February 2008
16 posts
All That Jazz →
“When John Coltrane was expanding the boundaries of the well-known song “My Favorite Things” at the Village Vanguard in May 1966, no one could have known what inspired him to take the musical turns he took. But imaging researchers may now have a better picture of how the brain was helping to carry him there.”
Optical Illusion →
“Stare at the dot for 30 seconds. Then, without moving your eyes, move the mouse over the image. The image will look like it’s in color until you move your eyes.”
Human Culture Subject To Natural Selection, Study... →
The process of natural selection can act on human culture as well as on genes, a new study finds.
How toddlers can help us to build more human... →
“The team is also planning to build an infant robot to approximate the complexity of human infants.” …Good luck with that!
WatchThe 5th dimension | SciVee (Via The Streeb-Greebling Diaries) I’m not entirely sure that I like all of this guy’s terminology, but he’s saying some interesting things. And he has a cool accent.
Guardian Darwin Special →
Biota.org: Podcast →
Machina: MIDI sequencing with FSAs and genetic... →
“Machina is a polyphonic MIDI sequencer based on Finite State Automata. Machina is probabilistic (i.e. very small machines can produce interesting non-repetitive output) but also capable of deterministically representing any piece of “discrete note music” - or anything in between. Recently support for evolving machines (using a Genetic Algorithm) which play similar (but not identical) music to an...
FastBreeder: An experimental genetic programming... →
“The idea is to grow code by choosing from a range of automatically generated variations of functions, you don’t have to know how they work, but each function creates a sound which can be selected by you. The following generation is then created containing mutants of your chosen sound. You can refine and develop the sound just by auditioning and choosing the best one each time.” ...
Developing Intelligence : Squealing and Blinking:... →
“Phil Stearns has constructed a 45 “neuron” network of electronic parts which responds to lights and tones with a (rather cute) squealing sound. A picture of the components for this strange device:”
(the teeming void): More is More: Multiplicity and... →
“Multiplicity is the uber-motif of current digital generative art - especially the scene around Processing. Look through the Flickr Processing pool and try to find an image that isn’t some kind of swarm, cloud, cluster, bunch, array or aggregate. The fact that it’s easy to do is a partial and not-very-interesting explanation; to go one step further, it’s easy and it feels...
