DESMA 9:Art, Science and Technology

We are now in transition from an object-oriented to a systems-oriented culture. Here change emanates, not

from things, but from the way things are done.

Jack Burnham, 1968

Biology, Networks, Natural Systems, Artificial Life

TODAY 4/16/07:

• Quick Review of last week’s topics and lecture by Sean Dockray

• Biological networks• Computer networks• Artificial Life• Visitor / responder: Edward Shanken, Ph.D.

The Difference / Analytical Engine: Charles Babbage, 1822

"Note on the application of machinery to the computation of very big mathematical tables." This machine used the decimal number system and was powered by cranking a handle.

AUGUSTA ADA KING, Countess of Lovelace (born Ada Byron)

Renowned for her description and associated notes on Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine which was never built, but Ada's notes are widely recognized as containing the first ever computer program.

“The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do whatever we know how to order it to perform. It can follow analysis; but it has no power of anticipating any analytical relations or truths.”

She speculated: that "the Engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent."

H.G. Wells:WORLD BRAIN

1937

automated system for making all of humanity's knowledge available

The TURING testAlan Turing, mathematician, cryptographer “father of computer science”

Turing provided an influential formalization of the concept of the algorithmand computation with the Turing machine in 1936.

Turing machines were not meant to be a practical computing technology, but a thought experiment about the limits of mechanical computation; thus they were not actually constructed. Studying their abstract propertiesyields many insights into computer science and complexity theory.

With the Turing test, he made a significant and characteristicallyprovocative contribution to the debate regarding artificial intelligence: whether it will ever be possible to say that a machine is conscious and can think.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)"the science and engineering of making intelligent machines"

AI is studied in overlapping fields of computer science, psychology, philosophy, Neuroscience and engineering, dealing with intelligent behavior, learning and Adaptation and usually developed using customized machines or computers.

John McCarthy He was responsible for the coining of the term "Artificial Intelligence" in a 1955 proposal.

In the philosophy of artificial intelligence, Strong AI vs. Weak AI debates the supposition that some forms of artificial intelligence can truly reason and solve problems.

Strong AI supposes that it is possible for machines to become self-aware, but not necessarily exhibit human-like thought processes. Weak AI makes no such claim and denies this possibility.

The term strong AI was originally coined by John Searle,

"...according to strong AI, the computer is not merely a tool in the study of the mind; rather, the appropriately programmed computer really is a mind"[1]

CHRISTOPHER LANGTON: Artificial Life

Langton’s ant: Squares on a plane are colored variously either black or white. We arbitrarily identify one square as the "ant". The ant can travel in any of the four cardinal directions at each step it takes. These simple rules lead to surprisingly complex behavior: after an initial period of apparently chaotic behavior, the ant appears invariably to start building a road of 104 steps that repeat indefinitely - regardless of the pattern you start off with.

SWARM INTELLIGENCESwarm intelligence (SI) is an artificial intelligence technique based around the study of collective behavior in decentralized, self-organized systems.

The expression "swarm intelligence" was introduced by Beni & Wang in 1989, in the context of cellular robotic systems.

The swarming behavior of ants, bees, termites, and other social insects has implications far beyond the hive. Swarm intelligence — the collective behavior of independent agents, each responding to local stimuli without supervision —can be used to understand and model phenomena as diverse as blood clotting, highway traffic patterns, gene expression, and immune responses, to name just a few. Swarm technology is proving useful in a wide range of applications including robotics and nanotechnology, molecular biology and medicine, traffic and crowd control, military tactics, and even interactive art.

SELF ASSEMBLYORGANIZATION

Self-assembly is coordinated action of independent entities under distributed (i.e., non-central) control to produce a larger structure orto achieve a desired group effect.

Instances of self assembly occur in biology (e.g., embryology and morphogenesis) and in chemistry (e.g., the formation of more loosely bound supramolecularstructures from groups of molecules). Additionally, in robotics, an objective is to produce and program groups of robots (or micro-robots) that are capable of self assembly.

CONTROL systems:

a device or set of devices to manage, command, direct or regulate the behavior of other devices or systems.

Control systems that include some sensing of the results they are trying to achieve are making use of feedback and so can, to some extent, adapt to varying circumstances.

Self-organization is a process in which the internal organization of a system, normally an open system increases in complexity without being guided or managed by an outside source. Self-organizing systems typically (though not always) display emergent properties.

IBM research report suggests that the best analogies for businesses n the future may no longer be the command structures of the military but the self-organising networks found in nature: schools of fish, flocks of birds and swarms of insects.

CELLULAR AUTOMATA

Conus textile exhibits a cellular automata pattern on its shell

A cellular automaton (plural: cellular automata) is a discrete model studied in computability theory, mathematics, and theoretical biology. It consists of an infinite, regular grid of cells, each in one of a finite number of states. The grid can be in any finite number of dimensions.

Wolfram argues that for fundamental reasons these types of systems, rather than traditional mathematics, are needed to model and understand complexity in nature.

Developed the Wolfram Code, method of enumerating elementary cellular automaton rules

Game of Life British matematician John Horton Conway

Garden of Eden patterns are configurations that cannot be reached from any other starting configuration.

Autoverse, an artificial life simulator ultimately based on a cellular automaton complex enough to represent the substratum of an artificial chemistry.

The Autoverse is a clockwork Newtonian chemistry set, internally consistent and vaguely resembling real chemistry. In the novel, tiny environments - simulated in the Autoverse and filled with small populations of a simple artificial lifeform- are opposed to huge virtual realities making heavy use of heuristics and therefore intrinsically incoherent.

ELIZA, computer therapist

Joseph Weizenbaum:Artificial Intelligence may be possible, we should never allow computers to make important decisions because computers will always lack human qualities such as compassion and wisdom.

1966, wrote a program which parodied a Rogerian therapist (counseling), largely by rephrasing many of the patient's statements as questions and posing them to the patient.

A.L.I.C.E.Artificial Intelligence foundation

Loebner prize

GENERATIVE ART

generated, composed, or constructed in an algorithmic manner through the use of systems defined by computer software algorithms, or similar mathematical or mechanical or randomised autonomous processes.Generative art is a system oriented art practice where the common denominator is the use of systems as a production method. To meet the definition of generative art, an artwork must be self-contained and operate with some degree of autonomy.

Stephen Wilson, Is Anyone There? 1992

If we are going to have artificially intelligent programs and robots, I would have sculptors and visual artists shaping their appearance, musicians composing their voices, choreographers forming their motion, poets crafting their language, and novelists and dramatists creating their character and interactions. To ignore these traditions is to discard centuries of experience and wisdom relevant to the research questions at hand.

JACK BURNHAM:Systems Esthetics, 1968

"[The] cultural obsession with the art object is slowly disappearing and being replaced by what might be called 'systems consciousness.‘Actually, this shifts from the direct shaping of

matter to a concern for organizing quantities ofenergy and information...

"Deep-rooted drives lasting several milleniaare not erased from the human personality overnight. Yet there is abundant evidence that the modern era of artistic expression through culptured objects is drawing to a close. Taking the path outlined up to now, it would be logical to speculate on the quasi-biological nature of future art...

HANS HAACKE:Condensation Cube, 1963-65

At about the same time Haacke did this piece, Ralph Lorenz, a meteorologist, was discovering the strange attractor and the intrinsic unpredictability of weather systems.

John Cage

Used randominzation of I Ching and Zen Buddhist ideas of repetition

BRIAN ENO:"Evolving metaphors, in my opinion, is what artists do."

Eno collaborated on the development of SSEYO's Koan generative music system and this software was used in the creation of the album Generative Music 1

"Generativity plays a role in many fields now, with gaming being no exception. Also built around this notion and probably one of the currently most eagerly awaited games is Will Wright's Spore, for which Brian Eno, as he revealed, will be making the soundtrack! He was asked to do it, because the designers wanted sound that is just a procedural as the game itself, instead of the loops which are tied to certain stages or areas which we are used to experience in games."

JAMES SEAWRIGHT:House Plants, 1984

KEN RINALDO:Autopoiesis

Seeks an "integration of organic and electro-mechanical elements" that point to a "co-evolution between living and evolving technological material."

DAVID ROCKEBY

Very Nervous System, 1986-90

n-Cha(n)t, 2001

Christa Sommerer & Laurent Mignonneau

Interactive plat growing