Michael Ang

I was interviewed about my thesis a little while ago for Jeffrey Leblanc’s online video show Talking To ITP.

Interview part one
Interview part two

The How Weird Street Faire is this great street fair in San Francisco. It’s one of those things that makes a city not dead and boring. But this year its permits were denied. SF residents go to the site or the hearing (Feb 22) and show your support!

The How Weird Street Faire was denied its permits on Thursday Feb. 8th because of the emotional opposition of a few neighbors. We are appealing the decision, and have a hearing on Thursday Feb. 22, 2007.

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There are 2 ways you can help.

1. Take 10 minutes and send a letter to the City. See template below.

2. Take 1 minute and sign the Petition. Scroll down to the link below. 420 people have signed so far.

How Weird site. Link to petition. Via TikiRobot.

Update: How Weird is happening! This will be its last year at the old location though. Better than nothing!

I’ve done a lot of research and have started down a few different paths that could become the focus of my thesis or basis for future work. I wrote down the different areas/topics that I’m interested in on a bunch of postit notes and stuck them to the wall. They fall under the broad categories of Philosophy, Science, Politics, Art and Ethics. Each category has a different colour.

Under each category I made a list of each idea I’m interested in. Then I sorted the notes in each category with more important or interesting ideas percolating to the top. After that I started making clusters of ideas related across categories.

The main clusters (or “constellations”) that emerged are roughly as follows:

• The “what is the nature of life?” cluster dealing with what recent developments in molecular biology are telling us about the material basis of life and the relationship between humanity and nature (as affected and effected by our new tools for genetic manipulation).
• The “open source biotechnology” cluster dealing with issues of corporate and institutional control of biotechnology.
• The “ethics of biotechnology in artistic practice” cluster dealing with the use of living organisms and biotechnology in art.
• The “art as informal science education and arena for debate” cluster exploring the relationship between art, science and the public.

Things are starting to gel a little. Part of the challenge is that there is so much information to assimilate, and so few easy answers.

Thesis Mindmap set on Flickr

I gave a presentation this week on DNA computing to the ITP Artificial Intelligence and Biologically Inspired Computing discussion group.

DNA computing is fascinating to me since it offers the potential of massive parallelization (trillions of copies in a drop of water), use of DNA as input and output, and tiny power consumption. The basic idea is that you can encode “software” into physical strands of DNA and use chemical and enzymatic reactions to do computation. The most exciting example I’ve come across so far is a DNA computer developed by the Weizmann Institute that can recognize abnormal activity related to cancer that can be detected when four separate genes are active. The computer recognizes that all four are active together and then releases a strand of DNA that could suppress the activity. This has been shown to work in a test tube and there are huge hurdles to overcome before it could work inside the human body. Very interesting to think of molecular computers eventually working inside cells and programs modulating activity inside those cells.

Here are the slides from my presentation (.ppt). References from the presentation below. This biological nanocomputer animation from the Weizmann Institute is great.

• What is DNA - Genetics Home Reference
• DNA Computer Could Target Cancer - Nanotech Web
• DNA Computing: A Primer - Arstechnica
• On Constructing a Molecular Computer - Len Adleman
• Breaking DES using a molecular computer
• Injectable Medibots: Programmable DNA could diagnose and treat cancer - Science News
• First game-playing DNA computer revealed - New Scientist
• Programmable and autonomous computing machine
• Personal Biocomputing - Eugene Thacker
• Biological Nanocomputer - Weizmann Institute
• Biological Nancomputer Animation - Weizmann Institute
• Computer Made from DNA and Enzymes - National Geographic

Dare to compare this Flash animation of RNA translation into protein with the 1970s interpretation I posted earlier this week.

The brilliant (and twisted) Real Ben Brown sent me this fantastic video of a dance interpretation of protein synthesis carried out with hundreds of students on a football field in 1971. It’s narrated by Nobel laureate Paul Berg and check out that sound track! All kinds of awesome.

The mission of Habana Labs in Brooklyn is to research, develop and apply technology related to ecology and sustainable energy. Their focus is on empowering local communities to take part and their approach is very hands on. At their third in a series of workshops on wind power the focus was on the electronics needed to convert kinetic motion (e.g. from a wind turbine) into useable electrical energy. Using mostly scavenged motors about 40 people were able to build small generators to convert rotary motion into electricity. Felt really good to see people getting their hands dirty and sustainable energy becoming less abstract.

There were a lot people taking pictures, including a video crew from ITP. There should be more documentation documentation up on their site soon.

Habana Labs Flickr photoset

Blue Flower was featured on Make: Magazine’s blog yesterday. Awesome!

Took a break today and went to the opening of [silence] at Gigantic Art Space. The show runs through Feb 24. (The link for the show is to the "current" page at GAS… too bad there’s no permalink for current events!)

Douglas Repetto has his Puff, Bang, Reverb installed and there was a nice installation of speakers making standing waves in water by Douglas Henderson. I’d like to go back when it’s quieter at the gallery. It was packed for the opening (which I hear is its last, sadly).

It was also an excuse to try out my new Canon G7 camera. Great little machine and I’ll be putting it through its paces soon enough!

Pictures from [silence] at Gigantic Art Space and also the same set on Flickr.

I like having my pictures on Flickr and another copy on my site. Almost at the point where a single script uploads to both places! One thing I’m trying to do lately is write my own little scripts to make myself more productive. At some point I’d like to make it all integrate automatically with this blog.

Water_Speaker.avi (xvid)