harder for women to be perceived as leaders in their field. Women are less frequently referred to by their proper title, and more often praised for ‘teamwork’ and other cooperative traits that are typically perceived as feminine. In contrast, their male colleagues were mostly recognised for traits considered more masculine - leadership and ‘decisiveness’. Such micro-invalidations create an atmosphere where women do not have equal footing with men in advancing their careers and where being successful means going against norms for your gender. Linguistic design features like grammatical conventions and word choices seem invisible to native speakers, yet have far-reaching influence on our decisions in finance, politics, and careers. The design of our language both defines and creates us. Perhaps we should look more closely at how our social structures could help us conquer the inborn biases of our language, or at least be more aware of the bounds our language may impose upon us.
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Artwork: Jasmine Smith - @jerzmin
How mathematical approaches solved the riddle of the piano
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One of the most important developments in the history of Western music was made possible by a rather acrobatic feat of engineering. Bartolomeo Cristofori was an Italian instrument craftsman appointed by the Grand Prince of Tuscany as Keeper of the Instruments in the 17th century. Two of the most commonly used musical instruments in his region were the clavichord and the harpsichord. These were stringed keyboard instruments, meaning that pressing one of their keys caused a corresponding string to be plucked by a small metal blade to produce a sound. Both, however, had their problems. The clavichord allowed for varied musical expression – hard and accented, soft and gentle, everything in between – but was such a quiet instrument that audiences in concert halls could not hear it. In contrast, the harpsichord had a sound powerful enough to be heard from the opposite side of a large, crowded room, but it could only be played at one dynamic – obnoxiously loud. Cristofori was driven to combine these qualities of expression and volume to create the perfect stringed keyboard instrument. He would not live to know how great a rift between the theoretical and practical worlds of music his invention brought. Using only his knowledge of the mechanisms of harpsichords, by 1700 Cristofori had designed a system whereby the keyboard’s strings were struck by hammers instead of plucked by blades. He constructed a mechanism that translated the pressing of a key to the rapid motion of a hammer, causing the hammer to move at a speed determined by the strength with which the key was pressed, immediately bounce off the string to avoid sound dampening, and return to its rest position rapidly so that the key could be instantly replayed. The instrument Cristofori had stumbled upon was, of course, the piano. One of the most versatile musical tools ever invented, it remains a key touchstone in Western music to this day. But with the widespread success of the piano following its invention, a problem that had plagued the stringed keyboard instrument family since its inception came to a greater light. We can turn to music theory to explain this problem and assist our understanding. For an uneasy period in music history, no two pianos had exactly the same kind of temperament, as they were tuned to the player’s individual taste.
Artwork: Leong Jin Ean
When we examine the keyboard of a piano, we see a repeating pattern of white and black keys:
C
C
Each individual set of the pattern consists of seven white keys and five black keys. The notes played when each key is pressed are given characteristic names as shown; the first white key of each set is named C, and these names repeat as the pattern does.
notes at once gives a fuller, more satisfying sound to a piece. However the relationship between the octave and the fifth is where the glaring flaw of the stringed keyboard family lies. If you take a perfect fifth on a keyboard (from C to G), then consider another fifth on top of that (G to D), and continue to add fifths together until you have a distance between notes of 12 perfect fifths, you reach another C – similarly to what you would have found if you had considered seven perfect octaves. However, as found on a simple calculator, there is a difference in the frequencies between the notes resulting from these two intervals; doubling the frequency of a sound wave seven times gives a smaller result than multiplying it by 1.5 twelve times. Keyboard instrument players therefore faced a choice; to decide whether to tune the instrument so that the fifths are perfect, resulting in octaves that are too large; or to perfect the octaves by compressing, or “tempering”, the fifths to less than their ideal size. This process of adjusting intervals within an octave to fit a keyboard’s design is called temperament, and for an uneasy period in music history, no two pianos had exactly the same kind of temperament, as they were tuned to the player’s individual taste. Fortunately, a solution to this problem had been waiting in the Eastern world; as early as 1584, Chinese prince Zhu Zaiyu had devised an “equal temperament” whereby each semitone – the difference between any two adjacent notes, on white or black keys – could be defined as an increase in one twelfth of a note’s frequency from one key to the next. the higher of two notes a semitone apart would have a frequency equal to 13 twelfths of the lower note’s frequency. As there are 12 semitones in an octave, this concept served an almost perfect answer to the problem of temperament, although a handful of the intervals, such as the fifth, remain slightly inaccurate. Although it took several hundred years for the equal temperament to be first used in practice by the composer Claude Debussy in the late 1900s, it is the most popular temperament in use to this day, serving as a powerful reminder – like Cristofori’s invention of the piano – that mathematics and engineering can have profoundly beautiful impacts on art and music.
Author: Tom Stephens
The two notes both named C have a special relationship to each other; the frequency of the sound wave made when the higher C is played is double that of the lower C’s sound wave. In consequence the two notes resonate when played together, creating a pleasant, full sound. This relationship exists between any two identically named notes, and expands to the rest of the keyboard; for example, the C above the higher labelled C would have a frequency three times that of the lower labelled C. The distance between two adjacent similar notes, i.e. each set of the repeating keyboard pattern, is called an octave. Other notes within each octave have crucial relationships to each other; the fifth note above C, labelled G, has a frequency one-and-a-half times the frequency of C. Aptly named the “fifth”, it lies in the middle of an octave between two Cs. Playing all three
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This is a multispectral satellite image of London and its surrounding area, taken from Landsat 8 on 17 November 2017. Landsat 8 rotates the earth on a 16-day cycle and is part of the Landsat Data Continuity Mission, a collaboration between NASA and USGS, which uses satellite imaging techniques of multiple bands of different wavelengths to collect different types of information. The image has 30m resolution (i.e. one pixel in the image represents 30m on earth’s surface). The multiple bands were combined into one image, and different bands were selected to highlight different types of land cover. Normally, bands 2,3 and 4 correspond to red, green and blue colours which combine to make normal images. This image is a false-colour composite – band 7 = red, showing short wave infrared waves, band 6 = green, also showing short wave infrared waves, and band 4 = blue, showing what is normally shown as red. Therefore, this combination highlights the urban rural divide: urban environments are cyan, while rural areas are red. By Hannah Fisher
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