music
+ math
▲ WELCOME TO THE 5TH DIMENSION | This isn't meant to be understood — it's meant to be enjoyed.
Max Cooper's Ascent — Making of the Music video
Enter the 5th dimension
Ascent answers the question: if you were living in a 5-dimensional room and projected digits of `\pi` onto its walls, what would you see?
“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
fmt
size
(mm)
size
(inch)
ppcm
ppi
A0
841 × 1,189
33.1 × 46.8
77
196
A1
594 × 841
23.4 × 33.1
109
277
A2
420 × 594
16.5 × 23.4
154
392
A3
297 × 420
11.7 × 16.5
218
554
A4
210 × 297
8.3 × 11.7
309
784
A5
148.5 × 210
5.8 × 8.3
436
1,108
A6
105 × 148.5
4.1 × 5.8
617
1,568
2.2 · North American sizes
size
(inch)
size
(mm)
ppi
ppcm
4 × 4
102 × 102
1,620
638
5 × 5
127 × 127
1,296
510
6 × 6
152 × 152
1,080
425
7 × 7
178 × 178
926
365
8 × 8
203 × 203
810
319
10 × 10
254 × 254
648
255
12 × 12
305 × 305
540
213
14 × 14
356 × 356
463
182
15 × 15
381 × 381
432
170
20 × 20
508 × 508
324
128
22 × 22
559 × 559
295
116
24 × 24
610 × 610
270
106
36 × 36
914 × 914
180
71
40 × 40
1,016 × 1,016
162
64
50 × 50
1,270 × 1,270
130
51
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.
3.1 · The black-and-white collection
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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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 01:29:01 FRAME 1897 [49] | ASCENT_Black_0011101101001
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 01:34:01 FRAME 2017 [50] | ASCENT_Black_0011111100001
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 01:06:01 FRAME 2545 [51] | ASCENT_Black_0100111110001
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 02:21:01 FRAME 2905 [52] | ASCENT_Black_0101101011001
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 02:25:01 FRAME 3001 [53] | ASCENT_Black_0101110111001
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 02:04:01 FRAME 3697 [54] | ASCENT_Black_0111001110001
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 02:06:01 FRAME 3745 [55] | ASCENT_Black_0111010100001
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 02:08:01 FRAME 3793 [56] | ASCENT_Black_0111011010001
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 02:15:19 FRAME 3979 [57] | ASCENT_Black_0111110001011
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 02:18:11 FRAME 4043 [58] | ASCENT_Black_0111111001011
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 02:23:03 FRAME 4155 [59] | ASCENT_Black_1000000111011
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 02:27:10 FRAME 4258 [60] | ASCENT_Black_1000010100010
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 03:31:21 FRAME 4365 [61] | ASCENT_Black_1000100001101
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 03:39:01 FRAME 4537 [62] | ASCENT_Black_1000110111001
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 03:45:01 FRAME 4681 [63] | ASCENT_Black_1001001001001
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 03:48:01 FRAME 4753 [64] | ASCENT_Black_1001010010001
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 03:04:01 FRAME 4897 [65] | ASCENT_Black_1001100100001
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 03:08:23 FRAME 5015 [66] | ASCENT_Black_1001110010111
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 03:09:13 FRAME 5029 [67] | ASCENT_Black_1001110100101
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 03:10:07 FRAME 5047 [68] | ASCENT_Black_1001110110111
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 03:11:02 FRAME 5066 [69] | ASCENT_Black_1001111001010
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 03:13:23 FRAME 5135 [70] | ASCENT_Black_1010000001111
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 03:15:23 FRAME 5183 [71] | ASCENT_Black_1010000111111
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 03:16:01 FRAME 5185 [72] | ASCENT_Black_1010001000001
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 03:18:02 FRAME 5234 [73] | ASCENT_Black_1010001110010
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 03:20:08 FRAME 5288 [74] | ASCENT_Black_1010010101000
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 03:22:23 FRAME 5351 [75] | ASCENT_Black_1010011100111
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 03:26:19 FRAME 5443 [76] | ASCENT_Black_1010101000011
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 03:28:23 FRAME 5495 [77] | ASCENT_Black_1010101110111
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 03:30:10 FRAME 5530 [78] | ASCENT_Black_1010110011010
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 03:31:23 FRAME 5567 [79] | ASCENT_Black_1010110111111
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 03:33:23 FRAME 5615 [80] | ASCENT_Black_1010111101111
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 03:34:13 FRAME 5629 [81] | ASCENT_Black_1010111111101
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 03:35:08 FRAME 5648 [82] | ASCENT_Black_1011000010000
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 03:36:10 FRAME 5674 [83] | ASCENT_Black_1011000101010
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 03:36:23 FRAME 5687 [84] | ASCENT_Black_1011000110111
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 04:40:11 FRAME 5771 [85] | ASCENT_Black_1011010001011
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 04:47:04 FRAME 5932 [86] | ASCENT_Black_1011100101100
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 04:05:23 FRAME 6143 [87] | ASCENT_Black_1011111111111
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 04:15:23 FRAME 6383 [88] | ASCENT_Black_1100011101111
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 04:19:10 FRAME 6466 [89] | ASCENT_Black_1100101000010
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 04:20:04 FRAME 6484 [90] | ASCENT_Black_1100101010100
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 04:21:16 FRAME 6520 [91] | ASCENT_Black_1100101111000
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 04:22:01 FRAME 6529 [92] | ASCENT_Black_1100110000001
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 04:23:23 FRAME 6575 [93] | ASCENT_Black_1100110101111
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 04:32:23 FRAME 6791 [94] | ASCENT_Black_1101010000111
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 04:34:02 FRAME 6818 [95] | ASCENT_Black_1101010100010
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 04:48:23 FRAME 7175 [96] | ASCENT_Black_1110000000111
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 05:01:21 FRAME 7245 [97] | ASCENT_Black_1110001001101
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▲ MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION 05:09:23 FRAME 7439 [98] | ASCENT_Black_1110100001111
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news
+ thoughts
Mon 06-02-2023
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.
▲ Nature Methods Points of Significance column: Neural network primer.
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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.
Mon 21-11-2022
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).
▲ Nature Methods Points of Significance column: Regression modeling of time-to-event data with censoring.
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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.
Tue 25-10-2022
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.
▲ My art at the MIT Museum Gene Cultures exhibit tells shows the scale and structure of the human genome. Pay no attention to the pink chicken.