Max Cooper's Ascent — Making of the Music video
Enter the 5th dimension
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“Ascent” is chapter 9 of Max Cooper’s audio-visual masterpiece, “Unspoken Words” — a multi-platform project incorporating music, film, installation, live experience and digital art, exploring themes around the struggle to understa nd and express our internal state.
“Ascent” is an audio-visualisation of transcendence told through the lens of music, science and art. Max Cooper said about the inception of the theme:
“I was working on an installation project for a cathedral in Leuven, trying to communicate the idea and feeling of transcendence. I wanted to create this intense experience which I couldn’t put into words, but there was an ascending musical form which captured it”
Max commissioned scientist, artist and long-time collaborator, Martin Krzywinski to express the theme visually, interpreting the idea as an ascent into higher dimensions of spatial form, the resulting 5D hypercubes collapsed back down to the two dimensions of a screen.
“I discussed the idea with Martin [Krzywinski] to make associated visual ideas from the mathematics of form beyond our everyday, which delivered the message as directly and completely as I could.”
The “Ascent” NFT collection comprises five categories of works across a range of media and valuations. Black, Plasma, Viridis, Video and Public is available via Mesh Lab on Objkt on the Tezos blockchain.
During the video walkthrough, you might have noticed that the camera is zoomed into only a portion of the full scene.
If you're wondering what everything looks like, these posters are for you. They represent the full scene — the camera is zoomed out to capture all the objects on the stage.
The posters are available as NFTs. These are 11,520 × 6,480 pixel lossless PNGs but the scene fits into the central 6,480 × 6,480 square.
Below I provide the print resolution (ppcm = pixels per centimeter, ppi = pixels per inch) for a square (6,480 × 6,480) image printed to fit onto common European and North American formats.
2.1 · European sizes
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2.2 · North American sizes
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Three sub-collections of still images — Black, Plasma, and Viridis — complete an expansive range of 90 vast still images. These stills depict the whole scene, often revealing what exists outside of the field of vision shown in the video piece at specific moments in time.
Black features 50 images with five editions, and one registered collector of each piece will be randomly selected and receive a unique one of one physical giclée print, printed on 300gsm minuet cotton rag using archival inks.
The Black collection contains 50 assets. They are shown below downsampled to 1,000 × 1,000 pixels and cropped to a square format.
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Neural network primer
Nature is often hidden, sometimes overcome, seldom extinguished. —Francis Bacon
In the first of a series of columns about neural networks, we introduce them with an intuitive approach that draws from our discussion about logistic regression.
Simple neural networks are just a chain of linear regressions. And, although neural network models can get very complicated, their essence can be understood in terms of relatively basic principles.
We show how neural network components (neurons) can be arranged in the network and discuss the ideas of hidden layers. Using a simple data set we show how even a 3-neuron neural network can already model relatively complicated data patterns.
Derry, A., Krzywinski, M & Altman, N. (2023) Points of significance: Neural network primer. Nature Methods 20.
Background reading
Lever, J., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2016) Points of significance: Logistic regression. Nature Methods 13:541–542.
Cell Genomics cover
Our cover on the 11 January 2023 Cell Genomics issue depicts the process of determining the parent-of-origin using differential methylation of alleles at imprinted regions (iDMRs) is imagined as a circuit.
Designed in collaboration with with Carlos Urzua.
Akbari, V. et al. Parent-of-origin detection and chromosome-scale haplotyping using long-read DNA methylation sequencing and Strand-seq (2023) Cell Genomics 3(1).
Browse my gallery of cover designs.
Science Advances cover
My cover design on the 6 January 2023 Science Advances issue depicts DNA sequencing read translation in high-dimensional space. The image showss 672 bases of sequencing barcodes generated by three different single-cell RNA sequencing platforms were encoded as oriented triangles on the faces of three 7-dimensional cubes.
More details about the design.
Kijima, Y. et al. A universal sequencing read interpreter (2023) Science Advances 9.
Browse my gallery of cover designs.
Regression modeling of time-to-event data with censoring
If you sit on the sofa for your entire life, you’re running a higher risk of getting heart disease and cancer. —Alex Honnold, American rock climber
In a follow-up to our Survival analysis — time-to-event data and censoring article, we look at how regression can be used to account for additional risk factors in survival analysis.
We explore accelerated failure time regression (AFTR) and the Cox Proportional Hazards model (Cox PH).
Dey, T., Lipsitz, S.R., Cooper, Z., Trinh, Q., Krzywinski, M & Altman, N. (2022) Points of significance: Regression modeling of time-to-event data with censoring. Nature Methods 19.
Music video for Max Cooper's Ascent
My 5-dimensional animation sets the visual stage for Max Cooper's Ascent from the album Unspoken Words. I have previously collaborated with Max on telling a story about infinity for his Yearning for the Infinite album.
I provide a walkthrough the video, describe the animation system I created to generate the frames, and show you all the keyframes
The video recently premiered on YouTube.
Renders of the full scene are available as NFTs.
Gene Cultures exhibit — art at the MIT Museum
I am more than my genome and my genome is more than me.
The MIT Museum reopened at its new location on 2nd October 2022. The new Gene Cultures exhibit featured my visualization of the human genome, which walks through the size and organization of the genome and some of the important structures.
