e-Science Day III part 1

I'm taking over blogging the first session at today's e-Science workshop as Robert Sharl will be doing the first presentation. Normal service will be resumed shortly, so in the mean time apologies for spelling, typo, and grammatical mistakes. Gregory Sporton introduces The Accessible grid is this week's theme The story so far week one the oportunities. looking at frameworks and environments week 2 was looking at methodologies in practice and collaboration demo. The Accessible Grid Is there a challenge in e-Science. Can we identify what data is being sent and distinguish what is being sent. Firewalls can be an issue in e-Science. Robert Sharl Digital tools/Digital spaces Nature of computer in the digital process and how the computer is seen as part of the creative process Revisit paper from prague but within the context of e-Science Concentrating on Creative Practice & technology and on Ultra parallelism and the VRU useful lessons from what happened at the VRU Digitising the analogue 50 years translating and reproducing the world around us increasing effective badnwidth - accumalitive doublings storage & data processing and the halvings of cost - moore's law Allows digital tech to represent different things from instruction sets through over time to media & genetics Resolution moved from aproximate detail to where it is a perfect version to where we have excess capacity - we start to see metadata in photography the image is only part of the data set e.g geolocational data forms part of the process Performative increases tendencies - the computer is a tool - a digital powerful paintbrush requiring the control of an expoerienced practitioner. there is a move to the desktop - the user becomes the person in control of the process the machine age for ideas metrics of production digital tech - a heavy lifting gear for the processing of ideas equivalent to the steam age for manufacture. metrics are thos of production. any sufficient advance in tech is indistiguishable from magic. Moore's law allows artists to do thing not dreampt of before. belief in A&D is that tech is just a performance gain. Aquisition of tech is done in this was that it is an appliance within a process and faster. Creative play moves from just performance to transformative The singularity is where we are heading. As we head there we cannot see the exponential growth from close up The acceleration of everything Ultra parallelism - a model for virtualised creative research. principles of supercomputing applied to creativity Tools vs. environment tools are discreet and fit into a work flow, deploy them and they work on a batch model - one process at a time. Environments are dispersed, configured around a problem domain and use design patterns they are populated and use a time share model The network is where power is located creative supercomputing not just the physical hardware & software, but the organisational structures and the social structures - the whole network of people and ideas institutionalised tech monoculture normally. tried to look at tech as a matrix of interconnected focused around standards and glue technologies. the techs themselves help to speed up the process. looking for harmonics and synergies The future of creativity looking at tools in a network sense will provide near perfect information, the collapse of distance and the zero-scarcity of processin in 20 years Harnessing transformative effects looking at something that surrounds the whole creative process. turning the tech from lots of units to an environment. dramatic transformative effects Implication for eSciences in the arts The network is the computers new language - eArts rather external ref Tune the tech matrix look for conections harmonies standards synergies Don't deploy getting the tech out of the box, look at the network and the interesting place is the spaces in between Cede control - give up the control we don't get to see the effects of the spaces in between. Dr. Andy Pryke CERCIA, Birmingham University The 3 categories of the grid - data, computational & social Jargonism a lot of it when looking up the term of grid What does it mean rather than the tech technology focused and is possibly a bit confusing what it really is rather than tech sense The grid is a tool it's not the tools it's what you do with them Have to think of ways use this tool Flickr and the grid of access to everyone's images 4 cats actually. the equipment grid is the extra category. control of remote instruments or sensors. Social, Data and computing are the other main cats. The Data Grid 2 terms. Late 90's very specific definition which is part of eScience the wider grid concept goes further back in time Speech - 200,00B.C. through to oral tradition, accounting, cuniform writing, to printing to the Web The modern grid uniform access to data, and can be massive amount. Intelligent data and semantics of data to discern meaning within data currently very large amount of specific data generated and stored Computational Grid from history Abstract thought - speech - accountants - abacus - mechanical calculators through to digital computers The grid computer - the vision you won't need to know about the computer - invisible computing - access to massive amounts of computing power. currently lots of separate grids/clusters. specialised programming and scientific data. calculations need to be parallelised. Now batch processing but needs to be real-time for use by artists. Social Grid - history direct - primative life communicated in a social grid, social interaction, speech again communication physical but at distance e.g. through painting, writing, postal service (networked fashion) and printing (mass communication). communication in a virtual way through telecommunications, instantly at a distance. through recording Social grid the vision - equal communication and abolishing their location - virtual presence. Currently have Access Grid nodes - high tech video conferencing, standard ones such as Skype. MMOG such as Second life closest to virtual reality opportunity to use in ways not planned. Distributed genius collaborative creation over the grid time and tech should be invisible. e.g. Wikipedia, Flickr, B3TA, mash-ups, photoshop tennis - people can add things to a picture. Work using the grid - an example form Michael Takeo Magruder. Working in the Grid example of the Susanne Vega concert in second life. many people creating guitars and clothes in the virtual space and creating the items in the space. The Grid and the Arts? \How do we use it? e.g. as a research tool, for new-media artists?, for traditional practice? Artists in the Lab projects? Precursors to the Grid existed in history. Discussion Tools vs. Environment