"It sounds like the plot of a farfetched science fiction movie. Unfortunately for the residents of Texas, it is very much a reality: billions of tiny reddish-brown ants have arrived onshore from a cargo ship and are hell-bent on eating anything electronic.

Computers, burglar alarm systems, gas and electricity meters, iPods, telephone exchanges – all are considered food by the flea-sized ants, for reasons that have left scientists baffled.

Having ruined pumps at a sewage facility, the ants are now marching towards Nasa’s Johnson Space Centre and William P. Hobby airport, Houston, putting state officials in a panic. “They’re itty-bitty things, and they’re just running everywhere,” said Patsy Morphew, a resident of Pearland, on the Gulf Coast."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article3941545.ece

We had some lightbulbs blow out and the fuses tripped as lightning struck near or on the Ministry of Love. Luckily we had unplugged all the electronics first. Oh! Except for the coffee grinder, which mysteriously started up after a lightning strike and making weird poltergeist noises in the kitchen.

That was freaky.

"I believe that video games are a form of synthesized art that evolves by adapting new technologies. It's a business, so there are difficult decisions, but when you think about the future of video games, I think that you need to take some risks to move on forward."
- Hideo Kojima, creator of Metal Gear Solid

Kim writes:
"Remember these puppies? Well, with some luck and a lot of help from a grumpy English man I know, a limited run of Garden Pops are going to be sold at the KK Outlet in London this week.

A new round of Garden Pops are also being made with all new shapes and sizes (we’re talking Garden Pops as big as Gary the cat). More information will be available on www.gardenpops.com in the coming weeks."

Also:

"The Nintendo way of adapting technology is not look for the state of the art but to utilize mature technology that can be mass-produced cheaply", said Gunpai Yokoi, Nintendo's Engineering Manager, referring to their product development in 1973.

mrl24 raises the question of whether robots can create art. Here are my thoughts on the matter.

If the principles of what we call artistic expression can be codified and expressed in machine-executable form, can machines product artworks that resemble those produced by humans?

I believe they can, see this post for an example of an entryway into that domain.

When Corinna and I went to Basel for the visionary conference, we dropped in on the Art Machines Machine Art exhibition at the Museum Tinguely. Amazing stuff, I'll post pictures soon. But it raised the question of the artist moving creative agency further and further away from the original human artist. It's an interesting question.

Whether we call it "art" or not is a cultural consideration, IMHO. But whether it's creative, emotive, a creation of a conscious being, that's the real question, isn't it?

So let's go a step further. Can the processes and mechanisms of thought, emotion, and consciousness be codified and expressed in machine-executable form? Again I say yes.

xtingu identifies the shortcoming of today's symphony conducting robot, which falls short of expressing emotion, creating art, because the robot only does as it's programmed and that programming is limited. It is not programmed to be creative. It has a minimal model of the world and no capability for emergent behavior.

But I believe tomorrow's robot will display such creative behaviors. It will embody a synthetic consciousness that appropriately models what is going on in our heads. It will run process similar to the sensing, integrative, generative, and emotional processes of own organic machines. That kind of robot will create new works -- and those works will eventually be recognized by a future culture as art.

"Columbia's recent 'Art and The New Biology of the Mind' forum offered different perspectives on the relationships between science and the arts and with the process of visual perception. Many of the world's leading scientists addressed how new scientific discoveries offer extraordinary possibilities to re-examine human creativity, and give a clearer understanding of the ways in which we respond to the arts."

Click here for the videos.

I recommend V.S. Ramachandran's talk:
The Science of Art: Are there artistic universals?

Have YOU voted yet?

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1. Make sure you have a commenter ID. If you don't, ask for one.


2. Sign in. You'll know you're signed in when the top of the Gridskipper page says "Welcome, [your screenname]!"
   


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The voting ends TODAY!

The top five popular voted entries go to the final round!

Today was Wii Summit, meeting with an Evolutionary Artificial Life
artist I have idolized for 10+ years, sushi-go-round (Yo! Sushi!), and
secret mission to check out two PIU Pro locations in London.

"The Bush administration said yesterday that it plans to start using the nation's most advanced spy technology for domestic purposes soon, rebuffing challenges by House Democrats over the idea's legal authority.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said his department will activate his department's new domestic satellite surveillance office in stages, starting as soon as possible with traditional scientific and homeland security activities -- such as tracking hurricane damage, monitoring climate change and creating terrain maps.

Sophisticated overhead sensor data will be used for law enforcement once privacy and civil rights concerns are resolved, he said. The department has previously said the program will not intercept communications."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/11/AR2008041103655.html

Gates's Room, Cambridge

The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge