Ars Electronica: 3Fest, Wollongong

I’m very pleased to report that my proposal for the exhibition during  the 3Fest event has been accepted by the Ars Electronica committee in Linz. This will be the first time Ars Electronica has staged an event in Australia.

Scheduled to take place over 4 days in May 2020, a number of local stakeholders are-involved, including the Wollongong Council and the University of Wollongong School of Art.

The working title of my artwork is Sensory Interpretations, and it represents the outcome of my Synapse residency. Details of this residency have been posted on this blog and now is the time when I begin the creative work to recontextualise this ground breaking scientific data in the form of an interactive installation.

in this video still the neurons can be seen reaching out toward each other to transmit the stimuli around the body

I am reminded of the kymograph once again, and its’ use to measure electronic stimuli before the introduction of computers:

kymographs set up in this quasi-scientific viewer interactive installation, Brisbane Powerhouse, 2003.

It is exciting to develop my new installation, refining older concepts and incorporating recontextualised, recent scientific sensory data!

Electrophysiology

Whilst I am no longer posting this blog at weekly intervals this definitely does not mean that my laboratory experiences are over – far from it!! I recently spent time with Dr. Rocio Finol-Urdaneta exploring aspects of electrophysiology.

Looking down the microscope at the equipment set up to measure the spiking of the neurons in response to stimuli,  I could see the pipette piercing a group of neurons. When the spiking occurred it was represented on the computer screen nearby – where the spiking levels and frequency were represented in graph form.

Firing activity shown both diagrammatically and visually

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