Experiment with electric fish

Here are some of the latest images from the Enki project…

The main view of the experiment chamber. The Enki installation at Cornerhouse is now up and running. There are experiments by appointment every 15mins, and all the data is being collected.

It has taken me ages to make these comms units, they contain16 interconnecting cables within a noise reducing or shielded structure.

The Table has two monitors one from the fish room and one from the human room. You can speak to the person in the experiment via a mic.

Inside the sound proofed room for the human there is a chair and the sensor interface.

There is a window into the fish room on the side of the chamber

The room containing the fish is electrically shielded.

Vampyroteuthis “vampire squid from hell” – Planet Earth

Brain waves

In preperation for the next ENKi event, me and Greg spent the day testing the neuro-graphic interface; as an experiment we patched a strong frequency via MIDI to a MAX patch so our brains were modulating all kinds of strange sounds. I dont yet fully understand MIDI – but Later this will combine with the enki interface as a form of feedback.  In this image you can see the  graphics of the brain activity and the  receiver boxes – the sensors are wireless and stuck to our foreheads.

Chemical waves – bz reaction

Finally got around to experimenting with the reaction – trying to work out the best way to get a dramatic visual result – sandwiching the mix between glass and the base of a petri dish worked well – but the waste gas product creates bubbles which eventually obscure the reaction – so we tried to get an even covering over the glass by getting it perfectly flat.

Nicks brother had an idea to try the reaction vertically – which worked amazingly well.

The Carnivorous Syndrome in 3D

I was reading about this project in Make magazine – he grows different carnivorous plants from seed, and has filmed the growth process over a year in 3D time-lapse using a LEGO robot to make stereo-graphs using a standard digital camera.

You can buy the DVD from the site (you will need 3D glasses to see the 3D effect).http://www.3dsyndrome.com

Non-living Dissipative Systems

Its too late at night to be writing anything meaningful about slime molds, I have read that its is quite common to find it in the woods Looking at this site I think I may have actually seen some. This bears some relevance the the BZ reaction we have been working on…

“The investigation of such self-organizing chemical systems is still going on. All these chemical systems, mainly variants of the BZ-reaction, strongly point in the direction of corresponding biochemical processes in Organisms, for example the aggregation patterns of the Slime Mold. This mold consists of amoebae (unicellular animals) living on the forest floor. When starved (i.e. finding themselves in unfavorable conditions) they aggregate into a multicellular body which can then move in search of a more favorable habitat. The aggregation is triggered by the release of the compound cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) from some of the amoebae”

http://waynesword.palomar.edu/slime1.htm /a>

Spiral waves in colonies of the mold Dictyostelium discoideum. These patterns are created when the mold forms aggregates in response to some external ‘ stress’, such as a lack of moisture or nutrients.

Robo-fin

These projects investigate numerous applications of Neurophysiology, Sensor based motion guidance, experimental methods include measurement of the propulsion capabilities of robotic models of electric fish “We’ve developed a hypothesis regarding why active sensing animals such as electric fish, bats, and rats tend to have highly accurate spatial maps of their surround. We are testing this hypothesis using fish mazes.”

the robo-fin is a robot based on the sinusoidal fin movements of the knife fish.

“Our research group pursues both empirical and modeling efforts in mechanics and neurobiology, integrating the two together within simulation environments.”

http://www.neuromech.northwestern.edu/uropatagium/

neurostimulation and fish

The earliest recorded human effort at neuro-stimulation appears to have been that of the Mesopotamian healer Scribonius Largus 47AD (?) who used electrical currents to produce transient pain relief.

By either the direct application of electrical torpedo fish (eels, of the type shown below) to the human body or by placing painful extremities into a pool of water containing torpedo fish the resulting electrical shocks stunned the nervous system allowing an immediate and residual numbness in the extremity.

In this application electrical torpedo fish were the very first means of achieving transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) for therapeutic purposes. This form of treatment was particularly popular for the treatment of gouty arthritis.

Pliny (AD 61-113) commented on the fact that while the torpedo fish was not itself sluggish, it could induce sluggishness in other fish. He also detailed how to extract the medicinal magic of the torpedo fish into oils and ointments used for various ailments, or more popularly either to cool lust or to induce love.

In Plato’s (428-348 BC) dialoge Meno Socrates is told “you seem both in appearance and in your power over others to be like a torpedo fish, who torpifies those who come near him, as you have now torpified me, I think. For my soul and my tongue are really torpid and I do not know how to answer you.”

The affects of a shock from the electric Torpedo Fish, which lived in the Mediterranean, were well known. What caused of the affects was not. Aristotle (384-322 BC) said that the torpedo fish “narcotize” its prey.

BZ reaction

Last year my self and Nick Senior (Chemist and materials scientist) got together to recreate the BZ reaction – “The Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction is a spatio-temporal chemical oscillator.” which sounds excellent in its self – but to see this reaction for real is quite un-nerving in a strange way. I have made a page about it which has all the information on this (see pages) This year we are going to try and interface it with sensors to see if we can use the rhythmical pulses to control musical chords. hopefully this will be on show in Prague later in the year…

In this photo from our experiment last year – two spiral formations have developed, they rotate in synchronization and in opposite directions! the image covers about 5cm section of liquid squashed between glass.

BZ reaction page