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Biology, Networks,
Natural Systems, Artificial Life
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
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 test
Alan Turing, mathematician, cryptographer “father of computer science”
Turing provided an influential formalization of the concept of the algorithm
and 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 properties
yields many insights into computer science and complexity theory.
With the Turing test, he made a significant and characteristically
provocative 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"
John McCarthy He was responsible for the coining of the term
"Artificial Intelligence" in a 1955 proposal.
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.
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 INTELLIGENCE
Swarm 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 ASSEMBLY
ORGANIZATION
Self-assembly is coordinated action of independent entities under
distributed (i.e., non-central) control to produce a larger structure or
to 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 supramolecular
structures 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
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.
Conus textile exhibits a cellular automata pattern on its shell
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
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.
Garden of Eden patterns are configurations
that cannot be reached from any other starting configuration.
ELIZA, computer therapist
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.
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.
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 of
energy and information...
"Deep-rooted drives lasting several millenia
are 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