Animated Spectra

I tagged along with Laura on her language school's "cultural activity" again today. I guess it was a good thing too, since Laura and I were the only ones that partook. Our guide was Lucia again (same as last week). She's on the left in this picture:

Of course that's Laura on the right and one of Lucia's students in the middle.

Lucia took us to an art gallery maintained by the University of Sevilla called CICUS. The exhibit was small and had the theme Ausencias (absence):

An appropriately vague and squishy theme that was fun to think about in the context of the pieces inside. I only took one picture inside the gallery of this piece:

The black is just electrical tape on a white wall. The white is light from a projector. The light was animated and moved around in ways that complemented the black tape design. Sadly, it was out of alignment. I desperately wanted to fix the projector, but thought maybe it was supposed to be out of alignment. However, on the way out, we noticed a flyer for the the exhibit that featured a photo of this piece in which the light was aligned with the background. Then I really wanted to go back and fix it, but instead I left.

Lucia did a nice job speaking Spanish with us. I could understand about 80% of what she was saying.

The gallery was off of a courtyard at the CICUS. The tilework was lovely:

***

After the tour, Laura went to class and went home and worked on math. I did finally manage to create an animation in python. This animation is a spectral analysis of measurements of me walking/running taken using the inertial sensor in my phone (all smart phones have them). With a bit of Fourier transforming and finding the peak of the spectrum, I was able to see that when walking I have a step pace of about 2 steps/sec. When running, it's around 3 steps/sec. Here's an animation of the spectrum for my 30 minute walk/run:


None of this is really my research, but learning these technological tools will help with a variety of classes next year.