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Archive for the ‘media & arts’ category: Page 88

May 11, 2018

Data storage on DNA: Where Silicon Valley meets biotech

Posted by in categories: computing, food, genetics, media & arts

In the heart of San Francisco’s Mission Bay neighborhood, which not long ago was dirt lots and warehouses, Emily Leproust is cooking up what she — and $209 million worth of investor cash — believes is the future of DNA production.

Leproust is CEO of Twist Bioscience, a 5-year-old biotech company striving to make the production of synthetic DNA — which is used in fragrances, genetically modified foods and pharmaceutical drugs — cheaper, faster and smaller.

The same lab-manufactured DNA, Leproust hopes, could also transform the way data, from music to medical records, is stored.

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May 10, 2018

Exoplanet without clouds is the first of its kind ever discovered

Posted by in categories: media & arts, space

You can hear “Milky Way Blues” for yourself on a new website devoted to turning real astronomy data into music.

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May 10, 2018

Listen to our rotating galaxy make strange music

Posted by in categories: media & arts, space

You can hear “Milky Way Blues” for yourself on a new website devoted to turning real astronomy data into music.

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Apr 30, 2018

Brain imaging show that patients with Alzheimer’s disease can still remember and enjoy their favorite songs

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, health, media & arts, neuroscience

Not surprising and yet fascinating to actually see — “The researchers found that music activates the brain, causing whole regions to communicate. By listening to the personal soundtrack, the visual network, the salience network, the executive network and the cerebellar and corticocerebellar network pairs all showed significantly higher functional connectivity.”


“Ever get chills lis­ten­ing to a par­tic­u­lar­ly mov­ing piece of music? You can thank the salience net­work of the brain for that emo­tion­al joint. Sur­pris­ing­ly, this region also remains an island of remem­brance that is spared from the rav­ages of Alzheimer’s dis­ease. Researchers at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Utah Health are look­ing to this region of the brain to devel­op music-based treat­ments to help alle­vi­ate anx­i­ety in patients with demen­tia. Their research will appear in the April online issue of The Jour­nal of Pre­ven­tion of Alzheimer’s Disease…

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Apr 28, 2018

Janelle Monáe’s ‘Dirty Computer’ Short Film Speaks Truth to Power

Posted by in categories: computing, entertainment, media & arts

What do you get when you mix science fiction with music and some of the most powerful and important social issues to date? You get Janelle Monáe’s highly anticipated short film (or as Monáe astutely calls it ‘Emotion Picture’) Dirty Computer, which accompanied her new album by the same name.


A futuristic celebration of queer love, black and female power, and the nonconforming individual identity!

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Apr 24, 2018

Something really horrible happenedWe lost a friend with such a beautiful heart and the world lost an incredibly talented musicianThank you for your beautiful melodies, the time we shared in the studio, playing together as djs or just enjoying life as friends. RIP Avicii

Posted by in category: media & arts

Avicii, your music lives forever!

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Apr 21, 2018

How Music Generated

Posted by in categories: information science, internet, media & arts, robotics/AI

There is an enduring fear in the music industry that artificial intelligence will replace the artists we love, and end creativity as we know it.

As ridiculous as this claim may be, it’s grounded in concrete evidence. Last December, an AI-composed song populated several New Music Friday playlists on Spotify, with full support from Spotify execs. An entire startup ecosystem is emerging around services that give artists automated songwriting recommendations, or enable the average internet user to generate customized instrumental tracks at the click of a button.

But AI’s long-term impact on music creation isn’t so cut and dried. In fact, if we as an industry are already thinking so reductively and pessimistically about AI from the beginning, we’re sealing our own fates as slaves to the algorithm. Instead, if we take the long view on how technological innovation has made it progressively easier for artists to realize their creative visions, we can see AI’s genuine potential as a powerful tool and partner, rather than as a threat.

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Apr 13, 2018

Ray Kurzweil: Universal Basic Income will arrive in the 2030s

Posted by in categories: economics, media & arts, Ray Kurzweil

That, he said, will lead to new forms of expression, such as music, that will be as different from today’s communication as current human expression is from that of primates.

Asked how the U.S. and other countries would pay for a basic income, given existing large deficits, Kurzweil predicted that massive deflation would make goods much cheaper.

Separately: Kurzweil debuted a new Google project called “Talk to Books,” a new free tool that allows people to use their voice to ask a question and that will go find the best answers from hundreds of thousands of books. Unlike traditional search, it is based on semantics, not keywords.

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Apr 1, 2018

An app that lets you create 3D paintings in AR and leave them in the real world for people to find

Posted by in categories: augmented reality, media & arts

We can’t wait to play around with this.

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Mar 23, 2018

The space race: NZ’s push into a $320 billion market

Posted by in categories: business, entertainment, media & arts, space travel

Space has suddenly become big in New Zealand, but Rocket Lab is just one example of what is starting to look like exponential growth in commercial activity. Business consultant and self-confessed space junkie Kevin Jenkins looks into how things are shaping up.

One space narrative is about disappointment. The 1950s and 1960s were about possibilities, and landing on the Moon seemed to prove that the science fiction of the 20th century really was just history written before it happened. But the promise of space seemed to peter out. The Apollo moon programme came to look more like a peak or end-point, rather than the trial run for Mars some in the space programme had hoped it would be.

After Apollo, “space” seemed to shift back to being more of a popular culture theme. For example, the famous song, album and movie Space is the Place is by one of my favourite jazz weirdos, Sun Ra, who was adamant he came from Saturn. Space became a dominant meme in pop and rock music too, as well as a mainstay in novels and films.

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