Author: Monica Cano

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The Moment – a movie you control with your mind

Post by Richard Ramchurn (2015 Cohort)

In October 2017 I set out to direct my second brain controlled film. For the previous two years I have been doing a PhD in brain controlled cinema, which has consisted of taught courses, ‘performance led research in the wild’ studies, a bit of my own practice and a lot of reading. The PhD has given me the time and resources to study and analyse how people came to interact with my first film The Disadvantages of Time Travel, and to read up on passive theories of control amongst other topics relevant to my field. All this has informed my practice and when it came to returning to the director’s chair it was with the foundation of that work. The process of making my second film The MOMENT required me to dedicate all of my time and resources to it, and being able to officially pause my PhD during that time was invaluable. The production was gruelling. For at least a month I worked 7 days a week on no more than 4 hours sleep a night. After the shoot a lot of the crew, the producer and myself went into a kind of freefall and took a few days to return to a semblance of our previous selves. The MOMENT is the largest project where I have been at  the helm, it had a crew of 28, and 9 professional actors and we worked to a budget of £54k.

Behind the scenes

I kept detailed notes as I went along, throughout all of production, which will be helpful when it comes to writing up the practice side of the thesis. Screenings of The MOMENT have been used to collect ‘in the wild’ data form the public focusing on their interaction with the brain controlled film. However the film itself has its own touring life and a sustainable tour is currently being planned throughout 2019.

Making of the MOMENT on Vimeo

A project of this scale needs a team behind it. It is worth mentioning that I have the privilege of having an excellent and engaged supervision team who have supported the process, and my producer and partner who have made the practicalities of this project possible. I also found additional partnerships in industry with Live Cinema UK who helped with exhibition and engagement with widespread cultural organisations.

Lessons learnt summary –

  • Make sure you have adequate budget and time.
  • Time spent planning is never wasted.
  • Pool your resources, work with people you trust and if possible have history.
  • An army marches on its stomach, keep your crew fed and watered.
  • Find all the support you can from within and outside the PhD structure.
  • Continue to make friends with organisations.
  • Engage with the press.
  • Talk about your work whenever you can.
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FINISHING UP AT CAMBRIDGE

Post by Kate Green (2016 Cohort)

So the Michaelmas term at Cambridge has come to an end which means that I have finished my 3 month internship with the Trust and Technology Initiative.

A lot has happened over the course of three months and I would like to take this time to reflect on some highlights:

The Trust and Technology Initiative Launch; I helped cover the photography of the event as well as presenting my research.

 

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MCCRC Symposium – organised by my colleagues, this symposium and workshop provided me with some insight into the legal side of privacy.

Value in Personal Data workshop at the Digital Catapult – I attended a brunch workshop that explored putting a monetary value on personal data.

Misinfocon – as part of Mozfest’s programme this conference explored minsinformation in today’s society. This was particularly interesting from a public health perspective and the impact of misinformation on epidemics. I wrote some reflections for the Initiative’s blog.

Hannah Fry talk – I attended Hannah’s talk on her recent book on algorithms.

 

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USB-C talk from Google – this was a little too technical for me, but it was interesting to learn about the challenges of USB-C in laptop design.

Lunchtime talk with Prof Simon Schaffer – who talked about Babbage who didn’t invent the computer, but in fact replaced them…

Aside from different events, I met lots of new people from different areas from sociology to law, to computer science, to psychology.

I think this was a good time for me to take three months away from my PhD and explore different (but not unrelated) areas. It’s given me some perspective and a sense of where my PhD fits in the wider context.

In terms of work, I first of all started to explore the personal data downloads from social media platforms. I looked at the ease of access, the file types and device compatibility. I was interested to see how personal data downloads might be useful for social media users who participate in online health communities.

While this area was interesting, I wanted to make sure that the internship had a tangible outcome that could be useful for my PhD. I began to explore my interview data from my first study and specifically focused on a question I asked around ‘trust’. I had not analysed this part of the study because I was unsure of its relevance and usefulness, however, whilst at the Trust and Tech Initiative I felt like this was an opportune moment to explore it. I am hoping to write the findings up more formally and submit it to a conference proceedings in 2019.

When I shared the findings with my colleagues at the Initiative and it was felt that my exploration of trust through a transdisciplinary lens could serve as a useful resource for others entering the conversation. I have been writing up a report that uncovers one approach to talk about trust in technology and I use online health communities as an example case study. Once it has all been tidied up and formatted into a well-designed document it will be published by the Initiative.

Overall I feel that the internship was a positive experience; however, I am looking forward to focusing back on my PhD. The break was welcomed and now I feel it’s done its purpose. 🙂

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From Nottingham to the shores of Lake Victoria

Post by Gregor Engelmann (2014 Cohort)

The best ideas often don’t emerge from a single person – they are often the result of collaborative innovation. Hackathons bring together like-minded people who bring together different skills, tools, equipment, and experiences to celebrate creativity, innovation, and technology.

I have recently returned from ExHack, a student hackathon held at the University of Exeter. Over the last 4 years, I have supported more than 45 Hackathons throughout Europe and North America through my work with Major League Hacking before joining the World Bank Group on a short-term engagement to support the Lake Victoria Challenge.

Hackathons – What are they?


Hackathons are collaborative programming competitions run over a short period of time (usually 24 to 36 hours). During the event, attendees are encouraged to work in small teams to turn tech-related ideas into prototypes before pitching their projects to judges for a chance to win amazing prizes. Beyond the material goal of winning prizes, Hackathons are about a culture of building, learning, and sharing. They provide attendees with a holistic view of everything that goes into working as a team and implementing an idea from scratch.

While I participated in Hackathons as an attendee during the time I worked on my MSc in Human Geography, I have since focussed more on the learning and sharing aspect of hackathon culture. Working with Major League Hacking, the official Student Hackathon League, I have traveled to over 45 Hackathons to empower, support, and mentor Hackathon organizers and participants over the last 4 years.

During the events, I routinely run workshops and help attendees brainstorm ideas for their projects and debug their project code. My engagement is often in the form of informal mentorship – Hackathons are not about reinventing the wheel. Instead, it is about sharing what myself and others have learned, what worked and what didn’t and getting folks to try out new technologies.

Hackathons are also great spaces for networking. The events are frequently organized by students and supported by a myriad of (tech) companies from local start-ups and initiatives such as the Digital Economy Network to global players such as Google, AWS or Dell. Through my work with Hackathons and my Ph.D. research focussing on the role of novel data sources in informing Urban and Transport planning in Tanzania, I have been offered the opportunity to be involved in organizing the first Lake Victoria Challenge in Tanzania.

Lake Victoria Challenge

The shores of Lake Victoria are home to over 30 million people, making it one of the most densely populated areas in the world. Delivering vital health supplies and other urgent goods is often challenging due to rugged terrain, the remoteness of island communities and limited road networks. Novel technologies such as cargo drones have huge potential to alleviate some of the supply chain burdens faced by communities and businesses in the region.

Over 280 attendees from 23 countries traveled to Mwanza, Tanzania on the shores of Lake Victoria for a three-day conference and flying competition in October 2018.

The conference brought together domain experts from health, technology, transport, and regulation to discuss the transformative opportunities of commercial drone technologies for the Lake Victoria region specifically and other regions more generally. The event focussed on three areas:

1. Technology: discussing the latest development in drone technologies and application,
2. Regulation: integrating regulatory frameworks for integrating drones into civil airspace, and
3. Architecture: envisioning the form and function of Droneports, which are the hub for commercial drone operations

During the conference I had the opportunity to present some of the research outputs of the N-Lab’s Z-Roads project, using surveying drones and machine learning for low volume road condition analysis, as part of the LVC technology track in addition to being involved in the organisation of the event.

Below is a highlights video of the event:

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Summer Scientist

Each year children and parents are invited to visit the University and play lots of free and fun games that help us with research. This past summer, Wendy Olphert (2015 cohort) enjoyed assisting in one of the activities at Summer Scientist 2018:

A bit of brainwave! –Wendy Olphert

I’m researching the role that digital technologies (such as mobile phones and the internet) play in the lives of people with a brain tumour – whether their symptoms create challenges for technology use, and whether using technologies can contribute to improving their quality of life.

At one level, this is quite an easy idea to communicate to people outside of an academic context – we readily understand that if we have a problem with our brain it could affect our ability to think or act – but to appreciate the range of impacts that a brain tumour could have on an individual’s life requires an awareness of what our brains do and how they work.  The brain is such a complex organ that scientists are still researching these questions.  But we already know a lot, and as I recently found out, even for young children it can be fun as well as instructive to learn about how brains work!

Over the summer I had a chance to assist in an event called Summer Scientist 2018.

This is a week-long programme run by the School of Psychology at the University of Nottingham in the school vacation that has now run for several years.  Families are invited to bring their children (aged 4-11) to spend half a day at the University to play lots of free fun games and optionally to take part in some research activities – that were also designed to be fun and engaging. By taking part, children (and parents) get to learn about how the mind and brain work by experiencing real science first-hand.

University of Nottingham Psychology Science week. Photos by Alex WIlkinson of Alex Wilkinson Photography.

I was given responsibility for an activity on the theme of electroencephalography – how dull does that sound for young kids?!  But the organisers had found a clever and entertaining way to demonstrate the fact that the brain generates electrical impulses, using a special headset with a pair of furry (fake!) cat’s ears attached (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurowear). The headset picks up electrical activity from the brain which in turn moves the ears depending on your state of mind. When you are relaxed, the ears droop; when you are interested, the ears are alert – and when you are ‘in the zone’ the ears wiggle.  The kids had free choice over the activities they chose to take part in, and most were fascinated by the wiggly ‘cats ears’ and keen to try them out for themselves.

The children attending had a free choice over the activities they opted to do, and during the course of the two sessions in the day around 40 children of different ages came to the stand to try out the ears and, by doing so, learned about electrical impulses in the brain.  There was a mirror to look in; once I’d attached their headset, some found out that the more they giggled at their reflection the more the ears wiggled (and the more the ears wiggled, the more they laughed!) Others, especially one little boy of about 6, spent many minutes silently trying out different ‘brain activities’ such as thinking about exciting times such as parties, being calm, or trying to count backwards from 20, and clearly being intrigued to see the effects of his ‘brainwaves’ on the ears’ movement.

For the older children, and in some cases their parents, I explained how scientists can use the electrical impulses in the brain to find out more about how it works and what is happening when the brain is not working as it should – and that in turn gave me a chance to tell some of them about the research that I am doing.

I really enjoyed the day and it was clear that the kids had a great time too, as well as picking up lots of science along the way.  I felt that the whole concept of ‘Summer Scientist’ week really was a bit of a brainwave!