Currently: Master Thesis on psychophysiological effects of acoustic environments at Dolby GmbH Nuremberg, Germany. 2017-Present. MSc student in Digital Media Informatics. University of Bremen / HFK Bremen, Germany. Coursework included activity recognition from Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs), landmark navigation mobile app, Natural Language Processing (NLP) of diverse corpora and Tangible Embodied Interaction. 2017-1019. Student assistant at Spatial Cognition Center. Psychometrics, auditory display. University of Bremen, Germany. Past: 2015. Bachelor of Information Systems Engineering. UEES, Ecuador. 2002-2017. Academic Staff / Research / IT / Sound Production at www.igad.edu.ec, Ecuador. 2000-2017. Freelance: interactive media installations, video mapping and live coding performances for several events including symphony orchestra concerts, music festivals, TV presentations, and museum exhibitions. Produced corporate videos and music for several commercial and cultural projects. Research interests: At the intersection between computer science, electronics, neuroscience, biology, social science, and art, e.g., Human Centered Computing (HCC), ubiquitous computing, wearables, physiological interaction, machine learning.
Microscopic organisms or a planet? Gut bacteria affect states of mind.
ODE to Länadk ODE (Ordinary Differential Equations) to Länadk is a life project summarized here with a multimedia representation. It explores the thresholds overlapping and differentiating philosophy, spirituality, art and science. The philosophical concept is rooted in self-reflections about human’s counterproductive behavior which brings grief upon ourselves, showing symptoms of a sick society. Deconstructing exercises based on the views of Dadaism, the analysis of Gilles Deleuze’s and Simon O’Sullivan’s writings, and the effort to abstract from the conventional structured perceptions of the world, aided to gain abstraction from daily life activities. These postmodern views are contrasted here with the scientific method and its organized understanding of nature. Scientific empiricism is used both ambiguously and unambiguously.
Bacterial sample dying by means of electrochemichal processes.
An analogy with the predator-prey mathematical model of Lotka-Volterra, for example, is made to represent this recurrent tension of the underlying ancient mind-matter problem. Furthermore, visual and auditory elements are part of an external representation of the human Nervous System functions that take place under fight or flight vs. rest and digest states, i.e., footage of a specific bacteria species sample, which underpin the health of our large intestine and live in a dynamic ecosystem where chemical substances thrive and communicate with the brain. They send signals to the central nervous system (CNS: brain + spinal cord) to handle the immune system with neurotransmitters and hormones that are key to determine our mood and likelihood to acquire diseases such as depression, obesity or cancer.
Speculative design driven by microstuctures
The gut-brain axis mutualistic relationship determines to a great extent how healthy we are, and its balance is affected, among other things, by our eating habits, stress levels, antibiotics and parasites. Here, a metaphor of this phenomena is made visible by manipulating bacteria with electronic devices in order to approach a Lotka-Volterra behavior. Additionally, an oscillating sound in the background invites people to pace their breathing cycle to increase Heart Rate Variability, an indicator of health, low stress and higher cognitive capacity. This work was inspired by the search to integrate art and technology under the spiritual-scientific lens. It is a contemplation of ongoing research.
The gut-brain axis mutualistic relationship determines to a great extent how healthy we are, and its balance is affected, among other things, by our eating habits, stress levels, antibiotics and parasites. Here, a metaphor of this phenomena is made visible by manipulating bacteria with electronic devices in order to approach a Lotka-Volterra behavior. Additionally, an oscillating sound in the background invites people to pace their breathing cycle to increase Heart Rate Variability, an indicator of health, low stress and higher cognitive capacity. This work was inspired by the search to integrate art and technology under the spiritual-scientific lens. It is a contemplation of ongoing research.
