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Deep Sensing: Your Thought Experiments of the In-Between Spaces in Outer Space

Roger F. Malina – ORCID

So here goes:
Deep Sensing is, perhaps, an OBSERVATORY OF CRITICAL ZONES. In January 2024, Richardson Texas, you will be able to sense deep space:

You will be accessing the latest data from big telescopes in orbit and on earth to sense the universe we are embedded in (details at the end of this blog).

At the simple level, the team is converting NASA data into sensory experiences involving sight, sound, touch and walking around. No human has ever been to the places you will be “visiting’. What you
will experience are ‘fabrications’ made a team of artists, scientists,
administrators and…

By that I don’t mean that they are ‘false’ but that they are “made up’’ so we can make sense of these places. In some cases they may be false “hallucinations’, but we can only find that out by collecting different kinds of data.

The place you will be visiting has been named by some humans as “the pandora cluster’ a collection of galaxies orbiting each other. Go figure why this name makes sense.

Read Complete Blog Here

About the Author:

Roger F. Malina is a space scientist and astronomer, with a specialty in extreme and ultraviolet astronomy, space instrumentation and optics. He served as director of the Observatoire Astronomique de Marseille Provence and was NASA Principal Investigator for the Extreme Ultraviolet Satellite project at the University of California, Berkeley.

He is also a publisher and editor in the new emerging research fields that connect the sciences and engineering to the arts, design and humanities. Since 1982, he has served as Executive Editor of the Leonardo Publications at MIT Press. He founded, and serves on the board of two nonprofits, ISAST in San Francisco and OLATS in Paris, which advocate and document the work of artists involved in contemporary science and technology.

He is currently a Distinguished Professor of Art and Technology and Professor of Physics, at the University of Texas at Dallas and Directeur de Recherche for the CNRS in France. He serves as the Associate Director of ATEC, and founded the ArtSciLab in the ATEC program fall 2013.

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Emergence Emerges in Spite of the Best Symbiotic human + AI Analysis

After reading: Strong Emergence Arising from Weak Emergence

Roger F. Malina – ORCID

See abstract at bottom of this blog:
a) Don’t bother reading this article. The abstract says enough. The authors applied state of the art analysis tools. Their conclusion: Predictions of emergent phenomena, appearing on the macroscopic layer of a complex system, can fail if they are made by a microscopic
model.
b) How did meaning emerge in my brain as I read this next to the Calatrava bridge in Dallas. 3000 people are running a long distance race. The runners were in small clusters, like in the game of life (GOL) that the authors study. Yes some of the clusters are friends, but
others are clustering for other or no reason.
c) Maybe the meaning of complex is ‘phenomena we don’t understand, yet’ so?

Read Complete Blog Here

About the Author:

Roger F. Malina is a space scientist and astronomer, with a specialty in extreme and ultraviolet astronomy, space instrumentation and optics. He served as director of the Observatoire Astronomique de Marseille Provence and was NASA Principal Investigator for the Extreme Ultraviolet Satellite project at the University of California, Berkeley.

He is also a publisher and editor in the new emerging research fields that connect the sciences and engineering to the arts, design and humanities. Since 1982, he has served as Executive Editor of the Leonardo Publications at MIT Press. He founded, and serves on the board of two nonprofits, ISAST in San Francisco and OLATS in Paris, which advocate and document the work of artists involved in contemporary science and technology.

He is currently a Distinguished Professor of Art and Technology and Professor of Physics, at the University of Texas at Dallas and Directeur de Recherche for the CNRS in France. He serves as the Associate Director of ATEC, and founded the ArtSciLab in the ATEC program fall 2013.

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Disremembering through the thoughts of Stanislav Dehaene

Upon mid-reading of Dehaene’s 2020 book “How We Learn: The New Science of Education and the Brain”.

Roger F. Malina – ORCID

The first take home from this book, that I haven’t finished reading yet, is to: REDESIGN YOUR NAME. I called the wrong person yesterday, as I was reading Dehaene, when I called Patrick Mc in my phone address book. I reached Patrick McCray (my favorite historian of science and technology) when I was trying to reach Patrick McCully (my favorite police captain, the lead in the artscience of creative policing). Try searching them online. My cell phone is stupid its not affected by it’s context, my brain is.

I am sitting in my favorite brunch restaurant in Dallas.

Why is this relevant to this blog post? Because I now think differently about how my brain functions after reading this book. And in January I start (co) teaching a graduate seminar on Experimental Publishing and Curating. I will redesign the seminar based on this book. My previous syllabus is clearly erroneous and based on incorrect understanding of the brain.

Read Complete Blog Here

About the Author:

Roger F. Malina is a space scientist and astronomer, with a specialty in extreme and ultraviolet astronomy, space instrumentation and optics. He served as director of the Observatoire Astronomique de Marseille Provence and was NASA Principal Investigator for the Extreme Ultraviolet Satellite project at the University of California, Berkeley.

He is also a publisher and editor in the new emerging research fields that connect the sciences and engineering to the arts, design and humanities. Since 1982, he has served as Executive Editor of the Leonardo Publications at MIT Press. He founded, and serves on the board of two nonprofits, ISAST in San Francisco and OLATS in Paris, which advocate and document the work of artists involved in contemporary science and technology.

He is currently a Distinguished Professor of Art and Technology and Professor of Physics, at the University of Texas at Dallas and Directeur de Recherche for the CNRS in France. He serves as the Associate Director of ATEC, and founded the ArtSciLab in the ATEC program fall 2013.

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The end of the Academy as we knew it: New Forms of Academic Publishing?

Roger F. Malina – ORCID

Roger Malina is stepping down as Executive Editor of Leonardo publications after 40 years of volunteer labor. As part of this ISAST is carrying out a strategic review to try and understand the future of academic publishing.
When Leonardo Journal was founded by Frank Malina, at Pergamon Press, it was different in a number of desirable ways:

  1. Until the end of WWII academic publishing was carried out by Academies of Art and Academies of Science, and other non-profits such as some Universities, not by commercial publishers.
  2. Secondly artists were almost never asked to write about their art making and artwork; the founder of Leonardo was told “if you have to plug it in, it isn’t art”. Show it in a cinema museum.

    Now there are dozens of academic journals in the commercial and non-profit worlds including MIT Press, the current publisher of Leonardo Journal and Books. And artists can publish in dozens of peer-reviewed
    journals. Artists in academic settings often need to publish in peer reviewed academic journals in order to get promoted and tenure.

Read Complete Blog Here

About the Author:

Roger F. Malina is a space scientist and astronomer, with a specialty in extreme and ultraviolet astronomy, space instrumentation and optics. He served as director of the Observatoire Astronomique de Marseille Provence and was NASA Principal Investigator for the Extreme Ultraviolet Satellite project at the University of California, Berkeley.

He is also a publisher and editor in the new emerging research fields that connect the sciences and engineering to the arts, design and humanities. Since 1982, he has served as Executive Editor of the Leonardo Publications at MIT Press. He founded, and serves on the board of two nonprofits, ISAST in San Francisco and OLATS in Paris, which advocate and document the work of artists involved in contemporary science and technology.

He is currently a Distinguished Professor of Art and Technology and Professor of Physics, at the University of Texas at Dallas and Directeur de Recherche for the CNRS in France. He serves as the Associate Director of ATEC, and founded the ArtSciLab in the ATEC program fall 2013.

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Dis-remembering Manifesto

We spent time on devices. We perceive the world through lenses and microphones. We resigned our cognition to technical machines.

The memory of love, of human courtship, is inscribed in machines, chat histories, colorful images, more or less charming little films, personal messages, and any kind of digital auxiliaries. We rely on this. We generate romantic emotions from this. We make decisions based on this.

Likewise, wars and military conflicts generate a plethora of data from their ‘cognitive‘ sensorial activities – from seeing with drones, detecting with satellites, and communicating with headsets – generating data – generating memories. We observe it with objection but acknowledge its relentless functionality.

AI increasingly fashions the storage of all these human and non-human memories – including all logical operations to synthesize our collective and personal recollections.

Mostly perceived as a threat, it indeed is a unique chance for mankind to forget, to hand over an ocean of memories to machines – to engage in a collective amnesia.

Read Complete Blog Here
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Disremembering Edward Said: Entering the doors of Delusion

Roger F. Malina – ORCID

I first read Edward Said’s last book in 2004, after Michael Punt Reminded me of it. Oops after Michael recommended it. But I totally disremembered the content of this book.

What drew me to re-reading it was my 73 birthday. In particular I remember the argument that Beethoven’s unfinished symphony is his most influential. Or was it Schubert ?

The book had very little to do with what I remember about it.

Disremembering is perhaps a form of selective remembering, and in my case mis-taken remembering. But this dis-rememory was particularly enticing in my current self-narrative about academic freedom.

Read Complete Blog Here

About the Author:

Roger F. Malina is a space scientist and astronomer, with a specialty in extreme and ultraviolet astronomy, space instrumentation and optics. He served as director of the Observatoire Astronomique de Marseille Provence and was NASA Principal Investigator for the Extreme Ultraviolet Satellite project at the University of California, Berkeley.

He is also a publisher and editor in the new emerging research fields that connect the sciences and engineering to the arts, design and humanities. Since 1982, he has served as Executive Editor of the Leonardo Publications at MIT Press. He founded, and serves on the board of two nonprofits, ISAST in San Francisco and OLATS in Paris, which advocate and document the work of artists involved in contemporary science and technology.

He is currently a Distinguished Professor of Art and Technology and Professor of Physics, at the University of Texas at Dallas and Directeur de Recherche for the CNRS in France. He serves as the Associate Director of ATEC, and founded the ArtSciLab in the ATEC program fall 2013.

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The Physics of Migration: Edition 6

Roger F. Malina – ORCID

Book: “Migration Theory: talking across disciplines”

4th edition, Caroline B Bretell and James F Holland. Routledge, New York, 2023 DOI 10.4324/9781003121015
by: Caroline B Bretell and James F Holland

I just finished reading Chapter 2 on the Sociology of Migration by David Scott Fitzgerald.

The author immediately addresses the implicit biases he has: a global north western white sociologist writing in English-English. Yes, migration studies are affected by the geographic origin(s) of the author.

Apparently, passports were invented during WWII in Europe.

The author manages to both complexify and simplify the literature (there are structures in complexity/). He delves into personal motivations for migrations that often include irrational considerations (hence difficult to analyze logically?)

Read Complete Blog Here

About the Author:

Roger F. Malina is a space scientist and astronomer, with a specialty in extreme and ultraviolet astronomy, space instrumentation and optics. He served as director of the Observatoire Astronomique de Marseille Provence and was NASA Principal Investigator for the Extreme Ultraviolet Satellite project at the University of California, Berkeley.

He is also a publisher and editor in the new emerging research fields that connect the sciences and engineering to the arts, design and humanities. Since 1982, he has served as Executive Editor of the Leonardo Publications at MIT Press. He founded, and serves on the board of two nonprofits, ISAST in San Francisco and OLATS in Paris, which advocate and document the work of artists involved in contemporary science and technology.

He is currently a Distinguished Professor of Art and Technology and Professor of Physics, at the University of Texas at Dallas and Directeur de Recherche for the CNRS in France. He serves as the Associate Director of ATEC, and founded the ArtSciLab in the ATEC program fall 2013.

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The Physics of Migration: Edition 5

Roger F. Malina – ORCID

Book: “Migration Theory: talking across disciplines”

4th edition, Caroline B Bretell and James F Holland. Routledge, New York, 2023 DOI 10.4324/9781003121015
by: Caroline B Bretell and James F Holland

So, I have just finished reading page 156 of this book, the chapter by Philip Martin. The Chapter title is Economic Aspects of Migration

The chapter, as the author admits, is USA centric which is fine. It feeds into my bias that migration to the USA is a good thing. I migrated for the first time to the US for college at MIT in 1968.

My Czech grandparents family migrated to Texas in 1882, then they hated it so much they migrated back to Bohemia in 1918 after the first creation of the Czech Republic. Then the great depressions chased them back to Texas in the 1920s. My father was a forced migrant back to Europe in 1954  and became a political refugee in France, where I was born.

My father accidentally became a millionaire at the same time and switched careers from engineering to arts then publishing. I left France to USA to become a university student.

This is much discussed in this chapter: the lack of convincing correlation between going to college and subsequent career success. Neither Bill Gates nor Steve Jobs went to college.

Read Complete Blog Here

About the Author:

Roger F. Malina is a space scientist and astronomer, with a specialty in extreme and ultraviolet astronomy, space instrumentation and optics. He served as director of the Observatoire Astronomique de Marseille Provence and was NASA Principal Investigator for the Extreme Ultraviolet Satellite project at the University of California, Berkeley.

He is also a publisher and editor in the new emerging research fields that connect the sciences and engineering to the arts, design and humanities. Since 1982, he has served as Executive Editor of the Leonardo Publications at MIT Press. He founded, and serves on the board of two nonprofits, ISAST in San Francisco and OLATS in Paris, which advocate and document the work of artists involved in contemporary science and technology.

He is currently a Distinguished Professor of Art and Technology and Professor of Physics, at the University of Texas at Dallas and Directeur de Recherche for the CNRS in France. He serves as the Associate Director of ATEC, and founded the ArtSciLab in the ATEC program fall 2013.

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Trans-Chapter Migration: Edition 4

Roger F. Malina – ORCID

Book: “Migration Theory: talking across disciplines”

4th edition, Caroline B Bretell and James F Holland. Routledge, New York, 2023 DOI 10.4324/9781003121015
by: Caroline B Bretell and James F Holland

So, I have just finished reading page 102 of this book, the middle of chapter 2 on Demography by Francois Heran.

Please do contribute a blog post of your own to be woven into the next edition of this iterative book review.

I have been very intrigued by understanding the complexity of demographics and its study. Many of the concepts and definitions have evolved over time.

On page 95 Heran discusses the “panoply of censuses and surveys’. We forget that the naming of stars and constellations didn’t reach a consensus until recently and cataloguing of objects in the sky is a panoply of sometimes contradictory findings.

Read Complete Blog Here

About the Author:

Roger F. Malina is a space scientist and astronomer, with a specialty in extreme and ultraviolet astronomy, space instrumentation and optics. He served as director of the Observatoire Astronomique de Marseille Provence and was NASA Principal Investigator for the Extreme Ultraviolet Satellite project at the University of California, Berkeley.

He is also a publisher and editor in the new emerging research fields that connect the sciences and engineering to the arts, design and humanities. Since 1982, he has served as Executive Editor of the Leonardo Publications at MIT Press. He founded, and serves on the board of two nonprofits, ISAST in San Francisco and OLATS in Paris, which advocate and document the work of artists involved in contemporary science and technology.

He is currently a Distinguished Professor of Art and Technology and Professor of Physics, at the University of Texas at Dallas and Directeur de Recherche for the CNRS in France. He serves as the Associate Director of ATEC, and founded the ArtSciLab in the ATEC program fall 2013.

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The Physics of Migration: Edition 3

Roger F. Malina – ORCID

Book: “Migration Theory: talking across disciplines”

4th edition, Caroline B Bretell and James F Holland. Routledge, New York, 2023 DOI 10.4324/9781003121015
by: Caroline B Bretell and James F Holland

So, I have just finished reading page 79 of this book, the chapter by Donna R. Gabaccia.

The Chapter title is 1 Historical Migration Studies: Time, Temporality and Theory

For no good reason I like the fact that this writer has a non-anglo or un-anglo name. I wonder if, I am sure there is a field of ‘name studies’. What are the most or least common names of migrants? But of course, names can mislead, just as time can. My mother’s maiden name was “Duckworth”, her nickname “Duckie”. Smile: association studies.

I found this chapter compelling, facts and ideas I wasn’t familiar with. But/and a good dose of disciplinary skepticism. The author pokes at whether dividing into time periods is a good idea, but accepts it can stimulate useful thinking.

I enjoyed the study of the history of the very concept of ‘migration’, “immigration’, emigration etc. since my own family history is heavily embodied in migration and emigration. My grandparents for Bohemia found Texas treacherous and unhospitable. They migrated from Texas back to Bohemia in 1918 when the Czech Republic was created after WW1. They then remigrated back to Texas during the great depression in Europe.

My father said he left Texas as soon as possible, because the nearest library wasn’t within bicycling range from the family home in Brenham- he moved to Caltech where the books outnumber the people. He then became a forced emigrant as a political refugee in France. Cyclical migration: I am now living in Texas.

Read Complete Blog Here

About the Author:

Roger F. Malina is a space scientist and astronomer, with a specialty in extreme and ultraviolet astronomy, space instrumentation and optics. He served as director of the Observatoire Astronomique de Marseille Provence and was NASA Principal Investigator for the Extreme Ultraviolet Satellite project at the University of California, Berkeley.

He is also a publisher and editor in the new emerging research fields that connect the sciences and engineering to the arts, design and humanities. Since 1982, he has served as Executive Editor of the Leonardo Publications at MIT Press. He founded, and serves on the board of two nonprofits, ISAST in San Francisco and OLATS in Paris, which advocate and document the work of artists involved in contemporary science and technology.

He is currently a Distinguished Professor of Art and Technology and Professor of Physics, at the University of Texas at Dallas and Directeur de Recherche for the CNRS in France. He serves as the Associate Director of ATEC, and founded the ArtSciLab in the ATEC program fall 2013.