metainterface
a situation where the computer’s interface seemingly both becomes omnipresent and invisible, and where it at once is embedded in everyday objects and characterized by hidden exchanges of information between objects
a situation where the computer’s interface seemingly both becomes omnipresent and invisible, and where it at once is embedded in everyday objects and characterized by hidden exchanges of information between objects
the artistic practice of web scraping, or of automatically collecting and transforming found digital material. It hinges upon a combination of curatorial practice, reverse engineering, and hoarding mentality
or cameraless photography: “I create these spaces, or the neural networks create these spaces, which are latent - it’s the abstract representation of how such a model sees the world as you trained it. What I can do then, is to go inside that space and, like a photographer, look around virtually and frame that space.”
Ecological theorists Gregory Bateson and Felix Guattari offer a foundation for approaching these contradictions by thinking simultaneously about three interconnected domains: the self, the social and the ecological.
Participant designers, well versed in ontological entanglements, are well poised to enable these emergent ways of seeing and knowing to make transitions to another world not only possible but desirable.
Syncopation is to rhythm what dissonance is to harmony. A syncopated rhythm has accents on unexpected beats. In Western classical music, syncopation is usually temporary and eventually “resolves” to simpler rhythms. In the music of the African diaspora, syncopation is a constant, in the same way that unresolved tritones are constant in the blues.
media devices that allow individuals to control and customize their sonic environment, such as noise-cancelling headphones, smartphone apps that turn background noise into a seaside ambience, hearing aids that filter and alter the sound of the world
Prior information (from previous trials, scientific research or “expert opinion”) can be combined with information as it is accrued during a trial, as well as with the usual data available on completion of the trial, to make efficient and timely inferences about the safety and/or efficacy of a treatment or therapy.
A self-organizing multilayered neural network, which is named “cognitron”, cand be deduced and constructed following a new hypothesis for the organization of synapses between neurons: “The synapse from neuron x to neuron y is reinforced when x fires provided that no neuron in the vicinity of y is firing stronger than y”
“a machine which is able to reconstruct the surrounding sentences of a passage in a book”
“If I had to picture it right now, it would be a conurbation, a set of knots, crawling around through a pile of everything we’ve written here, seen as one long roll of parchment. It’s a creature that moves, bounces, skitters, but it doesn’t rise above the paper — you only see it as the words drag around in its wake.”
on bots
Ambient ecologies is a space populated by connected devices and services that are interrelated with each other, the environment and the people, supporting the users’ everyday activities in a meaningful way.
emergent systems where old and new media and physical and digital environments are designed, delivered and experienced as a seamless whole
The microbiome is the set of non-human organisms that live within us. Many help humans digest food. The microbotome is all the bots that help humans digest information and interact with the machine world. The microbotome will become—if it’s not already—absolutely essential to economic and social survival.
A robot designed for a single task has a fixed architecture and that robot will perform that single task well, but it will perform poorly on a different task on a different environment. If we do not know ahead of time what the robot will have to do and when it will have to do it, it’s better to consider making modular robots that can attain whatever shape is needed for the manipulation, navigation or sensing needs of the task.
An electrical impulse, instead of going to its proper destination and quieting down dutifully, starts circulating lawlessly. It invades distant parts of the mechanism and sets the whole mass of electronic neurons moving in wild oscillations.
Norbert Wiener in Time Magazine, 1948
The basic principle of adaption depends on the simple fact that the process toward equilibrium is irreversible. Misfit provides an incentive to change; good fit provides none. In theory the process is eventually bound to reach the equilibrium of well-fitting forms.