Plutonic Rainbows

Today, the backend was improved to accurately merge Live and Forecast solar data by aligning entries based on the Period End timestamp and using pandas’ mask method to replace missing values. This resolved the issue of NaN values in the API responses, ensuring that both live and forecast estimates are correctly combined.

Additionally, the frontend React components were updated to handle the revised data structure, allowing the dashboard to display complete and accurate solar energy information. As a result, the dashboard now successfully integrates and presents both live and forecast data without any errors.

I implemented an interactive and organized display of solar forecast data using a react-table in the React frontend, integrating it with a Flask backend API. My intention is for the project to demonstrate a scalable approach to data presentation within a React-based dashboard.

• Installed and configured the react-table library within the React environment to enable an efficient, organized display of forecast data in a tabular format.

• Developed the SolarForecast component to handle API requests, fetching data from the Flask backend, parsing the JSON response, and structuring it into a table.

• Managed and resolved React-specific challenges related to hooks, ensuring that useEffect, useMemo, and useTable hooks complied with React’s functional component standards and order of execution.

• Displayed the solar forecast data in a straightforward, user-friendly table on the dashboard, aiming to make key data points more accessible and clear.

• Conducted end-to-end testing of data flow by running both the React and Flask servers, confirming that the frontend accurately retrieved and displayed data from the backend API.

• Established a step-by-step procedure to restart and run the project from the terminal, ensuring ease of access and operability for future use.

Hopefully, this lays the groundwork for potential enhancements, such as dynamic filtering, data sorting, or even live data updates, thereby extending the dashboard’s functionality and user engagement.

With a shorter workday than usual, I completed my tasks ahead of schedule, allowing me to begin preliminary work on integrating React into the project. To ensure a systematic approach, I have outlined the components successfully configured thus far.

• Created a React project using create-react-app. Configured package.json with a proxy to allow API requests to the Flask backend.

• Set up a Flask server with an endpoint (/api/solar_forecast) to serve solar forecast data. Used flask-cors to enable Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS), allowing requests from the React frontend.

• Created a SolarForecast.js component in React to fetch and display data from the Flask backend. Verified the data was being fetched and displayed correctly in the React app, troubleshooting CORS issues until resolved.

• Addressed issues with CORS errors by adjusting Flask’s CORS configuration. Ensured the React and Flask servers were running on separate ports and connected correctly. Utilized browser Developer Tools to check for errors and verify data fetching.

• Displayed solar forecast data on the Solar Energy Project Dashboard in the React app. Verified the entire setup to confirm that both servers were functioning and communicating as expected.

This latest work is a collaborative durational work by musician Sarah Davachi and filmmaker Dicky Bahto, both based in Los Angeles. With a performance/running time of three hours, it invites the audience to shift their concentration and perception through gradual changes in sound and image. This piece was originally commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and received its premiere performance in September 2023.

You need patience and concentration for this one. Davachi splits the lengthy piece into three parts, opening with tape-dubbed string loops that she almost imperceptibly intermingles with woolly, wavering synth drones. It's music that's made for the deepest possible listening, following in the stead of work by Pauline Oliveros, or arch minimalists Éliane Radigue and Phil Niblock. And although we've not seen Bahto's accompanying film, the sound gives us at least some indication of its direction: slow, secretive and ineffably elegant. Over the course of an hour, the first part delicately progresses, absorbing different tones and textures as it grows. The solemn strings eventually disappear completely, and barely audible organ phrases appear in the far distance, suspended beneath Davachi's almost choral drones.

The second act is even more haunted, initially a soft-edged palpitation made from lower-case oscillations that twists and turns, heaving into the breathy middle section where Davachi introduces brassier, more hypnotic sounds. Warmed up by tape-y saturation, the pliant drones beat and throb with microscopic complexity, taking their time to excite quieted rhythms that only emerge after a listen or two. Eventually, the moody string loops that appeared at the beginning of the first segment seem to make a slight return, warbling into the foggy synths.

And it's these grazed, ferric murmurs that introduce us to 'Part III', in time joined by giddy resonant whirrs that almost overrun the entire spectrum. Davachi offers obscured callbacks to the rest of the piece throughout, while retaining our attention with swooning mesmeric tweaks and textures. In the central section, she almost creates an orchestral swell from her minimal electronic setup, and by its conclusion, drifts the composition towards the heavens with nebulous celestial wails.