In this section:
- Experiential Experiments
- Writing
- Apps
- Education
- Artificial Intelligence
- Enterprise
By making music using binaural recording technology, we explore the process of recording sound not as it exists in air, but as our eardrum actually ‘hears’ it.
An interactive art installation created by Beau Lotto, Sarah Rubidge and Erwan Le Martelot exhibited at the Otter Gallery in Chichester in 2005.
The Beacon is a 6 metre ‘Street Science’ installation of solar panels, glass and light erected on Old Street in London. The work is an experimental public structure that considers our dependence on the environment, not only for our survival, but also for who we are, even the colours we see.
With its wall of 77 speakers, the Soundwall enables people to transform the patterns of light that fall onto their eyes into music.
The 'POINT OF PERCEPTION' was a collaborative project between Madi Boyd, Mark Lythgo and R. Beau Lotto, which aimed to place people consciously at the point of uncertainty, between the known and unknown.
A collaboration between Lab of Misfits and composer Eduardo R. Miranda, performed using a soundwall of 77 speakers.
A piece composed by Larry Goves and presented in three different ways in order to explore music in context.
We have developed a set of tools, that make use of and extend the popular Processing open-source multimedia programming environment. Together they will enable artists without the skills of computer programming to significantly influence the content of their visual performance, while also keeping the programming of new graphics algorithms accessible to those seeking greater creative freedom.
Do you see the same colours that I see? Working in collaboration with the BBC’s Horizon programme, we have launched a series of experiments to answer this question.
This public programme aims to explore perception through live and interactive experiments involving large numbers of subjects.
Translating light into sound so that people hear their visual world is a wonderful way to experience the process of the brain actually learning to make sense of the world. As part of Passing Through – an exhibition at the James Talyor Gallery in London, Lab of Misfits in collaboration with Stephen Gage of the Bartlett created ‘Hearing Colour’.
We regularly invite visitors into our lab during the Lates events, which draw thousands of people to the Science Museum every month.
William Blake is fundamental to our thinking about how we see things and how they can be looked at from a different perspective. To this day his ideas remain contemporary and relevant, making it a pleasure to have been requested to take part in the Ashmolean's exhibition of Blake's works.
Our Musical Images app enables you to turn any image into sound… and you can upload the results onto our website.
An exhibition that provided a unique perspective on light and colour as part of the ‘Dan Flavin: A Retrospective’ exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, London, and included Beau Lotto’s White Light White Shadows installation.
Street science installation at the ScienceGallery in Dublin, Ireland that captures – literally – the flight of the bumblebee.
Illumination as a contextual cue to color choice behavior in bumblebees.
Lotto, R.B. and Chittka, L. (2005)
Illumination as a contextual cue to color choice behavior in bumblebees. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 102:3852-3856.
Download pdf
This research programme is creating virtual bees, what we call APIANTS, to help explain vision.
Lab of Misfits have successfully piloted a potential new model for scientific research and science communication, with The Experiment - an immersive neuroscience research experience that took place in a Victorian dungeon in Clerkenwell, London on 24th November.
The timing of cell death in the vision network is coincident with the end of the network’s formation. Target-Derived Neurotrophic Factors Regulate the Death of Developing Forebrain Neurons after a Change in their Trophic Requirements.
Journal of Neuroscience 21:3904-3910.
Download pdf
Public Library of Science Computational Biology 3:e180.
Download pdf
Regulation of cell survival in the developing thalamus: An in vitro analysis.
Experimental Neurology 181:39-46.
Download pdf
Responses of human visual cortex to uniform surfaces measured with fMRI.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA 101:4286-4291.
Download pdf
Fusion and Rivalry Are Dependent on the Perceptual Meaning of Visual Stimuli
Current Biology. 14:418-423.
Download pdf
A rationale for the structure of color space.
Lotto, R.B. and Purves, D. (2002)
Trends in Neuroscience 25:82-86.
Download pdf
An empirical explanation of the Chubb illusion.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 13:547-555.
Download pdf
An empirical explanation of colour contrast.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA 97:12834-12839.
Download pdf
Why are angles misperceived?
Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA 97:5592-5597.
Download pdf
Lotto, R.B. and Purves, D. (1999)
Nature Neuroscience 2:1010-1014.
Download pdf
An empirical explanation of the Cornsweet effect.
Journal of Neuroscience. 19:8542-8551.
Download pdf
A chapter entitled ‘Using illusions to teach children about the science and art of seeing and conceiving’, written by Beau Lotto in collaboration with Sara J. Downham and Dave Strudwick, is included in Creative Encounters, published by the Wellcome Trust in 2008.
Corney, C. Haynes, J. Rees, G. Lotto, R.B. (2009)
Paper describes the underlying basis for why we see illusions using a Bayesian ideal observer.
Bees recognise the colour of a surface under different colours of lights. Illumination as a contextual cue to color choice behavior in bumblebees.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA 102:16870-16874.
Download pdf
Determining the statistical relationships of images that facilitate robust visual behaviour is nontrivial. Here we ask if some spatial relationships are more easily learned by the visual brain than others. Visually naïve bumblebees were trained to recognise coloured artificial flowers in scenes of equal spatial complexity but differing patterns of stimulus intensity. When flowers of similar intensity were grouped into extended regions across the array (coincident with natural patterns of light), the accuracy of the bees' foraging behaviour was dependent on spatial context, even though this information was redundant to the task. When the same intensity information was organised into a pattern that was less consistent with natural patterns of illumination but of equal order, their behaviour was independent of spatial context and they required double the training time to solve the same conditional task. These observations suggest the brain is biased to more efficiently encode/learn ecologically ‘meaningful' image correlations.
Our Musical Images app enables you to turn any image into sound… and you can upload the results onto our website.
Music is typically constructed in time. Here we are using stills and movies of constructed colour to create musical forms in time and space.
We have developed a set of tools, that make use of and extend the popular Processing open-source multimedia programming environment. Together they will enable artists without the skills of computer programming to significantly influence the content of their visual performance, while also keeping the programming of new graphics algorithms accessible to those seeking greater creative freedom.
Experience the visual world through sound or compose music from the colours of a friend’s face.
This programme offers the opportunity to explore perception in relation to the embodied process of making.
More
In the project Blackawton Bees (in collaboration with Head Teach Dave Strudwick and tech Tina Wadwellyn) we again have performed truly novel experiments on bumblebees at a primary school in Devon. Except this time we have completely removed all boundaries: The experiments were not devised by the ‘scientist’, but by twenty five 8-year-old children.
A Systemic Computation Platform for the Modelling and Analysis of Processes with Natural Characteristics.
Download pdf
Cash-proof systemic computing: A demonstration of native fault-tolerance and self-maintenance.
Download pdf
Exploiting Natural Asynchrony and Local Knowledge within Systemic Computation to Enable Generic Neural Structures.
Download pdf
Investigating the Emergence of Multicellularity Using a Population of Neural Network Agents
Download pdf
Sitting in London’s Regents Canal (in Hackney) is a narrow-boat where all its energy is renewable. The owners of this boat commissioned Lab of Misfits to install its first generation Solar Stones, which trickle-charge the boats rechargeable battery system. The images here show the installation process, which was completed in May, 2009.
Here we provide a set of powerful colour, motion and shape illusions created in-house. Much of our research is centred on understanding how and why we see illusions.
Making music from colour.
An experiment into human perception in a space designed by Olafur Eliasson.
We are running a series of experiments that investigate our perception of generosity. 
Following the flight of the bumblebee for science and art.
This book describes an empirical theory for why we see illusions.
A programme that enables children to become the scientists that they already are.
A public programme which invites individuals to do perception research in our lab.
An artificial life model for investigating the ecological basis of colour vision.