Autonomy and Game Systems
with Murray Campbell, July 1st 2010
The relation between the game of chess and computers began a long time before the invention of the first digital device. But it was only in 1997, with the defeat of Garry Kasparov – one of the greatest chess players in history – by IBM’s supercomputer Deep Blue, that the experiments became widely known. Currently, the technology is being applied to other games, such as “question and answer” television game shows.
Murray Campbell is a senior manager with the Department of Mathematical Sciences of IBM, in Yorktown Heights, New York, United States. He was a member of the teams involved in the construction of machines to play chess, culminating in the development of the aforementioned Deep Blue.
Evolutionary art
with Jon McCormack, July 2nd 2010
The process of evolution by natural selection explains how the species change and adapt in the absence of explicit goals or external help. Evolution is a fact. It shows how systems of complex life arise in an autonomous way, from low to high, without there being a central planner or controlling demiurge. In the field of art, methods and processes elaborated with computer codes precisely simulate this principle.
Jon McCormack is one of Australia’s most representative new-media artists, whose work has been shown throughout Europe, Asia and the Americas. He is codirector of the Center for Electronic Media Art of Monash University, in Melbourne, where he also serves as a senior professor of computer science.
Autonomy and Post-Humanism
with Lucia Santaella and Stelarc, July 3rd 2010
A debate on the question of post-humanism, but from the standpoint of a non-anthropocentric humanism. Currently, a certain illusion circulates which holds that with the advent of biotechnology the “self” can finally be freed from the flesh, ignoring its material dimension. Science fiction apart, the priority now is to find ways to meet the challenges of the information era without losing sight of the condition of subjectivity and the human body.
Lucia Santaella is a researcher and professor at PUC/SP, where she earned her doctorate in literary theory and founded CS Games, a group for research into games and semiotics. She also serves as a professor at the School of Economics in São Paulo at Fundação Getulio Vargas (EESP/FGV), in the areas of new technologies and grammars for sound, relations between the verbal, visual and audio elements in multimedia, and the biocognitive foundations of communication.
Stelarc is an artist interested in the evolutionary architecture of the body and in possible ways of redesigning the human, enhanced by implants and exoskeletons. Head of the Department of Performance Art at Brunel University, England, he is an invited senior researcher at the University of Western Sydney, Australia.
Interaction, emergence and autonomy
with Paul Pangaro, July 3rd 2010
A reflection on the themes dealt with in each of the editions of the cybernetic trilogy of Emoção Art.ficial – interaction, emergence and autonomy – gives rise to the proposal of a second trilogy: conversation, entailment and autopoiesis. And these three concepts, in turn, point toward another possible triad: consciousness, meaning and the being human.
Paul Pangaro studied computer science at MIT and earned his doctorate in cybernetics at Brunel University. He worked with scientist Jerry Lettvin in the field of neural models, with Nicholas Negroponte – one of the founders of the Media Lab at MIT – in the area of animation systems, and with Gordon Pask in the cybernetics of learning. Co- founder of CyberneticLifestyles.com in New York City, he creates product visions and innovation strategies for clients such as Nokia, Poetry Foundation and Intellectual Ventures.
Artists and technology
Know more about the artists and works that appear in the video:
Pascal Dombis, Mikado_Explosion
Golan Levin, Messa di Voce, with Zachary Lieberman
Interactivity
Know more about the works and artists featured in the video:
Usman Haque, Evolving Sonic Environments.
Marie-Hélène Tramus, La Funambule Virtuelle, with Michel Bret.
Second Interactivity
Learn more about Michel Bret and the work that he developed with Couchot Edmond, La Plume e le Pissenlit.
Cybernetics
Watch the lecture by Paul Pangaro on central concepts of Emoção Art.ficial: interaction, emergency and autonomy.
Know more about Usman Haque and his work, Evolving Sonic Environments.
Explore other posts about causal circularity system, the process that machines use to refine their methods.
Cybernetics’ artworks
Learn more about Life Writer by Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau.
Consciousness
Learn more about the importance of the reproduction of emotions and intelligence in machines, from science’s point of view.
Meet Thoughtbody Environment Interface, Bill Seaman’s work that seeks to produce something that resembles the human conscience.
Meet La Plume et le Pissenlit the work of Edmond Couchot that moves teeth dandelions from the virtual interaction with the public.
Learn more about the ideas of the endophysicist Otto Rössler on artificial intelligence, theory of evolution and the potential of science.
Emergence
See two works by Leonel Moura: Robotarium (the world’s first zoo for robots) and RAP3 – Robotic Action Painter (a robot-artist who produces abstract paintings).
See also The Mutation of the White Doe, a work by Nicolas Reeves which brings unexpected readings of a Scandinavian folk song.
Emergence and artworks
Know more about RAP3 – Robotic Action Painter, a work by Leonel Moura.
See also Moura’s Robotarium, the world’s first zoo for robots).
Unpredictability
Meet VOID/O, by Sandro Canavezzi.
Emergence and Creativity
with Peter Cariani, July 2nd 2008
Various systems ranging from growing children to sophisticated robots experience the world, and, after a series of trials and errors, acquire the necessary independence to remodel themselves, giving rise to new behaviors and functions. This reveals a type of epistemological autonomy, that is, the system’s creative capacity to learn on its own and adjust itself for a better fit with the external environment.
Also watch the lectures Emergence and Cybernetics, Emergence and Aesthetics, Emergence and Chaos.
Peter Cariani is a biologist with a Ph.D. in systems science from Binghamton University, University USA. His interests include a wide variety of scientific and philosophical questions, such as cybernetics, theoretic biology, autonomous systems and neurology. He is currently an instructor at Harvard Medical School and a professor of musical cognition at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Emergence and Chaos
with Santiago Ortiz, July 3rd 2008
Interaction among elements is the essential force that gives rise to emergence. Fractals, dynamic systems, and the idea of complexity prove that agents that interact on the basis of simple rules can lead to complex and unforeseen results. Paradoxically, chaos reveals a kind of order, and theories suggest that meanings and coherences emerge from the confusion of an apparently disordered and diffuse world.
Also watch the lectures Emergence and Cybernetics, Emergence and Aesthetics and Emergence and Creativity.
Santiago Ortiz is an artist, mathematician and researcher in the areas of art, science and fields of representation. He works with techniques of communication, creation and expression that combine narrative and literature as well as digital and architectural spaces.
Emergence and Aesthetics
with Silvia Laurentiz, July 4th 2008
Watch the debate:
The multiple agents of a system, expanding until their limits of interaction, generate new and surprising patterns. Throughout the process they evolve catalytically without their planner – the artist, in this case – having total control over the effects unleashed. Case studies and new poetic experiments prove the advent of the phenomenon of emergence in the aesthetic field.
Also watch the lectures Emergence and Cybernetics, Emergence and Chaos and Emergence and Creativity.
Silvia Laurentiz is a multimedia artist. She holds a Ph.D. in communication and semiotics from the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo (PUC/SP) and serves on the faculty of ECA/USP.
Emergence and Cybernetics
with Andy Webster and Jon Bird, July 5th 2008
Part one:
Part two:
In nature or in computerized models, emergence is a phenomenon that arises from the cybernetic interaction among a sufficiently large number of real and/or virtual agents, whether in a physical or a virtual space. The circular causality among the elements can give rise to events in ecology, science and art.
Andy Webster is an artist and researcher at Falmouth College of Arts, in Cornwall, England. His works are influenced by North American artist Richard Serra and British scientist Gordon Pask.
Also watch the lectures Emergence and Aesthetics, Emergence and Chaos and Emergence and Creativity.
Jon Bird is a researcher in the field of computational neuroscience and robotics at the University of Sussex, England. He collaborates in art projects that involve concepts such as evolutionary curatorship and generative films. He is a member of the organizational committee of Blip, a forum of art, science and technology that holds exhibitions in the United Kingdom.
Autonomy
Watch the lecture of Paul Pangaro on Emoção Art.ficial’s central concepts: interaction, emergence and autonomy.
Also, watch Autonomy Systems and Games, with Murray Campbell, senior manager of IBM’s Mathematical Sciences Department.
Meet Eden, a Jon McCormack’s work: an ecosystem of artificial life.
Autonomy – Artworks
Also meet Eden, a Jon McCormack’s work: an ecosystem of artificial life.