Art Tech L@w

BioArt - Painting with Life

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 10:01:05 -0400

Developments in biotechnology have enabled artists to experiment with living tissue, bacteria, and life processes in ways that can be either beautiful or creepy-cool in a Frankenstein kind of way. Bioart engages scientists in close collaboration with artists to create artworks that raise thought-provoking questions about life, culture, and the ethical implications of using living material for social or aesthetic exploration. Pure “BioArt” tends to involve more direct interference with living organisms, such as utilizing genetic engineering to create living works of “transgenic art.” A wide range of works fall under the category “BioArt,” which was coined by artist/scientist Eduardo Kac, the creator of the glowing GFP Bunny. It ranges from beautiful artworks involving softly glowing fluorescent bacteria, to grotesque masses of engineered tissue. For an interesting example check out “bulletproof skin” made out of silk and human skin cells, a collaboration between Dutch Artist Jalila Essaidi and researcher Randy Lewis. Using living forms as art is not a new phenomenon, yet it has traditionally taken more “natural” forms such as the delicate, mutilated bonsai tree, or occasionally extreme practices of animal or plant breeders who wish achieve certain aesthetic ideals. Digital technology has enabled artists to use living forms to a variety of ends. See Phonofolium for a beautiful exploration of life, music, and electrical energy flow. The aesthetic possibilities of bioart expanded when Roger Tsien’s team of scientists painted an island sunset with bacteria infused with fluorescent proteins, which evidenced the versatility of the medium as well as the limited art skillz of biochemists. Fluorescence occurs when a substance absorbs light of one wavelength then emits it in a different wavelength. It’s the same principle fluorescent lights are based upon, though in this case the fluorescence was first isolated from a jellyfish (Aequorea victoria). Tsien was awarded a Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2008 for his discovery of the green fluorescent protein (GFP). The whole spectrum of colors is now available, making this medium more similar to traditional paint pigments than to some more monstrous BioArt creations. In addition, there are a number of fluorescing transgenic pets available. In addition to the standard transgenic mice (dubbed NeonMice), an individual can purchase green-fluorescent pets such rabbits, pigs, fish. More recently, fluorescing cats were engineered to be resistant to FIV and possibly advance AIDS research. The brainbow currently ranks as my favorite example of bioart. Created by scientists at Harvard University to allow them to visualize neural circuitry, the brainbow is not only colorful (which gains it points in my eyes) but also involves brains (Halloween candy for zombies). Scientists splice in genes that code for flourescent proteins. These manifest in a rainbow of different colors, allowing individual neurons to be distinguished from their near neighbors. The transgenic brainbow mice thus altered enable scientists to construct maps of neural circuitry and the relationships between different brain regions. The advancement of bioengineering technology has led to the creation of fields which have revolutionized science. For example, optogenetics - in which light-sensitive neurons in genetically engineered animals can be turned off and on using fiber optics - was chosen as the Method of the Year in 2010 by Nature Methods and allow neuroscientists unparalleled access into the inner workings of the mind. Yet some may still say that painting with life is a task more suitable to deity than man.

Transforming Creation: The Fair Use of Machines...

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 18:32:00 -0400

Transforming Creation: The Fair Use of Machines http://arttechlaw.com/transforming-creation-the-fair-use-of-machines

This is a sticky, complicated issue. But what can you expect from a legal system that can’t even figure out how to categorize software art?

Novel AI programs utilizing machine learning algorithms to generate novel creative works and innovative solutions to unsolved problems are fun things to research, but you might as well be tossed into a briar patch than attempt to litigate it (fun for lawyers, nothing but pain and confusion for anyone else).

Rocky Acosta

http://arttechlaw.com/ Explore the Boundaries of the Edge

How Much Longer Until Humanity Becomes A Hive Mind?

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 18:31:07 -0400

How Much Longer Until Humanity Becomes A Hive Mind?:

singularitarian:

Last month, researchers created an electronic link between the brains of two rats separated by thousands of miles. This was just another reminder that technology will one day make us telepaths. But how far will this transformation go? And how long will it take before humans evolve into a fully-fledged hive mind? We spoke to the experts to find out.

raccontidelterrore: kaajoo: World’s Most Beautiful Abandoned...

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 18:53:45 -0400

raccontidelterrore:

kaajoo:

World’s Most Beautiful Abandoned Places

Italian product manager and web designer Francesco Mugnai recently added a collection of images to his blog touting some of the most beautiful images of abandoned spots and modern ruins that he’d ever seen. The images Mugnai has captured come from empty castles, shuttered power plants, and dilapidated churches around the world. From a sunken yacht in Antarctica to a forever-closed amusement park in Japan, these images all make up a sort of anti-phoenix; rather than rising as new from the ashes, these husks remain preserved in decomposition, forcing viewers to confront the strange beauty of ruination.

jockohomo: Lord Shiva Devi Parvati, and Baby Ganesh Maha...

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 18:52:51 -0400

jockohomo:

Lord Shiva Devi Parvati, and Baby Ganesh

Maha Shiva, the god-king

dermoosealini: wildcat2030: Artificial intelligence is...

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 18:52:03 -0400

dermoosealini:

wildcat2030:

Artificial intelligence is arguably the most useless technology that humans have ever aspired to possess. Actually, let me clarify. It would be useful to have a robot that could make independent decisions while, say, exploring a distant planet, or defusing a bomb. But the ultimate aspiration of AI was never just to add autonomy to a robot’s operating system. The idea wasn’t to enable a computer to search data faster by ‘understanding patterns’, or communicate with its human masters via natural language. The dream of AI was — and is — to create a machine that is conscious. AI means building a mechanical human being. And this goal, as supposedly rational technological projects go, is deeply strange.

Consider the ramifications of a conscious machine: one that thinks and feels like a human, an ‘electronic brain’ that dreams and ponders its own existence, falls in and out of love, writes sonnets under the moonlight, laughs when happy and cries when sad. What exactly would it be good for? What could be the point of spending billions of dollars and countless hours of precious research time in order to arrive at a replica of oneself?

Go read it..

(via George Zarkadakis – Love and artificial intelligence)

We are not near the degree of technology that popular Trans-humanist orientated culture romanticizes but the concept art has always been a good masturbatory aid.

It would make interaction with computers easier for those without the ability to. It would provide perspective from a non human point of view because it would not be burdened with human inclinations, limitations and weakness. Aside from the obvious general computing advantages if an AI was able to design a better computer we would have technically achieved the singularity.

artfulpleadings: Cute Lawyers #23-24: 212 Sadly, the firm never...

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 18:51:46 -0400

artfulpleadings:

Cute Lawyers #23-24: 212

Sadly, the firm never got around to fixing its number so it wasn’t one digit off from a telemarketer’s. It took a very confused call from a major client to change that.

HAPTIC TALKS: bio-metaphor: tweet=action potential

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 18:50:33 -0400

HAPTIC TALKS: bio-metaphor: tweet=action potential:

haptictalks:

“The act of inserting a small piece of content into the stream – for example a tweet or a like – can be compared to a neuron being fired in the brain. The signal is then broadcasted to about 1000 other neurons through synapses (connections). These neurons may then choose to fire to their connected…

Nikola Tesla – Man, Like the Universe, is a Machine

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 15:02:25 -0400

Nikola Tesla.

“A Machine to End War” (Liberty, February, 1935)

“There is no conflict between the ideal of religion and the ideal of science, but science is opposed to theological dogmas because science is founded on fact. To me, the universe is simply a great machine which never came into being and never will end. The human being is no exception to the natural order. Man, like the universe, is a machine. Nothing enters our minds or determines our actions which is not directly or indirectly a response to stimuli beating upon our sense organs from without.”

Nature as a Guide for Efficient Design

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 13:38:28 -0500

Nature as a Guide for Efficient Design:

bi010gic:

A few blog posts back we provided a link to a beautiful video describing the Fibonacci series. The image above is from that video.

Now researchers have found that one of the patterns derived from the Fibonacci series that is present in sunflowers provides the most efficient arrangement for mirrors in solar power generation.

The title of the article from The Economist? “In matters of clever design, nature has often got there first.”

Two researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have now devised a better and more compact way of laying out arrays of mirrors. Slightly to their chagrin, however, and somehow appropriately, they found when they had done the calculations that sunflowers had got there first.

Pretty cool, huh?

kaizenPT: Rehab, Robotics, and Biomimetics, oh my..

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 13:36:13 -0500

kaizenPT: Rehab, Robotics, and Biomimetics, oh my..:

etrenty:

The robots are coming. And from the looks of it, they may be designed from the inside out to mimic our every move. Biomimicry is the new trend in robotics. From Aerovironment’s hummingbird UAV to Boston Dynamics Big Dog (both Darpa funded) we are seeing the rapid development of robots designed…

nikkiburnett: “Stelarc is a Cypriot-Australian performance...

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 13:33:32 -0500

nikkiburnett:

“Stelarc is a Cypriot-Australian performance artist whose works focuses heavily on extending the capabilities of the human body. As such, most of his pieces are centred around his concept that the human body is obsolete.”

While somewhat disturbing, there are few that are truly willing to experiment with their bodies.

All innovation involves experimentation - with a ‘fail faster = succeed sooner’ mentality, can and should our human evolution be accelerated with self experimentation?

Where is, and should the line be drawn? We experiment implicitly, and mostly it goes unquestioned, is explicit surgery piercing/cutting the barrier of the skin the ultimate line that we draw?

Creative Robots & The Law

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 13:31:00 -0500

(See ArtTechLaw.com for the FULL LEGAL ANALYSIS)

If a machine produces a creative work, who should get the rights to it?

Early research into AI encountered difficulties that arose partly due to the implicit notion that to be “artificially intelligent” a program must process information such that the result parallels how an intelligent person would respond in response to similar input. Machines have no intention of creating novel works, nor do they consider incentives as such. Only humans can make genuinely creative choices. Due to this reliance on producing “human-like” results, many official AI projects developed to produce machines that could perform tasks requiring human-like creativity. Traditional justifications for intellectual property protection, in many ways, are an ill fit for computer-generated works. Technological developments and the ease with which information flows over the Internet has enabled the free exchange of ideas and allowed culture to flourish.

We should take a hard look at our analog legal system, and come up with ways to adapt it to fit a digital age.

Email - The Good, the Bad, and the Controversial

Sat, 09 Feb 2013 18:31:54 -0500

Who invented email?

VA Shiva Ayyadurai has been in the not-so-enviable position of having to fight a tide of corporate-techie rage after the Smithsonian accepted his documents relating to inventing email when he was 14 back in 1978.

That didn’t seem too odd to me. I started college when I was 14, and while I promptly went on to spend the next 6 years maxing out my credits as an undergrad studying the arts, it appears he spent his time working on something much more useful.

It’s pretty cool to be recognized by the Smithsonian, but their announcement/acceptance of his papers provoked a lot of rage and controversy (including an response article by none other than Noam Chomsky weighing in on Shiva’s side), which is a bit odd because it wasn’t exactly the first time he said it. Shiva had even been called “Dr. Email” by the press for a number of years for coming out with the first real email management system, EchoMail (not to be confused with “email”, which he invented 20 years earlier).

Careful who you listen to, even techies can’t escape politics.

“Innovation is not owned by MIT, the Ivy League, or pedigreed scientists. It can occur any place, any time, by anybody. Fight for the destruction of systems which seek to hold it hostage, for innovation demands freedom.” - VA Shiva Ayyadurai

Who owns innovation? Inventing email in 1978 as a 14 year old...

Fri, 08 Feb 2013 21:01:56 -0500

Who owns innovation? Inventing email in 1978 as a 14 year old Indian boy living in New Jersey, USA.

http://www.inventorofemail.com/

Innovation is not owned by MIT, the Ivy League, or pedigreed scientists. It can occur any place, any time, by anybody. Fight for the destruction of systems which seek to hold it hostage, for innovation demands freedom.

- VA Shiva Ayyadurai

Where is Our Right of Revolution? No More Casualties in the Content Wars

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 17:13:01 -0500

“One who breaks an unjust law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.” - Martin Luther King Jr.

Whatever happened to government accountability? And where is the the legal system that represents the people? Scattered across our cultural history are great men and women who put their own lives on the line in order to accomplish something they saw as more important than themselves. At this point in time, when there is more and more information available to us to see what’s really going on, we should be even more aware and willing to hold the government accountable for their actions.

“When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.” - Thomas Jefferson (Thomas Jefferson on legal over-reach: “No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him.”)

I believe in people. Things don’t just happen, someone (or some collective of someone) DOES something. This past Sunday, a hero died. Killed himself, after being harassed by the legal system for downloading too many JSTOR articles in order to make knowledge more broadly accessible. Carmen Ortiz was charging him under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, or CFAA, and he faced up to 35 years in prison. Discussions had broken down and his case was up this coming Spring.

Family of Aaron Swartz Blames MIT, Prosecutors For His Death: (Owen Thomas, San Francisco Chronicle)

“Aaron’s death is not simply a personal tragedy,” [Swartz’s family] wrote. “It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach. Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s office and at MIT contributed to his death.”

That echoes a criticism made by Swartz’s friend Larry Lessig, the Harvard University professor and well-known authority on Internet law, who called the government prosecutor in the case a “bully” and said that Swartz had been “driven to the edge” by the government’s aggressive handling of the legal case.

The law is here to enforce principles of justice, to reinforce some normative universe we hold in our minds that there is a right or wrong, that right and wrong correlate with a lawful and unlawful, and that we can meaningfully participate in our own society. When those in positions of power begin to create a narrative that some subgroup is an “other” that ought to be alienated or incarcerated … that’s when bad things start happening.

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” Edmund Burke (disputed)

Doing something is a lot trickier than deconstructing how someone else is doing it wrong. People generally construct their own realities around the frameworks and narratives offered to them. It’s easy to say what’s wrong, it’s hard to make it right.

Civil rights leaders fought to create a change greater than themselves. MLK Jr. did so in a manner tailored to promote unity, and favored negotiations that led to peaceful resolutions and tangible results with the powers that be. Malcolm X took a more aggressive stance, a more militant attitude, and complemented MLK Jr. by providing an anti-establishment threat that added urgency to his cause.

“They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” - Benjamin Franklin

Cyber-activist groups, such as Anonymous, are particularly involved in resistance to government encroachments on privacy and Internet freedom, and have been all-but-labeled cyberterrorists by the FBI. Hackers from Anonymous have claimed credit for hacking MIT’s site to commemorate Aaron Swartz and call for an overhaul of computer crime laws. The government has deigned to dismiss their ridiculous charges, now that he’s dead.

So… Anonymous calls for Swartz’s death should be a rallying point for Internet freedom advocates. “We call for this tragedy to be a basis for a renewed and unwavering commitment to a free and unfettered Internet, spared from censorship with equality of access and franchise for all,” Anonymous hacks MIT Web sites to post Aaron Swartz tribute, call to arms

I’ll take that. It’s time to fight the oppression of moneyed interests, who have charged their puppets in the government with doing their dirty work for them. The CFAA should be used to go after credit card fraud, or corporate vandals, not guys who download too many journal articles. Prosecuting victimless crimes is just creating a new class of victims, only now government prosecutors are the ones killing people and destroying lives. The Founding Fathers just BARELY excluded the “right of revolution” from the Constitution. More specifically, that it is the duty of citizens to rebel if faced with an unjust government. Not right, but duty.

“A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of Saint Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal and natural law.” - Martin Luther King Jr.

The government should fear the people, and then there will be liberty. We have the information. We have the technology. We make the innovations. The law, the government, and the powers that be should realize that they are not here to serve moneyed interests, and they are not here to win elections. They are here to serve justice and the people. If they do not do their job… it’s our DUTY to rebel.

And now it’s time to fight.

"Aaron’s death is not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a criminal justice system rife..."

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 17:05:31 -0500

““Aaron’s death is not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach. Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts US Attorney’s office and at MIT contributed to his death. The US Attorney’s office pursued an exceptionally harsh array of charges, carrying potentially over 30 years in prison, to punish an alleged crime that had no victims. Meanwhile, unlike JSTOR, MIT refused to stand up for Aaron and its own community’s most cherished principles.””

- Statement from info-activist & internet pioneer Aaron Swartz’s family & partner, who died yesterday in Brooklyn.

Read about Swartz’s contribution to “Guerilla Open Acess” & the case against him that would have put him in prison for decades here.

(via thepeoplesrecord)

Visualization, Systems, and Beautiful Information

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 10:01:18 -0500

“As for a picture, if it isn’t worth a thousand words, the hell with it.” – Ad Reinhardt

When information is the focus, design can do amazing things. As human knowledge grows ever more expansive, our conceptualization of that knowledge needs to evolve to account for the increased complexity. Visualizations are the new creative frontier. Post-modernism is fading as the search for newer and gimmickier artistic expressions lead to anemic art devoid of real meaning. When a work of art requires a long explanation before it even begins to engage a viewer, then it’s the thought and not the art that contributes to creative culture.

In my Complex Systems Visualization class at MIT,^[1] taught by VA Shiva Ayyadurai - we were recently challenged to comment on the relationship between systems visualization and data visualization. The professor broke it down thusly:

Systems Visualization consists of: 1) Systems Theory; 2) A message, abstract, or pitch; 3) Storytelling, a compelling narrative; 4) A visual metaphor; and 5) “Data” Visualization.

The variables would fall out that way if everything is defined in terms of its relationship to Systems Visualization, but one could just as easily flip it around and define everything in terms of data. In data visualization the focus is on the data, whereas in systems visualization the emphasis is on the interrelationships; yet this distinction is one of kind, not a hierarchical distinction. In defining a term it is necessary to plot out related terms, but it wouldn’t make sense to, for example, classify all of systems theory according to its status as a subcomponent of systems visualization. Similarly, placing data visualization as the central term would make the background knowledge of the system from which the data is gathered a definitional component.

Visualization, according to Wikipedia, “is any technique for creating images, diagrams, or animations to communicate a message. Visualization through visual imagery has been an effective way to communicate both abstract and concrete ideas since the dawn of man.”

A compelling data visualization contains a message and story as well. This holds true even if data were strictly constrained to exclude broader concepts of “information” and “knowledge.” Admittedly, a simple graph may not contain much of a visual metaphor, but stark simplicity isn’t a differentiating factor; systems visualizations can consist of little more than a bunch of nodes and arrows. And if anyone’s ever read “How to Lie with Statistics,” or any of Edward Tufte’s books, everything communicates a message and draws upon a common narrative.

For example: Eric Cadora and Laura Kurgen’sMillion Dollar Blocks project mapped out in NY how much the government is spending, block by block, to keep people incarcerated. In some of the poorer areas of New York, over a million dollars is spent per year to keep would-be residents of a single block in jail.

The ever-more efficient methods of gathering and processing mountains of data lead to the blossoming of meaningful and engaging ways to visualize discoveries and information. The visual structure presents the information, tells the story, sends the message, and reaches out to communicate with the viewer so they can see the beautiful knowledge, too.

My Favorite Awesome Visualization Stuff:

TED talk: Aaron Koblin: Artfully Visualizing Our Humanity.

Website: visual.ly, e

Book: The Visual Miscellaneum by David McCandles (Sorry Tufte, your books are more informative but this one is prettier.)

Legal Visualization: EFF’s Free Speech is Only as Strong as the Weakest Link interactivevisualization of possible chilling effects Internet regulation would have on speech.

Footnotes (↵ returns to text)

I obsessively study stuff that looks pretty in my head. Which would make sense for an artist, but gets me some strange looks at law school. So I decided to figure out how to externalize the constant visuals flitting across my brain, not only to prove to the world (and myself, I guess) that I wasn’t crazy, but also to satiate whatever center in my brain is only happy if it is constantly processing info so pretty patterns dance around

Thought You Should See This: Happy Birthday, Email*

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 11:21:20 -0500

Thought You Should See This: Happy Birthday, Email*:

thoughtyoushouldseethis:

Love it, hate it, declare bankruptcy on a weekly basis or not, email is an integral part of modern life. And it’s 29 today*, so play nice and wish it a very happy birthday. The Next Web story, Today is the 29th Birthday of Email, As Copyrighted By This Man, tells the story of 16-year old V. A….

Systems Visualization, Yeah: Huzzah for Systems Visualization!

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 11:16:21 -0500

Systems Visualization, Yeah: Huzzah for Systems Visualization!:

rscmit:

Hello, everyone, and welcome to my CMS.631 Tumblr blog, where you can see the progress of my systems visualization final project and - if you wish - provide constructive feedback on my ideas.

But first, what is a system and systems visualization? What makes it different from data visualization…