The Genome Tower

So here’s our final render of the genome tower complete with the info graphics Natasha and I edited. They seem to work well with the model however I would like to create a version without them. We all worked hard on this project and the result looks pretty cool. The song we used is by a band called schlohmo, the song is Emerge from Smoke.

We used info graphic templates from http://videohive.net/item/flat-infographic-elements-v1/5046616

We did this as it would allow us more time for our models. As well as this we were able to learn a lot from how they had been initially put together as we had to go in and recreate and alter them to do what we wanted and show the data that we wanted. I created the info graphic at the beginning from scratch as well as the other black infographics following.

A look at camera moves

For our camera moves we focused on movies that were set in space or had any spaceship focus such as ‘Solaris’, ‘Interstellar’ and ‘Gravity’. We incorporated a lot of the moves we saw, as well as how the lighting was used to challenge scale.  The first video we looked at was this one which looks at the greatest space scenes in the movie ‘Solaris’. It we hugely helpful, as we went through it scene by scene and drew out the camera moves in relation with our model.  Many of them looked really well with our design so we incorporated them.

-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLV6JrygUb0

We also looked at angles from the ‘Gravity’ trailer and the ‘interstellar’ trailer.These were still very helpful but we had a stronger focus on ‘Solaris’.

-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ilq4chTn6Z4

-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiTiKOy59o4

Presentation

Infographics

-https://vimeo.com/78716671

Christian found this really cool video that depicts the kind of thing we want to accomplish with this project. We want the info graphics to be a similar style and the overall feel to be like this. Overall visually its really refreshing. As well as this we also looked at a bunch of other info graphic videos for research including this music video for ‘Matta – Release the Freq’

-https://vimeo.com/20800127

We really liked the movement of the spindle lines across the frame of the deer. It’s subtle but very effective, adding to the video instead of being distracting. As well as this we also looked at ‘Amon Tobin – Calculate’, which displays how to have a simple and beautiful animation.

-https://vimeo.com/31395235

Google’s Servers

Really cool article Natasha found that explores Google’s servers. We want to have our city contain everyone’s data, therefore our servers have to have a good design. These will be a really great inspiration for how we’re going to create our servers.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2219188/Inside-Google-pictures-gives-look-8-vast-data-centres.html

Cloud Storage of Belfast Genomes

Mad genius Natasha working this stuff out. I will never not be in awe working with this girl.

Here is the actual image of the mathematics session that occurred to work this out. You can practically see the smoke coming out of their brains.

Natasha Crowley

For our Belfast building project I wanted to get an idea of approximately how much one genome would be in GB. I found this article:

Regalado A., (2014), MIT Technology Review, Google Wants to Store Your Genome. [Online]. Available at: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/532266/google-wants-to-store-your-genome/

In one paragraph it says:

“The explosion of data is happening as labs adopt new, even faster equipment for decoding DNA. For instance, the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said that during the month of October it decoded the equivalent of one human genome every 32 minutes. That translated to about 200 terabytes of raw data.”

I’m not sure if this is a good way of going about it but from this I calculated that 1 human genome must be about 146.61245GB (dodgy calculations to be found in my sketchbook). So going by the NINIS population estimate for 2013 which was 280,735, we would need at least 40,337.7527TB of…

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Genome Sequencing

These videos Natasha found are really eye opening. We were kind of tackling the idea as something was was very far off being possible but hey, you never know. The more I learn about Genome sequencing the more interesting I find it.

Natasha Crowley

One of our ideas is to sequence everyone’s genome in Belfast and then design our building as a storage area/library to hold all the data.

This Ted Talk explains how cheap and fast genome sequencing has become.

Ted (2011) Richard Resnick: Welcome to the Genomic Revolution:

A short intro to genetic coding.

Ted-Ed (2012) The twisting tale of DNA:

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Jeremy Mann – City scapes

I will always have such a love for fine art and while browsing through some city designs I found these beautiful and unique paintings by Jeremy Mann. Definatley worth a look at.

http://redrabbit7.com/cityscape/

Statistics

Here are some of the soruces we have been looking at to gather stats for this project –

Contains a whole range of Belfast Stats –

http://www.belfastcity.gov.uk/business/investinginbelfast/belfastfacts.aspx

http://www.ninis2.nisra.gov.uk/public/AreaProfileReportViewer.aspx?FromAPAddressMulipleRecords=Belfast%40Exact+match+of+location+name%3A+%40Exact+Match+Of+Location+Name%3A++Belfast%403%3F

http://www.icar.org.uk/11963/belfast/statistics.html

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/compendiums/compendium-of-uk-statistics/economy/index.html

Pet Stats-

http://www.pfma.org.uk/pet-population-2014/

Crime Stats –

http://www.nisra.gov.uk/population_clock/ClockText.html

http://www.psni.police.uk/update_crime_statistics

And of course the University Archives.

The main statistics we are going to be using however are these

NINIS:

 

Household Size 2011	Number	2011 %
1	42,401	15.35
2	72,770	26.35
3	57,498	20.82
4	55,544	20.11
5+	47,928	17.36

Ethnicity, Religion, Identities 2011	%
Ethnic minority	3.57
White	96.43
Catholic	48.58
Protestant	42.30
British Identity	43.16
Irish Identity	34.77
Northern Irish Identity	26.82

Demography	%
<16yrs	18.61
>65yrs	14.55
male	48.08
female	51.92

Housing	%
owner occupied	51.66
rented	45.15
house owned outright	23.14
single occupant >65yrs	12.07
lone parent with dependant children	11.76
no access to car or van	40.07

Health 2011	%
long term/limiting health problem	23.75
good/very good health	75.87
provided unpaid for care for others	12.05

Qualifications	%
have degree or higher qualification	26.03
no degree or low qualification (level 1)	41.14

Labour Market Aged 16-74	%
economically active	63.6
economically inactive	36.04
paid employment	52.32
unemployed	5.67

Gross Weekly Pay in Belfast 2014	Male	Female
Jobs	104	86
Median Wage £	479.1	339.2
Mean Wage £	551.9	400.6

Safefood.eu

 

weight status Northern Ireland	adults %	women %	men %	girls age 4.5-5.5 %	boys age 4.5-5.5 %
carrying excess weight	60
overweight/obese		57	69	25	19
Obese		22	25

 

Belfast City Council

 

Age Population Estimates 2009	Number	%
All Ages	264,400	100
Children (<16)	52,100	19.4
Working Age (16-64)	169,400	63.1
Pensioners	46,900	17.5

Pet Statistics from http://www.pfma.org.uk/pet-population-2014/

Pet Statistics 2014	number	% of households
Fish kept in tanks	20-25 million	9%
Fish kept in ponds	20 million	5%
Dogs	9 million	24%
Cats	8 million	17%
Rabbits	1 million	2.4%
Domestic Fowl	1 million	0.8%
Caged Birds	1 million	1.4%
Guinea pigs	.5 million	1.1%
hamsters	400,000	1.4%
lizards	400,000	0.7%

My Pod designs

So I have to design the servers that will store our genomes. I wanted to go with a really organic, nature style. The sea creature like structure would hold our data. There will be a great number of them, connected to the main structure by the wires from the top. The glass casing gives a modern feel and allows the inner structure of the servers to be seen. Here are some of the renders of the finished model.

Our model was complex, with a high polygon count. After doing the math we realised that we needed 80 spheres each containing 64 servers. That would just not be practical. We couldn’t have something so complex being some numerous and tiny. Render wise it would have added on time we couldn’t afford. As well as this another primary concern was that our initial ldea of having an organic structure was quickly evolving into a much more structured, mechanical model. Everyone’s individual pieces went together well, but it was decided with the helix structure we were going with a new design would be better. Therefore we made a stylistic decision to not include the pod model. So Matthew and I created this alternative with went well. Instead we came up with a really basic octagon structure of servers that looked pretty cool, was as low polygon as possible and did the job.

Matthew designed the curved propeller element and the sphere. We decided that to keep our servers cool we needed to have an abundance of water being pumped through the whole system. The tubes and fans are designed to act like a huge circulatory system complete with pumps and a heat sink. The grainy texture of the glass in the image shows  the water in the system.This alternate model fits better so we’re pretty happy with it.