Studies Show the Value of Not Overthinking a Decision June 27, 2008; Page A9
Fishing in the stream of consciousness, researchers
now can detect our intentions and predict our choices before we are
aware of them ourselves. The brain, they have found, appears to make up
its mind 10 seconds before we become conscious of a decision — an
eternity at the speed of thought.
Their findings challenge conventional notions of choice.
Corbis
“We think our decisions are conscious,” said
neuroscientist John-Dylan Haynes at the Bernstein Center for
Computational Neuroscience in Berlin, who is pioneering this research.
“But these data show that consciousness is just the tip of the iceberg.
This doesn’t rule out free will, but it does make it implausible.” link
We love treehouses here at Inhabitat and are enamored with eco-architect Mitchell Joachim’s visionary ideas about how to grow living treehouses from ficus molded around frame structures. We’ve covered these brilliantly playful architectural ideas before on Inhabitat, but now we have a video from Mitchell Joachim explaining the details of how they work. Joachim does much better justice to his future-forward ecological designs than we are able to do in a mere post, so if you have any interest in living treehouses (and we know you do), check out this fascinating video below.
a music video titled “The Child” created by Antoine Bardou-Jacquet for the french DJ Alex Gopher. it shows a virtual world created only with animated typographics.
a simple story set in New York in which a young couple rush across town to the Central Hospital in order to deliver their baby is made into an exciting race. they travel through an alphabetical jungle where buildings, bridges & roads are made up entirely of words.
left: Blossfeldt Fractals (detail) - William Ngan & Right: Crystalpunk Automaton - Wilfried Hou Je Bek
Metaphorical brings to us a new work based on the photographs of Karl Blossfeldt and generated using a species of algorithm similar to L-Systems. Check out the dynamically generated Blossfeldt Fractals here, you can also read about the [...]
Circular Tensions, Homage to Oskar Fischinger - Harry Smith
Donjuanauxenfers has uploaded ‘Early Abstractions’ a cycle of early experimental films and animations by the great Harry Smith. There are a number of short individual films on the compilation although they are presented as one long stream in this context.
Part 1 contains three films that are [...]
Stringlattice() (detail) & Matrix() (detail)
Reese Inman uses computer algorithms to provide a map or blueprint for the construction of her paintings. Like a freeze frame from Conway’s Game of Life, and intricate mappings of other rare Cellular Automata, her paintings shimmer with pixillated light. From afar its is possible to imagine the final output [...]
Spin Cycle by Spencer Kiser is a turntable that allows the user to navigate color and aural spaces. It’s a plain ordinary turntable, surmounted by a webcam. On the same turntable, there are some colored plexiglass discs (shoot by the camera). Depending on chromatic combinations and on the dj’s juxtapositions, sounds are produced. During
After investigating on ’semantic capitalism’ and ‘taylorisation of speech’ with the project ‘Google Adwords’, Christophe Bruno reflects on the economic dynamics of collective hallucination. According to the French net artist “The Web, specifically in its version 2.0, is an implementation of control
In a supposed free-speech society, control over public spaces is paradoxically becoming tighter and tighter and advertising looks more and more like propaganda. Surrounded by ads communicating always the same messages, people are getting used to such a standard. Art then intervenes to alert
‘Rediscover analog’ sounds like the guideline for many contemporary digital artists who research in the audio-visual field. Combining this attitude with the desire of going over the limits imposed by a specific technology you get a project like ‘Synchronator‘, analog sound and video signal hacking by Dutch artists Bas van Koolwijk and Gert-Jan Prins. The duo,
How does generative art relate to semiotic? Does the randomic association between the signifier and the signified blur the process of meaning construction? If you adehere to the interpretative perspective, that includes the context as well as the interpreteur as parts of the communication process, it doesn’t.
In a special edition of El Pais Digital reporting the Arco festival in 2001, the Spanish artist Ricardo Iglesias, one of the net art pioneers in his country, said that nothing or almost nothing (”only cliché”) can be said about net art in five or six lines. However he mentioned a series of isolated topics that
CD + dvd C0C0S0L1DC1T1
The beginning of the first video works by Julio Soto, ‘The Possibility Of Utopia’, looks like taken from Peter Cook’s radical project ‘Plug City’ or from another artwork shown at the famous Archigram exhibition in 1973. It’s a very imaginative meta-narration that takes place in the unknown
Over the coming months ill be posting a lot of images from my explorations with the fantastic software - vvvv from Meso.
“vvvv is a toolkit for real time video synthesis. It is designed to facilitate the handling of large media environments with physical interfaces, real-time motion graphics, audio and video that can interact with many users simultaneously. “
It is a modular programming environment with similarities to Max/Msp except its pc only, and free, with a supportive group of practitioners and healthy development scene.
At the moment im mainly learning from hacking existing patches apart and together but as i learn more ill be posting the results and resources up here. For now a few screenshots from my exisiting experiments……..
Going to birmingham tomorrow to visit VIVID They are showing a series of films by Woody and Steina Vasulka
“Steina and Woody Vasulka are widely acknowledged to be leading exponents in the field of media art. Their body of work is unique; spanning the entire range of formats and confirgurations of electronic media; single and multiple screen video, live performance, real time processing, installation and interactive technology. From an historical view point (insofar as we can consider the short history of media art) their contribution is evolutionary.” The film screening which finishes on Saturday is part one of an ongoing exhibition. Part two consists of exhibtions of their installations and culminates in a talk hosted by the artists, followed by a pratical workshop exploring interactivity. Ive just banged my application in the mail. Fingers crossed.
Went to the Vasulka exhibition at VIVID in Birmingham. Lots of video goodness - No 54, Artifacts, C-Trend, Violin Power and The Art of Memory all stood out.
Violin Power Remember theres more to come - Part 2 will focus on their installation art and features Theatre of Hybrid Automata and Machine Vision.ont> It runs from 13th April until 6th May at Vivid.
Theatre of Hybrid Automata There will also be a talk and workshop by the Vasulkas in April. More details to follow….
Lately i have become interested in perlin noise, a function which attempts to construct randomly varied values which mimic the naturally ocurring randomness of nature. Many natural phenomena display this random variation from the waves in the ocean to the distribution of grass on a field. Developed by Ken Perlin who used it to control the texture generation in TRON, it is now used in computer graphic applications to produce effects such as fire and clouds. an example of perlin noise to create natural environments rendered with terragen Using the software VVVV i have been experimenting with perlin noise - rendering it onto a grid and controlling it with oscillators.
when moving they appear as natural waves with slowly evolving patterns. Its remarkable how human eyes see nature in numbers. In future i intend to develop the process to produce a controllable morphing landscape synth. more pics to follow….