Artificial Life
A short animated doc & upcoming show in Japan
A short documentary on Artificial Life, featuring several experiments I did some time ago, narrated by a cloned David Attenborough.
Talk
I assembled this for an exhibition at Japan’s Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanazawa - opening October 7th. The show also features a massive new installation of Eye of the Dream.
At the opening (this Saturday @ 2pm), I’ll be speaking in-person with reknowned Artifical Life scientist, Takeshi Ikegami. If you're in Japan, we'd love you to join us. Information here.
Non Serviam: Is an elaborate satire of the idea of artificial intelligence that gets to the heart of the moral dilemma that true success would create. It is written in the dry style of a book review that might appear in a broad scientific journal sometime in the near future. It discusses the book, Non Serviam, by Professor James Dobb, and through this the field of "personetics", the simulated creation of truly intelligent beings ("personoids") inside a computer. It starts with a quote that "[personetics is] the cruelest science man ever created." Lem has the erudite reviewer describe the general theory of personetics, the history and state of the art, and some of the consequences, liberally quoting the work of experts in the field. Later the reviewer quotes from the book a discussion that Dobb recorded in which a personoid philosopher, ADAN. considers what he might owe his (unknown) creator. It is clear that this personoid believes he has free will (and so can say, "non serviam", i.e. I choose not to serve). It closes by quoting Dobb's expressed dilemma in having to eventually bring this world to an end. This pseudreview also appeared, in a slightly different form, under the title The Experiment, in 1978 in The New Yorker.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Perfect_Vacuum#cite_note-7
https://canvas.umn.edu/files/7926221/download?download_frd=1
Nice. I've been strategizing creatively illustrated videos of scientific concepts for a major science museum, with a small team, for a few years now. This is really nice in that it's open ended abstraction that is really aesthetically pleasing.