New Rules for Life at the Edge of Chaos

“In the space between order and chaos, a zone usually described with the mathematics of impending avalanches and crystallizing liquids, scientists are finding new rules for life.”

Canine Morality

“Interestingly, dogs even outsmart chimpanzees on some theory-of-mind tests. When a researcher points at one of two cups, for example, dogs almost always run to the cup that is pointed to, a sign that they have intuited what the scientist was thinking — i.e., that the researcher was trying to show the dog something. Chimps, by contrast, have no idea what we mean when we point at something.”

Autodesk Builds Its Own Virus, as the Software Giant Develops Design Tools for Life Itself

“Of course, putting these tools into more people’s hands carries risks as well. While scientists see great potential to create novel medicines, vaccines and nanomaterials, bad actors could attempt to use them to create bio-weapons.”

Automation and the end of Capitalism

“If the owners and operators of the machines kept for themselves all the proceeds from robot production, the state could not for long provide enough income to the rest to enable them to buy the goods and services produced by the elite….but if most of the elite’s money were taken from them by the state to provide incomes for the leisure class so that they could buy goods and services, why would the elite bother to produce anything? It seems to me that fully automated production and a world in which few people work for a living is not in the interests of capitalism or of capitalists. Maybe capitalists DO need a large labour force. Their survival depends on it. “

Grocery Deliveries in Sharing Economy

“Instacart creates work by connecting affluent customers who have more money than time with part-time workers who have the opposite problem — lots of time, not enough money.”

Hogg Chromosome Hopper

Female pigs’ reproductive systems recognise whether a sperm will produce a boy or a girl before it reaches and fertilises the egg, and their oviduct (fallopian tubes) change in response, according to new research from the University of Sheffield and University of Murcia.

Asymmetrical Escape Patterns

“…it is not possible to overestimate the im- portance of the study of crowd stampede induced by panic, such as that taking place when people try to escape from a burning room, where the “follow-the-crowd” effect as- sociated with imitation may have grave consequences.”

“Jeeves, bring up my feed”

“It’s entirely possible that the influence of our virtual minders could reach far further. What if we tell our OS that we’ll only ever buy products that meet certain ethical standards; hit certain carbon emission targets or treat their employees in a certain way? Our computer may say no to brands for many different reasons. This may sound like science fiction, but actually we are close to combining concept areas such as big personal data management, the internet of things and operating systems that learn how to provide the perfect approach to life management, just for us. The ingredients are already there and companies that could potentially deliver a “Her” are already hard at work putting the building blocks of personal technology in place.”

Familiar Face

“Face-matching today could enable mass surveillance, “basically robbing everyone of their anonymity,” he says, and inhibit people’s normal behavior outside their homes. Pointing to the intelligence documents made public by Edward J. Snowden, he adds that once companies amass consumers’ facial data, government agencies might obtain access to it, too.”

Music and Science in the Age of Galileo (1992)

“…features twelve essays by leading specialists in the fields of musicology, history of science, astronomy, philosophy, and instrument building that explore the relations between music and the scientific culture of Galileo’s time. The essays take a broad historical approach towards understanding such topics as the role of music in Galileo’s experiments and in the scientific revolution, the musical formation of scientists, Galileo’s impact on the art and music of his time, the scientific knowledge of instrument builders, and the scientific experiments and cultural context of Galileo’s father, Vincenzo Galilei.”

Ralf Baecker is my hero.

“Ralf Baecker is an artist with a background in computer science, who works with and about technologie. He builds speculative machines and installations that investigate the digital and its cultural origin, with a focus on the encounter of thought and the (physical) world. He considers computers and cybernetic machines as epistemological hardware rather than tools.”

AESTHETICS IN THE 21ST CENTURY

“Ever since the turn of the century aesthetics has steadily gained momentum as a central field of study across the disciplines. No longer sidelined, aesthetics has grown in confidence.”

Rythyms of the Brain

“Due to its ability to give rise to spontaneous activity, the brain does not simply process information but also generates information. As a result, the world outside is not simply “coded” by meaningless “bits” of neuronal spikes but gets embed- ded into a context, an important part of which is time.”

Hills Hiding Arches

Photos taken between 1865 and 1872, these are—photographically speaking—almost impossibly ancient, approaching a point of chemical age as comparatively old to us today as the structures they depict were to the military expeditions that documented them in the first place.

PSYCHOGRAM

“You are not your brain. You have a brain, yes. But you are a living being that is connected to an environment; you are embodied, and dynamically interacting with the world. We can’t explain consciousness in terms of the brain alone because consciousness doesn’t happen in the brain alone.” Alva Noe. (Great links on this page)

Social Spiders

“In laboratory experiments, the researchers showed that spiders exposed to the same group day after day developed stronger and more distinctive personalities than those that were shifted from one set of spiders to the next. Moreover, the spiders in a stable social setting grew ever less like one another over time.”

Red Art: New Utopias in Data Capitalism

“Prompted by the economic crisis, New Media Art appears to increasingly employ the tools provided by new technologies in order to penetrate all aspects of global social living and assert the need for socioeconomic change. New Media artworks and art projects have gradually formed a common practice whose objectives allude to utopian theories of social organization lying closer to certain visions of communism, direct democracy and anarchism, rather than to the realities of neoliberal capitalism within which new media are produced and predominantly operate.”

Tears’ Topography

“Wordless and spontaneous, they release us to the possibility of realignment, reunion, catharsis: shedding tears, shedding old skin. It’s as though each one of our tears carries a microcosm of the collective human experience, like one drop of an ocean.”

Cloud Music (1974)

“… is the result of one such collaboration between three innovative and influential artists; Robert Watts, David Behrman and Bob Diamond. Robert Watts (1923- 1988) was the conceptual instigator for Cloud Music and a leading artist within Fluxus, one of the major avant-garde art movements of the late 20th century. As a trained engineer, he was an influential champion of non-traditional materials and regularly challenged the processes of art making. David Behrman (b. 1937) is an internationally recognized experimental music composer. He regularly collaborated with Merce Cunningham and John Cage, and continues to perform and exhibit multimedia installations worldwide. Bob Diamond (b. 1946) is an electrical engineer and mathematician who went to university at the age of 16. He was subsequently hired by NASA at 18 to work on Saturn Booster Rockets, (so his work is also represented at the National Air and Space Museum). In the late 60s, he turned his attention – and considerable technical aptitude – to begin working as an artist. Together these artists literally invented new technologies to realize a shared creative vision.”

Elderly Fear Robot Friends Will Corrupt Children

“This phenomenon is known as the “third-person effect.” “The greatest negative effects are predicted to occur among imagined audiences that are socially distant from the individual’s own reference group,” the Pennsylvania State University media researchers explain in their paper. “For the population of interest in this study, namely senior citizens, the obvious ‘other’ group is younger people.”

Writing versus Typing and your memory

“In this group, longhand-notetakers outperformed laptop-notetakers on the quiz. Analysis of student notes showed that laptop-notetakers tended to transcribe a lot of the speaker’s words verbatim. Mueller and Oppenheimer suspected that this was because those who typed notes were inclined to transcribe lectures, rather than process them. This makes sense: If you can type quickly enough, word-for-word transcription is possible, whereas writing by hand usually rules out capturing every word.”

The Poetics Of Space

“French philosopher Gaston Bachelard’s Poetics of Space remains one of the most appealing and lyrical explorations of home. Bachelard takes us on a journey, from cellar to attic, to show how our perceptions of houses and other shelters shape our thoughts, memories, and dreams.”

Gesture control iRing

“Not only the iRing position is detected but several other gesture recognition are also implemented. Showing/hiding the rings, rotating them clockwise and counterclocwise, approaching the device quickly or exiting the camera field view, can also be detected by the apps, further enhancing the level of touchless control you can do with iRing.”

Mushrooms Recover Gold out of Mobile Scrap

“Because it is difficult to remove the components from the circuit boards, the first step in most recycling processes is to crush everything into particulates and that’s how we start, too,” explains Jarno Mäkinen, research scientist at VTT. “But then, using non-toxic water-based solutions, we have managed to engineer mycelium-based biomass that acts as a biosorbent specifically targeted at gold complexes.”

Cancer killing Nano-bots

“Whether or not these structures are, in fact, robots forces us to ask: what is a robot? The researchers’ point in using the term — beyond it being catchy — was that they are programmed and act autonomously. The key difference from the popular conception of robots, constructed from metal and coded in 1s and 0s, is that these versions are made out of DNA and told what to do with As, Cs, Gs and Ts.”

Flexible all-carbon electronics bio-integrated

“…researchers have developed a new method for synthesizing entire integrated all-carbon electronic devices, including transistors, electrodes, interconnects, and sensors, in a single step, greatly simplifying their formation. The inexpensive electronic devices can then be attached to a wide variety of surfaces, including plants, insects, paper, clothes, and human skin.”

Open Source DIY CNC

“In 2006, Gerald created Mechmate: he decided to share his project for free and openly on the Internet so to create a community forum that would assist those who want to try building it by their hands in a DIY fashion. Who, after building the machine, wanted to make a donation was very welcome.”

Elaines Drone

“Because the subject of this work is your attention, the music can’t fully speak if you use it as background. If you listen to it that way you’re likely to get little back from it. Its pleasures reveal themselves to those who try and allow it to be their primary object of attention. Your mind won’t stay with it all the time, but that’s okay.”

Snails hate copper

“Apparently the slugs loath touching copper because the metal reacts with their slime and creates a mild electric current. It gives them an electric shock which repels them. This method works as well in the wet as it the dry, is 100% effective, and doesn’t kill the slug.”

Norman White is the shiz.

“Funky Isn’t Junky (1982)” An installation of five or six crude sound-producing machines synchronized by a “conductor” machine. As a reaction to ten years of intense personal involvement with electronic hi-tech, I built the work almost entirely with pre-40’s technology. At the end of the sequence, the piece appears to break down, dramatizing my love for the vulnerability of machine-kind. Materials: wood, motors, steel, plexiglas, aluminum, speaker, custom electronics. Owned by myself.”