Semiconductor at SSL

Final days...

2006-10-21T21:40:00.000-07:00

oh...somehow we got through the week without a single blog.
It was a pretty crazily busy week, making sure we got all our interviews, which we did, and also the photos, which we hope we did.
A trip to Pacific Film Archive to see some films presented by Rick Prelinger from his archive.
A Cory Archangel presentation on campus. A Matmos show at the Great American Music Hall in SF and some catching up with people.... Friday tied it all up nicely with an Ilan colloquium at SSL and checking out Liliane Lijns tests fo her new art work with some of the scientists:

Just in time for a nice sunset before we leave:

Point Reyes

2006-10-15T23:05:00.000-07:00

Day trip to Point Reyes. A national park north of SF. We saw plent of wildlife although its not the season for whales.
http://www.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=&amp;ie=UTF8&t=k&om=1&z=13&ll=38.028217,-122.920876&spn=0.12332,0.214577

Point Reyes lighthouse
http://www.google.com/maps?hl=en&q=&ie=UTF8&t=k&om=1&z=18&ll=37.99577,-123.02163&spn=0.003855,0.006706
it was going...paaaaarp.

San Fran day

2006-10-14T22:45:00.000-07:00

Had a busy San Francisco day showing some work at SF MOMA and ending up at the fantastic Other Cinema to watch a 'Psychedelic Pixel' show. Always a pleasure to be there.

Bill Abbetts simulations

2006-10-13T21:33:00.000-07:00

We wanted to talk to Bill Abbett when we were here before but never got the chace. We caught up with him and had a great interview, with detailed descriptions of magnetic activity just below the visible surface of the sun.
Look at these beautiful simulations...

Metalshop

2006-10-12T09:37:00.000-07:00

We've been processing alot of the images we're taking, a strcuture is coming together for the film with some great ideas developing......we have to keep on moving on to make sure we get everything we need while we're here.
Had a really usefull interview with Paul Thompson who runs the metalshop, describing the process of making parts for the instruments to go on satellites.

Themis has gone....

2006-10-11T12:14:00.000-07:00

We're having to be very persistent to get into places to photograph, and tie down our busy scientists to interview.
First up Bob Lin, SSL's director, on Magnetic Fields:

The focus seems quite different now since our time, all the clean spaces are empty of their satellites as they wait down in JPL to be given their launch date.
Getting into new spaces all time though - and some great photos.

not this one though... posers!

Kuni's Lab.

2006-10-10T09:14:00.000-07:00

Back in the Lab. photographing, exploring and interviewing...
getting to go to new places we didnt see before...
Kuni's Lab with Moon and meteorite rocks under analysis;

Foil from the Genesis mission that collected and bought back samples from the furthest point in our Solar System so far. The capsule crash landed in Utah and the foil crumpled up, now they are painstakingly smoothing it out and removing the Utah dirt from the surface.

woodwork

2006-10-10T09:02:00.001-07:00

a Daville readymade,(who needs photoshop ;))

The local trees grow from the top down.

a new beginning....

2006-10-10T08:23:00.000-07:00

On our way back to SSL to gather interviews and photographs for Magnetic Movie.....

Greenland and Canada

Magnetic Movie

2006-10-06T08:29:00.000-07:00

We will be heading back to SSL to make a new animation funded by the animate! scheme.
More details here on the project: http://www.animateonline.org/films/magneticmovie/all.html
Can't wait to go back.

The beginning of the end.....

2006-01-23T11:06:00.000-08:00

Some summing up needs to be done before we return back to the U.K. and start to plan the future, so this is being written during our flight back to London.
After giving our presentation at SSL things continued at a hectic pace, giving a performance + and screening of some work in Oakland at 21 Grand alongside Wobbly and friends. It was a packed out show which was unexpected but welcome as we got to say goodbye to the art community we have connected with. It's since been followed up with more invites to show work, specifically Brilliant Noise, our Sun documentary which we made at SSL. Also, we have been invited back in the summer for the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival - so we don't really need to say goodbye at all. We will organise some more shows in the U.S to tie in with this.
Similarly our SSL/Leonardo Salon was a great way to tie things up. Thankyou to everyone who came along to see the work and who we shared our experiences with. We presented three pieces of work, two which came out of the interviews we have conducted called, Ways of Making Sense and another, Do You Think Science.... at this point Brilliant Noise, our sun documentary was work in progress, which we also showed. We had one day after to tie things up at the lab, and it was great to have so much feedback from the scientists who told us how much they had enjoyed the work, we could have never anticipated this.

John Bonnell in Do You Think Science...?

Brilliant Noise

Ways of Making Sense

Of course we have been so tied up in our work recently that we were in denial about ever leaving SSL. It has been such an incredible experience, and we have met and grown to know many people, who have shared their valuable time with us and of whom we have grown fond. What a difficult place to leave. This opportunity has also given us a scientific focus where perhaps before it was very general and we are keen to continue our learning into the Sun Earth connection.

So, we couldn't leave California without a short trip along the Pacific Coastline to Big Sur. We have been out of touch with the world for several days in hope we can create some space between finishing at SSL and arriving back in the U.K. with no particular place to live but with definite plans for our work. Grey Whales are currently migrating south along Big Sur which is an amazing sight, last blast of sunshine and Californian dreaming before we move on....

rock pooling

We will continue to document the work that comes about as a result of our happy days at SSL on this blog, and places it goes but no doubt these will become irregular postings from now on. We will also document the work on our website some time over the next couple of months. So, thankyou for following our time and experiences here, this is not the end..........

Right time to sit back, watch March of the Penguins and enjoy the flight!

non-stop

2006-01-14T14:27:00.000-08:00

will be back here soon to report back on our presentation at SSL this week and our rounding up....
Doing a show this evening in Oakland at 21 Grand, so getting ready for this...
will stop moving soon!

Pulling together....

2006-01-10T17:51:00.000-08:00

still here... just working towards our presentation on Thursday, bringing everything together.
We have some nice pieces to show and talk about now....
We are above the clouds up at SSL today, with the Sun. Berkeley is grey.

Ways of Making Sense

2006-01-05T21:23:00.000-08:00

Back on track. Very nearly completed a film piece using the interviews and filming we have done at SSL. It's called 'Ways of Making Sense'. Looking forward to showing it next week at our
presentation. We will also show some of the Sun movie we're making and documentation of other ideas which we will make this year. We will give feedback on our research here, we have quite a story to tell.

2006-01-03T00:03:00.000-08:00

Pretty wet in California for days now. Lots of things on the move as a consequence.
A brief dry spell for New Years Eves antics in San Francisco.
We had one day left today of our car hire and wanted to make good use of it so a coast trip was in order down to Santa Cruz, in the rain....

getting prepared for going back to the Lab tomorrow....

Hummingbird Watching

2005-12-30T12:47:00.000-08:00

The view from our window at Peter's house.

It's a miracle!

2005-12-29T13:23:00.000-08:00

Quiet time to bring together our scientific interests while we've been here. Made some surprising connections which developed into potential art pieces. Starting to explore ideas of animation beyond the screen, as installations. Very excited about the potential of these and the new direction it would push our current practice but needs more consideration as we will need a studio to experiment with them and we don't even know where we're going to live yet. Will continue over the next few days to document and develop these ideas. Great time for thinking.
Ideal scenario to follow being here would be, go back to the U.K. and make the work which has come about as a result of being here, and then maybe to organise coming back to show or exhibit the work at some point. First things first, where do we go?!

Road trip

2005-12-27T18:23:00.000-08:00

Back from a road trip over Christmas with Wobbly; taking in Death Valley and Las Vegas.

a spot of dawn dune walking in Death Valley

a trek through Mosaic Canyon

some music references are at the end of each Blog for our road trip considering the important role it played in our experiences of these places. Johns attention to detail and extensive music knowledge made sure of that!

Start: Katamari Fortissimo Damacy Les Rallizes Dénudés - Live 1977 Nadja - Truth Becomes Death Jim Fassett - Symphony of the Birds Bernard Parmegiani - La Création du Monde

Zabriskie Point

2005-12-27T17:28:00.000-08:00

Death Valley: Günter Schickert - Überfällig Stuart Dempster - Underground Overlays from the Cistern Chapel (x2) David Hykes and the Harmonic Choir - Hearing Solar Winds (x2) (kicking in just as we hit 200 ft below sea level) Popul Vuh - Coeur de Verre Amalgamated Suns of Rest Eyvind Kang - The Story of Iceland

Salt Plains and Artists Drive

2005-12-27T16:30:00.000-08:00

Las Vegas

2005-12-27T15:32:00.000-08:00

Las Vegas:Yma Sumac - Mambo Emil Richards - Stones / New Sound Element Negativland - Dick Vaughn's Moribund Music of the 70's Phoenecia - Brownout Eats Tapes - Sticky Buttons Bach - Goldberg Variations - Gould 1955 Raymond Scott - Manhattan Research (this for the Hoover Dam trip) Free Design - Best ofVokokesh - Smile! And Point At The Mountain?Brainticket - Cottonwood Hill

Hoover Dam

2005-12-27T14:34:00.000-08:00

What a fascinating place. You really feel aspirations for the future here. The beautiful concrete modern architecture integrated into the landscape, would love to do some documenting here. The alternative was to go to Prelinger Archives and download two parts of a movie on the making of Hoover Dam: http://www.archive.org/details/BoulderD1931
http://www.archive.org/details/BoulderD1931_2

On The Road

2005-12-27T13:36:00.000-08:00

Back: Sunn 0)) - Black One Coh -0397Postpop Arnold Dreyblatt - Animal Magnetism Burning Star Core - Mes Soldats Stupides (parts) Y. Bhekhirst - Hot in the Airport Iancu Dumitrescu - Medium III / ED MN 1001 Asmus Tietchens - Biotop (parts) Kraftwerk - 1Moebius/Plank/Neumeier - Zero Set Jim O'Rourke - Bad Timing (side 2) Jamie Lidell - Multiply (parts) Hugo Keesing's Chartsweep

tinkering with more editing...

2005-12-21T16:50:00.000-08:00

some stills....

seasonal joy Berkeley style

2005-12-18T12:29:00.000-08:00

Earthquake

2005-12-16T11:55:00.000-08:00

Felt our first earthquake this morning! http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/states/last_event/states_california.html
this link will remain until the next one...
SSL Christmas party this afternoon - we get to see Ilan play his violin.

Animated Scientists

2005-12-15T12:06:00.000-08:00

Have been working on bringing interviews together to make an artwork that explores the Scientists discussing science as a language; The way we gain knowledge and represent it. It's edited so that it asks more questions than it answers and is turning out to be quite poetic.
The Sun footage is taking some form now too.

Talk

2005-12-13T12:21:00.000-08:00

Gave a talk at the San Francisco Art Institute. An amazing location; on a hill looking out across the bay.

Ephemera sorting at the Prelinger Library

2005-12-11T15:34:00.000-08:00

A backlog of ephemera for the Prelinger library meant hands on deck to do some sorting today:

Forty Winks and Eat Tapes

2005-12-10T15:33:00.000-08:00

Spent the day writing text on our work Mini-Epochs for an MIT book titled, Programming Media.
Forty Winks exhibition opened in Oakland this evening, showing our work 200 Nanowebbers. Met lots more interesting people of the bay area. You can make out legs below the white cubes in the image above - their heads are inside watching art works.

Eat Tapes played:

Lab day

2005-12-09T15:32:00.000-08:00

Lab day editing and IDL script implementing. Working with Steven Christie still to organise formats for downloaded Sun archives.
Last Colloqium of year today. Rousing presentation on the expansion of the universe.
We've officially extended our stay for another month, making the most of our Visa, giving us a chance to collect all the data we need to make specific projects on our return and a few more screenings of work.

Our final AGU day

2005-12-08T15:30:00.000-08:00

Magnetism talks / X sonify software and more documentation. Thankyou to all our participating scientists.

AGU day 3

2005-12-07T23:16:00.000-08:00

Caught up with some things at the Lab then headed back to the AGU. More portraits and more interesting 'reconnection' scientists.

conference life

Had a San Francisco evening with John and Drew.

AGU day 2

2005-12-06T22:06:00.000-08:00

We were planning a half day at the AGU and the rest at the Lab but things were too interesting. We stayed for a series of talks met up with scientists from recent excursions and did some networking around the various 'posters' . Thankyou to all our willing portrait participants. Here's a selection;

Mr Sun himself! An example of one of the many scientists we have met who have decided their area of interest according to their family name...

trying on the latest magnetometer fashion in magnetic field detection;

AGU meeting

2005-12-05T21:54:00.000-08:00

Change of plan for this week. We were due to give a presentation of our research on Thursday, but it clashes with the AGU [American Geophysical Union] meeting and have re-scheduled it. So we've joined the scientists and are having a week in San Francisco listening to talks on the latest hot topics, scientist spotting and doing a spot of photography.

Fuel

2005-12-02T17:14:00.000-08:00

Every now and then we get a chance to recharge at SSL and pass some time hanging out at the lab; seeing whats happening [which is quite alot at the moment with THEMIS activivty and Stardust conference] , and re-engage with people mainly by hanging about filming and photographing. We find ourselves involved in life at the Lab. These times really bring home the richness of our experiences here, constant inspiration and reflection. Also went to a colloquium today, and gained the normal abstract constructs and edited a short clip for the THEMIS website documenting it's arrival on Monday.
It's a good job we've got alot of projects in mind to get on with when we get back to the UK as it's going to be hard to leave all this behind.

THEMIS excitement...

2005-12-01T23:16:00.000-08:00

THEMIS safely arrived on Monday and is now being put through its paces....

some dedicated testing hardware for THEMIS

Getting progressively familiar with our interview footage and have been doing some more shuffling and processing.

2005-11-30T21:25:00.000-08:00

Keen to see how things went with THEMIS this week at SSL.
We missed a big day on Monday with the arrival of important hardware to bring the instruments together on the satellite.
Our journey back from Goddard was really delayed and we didnt get to the Lab today.
Wanting to get in and do some more documenting.
There's an important meeting next week in San Francisco, American Geophysical Union, many of the scientists we've been meeting from all around will be there. We may go, and have given ourselves a project to do there.
Meanwhile we're enjoying processing our ideas and are looking forward to getting back to working with the interviews we have been conducting with the scientists.

pictures from Goddard

2005-11-30T08:10:00.000-08:00

some work on the STEREO mission

a visit to the National Data Archive

Lincoln not at his best - having a hoover

leaving our connection in Las Vegas

we're in Washington....

2005-11-28T17:54:00.000-08:00

What an exceptionally inspiring day. Thanks to Jim Thieman for hosting us and giving us a comprehensive tour of Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Centre. Also thanks to Steel Hill for introducing us to working with SOHO visualisations and to Alex Young for demystifying the challenge which is the SOHO image archive. Vivek Divivendi gave us the lowdown on what it takes to be a space science visualiser and took us to the science visualisation studio where Tom Bridgman and Greg Shirah gave us a talk through their new and truly impressive 'A Tour of the Cryosphere' animation, which uses actual satellite data to create stop frame animations of various ice formations in transformation, on our planet. We called by Mona Kesoul who works on sonifying magnetic field data as an addition to visualising, to help increase our knowledge. We will get the programme X-Sonify working yet!
We have acquired plenty of amazing images which document our day, and have many inspirations that will inform our work for a long while to come.
images to follow....

2005-11-27T09:15:00.000-08:00

Clear skies over Arizona and New Mexico. Took some spectacular window seat views.

Wet Gate

2005-11-26T19:20:00.000-08:00

Just going to San Francisco for a friends All-Projector Orchestra performance at Other Cinema.

Off to Goddard very early tomorrow morning, back late Tuesday.

Thanksgiving continued

2005-11-25T19:15:00.000-08:00

Still thanks giving holiday. We are in work mode but have been forced to stay away from the Lab today, so it became a catching up day. DVD's to be sent to people books to be read. Also, our work The Mini Epoch Series is going to be in a MIT book called Programming Media, so questions need to be answered.

Thanksgiving

2005-11-24T11:44:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Megan and Rick for our tours of Comla, between and our Turkey and Cranberries.

Cosmic grains

2005-11-23T19:12:00.000-08:00

All day editing and sifting.

Charles Townes

2005-11-22T22:25:00.000-08:00

Improtu interview with Charles Townes today, who invented the Laser. We went to a symposium in October in his honour, where scientists battled it out. See our 'Amazing Light' entry.

Trip to Goddard planned

2005-11-22T12:54:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving is looming and people are being absorbed into the holiday fevor. We on the other hand are enjoying our working processes at the moment so we must go with the flow. We are however having an early Thanksgiving meal with our Berkeley neighbours this evening, and will spend Thanksgiving day with Rick and Megan Prelinger.
On Sunday we head of towards Wasington for a visit to Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Centre. We are booked in to have a tour, meet people from SOHO mission and also from the Visualisation team.

Andrew Westphal, editing and Sun archives

2005-11-21T23:05:00.000-08:00

Editing our footage down. Enjoying bringing different ideas together to see how they exist side by side. It's a playful process. Still deciding on how to formulate this research to present at our Leonardo Salon on the 8th December.
We had an interesting interview with Andrew Westphal today, he runs the Star Dust Mission, and we got the low down on the project:

Thanks to Iain Hannah for some pointers on using IDL[Interactive Data Language] software we're using to access and interpret Sun archives.

Urban Ore

2005-11-20T22:51:00.000-08:00

Cycled south. Plenty of curlews, cormorants and pelicans basking in the afternoon sunshine. Nature reserves, freeways, bay views and industry side by side. Explored the industrial area that runs along the rail track, lots of stunning modernist warehouses and came across a great structure containing organised piles of detritus, called Urban Ore.

Picked up some 1950's documents on the Sun, and other great physics books, one of them 'Concepts of Motion'.

Ploughing

2005-11-18T18:43:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Steven Christie for directions with IDL today, a science imaging tool used here.
It's enabling us to get some amazing quality images for our Sun documentary.
We have been also running back through the interviews we've been conducting, taking notes and bringing together ideas to do some editing next week. It's a interesting process. There's so much amazing material we have to work with. Some of the initial interviews seemed like a foreign language at the time, but now, looking back we are realising how much we have learnt since our arrival. It's all coming together and making sense.

Wilcox Solar Observatory / Silicon Valley

2005-11-17T10:00:00.000-08:00

We've done three days activities in one today.Begin at the beginning.....
Sunny clear skies meant we could follow through our trip to the Wilcox Solar Observatory at Stanford. Todd Hoeksema gave us a tour, and we documented the process involved in observing the sun, the fantastic architecture, and the mix of mechanical, analogue and digital technology used. Many photo opportunities. We're growing more and more interested in the histroy of observing the Sun and Todd said he can put us on touch with other Solar Observatories and people archiving Sun Documentation. More time is needed for that.

Wilcox Solar Observatory

following the light

the Sun being tracked by light sensors

We made our pilgrimage to National Semiconductor on Semiconductor Drive in Silicon Valley. We also gave ourselves a tour of all things virtual, Google,Intel,Yahoo,Apple at One Infinite Loop..........our busmans holiday.

Google Tour

San Francisco this evening for Blectum from Blechdom's return performance. Insane night.
It ended with some pie throwing...

Other Cinema

2005-11-13T10:45:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Craig Baldwin for his energy and creating such a great film/art community at Other Cinema, which in turn provided us with a stimulated appreciative audience last night. It was a collaborative effort, thanks to Wobbly we had sound and thanks to Matmos we had sharp vision.
Feeling inspired to keep developing our live performance software Sonic Inc. and I think we'll actually get round to collaborating while we're here, maybe with Wobbly, using it as an improvisational visual tool.

We're off to give our guests, Vicki and Peter a drive round tour of Berkeley and environs today, which is the only way to 'see' in the U.S.

Shows + Goddard

2005-11-12T12:21:00.000-08:00

A week of pulling things together.
We have a presentation of our time here on the 8th of December, feeding back on our experiences and research; a Leonardo Salon.
So, we're taking a stand back from where we have got to and what interviews we still need to do, in order to collate our ideas into a series of 'short documentaries'. Prioritising, getting the footage and dialogue we need for making work we have in mind, for when we get back. We have a series of animation experiments we'd like to run but I think these will have to wait.

We have booked in for a trip to Goddard Space Flight Centre at the end of the month, and are organising meeting up with some of the Visualisation team. Have been following up research focused on this field looking at developments in the use of visualisation and the technological implications. We will hopefully run some interviews there.

We have also now organised going to the Solar Observatory next week. We have to play along with the weather and be ready to visit it on a sunny day.

We had a good show at UC Davis last night. Will post some pictures here soon.
Got to go to San Francisco now for our show at Other Cinema.

Also, we have been curated into an exhibition here showing video works, through December/January. More to follow on that.

Janet Luhmann

2005-11-07T14:17:00.000-08:00

Had an impromptu interview with Janet Luhmann, well more of a conversation that we filmed. Came away feeling like it was a very rich experience, meeting some one who is clearly devoted to their field and is willing to spare time to share it with us. On Janets recommendation we will try and visit a Solar Observatory at Stanford to continue our explorations into the Sun.

This weekend we have two screenings and performances of our work;

UC Davis, California, USA
11th November 2005,
Double bill: Semiconductor and People Like Us
both performing and screening films.
Invited by TechnoCultural Studies
http://technoculture.ucdavis.edu/

Other Cinema, San Francisco,USA
12th November 2005,
Double bill: Semiconductor and People Like Us
both performing and screening films.

Greenhouses, David Lynch and spruced up website

2005-11-06T11:16:00.000-08:00

Saturday evening was spent on a Wobbly adventure at a greenhouse. Not any old green house but a beautiful arts and crafts style greenhouse in Berkeley that had people playing music in it, under shooting stars.
Sunday evening was spent with David Lynch and several scientists talking about creativity, counciousness and the brain, of sorts.
In 'our 'spare time' we have managed to re-vamp our website into a more information based user friendly one. New films online, and some still to add. Goodbye Flash and the conveyor belt menu, for those who know.

Nasa Ames visit

2005-11-04T22:40:00.000-08:00

need we say more! : wind tunnel

some bloke

drawing + planning

2005-11-02T14:20:00.000-08:00

preparing to make some animation experiments:

and delving deeper into Sun archives
with the help of scientists at SSL in the know:

Film on film

2005-11-01T14:37:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Peters home cinema and great film acquisitions, we watched a collection of inspiring works; got to see Toccata for Toy Trains by Charles and Ray Eames again. Peter has a lovely film print of this, beautiful colours from the 1950's. It has inspired me to revisit their film works. A month or so ago we picked up a Powers of Ten book, which explored the references in their film further.
John introduced us to Toshio Matsumoto's experimental video works on from the early seventies. A great discovery.

SunnO)))

2005-10-31T11:49:00.000-08:00

Halloween spent with SunnO))) , plenty of vibrating longwaves as promised. Our Sun Earth connection is now complete.

Exporatorium Part 2

2005-10-30T12:22:00.000-08:00

revisited the Exploratorium as there's more fun to be had and this time we booked into The Tactile Dome, where we all crawled around in the dark through tunnels, down slides and along corridors.
Next best was the 'dry ice comet trails':

'Modelling Space Weather'

2005-10-29T12:33:00.000-07:00

Back at SSL specifically for Janet Luhmans talk on 'Modelling Space Weather'
Very fitting to one line of investigation were following. Opened up lots of problems that scientists have in visualising data. We've arranged to discuss this further with her in a week or so.
Meanwhile we're in the process of documenting our ideas throughly, and revisiting scientists with more specific questioning.

Yosemite

2005-10-28T20:52:00.000-07:00

Continuing with the American literal way we saw '26 Mile Road' on the way to Yosemite National Park. The colossal scale of the glacial formations here is overwhelming. It emphasises the scale the scientists at SSL are working at, microphysics on a macro scale. As when I asked Ilan what advice he would give Laurie who has just started Astronomy at school, he said "it's very far away". Yosemite is very humbling.

a few classic images of Yosemite to whet your appetite:

Came back from hiking to experience Negativelands epic show supported by Sagan.

San Fran touring

2005-10-24T00:07:00.000-07:00

A selection of images from our touring San Francisco day; sightseeing, exploring, City Lights bookshop, and The Prelinger Library again. Can't stay away from there.

view from Coit tower

Bay Bridge

downtown

perfect books for our work at the Prelinger Library.... Visualization Techniques in Space and Atmospheric Sciences....

Off to Yosemite National Park tomorrow so will be 'away' for a few days.....pics to follow.

guests to tour about

2005-10-21T20:52:00.000-07:00

did some waiting about at San Francisco Airport for Paul and Laurie to arrive:

then took them to watch some other things waiting about:

this pictures for Freda!

took Paul and Laurie the long way home for some sightseeing

Stuart Bale intrerivew / chat.....

2005-10-19T17:17:00.000-07:00

Another inspiring interview today with Stuart Bale.

Lots of interesting areas explored that we have been thinking about already.

Really looking forward to recording it in to the computer tomorrow and seeing which direction we can go with talking to him more.

Some artistic activities going on in our 'booth'. Experimenting with some scientific data model making for animating.

Ilan gave us some more low downs on the science community. The picture gets alittle clearer and alittle more complicated every day.

We did some exploring and filming of the backstage area of the Lab. Some great mess.

Interview stills

2005-10-17T15:38:00.000-07:00

some stills from recent interviews: Stephen Mende

John Bonnell

David Brain describes his visualisations

Forrest Mozer explaining a radial boom

Jim Mc Fadden and the vacum chamber

Bike expedition

2005-10-16T15:26:00.000-07:00

Took our bikes on an expedition today. Over the bay, across the Golden Gate Bridge, through Marin headland, over hills, along cycle paths and eneded up somewhere near San Rafael. We nearly made a full circle, but you can't cycle across the Richmond bridge. Luckily there are bike racks on buses here, so we took them back to San Francisco on a bus journey and then on the Bart back to Berkeley; achey limbs!

Burning Star Core

2005-10-14T10:08:00.000-07:00

Had good intentions today to capture some stills from the interview footage we've got so far, but got carried away with going over it and editing out some dialogue for trying out some ideas. By the time it came to getting the bus down the hill, I was in full flow.
Also, been putting ideas to paper to make sure we get all the footage we need while we are here.
Trying to plan a visit to a Sun observatory to get some first hand footage.

Thanks to Mr Wobbly again, we went to a great evening; 'Night Noise Pancakes' of sound performance at ART SF an art studio/gallery in San Francisco. Appropriately 'Burning Star Core' played. Some photos at this point would show you the great view across to downtown from the wall to wall windows but it wouldn't capture the essence of the night. Saw some familiar faces and met some new ones too. Walked back from the BART in the first rain since we've been here.

Mars' magnetic field

2005-10-13T19:52:00.000-07:00

Were going on an unexpected trip to NASA Ames in November. A vip tour! Can't wait.

We interviewed David Brain today who studies Mars' magnetic fields. He produces amazing imagery as a result of the data and his own visualisation programming. We had a great interview with him and got some really inspiring footage.

We also interviewed John Bonnell who was testing the Electric Field Instrument that will be going on the THEMIS satellite. He gave us a good logistical lowdown on everything THEMIS.

John Bonnell doing things the technical way!

millions of tiny particles

2005-10-12T15:41:00.000-07:00

We pinned down two elusive scientists today; We asked Ilan some probing questions about plasma physics and found out more of what Forrest is working on. There is more to be had from these two though.
We also did some camera roaming to see whats going on about the labs. People are a little more used to who we are now and are more open for us to have a look and ask what they're up to. We dropped in on Jim McFadden who was doing some callibrations in a vacuum chamber on one of the THEMIS mission instruments, he gave us a great description of how it all works. We were hoping we may tie our trip to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory with THEMIS being tested there, but it looks like the project may run over schedule, we'll see.

Electron fluxes

2005-10-11T15:37:00.000-07:00

Trying to pin Ilan Roth down for an interview today. We have so many questions to ask him and soon the list will become too long!
He took us to a presentation on electron motion in the upper atmosphere. It's actually very interesting and involves creative phrases such as 'plasmopheric hiss waves' to jazz it up!
Becoming more interested in the electromagnet field that surrounds the earth and the various interactions that effect it.
We have more interviews this week with scientists working in this field.

....Just put the finishing touches to some questions for an interview with Forrest Mozer tommorrow morning. He descibes his area of interest as microphysics, so we will pobe the quantum.
Ilans been too popular today...the list is growing longer.

'state of the art'

2005-10-10T10:05:00.000-07:00

Lots of interesting topics had been discussed by the end of the symposium, with varying styles of presentation and varying amounts of contention between the scientists, especially on Saturday when people talked about unification theories, bringing theology into it and postulating on technology and civilisation, generations from now. There was some strong opinions aired.

We're learning alot about the science explored here at SSL. We seem to be absorbing it as if it were a new language, and we are starting to comprehend ideas, problems, approaches, and techniques as they come about again and again. We're processing and putting into practice science ideas, in addition to our intial interest in the analysis of scientists and their representation, to using actual science in the development of installations.

At this stage in the creative process we would normally be starting to submerge ourselves in making the work. Our processes are normally quite time consuming and it's difficult to combine them with anything else. But time permitting, here we have the opportunity to take our ideas futher and can document proposals for future artwork as we research. What a luxury.

Amazing Light Symposium

2005-10-06T12:07:00.000-07:00

Back in time for the Amazing Light Symposium, mentioned a while back. Even more well aged scientists packed in a room listening to and questioning the lastest advances in astrophysics. Hearing aid whistles and powerpoint problems ensuing. Taking away from this summaries and scientific gestures. A great talk on the 'history of light' sent ideas reeling for a series of drawings on 'science laws', and a reminder of a string of phenomena related installations.
More science tomorrow.

Donner Lake Trip

2005-10-05T11:15:00.000-07:00

We've just got back from Donner Lake, near lake Taho in the Sierra Nevada mountains. We stayed in a log cabin with the CSE group from SSL, exploring the surrounding peaks, and looking at the night sky with Igors telescope extravaganza.

Lake Donner

on the trail...

most of the group; missing Laura Aurora and Bryan.

the summits wind swept landscape

Lake Tahoe

2005-10-03T22:24:00.000-07:00

Today we go to Lake Tahoe with people from SSL so there won't be any posts for a few days, but I'm sure they'll be enough pictures to make up for it when we get back.

earthquake simulations

2005-10-02T21:55:00.000-07:00

We've been meeting lots of interesting artists and musicians and met more today. This afternoon Joe McKay took us out to his studio and showed us some of his current projects. He works with computers in a really tactile way, you can see some of his interestingwork here. His studio is on the edge of berkeley on this ex-military land where they still test 'things', like this building which houses a huge earthquake simulator to test earthquakes:

Yard sales

2005-10-01T21:41:00.000-07:00

Cycled about finding lots of weekend yard sales, picking up some great bits and spotting more of the great homes of Berkeley.
Saw the film Mirrormask which was released here on Friday and was filmed on location in Brighton in a great modernist building we used to live in, Embassy Court; I heard someone behind me say that it looked like a really depressing building to live in - this opinion is understandable - but on the contrary, it inspired us for years.

2005-09-30T21:32:00.000-07:00

Here's Ilan, he's teaching us science things:

Here's an example of what goes on in Ilans brain, a few of his tidy equations:

Tonight we went to Chabot Science centre with Wobbly to look through thier telescopes. Every friday you can view for free there , we saw clusters and some Messier objects. Here's one of the telescope domes.

Sun - the documentary

2005-09-29T16:00:00.000-07:00

Looked over recordings and interviews we have been making, to get it all backed up and to revisit our areas of interest.

Also, looking at various Solar visual and audio data bases, and downloading and collating alot of 'stuff' to produce a 'Sun documentary'.

We have lots of experiments on the go and in mind. At the moment we're thinking of producing a series of short investigations and results as films, documentaries and drawings.

Steve Mende interview and Space Dust

2005-09-28T15:15:00.000-07:00

We interviewed Stephen Mende today. He is one of the leading figures in Aurora sciences. We had specific questions to ask him, and got some great answers for our purposes. Hopefully we can talk to him again as he's very interesting.

Also, thanks to the 'space dust' team we hung out in thier clean space, filming them remove space dust that has been caught....in space. We also interviewed Chris Sneade, who gave us the low down on the project.

The image below is Aerogel,very wierd stuff; looks like a special effect in your hand, it's so light and translucent. It's made from silicon and is the lowest density material on earth.
They use this to catch the space dust.

and here's Joe filming....

Moon rock

2005-09-27T16:59:00.000-07:00

You never quite know where you're going to end up at SSL. Today Kuni Nishiizumi opened up his safe and we saw moon rock from the Apollo 16 mission, amongst other cool things Wow! We had a tour around the Aerogel lab, where they bring dust to examine which has been caught off the back of a comet.
So many things to process.

moon rock and a photograph of where it was taken from on the moon!

The Art of interviewing

2005-09-26T20:19:00.000-07:00

Filmed our first interview today with Nahide Craig. We explored many subjects, and the results are inspiring.
We have to be clever detectives in our new roles as interviewers. We have to learn to channel the conversation and feed the right questions so we can get the right flavour of answers. A new and intruiging challenge.
More tomorrow.

Also discovered Leonardo back copies are available to us free online at UC Berkeley. Been downloading some great articles. Never knew that Stan Vanderbeek did a residency with NASA 1979-80. He proposed that Nasa convert the Kennedy Space Centre into an artistic "Centre for inner space"...what a dude!

Walked the trail back down to campus:

The Bay Trail

2005-09-25T21:51:00.000-07:00

went exploring and discovered more cycling routes today - carried on beyond the Berkeley marina and there's the Bay Trail which is a dedicated paved cycle route for as long as you want...

where's the house?!

Pyrotechnic convention

2005-09-24T21:51:00.000-07:00

We tried to feed our brains with various books we have acquired; interferometry, shadowgraph techniques and reading about a history of sociologists being sent into science labs to look at not just how the scientists interacted but also looking at how they went about representing their ideas via graphs, diagrams etc. and what factors played a role in this.
Our Dim Sum neighbour dropped round some good reading material to help us on our way.

We were ready for The Boat Show come evening, and headed off to San Francisco to join the crew and listen to Wobbly,Bevin, Jay and Martin play their sounds. We had a tour of the bay, went under the Golden Gate Bridge, edged past Alcatraz and then had an eye popping experience watching cutting edge fireworks as there was a pyrotechnics conference in town: American Pyrotechnic Association convention. The most phenomenal display; fireworks that speeded up, slowed down, filled the sky. It got really silly when they started making cubes and spheres.
There was a great moment when Bevin was playing with the skyline of San Francisco rolling by and five or six silhouettes of pelicans flew behind. Didn't capture that in a photo but heres some others:

the picture above is of the resident sea lions at pier 39.

Magnetism strength

2005-09-23T21:51:00.000-07:00

Todays talk was given by Dave Mitchell of SSL about Mars' Bizarre Magnetic Field.
Apparently they didn't think Mars would have a significant magnetic field so they were quite suprised of their results. We learnt lots of other things about Mars that we didn't know before, but failed to understand the actual process that was used to measure it. It went into abbreveations speak. Ilans advice of the day was "the important thing is that they can measure the strength of the magnetism."
People are quite busy making proposals at the moment, so there's lots of activity in various departments. Next week we are doing some interviews with scientists, and will have to persuade them our cause is worthy! We have a honed down list of scientists we want to talk to now, and have devised a plan of action regarding questions.

signal to noise, schlieren and unseen satellites

2005-09-22T09:51:00.000-07:00

Ilan advised us " don't worry about books" but we said "we need some new knowledge" and "it's just a phase in the process we need to go through."
We got our library cards today and hunted down books in the varied libraries spread across campus. We weren't so far off at the beginning of our time here when we said we felt like Anthropologists, as half the books were in the anthropology library.

At sunset we hung out on a windy highway bridge in an attempt to see the southern horizon.
A satellite was launched down the coast and it was meant to make an impressive display, but the 16 minute window came and went and nothing happened. It had been launched, but we were not to see it this time.

Dim Sum + Ilan tour

2005-09-21T20:22:00.000-07:00

AM.
We were taken to Walnut Creek and treated to the best Dim Sum by our neighbours.

PM.
Ilan took us on an exploration; takingin Tilden park, North berkeley and Cheeseboard.

Exploratorium + CCA

2005-09-20T12:47:00.000-07:00

An interesting thing about interviewing scientists is that your getting them to verbalise something which is best represented in another medium.They search for specifc words and appropriate gestures.
The exploratorium is a somewhere you go to perceive science, you see, hear and touch it. Anything I write about it won't do these experiences we had there today justice. Similarly neither will these photos; on the left, cosmic rays we photographed in the cloud chamber and below an artificial aurora.

Here's Scott Arford at the California College of the Arts, performing with his Tvs and amplifying their interference. John Bischoff also played live electronics tonight. Two great performances.

research day

2005-09-19T23:41:00.000-07:00

topics of interest:

Representation in scientific practice: Edited by Michael Lynch and Steeve Woolgar
Insights of Genius: Arthuer I Miller
Aesthetics, Representation and Creativity in Art and Science
Arthur I. Miller [Leonardo v28 #3, 1995]

Imaging of articficial aurora in the upper atmosphere: paper by Stephen Mende and al at SSL.

screech screech

2005-09-18T10:33:00.000-07:00

a day for stopping still in our lovely new home;
lstening to squirrels painfully scraping their teeth
on walnuts "screech screech"

Other Cinema + Prelinger Library

2005-09-17T10:13:00.000-07:00

visited SFMOMA and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco today. Great show called “Bay Area Now” at the Yerba which is an annual show of local artists, and some really great work. Wrote some names down to follow up and I seem to have lost the ticket I wrote them on. Hmph. Had our first experience of Craig Baldwins Other Cinema tonight, fantastic community. We will be doing a show here on the 12th November with People Like Us, can't wait.
The film being shown and the lecture being given was exploring covert military complexes; mainly Area 51. As part of the evening Megan Prelinger had selected various documents and books that link in with this theme, presented them in a portable display case and then discussed each item, this was a performance in itself. All the documentation comes from her and Rick prelingers experimental library which houses many incredible volumes and is open by appointment. Anyway there's a picture above is of Megan performing, and one of Rick and Megan in their library: www.prelingerlibrary.org

Themis thermal vacum testing

2005-09-16T14:09:00.000-07:00

well here's the picture people have been waiting for, us suited up on part two of Forrests tour:

admittedly we look more like we're going to work in a bakery but I assure you that behind us is the thermal vacum vault in which the Themis instruments are being put through their paces
to make sure they don't fail in extreme temperatures.

here's a couple more images from our tour:

in Forrests office:

humidity monitor:

one of the 5 probes that make up Themis:

Alot more interesting scientists met and to re-meet. Next week we will interview some of the scientists from The Tour: part 1. We have formulated more focused questions around our interests now.

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

2005-09-15T21:27:00.000-07:00

Today was dedicated to moving to our sublet for the rest of our time here. Our hosts are off on holiday for several months and have left us in their charming abode. Definitely don't want to leave now. It took all of about half and hour to move so we went and explored more of Berkeley; mainly bookshops, of which there are many and we picked up some perfect books, especially a Laszlo Moholy-Nagy book called 'Vision in Motion' 1947. " This book is written for the artist and the layman, for everyone interested in his relationship to our existing civilization " (Moholy-Nagy, Vision in Motion, 1947, p.5) He had a desire to witness an inalterable link between art and life and produced great visual and formal paintings, sculpture and photography which linked vision, form and technology. His constuctivist works are great.

Documentation and PFA: part two

2005-09-14T21:06:00.000-07:00

Part two of our SSL tour is happening Friday.

Discussing more ideas for documenting our time here. We've become more interested about how scientists interpret and represent their data, visually and aurally. We have compiled questions we want to explore with them rearding this idea, and are finding that we can't help but notice the similarity in many of their working processes compared to ours as artists. Never thought we would find ourselves experiencing this sort of contact with such intruiging thinkers and explorers and finding that we have things in common. We have had some ideas to incoorporate the previously visualisation software into our documentation, as 'Art Experiments', in response to conversations with 'the scientists'. [We are referred to here as 'the artists' so we think it's okay to keep writing 'the scientists'!]

We gave a nice informal talk and presentation of our work at PFA tonight.
Once we start doing series of talks we become more relaxed, and the audience responds more.
Nice to see some familiatr faces there. Lots of interesting feedback and kind responses. We have another talk at San Francisco Arts Institute coming up.

SSL tour part one

2005-09-13T12:05:00.000-07:00

We've just been given an inspiring tour of half of SSL by Forrest Mozer
who introduced us to managers of the various missions, and what happens where. We promised to make contact with them again and find out more. He was great in letting them know who we are and how he enjoyed our work!
He's also got us invited to the vibration testing of some of the THEMIS
probes, where we'll have to 'suit up'. Second half of the tour to come tomorrow; what a valuable opportunity.

Also have come across some prototype software for the visualisatioin, analysis, and retrieval of space physics data, produces amazing images and animation. We're going to look at that and explore it's potential. Here's an image from it, very Sonic Inc!

Amazing Light

2005-09-12T12:48:00.000-07:00

We signed up today for a symposium that's happening at UC Berkeley: Amazing Light: Vision of Discovery. It's honouring Charles Hard Townes who is 90 and still works at SSL! He won the Nobel Prize for developing the Laser. The symposium sounds great; looking at possibilities for investigating new discoveries about our reality and developing new technology which may open up new advances in experimental physics. We like the sound of that...
http://www.foundationalquestions.net/townes/symposium.asp

we've been passed on this link today on a Sonification project:
http://spdf.gsfc.nasa.gov/research/sonification/sonification.html

we're getting lots of reference points from the scientists, sending us on different journeys of discovery.....
Apparently you can actualy see the San Andreus fault at Point Reys. Definately worth a trip.
Also, not far is Lassen Volcanic National Park! http://www.nps.gov/lavo/ it says; All four types of volcanoes in the world are found in the park. Over 150 miles of trails and a culturally significant scenic highway provide access to volcanic wonders including steam vents, mudpots, boiling pools, volcanic peaks, and painted dunes. !
We are booked in already to go to Yosemite National Park, and will book our trip to JPL soon. Lucky us.

Tilden regional park

2005-09-11T09:46:00.000-07:00

we took this pic on a cycle ride we did today.
Behind Berkeley hills is Tilden regional park and wildcat canyon, loads of bike trails with amazing views east and west + lots of Buzzards soaring overhead. Quite a hike to get to it, winding up through Berkeley hills, but it's downhill all the way back!
You can go swimming in Lake Jewel too, next time..
http://www.ebparks.org/parks/tilden.htm

Illuminated corridor

2005-09-10T09:46:00.000-07:00

Went to an outside film event tonight in Oakland called Illuminated corridor.
Lots of people with unique set ups; multi 16mm installations, live digital image and sound, live sound ensembles making sound tracks to Melies films, strobing spinning thing with a balloon used to create sound etc. and all in a parking lot next to the docks.

Helioseismology

2005-09-09T10:20:00.000-07:00

went to a talk at SSL by Reinhard Genzel on The Centre of the Milkyway: home of massive stars and black holes.
Just before the talk started, a scientist came up and whispered, "Do you know about Helioseismology?". Various scientists have been approaching us since our talk suggesting areas we may find interesting as a result of seeing our work. It's exciting that the scientists are feeling motivated to introduce us to space science after seeing what we do.....

went to a music gig at Mills college, Oakland tonight featuring: Matmos /Thomas Lehn and Marcus Schmickler and Femail
Here's a pic of Matmos and peeps: Jons playing 'adding machines' at the front!

Our talk at SSL

2005-09-08T10:43:00.000-07:00

Our PFA show tonight went well last night. Dick Hebidge was there although we didn't get to meet him, and the talk he's part of tomorrow clashes with ours at SSL. We got taken for 'bad food' afterwards which consisted of hanging out at the fresh Donut store sharing hot donuts...our initiation.

We talked about and showed our work to the scientists today.
It seemed to go well, and we had good responses. We kept the talk quite tight to give more of an introduction to our work and not to go into too much depth. We had lots of articles and interviews available for people who wanted to know more.
Some scientists quizzed us before hand during a welcome reception about our prescence at SSL, how we came to be here, why we were here etc. I think we passed.
Met lots of enthusiastic and interesting people, we have to make sure we chase up their promises, one of which is to have a proper tour of the laboratories, can't wait.

beam me up scottie! [pre-talk]