[dorkbotdc-blabber] some blather about last nights dork

[douglas repetto]

Sounds like a terrific meeting! One of these days I'll make it down to 
one...


Meanwhile, there's a good list called "eugene" that covers many of the 
topics Philip touched on below.

http://www.generative.net/mailman/listinfo/eu-gene



best,
douglas




Philip Kohn wrote:
> I really enjoyed last nights presentations.
> Unfortunately I arrived too late to see the Data_Scape in action.
> Pindar's talk really got me thinking about creativity.
> I would really like to know more about how things like balance, and 
> composition
> are handled without randomness.
> I really love the idea of seeing how far you can get without any random 
> numbers.
> I've always relied on some sort of random functions, even if they are 
> carefully tuned and filtered,
> but in a way it is really a cop out.
> 
> Most of the tools of artificial intelligence (neural nets, backprop, 
> etc.) are designed to capture
> regularities in the input/output transformation.
> But I think art and creativity revolve around the interplay of 
> expectations and surprises.
> You have to have rules, but you also have to break them, and break them 
> the right amount and
> in the right contexts.
> You need AI tools that can take a model of the regularities and figure 
> out how to make these interesting
> and strong exceptions.
> The worst thing you can do as an artist is to create something that 
> looks like a mistake.
> (Although you can repeat that "mistake" and then it may become good art 
> again!)
> The exceptions need to stand out.
> 
> I have done some art evolution, using my own ratings as a fitness function.
> In fact I became so obsessed with it that I was up all night rating 
> thousands of images.
> The best ones would get mutated to make the next batch, etc.
> This was in 1998, and I can't find any of the images at this point :<
> I really had to stop doing it because it was adversely effecting my life.
> 
> 
> Here are some of the best links:
> 
> One of my heroes, Karl Sims (what a perfect name!).
> http://www.karlsims.com/papers/siggraph91.html
> http://www.karlsims.com/
> 
> Also check out his creatures that evolved in a simulated physical 
> environment selected by their ability to walk, or swim or jump.
> http://www.karlsims.com/evolved-virtual-creatures.html
> It is amazing how "creative" some of these bots are in the way they move!
> I'd love to evolve some more realistic bots that could actually be built.
> 
> General history of interactive evolution, art
> http://www.asu.edu/cfa/art/people/faculty/collins/emergence/emergence.htm
> 
> An installation using interactive evolution to make abstract videos
> http://www.xs4all.nl/~notnot/E-volverLUMC/E-volverLUMC.html
> 
> 
> Didn't know about this one!  You can evolve some pretty interesting 
> images in a collaborative online pool.
> http://picbreeder.org/
> 
> Another image breeder that you can run on your own computer.
> http://simons.intlab.soka.ac.jp/~unemi/sbart/
> 
> 
> 
> There is a big problem with all this.
> When you have a lot of parameters, or knobs to twiddle, you need a 
> minimum of twice that number of example datasets.
> So if you really want to evolve each brush stroke, you will need a lot 
> of user input.
> Anything artistic is going to have zillions of parameters.  Maybe that 
> is a big part of creativity is finding
> your way around the space of possibilities without getting lost or 
> overwhelmed!
> 
> One solution would be to evolve a "critic" that evaluates the results, 
> and then let it work automatically.
> I have some ideas about how to evolve the critic based on examples of 
> good art that can be found easily on the web.
> 
> Blabber, blabber....
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ........................................................................
> .......dorkbot dc: people doing strange things with electricity.........
> ................... http://dorkbot.org/dorkbotdc .......................
> ........................................................................

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............................................... http://artbots.org
.....douglas.....irving........................ http://dorkbot.org
.......................... http://music.columbia.edu/cmc/music-dsp
.......... repetto............. http://music.columbia.edu/organism
............................... http://music.columbia.edu/~douglas