09 June 2008

Konstfack’s Forum on Creativity 2008

Did you miss Konstfack’s Forum on Creativity 2008?

Now you can view a recording.

13 February 2008

At Harvard, a Proposal to Publish Free on Web

By PATRICIA COHEN
Published: NYT February 12, 2008
Publish or perish has long been the burden of every aspiring university professor. But the question the Harvard faculty will decide on Tuesday is whether to publish — on the Web, at least — free.

Faculty members are scheduled to vote on a measure that would permit Harvard to distribute their scholarship online, instead of signing exclusive agreements with scholarly journals that often have tiny readerships and high subscription costs.

Although the outcome of Tuesday’s vote would apply only to Harvard’s arts and sciences faculty, the impact, given the university’s prestige, could be significant for the open-access movement, which seeks to make scientific and scholarly research available to as many people as possible at no cost.

“In place of a closed, privileged and costly system, it will help open up the world of learning to everyone who wants to learn,” said Robert Darnton, director of the university library. “It will be a first step toward freeing scholarship from the stranglehold of commercial publishers by making it freely available on our own university repository.”

Under the proposal Harvard would deposit finished papers in an open-access repository run by the library that would instantly make them available on the Internet. More.

30 November 2007

Cry, robot: the android dental patient at the cutting edge

· Machines filling gaps in shrinking workforce
· Japanese market to grow to £26bn a year by 2025

The days of a guaranteed pain-free visit to the dentist may not be far off thanks to a petite Japanese woman in a pink sweater who goes by the name of Simroid. She has a limited vocabulary and a strange complexion, but the 160cm-tall humanoid robot is happy to feel your pain.

More.

23 November 2007

Illusion and the sacred

But certainly for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, the appearance to the essence... illusion only is sacred, truth profane. Nay, sacredness is held to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness.

Feuerbach, Preface to the second edition of The Essence of Christianity

13 July 2006

The Return of Me

Paralyzed Man Uses Thoughts to Move a Cursor

By ANDREW POLLACK
Published: July 13, 2006

A paralyzed man with a small sensor implanted in his brain was able to control a computer, a television set and a robot using only his thoughts, scientists reported yesterday.

Matthew Nagle, left paralyzed when he was stabbed five years ago, and the circle he drew on a computer screen by using only his thoughts.

Those results offer hope that in the future, people with spinal cord injuries, Lou Gehrig’s disease or other conditions that impair movement may be able to communicate or better control their world.

“If your brain can do it, we can tap into it,” said John P. Donoghue, a professor of neuroscience at Brown University who has led development of the system and was the senior author of a report on it being published in today’s issue of the journal Nature.

In a variety of experiments, the first person to receive the implant, Matthew Nagle, moved a cursor, opened e-mail, played a simple video game called Pong and drew a crude circle on the screen. He could change the channel or volume on a television set, move a robot arm somewhat, and open and close a prosthetic hand.

Article

12 July 2006

Transhumanism...

Thanks to Ron Jones for this:

Transhumanism: Yearning to transcend biology

by Cathy Young The Boston Globe

Published: July 10, 2006


BOSTON With everything else that's happening in the world today, debates about whether humanity should embrace as yet nonexistent technologies that could enhance our physical and intellectual abilities and someday make us "more than human" may seem frivolous.
Nonetheless, a debate on "transhumanism" has been going on for a few years, with naysayers and doomsayers on one side, optimistic futurists on the other, and too little in between.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/07/10/opinion/edyoung.php

Article.

26 June 2006

AM I EVERYWHERE?

By davidng

Last year, I had a decidedly Jungian experience, which is odd for me as a rational scientific sort. This synchronicity event happened at a local bookstore where I was searching for an issue of a Canadian magazine called Maisonneuve, a publication nice enough to print an essay of mine. As I was looking over the rack, my eyes wandered and noticed an issue of The Believer, where lo and behold, I saw my name on the front cover - a very observable and clear “by DAVID NG”, written with agreeable font, and even flanked by two pretty star icons. I hurriedly flipped through the magazine to see if I could find any information on this author, confused that my life had perhaps become so busy that I was submitting articles without even knowing it.

Article

11 June 2006

Professor, scientist, art collector, crook: jail for conman with millionaire lifestyle

· Fraudster caught in £1m Christie's art scam
· Five years for man who created string of identities

Paul Lewis
Saturday January 21, 2006
The Guardian

In his time Robert Hyams has posed as one of the world's top microbiologists, claiming breakthroughs in the field of Aids and cancer. He has tricked banks, property agents and car companies out of fortunes. But it was his pretence to be a millionaire art buyer that finally led to jail for the conman when he attempted to swindle the auctioneers Christie's out of more than £1m worth of French masterpieces.

Article

08 June 2006

Clones' Debut Is a Test of Genetics, and Bettors' Wits

Thanks to Laurie for this:

Anyone trying to select a winner at the mule races this weekend in Winnemucca, Nev., will no doubt have a hard time choosing between Idaho Gem and Idaho Star. They may have different names, but they are not necessarily different mules.

Idaho Gem and Idaho Star are clones.

By BILL FINLEY
Published in New York Times: June 3, 2006

Article

01 June 2006

Second Life

Second Life is a 3-D virtual world entirely built and owned by its residents. Since opening to the public in 2003, it has grown explosively and today is inhabited by over 200,000 people from around the globe.

Second Life.

Apple's take on MMORPGs

By Brad Cook
A little while after breakfast, you enter the Wailing Caverns to retrieve the four gems possessed by the leaders of the Druids of the Fang. You defeat each of them in turn and carry the precious stones to Nara Wildmane, a Tauren who dwells in Thunder Bluff. She expresses her deep gratitude.

During lunch, you help the Allies take the town of Eindhoven, in the Netherlands. Your emerge as one of the few who survive an intense firefight with Axis soldiers. The victory is not only key to the war effort, but it also earns you officer status, granting you the ability to direct future missions and lead troops into battle.

In the afternoon, you fly across a landscape studded with odd-shaped buildings and fantastic-looking characters. You land among a colorful group playing Tringo and join the action before taking to the air once more. You’re on your way to Atlantis, where you’ll tour the sights in a submarine.

Article.

A RAPE IN CYBERSPACE

by Julian Dibbell
Published in: Village Voice, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 51, December 21, 1993

They say he raped them that night. They say he did it with a cunning little doll, fashioned in their image and imbued with the power to make them do whatever he desired. they say that by manipulating the doll he forced them to have sex with him, and with each other, and to do horrible, brutal things to their own bodies. And though I wasn't there that night, I think I can assure you that what they say is true, because it all happened right in the living room - right there amid the well-stocked bookcases and the sofas and the fireplace - of a house I've come to think of as my second home.

Call me Dr. Bombay. Some months ago - let's say about halfway between the first time you heard the words _information superhighway_ and the first time you wished you never had - I found myself tripping with compulsive regularity down the well-traveled information lane that leads to LambdaMOO, a very large and very busy rustic chateau built entirely of words. Nightly, I typed the commands that called those words onto my computer screen, dropping me with what seemed a warm electric thud inside the mansion's darkened coat closet, where I checked my quotidian identity, stepped into the persona and
appearance of a minor character from a long-gone television sit-com, and stepped out into the glaring chatter of the crowded living room. Sometimes, when the mood struck me, I emerged as a dolphin instead.

Article.

Glass Artists Face Off in Court

By TIMOTHY EGAN, New York Times
Published: June 1, 2006

SEATTLE, May 31 — As an ever-moving maestro in the world where fine art and commerce converge, Dale Chihuly is perhaps the world's most successful glass artist.

His clients include Bill Gates and Bill Clinton, and his elaborate installations of sea gardens and flower clusters show that mere sand transformed by fire can elevate a casino ceiling to the level of gallery spectacle.

But now Mr. Chihuly is in the midst of a hard-edged legal fight in federal court here over the distinctiveness of his creations and, more fundamentally, who owns artistic expression in the glass art world.

Article.

30 May 2006

Museum of Hoaxes

Contains entries such as (and thanks to Laurie for this one too):

A Virgin's Plea
Status: Hoax
Here's a hoax that I missed while away in Scotland. Geoff (who withheld his last name) claimed to be a twenty-five-year-old virgin. He launched a website (avirginsplea.com) on May 1, declaring that if his site received five million hits by the end of the month, a girl he knew had promised to sleep with him. Soon blogs were linking to his site to help him out, and the media (unable, as always, to resist an unusual story about sex) deluged him with requests for interviews. Predictably, it all turned out to be a hoax. Geoff, although a real person, was not a virgin, as reporters found out who tracked down a former girlfriend of his. In addition, Geoff hadn't created the site. He was merely the front man for it. The creator of the site was web designer Matthew Gamble who had intended it, so he later claimed, to be an experiment in viral marketing.

I learned about this hoax yesterday when I got a call from MTV Canada, who, after initially having been taken in by the hoax, were now interviewing Gamble on air. They telephoned me to get my opinion as a 'hoax expert'. Specifically, they were very curious about whether Gamble's hoax warranted inclusion in the Museum of Hoaxes. I assured them that it did, which seemed to make them happy. I didn't add that my standards for what warrants inclusion on the site are pretty low. As long as something sounds kind of hoaxy, I'll post about it on my blog. (The standards for what makes it into the Gallery sections of the site are much higher.)

I should also note that avirginsplea.com was a spoof of helpwinmybet.com, a site launched in March by a guy claiming that his girlfriend had agreed to a threesome if his site received two million hits. To my knowledge helpwinmybet.com hasn't been exposed as a hoax, per se, but I'm guessing that it's just a scheme to generate revenue from ads for dating sites.

Museum of Hoaxes

29 May 2006

End of Me tutorials/Tuesday 30 May 2006

On Tuesday 30 May we will focus on your projects and interpretations of course themes via individual tutorials (30 mins per tutorial). Please sign up for a time via the "Comments" function with EITHER Ron OR Rolf.

Ron’s available times are:

09.00-9.30 Anders Johansson
09.30-10.00
11.00-11.30 Karin Nilsson
15.00-15.30 Kira Carpelan
15.30-16.00
16.30-17.00

Rolf’s available times are:

13.00-13.30
13.30-14.00 Felicitas Rohden
14.00-14.30
14.30-15.00
15.00-15.30 Helena Regius
15.30-16.00 Joshua Webber

This is your opportunity to rehearse and receive feedback on your response to course assignment #3 before Thursday, so please be prepared to discuss your final essay/presentation as outlined below. Where? Ron's office in IS for those seeing Ron and S5 for those seeing Rolf. We look forward to hearing your ideas.

Best wishes,

Rolf Hughes & Ronald Jones

3. The final essay/presentation (comprising 50% of course grade) should be an exploration of one or more of the course themes of innovation, authenticity, and/or exhaustion. Students should carefully research, write and/or present and discuss a hypothetical or real life dilemma concerning an aspect of one of these themes. For example, a case of architectural plagiarism is afoot in U.S. courts that could be used to examine questions of authenticity and originality: U.S. Federal Judge Michael B. Mukasey, of Federal District Court in Manhattan, ruled in August 2005 that a lawsuit brought in the fall of 2004 by Thomas Shine against Skidmore, Owings & Merrill for copyright violations involving SOM's Freedom Tower design and Mr. Shine's 1999 student project at Yale (when David M. Childs, a partner at SOM, was his Professor) could proceed. Based on visual evidence alone, Judge Mukasey ordered that the case proceed leaving open the chance for Mr. Shine’s “originality” to be protected against Mr. Childs alledged appropriation of his design. Skidmore’s motion for dismissal was unsuccessful. Does Judge Mukasey’s decision lay the groundwork for deciding the existence of “originality” in the field of architecture, a field long known to be “collaborative” and “interdisciplinary?” If the courts determine ownership in this case, should that constitute a definition for “originality” in 2006? Should the courts be involved at all? And if not the courts, should professionals in the field create a governing body to protect the ideas of young artists, designers, craftspeople, and architects against poaching from larger firms and more successful practitioners? What are the implications for your practice if Mr. Shine does not prevail? Presentation due: Thursday 1 June.

23 May 2006

OneTrees

Cloning has made it possible to Xerox copy organic life and confound the traditional understanding of individualism and authenticity. In the public sphere, genetics is often reduced to 'finding the gene for .... (fill in the blank)', misrepresenting the complex interactions with environmental influences. The swelling cultural debate that contrasts genetic determinism and environmental influence has consequences for understanding our own agency in the world, be it predetermined by genetic inevitability or constructed by our actions and environment. The OneTrees project is a forum for public involvement in this debate, a shared experience with actual material consequences.

OneTrees

Who should own Swedish patents?

From NordForsk:

Many think that Swedens leading role in research and innovation is due partly to its patent legislation securing researchers employed at universities and university colleges the right to their own inventions. Now a possible abolition of this legislation might be the case according to a new government report. Naive, says patent-rich researcher.

NordForsk

The End of Gilbert

NY novelist, poet, essayist Gilbert Sorrentino – who once declared "Art cannot rescue anyone from anything.” – has died aged 77.

Obituary

22 May 2006

Artbots

ArtBots: The Robot Talent Show, an international art exhibition for robotic art and art-making robots

Artbots

“MEART – The Semi Living Artist”

“MEART – The Semi Living Artist” is a geographically detached, bio-cybernetic research and development project exploring aspects of creativity and artistry in the age of new biological technologies.

It was developed and hosted by SymbioticA - The Art & Science Collaborative Research Lab, University of Western Australia.

[...]

From an historical context, artists have always been concerned with imitating life and with giving life/animating qualities to non-living entities. Technology has also joined forces with art forms to create more sophisticated types of artificial life systems and “intelligent” machines. The uniqueness of MEART is the attempt to create an intelligent artificial/biological artist that has in itself the capability or potential to be creative. We are focusing on creating the artist rather than the artwork. MEART proposes to embody the fusion of biology and the machine - creativity emerging from a semi-living entity.

MEART