VASST

Metaphortean Research

Sat, 28 May 2011 14:30:00 -0400

Artist Carl Diehl will be lecturing tonight at little berlin at 7pm. This will be the last lecture in VASST.info’s series of lectures.

“An official, if speculative, genealogy of Metaphortean Research to be presented at Little Berlin gallery in Philadelphia on Saturday May 28th. Arriving at the end of the current exhibit of Very Amateur Society of Science and Technology, this Metaphortean presentation will include several nused and emergent Metaphortean pursuits, including the audio-visually augmented para-lecture version of Polterzeitgest.”

Art Science's Sake

Sat, 28 May 2011 14:26:35 -0400

Artists Angela McQuillan and April Aguillard’s science project for VASST.info. Read and listen to the full interview with Peter Crimmins and Carolyn Beeler on newsworks.org

Ron Klein Lecture/CANCELLED

Wed, 25 May 2011 09:49:15 -0400

Terribly sorry folks, he’ll be in NYC.

VASST.info/lectures/Bioethics

Fri, 20 May 2011 15:56:00 -0400

VASST.info lecture series that asks scientists to lecture on a related topic to an artist’s science project. In this lecture Camille McQuillan gives a lecture on bioethics related to April Aguillard & Angela McQuillan’s study of zebrafish. (ran out of battery at the last ten minutes where we began the conversation of genetically manipulating human embryos…shoulda been there!)

VASST.info/lectures/Bioethics from little berlin on Vimeo.

Gravitational Pull

Thu, 28 Apr 2011 11:07:58 -0400

“The singularity and the stellar matter locked up in it are hidden by the holes horizon. However long you may wait, the locked up matter can never reemerge. The holes gravity prevents it. Nor can the locked up matter ever send you information, not by radio waves, or light, or X-rays. For all practical purposes, it is completely gone from our universe.”

-excerpt from Kip Thorne’s Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein’s Outrageous Legacy

From Inside

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 10:37:04 -0400

“Actually, what you would see, given that you are able to withstand the tidal gravitational effects, would be that the entire universe being bent into a small cone in front of you looking away from the BH. Will have to find the exact reference for this, but it is in Black Holes and Time Warps by Kip Thorne.”

This is a quote taken from Chris Hardee from an on-line forum concerned with astronomy and cosmology. I found this when I googled: “how to create black hole lensing effect.” I have been struggling to simulate the effect that is said to occur around the outside of a black hole. the light that isn’t sucked in, is distorted at its’ perimeter, and looks something like this:

Unfortunately, I have not succeeded in imitating this effect and have since decided to attempt to create the conical view of the universe opposite the black hole. Turns out that not only can you read Thorne’s book “Black Holes and Time Warps” on-line, but that it is a great read and has amazing images.

This is an investigation of the usefulness of urban plants,...

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 19:56:19 -0400

This is an investigation of the usefulness of urban plants, based on recent knowledge of edible wild plants, and a long vested interest in the natural world. I gathered plants from around the city, testing their dye, food, and fermentation capabilities, boiling them, and burning them. I found some unnatural objects along the way and could not help using them.

Electricity for Progress - VASST Science Faire

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 18:51:00 -0400

Electricity for Progress - VASST Science Faire:

Electricity for Progress presents, Apple Distortion - an introduction to feedback and operational amplifiers. In this experiment, users are presented with three apples, touching these apples in various ways and combinations produces audible feedback. The feedback is produced using an old lm709 operational amplifier integrated circuit and an assortment of capacitors (including the human inter-actor). Handling and Grip affect tonal qualities to the sound produced. This device is meant to graph, in an audibly sensible way, the electrical properties and processes occurring inside the operational amplifier in self oscillation.

Biodiversity Studies below 30th Street & Girard Avenue

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 09:44:00 -0400

Final Report: April 17, 2011

Editor: Lisa Murch

Field Study #1
Rear Yard
Philadelphia, PA 19130

Field Study #2
Under the bridge by the Railroad Tracks
Philadelphia, PA 19130

Field Study #3
Over the bridge by the Railroad Tracks
Philadelphia, PA 19130

Executive Summary

Less than 5% of the great shrub-steppe ecosystem that once dominated this neighborhood has escaped development to date, and much of what remains unconverted exists in a highly degraded condition. The biological importance of my backyard’s relatively undisturbed habitat only increases as more and more of the surrounding landscape is converted to urban uses.

I inventoried the natural biological diversity in my backyard and decided to examine two other locations within a three block radius both of which were almost void of life. I surveyed the length and breadth of these sites, identifying, cataloging, and mapping the surviving plants, animals, and biological communities in this landscape. The inventory documented occurrences of dozens of living things and mapped critical biological resources. This work culminated with the publication of this volume, Biodiversity Studies below 30^th Street & Girard Avenue.

Biodiversity Studies below 30^th Street and Girard Avenue FINAL REPORT: 2011 Page 1 4/17/11[i]

Kant and Hypnosis: Not-So-Empirical Science.

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 03:20:00 -0400

Call it a foray into “transcendental science.” Hypnosis seems to me like an ideal laboratory for screwing around with certain ideas found in Kant’s The Critique of Pure Reason. With the eyes closed, the body immobile, and the mind in a hypersuggestible state, we are a bit more isolated from the empirical world; able to better see how we impose certain a priori concepts— like Substance or Causality— onto our world.

The hypnosis station will include tracks dedicated to various Kantian categories, as well as a few other topics, for your edification.

Brandon Joyce

From One Cell to a Complex Organism

Thu, 14 Apr 2011 11:21:22 -0400

For our science fair project, we decided to make a video as a documentation of the embryonic development of wild type (non genetically altered) zebrafish, starting from a single cell. Zebrafish are commonly used in many types of scientific experiments as a model for studying vertebrate development and genetics. They help us to understand how all vertebrates, including humans, grow from a single cell into a complex multi-cellular organism. Even though fish are a very different species to humans, their embryonic development is surprisingly similar. This stage of development is very exciting because it is the most rapid period of development, when this “life force” creates something so incredibly complex out of one tiny little cell.

We chose to film everything the way it happened. This video did not turn out like the video clips you would find in a scientific paper or textbook. Ours has many visible imperfections. The fish were not manipulated in any way, and were captured using short sessions of time lapse photography under a microscope as development occurred.

-Angela McQuillan and April M. Aguillard

Artificial photosynthesis

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 23:20:28 -0400

“From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Artificial photosynthesis is a research field that attempts to replicate the natural process of photosynthesis, converting sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide into carbohydrates and oxygen. Sometimes, splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen by using sunlight energy is also referred to as artificial photosynthesis. The actual process that allows half of the overall photosynthetic reaction to take place is photo-oxidation. This half-reaction is essential in separating water molecules because it releases hydrogen and oxygen ions. These ions are needed to reduce carbon dioxide into a fuel. However, the only known way this is possible is through an external catalyst, one that can react quickly as well as constantly absorb the sun’s photons. The general basis behind this theory is the creation of an “artificial plant” type fuel source.”

And here is an article speaking with scientists’ Etsuko Fujita, James Muckerman, David Grills, Kuo-Wei Huang, and Dmitry Polyansky
Artificial Photosynthesis: Inspired By Nature, Scientists Explore Pathways To Clean, Renewable Solar Fuel

Lensing Effect

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 13:09:00 -0400

Sculpting Light

check out this video.

“see… imagine a solar eclipse… is the moon absorbed by the sun….? no right? it just passes b/w earth n sun…. similarly , a blackhole just drifts inbetween the galaxy n the observer…. when doing so, it creates ripples in spacetime which wobble the light passing thru the edges of the blackhole(event horizon) which is the startn part of the spacetime warping and twisting..therefore, we see wobbled light around which we normally would not… hence we deduce , there is a blackhole there”

charlieking100 1 year ago

BFFF

Fri, 01 Apr 2011 10:52:40 -0400

BFFF, Best Friend Facebook Forever. Starting today, April 1st and ending on April 30th, Dave Kim & James Weissinger embark on their experiment for VASST.info. It’s a social experiment where Dave Kim aka https://www.facebook.com/notdavekim has to fulfill every request bestowed upon him by his friends on facebook. Become a fan of this page: https://www.facebook.com/MyBFFF to learn more about this project.

Best of luck to Dave and James from VASST.

http://www.mjt.org/

:-)

Fri, 01 Apr 2011 10:41:00 -0400

Thank you anon for directing us to the Museum of Jurassic Technology :)

Belka (Whitey) and Strelka (Little Arrow), accompanied by 40 mice, 2 rats, and a number of plants, became the first beings to safely return from space after seventeen orbits of the planet. Strelka later gave birth to a litter of 6 healthy pups, one of whom was presented to the young Caroline Kennedy by Nikita Kruschev as a gift from the Soviet peoples.

http://www.mjt.org/recentaddtions/creatures.html

SOME LOCAL SCIENCE HAPPENINGS

Thu, 31 Mar 2011 11:44:36 -0400

PHILADELPHIA SCIENCE FESTIVAL

APRIL 15 - APRIL 28

For two weeks Philadelphia’s schools, universities, cultural institutions and research centers will come together as a single, united voice to put science in the spotlight.

CLICK HERE for the complete Calendar of Events.

Is it just me or is it really odd that this is happening at the same time as our Science Fair?

The History of Science:

Of Elephants and Roses at the APS Museum.

Of Elephants and Roses: Encounters with French Natural History, 1790–1830 explores natural history in post-revolutionary France. Two grand gardens serve as the exhibition’s point of departure—the Paris Muséum of Natural History with its Jardin des Plantes, and Malmaison, the private garden of Empress Josephine, Napoleon’s wife.

Intersections between science and art

Tue, 29 Mar 2011 11:50:01 -0400

Artist-Scientist Jungian archetype

An extreme “duh” moment: Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci

Sexy Science: Portrait of the artist as scientist

Science Museums use art to enhance the geological, biological and environmental.

Ernst Haeckel: Die Radiolarien
(RHIZOPODA RADIARIA)
Berlin, 1862

Someone else doing the same search

The Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef

The French composer Olivier Messiaen chose to exploit properties...

Tue, 29 Mar 2011 11:26:34 -0400

The French composer Olivier Messiaen chose to exploit properties of prime numbers in his piece Quartet for the End of Time. The piano part consists of a 17-note rhythmic sequence repeated over and over, but the chord sequence that is played on top of this rhythm consists of 29 chords. As the 17-note rhythm starts for the second time, the chords are just coming up to two thirds of the way through its sequence. The choice of the prime numbers 17 and 29 mean that the rhythmic and chord sequences won’t repeat themselves until 17 x 29 notes through the piece. The mathematics of primes provides Messiaen with the key to create a sense of timelessness in the piece.

Go, Science

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 14:20:00 -0400

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Mon, 21 Mar 2011 15:43:17 -0400

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