# e-art: technoshamanism and more ... the future in music, technology, and art

<< Pollinator Synthesizer. The Pollinator Synthesizer is a generative soundscape, reacting in real time to the bees inside the Burt's Bees Observation Hive. Microphones and optical sensors detect bees moving in and out. Capacitive sensors detect presence and movement of the bees. Temperature and humidity sensors track subtle variations in the hive near the queen. All that data is interpreted into a droning ambient beefinspired soundscape. Talent: Ranjit Bhatnagar >>

https://moogfest.sched.org/mobile/

<< By day, Moogfest unfolds in venues throughout downtown Durham in spaces that range from intimate galleries and experimental art installations to grand theaters as a platform for geeky exploration and experimentation in sessions and workshops, featuring more than 250 innovators in music, art, and technology, including avant-garde pioneers such as cyborg Neil Harbisson, technoshaman paleo-ecologist/multimedia performer Michael Garfield on “Technoshamanism: A Very Psychedelic Century,”  ... >>

Moogfest  2016:  the  synthesis  of  future  music,  technology,  and  art. Themes:  Afrofuturism,  Art  and  Artificial  Intelligence,  Hacking  Sound  (Systems),  Instrument Innovators,  Radio  &  the  Radiophonic,  Technoshamanism,  Transhumanism. May  13,  2016

http://www.kurzweilai.net/moogfest-2016-the-synthesis-of-future-music-technology-and-art

# n-bot: gracefully conversations ...

<< Google  wanted  their  bots  to  be  smarter  and  eventually  more  conversational  than  the  rest  of  the bots  out  there.  And  in  order  to  do  that  they  are  technically  feeding  their  AI  machines  with  2,865 romance  novels  so  they  could  respond  to  conversations  better >>

<< Google  believes  that  by  doing  so,  they  could  potentially  inject  some  'personality',  conversational skills  and  who  knows,  maybe  even  a  dash  of  'compassion'  into  their  artificial  intelligence technology >>

Jessica F. Google‘s Artificial Intelligence Robot is Reading 2,865 Romance Novels: Find Out Why.  May  13,  2016  07:54  AM  EDT

http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/22143/20160513/googles-artificial-intelligence-robot-is-reading-2-865-romance-novels-find-out-why.htm

# s-evol: short messages in speciation

<< changes  in  the  sequence  and  length  of  four  microRNAs [post-transcriptional  gene  regulators] may  be  specific to  humans.  Two  were  highly  expressed  in  brain  tissue  and  may  exert  effects  on  genes  with neural  functions, while  two  exhibit  restricted  expression  patterns  that  the  authors  posited  implied a  role  in  development.  The  authors  also  found  that  "age"  might  matter;  in  an  evolutionary  sense, "younger"  microRNAs  had  less  sequence  conservation,  expression  and  disease  association, and  were  more  isolated  than  "older"  microRNAs. >>

Specific  changes  to  non-coding  RNA  may  be  part of  what  makes  us  human. May  9,  2016

http://m.phys.org/news/2016-05-specific-non-coding-rna-human.html

<< microRNAs  are  crucial  post-transcriptional  regulators  of  gene  expression  involved  in  a  wide  range  of  biological  processes. Although  microRNAs  are  highly  conserved  among  species,  the  functional  implications  of  existing  lineage-specific  changes  and their  role  in  determining  differences  between  humans  and  other  great  apes  have  not  been  specifically  addressed.  We  analyzed  the recent  evolutionary  history  of  1,595  human  microRNAs  by  looking  at  their  intra-  and  inter-species  variation  in  great  apes  using high-coverage  sequenced  genomes  of  82  individuals  including  gorillas,  orangutans,  bonobos,  chimpanzees  and  humans. >>

Gallego  A,  Melé  M,  et al. (2016)  Functional Implications  of  Human-Specific  Changes  in  Great  Ape  microRNAs.  PLoS  ONE  11(4):  e0154194. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0154194

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0154194

# s.esobio: modifying the Drake equation, the cosmic frequency of technological species

<< (..) as long as the probability that a habitable zone planet develops a technological species is larger than ∼10−24, humanity is not the only time technological intelligence has evolved >>

Frank A., Sullivan W.T. III. A New Empirical Constraint on the Prevalence of Technological Species in the Universe. Astrobiology. May 2016, 16(5): 359-362. doi:10.1089/ast.2015.1418.

http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/ast.2015.1418?journalCode=ast

<< (..) e noi potremmo essere al centro di una delle immense "enclavi galattiche dimenticate" >>

Apreda_Torquato. Commento. In: Federica Coppa. E se gli alieni si fossero estinti? 10 maggio 2016

http://www.galileonet.it/2016/05/e-se-gli-alieni-si-fossero-estinti/

FonT: intrigante il commento di Apreda_Torquato ...

# n-socsci: depicting harmonious relationship scenarios

<< These  scenarios  describe  [..]  predictions  in  what  will  be  an  algorithmic  and  smart  machine driven  world  where  people  and  machines  must  define  harmonious  relationships >>

Heather  Levy. Gartner  Predicts  Our  Digital  Future. Gartner’s  Top  10  Predictions  herald  what  it  means  to  be  human  in  a digital  world. October  6,  2015.

http://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/gartner-predicts-our-digital-future

# s-gene: extensive, quantitative perturbation approach to trace "the poetry" of gene regulatory networks

<<  DNA  content  of  our  genomes  resembles  a  complex  biological  language,  composed  of  coding  regions and  regulatory  regions.  Although  protein-coding  regions  in  DNA  could  be  compared  to  a  traffic  signal  –  utilizing  a  simple  stop  or  go  message  –  the regulatory  regions  in  DNA  are  more  like  poetry. “The  regulatory  sites  in  DNA  operate  like  a  light  switch  to  turn  a  gene  on  and  off.  In  animals,  it’s  extremely  complex,”  said  David  Arnosti (..) “There  might  be  hundreds  of  protein  factors  in  the  cell  that  bind  to  the gene  and  impact  activity.  And  there  might  be  hundreds  of  binding  places.” He  compares  the  “language”  used  in  these  regulatory  sites  to  poetry. “It  may  be  Emily  Dickinson,  or  Shakespeare  or  Allen  Ginsberg;  but  all  are  using  ‘words’  to  evoke  thoughts  and  emotions,  to  control  the  message” >>

Val  Osowski, Layne  Cameron. DO GENES EXPRESS THEMSELVES THROUGH POETRY? A  new study  from  Michigan  State  University  makes  inroads  in  learning  to  “read”  the  genome,  a  key  goal  of  modern  biology. Published:  May  9,  2016

http://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2016/do-genes-express-themselves-through-poetry/

To  understand  transcription  factor  interactions  on  enhancers  << (..) an  extensive,  quantitative  perturbation  analysis targeting  the  dorsal-ventral  patterning  gene  regulatory  network  (GRN)  controlled  by  Drosophila NF-κB  homolog  Dorsal [was used to test] the effects  of  cooperativity,  repression,  and factor  potency >>

Rupinder  Sayal,  Jacqueline  M  Dresch, et al. Quantitative  perturbation-based  analysis  of  gene expression  predicts  enhancer  activity  in  early Drosophila  embryo. eLife  2016;5:e08445. Published  May  6,  2016

http://dx.doi.org/10.7554/eLife.08445

# s-behav: the beetle Carabaeus lamarcki, dancer and sky analyzer

<< beetles  use  the  light  of  the  Milky  Way  to  navigate  in  the  world >>

<< when  the  beetles  dance  on  top  of  a  ball  of dung,  they  simultaneously  take  a  photograph  -  a  snapshot  -  of  how  celestial  bodies  are  positioned. Then  they  know  where  they  are  going  and  roll  off  with  their  ball  of  dung  in  a  straight  line  across  the savannah >>

When dung beetles dance, they photograph the firmament. Lund  University, 12 May 2016.

http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=164092&CultureCode=en

<< This is a dung beetle (Carabaeus lamarcki) dancing on top of its ball while reading the sky >> image, caption.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/05/160512125422.htm

Basil el Jundi, James J. Foster, et al. A  Snapshot-Based  Mechanism  for Celestial  Orientation. Current  Biology, 2016, in press.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2016.03.030

FonT: l'immagine della blatta sulla sua pallina di sterco che danza e contemporaneamente, attraverso la danza, fotografa la volta celeste per orientarsi e' davvero suggestiva, poetica; mi ricorda un'altra immagine:

<< ... trasformati in uno scarabeo stercorario gigante >>

di Salman Rushdie ("I romanzi e la vita [..] Il mito di Proteo". La Rep., 16/06/2006, pp. 48-9) dalla quale avevo composto una breve rima (quasistocastica):

2022 - si risvegliano stercorari
Saturday, June 17, 2006

http://inkpi.blogspot.it/2006/06/2022-si-risvegliano-stercorari.html