Speaker 1
Uh, okay, [clears throat] cool.
Speaker 2
Recording?
Speaker 1
Recording.
Speaker 2
Cool. Uh, so now as, as you were talking right now, I was thinking: Oh, yes, that’s what we’ll do that, and that’s what we should sell. We, we are creating dynamic systems.
Speaker 1
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2
That’s what we do. We’re creating creatures, we’re creating synthetic beings. Um, we’re— they’re not hiring, uh, you know, some coders or some composers. We— like, the most important work we’ve done revolve around the rephrasing of technology as, uh, a system that have, um… I think we’re stuck. Fuck’s sake.
Speaker 1
Stuck?
Speaker 2
You know, your, your, uh, page was stuck.
Speaker 1
Ah.
Speaker 2
Um, yeah. Re-rephrasing technology as, uh, as systems that have agency [paper rustling] and have a— they, they exist within a narrative, within a temporal dimension. Uh, so I think saying that what we’re building is a system that behaves like pain is golden.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
I think it’s a really, really strong line. And the, um, the second line, I think that complements that, is that, [clears throat] uh, finding the ways that pain is like music.
Speaker 1
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2
And when we’re talking about, uh, all the temporal aspects, the, the tempo and, and all, all sorts of terms that can exist because they, they don’t just describe music, they describe signal.
Speaker 1
Music-
Speaker 2
But we also have, we also have texture, which is used to describe, describe music.
Speaker 1
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2
And we also have all these subtleties that, uh, y-you were talking earlier, like you hear [chuckles] any genre that might have predominantly a style, but it’s not just that. There are all sorts of undertones and, uh, nuances.
Speaker 1
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2
Uh, so I think we can draw parallels, and then it, it’s really a story we are selling. That, you see, pain has these things, it’s undeniable. No one can say, “No, pain is not like that,” because we’re working with very common, uh, concepts around pain.
Speaker 1
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2
And we have music on the other side, again, with very, uh, concrete terms. And we say th-these things, of course, they are two com- two completely different things, but look, they share the same structure or the same-
Speaker 1
Mm
Speaker 2
… they share the same, um, ways of talking about them.
Speaker 1
Parameters.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 1
Do, do we want, do we want to say music, or do we want to say sound-
Speaker 3
Sound
Speaker 1
… sound or noise? ‘Cause I think, I— it might just be like a messaging thing, but I, I agree, music has terminology that is useful: texture, tempo, rhythm, et cetera. I think sound can still have texture and rhythm and tempo, and it maybe just keeps us away from-
Speaker 2
Yeah
Speaker 1
… we don’t want to create a piece of music because that has-
Speaker 2
Yeah
Speaker 1
… associations with being good or bad or like, um-
Speaker 2
Yeah. Okay, let’s not talk, say music. Let’s not say noise, because that’s also-
Speaker 1
Has-
Speaker 3
There’s a message.
Speaker 2
Pigeonholing.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
Yeah. Sound is good.
Speaker 1
Yeah, I think sound works. Um.
Speaker 2
[chuckles] Um, yeah, it’s, it’s, uh, really great that Lana found these references. Made me slightly depressed in the sense that I was the nearest people in the ’70s having no distractions, no social media, just doing the good work.
Speaker 3
Just being weird alone. [chuckles]
Speaker 2
Exploring.
Speaker 1
Fucking cracking on.
Speaker 2
Breaking ground. [laughing]
Speaker 1
I mean, that’s like my, my sister’s boyfriend does that. He’s a chemical… He’s doing his PhD in chemical engineering, and he just lives in this lab, and he’s very, like, non-social media, and yeah.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 1
He reminds me of that kind of work ethic.
Speaker 2
Oops, sorry. I got a call.
Speaker 1
No worries.
Speaker 2
[indistinct]
Speaker 1
I need to watch your reference properly. Um-
Speaker 2
Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1
I was also thinking, [sighs] as George was saying, that there’s those-
Speaker 3
So sorry, sorry, o-one moment.
Speaker 2
Ending. [indistinct]
Speaker 4
[indistinct]
Speaker 2
[indistinct]
Speaker 4
[indistinct]
Speaker 2
[indistinct]
Speaker 4
[indistinct]
Speaker 2
[indistinct]
Speaker 5
… Είμαστε στον πέ- πέμπτο όροφο. Εεε, η Πολυτεχνική έχει μία, έτσι πες ότι είναι, είναι ένα συγκρότημα. Έχει και ένα εσωτερικό δρομάκι δικό της, που μπορεί, μπορεί να περάσει φορτηγάκι, ναι. Εεε, και θα προταχθεί, ναι, από το μπαλκόνι, από το μπαλκόνι. Γιατί αλλιώς δεν υπάρχει τρόπος, το ασανσέρ δεν θα χωράει, πιστεύω. [θόρυβος δωματίου] Το συγκρότημα έχει δύο πλαϊνές εισόδους. Η μία είναι στην οδό [θόρυβος δωματίου] Bergstedt, εεε, και η άλλη είναι στην οδό… Δηλαδή η άλλη είναι λέγεται Τσιλέρ.
Speaker 3
Όχι, Τσιλέρ είναι η, η α-
Speaker 5
Μισό λεπ- μισό λεπτό να σου το φέρω.
Speaker 3
Λέγεται Μπάμπη Άννινου. Μπάμπη Άννινου λέγεται η κάτω που είναι στα Διαγώνια.
Speaker 5
Α, Μπάμπη Άννινου λέγεται η άλλη. Εεε, είναι και οι δύο κάθετες της Πατησίων [θόρυβος δωματίου] και έχει σε αυτές τις δύο οδούς, εεε, έχει καγκελόπορτα για να, για να περάσει κανείς στο συγκρότημα με καροτσάκι.
Speaker 3
[θόρυβος δωματίου] Ναι, είναι κατάλληλη.
Speaker 5
Ναι, βεβαίως, βεβαίως.
Speaker 3
[θόρυβος δωματίου] Ναι;
Speaker 5
Ναι, ναι, ναι.
Speaker 3
Εντάξει, dann я, όχι ξέχασα. [θόρυβος πληκτρολογίου]
Speaker 5
Ωραία! Πέμπτη αυτή, έτσι;
Speaker 3
Εεε.
Speaker 5
Κουδούνι έτσι κι αλλιώς, εεε-
Speaker 3
Ναι.
Speaker 5
Ναι, ναι, ναι, ναι. Δηλαδή ούτως ή άλλως θα, θα προστρέξουμε για να περάσει μέσα το φορτηγό. Ευχαριστώ πολύ. Γεια σας!
Speaker 3
[θόρυβος πληκτρολογίου] Λένα.
Speaker 2
Έτοιμη.
Speaker 3
Μμ;
Speaker 2
Τι; Έτοιμη.
Speaker 3
Sorry?
Speaker 2
That’s… Okay, just had a sofa delivery to arrange, um-
Speaker 1
We bought a new sofa about three weeks ago. I think it’s going to take twelve weeks [γέλιο] to be delivered.
Speaker 3
If you’re lucky.
Speaker 1
If.
Speaker 2
Yeah, we already done the beginning of December, Black Friday time.
Speaker 1
Mm-hmm. Yeah, always fun.
Speaker 2
Yeah. [καθαρίζει το λαιμό] Uh, cool.
Speaker 1
I was just looking at Mauricio. I mean, he’s certainly got the credentials, like experimental sound artist, composer, performer. He’s, he’s the head of R&D at that place.
Speaker 2
Si.
Speaker 1
So…
Speaker 2
Um, I keep dreaming of, um, the systems like the ones that Kasim was building.
Speaker 1
Mm.
Speaker 2
I mean, Aliki rightfully said that if you build something like that, it’s not very flexible. You kind of have to go with it.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
But anyway, but I’m thinking something that’s very raw, that works with, with signals and physics and, and, and all the materials you put together. So in a way, it’s undeniable. Not undeniable, not scientific. It’s [exhales] in a way, it’s convincing because you have a, a raw signal coming from somewhere-
Speaker 1
Yeah
Speaker 2
… and you can really see it, um, create a result without the fakery of, uh, of software.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 3
You can see it, or you can hear it.
Speaker 2
Both, because it has an apparatus as well. It’s not in a black box. So you say, “Okay, it goes in a computer, you can do whatever fake stuff you want with it, and that’s it.”
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
The- it’s real circuits going, going on, and you can see it, and it’s this artifact.
Speaker 3
Yeah. But I just-
Speaker 2
Pain machine. [γέλιο]
Speaker 3
I, I want— I don’t want to… I just don’t want to be in the same positions as we were with three correspondents, because all of these raw sounds, they sound not at all commercial. Like, all of these things that I found today, they couldn’t stand in, in what, what they have in mind, because it wouldn’t be-
Speaker 2
Yeah
Speaker 3
… appealing for, for a, you know, a non-scientific, non-ar- non-artistic audience. It needs-… like, I, I don’t think we can avoid it. We don’t like it, but I think it’s best to be proactive about- [chuckles]
Speaker 1
Yeah, I think-
Speaker 3
Having it commercial rather than having-
Speaker 2
Yeah
Speaker 3
… having it imposed with something cheesy and crap.
Speaker 2
Yeah. We’ve got this guy saying, “Oh yeah, we want it to be pleasant,” and blah, blah, blah, but then the company-
Speaker 1
But then the company-
Speaker 2
No, we want the fucking jingles.
Speaker 3
Yeah, oh, that thing. [chuckles]
Speaker 1
The c- they want it unpleasant until they hear something unpleasant, and then they’re like, “Oh, this is unpleasant.” [chuckles]
Speaker 3
[chuckles]
Speaker 2
Yeah, not this kind of unpleasant.
Speaker 1
I think you-
Speaker 2
Pleasant.
Speaker 1
I think you started it correctly by saying you have this dream, and I think with true correspondence, all of our dreams kind of bit us in the arse-
Speaker 2
Yeah
Speaker 1
… because ultimately we need to tie ourselves to a method that is flexible and that we can change-
Speaker 2
Yeah
Speaker 1
… and get lots of different things from.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 3
Well, also-
Speaker 2
But-
Speaker 3
Also, in, as I was reading the text that Chris wrote, there’s, like, this sound of the self, and I think that, that is the key thing, because this needs to be something appealing to listen to.
Speaker 1
Mm.
Speaker 3
And what is that? Like, I, I was trying to, to figure out what kind of sound-
Speaker 1
Yeah
Speaker 3
… that you would put.
Speaker 1
In my, in my mind, that bit was very like… [sighs] I don’t know. It would be cool if we could record someone’s voice and then abstract it in a way. So I don’t know, is there a way that you, you could get, like, a single tone from someone’s voice? So, like, we all have a speaking voice, but that obviously, like, changes with every word. But is there a way to get like a, what’s like the fundamental tone of someone’s voice? I don’t know.
Speaker 2
Mm.
Speaker 1
Or, or is it like a heartbeat, or is it something?
Speaker 2
Mm.
Speaker 1
But then this obviously takes us down a rabbit hole that’s very, like, person specific, which is fine if the project kind of has like a subject or a series of subjects, or if we end up going down this kind of live experiment route where we get someone to record their voice, and that becomes the thing, and then… Yeah.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 1
Th- this-
Speaker 2
Yeah
Speaker 1
… this idea of the, the, the self being masked or distorted by the pain layers.
Speaker 2
If we go down this personalized route, it’s interesting, and it opens up, um, [sighs] different, like, more activations.
Speaker 1
Mm.
Speaker 2
So if we say we build a system that it’s not one size fits all, or it’s not-
Speaker 1
It’s not one sound fits all. It’s not one output.
Speaker 2
Exactly. But it can be something that, um, it’s a standalone experience in select locations, and you go there, and you record your profile of whatever, and then it’s you, and then you upload it to the system, or you generate something that’s unique.
Speaker 1
It’s also-
Speaker 2
Because sh- because pain is unique, uh, et cetera.
Speaker 1
Yeah. It’s also maybe a, an easier thing to record than attaching an EEG headset to everyone that’s getting involved.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 1
Now, you’re not gonna be able to get the, the whole pain profile element from just the sound, but maybe each… So there’s the self, the, I can’t even remember what I fucking wrote now. Um, the different layers, maybe there’s a recorded element for each one. So you record your voice, then you have to describe your pain in three words or I don’t know.
Speaker 2
Yeah. [clears throat] Um-
Speaker 1
But I think, yeah, maybe this element of personalization is another thing that we can sell.
Speaker 2
Yeah. Uh, that being said, it didn’t sound like they want to pitch these subjective-
Speaker 3
Mm
Speaker 2
… ways of measuring. It sounded like they want to be very-
Speaker 1
Yeah
Speaker 2
… scientific and precise. Which there’s only so far you can go from what little GPT gave me regarding the state of the art of these things. Still, clinically, it’s, it’s not, not accepted, it’s just… It’s not very well researched. It doesn’t have a very robust methodology-
Speaker 1
Yeah
Speaker 2
… and have a, um-
Speaker 1
What I was looking at was there was a lot of stuff that you record stuff that is a result of pain. So-
Speaker 2
Yeah
Speaker 1
… you can record stress or increased heart rate, heart rate.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 1
Well, there’s all these things that you can deduce this person is in pain because these other things are happening.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 1
But there’s, there’s not really a way to measure it directly.
Speaker 2
Yeah, I, I was looking at this EEG and machine learning, that they managed to, to get to a, to an equivalent accuracy as more, uh, detailed EEG with, with fewer, uh, electrodes and machine learning that kind of infers what’s going on. Um, yeah, I need to, to read a little bit more into it, but they were mentioning that their goal is practicality and being able to wear a headset and not have hundreds of stuff on your head.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
Um, phone number, and let the, and, and a phone do it, do the training in real time, things like that.
Speaker 1
I, I’ve not looked into it, but is there… Do we know if there’s, like, a region of the brain that is particularly active? Like, you know, you get these, these MRI scans where they get someone to, like, play music while they’re having their brain scanned, and there’s, like, particular regions-
Speaker 2
Yeah
Speaker 1
… that illuminate. Is there a kind of pain control region that you can monitor?
Speaker 2
No.
Speaker 1
Uh-
Speaker 2
No idea. Um-
Speaker 1
… because there must be people-
Speaker 2
I want to, I want to say something else. Sorry. Oh, but what you said before, uh, about our dreams and that they got shattered, et cetera. Uh, maybe the smart thing to do is still position ourselves as the dreamers, but have a strategy where we sell the dream, but we know in advance that the end result is not gonna be that dream. Like, not aim for that, set our own expectations, um, not necessarily lower, but kind of elsewhere. Uh, but still sell them the really big idea. Uh, because I feel like that’s what made us win the, um, the correspondence and, okay, one competitor [chuckles] leaving. Uh, [chuckles] um, but, uh, Daniel said, “Yeah, you, you were the most, the most poetic, and-
Speaker 1
Yeah-
Speaker 2
you…”
Speaker 1
But, but yeah, I think we can still do that, right? And like, I just think the idea of a, [chuckles] of a physical, like, synthesizer system scares the shit out of me. Because although, yes, it has that physicality and that undeniably that would be amazing, it has— it’s so restrictive in so many ways-
Speaker 2
Yeah
Speaker 1
… that. Also, like-
Speaker 3
Mm-hmm
Speaker 1
… we’re kind of at the mercy of our collaborator, right? Like, if Elias gets involved, we want him-
Speaker 2
Yeah
Speaker 1
… to use the tools that he’s comfortable with, and-
Speaker 2
Yeah
Speaker 1
um-
Speaker 2
Yeah, but if, uh, if Kasim gets involved or so, yeah, Hans Zimmer. [chuckles] And I was like, “Would be cool to get Hans Zimmer.”
Speaker 3
It would be cool. It’s commercial project.
Speaker 2
Um-
Speaker 1
I mean, he’s a, he’s a fucking cool guy. Like, he would be well up for, like… If you could somehow get it in front of him, I’m sure he would, but.
Speaker 3
Yeah, but-
Speaker 1
He’s probably busy. [chuckles]
Speaker 3
You think?
Speaker 1
Mm.
Speaker 3
I, I only said what I said because, like, I, I don’t think the idea of raw signal translating to sound is gonna fly at the end of the line, because it just sounds too abstract. Like, it’s not even that evident for us that we know what we’re doing. Like, a spike in the, in the EG might not be the spike that we expect in the sound. It might even not be that recognizable as we think it will be.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 3
So-
Speaker 2
You need the processing.
Speaker 3
You need… Yeah-
Speaker 2
Yeah
Speaker 3
… you need some kind of processing step.
Speaker 1
But I think, I think what won us three correspondents and what made the… And to be honest, it’s probably what actually made the, the whole awards thing believable, was we had the whole agent chain idea, and so breaking this, like, [sighs]
Speaker 3
Yeah.
Speaker 1
There we had a very sim- we had, well, we had a signals to articles process, didn’t we? And now we’ve got to have some sort of multifaceted pain signal thing to sound. I think if we can break that down into a chain of what’s happening in between, and actually talk about, sell the what’s happening in between as this is the interesting bit, um, that’s how we do it, right?
Speaker 3
Yeah.
Speaker 1
And I think this, this layering approach is, is quite a, a convincing way to do that.
Speaker 3
And I think, I think the, the winning idea is what he said, it’s to design the sound, the sound of pain-
Speaker 1
Mm
Speaker 3
… somehow.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 3
You need some-
Speaker 2
And I, I, I really like what, uh, Aliki said, that it could be a methodology. It could be something that’s open, it’s open source, and the community, scientific or music, could actually, uh, jump into that and see and verify how X becomes Y.
Speaker 1
Ah.
Speaker 2
Which I think is important given the context and given what they said they’re worried about, and the doctors, uh, not being convened, blah, blah, blah. So what is common in these communities is to publish your results and publish your methodology. Otherwise, you’re shit, you’re nothing. I think being able to have a methodology that’s verifiable, reproducible, and it’s not lost in, in the noise and in the imperfections of materiality, or-
Speaker 1
Yeah
Speaker 2
… it’s not a one-off system that no one else can build.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
I guess, huge credibility.
Speaker 1
We do also want to wave the art flag, right, as well, though. We wanna say, “This is, this is an artistic interpretation of pain, and this is the way that we are viewing it.”
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 1
So I think, I think that baseline idea of, like, having the sound of a person-
Speaker 2
[clears throat]
Speaker 1
… that is, that is obscured, distorted, masked, that’s our artistic interpretation of what pain does, right? It’s like, pain obscures you. It stops your… It stops you from living your life.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 1
And I think as like a, having that as like the, the art manifesto, for me, works. ‘Cause no one can challenge that. We can just say, like, “That’s how we’re viewing it,” um-
Speaker 2
But art, art in the way that the expansion photography is art.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
Meaning that it’s not-
Speaker 3
Yeah, I-
Speaker 2
It’s not some s- sort of stuff that we imagine and came out of nowhere. It, it is a way for humans to perceive something-… that has no other ways of being presented, therefore you need to interpret, you need to bring it close to our perception.
Speaker 3
Yeah. I think that the things are artistic interpretation is not gonna fly with them, because it leaves too much room for people to question it scientifically. I think it’s more like popularization of the science or something like, like that-
Speaker 2
Mm
Speaker 3
… in the, in the selling point. ‘Cause, yeah, that it’s what George said, at the end of the day, I don’t want the campaign to be okay, you know, they- there’s some artists, and they just imagined what pain would feel like, would sound like.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
Yeah. I also don’t like the term popularization.
Speaker 3
Okay, find us something else. [chuckles] It was just an example.
Speaker 1
Yeah, it’s the… Yeah, dissemination.
Speaker 3
Just making it more understandable. [chuckles] I don’t know what- how to say it-
Speaker 1
Yeah
Speaker 3
… a nice word.
Speaker 1
But it’s but, yeah, what I mean by like the artistic manifesto is, is those are the- these are the philosophies that we’re bringing to the scientific elements.
Speaker 3
Sure.
Speaker 1
So, like, we, we still want to do the scientific processes and record stuff using the, all the techy gear and all that stuff, but, like, the, the way in which we want to view it and frame the whole, like, this is why we’re taking this measurement and how we’re translating it to a sound-
Speaker 3
Yeah
Speaker 1
… can be more artistically based. That, that doesn’t remove the validity of the signal or whatever.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 3
Yeah, not at all. It’s just how we phrase it.
Speaker 1
Yeah. Um…
Speaker 3
So we’re waiting from them to come back with something?
Speaker 2
I, I just messed them, uh, the other day about whether we- it’s the only, uh, we are the only ones that are waiting.
Speaker 3
Yeah, I saw your email.
Speaker 2
But, uh-
Speaker 1
Yeah, they’ve not replied to that. [sighs] Uh, we could-
Speaker 2
I think we… Sure.
Speaker 1
We could reach out to Daniel more kind of directly on that.
Speaker 2
Yeah. We can. Um-
Speaker 1
I also think maybe we want to have, like, a master deck, which would be our, like, this is our full treatment submission with all of our ideas and, like, all the stuff which we don’t want to share with them until we’ve… [sighs] Not necessarily until we guaranteed the job, but maybe once we know a bit more.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 1
Um, and therefore, do we have a kind of reduced version which shares some of the catchier ideas and kind of shows that we know what we’re doing?
Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1
Um-
Speaker 3
Also, still unclear what’s gonna happen in March [chuckles] on their end.
Speaker 1
Yeah, unclear on what’s gonna happen in March on their end. Unclear, well, we’ll find out later today with Medina, because Ludo was talking about pushing that to, like, April time. I don’t expect that to be a sudden, like, shitload more work, but at the same time, it, it would be added stress and just a d- a distraction ultimately. But [clears throat] if we’re only kicking off in, [inhales] um, March, April, probably kicking off in April, right? That’s what he said. Um, we’re not, we’re not gonna be in the, like, trenches of this project for a while.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 1
So I’m not, yeah, I’m not too concerned resources-wise. Um-
Speaker 2
I think we, we need to discuss, um, the different types of activation-
Speaker 1
Mm
Speaker 2
… we will propose, uh, and start.
Speaker 1
Well, yeah, we need-
Speaker 2
Starting with a deck for them.
Speaker 1
We need to break down the deliverables as well, right? It’s like-
Speaker 2
Yeah
Speaker 1
… is, is our, ‘cause [chuckles] I don’t think we’re gonna be the ones handling the rollout to all these CVS pharmacies. Um-
Speaker 2
True
Speaker 1
… but we might be in charge of what gets, like, the, the thing that gets put in these places needs to work. Um, so there’s, yeah, if the live stuff goes ahead and they’re kind of pie in the sky, best case rollout happens, there’s one set of deliverables. If it’s literally just a kind of digital asset that they can use for adverts and the campaign, which would be what? Like, a film and all the shit that goes with that.
Speaker 2
Okay, so the, the thing they want is the most boring, the film and all these advertisements.
Speaker 1
Yeah, but is the film a result of an experiment? So we could basically just be like-
Speaker 2
Exactly
Speaker 1
… we’re doing an experiment, or we’re doing-
Speaker 2
Yeah
Speaker 1
… like, we’re doing a-
Speaker 2
Yeah. Uh, the, the second, uh, well, the first thing that’s, uh, most close to that and what we will have produced anyway is a, a really, really good-looking website that serves, uh… Remember that link I sent you yesterday, uh, this amazing data-
Speaker 1
Yeah, that I did yeah
Speaker 2
… So made this thing about, uh, bird watching.
Speaker 1
Mm.
Speaker 2
But it’s at the same time, an article you read through and a database diagrams.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
And so it’s kind of, it’s where you’re flowing through it and you’re reading, but then you can stop-… and actually play with interactive diagrams.
Speaker 3
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2
And it, it’s very good. So imagine something like a website that explores a process, but also is a library of the sounds, and it’s a visualizer of the sounds, and it’s a way for you to maybe pick the kind of sound that matches what matches your pain. Almost like a, an open experiment, a crowdsourcing experiment. So a website that, that is significant. It’s not just, “Oh, we did this”-
Speaker 1
Mm.
Speaker 2
… but it’s an active, uh, an active thing, a tool in this process. It’s, it’s helpful in a way, and could be a reference for the, for the scientific community. Um, it’s ambitious, but-
Speaker 1
They’re not-
Speaker 2
We do that’s-
Speaker 1
I’m not-
Speaker 2
We do that’s the equivalent amount of money for it, so.
Speaker 1
I’m not against… I’m definitely not against it. Um, they’ve not mentioned a website, that’s the only thing. Like, tree correspondence, maybe it was a bit further along in terms of their, like, creative with it, but they came to us and were like, “We’re doing a website.” Like, there has to be a supporting website. So it-
Speaker 2
Yeah
Speaker 1
… it’s definitely something we could suggest.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 1
It would, it— like, we’d have to blow the budget up to do that. I mean, this searching for birds thing is fucking sick, and I think is the, is the [chuckles] best way to sell that idea, is like, “Look at this thing someone’s done. It perfectly explains a re-
Speaker 2
Mm
Speaker 1
… a res- research pro- process.” Um, we’d be-
Speaker 3
But do you think that can be activation or, or after, like an after, after the fact presentation? Because we, we, we won’t have the scientific research yet.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
Well, this will happen once the project finishes, the website goes live.
Speaker 3
So it’s not activation?
Speaker 2
No, sorry. I meant… Yeah, I, I meant something else. I meant one of the deliverables.
Speaker 1
Just docu- yeah, it’s, it’s documentation deliverable, right? Um-
Speaker 2
Yeah, you can say it’s documentation, but I think phrasing it as documentation makes it sound more boring.
Speaker 1
But we can phrase it-
Speaker 2
I’m, I’m thinking, I’m not reading it as, as a fallback plan, because the ability to roll out something at pharmacies or even have a performance, I think there is a high risk associated with this.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
It could fail in lots of ways, but at least showing this amazing research in a way that is tangible and lives on.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
Um-
Speaker 1
I mean, the… We just phrase it as like it’s part of the campaign content, right? So-
Speaker 2
Yeah
Speaker 1
… they, they’re gonna want us to produce whatever we can to support the campaign submission.
Speaker 2
Mm.
Speaker 1
So within that, we could say, data viz, or just like, yeah, visualizations of the process, which we’d need to give them anyway. And then the weapons grade version of that is a, a microsite website, single page scrolly thing. Um, yeah. Um, I’m just scrolling up and down this page now. [mouse clicking] Let me go to that. [sighs]
Speaker 2
Yeah, maybe, uh, can you paste the link here so I can show it to them?
Speaker 1
Sure. And then other, other deliverables that we can think of.
Speaker 2
So if we had a system that, um, could turn EEG signals, [mouse clicking] um, into sound live, in real time, um, [sneezes] then we could have some performance. It could be like-
Speaker 3
The scary bit is not the li- the live performance, it’s the, the pain tracking and the effectiveness of the drug tracking-
Speaker 1
Yeah
Speaker 3
… in real time.
Speaker 1
I mean, does that… Yeah.
Speaker 2
Because it, it can, it can easily be seen as a fake-
Speaker 1
Yeah
Speaker 2
… thing.
Speaker 1
Yeah, it’s like-
Speaker 2
And there is no way to prove not
Speaker 1
… someone takes the drug, someone else presses a button, and it changes the sound. Um-
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 1
I think, I think that this— we could say the success of the R&D, right? The success of the pain tracking and the actually seeing what the drug does, right, could inform the deliverables. We could say, There’s no way we’re gonna do a live activation if the R&D tells us that this isn’t gonna be practical. Not necessarily that it’s not gonna work, but because it might work for a film, or, like, it might work in a controlled environment-
Speaker 2
Yeah
Speaker 1
… um, for a specific pain sufferer.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 1
Um-
Speaker 2
Uh, what if it was a performance where the audience can walk into a room or something, they have— they are in pain, so it’s for people who are in pain currently. Uh, the personnel puts the headset on them, does all, everything properly, and they are generating the sound, and they’re taking a drug, and then this whole thing changes over time. So it’s not a staged thing where everyone comes to see something staged by us, it’s something that they can literally walk in.
Speaker 1
That’s what I was-
Speaker 2
See the-
Speaker 1
Yeah
Speaker 2
… people are walking in, and-… But you can, you can go in.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
There’s a queue, you go in and-
Speaker 1
That’s what I assumed the rollout would look like. It would look like a Nike, uh, type thing.
Speaker 2
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1
Whereas, yeah.
Speaker 3
Yeah, but what- that, that’s also what I said was about, like, what if, I don’t know, the, the tech we have set up can’t track that specific kind of pain, and then the drug doesn’t really work for that specific kind of pain? Like-
Speaker 1
Yeah
Speaker 3
… That’s exactly what we worry about.
Speaker 2
Yeah. If the drug does not act fast enough-
Speaker 3
Yeah, that… I don’t know. That’s also a thing.
Speaker 2
Uh, which we need to know.
Speaker 1
Yeah, ‘cause what, like paracetamol takes 20 min- 20 minutes.
Speaker 3
Depends how you take it.
Speaker 1
Yeah, half an hour.
Speaker 2
Yeah. [chuckles]
Speaker 1
[chuckles] Like, I saw that coming, I saw that coming before Eleona finished the sentence.
Speaker 2
[laughing]
Speaker 3
Yeah, it sucks.
Speaker 2
Um. [chuckles]
Speaker 1
But, I mean, that’s to my point, right? I think we just flag that as like, this is gonna be… These are the stages of the project. If-
Speaker 2
Yeah
Speaker 1
… if the R&D surrounding the pain measuring f- uh, method isn’t, [chuckles] like, isn’t good enough, then we can’t do live activation.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 1
Um-
Speaker 2
Which brings me to a next point: who is responsible for the experiment?
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
Are we meant to do it? We’re definitely not equipped-
Speaker 1
No
Speaker 2
… in skills or capital, um, to do this.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
On the other hand, we need to have some control of this process.
Speaker 1
We kind of run the show. We wanna give them a shopping list of the stuff we want, right? And, like, we, we wanna be as involved in, like, understand-
Speaker 2
Yeah
Speaker 1
… understanding the equipment they’re using, and… Yeah.
Speaker 2
Yeah, but it- even, even if, if they gave us the best EG money can buy, we still wouldn’t be the right people to test with it.
Speaker 1
No, we’re not the technicians. We’re, we basically want the result of these things, don’t we?
Speaker 2
Yeah. So-
Speaker 3
Yeah, I-
Speaker 2
… so instead of, instead of needing the tech, we need a, we need a whole setup that is, uh, experimentally, um, rigorous.
Speaker 1
Sure.
Speaker 2
And then we, we, we want to be able to, uh, to interface with them, get data, talk to them.
Speaker 1
Analyze the results, and…
Speaker 2
Yeah. So, so we want them to, to buy us a lab, uh, with people. [chuckles]
Speaker 3
What about, what about-
Speaker 2
What a great use of English language I have these days. [chuckles]
Speaker 3
I wonder about the company itself, like Tylenol, how did they test this drug? Do they test- how do they-
Speaker 1
It’s untested. [laughing]
Speaker 2
[laughing]
Speaker 3
Yeah, they, they must have-
Speaker 1
Yeah, they must have facilities
Speaker 3
… some experiments going on.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 3
Like, why can’t we tap into-
Speaker 1
Yeah
Speaker 3
… first of all, those resources-
Speaker 1
Yeah
Speaker 3
… and maybe discuss with them?
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 3
And to, like, they must have scientists that worked on that.
Speaker 2
Yeah. Maybe, I, I don’t know. It makes a lot of sense what you’re saying, I agree. I’m just thinking maybe the part of Tylenol that is responsible for all, all these things-
Speaker 3
Is in Tylenol.
Speaker 2
No, is not very willing to share that with a random project that the marketing department does. Maybe these departments don’t even really talk to each other.
Speaker 1
Yeah, they may not even talk.
Speaker 3
True.
Speaker 1
I think maybe within our treatment, we include, like, a wish list section, right? We say, like-
Speaker 2
Yeah
Speaker 1
… we want to leverage Tylenol’s facilities, expertise, whatever. Like, surely there’s an amount that we can get from the client. We can get shit from Hyundai. Like, they just about let us in the buildings in Czech Republic. Like, their supposed, like, partner organizations were fucking crap, so…
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 1
I don’t think we can expect too much, but I think [exhales] giving them a wish list takes, like, positions us as like we’re not responsible for-
Speaker 2
Yeah
Speaker 1
… actually developing the experiment. Like-
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 3
Do they want us to be responsible?
Speaker 2
No.
Speaker 1
I don’t think so. I don’t think so.
Speaker 2
I think in, in no way should we be responsible for data collection.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
It, it, it does so many things that we, we want off our plate. Like, [exhales] we don’t want to be the ones that are sourcing the people.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
We don’t wanna be the ones responsible for the well-being of these people. We- there’s, you know, finding the right space for that. There’s, of course, setting up, having the equipment, setting up the equipment, ensuring the data is correct.
Speaker 1
The eth- like, the ethics of conducting an experiment, right, is like, there’s so much-
Speaker 2
Yeah
Speaker 1
… it’s so involved, particularly within, like, a marketing context. Like, you could so easily be seen as taking advantage of someone’s-
Speaker 2
Yeah
Speaker 1
… painful condition in order to sell a drug that they’re not, like-
Speaker 3
Yeah.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 3
What, what about the, the doctors that they’re in contact with?
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 3
Is that something they, they could lead somehow?
Speaker 2
It-
Speaker 3
It almost feels like there should be a university involved.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
Yeah. Feels like it. Um, in a way, in a way, I don’t care how they do it-… we would, we, it’s— what I said earlier, it kind of crudely, uh, is true, though. We want a lab set up-
Speaker 1
Yeah
Speaker 2
… with the right personnel and the right process in place, and we go there, and we start having these sessions and discussing with these people and understanding what’s gonna happen, and then we wanna get the, the, the data.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
Uh-
Speaker 1
And then our bit starts once we’ve got the-
Speaker 2
Yes, of, of course, knowing more about what we wanna do could steer a little bit some aspects of the sensing, but may- maybe not at all, because maybe h- the way they’re doing it is so specific and with very hard constraints that I’m fine if we have no say in this-
Speaker 1
Yeah
Speaker 2
… and they just hand us everything they got, um, and we figure it out.
Speaker 1
I suppose we would need to… We’d need to understand the output before we get it.
Speaker 2
Exactly. Yeah. W- we need to understand the technology for sure. We need to understand what it is that they’re measuring, what does it mean? We need— we also need to know what these people were feeling, what- when they were being measured.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
So w- we need to have as, as full of a con- context as possible. Uh, just getting raw signals won’t help us if we want to create-
Speaker 3
We kind of need to be there.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 3
Not for all [clears throat] the experiment, but also n- not be completely remote.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 3
It doesn’t feel like it’s gonna work out.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 1
Yeah, there, there needs to be a hands-on element, for sure.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 1
Um, but I think it’s fine for us to include questions in the deck, um, and this kind of wishlist and be like, “This is the stuff that we need clarified. This is what we’re…”
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 1
‘Cause that, I mean, that just shows that we’re being proactive and we’re thinking about, yeah, solutions to things. Um…
Speaker 2
Do we need, um, Lawrence to be on board?
Speaker 1
Don’t know. I think depending, and it’s kind of what I said to him on the phone, is it, his involvement, I think, would be very deliverables dependent.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 1
Um, uh, having just spoken now, I think the realization that we do not want to be involved in any way, shape, or form in the organization of the live demonstrations or experiments, or whatever, makes me think that, like, if we were to appoint Lawrence and say, like, “He can do events,” then suddenly we’re maybe making ourselves responsible for that stuff.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 1
Um, which would be problematic. Um, therefore, don’t know.
Speaker 3
Who would do it, though?
Speaker 1
Sorry?
Speaker 3
Who would be, who would organize these events? Would it be FCB, whatever they’re called? Would it be Tylenol?
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 3
Would it be an external producer that comes in, that we are not collaborating with?
Speaker 1
Maybe. I mean, I imagine if, if Lawrence was to do it, he’d be straight on the phone with James because of his, like, American network, so it, it could potentially be, like, a James equivalent who’s got pharmacy ins… I don’t know. I sort- I— maybe at the moment, I kind of just wanna steer away from the whole live demo thing, ‘cause I don’t know how much of a benefit it actually is. Like, yes, it adds some kind of breadth to their whole campaign, saying, like, “We did, we did this event at fifty pharmacies, and all these people experienced, uh, the sound of pain and changed it,” but, um-
Speaker 2
I j- I just, I just li- like the idea of the, of the live thing because it moves the project into a territory that is, uh, more relevant to our core practice, instead of building a system that ends up in a fucking TV commercial.
Speaker 1
Part of a film, yeah, and his very background.
Speaker 3
Yeah. Also, I, I wanted to ask… Okay, let’s put, like, put a question mark on the live demo. What is the, the actual thing that we will be producing? Like, okay, we translate pain to sound. Like, h- how… Let’s say it’s a video. How long?
Speaker 2
Long.
Speaker 3
Yeah, like-
Speaker 2
Thirty seconds.
Speaker 3
I almost don’t know exactly what the final deliverable is on our end. Campaign aside, like, what are we producing?
Speaker 2
They will want audio files.
Speaker 3
Yeah, but-
Speaker 2
Then they’re gonna trim them into thirty seconds, put them in the ad.
Speaker 1
Yeah. It, it, it depends, right? Like, if this, if the sounds need to be— like, if we’re creating a system that responds to different people differently, so there’s, like, a personalization element, then who knows? We’re producing, like, a library of, of sound. If we lose that element, and we just say-… it’s a, it’s a generic system that sounds the same for everyone, or like in terms of like, [inhales] in terms of like the base sound of it. I- it’s, it’s gonna be similar for everyone, but maybe it behaves differently depending on the signal, or definitely it behaves differently depending on the inputs, then I don’t know what the de- deliverable is. I think the, the deliverable is the system plus the outputs of that, and however we intend to use it, right?
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 1
And then obviously they would discard the … or, like, similar to tree correspondence, the system is there, but they’re never gonna take it and use it in any way.
Speaker 3
Yeah.
Speaker 1
Um, I think us saying we’re gonna develop a thing which is capable of creating the things you need, that’s, that’s the sales pitch, right?
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 1
And we can describe the inner workings of this thing in a way that makes the campaign compelling, and gives you the campaign content that you need to, to sell the thing.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 3
Yeah.
Speaker 1
But how complex or what those outputs are at the moment, it’s kind of … just depends on their scope and their ambition.
Speaker 2
So it, it’s, [chuckles] like this, uh, this audio becomes relevant. [sighs] Well, i- if it is not live, it becomes relevant if you trust the story behind it, and you trust that it is indeed-
Speaker 3
So it-
Speaker 2
-the output of this whole thing.
Speaker 3
So it kind of needs a website.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 3
Otherwise, it’s-
Speaker 1
Yeah
Speaker 3
… up in the air. [chuckles]
Speaker 2
Yeah. Not only needs a website, I think it needs a-
Speaker 3
An interactive website.
Speaker 2
Ye- yes, and a proper, a proper science- scientifically oriented recommendation-
Speaker 3
Paper?
Speaker 2
… something like that, paper or code. But, but then when it comes to the live, if it’s live, uh, it becomes relevant only if you are convinced that what you are hearing is [clears throat] what that person is experiencing pa- passing through, uh, our system.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
Uh, if you’re not convinced about that, or if there is not a person, let’s say, imagine a concert that is playing the full score that we generated, and it’s like 10 channels, each one is a person experiencing pain, and it’s a beautiful composition, et cetera. Is it of significance? I don’t know. Because it, it could be a… [chuckles] It’s only if you’re convinced that this thing is authentic-
Speaker 1
Yeah
Speaker 2
… that it becomes significant. And-
Speaker 1
Yeah. That’s-
Speaker 2
If we are not able to create that convincing, uh, situation-
Speaker 1
Yeah
Speaker 2
… I don’t think the live anything, live anything would, uh, would be a good idea.
Speaker 1
Is that a good way to frame the whole document? Is like, “The success of this campaign depends on creating authenticity surrounding the end sound.” So this is how we’re gonna do it. Like, we’re gonna create an open, like, an open system, or like a, at least like a, a viewable system, which takes an already valid signal and uses it in these ways, and we’re very explicit about how that’s being used. Um, then we have this supporting website, which documents X, Y, Z, and the whole thing is geared towards like the audience hearing the sound. Like, the audience are going to hear the sound. How do we ensure when they hear the sound, it- they think it’s authentic or they… Yeah.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 1
Because-
Speaker 2
So the audio needs to exist with a video of the person explaining-
Speaker 3
Yeah, I was gonna-
Speaker 2
… plus the data. So at the same time, you get the person saying what they feel, you get the data that-
Speaker 1
Sure
Speaker 2
… grounds in mathematical language, what’s going on in their body, and the sound, which is artistic output.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
Um, and that can work on the website beautifully.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
In the real world, it would be great if you had something like a… If you, if you had someone pinching you, and we could record that thing, which we cannot. I don’t think we can… That’s the problem, I don’t think the systems are so responsive.
Speaker 1
No.
Speaker 2
Like, so even if you hook up someone with EEG, you probably- it would probably fire anyway.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
And unless they had some really severe [chuckles] incident.
Speaker 3
Like hitting your small finger on the corner. [chuckles]
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, like something that make your whole brain scream. I think-
Speaker 3
Well, like, what if the, in, in a live demo scenario, there is like-
Speaker 2
You have a fucking MRI machine. [laughing]
Speaker 3
There is a person-… there is a person that goes into, [mouse clicking] goes into a room that-
Speaker 2
Mm
Speaker 3
… they put on a set of headphones, so they can’t really hear anything that’s happening outside, and they start describing their pain, and that is placed on the other room that’s open to the public, like subtitles to what they’re hearing.
Speaker 2
Hmm. Yeah.
Speaker 3
Something like that.
Speaker 2
Yeah, that would be great.
Speaker 1
Well, I think that, that’s an interesting element I was thinking about earlier, is like they’ve kind of-
Speaker 2
Yep
Speaker 1
… they- they’re very quick to discard the whole subjective thing, which is people describing their pain, and like in, in the meeting we had with them, they’re presenting this thing as kind of like a replacement to that. So it’s like-
Speaker 2
Yeah
Speaker 1
… people describing their pain as subjective, it doesn’t work. People that don’t speak English really struggle, so we want to come up with this sound method, which is genuine and rigorous. But I think, like you’re saying, still having the description as part of the process is, is useful. Like, it doesn’t-
Speaker 2
Yeah. [clears throat]
Speaker 1
We don’t necessarily need to use it to create the sound, but I think someone coming in and saying, “Oh, I have a, a dull, throbbing, constant pain,” is use-
Speaker 2
Yeah
Speaker 1
… is useful information when you’re categorizing that input.
Speaker 2
It’s almost like when you are, um, [mouse clicking] when you’re describing it out loud, you’re validating what the data is showing.
Speaker 3
Yeah, that was my point.
Speaker 2
Or vice versa, the data are validating what you’re saying.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
So they work in tandem.
Speaker 3
And it might not be, you know, synchronized at all, at all, you know, iterations of it, but if we have like a library of these recordings, like sound and video and subtitles-
Speaker 2
Yeah
Speaker 3
… um, I want to believe that in most of them, [chuckles] something coherent is gonna happen. And the other thing that I was thinking while I was thinking this experiment in my head is, what if we actually use the voice as like the, the baseline, and instead of being a description of your pain, it’s more like you’re describing your day and there’s a lot of extra stuff that are happening, either when you’re in pain or, or when you’re not in pain?
Speaker 2
Yeah. So we-
Speaker 3
Like distortions or-
Speaker 2
Yeah, we could analyze your voice while you’re in pain and analyze your voice when you are not in pain. And, uh, may- maybe, maybe you’re asked to say the same sentence while you’re in pain and while you’re not in pain after the drug, and we get some sort of neural network to compare the two.
Speaker 3
Which is a step further on that point I was thinking.
Speaker 2
Okay.
Speaker 3
Yeah. Yeah, mine was more simple, like we just, on top of the voice, we add layers of sounds that you can… You have clarity on, on the description. It’s almost like reading a journal and, like, you’re describing-
Speaker 1
Oh. Oh, yeah
Speaker 3
… something.
Speaker 1
Actually-
Speaker 3
And then there’s moments that there’s clarity, and then there’s moments that there’s, like, stuff that suffocated somehow or, or something like that. It’s very literal, but-
Speaker 2
Are you talking about what? About which deliverable now?
Speaker 3
Just thought.
Speaker 2
Okay.
Speaker 3
This is just a thought about the sound, I guess. Maybe it relates back to what you were saying previously about the self and like-
Speaker 1
The self thing, yeah
Speaker 3
… what kind of self?
Speaker 1
Yeah, that’s what I was gonna say, is I think, I think taking someone’s voice and using it somehow in the generation of the sound is interesting, just from, like, a personalization perspective.
Speaker 3
But there, there is… I am a bit skeptical because it, it, it adds a layer of being very literal about it.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 3
Like-
Speaker 2
Yeah, [clears throat] but we don’t necessarily need to use their voice as it is. We could process it and extract some information from it, or use it as a signal as well.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
Not just the voice. Um, also something we need to remember regarding the live stuff, for these people, it’s not fun, it’s not entertainment. Like, it’s also a bit weird to ask someone that’s in proper pain to come for shit and giggles.
Speaker 3
It’s not, it’s not the same- It’s not the same, like, I want to believe that it’s not the same. Like, chronic pain is not like I broke my leg.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 3
I want to believe that it’s not the same amount of pain that… I, I agree that it’s not entertainment. I just want to say that it’s probably not as, as excruciating as we might think.
Speaker 2
Yeah, y- yeah, but still, you’re making a piece of entertainment for the audience, and the focus of that entertainment is someone who is in pain.
Speaker 3
I don’t want to think of it as entertainment. FCB might, [chuckles] but, um-
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
Uh-
Speaker 1
I mean, they’re on-
Speaker 2
Y- y- it’s… You’re going there for the reason you’re going to a performance.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
It’s a performance.
Speaker 3
You’re going there to experience how pain sounds.
Speaker 2
W- Yeah, but-
Speaker 3
Well, what you’re saying invalidates the, the live bit entirely then.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 3
Okay.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
I’m, I’m just thinking out loud. Just want to-
Speaker 1
I think their whole idea is, like, people with chronic pain are gonna want to go to the pharmacy to get this drug. When they’re getting this drug, if someone was to say to you-… do you wanna hear what your pain sounds like now versus after the drug? Would you, would you agree to that or not? Like, would that be of interest? And then we’re into the whole subjective, like, does anyone actually give a shit? Which we can’t really define, but-
Speaker 3
Probably not. They just want the drugs. [chuckles]
Speaker 1
Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, that’s the thing, and, uh, uh, I think we just need to be as sensitive as possible when it comes to, like… There are so many different types of chron- I know they call it persistent pain, but yeah, like chronic pain sufferers, there are gonna be people that, like, feel like they have chronic pain, but it doesn’t actually affect their life too much. There’s gonna be people who can’t work and, like, are basically housebound because they’re constantly in, in pain. So yeah, I don’t know. It’s kind of not really up to us to decide how to navigate that. Um, I think I’ve maybe, maybe we’re starting to think about territory that we’re better off ignoring and being like, “Look, if you guys want to do the live demos, we’ll produce a system that takes X and turns it into Y, but we’re not getting involved in the, the ethics of how you’re bringing these people in or the way that you’re presenting it.” Um, and maybe we should just focus on, like, we’re interested in how we measure s- we measure pain and the whole recording the input element, but we don’t know how, or we don’t have the equipment to do that. What we do have the ability to do is take the output from those measurements and turn them into a artistic representation of-
Speaker 2
Yeah
Speaker 1
… those signals.
Speaker 2
Yeah. And, um, just to reiterate what we said earlier, the more I think about it, the more, uh, I convince myself that we need a very accurate/complete context, um, that surrounds the recordings. So when… We need to know what was happening when that peak or that thing, that feature appeared in the signal. Um, if we don’t have that information, I think it becomes much harder to meaningfully create a story.
Speaker 1
But the most, the most important thing or the, the, the event that we’re interested in, in terms of the input, is how does it change from before drug to after drug? We’re not interested in pinching someone and seeing a signal or, like, breaking someone’s leg and seeing a signal. We’re interested in what does it look like before and what does it look like after.
Speaker 2
Y- yeah, but, but also, like you said on the text, we’re interested in, in this, um, all these subtleties of pain before when they took the drug.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
Like, how, how do they experience it w- when they were waking up? How do they experience it when they were trying to think or talk or exercise, you know? Uh, I, I know that when I have a headache, certain things-
Speaker 1
Makes sense
Speaker 2
… make the headache shooting, and then certain things calm it down.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
Uh, so we want that backstory and not just the transition period.
Speaker 1
Yeah, that’s-
Speaker 3
But we need the backstories to create the, the sound.
Speaker 2
Yeah. I’m talking about the sound now, about the system, not the live. I moved away from the live.
Speaker 3
Yeah, yeah, no, I know. I mean-
Speaker 1
Yeah. Yeah, no, it’s, uh, it’s true. We need to…
Speaker 2
Um, so whatever, whatever they do, we need a way for them to signal or record what they were doing when a record- when some, some marker appeared. Um, and, uh, Alana had this, uh, thing, um, it was monitoring your heart rate at some point, right?
Speaker 3
Yeah, it’s a h- a Holter device.
Speaker 2
A Holter. So for a day, you put the thing in your finger?
Speaker 1
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 3
No, it’s not in your finger.
Speaker 2
Where is… Yeah, it’s here.
Speaker 3
You have electrical probes.
Speaker 2
But you had something on your finger, no?
Speaker 3
No, nothing. You’re confusing it with something else.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 3
No, this is just to-
Speaker 2
Yeah, you had all these things here
Speaker 3
… to monitor, like, arrhythmia or whatever.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 3
And together with that, you need to document, like, if, if something happens and you, you understand that something is not, does not feel, like, right. They gave me a piece of paper, and I had to document, “At this time, I felt this thing.”
Speaker 2
Yeah. So what if they had an app or a small device where when something happens, they could take a recording, like, you know, audio recording, they speak about it. They, “Oh, now I was trying to lift hmm than this.” So we have timestamp recordings of their self-report.
Speaker 1
So now-
Speaker 2
So they don’t have type because that’s annoying.
Speaker 1
It adds a d- it adds a duration to the experiment that, uh-… maybe complicates things. But yeah, I mean, we’re getting in- we’re definitely getting into the woods of like-
Speaker 2
Because they were saying, they were saying they want to record them for a full day without the drug, and then record them. Yeah, so that’s what I got from the conversation.
Speaker 1
Oh, I completely messed up there.
Speaker 2
Yeah. The, and because I remember them saying, “And then we bring them again with the drug,” something like that.
Speaker 1
Oh, shit. Okay. Yeah, well, I think we… Yeah, we should maybe position ourselves as, like, we need to understand the parameters of the experiment, and, like, we will- we can suggest ways in which we think the signals that we’re getting would be good. [chuckles] But we can’t be in charge of actually setting up this experiment and, like, I don’t know, we can advise on, like- [exhales]
Speaker 2
Oh.
Speaker 1
Yeah, I don’t know. It’s so difficult.
Speaker 2
I just thought a way to talk about the need for both the self-reporting and the signals is that self-reporting gives context to the data. Otherwise, the data can only tell you certain, certain, uh, neuron activations or-
Speaker 1
Oh, right.
Speaker 2
The average, the average of the neuron activations. You don’t know what was really happening. So unless someone tells you and, and gives you a, a description of their context, this data could be anything.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
Uh, and I, I think that, I think that’s a very convincing and logical argument.
Speaker 3
Yeah. Also, to come back to something they said, the, the thing about diagnosing what you have from the signals, like, like, that’s completely off the table.
Speaker 1
Yeah. [chuckles]
Speaker 3
Um, fuck no!
Speaker 2
Yeah, what the fuck?
Speaker 1
Yeah, there’s like… He’s like, “We still use this smiley face chart to diagnose pain.” [chuckles] Yeah, because no one’s come up with anything fucking better, and, like, some fuck— some American marketers are not gonna be the people to-
Speaker 2
[chuckles]
Speaker 3
Diagnose what the fuck you have
Speaker 1
… to change that.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 1
Um.
Speaker 2
It’s some illusion.
Speaker 3
It’s also-
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 3
It’s very important for… My mom, she’s a dentist, and, like, I had a tooth that was achy, and she couldn’t find anything wrong with it, like, from imaging or whatever, or looking at it, examining it. And she told me… I, I told her, “Okay, then it, it might must be, you know, something in my mind.” And she said, “No, when the patient is in pain, you always have to respect that and figure out why it’s happening.” Like, it’s, you know, it’s not that I can’t put data to it, so you’re not in pain.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 3
It’s like, if you say you’re in pain-
Speaker 1
You’re in pain
Speaker 3
… you’re definitely in pain, and as a doctor, I have to respect that.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 3
So it’s, the self-reporting is very important. That, that’s my point. Like it’s-
Speaker 2
Okay, yeah.
Speaker 1
I think the, I think the only thing about the self-reporting, uh, they’re not necessarily saying that it’s not important or is not valid. I think they were saying, like, self-reporting in itself is limited by people’s ability to speak English, or it has, it has biases to it, which means that, like, some people might-
Speaker 3
What does English have to do with it?
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 3
Like, in every country, they speak the language that they report pain, too.
Speaker 2
Last week on Fucking Translator. [chuckles]
Speaker 1
Oh, yeah, but I mean, that’s what they were saying, right? It was like, I don’t know, people’s diagnosis of, of their pain is limited by their ability to describe it.
Speaker 2
Yeah, of course.
Speaker 1
Um, therefore-
Speaker 2
Um
Speaker 1
… therefore, having this magical sound system that can just tell you what pain they’re in would be better, but the issue is it’s magical, and- [chuckles]
Speaker 2
I think a, a big question is, uh, how repeatable these experiments can be. For example, the same person being measured with the same type of pain, will we get kind of the same patterns?
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
And when they take the painkiller, these patterns are not there, and then, then when, you know, the next day they don’t have the drug, we get- we see the same patterns emerge. Is it like that? Like, two people with a very similar injury, for example, which causes them chronic pain, will we get similar signals at all or not? Because if not, it ca- it can definitely not be used to, um, diagnose anything. Like, if you get two people with a back injury, same spot, they’re both in a lot of pain, and we get completely different graphs, then we’re talking about only personalizing-
Speaker 3
That is-
Speaker 2
… not the general.
Speaker 3
That is probably what’s gonna happen.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 3
Or actually, I thought, I thought of something else, like, because we don’t, we don’t have experiences of chronic pain, we don’t really know what it’s like, but I imagine that to a certain degree, you get used to having it. So it’s not really, it’s not really the-
Speaker 2
Yeah
Speaker 3
… pain itself that you’re, y- you experience. It’s, it’s more about different conditions that might affect your tolerance to that pain you’re used to.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 3
So it might not even be about the pain itself and, like, the new, the nerves that are experiencing, because maybe that, that’s constant.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 3
It’s more about what change, like, I don’t know, I walked out in the cold, and my back hurts, something like that. So the conditions probably also matter a lot in this type of pain.
Speaker 2
Yeah, context.
Speaker 3
Yeah.
Speaker 1
Yeah, that’s true. Well, I mean, I think we can, we can go back to them fairly safely and say, “Well, I don’t know, we need to do a bit more research, perhaps, but-… there’s- we- you can’t measure pain like we can measure temperature. There’s no, there’s no measurement for that. The only stuff that you can measure is stuff that implies pain, like you’re stressed, your heart rate’s elevated, y- your EEG signal looks like God knows what, if that’s even a thing, and this is where the doctors need to tell us. So because we can’t directly measure pain, I don’t know if we can… All we can say is that this sound is a interpretation of the stuff that we can measure, and if that therefore reflects the pain that these people are experiencing, then great. But-
Speaker 2
But what we can say is that although we cannot measure it directly, we can correlate the signals with what people are reporting at the same time.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 3
Yeah.
Speaker 2
So at least we can, uh, we can know what the signals look like when-
Speaker 1
Yeah
Speaker 2
… the people themselves reported pain.
Speaker 1
And cru- and crucially for them, we can see if these signals change, having had the drug.
Speaker 2
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1
And again, we can correlate that with what these people say. So I think we need to tell them that the self-reporting, in our view, is still very important because it validates or correlates the signals we’re getting. The signals aren’t directly measured, but the signals aren’t a direct measurement of pain, but they are indicative of pain.
Speaker 2
Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1
Do those signals change before and after? Who the fuck knows? We need to find out. Now, the campaign is inevitably gonna say, Tyla lol are incredibly brave and amazing because they’ve taken on this experimental project, and they’re willing to see if it works or not.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 1
We need to gauge actually what is the client’s appetite for [chuckles] doing something genuinely experimental, which may turn around and say, “We measured these signals. They’re not a direct measurement of pain, but they are indicative of it. They were this before the drug, and they were this after the drug.” You guys decide what to do with that. [chuckles]
Speaker 3
Yes.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 1
Um, okay. Well, I think we’ve got- I’m gonna put this into the transcription, and we’ll have a fuckload of… [chuckles]
Speaker 2
Can, uh, can we get, like, a, a proper who said what?
Speaker 1
Don’t know. I would probably have to pay for that. I’ve just recorded it as an OBS recording, and then previously I’ve just put that into, like, a transcription thing and then done sum-
Speaker 2
Yeah
Speaker 1
… done summaries of that transcription.
Speaker 3
Yeah.
Speaker 1
But, um, I think it gives us a lot of good content to use for the updating the treatment. Um, whether this treatment is gonna be a [chuckles] like a pitch for us to do the project or, like, more of an interrogation of the validity of the project, I don’t know. ‘Cause we-
Speaker 2
Yeah, I have this, um, maybe, maybe stupid belief, but it’s a belief, uh, if you’re honest about the challenge of the project, you come across as more serious.
Speaker 1
Yeah, 100%.
Speaker 2
And be good.
Speaker 1
I’m with you on that.
Speaker 2
Um, right. Good chat. I enjoyed it.
Speaker 1
Yeah, it’s, it’s interesting. I came in much more naively optimistic about the project-
Speaker 2
[chuckles]
Speaker 1
… and once you start talking about the problems, you’re like, “Ah, fuck, actually this is- [chuckles]
Speaker 2
[chuckles]
Speaker 1
… uh, easy to get wrapped up in the cool, artistic, philosophical framing of-
Speaker 2
The, the thing it, it’s up to them how loose they’re willing to lose. And of course, with enough faster risks, we can do really great things.
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Speaker 2
But then it needs to be, uh, portrayed in the appropriate way.
END
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