Category: Past Projects

As an experimental publisher at ArtSci lab at UT Dallas, Dhatri can explain that peer reviewing is an essential part of the publishing process. It is a quality control measure that ensures the research or work submitted for publication is of high quality and meets the standards of the scientific community. Peer reviewing involves soliciting feedback from subject matter experts or peers who have the necessary expertise in the relevant field. The peer reviewing process typically involves sending a lot of emails back and forth between the authors, reviewers, and the publisher. This can be a tedious and time- consuming task, and it can also be prone to errors and delays.

To address these challenges, we can automate the peer review process using Python to automate repetitive tasks, such as sending and receiving emails, tracking revisions, and generating reports. By automating the peer review process, we can streamline the workflow, reduce errors, and improve the efficiency of the publishing process. This will enable us to provide faster feedback to authors and ensure a timelier publication process.

Overall, automating the peer review process using Python can help us to improve the quality and efficiency of the publishing process, making it more accessible and beneficial to both authors and reviewers.

Project By:
Dhatri Polasanapalli

In the home page, the photos of the food are instant, and the photos disappear from the home page after an hour of display. The reason for this setting is mainly because the food eaten at different times is different (breakfast, lunch, dinner). However, if we click on the personal page, we can see all the meals posted by that person before.

Project Link

A collection of multidisciplinary exemplars of science, engineering, art, design, and humanities.

The SEAD Exemplars exhibit will comprises a collection of exemplar works demonstrating effective intersections among the sciences and engineering with art, design, and the humanities. The works represent international diversity as well as diversity of practices and disciplines. The sections of the exhibit reflect the different purposes and impact of the exemplars:

• Pioneering: Individuals and groups whose careers have transcended disciplines and paradigms.
• Exploring: Projects that have pushed the boundaries of both arts and sciences.
• Bridging: Projects that seamlessly connect and merge the arts and the sciences.
• Engaging: Projects that seek to express and communicate to the public at large.
• Questioning: Projects that ponder about the implications of arts and sciences themselves.
• Educating: Projects meant to both teach and encourage learning.
• Innovating: Projects that led to discoveries and inventions.

Project Link

The CDASH (Curriculum Development in the Arts, Sciences and Humanities) website was established in 2012 by Kathryn Evans and Roger Malina as both a resource for faculty who engaged in or were interested in engaging in art-science-humanities curriculum; and as a data collection point where these types of curriculums could be surveyed for innovation and sustainability. Our new site will include graduate, undergraduate, primary/secondary and informal curriculum.

Our new website allows you to easily enter your course and all the relevant details. Please log in or register before you submit your course. You may also access the other areas of the site. Those who submit syllabi will be admitted to the Cloud Curriculum, where you can download other syllabi and resources.

For more information, contact cdash@utdallas.edu.

Project Link

Creative Disturbance is an international and multilingual podcast platform that facilitates collaboration between individuals in art, science, and technology communities. It was created in 2014 by the ArtSciLab of the School of Arts, Technology and Emerging Communication of UT Dallas, with the support of The MIT Press and Leonardo/ISAST. It is primarily run by UT Dallas students, with oversight and assistance from faculty.

Creative Disturbance is an international and multilingual podcast platform that facilitates collaboration between individuals in art, science, and technology communities. It was created in 2014 by the ArtSciLab of the School of Arts, Technology and Emerging Communication of UT Dallas, with the support of The MIT Press and Leonardo/ISAST. It is primarily run by UT Dallas students, with oversight and assistance from faculty.

Creative Disturbance has been made possible thanks to the success of a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign and the generous contribution of donors. On December 8, 2014,133 backers pledged $21,511 to keep Creative Disturbance running. The podcasts are since then recorded and produced by individuals who have an interest in art, science, design, education or technology. As promised during the campaign, the funding generated through this initiative has served to award international grants to students and young professionals across the world (Canada, China, Columbia, Egypt, Kenya, Portugal, South Africa, Sweden, and Turkey so far). In return, the students have created a series of podcasts of their interests.

After four years of activity, Creative Disturbance has covered a wide range of topics such as the advancements of generative art and virtual reality, the ethics and aesthetics of artificial life art, the field of sonification, the meaning of Persian sculpture and mythology, the aesthetics of Chinese contemporary new media art, the dynamics of African diasporas and the Afrofuturist movement, the evolution of digital art in Latin America, the emergence of interactive architecture and synthetic biology, the impact of climate change in environmental art, the story of women engineering, the relationships between gender and economics, technology, race, and sexuality, etc. Today, more than 40 channels have been created by a network of local and international collaborators in the fields of art, science and technology. Creative Disturbance is 480 podcasts published in 16 languages listened in more than 145 countries for a total of 94,408 downloads. We intend to continue this effort by promoting multilinguism, trans disciplinarity and experimentation in the next phases of our development.

Researching how researchers and expert practitioners work together in inter- and trans-disciplinary contexts in order to tackle complex problems with creative solutions, ranging from the environment, to new ways of learning, to technology and society.

Project HERMES looks at how researchers and expert practitioners work together in interdisciplinary (across institutional departments) and transdisciplinary (across stakeholder communities) contexts through the framework of Transdisciplinary Intelligence. The framework includes knowledge and aptitude metrics, good practices, and transdisciplinary training modules to improve collaboration among artists, designers, engineers, scientists, and other experts in order to boost innovation through tool sharing and idea exchange. Project HERMES is currently underway internally at the University of Texas at Dallas among its 100+ research groups and will expand to industry partners in 2020.

A collaboration of artists, designers, and neuroscientists, Data Stethoscope is a multimodal data sonification and visualization of function MRI brain scans of individuals 20 to 80 years old. The desktop application allows this brain data to be explored sonically. This project, funded by DARPA, gives neuroscientists a way to “hear” how connections change in the aging brain.

1. Listening to Data

LISTENING TO DATA (Sonification) is the new tool needed for analyzing the ever growing data cloud. Our work is perfecting the many ways to make better decisions by not just visualizing, but simply LISTENING TO DATA. The existing data tools rely almost exclusively on flawed elaborate interactive visualization of data. Data Science, AI and Big Data industries are only developing a wide variety of data visualization tools to allow rapid and accurate decision making. The time to bring in at least one more, our richest sense in many ways, LISTENING TO DATA into the mainstream!

2. The weakness of the visual

Although the human eye is a sophisticated tool, it can also be easily tricked. Consider some of these weaknesses associated with visual inspection:

• Unreliability – Browse through a set of optical illusions to get a sense of just how unreliable the human eye can be.
• Imprecision – The human eye is not capable of making precise measurements, especially on a very small scale.

3. Breakthroughs: The Data Stethoscope Project

The Data Stethoscope Project at the UTD ArtSciLab has:

• Developed a comprehensive set of audio tools for turning data to sound.
• Developed a data sonification apprenticeship program (HERMES)
• Developed training modules to learn to listen and interpret data as information
• Cognitive Testing and providing certificates of completion to 100s individuals

Traditional Sonifications have been limited to a “proof of concept” or “artistic expression” context of the 25+ year history. We prefer the term LISTENING TO DATA. We have moved beyond Sonification and are prepared to scale up the distribution of our research findings.

• LEARN (to LISTEN TO DATA )
• EXPLORE (new sound adventures)
• TEST (to find and improve on the best techniques)

3.1 Some tested USE CASES:

• DATA LISTENING Graduate Business Students have complemented and augmented visualization work with proven access to more dimensions of data at once.
• LISTEN TO DATA observing visually demanding experimental processes in real time, data listening has been proven effective.
• LISTEN TO DATA using the new techniques we have pioneered for signalling weather and traffic conditions (and more) while driving, cooking in the kitchen etc.

We have created ways to standardize sounds of various types of audio representation of data!

4. Key Partners

Our research has determined that we have Key Partners that we will be targeting in Business Analytics, Data Science and Smart Speaker Market We plan to work in these areas with these resources:

•  Web based general distribution (Tableau, Javascript)
• Professional Users via dynamic notebooks (Jupyter, Custom Apps)
• Consumer Informatics via Sonic Alerts (Smart Speakers in Home and Car)

5. LET (Learning Exploring Testing)

LET us move forward with this approach which is designed and tested to assure success as the use of these new tools becomes a part of the workflow at the enterprise scale in the key industries of Business analytics, Research sector, Educational sector, and the growing Consumer “INFO sounds” market.

By focusing on LISTENING TO DATA We create the value proposition that will develop auditory interfaces to complement, augment and in some cases, replace visualization for increased efficiency, productivity in business and science workflows and beyond.

Project Link

ARTECA is a digital space that supports scholarly materials that explore the intersection of arts, humanities, science, and technology. The portal serves as a virtual art-science community resource and critical content provider for scholarly and experimental publications, including gray literature.

The project is a collaboration of The MIT Press, Leonardo/ISAST, and the ArtSciLab at UT Dallas.

ARTECA acts as a valuable hub for academic librarians and researchers, and aids in raising the art, humanities, science, and technology community’s visibility when other monodisciplines have already established such services.

Originated in 2021 by Lauren Bernal in conjunction with Sairam Venkataraman and UTD Clinical Assistant Professor of Information Systems at UTD’s JSOM, Dr. Judd Bradbury.

D.A.T.A.(Data Analytics Team for the ArtSciLab) is an alliance of analytic-driven ASL members. Its goal is to maintain sustainability in ASL as we learn from our history to make the best judgments for the future. With Lauren’s B.S. in psychology, she is utilizing knowledge of emotional intelligence and research design as a lens to start the Data Analytics Team of the ArtSciLab (coincidentally acronymic for “D.A.T.A.”) to turn our qualitative measures into quantitative data visualizations. In the rationale for D.A.T.A., she expresses how the information we have on our ArtSciLab members can be used with understanding how to better our systems with increasing heterogeneity, seeing our strong points and weaknesses from an introspective point of view. Lauren nominated our new Lab Coordinator, Sairam Venkataraman, to be the lead of D.A.T.A. as he is earning his master’s degree in business analytics and can scaffold others on learning data analytics.

Project By:
Sairam Venkataraman

The ArtSciLab Crier began in early 2021 when the new Lab Coordinator Mahmoud Elkarmalawy wanted to answer the popular question of “What is going on at the ArtSciLab?”. He later invited Daniel Martinez-Murillo onto the Crier team to help him answer that question.

The ArtSciLab Crier is a weekly newsletter website designed to inform ArtSciLab members and other interested parties about the lab’s events and news related to the lab. The name is based on town criers, who would make public announcements in town halls, and the logo is inspired by newspaper boys, who in a similar fashion would exclaim news headlines in the streets. In the same way, the Crier intends to point interested people’s attention towards the ArtSciLab and their projects by spotlighting them and relevant news, interacting with readers through activities, and providing readers with the latest events, research results, and inquiries. More than just a blog, the Crier hopes that its team’s accuracy, creativity, and efforts shine through and provide an enjoyable insight into the world of the ArtSciLab. 

In this way, the Crier’s use of experimental publishing and curating methods aids in its mission to create a deeper level of engagement within the ArtSciLab family and its external network of collaborators, leading to a more connected community of hybrid professionals from various disciplines, cultures, and backgrounds.