Animal Influence I - Antennae The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture

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Lisa Jevbratt iPhone app mockup, 2008 Jevbratt user interfaces, is a large part of the project. The implementations all prioritize the meanings that the way they are used generates over the potential quality of the actual simulation. A virtual reality type installation would easily simulate larger fields of vision, and it could use sound, smell, temperature, etc., to help simulate aspects of vision that go beyond human capabilities, such as ultraviolet sensitivity. But the participatory, performative aspects of the chosen implementations outweigh the limitations. The Algorithms There are many aspects of vision, some more difficult to simulate than others. In many cases, other species vision is a superset of human vision; 80 they see better or more than we do in some aspect(s). Some are subsets and, as such, are easier to simulate within the constraints of our physiology. The Zoomorph algorithms will eventually simulate many aspects of vision, both subsets and supersets of human vision: night vision (rod based vision), field of view, spatial vision, magnetoreception (newer research suggests that some animals, potentially including the human, actually see magnetic fields),[6] temporal acuity (flicker fusion rate), polarized light, etc. We[7] started with what seemed to be the easiest aspect to simulate: color vision (in fact, the renowned animal color vision expert Gerald Jacobs[8] told us that it would be the only aspect that could be meaningfully simulated). It turned out
to be very complex and it has kept us busy for a long time. Color vision is the ability of an organism to distinguish lights of different spectral qualities. Scientists are studying color vision by looking at how an animal reacts to stimuli of different wavelengths, and by looking at the physical sensitivity to wavelengths in the animal’s eye. Cones in the retina are sensitive to lights of different wavelengths. A higher amount of types of cones will provide the potential for experiencing more colors, and a higher amount of cones in total will generate a higher saturation. Some birds and fish also have filters in their eyes, called oil droplets, which modify the spectral sensitivity of their cones, making their vision more complex to simulate. Humans and some other primates have three types of cones; we are trichromats. Simplified, trichromats are sensitive to red, green and blue. With those cones combined we have the potential of experiencing approximately one million colors. Scientists debate why we have three and not more or fewer cones. Many agree that our early mammalian ancestors were tetrachromats, i.e. having four different cones, with a color sensitivity far surpassing ours. But the threat of being eaten by dinosaurs forced them to be nocturnal. Our ancestors had to sacrifice cones for rods, the type of receptors in our eyes that are active under low light conditions. The theory is that all mammals became dichromats, sensitive to two kinds of light, allowing them to experience some colors (similar to what a “color blind” human animal sees), and that some primates eventually, through natural selection, regained one cone. Why that happened is debated. Some say we need the third cone, which adds ability to differentiate red from green, to distinguish ripe fruit and young leaves suitable for eating. Others claim that it is used to see subtle shifts in skin coloration, allowing us to detect illness in our young or mood shifts, such as sexual readiness. Other theories say it is used for object constancy. Better color discrimination helps us see an object as one and the same under very different light conditions. Some scientists are reluctant to (what they call) speculate about the reason. Art has the potential of exploring scientific inquiries from a different perspective, and while the project is not trying to solve why different species see different things, it hopes to provide a tool for, and encourage, such “speculations.” We started by collecting the specific peak spectral sensitivities of the cones of whatever species we could find data about. We then progressed to work on an algorithm that would simulate the color vision of monochromatic mammals who have one cone receptor, and dichromatic mammals who have two. It seemed 81 simple enough, considering these mammals have fewer cones than we do. However, how to develop those algorithms was not as obvious as we first thought, even though we consulted with some of the most well renowned color vision specialists in the world: Gerald Jacobs and Jay Neitz.[9] There were many conceptual decisions to be made. The algorithms we settled for, after much work, seem scientifically sound. They did receive approval from Jacobs. Now I wonder if they, to be successful as simulations, need to be less scientific and more fictional. There is a common misconception that many non-human animals don’t see colors, but in fact only a few are monochromats. Due to the lack of another cone to compare the wavelength input with,[10] they only experience intensity of light, not the chromatic information of the wavelength. Because these animals have one cone that receives all light, their eyes are more light-sensitive than ours. The monochromatic algorithm is fairly simple in that it turns a color image into a grayscale image. However, depending on what wavelength the animal’s cone is most sensitive to, the shade of gray corresponding to a specific color will vary. Judging from the limited data I have been able to collect, there seem to be two distinct groups of monochromats: marine mammals and nocturnal mammals, with marine mammals being more sensitive to greenish light and nocturnal mammals to more reddish light. One can speculte about the reasons. It makes sense that ocean dwelling animals see more green than red, since red is the first wavelength to be filtered out in water. But why are they not more sensitive to blue? Some research says it is so because their visual system was developed to function on land, not in water (Levenson et al., 841). What is the purpose of nocturnal animals being more sensitive to red? And what is going on with the hamster whose cone peak is similar to the marine mammals, not the other nocturnal mammals. Most mammals are dichromats. They do not have a separate red and green sensitive cone, so instead of registering these two colors separately, they see some kind of yellowish color in response to wavelengths in the green to red range, while blue might be more similar to what we see. To understand how dichromatic animals experience colors, researchers have consulted with colorblind humans[11] who are also dichromats, and in terms of color, see the word in a very similar way to most mammals.[12] While all dichromatic mammals might see a similar range of colors, the actual colors they see will be different depending on the specific sensitivities of their cones. Animals whose red/green sensitive cone is more sensitive to red will
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Antennae Issue 21 - Summer 2012 ISS
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EDITORIAL ANTENNAE ISSUE 21 Animal
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Since 2002, IF has been recognized
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oth rural and urban societies. Huma
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performances of IF’11: Animal Inf
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animals. What science is helping us
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developed for this exhibition, is a
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animations of Myron Campbell are na
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Agency 17
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ecoarttech (A) Documentary Image fr
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ecoarttech (B) Wild Info Net openin
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ecoarttech (E) Dog image used routi
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ecoarttech (G) Screen Grabs from #T
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Sam Easterson 27
Page 29 and 30: Situated between the fields of art,
Page 31 and 32: Joanne Bristol Figure 1: New Art Ex
Page 33 and 34: Joanne Bristol and Graham Mockford
Page 35 and 36: Ian Gardner 35
Page 37 and 38: WOLF is a gallery based piece of wo
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Page 45 and 46: This sound installation is part of
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Page 49 and 50: Kelty McKinnon Janet Rosenberg and
Page 51 and 52: Kelty McKinnon HNTB and MVVA’s Hy
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Page 57 and 58: France Cadet Robotic Dog Acupunture
Page 59 and 60: Justine Allen Image 1: Octopus disg
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Page 63 and 64: signifies all sorts of things. Betw
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Page 69 and 70: Julie Andreyev: For Interactive Fut
Page 71 and 72: Sam Easterson Nest Cam series Sam
Page 73 and 74: animals to people in a very direct
Page 75 and 76: Neil Chung Animal Behaviour Playlis
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Page 83 and 84: Lisa Jevbratt iPad Colour Listing
Page 85 and 86: Lisa Jevbratt Scientific (top left
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Page 89 and 90: Lisa Jevbratt Eye organ Unknown [+
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Page 95 and 96: Megan Matichuk and Gabrielle Burke
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