PHENOM E N OLOGY
a n i nt e ra c t i ve i ns t a llation e xp loring th e p h e nome na of t h e h u m a n b ra i n a nd th e unive rse by sara r ubino
“That which is Below corresponds to that which is Above, and that which is Above corresponds to that which is Below, to accomplish the miracle of the One Thing.�
-translation of The Emerald Tablet of Her mes Trismegistus
PHENOMENOLOGY For as long as I can remember, I have believed the human being to be a mini universe; a microcosmic translation of the macrocosm. This notion became the foundation of my Ammerman Center for Arts & Technology senior project at Connecticut College, titled Phenomenology. During this time period, I conducted research on the connections existing within the brain and the universe. I took careful notes and simplified the ideas that I thought revealed the most legitimate and intriguing parallels between each system. I abstracted their elements and brought them together in one space, representing them through the use of interactive lights, sounds, and projections via the Microsoft Kinect, Arduino, and Processing technologies. Th e fo llow ing page s of this book a ttemp t to illustra te the culm inat io n o f m y f indings a nd resulting thought p roc ess be h ind bringing Ph e nomenolog y to life.
R ESEA RC H Quoted excerpts from a few of the favorite articles...
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“ The universe may grow like a giant brain, according to a new computer simulation.
The results, published Nov.16 in the journal Nature’s Scientific Reports, suggest that some undiscovered, fundamental laws may govern the growth of systems large and small, from the electrical firing between brain cells and growth of social networks to the expansion of galaxies. ‘Natural growth dynamics are the same for different real networks, like the Internet or the brain or social networks,’ said study co-author Dmitri Krioukov, a physicist at the University of California San Diego... Using Einstein’s equations of relativity, which explain how matter warps the fabric of space-time, physicists can retrace the universe’s explosive birth in the Big Bang roughly 14 billion years ago and how it has expanded outward in the eons since. So Krioukov’s team wondered whether the universe’s accelerating growth could provide insight into the ways social networks or brain circuits expand. The team created a computer simulation that broke the early universe into the tiniest possible units — quanta of space-time more miniscule than subatomic particles. The simulation linked any quanta, or nodes in a massive celestial network, that were causally related. (Nothing travels faster than light, so if a person hits a baseball on Earth, the ripple effects of that event could never reach an alien in a distant galaxy in a reasonable amount of time, meaning those two regions of space-time aren’t causally related.) As the simulation progressed, it added more and more space-time to the history of the universe, and so its ‘network’ connections between matter in galaxies, grew as well, Krioukov said. When the team compared the universe’s history with growth of social networks and brain circuits, they found all the networks expanded in similar ways: They balanced links between similar nodes with ones that already had many connections... The eerie similarity between networks large and small is unlikely to be a coincidence, Krioukov said...It’s more likely that some unknown law governs the way networks grow and change, from the smallest brain cells to the growth of mega-galaxies, Krioukov said. ‘This result suggests that maybe we should start looking for it’...
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- summar y taken from a LiveScience.com ar ticle written by Tia Ghose
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“ Roughly 80 percent of the mass of the universe is made up of material that scientists cannot directly observe. Known as dark matter, this bizarre ingredient does not emit light or energy...If scientists can’t see dark matter, how do they know it exists?
Scientists calculate the mass of large objects in space by studying their motion. Astronomers examining spiral galaxies in the 1950s expected to see material in the center moving faster than on the outer edges. Instead, they found the stars in both locations traveled at the same velocity, indicating the galaxies contained more mass than could be seen. Studies of the gas within elliptical galaxies also indicated a need for more mass than found in visible objects. Clusters of galaxies would fly apart if the only mass they contained were visible to conventional astronomical measurements. Albert Einstein showed that massive objects in the universe bend and distort light, allowing them to be used as lenses. By studying how light is distorted by galaxy clusters, astronomers have been able to create a map of dark matter in the universe...Although dark matter makes up most of the matter of the universe, it only makes up about a quarter of the composition... The universe is dominated by dark energy. After the Big Bang, the universe began expanding outward. Scientists once thought that it would eventually run out of the energy, slowing down as gravity pulled the objects inside it together. But studies of distant supernovae revealed that the universe today is expanding faster than it was in the past...indicating that the expansion is accelerating. This would only be possible if the universe contained enough energy to overcome gravity — dark energy.
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- explanation taken from a Space.com ar ticle written by Nola Taylor Redd
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“ ...Einstein, died April 18, 1955, at Princeton Hospital in Princeton, N.J. Within hours,
the quiet town was swarming with reporters and scientific luminaries, and people who simply wanted to be near the great man one last time, says Michael Paterniti, a writer who did a lot of research on the events of that day. ‘It was like the death of the prophet,’ Paterniti says. ‘And so it got a little bit crazy.’ Things got especially crazy for Thomas Harvey, who performed the autopsy on Einstein. During the procedure, he removed the brain to examine it, which is routine. But instead of placing the brain back in the skull, Harvey put it in a jar of formaldehyde, Paterniti says...‘He believed that his role was to preserve this brain and to put it in the hands of some leading neuroanatomists who might be able to figure out the key to Einstein’s genius’... One scientist who had asked for samples [of the brain] was Marian Diamond at the University of California, Berkeley...At the time, the 1980s, most scientists still believed all the important work in the brain was done by neurons. And researchers had already learned from other samples of Einstein’s brain that he didn’t have a lot of extra neurons. But Diamond was fascinated by another type of brain cell, called a glial cell. Glia means glue. And the assumption back then was that glial cells were just glue holding a brain together. Diamond wanted to see if there were more of the glial cells known as astrocytes and oligodendrocytes in Einstein’s brain. So she counted them and found that there were, especially in the tissue from an area involved in imagery and complex thinking... The discovery got a fair amount of attention in the media. But scientists really didn’t know what to make of it, says Doug Fields, a brain researcher at the National Institutes of Health... ...In 1990, a Stanford University researcher named Stephen J. Smith published a paper in the journal Science that would change everything. Smith knew that neurons communicate using a combination of electrical charges and chemical signals...Smith suspected that astrocytes might also have the ability to communicate, but were doing so using only chemical signals, which are easy to miss if you’re not looking for them...Maybe astrocytes were actually eavesdropping on the chemical conversations between neurons, and rebroadcasting them to distant areas of the brain. If Smith was right, it would mean that astrocytes could be involved in learning, memory and even genius. Smith tested his idea on living astrocytes taken from a mouse. ...Fields, in his lab at the NIH, offered to re-create that landmark experiment. He’s staring through a microscope at a dish of astrocytes, which look like stars in a dark night sky. ‘I’m going to get a little bit of this glutamate neurotransmitter in a pipette and just drop a bit of it into this culture dish,’ he says. ‘And we’ll see if the astrocytes can sense that neurotransmitter.’...Then, slowly, great waves of color radiate out from the initial point of contact. The chemical message is passing from one astrocyte to the next. ‘I just wish I could get across the amazement of that finding — that these cells that were thought to be stuffing between neurons were communicating,’ Fields says. ‘It was like finding a whole other brain within the one we already knew about’...
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- resea rch published in a NPR.com ar ticle written by Jon Hamilton
F O R MU LATI ON Simplified research informed the thought process behind the project... W h at c o ul d we easily see an d measu re in each s ys t em? • Neurons | approx im at e ly 100 billion • Galaxies | acce pt able range is app roxima ted a t 100 billion - 200 billion W h at Do e s
c o ul d n’t we easily see an d measure in each s ys t em? • Glial Cells | approx im at e ly 90% of the bra in’s c ells • Dark Matter / Dark Energy | ro ug h tota l is 80% - 90% of the universe’s ma ss a n d en er g y S o m e st u d ie s and be lie fs also re vea l a ra ther la rge p or tion of the bra in is domin a ted by the u n c o n sc i o us act iv it y. For sim plicity p urp oses, I considered Glia l Cells to be a p a ra l l el o f Da rk Ma t te r, and t h e Unco nscious Mind to be a p a ra llel of Da rk Energ y. e a c h s y s t e m behave in a similar manner? • Each network shares some basic natural growth element | ca usa l link s & clustering • Each shares a sense of ‘malleability’ | neurop la sticity vs. gra vita tiona l lensing • Each has a cycle of life | bir t h t o dea th to tra nsc endenc e I e q u a t e d spirit ual be lie fs w it h t he la w tha t ma tter/energ y c a nnot be crea ted no r d es troyed . Eve r y t h i n g m ust be t ransfor m e d into something else, whether ta ngible or inta ng ib l e.
- neural network visualiz ed (Google image)
- universe expansion visualiz ed (Google image)
I N SPIRATION Other artists have used similar ideologies to synthesize their work...
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Alex Grey | Painting titled “One” “ We l i ve in succe ssion, in d iv ision, in p a r ts, in p a r ticles. Mea ntime within us is t h e so u l of t h e w h o le ; t h e w ise silenc e; the universa l bea uty; to whic h ever y p a r t a n d pa r t icle is e qually re lat e d ; t he eter na l One.”
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Yayoi Kusama | Installation titled “Infinity Mirrored Room” “ Th e so u ls o f m illions of ligh t ye ars a wa y.”
C R EATION The media that was most appropriate for the full experience... W h at m a t e r i a l s were u sed? • Lights | ch rist m as & L ED • Colors | blue & purple • Sound | co nve r t e d brain w ave s [ p er mission gra nted by Ya le Professor who crea t ed thes e] co nve r t e d e le ct ro m agne t ic vibra tions [ op ensource from NASA] • Mylar Sheets • Projectors • Speakers • Fans W h at t e c h no l o gies were u sed an d why? • Microsoft Kinect | use d t o d e t e r mine viewer movement ma p p ing • Processing 2.0 | use d t o int e rpre t Kinec t infor ma tion & to communica te to the Ard u in o, as we ll as t o o t h er intera ctive p a r ts • Arduino | use d as a sw it ch in conjunction with the interp reted Kinect infor ma tio n
Th i s t e c h no lo g y w as pe r fe ct be cause it exhibited a simila r k ind of cha in rea c tion a s n o ted in the i n fo r m a t i on t ransm it ion t h ro ugh neura l network s a nd gra vita tiona l p ull betwee n g a l a x ies .
W h at w a s t he b est layou t of the mate rials ? • The space was divided into two halves | the bra in ha lf [ right] & the universe ha l f [l ef t] • A cluster of light strands formed each half | christma s lights surrounded a central LED stra nd r unning from one c luster to th e o ther • The sounds were divided between a right and left speaker | bra in sp ea k er [ ba ck rig ht] & universe sp ea k er [ ba ck l ef t] • The colors were projected on the back wall • The sheets of mylar aligned the two side walls • The projector lights and fans were pointed at each side wall A h a ppy accid e nt h ad o ccure d w here, during a p ra ctice r un, a p rojec tor light ref l ected o f f a m y l a r w all ont o t h e back w all, crea ting ver y stra nge for ms tha t ha d a ver y c or p o rea l f eel , a l m o st i n ve r t ing t h e m acro cosm with the mic roc som. These were k ep t beca use n o t o n l y d id t h e y w o rk nice ly w it h t h e co lo r projection on the ba c k wa ll, but they connecetd with the ove ra l l i d e a be h ind t h e pro je ct . To enha nce this effec t in the fina l insta ll, two mo re l ig hts we re a d d e d w it h sm all oscillat ing fa ns subtly blowing the myla r to crea te movemen t.
W h i c h o f t he m a terials were in teractive and why? • Christmas Lights Ea c h c l u ste r t ur ne d o n w h e n t h e viewer moved closer to it, a llowing him/her to a ct a s the e l l u si ve e l e m e nt t y ing t h e space together. The viewer simulta neously bec a me the g l ia l cel l s & u n c o n c ious m ind , as we ll as t h e da rk ma tter & energ y • Color Fade Th i s w a s s im ilar t o t h e ch rist m as lights in tha t the c olor fa ded from blue to p u r p l e a s the v i e we r m ove d fro m righ t t o le ft , fur ther deep ening the sta te of the environme n t. On e o f t h e re a so ns be h ind t h e co lo r ch ange wa s to p a y homa ge to the sc ientific exp erimen ts tha t o b se r ve d th e ligh t ing up of ne urons & glia ls during sp ik es of a ctiva tion. Another rea s o n w a s t o p a y h om age t o m e asurable ‘blue shifts’ a nd ‘ red shifts’ of sta rs & ga la xies a s they move.
• Sound Volume Th i s w a s ye t ano t h e r fe at ure based on right a nd left movement.The viewer’s a dva n cemen ts t ow a rd s t h e righ t o r le ft sid e s w ould inc rea se the volume of the bra in sounds o r u n iver s e so u n d s re spe ct ive ly. Th e re sult w a s a n everc ha nging mixture of the a udible sounds , b a s ed o n a se t p l a y l ist of t h e looping file s.
W h i c h o f t he m a terials weren’t in tera ct ive and w hy? • Central LED Strand Th e LE D w as cust o m program m e d by mea ns of the Arduino to r un from the botto m o f o n e c l u st e r, u p it s m id d le ax is, and t hrough to the bottom of the other c luster. This wa s l o o p ed b a c k a n d fo r t h , w it h it s const an t movement loosely tied to the consta nt expa n s io n a n d g row t h o f bo t h sy st e m s. Fur t h e r more, its a utonomous tra vels from one rea lm t o the o ther a c t e d a s t h e h igh e r ‘spirit ual’ e ne rg y tha t tra nsc ends from life to dea th a nd the b eyo n d . • Mylar Movements & Reflections Th e my l a r’s m ove m e nt s we re d ict ated by osc illa ting fa ns tha t c a used the viewer’s ref l ectio n s t o w a r p w hich paralle le d t h e w arp ing of sp a c e- time & the p la scitic ty of neurons over time. Fu r t h e r mo re , t h e m y lar gave t h e entire sp a c e a sense of infinity.
I N STAL LATION
lights & mylar
I N STAL LATION
colors & projections
A b i g t h a nk yo u goe s out t o all professors, friends, & fa mily w h o h e l pe d m ake Ph e no m e no lo g y a rea lity & sup p or ted me d u r i n g t h e pro ce ss.