digital consciousness

I've recently come across an interesting piece of text by Headmine, I have shared below. It highlights an interesting problem that digital social media creates: The conscious perception of any given moment seems to have shifted, to have been delayed until the moment it is shared.

"There’s a new sense of Now emerging from the web and it’s starting to become more present than the here and now in front of us. The events in our lives only seem to come into full existence as we post them online. A moment that can’t be digitized and shared in one form or another is in danger of never happening.

Our parents took photos to try to hold on to the past. We take photos to create the present.

We point our mobile devices at the things and events in our lives not to remember them but to make them real. This concert, this forest, this meal with friends hasn’t really happened until it’s made its way online. The cutting edge of experience is shifting away from our senses, moving outside of our consciousness, and getting entangled in our electronic media.

Now has become the moment when the fragments of our ‘real’ lives are released into the cloud. Now is now the ephemeral membrane between us and the network.

'Google organized our memory. Real-time search organizes our consciousness.' - Edo Segal"

Perhaps we could say that sharing enhances conscious perception.

“It’s funny how the colors of the real world only seem really real when you viddy them on the screen.” -A Clockwork Orange

the eye writer

The Eyewriter from Evan Roth on Vimeo.

The EyeWriter project is an ongoing collaborative research effort to empower people, who are suffering from ALS, with creative technologies. It is a low-cost eye-tracking apparatus & custom software that allows graffiti writers and artists with paralysis resulting from Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis to draw using only their eyes.

emily howell

Have a listen to the new star on the classical music sky: Emily Howell

Sounds impressive? However, Emily Howell is not real, but virtual. David Cope, a music professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz is her craetor. She is nothing less than a computer program, which (after almost 40 years) is now able to create original compositions of contemporary classical music. Read more here.

But Howell is, her critics say, dumbly re-arranging phrases from the work of earlier human composers into a new pattern which is only theoretically original (...) "From the heart – may it go to the heart," wrote Beethoven on the manuscript of his Missa Solemnis. From the byte to the brain can never be equivalent to that (Mark Lawson in the Guardian).

I'm relieved.

taking the "fiction" out of "science fiction"

First in a series of posts on the future of brain imaging technology (I will use this for a debate in class with the students): CBS's 60 Minutes with Lesley Stahl: "How Technology May Soon 'Read' Your Mind" (picture via Bertrand Thirion).

Watch an interesting lecture on this topic by Martha Farah here ("Imaging the Brain, Reading the Mind" is a Northwestern University public outreach program to help the general public understand the impact of cutting-edge brain imaging technology on human health, law, and ethics).

masakatsu sashie's orbs

(reposted from pinktentacle; picture source and more pictures here)

"Masakatsu Sashie's fantastic “orb” paintings depict large, city-like spheres that float gently above the remains of a failed civilization. The giant orbs, which seem to be self-contained worlds unto themselves, are pieced together from the scraps of old Showa-period buildings and bits of consumer culture, such as vending machines, pachinko parlors, fast food signs, and video game components. Part retro and part sci-fi, the orbs appear to hover gracefully between the worlds of a nostalgic past and a dystopian future."

robo jellies

Meet the new generation of RoboJellies!

AquaJelly is an artificial jellyfish made by Festo and presented at the Hannover Trade Fair in 2008. It is an autonomous jellyfish with an electric drive and an intelligent, adaptive mechanical system. It has 11 infrared light-emitting diodes and communicates with a central station by using the short-range radio standard ZigBee. AquaJelly consists of a translucent hemisphere and eight tentacles used for propulsion. At the centre of the AquaJelly is a watertight, laser-sintered pressure vessel. This comprises a central, electric drive, two lithium-ion-polymer batteries, the charge control device and the servo motors for the swashplate. source

And here is its mesmerizing sibling, AirJelly (with a helium-filled balloon as a body), presented at the same fair.

Last but not least: Here is Aquaroid BT 02 of the aquaroid series made by the Japanese Company Takara Toys in 2000. The robots are powered by solar cells. They float and swim inside tanks of water, changing direction when they hit obstacles.

bendito machines

Bendito Machines are at the moment three short animated movies, directed by Jossie Malis, produced by Zumbakamera and inspired by oriental Shadow Play. Themes of the series are power, greed, control, consumerism, capitalism, religion, superstition etc. Issues and problems of people are mirrored in a sarcastic way to create a final one hour film (a series of 10 episodes) which is supposed to reach people all over the world, who might recognize their society and its problems. It is supposed to make people aware of and question what they usually try to forget or repress, just because it is an unpleasant, dangerous or difficult issue. If you understand Spanish, check out this interview.

Here are the links to Bendito Machine 1 and Bendito Machine 2. Here is a link to an audio discussion of Jossie Malis on the first two episodes (in English).

Here you can watch Bendito Machine 3: "Obey His Commands" (one of my favourites):

Director: Jossie Malis

Music: Sxip Shirey

Country: Spain

Year: 2008

In my opinion, this episode is about how new media replaces old media and how people worship everything they don't understand. The radio is replaced by the TV (sending subliminal messages), which is replaced by something resembling a computer. I the end people are actually the slaves of technology. However, the main point is that people don't seem to understand, that they should not worship each and every idol they receive but rather the entity on that mountain, who is providing them with their "toys" and which in the end destroys the city.

connecting generations

The Yellow Smiley Face ( © PortableFilmFestival.com ) from Nixie on Vimeo.

director: Constantin Popescu Jr.

actors: Luminita Gheorghiu & Teodor Corban

It's a bit long, but worth it! Yahoo Messenger commercial? I think it's more! Do you recognize yourself or someone else dear to you? May not be everyone's story, but it certainly is very close to mine!

immersion

by Robbie Cooper

entity

Wayne McGregor's latest work, Entity, explores the connection between the brain and movement.

Check out McGregor's "Random Dance" website.

Entity is the latest in a series of choreographic inquiries into the relationship between the brain and the moving body - a project which has led McGregor to work with psychologists, neuroscientists and software engineers. The piece is born of his preoccupation with the idea of 'an artificially intelligent choreographic entity' - a piece of software which can 'think' for itself and help generate movement. The relationship between this research and the performance on stage is an abstract one, but the production is studded with visual markers which define the territory.