My good friend Josh Pollen is one-third of food design studio Blanch and Shock, who meld sustainable, local and seasonal food with an exotic array of chemical practices.

He has just returned from the Nordic Food Lab, the sea-faring research adjunct of Noma, at which he has been developing culinary techniques that make of insects: cockroaches, locusts, woodlice, and more. The resulting dishes were served at the Wellcome Collection Pestival event, with some beautiful results.

In more relaxed surroundings, I was surprised to find that unadorned black ants make a tangy and remarkably moreish accompaniment to a beer.

Josh documents his food work on Infinite Slice, a tumblr that is as visually rich as it is hunger-inducing. There is a satisfying tension between the overgrowth of wild meat and foliage, and the clean lines and labelled zip-lock bags of the preparation process, reflecting the order that we impose in striving to understand the teeming world around us.

More: Infinite Slice

Mark Newman is a physicist and mathematician whose research is focused on the structure of complex networks, from epidemiology to social relationships. The below diagram is taken from his 2000 paper on scientific coauthorship networks, and is a wonderful illustration of the small-world model (as famously typified in Erdös and Bacon numbers).

As well as his prolific research output, Newman is also co-author of The Atlas of the Real World, which distorts the standard Mercator projection to illustrate localized weightings of various statistics. It's not the most aesthetically enduring of techniques, but is effective in its aims. The HIV prevalence map, with its flattened upper hemisphere, is particularly haunting.

O'Reilly Radar reports that the 'sizzle' sound of mp3 artefacts is becoming increasingly preferred by music listeners. Yes, preferred; in listening tests performed annually over 6 years, listeners have increasingly rated songs with low-bitrate mp3 compression above those that a higher rate.

The author suggests that this is akin to vinyl listeners preferring the crackle of wax over the cleanness of digital recordings — though I have always figured that the vinyl preference is less subjective and more to do with its innate warmth and high-frequency rolloff. The "hot dog at the ball park" analogy is compelling, however, and there's undeniably something comforting about (say) the compression of FM radio when indoors on a cold winter's night, or listening to a cassette through a battered pair of headphones. It's not inconceivable that the mp3 sizzle could be headed for the same fate.

Zane Berzina is a Latvian researcher working across the boundaries of textiles, electronics and theory to produce beautiful physical artefacts, with a strong focus on the design and production processes. Her recent practice, at LCF, manifest itself in a series of investigations using the skin as an analogy for textile surfaces to create "polysensual, therapeutic and interactive environments". She's now based at Goldsmiths, with links to the Constance Howard Resource and Research Centre in Textiles.

Her current work is, on display at the Science Museum's Dana Centre (last day today!), exposes the pervasive forces and potential of electrostatic in fabrics: E-Static Shadows.

It's the product of a two-year research project which is beautifully documented on her website. For those around London, there's a talk tonight exploring the issues surrounding this research:

How can electrostatic energy enhance the sensory experience of our surroundings? Join designer Zane Berzina, architect Jackson Tan and material scientist Mark Miodownik in our e-static shadows installation to talk future textiles. Explore the invisible forces of electrostatics in this night of playful interactions.

More information here.

Research from Cornell University, and published in this month's Science (requires subscription), indicates that there is purpose behind the mosquito's buzz besides keeping its human neighbours awake at night: male and female mosquitoes induce harmonic convergence within the frequency spectra of their hums as part of their mating practice. Contradicting earlier research which suggests that males have a highly limited hearing range whilst females are entirely deaf, both sexes were shown to modulate their buzzing frequencies to enter into harmonic love-making.

More info, and video, on Wired's Not Rocket Science.

Tomorrow (January 31st) at Goldsmiths University, Joe Banks of Disinformation is talking on Rorschach audio and the tendency to romanticize and creatively inflate perceived EVP phenomena:

“Rorschach Audio” offers the primary hypothesis that an understanding of the relevant aspects of psychoacoustics provides a complete explanation for most EVP recordings, and a secondary hypothesis that an informed understanding of these processes is as important to understanding the emergent field of sound art as studies of optical illusions have historically been to understanding visual art.

Next month (February 22nd), Experiment 1 Arts Collective present Flesh and Flame, a night of performance art, music, sculpture and flesh, taking place at Corsica Studios in Elephant. It looks to be a great night, and tickets are half price until the end of January.