Onassis AIR

Workshop 001

Everything Equally Evolved

Aims & Outcomes

• Explore methods of online research
• Learn about different archives for research
• Unpick academic research (particularly science)
• Learn about specific archives: Satellites!
• Research and present something from the archives

Online research

• Search Engines
• Information Services
• Media Sources
• Academic Research
• Other Repositories
• Talking to people

Search Engines

• They Who Shall Not Be Named (but will come in handy)
• DuckDuckGo - a privacy preserving search engine
• Ecosia - a search engine which plants trees

Information services

• Wikipedia but use the references
• Archive.org - particularly the Wayback Machine for archived websites
• News sites (Google News)

Media Sources

• Wikimedia Commons
• Archive.org - Again
• Google Books
• Gutenberg - free library of all kinds of texts
• Creative Commons - for content to reuse
• Freesound - for license-free audio
• UbuWeb - incredible art archive

Academic Research

Citations. e.g.: Ganey, Gerard Q., et al. "The role of microbes in snowmelt and radiative forcing on an Alaskan icefield." Nature Geoscience 10.10 (2017): 754-759.

DOIs: https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo3027

Structure

• Abstract
• Research
• Conclusions
• Methods
• References
• Supplementary Information

Reading Papers

Ganey, Gerard Q., et al. "The role of microbes in snowmelt and radiative forcing on an Alaskan icefield." Nature Geoscience 10.10 (2017): 754-759.

• Search title on Google Scholar
• Find the journal listing
• Is there a Free PDF available? (e.g. from a preprint server)
• Unlock with Sci-Hub (Drag this link: Open with SciHub to your bookmark bar)
• Look out for figures, additional media (e.g. videos), "Supplementary Information"
• Check out the author(s), their other papers, affiliations etc (e.g. on Academia.edu)

Down with paywalls

Everything is equally accessible.

• Bypass Paywalls - Extension on Chrome to unlock websites
• Calibre - tool for removing DRM from ebooks and documents
• Failing everything, check the torrents, e.g. RARGB or Pirate Bay
• Forums are your friends: search your problem
• And always USE A VPN

Dark Archives

• Aaaaarg (got a login?)
• Monoskop
• Memory of the World
• Library Genesis

Download Everything! (and Backup)

Don't rely on things staying available. Keep links and original sources of everything.

• youtube-dl - Download anything from YouTube
• Google Image Search - Find original of images
• Get iPlayer - Download BBC iPlayer shows
• Back up to pCloud, Dropbox, Backblaze etc

Talk to people

You can email anyone you like. Some will never get back to you, some will be busy, some will be amazing.

Find peoples' emails on their website, their staff page, via social media message, or by asking contacts.

It's always worth it.

Open Source Intelligence

The use of publicly available tools and datasets to find out more information. There's more out there than you'd expect.

• Freedom of Information Requests: What Do They Know? (UK), Ask the EU, FOIA (US)
• Open Infrastructure Map - What the hell is that thing?
• FlightRadar24 - Stuff in the air
• MarineTraffic - Stuff in the water

Environmental Information

• Movebank / Animal Tracker - Database of wildlife observations
• Merlin Bird ID
• Plantsnap (Identifying plants)
• EU Bird Portal - Tracking bird migrations live
• BirdCast - The same, in North America

Satellites

• Sources of information
• Seeing through time
• Seeing in other frequencies

Sources of information

• Google Maps
• Yandex Maps
• LandLook and SentinelLook Viewers
• EU Metsat Viewer
• Sentinel Hub
• Lots and lots of Near-realtime Earth observation resources

Seeing through time

• Google Earth Timelapse
• Examples of Landsat Timelapses
• In-depth tutorial for creating Landsat timelapses (Coding required)

Seeing in other frequencies

• Excellent Intro: Putting Landsat 8’s Bands to Work
• NASA: The Sun at different wavelengths
• Multispectral art images
• Infrared Photography
• Richard Mosse's The Enclave and Incoming [PROBLEMATIC]
• Oliver Lutz's UV installations
• Lots more Examples of multispectral images from Golan Levin's class

Exercise One

Paracademic Research

1. Find a news story or environmental issue you're interested in.
2. Find the source: download and read the original paper.
3. Find cited papers and additional information if necessary.
4. Make sure you look at figures, tables, etc.
5. Present this paper in a new way: a story, image, or whatever you like.

Exercise Two

Seeing through satellites

1. Go through satellite sources from earlier slide.
2. Use one or more sources to explore a particular place, region, or thing.
3. Find images of that site across different times.
4. Find different representations of that site (different bands, filters etc).
5. Construct a new image or way of seeing the site.