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Martin Krzywinski @MKrzywinski mkweb.bcgsc.ca
WELCOME TO THE 5TH DIMENSION | This isn't meant to be understood — it's meant to be enjoyed.
MAX COOPER'S ASCENT | From Max Cooper's album Unspoken Words. Music by Max Cooper. Animation by Martin Krzywinski.
Love music and science? Explore my collaboration with Max Cooper where we tell the story of infinities and animate the digits of π. Both tracks appear on Max's Yearning for the Infinite album.
Another collaboration with Max!

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?

1 · Ascend to higher dimensions

We know you're Yearning for the Infinite, but do you yearn for dimensions too?

Welcome to Ascent from Max Cooper's latest album Unspoken Words.

So, go ahead — ascend to higher dimensions. You may forget to come back.

2 · Premiere at the Acropolis

An early version of the Ascent video premiered at Max's Live at the Acropolis show.

ASCENT LIVE AT THE ACROPOLIS | Ascent at Live at the Acropolis Live performance. Music by Max Cooper. Animation by Martin Krzywinski. The final release of the video is slightly different from what was shown at the Acropolis.

The video expands on visual elements first presented at the And& festival in Leuven.

3 · Ascent digital art collection — own a frame

The “Ascent” digital art collection by Max Cooper and Martin Krzywinski comprises vast images of transcendence in 75 million pixels on billboards in NYC, LA, Miami, London, Berlin and Leuven.

The collection is the latest of the NFT collections curated by Mesh Lab.

Martin Krzywinski @MKrzywinski mkweb.bcgsc.ca buy artwork
MAX COOPER'S ASCENT NFT COLLECTION | ASCENT_Black_1010000001111 (BUY ARTWORK)

They look superb in print.

buy artwork Max Cooper's Ascent (frame 5135) by Martin Krzywinski
MAX COOPER'S ASCENT | Art poster of a full frame of the music video. (buy artwork / see all my art)

4 · Video walkthrough

The video builds on work I did with Max for Transcendence from the Yearning for the Infinite, which itself was based on my 2015 Pi Day art.

The 2015 π Day art takes a Mondrain perspective on π. The art was used in a collaboration with Max Cooper for his track Transcendental Tree Map from the album Yearning for the Infinite. Animation by Nick Cobby and myself. Watch the full show at the Barbican Centre.

In 5 minutes and 55 seconds (8,520 frames), the video takes you from zero to 5 dimensions and back again.

To help you interpret what you are seeing, I walk you through the video. I also present the animation system I built for the video, which was coded from scratch.

The entire animation is built up from about 170 keyframes. Each keyframe defines (a) which objects are shown (b) the dimensionality, size and rotation of each object and (c) the zoom and rotation of the camera itself.

The walkthrough will take you through some of the important keyframes in the video — where new elements are introduced or interesting things happen.

Martin Krzywinski @MKrzywinski mkweb.bcgsc.ca
MAX COOPER'S ASCENT #701 0:29:04 | 5/48 1.c1( 4/ 47)1.c2
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The keyframe definitions are shown in yellow boxes under the frame — these are commands that the animation system parses as it builds the scene over time. The grey boxes show position and zoom of the camera and the actual angles and sizes of objects.

Right now, all this looks confusing — not to worry, it will all be explained in the walkthrough!

5 · My other collaborations with Max

If you like math to a heavy beat and a lot of screen flashing, check out Aleph, our 6 minute video on the story of transfinite numbers.

The video is unique in that it demonstrates Cantor's diagnoal argument to proove that rationals are countable and that reals are not countable.

Love music and science? Explore my collaboration with Max Cooper where we tell the story of infinities and animate the digits of π. Both tracks appear on Max's Yearning for the Infinite album.
Another collaboration with Max!

6 · Mesh lab

Mesh was founded in 2016 to explore the intersection of music, science and art. With a growing global audience and engaged community of practitioners and activists, the platform has conceived work by leading creatives in the fields of music, digital art, film, installation, code, architecture, developing collaborations and commissions with business, arts and science institutions.

Typically, Mesh projects begin with a scientific stimulus which leads to a creative expression, incorporating a variety of digital media including AR, AI, VR, NFT, spatial audio as well as physical structures and live experiences. Collaborators and commissioners include The Babraham Institute, Zaha Hadid Architects, Dolby, L-Acoustics and PepsiCo, and have been exhibited and performances at Barbican Arts Centre, Odeon of Herodes Atticus at the Acropolis and will host an interactive art installation during Art Basel in Miami from 1—2 December.

news + thoughts

Nasa to send our human genome discs to the Moon

Sat 23-03-2024

We'd like to say a ‘cosmic hello’: mathematics, culture, palaeontology, art and science, and ... human genomes.

Martin Krzywinski @MKrzywinski mkweb.bcgsc.ca
SANCTUARY PROJECT | A cosmic hello of art, science, and genomes. (details)
Martin Krzywinski @MKrzywinski mkweb.bcgsc.ca
SANCTUARY PROJECT | Benoit Faiveley, founder of the Sanctuary project gives the Sanctuary disc a visual check at CEA LeQ Grenoble (image: Vincent Thomas). (details)
Martin Krzywinski @MKrzywinski mkweb.bcgsc.ca
SANCTUARY PROJECT | Sanctuary team examines the Life disc at INRIA Paris Saclay (image: Benedict Redgrove) (details)

Comparing classifier performance with baselines

Sat 23-03-2024

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. —George Orwell

This month, we will illustrate the importance of establishing a baseline performance level.

Baselines are typically generated independently for each dataset using very simple models. Their role is to set the minimum level of acceptable performance and help with comparing relative improvements in performance of other models.

Martin Krzywinski @MKrzywinski mkweb.bcgsc.ca
Nature Methods Points of Significance column: Comparing classifier performance with baselines. (read)

Unfortunately, baselines are often overlooked and, in the presence of a class imbalance5, must be established with care.

Megahed, F.M, Chen, Y-J., Jones-Farmer, A., Rigdon, S.E., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2024) Points of significance: Comparing classifier performance with baselines. Nat. Methods 20.

Happy 2024 π Day—
sunflowers ho!

Sat 09-03-2024

Celebrate π Day (March 14th) and dig into the digit garden. Let's grow something.

Martin Krzywinski @MKrzywinski mkweb.bcgsc.ca
2024 π DAY | A garden of 1,000 digits of π. (details)

How Analyzing Cosmic Nothing Might Explain Everything

Thu 18-01-2024

Huge empty areas of the universe called voids could help solve the greatest mysteries in the cosmos.

My graphic accompanying How Analyzing Cosmic Nothing Might Explain Everything in the January 2024 issue of Scientific American depicts the entire Universe in a two-page spread — full of nothing.

Martin Krzywinski @MKrzywinski mkweb.bcgsc.ca
How Analyzing Cosmic Nothing Might Explain Everything. Text by Michael Lemonick (editor), art direction by Jen Christiansen (Senior Graphics Editor), source: SDSS

The graphic uses the latest data from SDSS 12 and is an update to my Superclusters and Voids poster.

Michael Lemonick (editor) explains on the graphic:

“Regions of relatively empty space called cosmic voids are everywhere in the universe, and scientists believe studying their size, shape and spread across the cosmos could help them understand dark matter, dark energy and other big mysteries.

To use voids in this way, astronomers must map these regions in detail—a project that is just beginning.

Shown here are voids discovered by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), along with a selection of 16 previously named voids. Scientists expect voids to be evenly distributed throughout space—the lack of voids in some regions on the globe simply reflects SDSS’s sky coverage.”

voids

Sofia Contarini, Alice Pisani, Nico Hamaus, Federico Marulli Lauro Moscardini & Marco Baldi (2023) Cosmological Constraints from the BOSS DR12 Void Size Function Astrophysical Journal 953:46.

Nico Hamaus, Alice Pisani, Jin-Ah Choi, Guilhem Lavaux, Benjamin D. Wandelt & Jochen Weller (2020) Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics 2020:023.

Sloan Digital Sky Survey Data Release 12

constellation figures

Alan MacRobert (Sky & Telescope), Paulina Rowicka/Martin Krzywinski (revisions & Microscopium)

stars

Hoffleit & Warren Jr. (1991) The Bright Star Catalog, 5th Revised Edition (Preliminary Version).

cosmology

H0 = 67.4 km/(Mpc·s), Ωm = 0.315, Ωv = 0.685. Planck collaboration Planck 2018 results. VI. Cosmological parameters (2018).

Error in predictor variables

Tue 02-01-2024

It is the mark of an educated mind to rest satisfied with the degree of precision that the nature of the subject admits and not to seek exactness where only an approximation is possible. —Aristotle

In regression, the predictors are (typically) assumed to have known values that are measured without error.

Practically, however, predictors are often measured with error. This has a profound (but predictable) effect on the estimates of relationships among variables – the so-called “error in variables” problem.

Martin Krzywinski @MKrzywinski mkweb.bcgsc.ca
Nature Methods Points of Significance column: Error in predictor variables. (read)

Error in measuring the predictors is often ignored. In this column, we discuss when ignoring this error is harmless and when it can lead to large bias that can leads us to miss important effects.

Altman, N. & Krzywinski, M. (2024) Points of significance: Error in predictor variables. Nat. Methods 20.

Background reading

Altman, N. & Krzywinski, M. (2015) Points of significance: Simple linear regression. Nat. Methods 12:999–1000.

Lever, J., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2016) Points of significance: Logistic regression. Nat. Methods 13:541–542 (2016).

Das, K., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2019) Points of significance: Quantile regression. Nat. Methods 16:451–452.

Convolutional neural networks

Tue 02-01-2024

Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so that each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry. – Richard Feynman

Following up on our Neural network primer column, this month we explore a different kind of network architecture: a convolutional network.

The convolutional network replaces the hidden layer of a fully connected network (FCN) with one or more filters (a kind of neuron that looks at the input within a narrow window).

Martin Krzywinski @MKrzywinski mkweb.bcgsc.ca
Nature Methods Points of Significance column: Convolutional neural networks. (read)

Even through convolutional networks have far fewer neurons that an FCN, they can perform substantially better for certain kinds of problems, such as sequence motif detection.

Derry, A., Krzywinski, M & Altman, N. (2023) Points of significance: Convolutional neural networks. Nature Methods 20:1269–1270.

Background reading

Derry, A., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2023) Points of significance: Neural network primer. Nature Methods 20:165–167.

Lever, J., Krzywinski, M. & Altman, N. (2016) Points of significance: Logistic regression. Nature Methods 13:541–542.

Martin Krzywinski | contact | Canada's Michael Smith Genome Sciences CentreBC Cancer Research CenterBC CancerPHSA
Google whack “vicissitudinal corporealization”
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