This week on The Digital Life, our special guest is Christopher Janney, a pioneer in the field of sound art, merging architecture, sound, light, and interactive technology. For over 30 years, Janney has been blending music and light with the physical space in unexpected ways, including public art installations like Soundstair, which can be viewed at the Boston Museum of Science, and the playful Rainbow Cove at Logan Airport. Janney famously worked with Mikhail Baryshnikov on “Heartbeat:mb”, which used a medical sensor to monitor Baryshnikov’s heartbeat to provide the rhythmic music to his dancing. Janney is bringing his show, “Exploring the Hidden Music”, to the Boston University Dance Theater on Friday, June 8th at 8 pm. Join us as we discuss art at the intersection of music, architecture, and technology.

Resources:

“Exploring the Hidden Music” at BU

Janney Sound

On The Digital Life this week, we discuss the latest salvos in the streaming video wars as Netflix, Amazon, Hulu and YouTube Red duke it out.

On YouTube Red, the show Cobra Kai is full of GenX nostalgic goodness. But is that enough for a service to compete with the likes of Netflix and Hulu? And will it attract new subscribers in a crowded marketplace for streaming video? Netflix may have some original content programming problems of its own. Does data really give you a better show? Or does every television series wind up feeling the same—the plots washed out imitations? When it comes to video streaming, what’s more important, content or platform? And how does this all shake out? Join us as we discuss.

Resources:
YouTube Crane Kicks Into the Streaming Wars With ‘Karate Kid’ Sequel

Does Original Content Help Streaming Services Attract More Subscribers?

On The Digital Life this week, we discuss the environmental price of technology and the growing need for sustainable design and UX. A series of research studies has detailed the increasing carbon footprint of the tech industry. The largest contributor to this carbon footprint are servers and data centers, but as more IoT devices come online, they are sure to play an increasing role. We need to reduce, reuse, and recycle our technology, over the course of the product lifecycle, and this is where sustainable UX design can have an impact. In industrial design, there are a number of environmentally friendly approaches including Design for Disassembly and Design for Remanufacturing. Can these types of ideas be applied to the design of software and the Web? In what ways can UX help reduce the carbon footprint of tech? Join us as we discuss.

Resources:
Mozilla Internet Health Report 2018

Assessing ICT global emissions footprint: Trends to 2040 & recommendations

On The Digital Life this week, we chat about creativity and the neuroscience of improvisation. Over the past decade, the field of improvisational neuroscience has exploded. Neuroscientist Dr. Charles Limb investigated the neural underpinnings of spontaneous musical performance, by examining improvisation in professional jazz pianists using functional MRI. Dr. Limb wanted to know more about the cognitive context enabling the emergence of spontaneous creative activity. Dr. Limb’s research and others like it are fundamental to discovering how human creativity operates. Everyone is creative, it’s just a matter of degree. Join us as we discuss.

Resources:
Neural Substrates of Spontaneous Musical Performance: An fMRI Study of Jazz Improvisation

Jazz improv and your brain: The key to creativity?