Batteries Not Included – Mind as Machine Art – Artificial Intelligence – Artificial Life
Friday 13 July
The Music Hall
Shrewsbury, UK
09:00 – 19:30
http://www.darwinshrewsbury.org/symposium/index.html?theme=286
Speakers include:
Keynote: George Dyson, author of Darwin Among the Machines
Margaret Boden, Ernest Edmonds, Jon McCormack, Rob Saunders, Phil Husbands, Mike O’Shea, David Plans Casal, Jon Bird, Dustin Stokes, Catherine Mason, George Mallen, Richard Brown and Erwin Driessens & Maria Verstappen
The evening program includes the opening of the Shrewsbury Art Open.
For further details check the website or contact the curator:
Paul Brown – paul@paul-brown.com
http://www.darwinshrewsbury.org/symposium/index.html?theme=286
Paul Brown – based in the UK March-July 2007
mailto:paul@paul-brown.com
http://www.paul-brown.com
UK Mobile +44 (0)794 104 8228
USA fax +1 309 216 9900
Skype paul-g-brown
Visiting Professor – Sussex University
http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/ccnr/research/creativity.html
Our keynote speaker on the 13th of July will be George Dyson – He is the author of Project Orion: The Atomic Spaceship 1957-1965 and Darwin Among the Machines (1998) ISBN 0-7382-0030-1, where he suggested coherently that the internet is a living, sentient being.
We are delighted to announce that the curator for our ’07 symposium is Paul Brown
Paul is an artist and writer who has specialised in art,science & technology for almost 40 years. His computer-generated artwork has been exhibited internationally since 1967 and is currently on show in Europe, Russia, the USA and Australia. He is currently chair of the Computer Arts Society, a British Computer Society specialist group and is visiting professor in art and technology at the University of Sussex.
To receive updates on the developing programme please click HERE or go straight to the box office 01743 281 281 www.musichall.co.uk
This event combines a day of lectures and discusssion with public science demonstrations and film screenings at the OMH
The Darwin Summer Symposium 2007
The Music Hall
Shrewsbury
Friday 13 July 2007
09:00 – 19:30
The following is a draft programme and may be subject to minor changes. Most of the speakers, including the keynote speaker George Dyson, are confirmed.
09:00 Registration & Coffee
09:30 Convene
Official Welcome and Chair’s Opening remarks – Paul Brown 15 min
09:45 – 11:00 Session 1 – Chair Ernest Edmonds
Introduction – Ernest Edmonds 5 min
Ernest Edmonds is an artist and professor of computer science and director of the Creativity and Cognition Laboratory at University of Technology, Sydney, Australia. He is the editor of the journal Knowledge-based Systems (Elsevier), Editor-in-Chief of the new Transactions section of the Leonardo Journal (MIT Press) and convenor of the biannual ACM Creativity and Cognition conference series. His pioneering computational artworks have been exhibited internationally since the late 1960’s.
Margaret Boden in conversation with Ernest Edmonds 40 min
AI, Creativity and the Arts (NB Pre-recorded at the C&C lab, UTS in February 2007))
Margaret Boden is a philosopher and Research Professor of Cognitive Science at the University of Sussex. She is an authority on Artificial Intelligence, Creativity and Cognitive Science and has written extensively on AI and the arts. Her most recent publication is the two-volume Mind as Machine: A History of Cognitive Science, OUP, 2006.
Jon McCormack in conversation with Rob Saunders 30 min ‘Creator and Observer’
Jon McCormack (Monash University, Australia) is an Electronic Media Artists and co-director of the Centre for Electronic Media Art (CEMA) and a lecturer in the School of Computer Science amd Software Engineering at Monash University in Melbourne. ‘Impossible Nature’ – a book about his work was published by the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACM) in 2004.
Rob Saunders (University of Sydney, Australia) is an Artificial Intelligence researcher who develops computational models of individual and social creativity.
Rob joins us live from the Creativity & Cognition Laboratory, UTS, Sydney via Access Grid
11:00 Morning Coffee 30 min
Music and videos curated by the Computer Arts Society (CAS)
11:30 – 12:30 Session 2 – Chair Paul Brown
In residence at the Music Hall, Shrewsbury:
George Dyson 60 min
Keynote Address: Darwin Among the Machines
Of all the manifold repurcussions of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species, none reverberates as powerfully as Samuel Butler’s observation, announced in 1863, that the laws of evolution apply not only in the realm of nature, but in the realm of machines. In the 144 years since Butler published ‘Darwin Among the Machines’ in the Christchurch Press, we have increasingly *de*coded the operation of living organisms, and *en*coded life-like (dare we say living?) processes into machines. George Dyson, author of the 1997 Darwin Among the Machines, will give us an update on how the Darwin-Butler controversy of the 19th century has become the synthesis of the 21st.
12:30 Buffet Lunch & Networking 90 min
Music and videos curated by the Computer Arts Society (CAS)
14:00 – 15:30 Session 3 – Chair George Mallen
TBC: Live from the InQubate Centre for Creativity at the University of Sussex via Access Grid:
Phil Husbands in conversation with Mike O’Shea 30 min ‘EASy Arts’
Phil Husbands and Mike O’Shea are co-directors of the Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics (CCNR) at the University of Sussex. The CCNR is one of the leading international centres for research into evolutionary and adaptive systems (EASy) and artificial life and hosts an influential and longstanding artist-in-residence programme. Phil Husbands was originally a musician and is now a computer scientist and has an international reputation for his work with genetic algorithms and evolutionary robotics. Mike O’Shea is neuroscientist who is interested in how the human brain evolved and in the biological origins of creativity, the selective advantage of creativity and consciousness. He’s collaborated with computer scientists, notably Phil Husbands, in developing/evolving artificial brains, inspired by neuroscience, for mobile robots. In collaboration with Sol Sneltvedt he helped produce the AHRB/Arts Council supported SciArt installation called Mindscape, an attempt artistically to visualise the workings of the human brain and mind.
In residence at the Music Hall, Shrewsbury:
David Plans Casal 30 min
Remembering the future: Applications of genetic co-evolution in music improvisation.
Musical improvisation is driven mainly by the unconscious mind, engaging the dialogic imagination to reference the entire cultural heritage of an improvisor in a single flash. This talk introduces a case study of evolutionary computation techniques, in particular genetic co-evolution, as applied to the frequency domain using MPEG7 techniques, in order to create an artificial agent that mediates between an improvisor and her unconscious mind, to probe and unblock improvisatory action in live music performance or practice.
David Plans Casal is a musician and researcher, and digital technologist at Brunel University. His research focuses on artificial intelligence and music. He has given concerts at IRCAM (Igor Stravinsky Hall), the Sonic Arts Research Centre in Belfast, and several London venues.
Jon Bird in conversation with Dustin Stokes 30 min
‘Evolving an Artist’
Jon Bird and Dustin Stokes both at the University of Sussex, are members of an AHRC funded research team, where they are currently researching creative behaviour from the angle of evolutionary robotics and computation.
Jon Bird is an artificial life researcher, specialising in evolutionary and adaptive systems. He is founder and co-organiser of Blip, a Brighton-based New Media organisation.
Dustin Stokes is a philosopher, specialising in philosophy of mind and cognitive science and philosophical aesthetics.
15:30 Afternoon Tea 30 min
Music and videos curated by the Computer Arts Society (CAS)
16:00 – 17:30 Session 4 – chair Jon McCormack
In residence at the Music Hall, Shrewsbury:
Catherine Mason in conversation with George Mallen ‘Origins’ 30 min
From the 1960s new frameworks for collaboration between the arts and sciences were established in the UK and the discussion will focus on the origins of computing and digitial technology in the arts.
Catherine Mason is an art historian who has recently researched the early development of the computational arts in the UK from 1960 – 1980.
George Mallen is a cybernetician and was a co-founder in 1969 of the Computer Arts Society. In the 1960’s he worked with the UK arts/cybernetics pioneer Gordon Pask and in 1969 helped to create the pioneering Ecogame for the CAS founding Event One.
Richard Brown ‘Artists presentation’ 30 min
Richard Brown has a BSc in Computers & Cybernetics and an MA in Fine Art and creates work that explores interactivity, complexity and emergent processes using a variety of media including mould, electrochemistry, electronics and digital computers. His work has been supported by Intel, The Arts Council, Sci-Art Wellcome Trust and in 2002 he was awarded a two-year fellowship grant from NESTA (the National Endowment of Science Technology and the Arts). He is currently Research Artist in Residence at the School of Informatics, Edinburgh University.
Driessens & Verstappen ‘Artists presentation’ 30 min
Erwin Driessens and Maria Verstappen have worked together since 1990 and are based in Amsterdam. They have jointly developed a multifaceted oeuvre of software, machines and three-dimensional objects. Their research focuses on the possibilities that physical, chemical and computer algorithms can offer for the development of image generating processes. Their most recent work is E-volver a large-scale projected public artwork for the Leiden University Medical Centre that uses evolutionary software to ‘breed’ images.
17:30 – For those who can stay;
Announcement of prize winners for the Shrewsbury Open @Shrewsbury Museum & Art Gallery before returning to the Clive Suite, the Music Hall for nibbles and networking (licensed bar) including a background performance of music and videos curated by CAS
19:30 – ends
Access Grid
The intention is to netcast the entire event to a global audience via Access Grid. Speakers will present at three Access Grid portals:
– The Music Hall, Shrewsbury – the main event location
– The Creativity and Cognition Laboratory at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia
– InQbate Centre for Creativity at the University of Sussex, Brighton, UK.
Please Note: The proposed screening of ‘Blade Runner – the Directors Cut’ has been cancelled owing to licencing difficulties.
Website: http://www.darwinshrewsbury.org/symposium/index.html?theme=286
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