A filmmaking robot This robot makes short films based on its visual experience. Its eyes travel about the city on buses while the body sits in a gallery. The eyes collect snippets of video, and transmit them to the body when their buses come within range of a Cafenet wireless internet node. The robot body splits the video into individual frames and analyses each one, obtaining twenty numbers reflecting the arrangement of colour, shape and detail within the frame. These numbers are treated as coordinates in a twenty dimensional space, in which distance is somewhat related to visual difference. For twelve hours a day the robot traces a zigzagging path through this space. This path passes through a series of images, which become a video sequence. Visitors to the gallery can see this video, called variously the robot’s “dream” or “stream of consciousness”. At the end of the day the robot looks over its days work and joins the best parts together as a finished film. The robot uses neural networks and heuristic rules to choose waypoints for its daily dream, but the finished film is mainly selected for the smoothness of its movement through the space. The robot will remember everything it sees until it has five million images in its mind, after which it will replace its least favourite images with new ones. In addition to getting images from the eyes, the robot creates false memories by combining and manipulating well-liked and overused images. These notes are incomplete. You can see samples of his work on the page. It also gives a rundown if its aesthetic training, which gives some clue as to how it is making judgments. The most meaningful part of these pieces is definitely the credits: “By a Filmaking Robot”. The choice of the indefinite […]

Cloaca This exhibition of Wim Delvoye’s large-scale installation Cloaca represents the first-ever solo presentation by a U.S. museum of the acclaimed young Belgian artist’s work. Built from chemical beakers, electric pumps, and plastic tubing arrayed on a series of seven stainless steel tables, Cloaca is the result of a three-year collaboration between the artist and scientists at the University of Antwerp, whose shared mission was to duplicate the functions of the human digestive system as closely as possible. Cloaca is fed twice a day from a large funnel reached by climbing a stepladder. At the work’s inauguration, Delvoye himself ascended the ladder carrying a tray laden with a tasty and substantial Belgian meal of mushroom soup, filet of fish, and a rich pudding, which he dropped in the funnel a dollop at a time. The food is chewed by a garbage disposal device before traveling on a 27-hour-long digestive trajectory, through six glass vats connected by tubes and pipes, pumps and various electronic components that are Cloaca‘s stomach, pancreas, and small and large intestines. The “digesting” food is constantly kept at a precise 37.2 degrees centigrade and each of Cloaca‘s “organs” is full of computer-monitored enzymes, bacteria, acids and bases such as pepsin, pancreatin, and hydrochloric acid. The product finally goes through a separator and the remaining solids are extruded onto a conveyer belt. Oh shit.

[Commentary on this post.] Ok, so no one seems to like the videos. But I think that’s rather uncritical. Lets look at this more carefully. The first important thing to notice is that it is the robot making this art. It is making aesthetic choices about the material and integrating those choices in novel ways to createthe final product. Its decisions are its– no one determines which decisions it will make, and its even incorrect to say this is a decision procedure: neural nets are trained, in this case on impressionists paintings, but no one has any priviledged access to the internal structure on the net, except the robot itself. The robot is in this special position because it can use the network. We don’t know the internal structure, but that doesn’t mean we are entirely blind to its evaluative criteria. In particular, we know the input/output dimensions, and what features or properties those dimensions code for. We can call this the machine’s understanding of the art work. Notice that what it understands about the images is radically unlike our own understanding. It doesn’t see cars or roads or traffic, like we do. It sees colors at places. It sees composition. I’m inclined to say that we can’t really evaluate the art here, because we lack the machine’s understanding of its film. I’m not claiming that we need to know the artist’s intentions and understanding in order to evaluate a piece of art, but just that what the machine sees is so radically different from what we see, that our gut reactions to the work doesn’t say much about its merit. Its important, then, to describe the machine’s relation to the art as a kind of understanding. Notice that this is different from attributing mental states to the neural net. […]

From the NYT: In a Wired South Korea, Robots Will Feel Right at Home South Korea, the world’s most wired country, is rushing to turn what sounds like science fiction into everyday life. The government, which succeeded in getting broadband Internet into 72 percent of all households in the last half decade, has marshaled an army of scientists and business leaders to make robots full members of society. … If all goes according to plan, robots will be in every South Korean household between 2015 and 2020. That is the prediction, at least, of the Ministry of Information and Communication, which has grouped more than 30 companies, as well as 1,000 scientists from universities and research institutes, under its wing. Some want to move even faster. “My personal goal is to put a robot in every home by 2010,” said Oh Sang Rok, manager of the ministry’s intelligent service robot project. SK is desparate to move past the cloning hoax from a few months back; nothing like a little shame to get people motivated. Hopefully the next few years will let us confront our shame instead of hiding it behind self-righteous arrogance, because its really holding us back. South Koreans use futuristic technologies that are years away in the United States; companies like Microsoft and Motorola test products here before introducing them in the United States. Since January, Koreans have been able to watch television broadcasts on cellphones, free, thanks to government-subsidized technology. In April, South Korea will introduce the first nationwide superfast wireless Internet service, called WiBro, eventually making it possible for Koreans to remain online on the go — at 10 megabits per second, faster than most conventional broadband connections. South Korea, perhaps more than any other country, is transforming itself through technology. About 17 million of the […]

The internet is stupid. Kitsch with a sleek interface is still kitsch, even when it takes more kitschy technobabble to differentiate the currenty, Web 2.x kitsch from previous iterations of the same themes. The only things more stupid than the internet are the people who use it, and their dim understanding of the technology which supports their interactions is reflected in their limited vocabulary. Also, they don’t understand irony. Enter the “Manifesto for Networked Things” (PDF link via BoingBoing), by Julian Bleecker, who coins without shame the unfortunate second-order neologism ‘blogject’. “Blogject” is a neologism that’s meant to focus attention on the participation of “objects” and “things” in the sphere of networked social discourse variously called the blogosphere, or the social web As Bleecker immediately points out, this term ressonates with Sterling’s far more elegant term spime, which are searchable objects that can be tracked through time and space, and record their own histories and interactions with other objects. So a blogject is a species of spime, distinguished by the fact that it blogs. Bleecker prefers not to use Sterling’s term because, as he says, the semantics of ‘blogject’ are “immediately legible”. Well, its syntax is prima facie atrocious, but are its semantics any better? “Bloggers” loosely defined, are participants in a network of exchange, disseminating thoughts, opinions, ideas — making culture — through this particular instrument of connections called the Internet. Although this comes off a bit heavy handed, I appreciate his understanding of blogging: it is a kind of internet-mediated social interaction that reflects our contributions to and interactions with a community. The internet not only facilitates these social interactions, but it unlocks many of the constraints of space and time such that entirely novel modes of interaction are possible, thus allowing for a expanded conception of participation. […]

Both via Endgadget “Internet Renaissance Robot” shuns chores, entertains instead This time it’s a robot that wants to present us with info, but instead of merely reading text off of an RSS feed or blaring a few music streams, the ITR bot works with its very own “RTML” language to present media with motion, voice, and emotion. Of course, this means content developers will have to create RTML content to be displayed by the humanoid bot, but it’s an interesting concept at least, and we look forward to seeing what happens. We can’t say we’re as optimistic as the Speecy Corporation, which dreams of the ITR being fifth major form of household media after radio, TV, PC, and mobile phone. Climber to wear HAL cyborg suit, carry quadriplegic man to summit The best part of this is not so much the suit as this bit from the FAQ: Q. Can we go to the bathroom or take a bath with HAL ? A. We are researching it now.

Here’s an excerpt of my conversation with Stewart on the D&D forums about Bleecker’s article. The discussion is basically about the limits of participation, and Stewart does a pretty good job of bringing out some of the main features of the view. Its a bit long, but it gets better as it goes. By the end I think I build up to something like a response to Kripke’s criticism of meaning, which is a result I didn’t quite expect, but I’m very happy with it. Stewart starts by responding to my commentary on Bleecker’s article. Under that rubric, heres some examples of other things that ‘participate’: trees, rocks, clouds, weather, Mars, clothes, brick walls, terrists, wristwatches, what Well, Bleecker has a way of differentiating here: spimes are self-describing. They assert their presence, they make it an issue for others. Nothing you mention, except maybe terrrrritz and wristwatches, are assertive in this way. Yesterday I was driving and I used my eyes to query what was in front of me. The brick wall downloaded information in the carrier-form of photons onto my retina describing itself as a brick wall: but not just that it was brick wall, but what color it was, how high it was, how thick it was, how old it probably was, its exact spacetime location, whether or not it was an attractive brick wall, and what the current weather was (because if it was wet it was probably raining). As such, I knew I had to turn (because it asserted its presence to me) otherwise it would have been an issue for me had I ran into it. There isn’t a difference between being 6 feet tall, and saying “I am 6 feet tall”? Yes there is. But since we’re not talking about ‘mentalistic’ terms the point […]

Sorry for the extended break, but I’ve got a prelim to write. I should be back to normal after the conference. Footnote 21 from my dissertation proposal, “Rethinking Machines”, section 2.3, in which I discuss the objection that my view is suspiciously pan-psychist. In other words, if I want to take out the trash, I can do it, I can get someone else to do it, I can get a robot or my pet to do it if I trained them in the right way, but waiting for the wind to take it out is rather futile. One might say the weather just isn’t very competent- it doesn’t play along. Oh dear god what am I doing with my life.

Microvisions by Adam Rex Currently on auction at eBay. Link via BoingBoing.

Noelle models range from a $3,200 basic version to a $20,000 computerized Noelle that best approximates a live birth. She can be programmed for a variety of complications and for cervix dilation. She can labor for hours and produce a breach baby or unexpectedly give birth in a matter of minutes. She ultimately delivers a plastic doll that can change colors, from a healthy pink glow to the deadly blue of oxygen deficiency. The baby mannequin is wired to flash vital signs when hooked up to monitors. The computerized mannequins emit realistic pulse rates and can urinate and breathe.|link via Engadget|