Sunday 29 May 2011

Back to the gene garden




back to the gene garden:




float xoff = 0.0;
float xincrement = 0.01;
int THRESH = 100;//size of best int
int POP_MAX = 1200;
int maxSIZE = 122;//max cell size
int[] pop = new int[POP_MAX];
//int[] fit = new int[10];
ArrayList fittest;
ArrayList babies;
int b, c, bab, baby;
//int cycles = 9;
void setup() {
size(900, 200);
fittest = new ArrayList();
babies = new ArrayList();
for (int i=0; i < POP_MAX; i++) {
pop[i] = (int)random(0, maxSIZE);//fill first population
}
}



void draw() {
// noLoop();
frameRate(2);
babies.clear(); //kilfuture parents

int ran2 = (int)random(maxSIZE, maxSIZE+maxSIZE/2);
for (int yy = 0;yy<5;yy++) {
babies.add(ran2);//couple of mutants
}
float n = noise(xoff)*width;

// With each cycle, increment xoff
xoff += xincrement;

fill(255);
rect(0, 0, width, height);
//initial population
for (int i=0; i < POP_MAX; i++) {
// println(" " +pop[i] + " ");
// ellipse(i+30, 50, 25, 25);
getFit(pop[i]); //asess for fitness
}
for (int i=0; i < fittest.size(); i++) {
Integer a = (Integer)fittest.get(i);
//println(" " +a + " ");
}



//best babies bred from best of population:
for (int i=0; i < babies.size(); i++) {
Integer tempbab = (Integer)babies.get(i);
bab = tempbab;


noStroke();

fill((int)random(bab*2), (int)random(bab*3), (int)random(bab*2), bab);
// ellipse(i+bab+bab/2, 100, bab, bab);
ellipse(i+bab+bab/2, 100, bab, bab);
// ellipse((int)random(n),height/2,bab, bab);
}
/*for(int i=0;i=THRESH) {
// println(" " +check + " ");
fittest.add(check);
breed(check);
}
}

///add biggest together
void breed(int a) {

int ran = (int)random(fittest.size());
for (int i=0; i < ran; i++) {
Integer tempb = (Integer)fittest.get(i);
b = tempb;
}

for (int i=ran; i > ran; i++) {
Integer tempc = (Integer)fittest.get(i);
c = tempc;
}

// fill((int)random(20, 255), 20);
///println(b+c);
// translate(20, 20);
//ellipse(b, c, 20, 20);
// baby =b+c+(int)random(-200); //breed and mutate
baby =b+c; //slight mutation
babies.add(baby);
}
///ignore this (note to self)



World world;

void setup() {
size(1100, 200);

world = new World(15); //20
smooth();
}

void draw() {

background(255);
world.run();
}


void mousePressed() {
aahha
save(frameCount+".jpg");
}
////


class Food {

ArrayList food;
ArrayList ellie; //my random size variables
int eloc;
int a =80;

Food(int num) {
// Start with some food
food = new ArrayList();
ellie = new ArrayList();//random sizes
for (int i = 0; i < num; i++) {
food.add(new PVector(random(width), random(height)));
}

for (int i = 0; i < food.size(); i++) {

ellie.add(int(random(10, 78)));
}
}


void run() {

for (int i = 0; i < food.size(); i++) {
PVector loc = (PVector) food.get(i);
ellipseMode(CENTER);
eloc = (Integer) ellie.get(i);

fill(loc.x, eloc, loc.y);


ellipse(a+i*53, 80, eloc, eloc);
// rect(a+i*50, 80, eloc, eloc);
}
}

// Return the list of food
ArrayList getFood() {
return food;
}
}
/////


class World {


Food food;

// Constructor
World(int num) {

food = new Food(num);
}


void run() {
// Deal with food
food.run();
}
}
//thanks to D. Shiffman...

Friday 27 May 2011

Photographing God Part II

This is the most mysterious image of God I have captured so far, and I can definitely see a bit of a laugh forming on that ghostly face. If God is light (Apollo is a god of light and the sun, God is light and in him is no darkness at all (John) and in Buddhism, all beings are imbued with a spark of inner divine light), then the attempt to use optical methods for capturing a representation seems reasonable, more reasonable at least then using words. It's quite hard to find serious references to this endeavour. I've just discovered Mel Alexenberg has a site called 'Photographing God', with this heading of text:
'Focus your camera lens on God and you will see God looking back at you. Seeing God is seeing divine light reflected from every facet of your life.' http://photographgod.blogspot.com/
I Haven't thought yet how to frame my project, but I suspect, it's underpinned by a search for the possibilty of experiencing an absence of dread, an absence of specific subjectivity as well as the more laudable academic quest for the unrepresentable - exploring the limits of symbolic representation. Can we have a 'direct experience', for example? This is an analogue device in which there is no inscriptive technology at play, only a fleeting im-material presence. What the viewer sees is only light, which we can pass our hands right through - through God and out the other side, leaving us wondering if we have seen anything at all.
The blueish one in this image is with natural light, the red one (earlier post) is with electric light..the result is like a pin-hole camera photograph, I'd like to add garden sounds to the box.

Buddha garden 'hologram' part I

The idea is for a mystical and peaceful meeting with G (of some sort), you press the hefty steam punk button on the lid and see G in a nice Zen garden, it's Pepper's Ghost illusion, which my students told me about on Tuesday - an optical illusion with a reflective surface and light. Looks a lot like a hologram or a ghost..

Tuesday 24 May 2011

Bizzare results from my gene garden this afternoon

Bizare results from my gene garden this afternoon, trying to grow the Zen Garden via Genetic Algorithm, but somehow it got out of control and started breeding 'plants' by the thousand.oops

Saturday 21 May 2011

neural spam: Neuro-marketing horrible but true


neural spam
"from sensory branding to emotion-based marketing, we cover it all. Our emphasis is always on practical techniques that yield real-world results."
http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/
Having worked with EEG machines I can see the potential for totally arbitary mis-matching of brains to products, somewhat like mental spam. Infact the whole concept could be sold to Spam.
That's progress.

Did the Apocalypse take place?


Did the promised Apocalypse take place today at 6? I haven't had a chance to pop out this afternoon, so can't be sure. The BBC is still running so I take this to mean that either:
a) the world hasnt ended.
b) it has ended, but as promised the unbelievers have briefly survived, and the BBC is therefore a hot-bed of unbelief, (thus I too have been classified as unsaved).
or
c) the world has ended and I am in a heaven or hell which is identical in every way to my previous world. In which case the whole concept of apocalypse has been greatly exagerrated.
d) They got the dates wrong again.

Friday 20 May 2011

Amazon tribe lacks abstract idea of time, study says

From an uncontacted TV station known as 'auntie beeb':

An Amazonian tribe has no abstract concept of time, say researchers.

The Amondawa lacks the linguistic structures that relate time and space - as in our idea of, for example, "working through the night".

The study, in Language and Cognition, shows that while the Amondawa recognise events occuring in time, it does not exist as a separate concept.

The idea is a controversial one, and further study will bear out if it is also true among other Amazon languages.

The Amondawa were first contacted by the outside world in 1986, and now researchers from the University of Portsmouth and the Federal University of Rondonia in Brazil have begun to analyse the idea of time as it appears in Amondawa language.

"We're really not saying these are a 'people without time' or 'outside time'," said Chris Sinha, a professor of psychology of language at the University of Portsmouth.

"Amondawa people, like any other people, can talk about events and sequences of events," he told BBC News.

"What we don't find is a notion of time as being independent of the events which are occcuring; they don't have a notion of time which is something the events occur in."

The Amondawa language has no word for "time", or indeed of time periods such as "month" or "year".

The people do not refer to their ages, but rather assume different names in different stages of their lives or as they achieve different status within the community.

But perhaps most surprising is the team's suggestion that there is no "mapping" between concepts of time passage and movement through space.

Ideas such as an event having "passed" or being "well ahead" of another are familiar from many languages, forming the basis of what is known as the "mapping hypothesis".

Researchers with Amondawa people
The Amondawa have no words for time periods such as "month" or "year"

But in Amondawa, no such constructs exist.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13452711

Thursday 19 May 2011

Brainwave controlled Cartesian Theatre


The Caresian Theatre is a sense and shock-based virtual theatre based on Ivan' Dar's life and philosophical explorations on the South Bank, a visceral addendum to the South book and software.

A theatre in which pain, fear, pleasure and anxiety are the dramatis personae, producers and agents in a set of visceral productions which map out the truth tables of human possibility A less painful set of experiential tools are available via the book South, which is my attempt to consolidate and interpret the legacy of Ivan Dar.

Like many before him he asked are we one thing – or are we two – mind and body? If we are two, are they one? Mind-body or mind and body? Or are we mind or body, as in this truth table:


FF not-mind not-body

TT body-mind

TF mind not body

FT body not mind


above fig 1.1








Ok so the cardboard is a bit rubbish (literally), the second to top image was an accident - I called the wrong image in the code, instead of a character got an interesting disruption to the virtual theatre facade - apposite given Ivan Dar's problem with topological boundaries...The characters are sourced from Google Street View around the South Bank.

Wednesday 18 May 2011

Skillset Pdf

BUILD YOUR OWN MA


BUILD YOUR OWN MA

http://courses.skillset.org/build_your_own_ma
Check out my course Programming for Artists as a module
on the fantastic new Professional Media Practice MA,
you can take uop to 5 years to get your MA, build it yourself across
lots of colleges in Britain. These are all courses the media industry has asked for.
http://www.gold.ac.uk/pg/ma-professional-media-practice/programming-for-artists/

Monday 16 May 2011

Motion captue stuff Carol and I did today


Motion capture stuff Carol and I did today, thanks to Andie for helping us, trying to get a submission ready in time for Siggraph 2011. That's me picking up a lap-top with exaggerated effort, and the data from the 34 points picked up by the 12 cameras. Had to wear the silly oufit, like a wetsuit with shiny balls stuck onto it and a special hat.

Zen garden in an Altoid tin part 2





Not virtual this time, need to add the sound of a bubbling stream and aim to make it pseudo-holographic in the mode of Laurie Anderson's beguiling 'at the shrink' top, 1977, in which she used a Laurie Anderson lump of shaped clay, and , as we noticed on Sunday, a cut-out hole of herself over the projector screen so there wasn't an unwanted shape around it.
Said good-bye to my thesis today as it's now going to the Goldsmiths library. All over in a flash..

Friday 13 May 2011

ithesis have done a great job

The ithesis people have done a great job on my thesis, with lovely colour pages exactly where I wanted them, http://www.ithesis.co.uk/ a cute CD pocket at the back and ten year guarantee on the binding,....really feels like it's over now, will hand it in on Monday.

Saturday 7 May 2011




Devoting next few weeks to the Cartesian Theatre. I'm going to write it up and perform it for the forthcoming Great Writing Conference in June, characters are matched to brain-states and situations linked to anxiety or calm etc. Ivan Dar gets to be the meta-protagonist. Went to see Wim Wenders' photographs at the Haunch of Venison but got distracted by Eve Sussman's msyterious Sci-fi film, whiteonwhite, 'six episodes of an algorithmic noir'. Ballardian is the word for it. Very engaging. http://www.canopycanopycanopy.com/10/whiteonwhite
Haunch of Venison is like a deserted Embassy, wondering down Burlington Arcade to get there is narcoma - it doesnt feel real on any level.

Thursday 5 May 2011

Media and the Senses today

hmmm...Funny I suppose - reading a paper abut anxiety, and feeling a bit panicy in the middle of it - hoist by my own petard, only just finished Siri Hustvedt's the Shaking Woman, as well, ha ha . but some positive comments and a chance of publication.... want to read Ian McGilchrist's book now - the Master and The Emissary. My pictures didn't look too wonky, spent the first part of the morning playing with Carol's fabulous and ingenious Bolt sculpture, I'd like one for my front room, possibly powered by the treadmill..

Wednesday 4 May 2011

University of Haifa Curatorship Conference‏

Crashtastic Skype presentation yesterday at the University of Haifa Curatorship Conference‏, the signal worked for about 2 minutes before Lee threw in the towel with Skype and saved the day by reading my stuff out for me, as she is in actual real-world Haifa, unlike me in no-bandwidth-on-sea. What a shame, but she did a fabulous job by all accounts and we are invited to publish, hooray. Sicking up stuff with ISBN numbers on it is my goal this year (joke from Campus). We were presenting the VAINS project and particularly discussing embodiment in the online curatorial domain etc