After Nature: The Arts of the Machine

Call for debate on killer robots

2009-08-04T10:53:00.001+02:00

By Jason Palmer
Science and technology reporter, BBC News

An international debate is needed on the use of autonomous military robots, a leading academic has said.
Noel Sharkey of the University of Sheffield said that a push toward more robotic technology used in warfare would put civilian life at grave risk.
Technology capable of distinguishing friend from foe reliably was at least 50 years away, he added.
However, he said that for the first time, US forces mentioned resolving such ethical concerns in their plans.
"Robots that can decide where to kill, who to kill and when to kill is high on all the military agendas," Professor Sharkey said at a meeting in London.
"The problem is that this is all based on artificial intelligence, and the military have a strange view of artificial intelligence based on science fiction."

More.

EYE OF THE STORM - AN INTERDISCIPLINARY CONFERENCE ON SCIENTIFIC CONTROVERSY

2009-05-03T12:05:00.000+02:00

EYE OF THE STORM - AN INTERDISCIPLINARY CONFERENCE ON SCIENTIFIC CONTROVERSY, 19 / 20 June 2009, Tate Britain, Millbank, London SW1, UK. EYE OF THE STORM aims to explore a range of controversies, from esoteric arguments between physicists over the structure of the universe, to disputes about the causes of species decline and climate change, and highly charged public controversies around the use of stem cells and the distribution of genetically modified organisms. When heated debates around the challenge of climate change have shown how abstruse uncertainties within a scientific community can be amplified and distorted to challenge the whole notion of human-caused greenhouse warming, EYE OF THE STORM sets out to examine the relationship between scientific uncertainty and public controversies around science.

RECLAIMING THE ENLIGHTENMENT

2009-05-03T12:04:00.000+02:00

Nobel symposium: RECLAIMING THE ENLIGHTENMENT
Onsdagen den 20 maj 2009, kl.14.30-18 (inkl. paus)
Lokal: Börssalen, Källargränd 4, 2 tr., Gamla Stan, Stockholm
Föredragshållare: Stephen Bronner, Professor of Political Science, Comparative Literature and German Studies, Rutgers University, NJ
Titel: RECLAIMING THE ENLIGHTENMENT - THEN AND NOW
Föredragshållare: Barbara Taylor, Professor of Modern History, University of East London
Titel: ENLIGHTENMENT AND THE USES OF WOMAN
Föredragshållare: Robert Bernasconi, Professor of Philosophy, University of Memphis
Titel: DISINGENIOUS DISENLIGHTENMENT
Moderator: Marie-Christine Skuncke, Professor i Litteraturvetenskap, Uppsala universitet
The aim of this symposium is to encourage a critical discussion of the legacy of the Enlightenment from the perspectives of ethnicity, gender, religion and politics. -- Stephen Bronners intresseområde är politisk teori. Han har bl.a. skrivit böckerna: Moments of decision: Political history and the crises of radicalism (1991); Of critical theory and its theorists (1994); Reclaiming the enlightenment: Toward a politics of radical engagement (2004). Barbara Taylors forskningsinriktning är "upplysningens kvinnor" och hur den sociala och ekonomiska utvecklingen över tid verkat ur ett genusperspektiv. Hon har bl.a. skrivit och/eller redigerat: Eve and the new Jerusalem: Socialism and feminism in the 19th century (1983, 1993); Mary Wollstonecraft and the feminist imagination (2003); Women, gender and enlightenment (2005). Robert Bernasconi forskar om rasbegreppet och dess historia. Han har skrivit och/eller redigerat i urval: The idea of race (2000); Concepts of race in the eighteenth century (2001); Race and racism in continental philosophy (2003). Marie-Christine Skunckes forskningsintresse är Svenskt 1700-tal i europeiskt perspektiv, fursteuppfostran, politisk retorik och mediehistoria. Hon har under det nya millenniet redigerat i urval: Riksdag, kaffehus och predikstol: Frihetstidens politiska kultur 1766-1772 (2003); Media and Political Culture in the Eighteenth Century (2005). -- Föranmälan till alt. 08-534 818 18

CfP: ARCHIBOTS : Intelligent and Adaptable Built Environments

2009-04-26T18:23:00.001+02:00

CfP: ARCHIBOTS : Intelligent and Adaptable Built Environments
An International Workshop on Architectural Robotics at Ubicomp 2009

date and venue: September 30, 2009 in Orlando, Florida at Ubicomp 2009.
workshop URL: www.archibots.org
papers due: 5pm EST on June 25, 2009 (see below)
organizers: Keith Evan Green (Clemson U.) and Mark Gross (Carnegie Mellon
U.)

call: Robotics embedded in our built environment will increasingly support
and augment everyday work, school, entertainment, and leisure activities in
an increasingly digital society. A full-day workshop offering at Ubicomp,
the International Conference on Ubiquitous
Computing, Archibots aims
to identify opportunities and challenges in research and education in the
emerging area of Architectural Robotics - intelligent and adaptable
physical environments at all scales. For Archibots 2009, we seek position
papers representing diverse perspectives from the extended ubicomp community
exploring possibilities and defining an agenda for Architectural Robotics
for the year 2019 and beyond. Workshop participants will discuss these
perspectives and then, in teams, sketch short videos to envision possible
futures. The collected videos of the workshop are intended to stream to the
Video Program of the conference. The organizers plan to publish selected
position papers as an edited book or a special issue of a journal, and also
further relations with industry and allied disciplines.

scope: We solicit position papers envisioning opportunities and challenges
for Architectural Robotics to support and enhance human needs and desires,
including, but not limited to:
specific applications (e.g., work, health, play, elderly, disabled,
children).
re-configurable and modular robotics in buildings, public places,
furniture...
sociological and psychological implications of architectural robotics.
programming buildings that sense, infer, and respond to human needs.
intelligent building structures and systems with embedded robotics.
the software and hardware infrastructure needed to realize archibots.
teaching and learning architectural robotics.
We encourage papers that go beyond a mere presentation of accomplished
works; instead, we seek contributions to this emerging field that openly
communicat e techniques, methods and assemblies of architectural robotics
and, more broadly, the challenges and prospects of architectural robotics
which we recognize as technical, social and aesthetic.

submissions: Paper submissions must be formatted according to the Ubicomp
supplementary proceedings template and submitted in PDF to both
kegreen@clemson.edu and
mdgross@cmu.edu no later than 5pm EST on June 25,
2009. Papers must not exceed 6 pages and 10MB, including abstract, all
figures, and references. Each submission should have one designated author
who will participate in the conference, should the submission be accepted.
[The organizers acknowledge support for this workshop from the U.S. National
Science Foundation.]

Artist gets an extra ear implanted into his arm

2009-04-14T07:47:00.000+02:00

Helen Pidd
The Guardian, Tuesday 14 April 2009

A man with 3 ears at the Edinburgh Science Festival. Performance artist Stelios Arcadiou, known as Stelarc, says his extra ear, made of human cartilage, is an augmentation of the body's form. Photograph: Murdo Macleod

A man with three ears will appear at Edinburgh Napier University today to talk about his "extra" ear, which has been surgically implanted on to his forearm.

Australian performance artist Stelios Arcadiou, known as Stelarc, had the third ear created from cells in a lab in 2006. At the Edinburgh Science International Festival today, Stelarc will discuss his plans to install transmitters in his new ear, so people listen to what it is hearing online. He also hopes to grow a soft earlobe using his own stem cells.

The ear is made of human cartilage. Stelarc, who is visiting professor at Brunel University School of Arts, took 10 years to find a surgeon willing to perform the operation. He uses medical instruments, prosthetics, robotics, virtual reality and the internet in his work.

Ear it is.

Art, literature and copyright in the age of digital reproduction

2008-12-03T09:05:00.000+01:00

The Valand Seminar for Advanced Art Theory # 10
In collaboration with The Department of Literary Composition, Poetry and Prose

Theme: Art, literature and copyright in the age of digital reproduction

Guest: Rasmus Fleischer, copyriot.se, Piratbyrån, phd student in contemporary history

Date: Dec 2nd, 2008, Tuesday, 2 pm – 5 pm.

Site: Valand School of Fine Arts, University of Gothenburg, Sweden

Room: Endre Nemes.

Pre-reading: Lawrence Liang: "The Black and White (and Grey) of Copyright"
(Introduction to the book "A Guide To Open Content Licences")
http://pzwart.wdka.hro.nl/mdr/research/lliang/open_content_guide/02-chapter_1/

Felix Stalder: "The Stuff of Culture"
http://www.noemalab..org/sections/ideas/ideas_articles/pdf/stalder_stuff_culture.pdf

Michel Foucault: "Author Function"
http://oil21.org/txt/Michel%20Foucault%20-%20Author%20Function.txt

Eva Hemmungs Wirtén's paper is also online:
http://www.abm.uu.se/evahw/Outofsight.pdf

Eva Hemmungs Wirtén's paper is also online:
http://www.abm.uu.se/evahw/Outofsight.pdf

Rasmus Fleischer: "The future of copyright" (never mind its context):

http://www.cato-unbound.org/2008/06/09/rasmus-fleischer/the-future-of-copyright/

Rasmus Fleischer: "Untitled 23"

For the last text, please contact Fredrik Svensk: fredriksvensk@yahoo.se; fredrik.svensk@valand.gu.se

Schedule:

14:00 Introduction: Mats Kolmisoppi & Fredrik Svensk
14:15 Lecture: Rasmus Fleischer
15:30 Discussion, moderators: Mats Kolmisoppi & Fredrik Svensk
16:00 Break
16:20 End discussion
17:00 End

Smile And Robot Smiles With You

2008-11-14T08:38:00.001+01:00

From Sky News:

British scientists have come up with the first robot that can mimic a person's expressions simply by watching their face.

Jules, the robot with the human face
Humanoid 'Jules' is a disembodied androgynous robotic head that automatically copies the movement and expressions of a human face. The technology works using 10 stock human emotions - for instance happiness, sadness, concern - that have been programmed into the robot. The software then maps what it sees to Jules' face to combine expressions instantly to mimic those being shown by a human subject. Controlled only by its own software, Jules can grin and grimace, furrow its brow, and 'speak' as the software translates real expressions observed through video camera 'eyes'.

More.

Fail better

2008-11-12T11:36:00.001+01:00

Thanks to Charlie Stern for this too:

What makes a good writer? Is writing an expression of self, or, as TS Eliot argued, 'an escape from personality'? Do novelists have a duty? Do readers? Why are there so few truly great novels? Zadie Smith on literature's legacy of honourable failure

Zadie Smith
Published Saturday January 13, 2007 in The Guardian

More.

Labours of love

2008-11-10T14:59:00.001+01:00

The Guardian, Saturday February 2 2008

It takes 10,000 hours of practice to become a skilled carpenter or musician - but what makes a true master? Richard Sennett on the craftsman in us all.

Rives: A 3-minute story of mixed emoticons

2008-11-02T11:57:00.000+01:00

Thanks to Willow for this reference.

SMS enabled freestyle rap

2008-10-31T08:31:00.001+01:00

Thanks to Charlie Stern for this follow-up to Group 2's "Authenticity" project:

eMCee Tee eX Tee

… BRAND NEW !!! SMS enabled freestyle rap! Sneak Preview from my studio!
Working with The 1shanti, we gathered together some of New Yorks finest MC’s to take your input live on the fly and kick it out in their voice. MC’s are fed a text message then they freestyle, then they are fed another message and so on, eventually handing off the mic to another MC keeping the flow fresh. Think about it, how much would McCain love to deliver his speeches with Obama’s charisma and voice. Well come see your message dropped on the crowd in the voice of some of NYC’s bravest MC’s.

Check it out.

Intersections

2008-10-27T10:03:00.002+01:00

Manchester Metropolitan University, MIRIAD
2 - 4 April 2009

Segues: Corporeal Theory, Site-Writing, e-Materiality
Penny Florence, Slade, UCL
Marsha Meskimmon, Loughborough University M.G.Meskimmon@lboro.ac.uk
Jane Rendell, Bartlett, UCL

This session seeks to explore a specific intersection within the interdisciplinary territory that constitutes art historical enquiry, namely, the encounter between art history and ‘practice-led’ research. Arguably, the segue between these adjacent fields opens up a range of significant questions, from the politics of form to the limits of interdisciplinarity itself.

It is also a timely encounter; as art historians increasingly turn to contemporary practice, engaging with multi-medial works and multi-modal forms of knowledge, practitioners (defined in the broadest sense) are materialising theory in and though the processes of making. This mutual constitution of the territory of arts research by historians/theorists and practitioners is changing the mechanisms by which domains of knowledge are constructed, interrogated and validated.

The session invites papers/presentations that engage productively with these questions and that seek themselves to develop this particular interdisciplinary intersection through specific practices – whether these are modes of writing, forms of critical enquiry, sites of intervention, practices of intermediation or other, as yet unimagined, configurations of critical aesthetics.

For more info please go to http://www.aah.org.uk/conference/2009session19.php

The deadline for abstracts is 10 November 2009.

Art & technology... (Alberto's links)

2008-10-26T19:15:00.001+01:00

Here, writes Alberto, is some old fashion a&t:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUQBCHkg7GA&feature=related
reccomended documentary on Erkki: http://icarusfilms.com/new2004/fut.html

http://www.9evenings.org
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoxuzPPstXc

http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Jean_Tinguely.aspx

ORDER OF PLAY: THURSDAY 30 OCTOBER

2008-10-24T09:01:00.002+02:00

9.00: Meet at Vita Havet.

9.15-10.00: Group 1
10.15-11.00: Group 2
11.15.12.00: Group 3
13.15-14.00 Group 4

14.00: End.

Pablo will need to leave at 13.00 or 13.30 – so, if everybody has sufficient stamina, we could reduce the time on transitions between projects and run all four projects through before lunch instead, with a 20 minute break between Group 2 and Group 3.

MAKE magazine

2008-10-24T08:58:00.000+02:00

The first magazine devoted entirely to DIY technology projects, MAKE Magazine unites, inspires and informs a growing community of resourceful people who undertake amazing projects in their backyards, basements, and garages.

Here.

40,000 Not-Very-Easy Pieces

2008-10-24T08:40:00.001+02:00

By Boris Kachka
Published Mar 24, 2008 In New York Magazine

British artist-writer Graham Rawle resisted the idea of printing Woman’s World, a new novel about a possibly homicidal cross-dresser that consists entirely of phrases clipped from sixties women’s magazines, in collage form; he was concerned it might be taken for “a novelty rather than a novel.” He needn’t have been: Jean Doumanian decided to produce the movie without even knowing how the book had been constructed. Below, Rawle dissects page 209.

Read on.

Vitalism

2008-10-22T12:50:00.002+02:00

In Our Time: Melvyn Bragg and guests investigate the history of ideas.

On a dreary night in November 1818, a young doctor called Frankenstein completed an experiment and described it in his diary:

“I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet…By the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open…”

Frankenstein may seem an outlandish tale, but Mary Shelley wrote it when science was alive with ideas about what differentiated the living from the dead. This was Vitalism, a belief that living things possessed some spark of life, some vital principle that lifted them above dull matter. Electricity was a very real candidate.

Vitalists aimed at unlocking the secret of life itself and they raised questions about what life is that are unresolved to this day.

Listen to In Our Time (BBC podcast) on Vitalism here.

RTP Studio 1, 2 and 3 Crits

2008-10-22T10:27:00.003+02:00

Dates and times for final crits are now confirmed:

RTP Studio 1 begins 9.00 Wednesday 29 October. (SK+MA)
RTP Studio 2 begins 9.00 Thursday 30 October. (RH+AF)
RTP Studio 3 begins 10.00 Friday 31 October. (RJ+JB)

Where? Vita Havet.

S1, S2, and S3 (your usual seminar rooms) are also available if required.

There will be a public symposium on course themes 13.00-16.00 Friday 31st, followed by drinks. All welcome.

Where? Svarta Havet. Please spread this information to interested parties.

Sweden to help universities commercialize innovations

2008-10-22T09:59:00.001+02:00

Several colleges and universities in Sweden are to receive money to set up offices of innovation which will help researchers turn their discoveries into commercial enterprises.

The initiative will help researchers apply for patents and licences, promises higher education and research minister Lars Leijonborg, along with enterprise minister Maud Olofsson, in an article in the Svenska Dagbladet (SvD) newspaper.

“[Research] institutes play an important role as a link between research at academic institutions and companies. By increasing resources and strengthening organizations, we’re creating the conditions for internationally competitive institutes in Sweden,” write the two ministers.

Article in The Local.

EXHIBITION: FRONT MEETS DROOG

2008-10-20T17:30:00.002+02:00

“Conversation piece” by Front at Droog design.

A design speed dating dinner. All the guests moved one step at the table every 7th minutes and got a new conversation
partner. Questions were printed on the Table cloth and Plates to help to start the conversation.

(Sound familiar?!)

More.

ASSIGNMENT 3

2008-10-20T10:14:00.003+02:00

Keeping it Real: The Authenticity of Experience in Practice-Led Research

The field of practice-based research in art, craft and design places a strong emphasis on "experiential" knowledge – the practitioner's capacity to "reflect" on her experience in/as/through/of practice (see, for example, Michael Biggs "Learning from Experience" and Rolf Hughes "Experience and Communication".

This presupposes a reflective, creative individual – in short, a modern concept of an autonomous, originating 'self'. Could a system or a machine be capable of reflective practice? Can a machine – or a semi-autonomous system – be truly 'creative'? What if a national research council were to offer funding to a project proposal in "artistic research" that had been generated by an inhuman 'author'? With this third assignment, we want you to play the roles of human, machine, and evaluator in the Turing Test (see related references in the posts/links below) to investigate whether this emphasis on the authenticity of human experience and its expression in creative forms precludes the possibility of a 'post-human' researcher in practice-led art, craft and design research. In our scenario, you have two chances to attract up to 5 million RD (= Research Dollars, an imaginary currency roughly compatible with the Swedish kronor in value) from the funding agency which will be represented by Alberto, myself and invited guest crits; one attempt through posing a significant research question using the existing art, craft and design skills of your group, and the second attempt through devising a system capable of generating an "original" or "creative" design/art/craft artefact or process. You may (as we discussed on Thursday) present the outcome of the system or the system in action, but in either case be sure to document thoroughly every step of your research planning, design and execution. In order to ensure that participation is evenly spread across members of the different groups, every student is also asked to make available, on request, there own 'research journal' which documents this process, their contributions and the significance of the wider research questions posed and/or implied by their project.

The assignment therefore comprises three components and requirements:

1. By combining the existing art, craft and design skills within each interdisciplinary group, formulate a practice-led research proposal which investigates a theme of research significance beyond art, craft and design practice. (= Wetware component).

2. Design a system capable of generating questions/propositions/provocations of research significance and present this system (or a record of its outcomes) as 'authentic' research undertaken by a human practice-led research team. (= Hardware component).

3. Document your processes, research and methodologies via a blog or web site (one for each group) and be prepared to present orally a reflective and theoretically informed account of the significance of your project(s) – their achievements, limitations and/or failures (these too can be significant) – to your audience at the crit on Wednesday/Thursday (29th/30th October) of Week 44. (= Software component).

Based on a combination of your responses to the three requirements above, the 'research committee' (at present comprising Alberto and myself) will make a symbolic award of up to RD 5m to the group which we feel sets the most compelling research agenda, inspires the greatest faith in their ability to execute their investigation through their chosen methodologies, shows the greatest command of the tools and materials of art, craft and design in developing practice-led research, and is able most persuasively to communicate their research vision to an audience consisting not only of experts but also of the general public.

As always, Alberto and myself are available for discussion, consultation, advice etc. as required. Good luck!

The Alan Turing Home Page

2008-10-20T09:26:00.002+02:00

Maintained by Andrew Hodges
Author of Alan Turing: the Enigma.

A large website dedicated to Alan Turing (1912-1954)

The Turing Test (Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy)

2008-10-20T09:14:00.001+02:00

First published Wed Apr 9, 2003; substantive revision Tue May 13, 2008
The phrase “The Turing Test” is most properly used to refer to a proposal made by Turing (1950) as a way of dealing with the question whether machines can think. According to Turing, the question whether machines can think is itself “too meaningless” to deserve discussion (442). However, if we consider the more precise—and somehow related—question whether a digital computer can do well in a certain kind of game that Turing describes (“The Imitation Game”), then—at least in Turing's eyes—we do have a question that admits of precise discussion. Moreover, as we shall see, Turing himself thought that it would not be too long before we did have digital computers that could “do well” in the Imitation Game.

The phrase “The Turing Test” is sometimes used more generally to refer to some kinds of behavioural tests for the presence of mind, or thought, or intelligence in putatively minded entities. So, for example, it is sometimes suggested that The Turing Test is prefigured in Descartes' Discourse on the Method.

More.

The Ultimate Turing Test

2008-10-20T09:03:00.003+02:00

By David Barberi, 1992

What is the ultimate Turing Test?

In 1950 Alan Turing published his now famous paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence." In that paper he describes a method for humans to test AI programs. In its most basic form, a human judge sits at a computer terminal and interacts with the subject by written communication only. The judge must then decide if the subject on the other end of the computer link is a human or an AI program imitating a human.

Can Turings test be improved on? Yes. With current advances in computer graphics, virtual reality, biomechanics and many other fields, it is possible to create an "Enhanced" or "Virtual" Turing test. The underlying idea of the test is still the same, but the amount of interaction between judge and subject is increased greatly.

Read on.

Alan Turing: "Computing machinery and intelligence"

2008-10-20T08:58:00.001+02:00

I PROPOSE to consider the question, 'Can machines think?' This should begin with definitions of the meaning of the terms 'machine 'and 'think'. The definitions might be framed so as to reflect so far as possible the normal use of the words, but this attitude is dangerous. If the meaning of the words 'machine' and 'think 'are to be found by examining how they are commonly used it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the meaning and the answer to the question, 'Can machines think?' is to be sought in a statistical survey such as a Gallup poll. But this is absurd. Instead of attempting such a definition I shall replace the question by another, which is closely related to it and is expressed in relatively unambiguous words.

The new form of the problem can be described' in terms of a game which we call the 'imitation game'. It is played with three people, a man (A), a woman (B), and an interrogator (C) who may be of either sex. The interrogator stays in a room apart from the other two. The object of the game for the interrogator is to determine which of the other two is the man and which is the woman. He knows them by labels X and Y, and at the end of the game he says either 'X is A and Y is B' or 'X is B and Y is A'. The interrogator is allowed to put questions to A and B thus:

C: Will X please tell me the length of his or her hair?
Now suppose X is actually A, then A must answer. It is A's {p.434}object in the game to try and cause C to make the wrong identification. His answer might therefore be

'My hair is shingled, and the longest strands, are about nine inches long.'

In order that tones of voice may not help the interrogator the answers should be written, or better still, typewritten. The ideal arrangement is to have a teleprinter communicating between the two rooms. Alternatively the question and answers can be repeated by an intermediary. The object of the game for the third player (B) is to help the interrogator. The best strategy for her is probably to give truthful answers. She can add such things as 'I am the woman, don't listen to him!' to her answers, but it will avail nothing as the man can make similar remarks.

We now ask the question, 'What will happen when a machine takes the part of A in this game?'

Read on.

Machine takes on man at mass Turing Test

2008-10-20T08:16:00.000+02:00

Our reporter was among the judges struggling to tell the difference between human and computer-programmed conversation

by Will Pavia

Eugene Goostman is a 13-year-old boy from Odessa, Ukraine, the son of a talk-show host and a gynaecologist, who keeps a guinea pig called Bill in his bedroom and likes the science fiction novels of Sergei Lukyanenko and Kurt Vonnegut.

He is also a work of fiction, a software program written by a bio-scientist from St Petersburg and a finalist in a contest to find the world’s first thinking computer, staged yesterday at Reading University.

His task was to convince judges, in five minutes of conversation, that he was a human being who really had read Slaughterhouse Five and could plausibly shoot the breeze about it and any other topic under the sun.

I was one of those judges, and yesterday, I was fooled. I mistook Eugene for a real human being. In fact, and perhaps this is worse, he was so convincing that I assumed that the human being with whom I was simultaneously conversing was a computer.

More.

Bionic suit: the Iron Man cometh

2008-10-20T08:13:00.000+02:00

There is a new power in the land – a robotic suit that can multiply its wearer’s body strength tenfold

by
Tim Hornyak

The idea of possessing superhuman strength is a Hollywood staple. It is also a dream that audiences can’t seem to get enough of – witness the £300m-worth of tickets sold worldwide for Iron Man, starring Robert Downey Jr, over the summer. But while Iron Man’s rocket boots and built-in “repulsor rays” so far remain on the drawing board, a powered exoskeleton able to multiply its user’s strength tenfold has just become a reality.

Earlier this month, in a little noticed ceremony in Japan, the world’s first fully functioning robotic exoskeleton was launched. It is called the Hybrid Assistive Limb (HAL) system and will endow the wearer with abilities and strength he or she could previously only have dreamt of. As the scientists said at the launch – we are now officially in the age of the cyborg.

Read on.

Conceptual Paradise

2008-10-17T10:43:00.002+02:00

Monday 27 october
The film ‘Conceptual Paradise’ will be shown at Park cinema in Stockholm. The film is a documentary film with interviews giving an introduction to conceptual art and how it developed.

After the film there will be a panel discussion with the German filmmaker Stefan Römer and invited guests. The discussion will focus on how conceptual art has influenced design.

Includes interviews with:

Vito Acconci + Art & Language + Michael Asher +
John Baldessari + Robert Barry + Hartmut Bitomsky +
Mel Bochner + Gregg Bordowitz + Klaus vom Bruch +
Daniel Buren + Victor Burgin + Luis Camnitzer +
Jan Dibbets + Mark Dion + Sam Durant + Valie Export +
Stano Filko + Andrea Fraser + Liam Gillick + Dan Graham +
Renée Green + Shilpa Gupta + Hans Haacke +
Július Koller + Joseph Kosuth + Sonia Khurana +
David Lamelas + Sol LeWitt + Thomas Locher +
Marcel Odenbach + Yoko Ono + John Miller + Adrian Piper +
Yvonne Rainer + Allen Ruppersberg + Ed Ruscha +
Martha Rosler + Allan Sekula + Peter Weibel +
Lawrence Weiner + Stephen Willats + Heimo Zobernig

Beth Morris recommends...

2008-10-17T10:06:00.003+02:00

Thanks to Beth Morris for sending the following links and references:

"the crochet counterfeit project"

Celeste Christie's "small change project"

Also, this on the theme of hacking and DIY and systems that we have been covering:...

And the artist Packard Jennings

And the artist Stephanie Syjuco and her blog.

Thanks for sharing all these, Beth! Anyone else wishing to post influences/inspirations/curiosities etc related to the course themes, send details to me. Remember we have the 'open mike/open projector' slots free – if anyone would like to update me on the sign-up progress in S2 I will post details here.

THE CHICKEN APPEAL

2008-10-17T07:54:00.000+02:00

PUBLIC LECTURE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF GREENWICH

Tue 21 October 2008, 5.30pm

Koen Vanmechelen
THE CHICKEN APPEAL

Cross-breeding is the thing. We need to cross breed across the boundaries if we want the world not to perish. We need to think cosmopolitical. Nothing is as beautiful as joining with other cultures and take energy from this. (Koen Vanmechelen)

The first, primitive chicken, the 'Red Jungle Fowl', still lives near the Himalaya. In contrast with domesticated chickens the Red Jungle Fowl is monogamous. As the fowl still lives in the wild, monogamy may be even a stronger characteristic than the polygamous element. The 'super bastard' or Cosmopolitan Chicken is no return to the primitive fowl, but a new start. For his first cross-breeding Koen Vanmechelen chose the 'Mechelse Koekoek', the pride of Flemish chicken breeding and a relative in name to the artist. It was cross-bred in 1998 with the 'poulet de Bresse', a first-rate French chicken. Their cross-breeding, the 'Mechelse Bresse', was later cross-bred with the English 'Redcap'. This 'Mechelse Redcap', uniting Belgian, French and English nationalities was crossbred with the American 'Jersey Giant' …

Speaker: Koen Vanmechelen is one of today's artists who no longer choose just one medium to work in. His works range from highly expressive paintings and drawings, to photography, video, installations, works in glass and a 'recurring' wooden sculpture. What links all these different ways of expressing himself are the chicken and the egg. Over the years they have become an important symbol that has enabled the artist to make a connection to scientific, political, philosophical and ethical issues. The intricate system that he thus developed is the subject of the debates, conversations and lectures that the artist organizes or takes part in to shape his philosophical universe.
Vanmechelen current work can be divided in three main categories: Golem, the principle of the creating man, is the point of departure for the whole of his work. The Cosmopolitan Chicken Project (CCP) is the core of the artist's work, a breeding programme with chicken breeds from all over the world; the project draws attention to the crossing of borders and all its implications and calls, above all, for a mutual understanding. Medusa is the scientific part of the project and the collaborative think tank behind the CCP.
www.koen-vanmechelen.be

FREE

Venue:

University of Greenwich School of Architecture & Construction
Norbert Singer Lecture Theatre (M055)
Mansion Site, Avery Hill Campus
Bexley Road, Eltham
London SE9 2PQ

Lecture Series Programme 2008/09:
http://digitalstudio.gre.ac.uk/content/category/4/35/57/

Maps and travel directions:
http://digitalstudio.gre.ac.uk/content/view/167/37/

Further information:
Teresa Stoppani
t.stoppani@gre.ac.uk

Pablo Miranda/Army of Clerks

2008-10-16T21:55:00.000+02:00

Army of clerks explores generative and algorithmic approaches in architecture and design. Its rationale is the investigation of a computed and a computing architecture, one performed through algorithms instead of represented through drawings and projections. Army of clerks seeks a new type of architectural aesthetics which are no longer grounded on the architects privileged point of view, but on the relentless accumulation of unintelligent calculations, mindless arithmetics performed by computational armies of clerks.

More.

Welcome to Vernissage of Simon Key Bertmans Rugs.

2008-10-16T21:48:00.001+02:00

Wednesday 22 oktober 16-19 at Bruno Götgatsbacken Gallerian i Stockholm. Götgatan 36

“7 rugs based on statistics, rules and aesthetic qualities”

+ a special art-work from Sapporo in Japan. Made by Hiroko Tsuchimoto

The exibition ends at 28 of oktober. Open every day between 11-19.

Map here.

Architectural Prototypes: Modes of Design Development and Architectural Practice

2008-10-15T15:05:00.001+02:00

by Jonas Runberger

The licentiate thesis was defended at KTH School of Architecture in Stockholm on September 30th 2008 with opponent Michael Speaks (PhD, Dean College of Design, University of Kentucky). The thesis was passed, leading to a Technical Licentiate degree in Architecture.

The licentiate thesis is divided into two parts; the Contexts book and the Projects book. The two books are intertwined through a system of references, and are meant to be read together. The Contexts book explores contemporary discourses within the field of digital and projective design and new forms of architectural practice. The Projects book is based in design projects developed by the Jonas Runberger, often in collaboration with other architects, and traces a discourse based on advanced parametric design methods and architectural effects.

The thesis is printed in a limited and numbered edition of 125. A small number of copies will be available for sale shortly, please contact jonas (at) runberger.net for more details.

PDF version here. Online version here.

A MOVIE ABOUT CONCEPTUAL ART: Monday 27th October

2008-10-14T19:58:00.001+02:00

I'm going...EDG students and faculty are going....All welcome! /rolf

CONCEPTUAL PARADISE
by Stefan Römer

OKTOBER 27

BIOGRAFEN PARK

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TRAILER: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TblOOkzsAsY

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INTERVIEWS WITH :

Vito Acconci + Art & Language + Michael Asher +
John Baldessari + Robert Barry + Hartmut Bitomsky +
Mel Bochner + Gregg Bordowitz + Klaus vom Bruch +
Daniel Buren + Victor Burgin + Luis Camnitzer +
Jan Dibbets + Mark Dion + Sam Durant + Valie Export +
Stano Filko + Andrea Fraser + Liam Gillick + Dan Graham +
Renée Green + Shilpa Gupta + Hans Haacke +
Július Koller + Joseph Kosuth + Sonia Khurana +
David Lamelas + Sol LeWitt + Thomas Locher +
Marcel Odenbach + Yoko Ono + John Miller + Adrian Piper +
Yvonne Rainer + Allen Ruppersberg + Ed Ruscha +
Martha Rosler + Allan Sekula + Peter Weibel +
Lawrence Weiner + Stephen Willats + Heimo Zobernig

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TIME: 18.30

TICKETS: WWW.TICNET.SE

PRICE: 100 SEK

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AFTER THE SCREENING:

If the Conceptual Art strived to abandon the object, what is then
Conceptual Design?

Talk with Markus Degerman (Uglycute) and Stefan Römer
+ invited guests.

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PREFILM by Daniel Eatock

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Tickets also thru Stockholm Tourist Center, Sverigehuset,
or at your local ATG-kiosk.

Tickets will also be sold at place.

Be on time!

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An arrangement by Research and Development with support by IASPIS.

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WWW.CONCEPTUAL-PARADISE.COM

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DIRECT LINK TO TICKETS:

http://www1.ticnet.se/PriceTable?l=SE&EVNT=STH20010BPK10271&CL_ORIGIN=

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

R&D
Design and Art Direction
+46-8-33 09 18
researchanddevelopment.se

From Relational Aesthetics - Nicolas Bourriaud (1998)

2008-10-14T11:06:00.002+02:00

Relational form

Artistic activity is a game, whose forms, patterns and functions develop and evolve according to periods and social contexts; it is not an immutable essence. It is the critic's task to study this activity in the present. A certain aspect of the programme of modernity has been fairly and squarely wound up (and not, let us hasten to emphasise in these bourgeois times, the spirit informing it). This completion has drained the criteria of aesthetic judgement we are heir to of their substance, but we go on applying them to present-day artistic practices. The new is no longer a criterion, except among latter-day detractors of modem art who, where the much- execrated present is concerned, cling solely to the things that their traditionalist culture has taught them to loathe in yesterday's art. In order to invent more effective tools and more valid viewpoints, it behoves us to understand the changes nowadays occurring in the social arena, and grasp what has already changed and what is still changing. How are we to understand the types of artistic behaviour shown in exhibitions held in the 1990s, and the lines of thinking behind them, if we do not start out from the same situation as the artists?

More.

Stereo Effect

2008-10-12T21:41:00.000+02:00

By Tyler Coburn

"Stereo," Christian Marclay's first solo exhibition at San Francisco's Fraenkel Gallery, surveys "concepts of doubling and echoes" across the American artist's career. Since the mid-1970s, Marclay has uniquely navigated the visual and sonic realms, exploring the materiality of equipment like the gramophone, turntables and record through processes that foreground what the artist calls the "unwanted sounds" of the mediums: the clicks, pops, scratches and deterioration that hold "expressive power" in themselves. In the past decade, Marclay has extended his position as cultural archivist with acclaimed installations like Video Quartet (2001) and Crossfire (2007), respectively comprising sequences of musical performance and gunshots assembled from dozens of feature-films.

More.

Geek Lessons

2008-10-12T21:01:00.001+02:00

By MARK EDMUNDSON
Published: NYT September 19, 2008

...Good teachers perceive the world in alternative terms, and they push their students to test out these new, potentially enriching perspectives. Sometimes they do so in ways that are, to say the least, peculiar. The philosophy professor steps in the window the first day of class and asks her students to write down the definition of the word “door.” Another sees that it’s hard to figure out how the solar system works by looking at the astronomy book. So he takes his friends outside and designates one the sun, the other the earth and gets them rotating and revolving in the grassy field. (For reasons of his own, he plays the part of the moon.)

Article.

References for "Hacking" seminar

2008-10-12T20:29:00.003+02:00

Alberto offers the following references in relation to our next meeting on "hacking":

Paul Granjon's hacking (video):
http://www.zprod.org/PG/home.htm
Dziga Vertov's Man with the Movie Camera (film):
http://www.archive.org/details/ChelovekskinoapparatomManWithAMovieCamera
Lev manovich's Database as a Symbolic Form (essay):
http://transcriptions.english.ucsb.edu/archive/courses/warner/english197/Schedule_files/Manovich/Database_as_symbolic_form.htm
Victoria Vesna's Database Aesthetics (essay):
http://vv.arts.ucla.edu/AI_Society/vesna_essay.html
The New Media Reader (collection of essays):
http://www.newmediareader.com/book_contents.html

Assignment 2: Design a practice-based research symposium

2008-10-12T18:04:00.006+02:00

"Good teachers perceive the world in alternative terms, and they push their students to test out these new, potentially enriching perspectives. Sometimes they do so in ways that are, to say the least, peculiar."
Mark Edmunson, Geek Lessons

Design and direct a symposium on the theme of practice-based research.
When: 13.00-16.00 Tuesday 14 October.
Where: site of your choosing.

The aim is to create an educationally rich and appropriate experience, one that allows us (your audience and participants) to investigate, explore and discuss (by any means you deem relevant) the concept of practice-based research in the arts, craft and design. This means you are responsible for the event's form and content alike.

Suggested methodology:
First identify and discuss the parameters, rules and conventions of a 'conventional' conference/symposium. Take nothing for granted: consider every aspect that affects the pedagogical situation: site, architecture, interior, furniture, purpose of artefacts/materials, communications technologies, language(s), roles of speaker(s) and audience, presentation techniques, degrees of interactivity, conventions of clothing, movement, physicality, light, scenography etc.
Which of these work well? Which should be retained, modified, rejected, or replaced?

Then design an event, lasting up to three hours (duration is also one of your parameters), in a way that will best help us explore and understand (if these are desirable goals in your formulation) the issues, challenges and complexities (if any) of practice-based research in the arts, craft and design. It's your show! Divide the group into smaller units to spread the work. Be explorative, experimental – don't be afraid to fail in parts of the overall conception, but be prepared to justify your decisions, aims and methods. You are, after all, designing a utopian encounter.

Reading: article in Frieze on artist Olafur Eliasson’s forthcoming professorship at Berlin’s Universität der Künste as an experiment in art education + "The Art Market" by Ronald Jones (both available via links below).

(Brief first presented in Vita Havet Wednesday 8 October 2008)

Reading list for Olafur Eliasson’s school

2008-10-12T17:41:00.001+02:00

Edwin A. Abbott, Flatland (1884)
Daniel Birnbaum, The Hospitality of Presence: Problems of Otherness in Husserl’s Phenomenology (1998)
Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (1980)
Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century (1992)
Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle (1967)
Gilles Deleuze, Bergsonism (1990)
Jan Gehl, Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space (1987)
George Kubler, The Shape of Time: Remarks on the History of Things (1962)
Bruno Latour, ‘From Realpolitik to Dingpolitik - An Introduction to Making Things Public’, in Making Things Public: Atmospheres of Democracy (2005)
Doreen Massey, For Space (2005)
M. Minnaert, The Nature of Light and Colour in the Open Air (1954)
Chantal Mouffe, ‘Agonistic Public Spaces, Democratic Politics, and the Dynamic of Passions’, in Thinking Worlds: The Moscow Conference on Philosophy, Politics, and Art (2008)
Thomas More, Utopia (1516)
Juhani Pallasmaa, The Eyes of the Skin: Architecture and the Senses (2005)
John Rajchman, Constructions (Writing Architecture) (1998)
Steen Eiler Rasmussen, Experiencing Architecture (1964)
Israel Rosenfield, The Invention of Memory: A New View of the Brain (1988)
Felicity D. Scott, Architecture or Techno-Utopia: Politics after Modernism (2007)
Francisco J. Varela, Ethical Know-How: Action, Wisdom, and Cognition (1999)
Lawrence Weschler, Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees: A Life of Contemporary Artist Robert Irwin (1982)

Open Studio

2008-10-12T17:38:00.001+02:00

by Christy Lange

Artist Olafur Eliasson’s forthcoming professorship at Berlin’s Universität der Künste will be an experiment in art education.

Article published in Frieze Issue 118 October 2008.

The Art Market

2008-10-12T17:36:00.001+02:00

by Ronald jones

An arts degree, some experts claim, is now one of the most desirable qualifications in the world of business. Yet cross-pollination comes with a high risk of failure – is it worth it?

Article published in Frieze Issue 101 September 2006

How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity

2008-10-11T09:28:00.001+02:00

by Ed Catmull

"If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they will screw it up; if you give a mediocre idea to a great team, they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something that works."

Article here (requires subscription).

'Communicating (by) Design' conference

2008-10-10T11:19:00.001+02:00

The deadline for submitting abstracts for the 'Communicating (by) Design' conference, which will take place from 15th - 17th April 2009 in Brussels – Belgium, is drawing near!

If you would still like to submit an abstract proposal, please feel kindly invited to do so until 15th October 2008.

Abstracts can be uploaded via our official conference website: http://conf.bydesigning.info.

Budget/RTP Studio 2

2008-10-10T11:14:00.002+02:00

The budget in total for our studio group is 6000 kronor. As we will need money for the final assignment, we cannot spend all of this on assignment 2; account for (if required) 2000-3000 of the total for Assignment 2 leaving 3000-4000 for the final assignment (Assignment 3). Important: please keep receipts for everything you have purchased – without these we cannot reimburse you!

Talkin’ Loud and Sayin’ Something

2008-10-08T08:23:00.000+02:00

Four perspectives on artistic research

The catalogue for the contemporary art exhibition Talkin’ Loud and Sayin’ Something is out now and available for download. A special edition of Art Monitor, the book is both a visual documentation of the exhibition and a reflection on the research practices involved in the process. It comprises a long methodological essay, interviews with the artists, and four artists’ statements.

Download catalogue.

On (sensory) "experience"...

2008-10-07T11:58:00.002+02:00

Ode to Autumn

John Keats, September 19 1819

BOILERPLATE: Mechanical Marvel of the Nineteenth Century

2008-10-06T16:30:00.001+02:00

Boilerplate was a mechanical man developed by Professor Archibald Campion during the 1880s and unveiled at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition.

Built in a small Chicago laboratory, Boilerplate was originally designed as a prototype soldier for use in resolving the conflicts of nations. Although it was the only such prototype, Boilerplate was eventually able to exercise its proposed function by participating in several combat actions.

In the mid-1890s, Boilerplate embarked on a series of expeditions to demonstrate its abilities, the most ambitious being a voyage to Antarctica. Boilerplate is one of history's great ironies, a technological milestone that remains largely unknown. Even in an age that gave birth to the automobile and aeroplane, a functioning mechanical man should have been accorded more significance.

Read more.

Nothing but the truth: Internet hoaxes

2008-10-06T16:23:00.001+02:00

We all rely on the net for information and entertainment.But how can we spot where reality ends? Rhodri Marsden investigates
Monday, 6 October 2008, The Independent

You know something? There's a hilarious video doing the rounds on the internet at the moment. Now, this information obviously won't be forcing understaffed news desks across the globe to coax former reporters out of retirement; if your job involves the use of a computer, you'll do well to get through a working day without being sent a web-link to a video someone thinks is side-splitting.

But, as supposedly hilarious video clips go, this is a pretty good one. It features a well-groomed eight-piece band called Sonseed, all wearing their Sunday best, performing a ditsy little ska tune called "Jesus Is My Friend" on an early Eighties religious show on American TV – and if you haven't seen it, do force yourself to have a look; it's at d95.com/jesus. It has many of the ingredients of a copper-bottomed viral hit: dated haircuts, dubious fashion sense, questionable musical value and, above all, mind-boggling peculiarity.

Read article here.

erik bünger: gospels (2006)

2008-10-06T16:06:00.001+02:00

After long and painful research a picture started to emerge. Going through a vast amount of archive material I stumbled upon more and more interview clips where there seemed to be a lack of clarity as to whom the person on camera was actually referring to.

Yet they all spoke of Him. Sometimes the reports on Him seemed to reinforce each other and sometimes they seemed to contradict each other. Nevertheless there was something in the tone of their voices and in the way they raised their hands that made me sense some sort of coherence in their experience. Sometimes I felt I caught a glimpse of a silhouette reflected in their eyes.

Gospels is work with an open-ended duration. As new material is found new chapters will be added, slowly completing and complicating the picture. A canon in the making.

The project was initiated during a two-month residence at Werkleitz Gesellschaft in Halle, Germany in the spring of 2006.

erik bünger.

EKSIG CONFERENCE 2009

2008-10-06T14:42:00.000+02:00

19 June 2009:
EKSIG 2009: EXPERIENTIAL KNOWLEDGE, METHOD AND
METHODOLOGY

International Conference 2009 of the DRS Special
Interest Group on Experiential Knowledge

The EKSIG International Conference 2009 will address the theme
of "Experiential Knowledge, Method and Methodology". It will be
convened by the DRS Special Interest Group on Experiential
Knowledge (EKSIG), and hosted by London Metropolitan University.

Organisers: Linden Reilly, Chris Smith, Kristina Niedderer,
Seymour Roworth-Stokes
Venue: London Metropolitan University, London, UK
Conference home page: http://www.experientialknowledge.org
Contact: info@experientialknowledge.org

FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS

For EKSIG 2009, we invite submissions for the theme
"Experiential Knowledge, Method and Methodology". With this
theme we aim to provide a forum for debate about methodology and
methods for the inclusion and communication of knowledge in
research and practice in the creative disciplines.

The need to be more explicit about research methods, frameworks,
and methodologies has arisen from the increasing use of creative
and professional practices as part of the practice of research
in recent years. While research guidelines and regulations have
been either generic enough, or were adjusted, to accommodate the
use of some creative and professional practices under certain
conditions, the debate about the nature, aims, validity,
evaluation, and necessity of such research has continued.

While all research has a method, and disciplines are
characteristically driven by debates about the best methods for
achieving their aims, that which constitutes a research method
in design and related disciplines is still a matter of debate.
The debates about research methods in design in many ways echo
questions addressed in the design methods movement of the 1960s
and 1970s, such as: 'What are design methods?' Now framed in
terms of design research, questions address the conditions under
which design methods might be used as research methods as well
as the nature of discipline specific methodologies.

The developing understanding in this debate is that the
inclusion of practice in the research process or as a research
outcome helps to integrate and/or communicate those kinds or
parts of knowledge that cannot easily be made explicit, such as
the tacit part of experiential and procedural knowledge,
commonly known as tacit knowledge. With this conference, we wish
to explore the different ways in which tacit knowledge can be
integrated and communicated within the framework of research.

Questions of interest are, for example:

- What are design methods and what are design research methods?

- How is knowledge/knowing created within the process of
research?

- What frameworks are there to guide discipline specific
methodologies?

- How can we integrate and utilize tacit knowledge in the
process of research?

- Why is the use of tacit knowledge important in research?

- What contribution can the use of practice make to the
inclusion of tacit knowledge in research?

- What contribution can the use of design practice make to the
development of design research?

- What methods are there for the communication of tacit
knowledge within research?

- Can we talk about the communication of tacit knowledge, or
should we talk about a transfer?

- What means and methods do we have to transfer tacit knowledge?

We wish to bring together people from different fields and
disciplines with different approaches to address these issues.
We invite contributions from the design disciplines (design,
engineering, craft, media etc), philosophy, education, health
and knowledge management that are concerned with methods and
methodology in research and in creative and professional
practice; with the nature, role, and management of knowledge
within research; and with the role and use of creative practice
(both as process and outcome) as a means by which to develop and
manage experiential/tacit knowledge within research.

SUBMISSIONS

For EKSIG 2009, we invite position papers, which offer
challenging new views on the subject. Position papers will be
selected subject to a double blind review process by an
international review team. In the first instance we ask for the
submission of abstracts. Authors of selected abstracts will be
asked to submit full papers.

We invite the submission of abstracts of 700-800 words
(excluding references) for position papers by 1st December 2008.
Abstracts should be sent as plain text in the body of the email
from the lead researcher's email address. Please send your
abstract via e-mail to info@experientialknowledge.org.uk

Authors of selected abstracts will subsequently be invited to
submit full papers (4000-5000w) in early 2009.

For further information, please visit:

http://www.experientialknowledge.org

Against Nature: The Arts of the Machine - First Assignment

2008-10-06T12:02:00.002+02:00

Preparation
Download/read the Fluxus Performance Workbook from the course blog for examples of performative instructions.

Groups
You are divided into three interdisciplinary teams according to the following themes:

1. Space
2. Time
3. Sound

Site:
All three groups work on the same site – i.e. the intersection between your studio space (marked 2. in Vita Havet) and Seminargatan.

Group 1 designs a system capable of generating an experience of space.
Group 2 designs a system capable of generating an experience of time.
Group 3 designs a system capable of generating an experience of sound.

Treat passers-by as well as the systems devised by the other two groups as your information; your system will generate an experience of its allocated theme and may be left to evolve over successive generations. Your system will be considered ’creative’ if it is generating unpredictable and appropriate outcomes, is responsive to its context and surroundings, and capable of interacting with the two neighbouring systems.

Deadline: set systems in motion 12.00 (lunchtime) Wednesday 8th October
Crit: 13.00 Wednesday 8th October, Vita Havet.

Preparatory reading for Louise Mazanti's lecture

2008-10-06T10:05:00.003+02:00

In advance of Professor Louise Mazanti's lecture (Tuesday 28 October 2008), please read:

Shales, Ezra: “Technophilic Craft”, American Craft Magazine, April/May 2008.

'Intelligent' computers put to the test'

2008-10-05T21:40:00.002+02:00

And thanks to Willow for this:

'Intelligent' computers put to the test'

by David Smith

Can machines think? That was the question posed by the great mathematician Alan Turing. Half a century later six computers are about to converse with human interrogators in an experiment that will attempt to prove that the answer is yes.

Article.

Choose Your Own Adventure

2008-10-05T21:36:00.001+02:00

Thanks to Natasha Llorens-Perkins for this:

Choose Your Own Adventure is a series of children's gamebooks first published by Bantam Books from 1979-1998 and currently being re-published by Chooseco. Each story is written from a second-person point of view, with the reader assuming the role of the protagonist and making choices that determine the main character's actions in response to the plot and its outcome. Choose Your Own Adventure was one of the most popular children’s series during the 1980s and 1990s, selling over 250 million copies between 1979 and 1998, and translated into at least 38 languages.

More.

From Original to Copy and Back Again

2008-10-05T21:17:00.001+02:00

by James Elkins

Within aesthetics, exchanges about the nature of forgery have been made largely in response to Nelson Goodman’s Languages of Art (1968). In his original scenario we are invited to contemplate two paintings: one is authentic and the other is forged, but we cannot distinguish them by “merely looking,” without the aid of X-Rays and chemical analyses. Our different aesthetic response to the two paintings is used to argue, in the words of Joseph Margolis, that “there are bound to be aesthetically relevant considerations in the appreciation of art that are not directly accessible to perception or to any other relevant mode of experience.”[1] Historians have been largely silent during the debates on Goodman’s claim: not, I think, because it is not an important problem, but rather because what matters to historians are the imperceptible considerations in any given case, rather than the simple existence of such considerations.

Paper.

The Authorship of Generative Art

2008-10-05T21:13:00.001+02:00

How I Drew One of My Pictures: *
or, The Authorship of Generative Art

Adrian Ward BSc & Geoff Cox MA(RCA)

Abstract

The concept of value is traditionally bestowed on a work of art when it is seen to be unique and irreproducible, thereby granting it authenticity. Think of a famous painting: only the original canvas commands genuinely high prices.

Digital artwork is not valued in the same way. It can be copied infinitely and there is therefore a corresponding crisis of value. It has been argued that under these conditions of the dematerialised artwork, it is process that becomes valued. In this way, the process of creation and creativity is valued in place of authenticity, undermining conventional notions of authorship.

It is possible to correlate many of these creative processes into instructions. However, to give precise instructions on the construction of a creative work is a complex, authentic and intricate process equivalent to conventional creative work (and is therefore not simply a question of 'the death of the author'). This paper argues that to create 'generative' systems is a rigorous and intricate procedure. Moreover, the output from generative systems should not be valued simply as an endless, infinite series of resources but as a system. To have a machine write poetry for ten years would not generate creative music, but the process of getting the machine to do so would certainly register an advanced form of creativity.

When a programmer develops a generative system, they are engaged in a creative act. Programming is no less an artform than painting is a technical process. By analogy, the mathematical value pi can be approximated as 3.14159265, but a more thorough and accurate version can be stored as the formula used to calculate it. In the same way, it is more complete to express creativity formulated as code, which can then be executed to produce the results we desire. Rather like using Leibnitz's set of symbols to represent a mathematical formula, artists can now choose to represent creativity as computer programs (Harold Cohen's Aaron, a computer program that creates drawings is a case in point).

By programming computers to undertake creative instructions, this paper will argue that more accurate and expansive traces of creativity are being developed that suitably merge artistic subjectivity with technical form. It is no longer necessary or even desirable to be able to render art as a final tangible medium, but instead it is more important to program computers to be creative by proxy.

Paper.

Themes for AN meetings

2008-10-02T11:28:00.002+02:00

1. on rules (AF) Wednesday 1/10
2. Second Nature (RH) Thursday
3. OULIPO + Collage (AF+RH) Friday
4. Alterity: set a trap (student work) Monday.
5. Alterity crit (all) Tuesday
6. Hacking seminar + assignment Thursday.
7. Hacking crit. Monday.
8. Presentation and discussion of final assignment. Tuesday.
9+. Own work with supervision from AF+RH

"Conscious Machines: Memory, Melody and Imagination"

2008-09-25T13:51:00.001+02:00

by Susan A.J. Stewart

At first glance the question, ''Will conscious machines perform better than 'unconscious' machines?'', seems innocuous or, at least, to elicit a straightforward positive response, but it prompts the question, ''Perform what?''. If the aim is to produce a machine that will perform as a human being or other phenomenally conscious agent in an intersubjectively-demanding social and moral environment, then there can be little doubt that a conscious machine would out-perform an `unconscious' machine. But there are also circumstances in which a conscious, empathetic, decision-making, risk-taking agent would be a distinct disadvantage, and I will allude to circumstances of this kind briefly towards the end of the paper.

Following on from Damasio's [1991, 1994, 1999, 2003] claims for the necessity of pre-reflective conscious, emotional, bodily responses for the development of an organism's core and extended consciousness, I will argue that without these capacities any agent would be significantly less likely to make effective decisions and survive. Moreover, I will argue that machine phenomenology is only possible within a distributed system that possesses a subtle musculature and a nervous system such that it can, through action and repetition, develop its kinaesthetic memory, individual kinaesthetic melodies, and an enactive kinaesthetic imagination. Without these capacities a potentially conscious machine would remain unconscious. It would be without the necessary nuanced somatosensory awareness of its active engagement, even if that action is to some extent goal-directed, and would be incapable of developing the sorts of somatic markers or saliency tags that enable affective reactions, and which are indispensable for effective decision-making.

Available here.

Accepted for presentation at the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), Washington, VA., 7-11 November 2007, and to appear in the Proceedings of FSS-07: AI and Consciousness: Theoretical Foundations and Current Approaches.

After Nature/themes for meetings

2008-09-25T12:04:00.001+02:00

1. on rules (AF) Wednesday 1/10
2. Second Nature (RH) Thursday
3. OULIPO + Collage (AF+RH) Friday
4. Alterity: set a trap in city for disrupting existing flow and capturing (student work) Monday.
5. Alterity crit (all) Tuesday
6. Hacking seminar; assignment for next Monday; redesign seminar as pedagogical experience (include interior, furniture, language, architecture, behaviour, role, gender etc) Thursday.
7. Seminar (designed by students) crit. Monday.
8. Presentation and discussion of final assignment. Tuesday.
9. Own work.

After Nature:The Arts of the Machine

2008-09-25T11:30:00.000+02:00

Research Through Practice Studio 2
Konstfack University College of Art, Craft and Design
Fall 2008
Tutors: Rolf Hughes and Alberto Frigo

"Another very wrong idea that is also going the rounds at the moment is the equivalence that has been established between inspiration, exploration of the subconscious, and liberation, between chance, automatism, and freedom. Now this sort of inspiration, which consists in blindly obeying every impulse, is in fact slavery. The classical author who wrote his tragedy observing a certain number of known rules is freer than the poet who writes down whatever comes into his head and is slave to other rules of which he knows nothing."
Raymond Queneau

Keywords:
Alterity, authenticity, originality, copy, authorship, design theory, creativity, auto-poiesis, human experience, accountability, authority, ownership, oeuvre, intention, OULIPO, emergence, generative & evolutionary design, interdisciplinarity, art, metaphor, biotechnology, nanotechnology, fake, forgery, masquerade, ventriloquism, counterfeits, non-inductive, spontaneous, copyright, disguise, deception, natural, non-heroic, automatic, mechanistic, rituaistic, repetition, difference, the inhuman.

Aims:
This studio is set up to question whether or not practice-based research, with its particular emphasis on experiential, embodied and “tacit” knowledge, is dependent on concepts of authenticity and integrity grounded in a historically specific understanding of human selfhood. In order to investigate this, we will investigate performances of creativity and/or cultural production which are variously characterised as combinatorial, generative, “post human”, automatic etc. By automating acts of ‘creativity’, we seek to explore whether the concept of the “human” is becoming a nostalgic fetish in art, craft and design discourse as well as practice-based or “artistic” research.

Toward a General Theory of the Constraint

2008-09-25T11:28:00.001+02:00

by Bernardo Schiavetta

This text proposes a series of definitions, the aim of which is to better circumscribe what is, and what is not, meant by writing under constraint. I shall do so by using exclusively logical and objective criteria. Of course, this does not mean that aesthetic or ideological problems are of no concern here, on the contrary, but it wouldn't be serious to tackle these very complex questions as long as there exists no precise definition of constraints.

Here.

Wild Nature and the Digital Life Special Issue

2008-09-25T10:04:00.001+02:00

Generative and Emergent' Essays
Guest edited by Dene Grigar

Locative and Performative' Essays
Guest edited by Sue Thomas

Here.

Konstfack’s Forum on Creativity 2008

2008-06-09T14:42:00.000+02:00

Did you miss Konstfack’s Forum on Creativity 2008?

Now you can view a live recording.

Paul Thek Project

2008-01-15T10:28:00.000+01:00

This site is dedicated to the installation work of Paul Thek. It is an ongoing project to collect and contextualize documentary photography and other relevant sources around Paul Thek’s environments.

Various complex questions underlay the consideration and analysis of Paul Thek’s installation work, above all matters of authorship and reconstruction. Many of his installation works cannot simply be reconstructed as in its physical and ideal presence it was inextricably bound up with the artist, the co-operative and, above all, time. From a museological point of view the task to find a final home for the relics and to free them, at least temporarily, from their existence as mere inventory numbers in order to attribute them a function in the context of art mediation thus becomes all the more challenging.

From an art historical point of view other methods come up in order to collect and contextualize information which is the more important the less Thek’s environments can be brought back to life again. From a frank interest to bring to light what was hidden for so long, this website serves not only as a prototype for media-based art historical research, but also as a tool to contextualize Thek’s process oriented use of the mythological object.

The Rights of Robots

2008-01-15T09:50:00.000+01:00

The Rights of Robots:
Technology, Culture and Law in the 21ST Century

by Phil McNally and Sohail Inayatullah*

"The predictable response to the question: should robots have rights has been one of disbelief. Those in government often question the credibility of an agency that funds such research. Many futurists, too, especially those concerned with environmental or humanistic futures, react unfavorably. They assume that we are unaware of the second and third order effects of robotics‑‑the potential economic dislocations, the strengthening of the world capitalist system, and the development of belief systems that view the human brain as only a special type of computer.

Why then in the face of constant ridicule should we pursue such a topic. We believe that the development of robots and their emerging rights is a compelling issue which will signficantly and dramatically impact not only the judicial and criminal justice system, but also the philosophical and political ideas that govern our societal institutions."

More.

The great unknown

2008-01-15T09:47:00.000+01:00

From Jonathan Swift to Joe Klein, writers have gone to great lengths to hide their identities and cannily exploited the ensuing public speculation. John Mullan on how anonymity is often a sure route to notoriety

Saturday January 12, 2008
The Guardian

More.