My collection of articles and ideas around things I am interested in.
Dustin Yellin: A journey through the mind of an artist. Interview with John Wolseley. Inside Robot Dreams: What Google's DeepDream Bot Thinks About. Do androids dream of electric sheep?
Actually, it's not far off. Artificial neural networks have taken giant leaps in image classification. And yet experts actually know very little about how they work - or why they fail. In order to visualize what's going on, three software engineers at Google decided to turn the DeepDream neural network on its head.
Alexander Mordvintsev, Christopher Olah and Mike Tyka asked their artifical intelligence bot to enhance an image in such as way as to elicit a particular interpretation - say, a banana. "Start with an image full of random noise," said the engineers, "then gradually tweak the image towards what the neural net considers a banana.
Sugar Murals and Cake Icing Graffiti by Shelley Miller. Using materials that for centuries have been reserved as tasty decoration the finest cakes and pastries, Montreal-based artist Shelley Miller attacks brick walls and deteriorating urban surfaces with cake icing to create ornate scrolls and decorative motifs.
While the medium itself is purely culinary, her illustrations and patterns borrow heavily from calligraphy and decorative arabesque scrolls seen in ancient temples and mosques. Another added dimension is its impermanence as the works crack, drip, and melt off the wall, potentially disappearing in just a few days. Most recently Miller presented an interactive piece at Nuit Blanche in Montreal called Throw-Up, and you can follow updates via blog—check out that book sculpture! (via collabcubed) Robots test their own world wide web, dubbed RoboEarth. 14 January 2014Last updated at 07:38 ET The RoboEarth system will be tested in a hospital setting A world wide web for robots to learn from each other and share information is being shown off for the first time.
Scientists behind RoboEarth will put it through its paces at Eindhoven University in a mocked-up hospital room. Four robots will use the system to complete a series of tasks, including serving drinks to patients. It is the culmination of a four-year project, funded by the European Union. The eventual aim is that both robots and humans will be able to upload information to the cloud-based database, which would act as a kind of common brain for machines. Common brain The system has been developed by research scientists from Philips and five European universities including Eindhoven. The four robots selected to test the system in a public demonstration will "work collaboratively" to help patients, he told the BBC. She Stretches And Glides Her Body Over A Blank Canvas. When I Realized What She Was Creating, I Was Blown Away. "El Paso" scene in Breaking Bad plus the rest of it.
Gorilla's Pet : Koko Mourns Kitten's Death. Koko the "talking" gorilla whimpered with grief and "discussed" the death of her pet kitten, struck and killed by a car, for several days after getting the bad news, her teachers say. The 13-year-old gorilla became famous after being taught American sign language by researchers at the Gorilla Foundation in Woodside, near Stanford University. The 12-year-old research project is said to be the world's longest continuing ape language study. Koko, whose favorite picture book stories include "The Three Little Kittens" and "Puss 'n' Boots," asked for a kitten for a Christmas present a year ago, researchers said.
Robots test their own world wide web, dubbed RoboEarth.
Notes on What's What - from Island by Aldous Huxley. Notes on What's What, and What It Might be Reasonableto do about What's What [Page 35/295, or .12] Nobody needs to go anywhere else.
We are all, if we only knew it, already there. If I only knew who in fact I am, I should cease to behave as what I think I am; and if I stopped behaving as what I think I am, I should know who I am. What in fact I am, if only the Manichee I think I am would allow me to know it, is the reconciliation of yes and no lived out in total acceptance and the blessed experience of Not-Two. In religion all words are dirty words. Because his aspiration to perpetuate only the "yes" in every pair of opposites can never, in the nature of things, be realized, the insulated Manichee I think I am condemns himself to endlessly repeated frustration, endlessly repeated conflicts with other aspiring and frustrated Manichees. Conflicts and frustrations---the theme of all history and almost all biography. Most pillars are their own Samsons. St. [Page 134/295, or .45.]
Mantra/Inspiration. Generation X Writing. Social Perception. The Brain and Perception. Sixty Six & Ninety Nine - My Blog. Heterotopia (space) Heterotopia is a concept in human geography elaborated by philosopher Michel Foucault to describe places and spaces that function in non-hegemonic conditions.
These are spaces of otherness, which are neither here nor there, that are simultaneously physical and mental, such as the space of a phone call or the moment when you see yourself in the mirror. A utopia is an idea or an image that is not real but represents a perfected version of society, such as Thomas More’s book or Le Corbusier’s drawings. Foucault uses the term heterotopia to describe spaces that have more layers of meaning or relationships to other places than immediately meet the eye.
In general, a heterotopia is a physical representation or approximation of a utopia, or a parallel space that contains undesirable bodies to make a real utopian space possible (like a prison). Foucault uses the idea of a mirror as a metaphor for the duality and contradictions, the reality and the unreality of utopian projects.