Lottolab studio creates installations, musical performances and educational programmes, and performs carefully controlled experiments on the perception and behaviour of humans, bumblebees and evolved artificial life systems in laboratory and public realms.
Our hope is to engender a more empathic view of nature and human nature by creating spaces of understanding that are indifferent to the contrived boundaries between disciplines. (And people within those disciplines).
Understanding how and why we see what we do will ultimately require understanding the complex, emergent and interdependent relationship between biology and psychology. Here we present work relevant to the mechanisms of seeing.
The brain tells itself stories, and it’s these stories that are our perceptual and conceptual truths of the world that guide our behaviour. Here our aim is to understand the principles by which the human brain encodes the meaning of sensory relationships that were previously useful.
While all brains are made from the same biological stuff, the diversity of natural (and artificial) brains architecture is phenomenal. And yet, animals as diverse as bees and humans both see colour. Indeed, both even see the same illusions of colour. A critical aim, then, is to understand what is common between them, since only then will we have discovered a priniple of biology that transcends any specific neural architecture. If these shared principles exist, they will best be described at the computational level. Here we describe our work that is attempting to find principles by which netowrks (natural or artificial) resolve the inherent uncertainting of sensory information. Some of this work involves playing god: evolving artificial life systems within artificial worlds.
Fundamental to the success of our research is to engage with people at multiple levels. Thus our output not only includes papers published in scientific journals, but also works that create physical structures and events in venues as diverse as primary schools, concert halls or even the side of the street that enables others to consider the importance of not being an outside observer of nature, but one defined by interaction (i.e., one's past local ecology).
We call our public work 'street science', since all of our work is ambitious and experimental. In this way we aim to leave a trace in the viewer that goes beyond their immediate sensory experience and contribute to technical innovation while simultaneously impacting current understanding of nature and human nature.
It is essential, therefore, that all our public event/structures/studies foster innovation and enthusiasm in the local community in which they reside. In this regard, we aim to use our projects as a means for contributing to local labour, local resources and local education and/or mentoring programmes.
Here we list and/or describe the events, papers, talks, projects, performances and installations that will soon be in the public domain. Naturally the list will be continually change from week to week.
Here we provide descriptions of projects that in the development phase. These may be commissioned and/or published projects that will soon be in the public realm, or ideas for research or public installations that are being developed, but are not yet realised.
Here we provide a brief description of all our previous projects.
This features page gives a sampling of the diverse range of integrated activities at Lottolab Studio. To see more activites, please use either the 'filter' buttons above or go directly to 'Programmes'.
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.
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.
This general image is the heart of ‘Living Narratives’ that will be both performance and experiment; that conceptualizes and tests fundamental ideas in neuroscience, complex systems, and art/theatre; that communicates and explores – in a deeply intuitive way – fundamental principles, and then applies those principles to reconsider theatre and theatrical narrative as process.
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, Lottolab Studio in collaboration with Stephen Gage of the Bartlett created ‘Hearing Colour’.
Clarke, R. Lotto, R.B.(2009)
Visual processing of the bee innately encodes higher-order image statistics when the information is consistent with natural ecology.
We have developed the first iPhone game played in sound. The aim is to keep a ball from hitting the ground by either catching it or bouncing it on your paddle. Except in this game you can’t see the ball… you can only hear it.
Sitting in London’s Regents Canal (in Hackney) is a narrow-boat where all its energy is renewable. The owners of this boat commissioned Lottolab Studio 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.
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.
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.
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.
Exhibition that provided a unique perspective on light and colour as part of the Dan Flavin: A Retrospective exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, London. ' White Light White Shadows' installation designed by Beau Lotto. Afterimage collaborators were Mark Lythgoe, Mark Miodownick and Beau Lotto.
Street science installation at the ScienceGallery in Dublin, Ireland that captures – literally – the flight of the bumblebee.
An interactive art installation created by Beau Lotto, Sarah Rubidge and Erwan Le Martelot exhibited at the Otter Gallery in Chichester in 2005.
A 81 speakers, 4 ADAT and 7 amplifier system that enables researchers, artists and musicians to experience directly sound in 2D.
Music is typically constructed in time. Here we are using stills and movies of constructed colour to create musical forms in time and space.
The Soundwall is both a scientific tool and platform for musical composition. As a research tool, the Soundwall enables us to explore the process by which the brain literally ‘makes sense’ of ambiguous sensory information.
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.
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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.
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Regulation of cell survival in the developing thalamus: An in vitro analysis.
Experimental Neurology 181:39-46.
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Responses of human visual cortex to uniform surfaces measured with fMRI.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA 101:4286-4291.
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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.
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Public Library of Science Computational Biology 3:e180.
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Fusion and Rivalry Are Dependent on the Perceptual Meaning of Visual Stimuli
Current Biology. 14:418-423.
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A rationale for the structure of color space.
Trends in Neuroscience 25:82-86.
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An empirical explanation of the Chubb illusion.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 13:547-555.
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An empirical explanation of colour contrast.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA 97:12834-12839.
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Why are angles misperceived?
Proceedings of the National Academy of Science USA 97:5592-5597.
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Lotto, R.B. and Purves, D. (1999)
Nature Neuroscience 2:1010-1014.
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An empirical explanation of the Cornsweet effect.
Journal of Neuroscience. 19:8542-8551.
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Using illusions to teach children about the science and art of seeing and conceiving
Lotto, R.B. (2007)
Wellcome Books. In press.
Mother: Making the Performance of Real-Time Computer Graphics Accessible to Non-programmers
A Systemic Computation Platform for the Modelling and Analysis of Processes with Natural Characteristics.
Cash-proof systemic computing: A demonstration of native fault-tolerance and self-maintenance.
Exploiting Natural Asynchrony and Local Knowledge within Systemic Computation to Enable Generic Neural Structures.
Investigating the Emergence of Multicellularity Using a Population of Neural Network Agents
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.
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Lottolab Studio 11-43 Bath Street University College London London EC1V 9EL Email: lotto@ucl.ac.uk








































