wet dreams. living machines

The assessment presentation felt like a punch in the guts. I was winded, my lungs couldn’t suck in air and i couldn’t see where my project was heading. After two weeks. I’ve regained my breath. I’m able to think again.

The next few weeks, I intend to look into existing research completed on environmental indicators in the form of graphs. Those environmental indicators are: CO2, H2O, human population growth etc…

I hope to map our environment through these graphs and see if there are any correlations/ relationships between these environmental indicators.

I am going to collect graphs and equations that simulate the ‘life’ of these environmental indicators. With this information, I am going to create a poster and possibly an installation art piece.

I found the reviews of our on-going work a little lacking in giving direction. Granted it is difficult for a lecturer to come into the subject cold and try to assess our work – there needs to be a better method of assessment so that both parties feel adequately prepared.

It was a long night, maybe a few nibblies would have made the evening more interesting. And those presenting last had a bit of a short run of time – kinda not fair really. I enjoyed people talking at length about each presentation, but felt rushed towards the end and each later student got less and less attention.

Anyway, thats my 2 cents.

Okay, so after yesterday’s assessments. I’ve come to the realisation that my assignment is missing something that everyone else’s has. And that is an element of fun and experimentation.

I am still passionate about the idea that mathematics underlies everything in nature and that on a grand scale our ecosystem can be defined by some mathematical approximation. But now I have to think of a cool outcome… maybe some kind of interactive display… hmmm…

On preceding with my Theory of Sustainability. I did a quick literature review to see what research has previously been conducted in this field and what their outcomes were.

This paper, titled “Sustainability, Stability and Resilience” is a great source of information.

I will add more links to this post pertaining to other research conducted in this field whilst undertaking this lit review.

What are the tangible outcomes of my research?

Research document
1. Literature Review
2. My hypothesis
3. Assumptions

4. Experiments
1. Method
2. results
3. conclusions

5. Future applications
6.

Design Outcome
1. poster??
2. flash interactive program??
3.model??
4.installation art??

As previously mentioned understanding how our environment works and decoding the intrinsic mathematical formula that the environment follows could lead to several applications. Those applications are listed below:

1. Scientists can use this ‘equation of sustainability’ to predict and forecast our future environment/ state.

2. Governments/ commitees coulds use this information to either preempt future living standards and lifestyle and living habits or they could choose to try and control the inputs and outputs.

2. Scientists could alter our state towards sustainability or drive our environment into an unstable state depending on what is needed. Hyperthetically – maybe the environment needs fluxs of stable and unstable states.

3. Generally speaking, understanding that nature is based on some mathematical formula means that even business communities could model their success through tree growth and distribution in forests. Or businesses could develop their businesses or start new ventures depending on the predicted forecast.

The Theory of Sustainability might be composed of several sub-equations. For example:

Overall equation sustainability (S) = ……..(sub equations)

The sub-equations are mathematical models of micro environments or chemical reactions that take place in our environment.

Some assumptions that have been made are:
Assumption 1
All matter/ energy is neither lost or created.

Assumption 2
For a system to be in equilibrium the inputs must equal the outputs

inputs = outputs

Also, the term ‘sustainability’ has to be defined. Is it human sustainability? Or Economic/ business sustainability? Or environmental sustainability?

Depending on what is being sustained, the equations would change to forecast different results. Though, they may be interconnected. Human sustainability may be related to environmental sustainability and economic sustainability etc..Though, is environmental sustainability dependent on human sustainability? For example, we’ve seen the dinasours become extinct however the environment continued.

Answering some of the questions that Boo has suggested…
What kind of future does your design suggest? What kind of future do you want to allude to in your design?

Proposing that there is a set of laws that governs our environment’s sustainability would mean that in the future scientists could calculate where the state of our environment is in relation to the state of sustainability. Scientists could monitor or alter our environment’s state by varying the inputs, such as the amount of CO2 or Hydrogen, biomass or waste to drive our environment towards levels of sustainability or induce an unstable (unsustainable) state if desired.

What limitations/ parameters are you putting in place?

Some of the parameters to be imposed on this research project are:

isolate specific variables to test and experiment

Test variables that have the most effect on our environment

Identify and isolate a specific eco-system to test
(pond + frog) (pond + fish) etc…
The pond is the environment and the fish, frog is the environmental indicator.

What further research needs to be completed before I can coherently present my ideas for this project?

Short answer… so much!

Long answer…
1. look into how the fibonacci sequence is derived and see if this can be adapted to my research.
2. Write up an experiment and do some tests to prove or disprove my theory.

What outcome do you expect to achieve?

My investigative project will result in a set of diagrams and equations that will help scientists determine what state of sustainability the environment is at and how to alter the environment’s state towards sustainability or away from it.

Whilst vaccuuming I came to the conclusion that this semester, in this subject, I was going to do some sort of scientific investigation – a lab experiment.

My interest for self investigation was sparked by the DYI DNA extraction experiment the class performed in the second week of semester. It reignited my interest in science and experimentation. I’m still very much interested in Biomimicry but more so from the perspective of mathematics.

Initially (as my previous post titled ‘Homework 3… ‘ I said I wanted to observe birds and their unique ability to fly. Unfortunately as I thought more about it, I found that the experiments that I wanted to perform were too complex and possibly unethical. So, I went back to thinking about my other areas of interest in the hope that I would be able to find an area that I could investigate. A topic that could be complex and challenging yet be containable within a semesters work load.

Previously, I’ve spoken briefly about the idea that mathematics could be the basis of creation, the environment and even ‘sustainability’. It’s not hard to believe since, mathematics is prevalent in everyday life, in nature, our bodies, music, chemistry, physics.

As my research project for this subject, Wet Dreams, I’m proposing that there is a mathematical formula/ theorem that governs sustainability. Let’s call them the Laws of Sustainability.

For this subject, I intend to establish some of the variables that affect sustainability, define the meaning of sustainability, set up basic experiments that will isolate these variables and determine their outcomes when the inputs are varied. From these basic experiments I intend to develop a formula that indicates where we are along the stage of sustainability and what inputs/ changes are required to approach sustainability.

The idea that our world is governed by laws of mathematics is astounding. Understanding this theory and breaking the code of ‘the laws of sustainability/nature’ would be akin to deciphering our human genetic code. It would have a profound impact on how the human race interacts with nature. Similar to the implications of understanding the human genome – where humans can begin to manipulate the human body – civilisation could play a more intrinsic part in stabalising our environment. Rather than speculating about what needs to be changed to obtain sustainability, society may one day be able to calculate the exact inputs.

The discipline that is Biomimicry is far reaching, complex and I believe is cross disciplinary. Our environment permeates every part of our existence. Although the discipline that is Biomimetrics is still a fledgling science. Humans are just beginning to understand the profound implications of finding solutions from our natural environment. Though many people are sceptical about the current outcomes that have been generated from mimicking nature, I highly doubt that there is anyone who disbelieves the profound wealth of information that can be learnt from our environment. However, by mimicking nature in appearance sake only will mean that society will fall short of it’s desired solution, possibly even creating more problems.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been researching a few different topics. Those topics included The Human Genome Project, biomimicry – specifically spiders webs and their applications, and the mathematics behind the growth of trees. I’ve also been contemplating a theory that life and everything in it is supported by a complex mathematical algorithm – abit like Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity – and therefore the ultimate biomimicing is to decipher this universal algorithm and base all designs and applications on this.

In the end I’ve settled on the complex, yet intriguing, subject of birds. One of my inspirations, Leonardo DaVinci, observed birds and their flight and then crafted a plane that flapped to try and simulate flight. Obviously he was unsuccessful but his method of investigation – observation – had merit.

My own investigation/ research project will utilise similar methods employed by Leonardo DaVinci. I intend to use modern methods of observation to make insights into how birds fly, how their anatomy assists them to fly and investigate the feature that makes them unique, their feathers. From these observations I will then develop modern applications.

Currently, I am unsure weather I will reference existing materials and research or attempt a research investigation based purely on observation.