[-empyre-] Machine Dreams

[B. Bogart]

Hello All,

My apologies for jumping on this older message, but I could not resist
responding to the subject.

Mark, thank you for posting info on this event. I will check out the
video stream.

Since 2008 I've been developing a series of site-specific installations
that use machine learning and computer vision to construct their own
dreams (and perceptions). I came to the work after masters study in the
context of machine creativity and thought of dreams as a possible
non-rational, non-problem-solving, non-task-oriented form of novelty
generation.

I ended up doing a PhD on the topic and built a system meant as a
site-specific generative artwork that 'senses' the world through a live
camera and creates its own internal simulation of reality that is
manifest in perceptual, dreaming and mind-wandering modes.  The approach
and model of dreaming is currently being used to appropriate popular
cinematic depictions of AI.

For more info:

http://www.ekran.org/ben/wp/2009/dm2/

http://www.ekran.org/ben/wp/2012/an-artist-in-processa-computational-sketch-of-dreaming-machine-3/

http://www.ekran.org/ben/wp/2014/watching-and-dreaming-2001-a-space-odyssey-2014/

http://www.ekran.org/ben/wp/2017/watching-blade-runner-2016/

https://youtu.be/Clp0blcHG8M

https://youtu.be/xYtt8qSwJws

Ben Bogart, PhD
www.ekran.org



On 2017-05-22 08:45 AM, Mark Marino wrote:
> ----------empyre- soft-skinned space----------------------
> 
> 
> 
> Hi, Machine Dreamers,
> 
> I'm so excited for this week's discussion.  Our Machine Dreams encounter
> was one I will not forget.  For those of you who missed it, you can
> watch a somewhat pixelated version here.
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFYFaWrqZik
> 
> As I read over our publication from Machine Dreams, flip through the
> pages of Radio heart, or think about our time together, I'm struck by
> the shear humanity of the whirls with robots.  Or rather, I'm struck by
> the parts of humanity that emerge from the whirls.  
> 
> Why are we so drawn to the machines of our machine dreams, as people, as
> artists, as dreamers? I'm starting to think that it is not their
> inability to be completely human but instead their ability to fully
> embody one part of the human attributes without manifesting the full
> meat sack of messy, squishy embodied being. In other words, they allow
> us to imagine intensely our humanity in part.   Not metonymic but in
> isolation.
> 
> An emotion.  A logical flow.  A sense of consideration without empathy.
> Knowledge without understanding.
> 
> But our intense encounter with even that part of humanity -- that part
> of humanity isolated from the whole -- is transformative.
> 
> "I still hear you radio heart beating
> Inside the meat of mine."
> 
> And of course, no doubt this partiality is part and parcel of our
> experience of one another. 
> 
> That is my first thought.  Looking forward to our conversation.
> 
> Best,
> Mark Marino
> 
> 
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