With image removed 🙂

________________________________
From: Max Herman <maxnmher...@hotmail.com>
Sent: Friday, July 23, 2021 2:32 PM
To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity 
<netbehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org>
Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] analogy and AI poetry


Correction and apologies re the below:  Grosseteste was 13th century, and the 
quotation is from Cusanus who was 15th century.

+++

In Leonardo expert Martin Kemp's very interesting 2021 book about light as a 
theme in Dante and later painters from Giotto through Rubens and the Baroque, 
he cites the 14th century German philosopher Grosseteste as a kind of 
touchstone and closing argument about imagination:

"To understand something about the motion of the universe, you must merge the 
center and the poles, aiding yourself as best you can by your imagination 
[italics mine].  For example, if someone were on the earth but beneath the 
north pole [of the heavens] and someone else were actually at the north pole 
[of the heavens], then just as to the one on the earth it would appear that the 
pole is at the zenith [from that point], so to the one at the actual pole it 
would it appear that the centre is at the zenith [from that point].  And just 
as antipodes have the sky above, as do we, so to those who are at either pole 
the earth would appear to be at the zenith [from their point].  And at 
whichever [of these] anyone would be, they would believe themselves to be at 
the centre.  Therefore, merge these different imaginative [italics mine] 
pictures so that the centre is the zenith and vice versa.  Thereupon you will 
see -- through the intellect to which only learned ignorance [italics mine] is 
of help, that the world and its motion [italics mine] and shape cannot be 
apprehended.  For [the world] will appear as a wheel in a wheel and a sphere in 
a sphere -- having its circumference nowhere, as was stated."

________________________________
From: Max Herman <maxnmher...@hotmail.com>
Sent: Friday, July 23, 2021 1:46 PM
To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity 
<netbehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org>
Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] analogy and AI poetry


Hi Graziano,

It is interesting that the two artworks Time Landscape and Circle of Time 
appear to have elements complementary to their respective continents: North 
America and Eurasia.  One setting is densely urban, while the other appears 
rural, though these factors could be continentally reversed without distortion 
(Eurasia has cities too, and North America farms).  The geometry is 
interesting, rectangle versus concentric circles.  This for me contrasts modern 
grid with pre-heliocentric astronomy, concrete versus stone, and so on, and 
enhances the imaging of time in the artworks.  I hadn't known about Sonfist and 
the Florence connection is certainly germane to my current project, as Dante 
uses a concentric-circle cosmology to which I believe Leonardo counterposed a 
model of distributed, transient, and non-static centricity which nevertheless 
remains analog.

It may not be relevant, but there is some interesting new math linking number 
theory to geometry called "the Fargues-Fontaine curve," and if it relates to 
the physics of time it would be even more interesting.  I somewhat understand 
the aspects of the article targeted at the laypeople, but the real math is to 
me only poetic (though not uninteresting for that reason):

"The work fashions a new geometric object that fulfills a bold, once fanciful 
dream about the relationship between geometry and numbers.  'This truly opens 
up a tremendous amount of possibilities. Their methods and constructions are so 
new they’re just waiting to be explored,' said Tasho Kaletha of the University 
of Michigan."

https://www.quantamagazine.org/with-a-new-shape-mathematicians-link-geometry-and-numbers-20210719/

"Abstract. Following the idea of [Far16], we develop the foundations of the 
geometric Langlands
program on the Fargues–Fontaine curve. In particular, we define a category of 
`-adic sheaves on
the stack BunG of G-bundles on the Fargues–Fontaine curve, prove a geometric 
Satake equivalence
over the Fargues–Fontaine curve, and study the stack of L-parameters. As 
applications, we prove
finiteness results for the cohomology of local Shimura varieties and general 
moduli spaces of local
shtukas, and define L-parameters associated with irreducible smooth 
representations of G(E), a
map from the spectral Bernstein center to the Bernstein center, and the 
spectral action of the
category of perfect complexes on the stack of L-parameters on the category of 
`-adic sheaves on
BunG."

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2102.13459.pdf

+++

What I hoped for in the article, but could not find, is a visual of the new 
shape but perhaps it's not that kind of shape!  🙂  One oblique figurative image 
in the Quanta article is a circle with a twist in it reminiscent of some 
Leonardo knots (including those in the Esperienza).  The Arxiv article talks 
about infinity categories, isomorphisms, convolution, and other evocative words 
relative to Six Memos (which discusses Perec's use of categories and 
isomorphism) but I am certain I don't understand the math behind them much at 
all except that they seem to refer to transformations or transitions that can 
occur in either mathematically integrable or non-integrable ways.

The Quanta article states that "The clear next step is to nail down both sides 
of the local Langlands correspondence — to prove that it’s a two-way street, 
rather than the one-way road Fargues and Scholze have paved so far."  It would 
be interesting if our own human perspective of time -- that it doesn't go 
backward, but forward -- has to do with the geometry of the correspondence in 
spaces like our observable universe.  This idea is, of course, total BS on my 
part, math fiction or gibberish, rooted in my imaginary sense that once events 
occur in time and are thus "braided" they can't always completely un-braid as 
it were, or only in unique conditions like inside of black holes or something.  
Regardless of my comic math poetry I see Sonfist's two artworks as eloquent 
captures of this kind of braiding within cycle, that both gives form to a space 
and portrays a narrative.

Not sure if the below image will go through, but it captures the Solstizio 
Calvino circle I made in June from a couple thousand feet up.  The circle is 
about thirty feet across, made with stones from the site, above the center of 
the image near a section of trail crossing a dry riverbed.  [For image see 36 
degrees 09' 49" N by 115 degrees 27' 02" W, camera 2200 m.]

I forgot to mention regarding natural intelligence, because it is attached to 
bodies I think it can be susceptible to organic phenomena of health and disease 
(in addition to the attributes you list).  From the standpoint of brains, in 
addition to nutrition and sleep something like meditation (non-task- or 
weakly-task- oriented waking awareness) is required for some aspects of that 
health particularly those processes directly involved in the imaging of time.  
Arguably all brains have to do this and therefore the dog does have Buddha 
nature.  🙂

https://www.quantamagazine.org/brains-background-noise-may-hold-clues-to-persistent-mysteries-20210208/

Regarding the visuospatial nature of how the brain perceives ideas, the below 
about maps was interesting.  Not sure if it relates but I have been doing some 
drawing with a compass a la Leonardo this past week and noticed that if you 
make a circle, then a congruent circle with its center at any point on that 
circle, and then congruent circles with centers at any subsequent point where 
circles intersect, you get an expanding hexagonal matrix which is very lovely.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-brain-maps-out-ideas-and-memories-like-spaces-20190114/


All best,

Max





________________________________
From: NetBehaviour <netbehaviour-boun...@lists.netbehaviour.org> on behalf of 
Max Herman via NetBehaviour <netbehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org>
Sent: Friday, July 23, 2021 10:42 AM
To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity 
<netbehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org>
Cc: Max Herman <maxnmher...@hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] analogy and AI poetry


Hi Graziano,

Great information about Sonfist and natural intelligence, much appreciated!  I 
will review Time Landscape and Circle of Time for sure.

Time is so important, I am finding, in Leonardo's thinking and imagination.  
Time was basic to Dante as well, as in his closing image of the Commedia when 
he says that his consciousness was moving like a connected wheel with the 
cosmos.  (Leonardo and Dante were both musicians in which time is of course of 
the essence.)  Time per se is something that still offers challenges to science 
and art today, and since natural intelligence has been around so many years 
longer than machine intelligence it almost certainly has some pointers to share.

In addition to Dante, Leonardo also read Ovid, who was so focused on time and 
processes.  Things are not as they seem in a snapshot, but have all kinds of 
past and future movement aligned and intertwined just like currents in a river. 
 Time destroys, but also creates, as Percy Shelley metaphorized as the wind:  
"Destroyer and preserver, hear o hear!"

In Leonardo expert Martin Kemp's very interesting 2021 book about light as a 
theme in Dante and later painters from Giotto through Rubens and the Baroque, 
he cites the 14th century German philosopher Grosseteste as a kind of 
touchstone and closing argument about imagination:

"To understand something about the motion of the universe, you must merge the 
center and the poles, aiding yourself as best you can by your imagination 
[italics mine].  For example, if someone were on the earth but beneath the 
north pole [of the heavens] and someone else were actually at the north pole 
[of the heavens], then just as to the one on the earth it would appear that the 
pole is at the zenith [from that point], so to the one at the actual pole it 
would it appear that the centre is at the zenith [from that point].  And just 
as antipodes have the sky above, as do we, so to those who are at either pole 
the earth would appear to be at the zenith [from their point].  And at 
whichever [of these] anyone would be, they would believe themselves to be at 
the centre.  Therefore, merge these different imaginative [italics mine] 
pictures so that the centre is the zenith and vice versa.  Thereupon you will 
see -- through the intellect to which only learned ignorance [italics mine] is 
of help, that the world and its motion [italics mine] and shape cannot be 
apprehended.  For [the world] will appear as a wheel in a wheel and a sphere in 
a sphere -- having its circumference nowhere, as was stated."

Kemp blends Grosseteste's idea of "learned ignorance," which means something 
like "diligent observation that accepts its incompleteness," into the ideas of 
Godel and Heisenberg.  The uncertainty or incompleteness of the two 20th 
century scientists is compared to the medieval and Dantean motif of light that 
is so strong it overwhelms the senses so that what radiates it cannot be seen.

My education is not of the greatest, and never focused at all on art history, 
but from what little I know about literature words add a new dimension to this 
picture.  Dante of course worked to outline a relationship between words and 
vision; he sort of says that vision is the ultimate input, but words are 
necessary to help imagination turn the input into knowledge or truth.  I.e., 
the eyes can mislead us if we don't apply our imaginations and the humble state 
of "learned ignorance."  Words, of course, can also flat out lie and fabricate 
to the exclusion of more reality-focused words.  Hence some of the difficulties.

Leonardo had a very interesting approach: he believed that a visual image could 
be not just raw input data, but could be as imaginative as words in both input 
and output.  One example on which few disagree is his Last Supper, in which 
myriad details and convolutions from the textual narrative are captured in the 
visual forms and movement of the composition.  (It is my hypothesis that his 
most famous portrait is similarly "visuotextual" if that is a word, 
allegorically depicting his philosophy of the arts and sciences as Esperienza, 
and uses the visual imagination in all its nuances holistically with reference 
to textual material outside the image -- such as in his own notebooks as well 
as texts by other authors -- and interwoven with it while remaining 
differentiated rather than subsumed.

Calvino writes of Leonardo in Six Memos: "not just in science but also in 
philosophy, he was confident he could communicate better by means of painting 
and drawing.  Still he also felt an incessant need to write, to use writing to 
investigate the world in all its polymorphous manifestations and secrets, and 
also to give shape to his fantasies, emotions, and rancors -- as when he 
inveighs against men of letters, who were able only to repeat what they had 
read in the books of others, unlike those who were among the 'inventori e 
interpreti tra la natura e li omini' (inventors and interpreters between nature 
and humans).  He therefore wrote more and more.  With the passing of the years, 
he gave up painting and expressed himself through writing and drawing, as if 
following the thread of a single discourse in drawings and in words...."

Incidentally, it was reading this very passage (despite its imperfect 
historical accuracy) in Six Memos in early 2018 which got me on my Leonardo and 
Dante goose chase.  Was Leonardo in fact not only a poet, but a novelist of the 
encyclopedic form, a skilled practitioner of what today we could call a unified 
fabric of all known media with unlimited subject matter?  His writings in both 
translation and the original struck me as absolutely poetic, dramatic, 
allusive, and novelistic, in much the way many passages from Shakespeare are 
(amid the ample framework of medieval convention).  "Proving" such a 
self-awareness as an author so understood by Leonardo is another question, and 
is often dismissed as self-indulgent projection.  However, is the burden of 
proof rightfully placed upon the advocates of Leonardo's poetic skill and 
sensibility?  Why not on the far more ridiculous propositions that despite 
writing poetry, he had no poetic imagination; despite designing theatrical 
productions he had no dramatic imagination; despite writing thousands of pages 
of prose he had no ability to use style, nuance, subtext, metaphor, 
misdirection, or satire?  At the very least, it is indefensible for such a 
possibility to be ordained as not only unproven but unprovable; and if 
provable, at least the criteria of proof must be defined as clearly as the 
burden to be assigned.  (I find Ode I of the Convivio to be very close to proof 
enough that there are many levels happening at once, but not all perhaps would.)

Why place the burden thus on the less reductive hypothesis?  For the simplest 
of reasons: dearth of processing power, which is to say, imagination, and a 
felt fear of error.  Leonardo as a visual artist and scientist is complex 
enough, and if you add the layers of writer, poet, dramatist, and philosopher 
any rubric for labeling becomes disastrously incomplete (in the Godelian sense) 
and the material escapes any attempt at simple fencing.  It's kind of like 
keeping young children away from chapter books which cause them too-great 
upset.  This doesn't at all mean that such books can or should be sequestered 
forever; in fact, it is most plausible that Leonardo engineered his information 
in such a way that permanent sequestration would be computationally impossible 
just as all consequences in natural systems become apparent sooner or later.

Perhaps one can think of natural or organic intelligence as an analog network 
generated in physical space over billions of years, with inorganic electronic 
intelligence (setting aside the semantics of the word "intelligence") only the 
lastest fashion or garment of the day?  Of course there are legions of theory 
which claim all intelligence, information, and knowledge to be digital not 
analog and this, if correct, answers every single difficulty instantly.  But it 
may not be correct, and what if it isn't?  Then we may have veered somewhat off 
course as it were.  Perhaps there is plenty of time to get back on a better 
course, but perhaps there is no time left and only the course we are on can 
exist.

Desperately in need of brevity I wrote the following yesterday on my way back 
home to the city:

"Art should be like Nature."
The Garment is like Nature.
The Garment is then what
Art should be, and Art.

and:

"Esperienza is universal analogy."

To find a visual image alluding to what he has argued above, Calvino cites 
Leonardo's marvelous fragment (which he revised three times, much as a poet 
would):  "O quante volte fusti tu veduto in fra l'onde del gonfiato e grande 
oceano, a guisa di montagna quelle vincere e sopraffare, e col setoluto e nero 
dosso solcare le marine acque, e con superbo e grave andamento!"  This is both 
a scientific reflection on the origin of marine fossils at high elevations and 
a poetic invocation Calvino believes Leonardo "presented almost as a symbol of 
the solemn force of nature," which "gives us an inkling of how Leonardo's 
imagination worked."  Why "almost"?  I must again quote Calvino, who in his 
planning to give his remarks as a lecture to Harvard undergraduates in 1985 
wrote "I leave you this image at the very end of my talk so that you may carry 
it in your memories as long as possible, in all its transparency and its 
mystery."

Thanks again for the great links and info!

Max






________________________________
From: NetBehaviour <netbehaviour-boun...@lists.netbehaviour.org> on behalf of 
Graziano Milano via NetBehaviour <netbehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org>
Sent: Friday, July 23, 2021 7:12 AM
To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity 
<netbehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org>
Cc: Graziano Milano <grazmas...@googlemail.com>
Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] analogy and AI poetry

Dear All,

Alan Sonfist’s Time Landscape was his first historical sculpture to introduce a 
key environmentalist idea of bringing nature back into the urban environment as 
part of Environmental Art. Another amazing artwork by Alan Sonfist is Circle of 
Time (1986-89) based in Florence, probably close to where Leonardo Da Vinci was 
born and grew up.

Environmental Art is a range of artistic practices encompassing both historical 
approaches to nature in art and more ecological and politically motivated types 
of works. More info about Environmental Art and artists involved in it is here: 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_art

The V&A Museum has in its collections five of Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks. On 
its website page – Leonardo da Vinci: Experience, Experiment, 
Design<http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/l/leonardo-da-vinci-experience-experiment-design/>
 – the V&A says that:

“For Leonardo, sight was the noblest and most certain sense. It provided access 
to 'experience', which shows us how nature works according to mathematical 
rules. Any knowledge that could not be certified by the eye was unreliable. He 
investigated the relationship of the eye to the brain. He proposed a system in 
which visual information was transmitted to the intellect via the receptor of 
impressions and the 'common sense', an area where all sensory inputs were 
coordinated.”

That's how our Naturalist Intelligence works and develops our creativity. Here 
our 9 Essential Skills of Naturalist Intelligence (And How They Help Us):

1. Observation
2. Pattern Recognition
3. Sensory Awareness
4. Empathy
5. Mental Clarity
6. Critical Thinking
7. Curiosity & Investigative Ability
8. Appreciation & Respect For Nature
9. Care-taking & Stewardship

More detailed info about these 9 Essential Skills of Naturalist Intelligence: 
https://nature-mentor.com/naturalist-intelligence-skills/

But our natural environment is now under threat as temperatures rise and 
pollution increases, wildfires, floods and extreme winds have battered many 
parts of the world in the last six months. You can see 50 photos of recent 
extreme weather around the world here:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2021/jul/19/climate-crisis-weather-around-world-in-pictures-wildfires-floods-winds

That's really terrible as many people died and our natural environment is under 
threat.

Regards,
Graziano

On Tue, 20 Jul 2021 at 05:26, Alan Sondheim via NetBehaviour 
<netbehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org<mailto:netbehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org>>
 wrote:
I think you could find a lot of info on Sonfist's work. I don't think 
'rewilding' was used at the time. It was a landscape reflecting earlier times 
when there was a different ecology. It's still there and quite beautiful, 
fenced off near NYU. You don't enter it.

Watching a lot of narrow boat and urban archeologists treading the English 
landscape, all those narrow corridors between, among fields, that seem 
intensely wild and elsewhere, amazing. And amazing, not trashed, unlike places, 
say in RI, where plastic and other garbage is often found, even parts of cars. 
There are still shorelines that look pristine but the ecology's deeply stressed.

I never thought of Sonfist as a research artist per se, but as someone, like 
another alan, Alan Saret, creating a kind of grace... even a possibility of 
becoming

- Alan

On Mon, Jul 19, 2021 at 4:21 PM Johannes Birringer via NetBehaviour 
<netbehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org<mailto:netbehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org>>
 wrote:

dear all,
after the floods i am catching up with this very interesting discussion on AI 
and other imaginary intelligences and Esperienza, but am trying to find a 
connection to Finsbury Park since Alan asked about it:

before leaving London to travel to southwest Germany and my valley studio, I 
spend an evening jogging with a friend on the Parkland Walk (south), starting 
at Finsbury Park, onto the footpath that leads through an amazing local nature 
reserve towards Highgate, and one can discover luscious plants, wildlife, 
birds, all sorts of insects ad critters, and interesting features like old 
railway platforms and bridges...... i was surprised as I imagined being in the 
middle of London but i was apparently in a kind of narrow forest area, not an 
urwald, but charming, leafy and obviously very popular (that June night there 
were innumerable joggers, flâneurs, lovers, dog walkers, bicyclists). Finsbury 
Park itself looked more orderly, louder, there were courts where young people 
were playing ball games to vibrant reggae music....

I don't know 'Time Landscape' and what Alan Sonfist  created in the Greenwich 
Village Park (did they plant a few hundred plants, trees, shrubs, grasses and 
flowers that were all found in Manhattan before the Dutch came in the 17th 
century? was that the concept of his "re-wilding"?).... I wonder how research 
artists re-think colonial matters, territories, and compost through plants and 
plant art (I am thinking of someone like Bartaku who recently presented his 
research on "Baroa belaobara: berryapple" at Aalto)... and also how we can 
re-think our relations to climate, earth, storms, droughts, hurricanes and 
floods (people here in the southwest of Germany were unprepared and had not 
imagined the force of nature)...... and since all of you made such wonderful 
comments here, on the imaginaries, the embodiments, and the machines, here is 
what my friend Bartaku writes on the choke berry:

>>
"Baroa belaobara: berryapple" speaks about an art practice that addresses a 
plant while following sudden signals at a plantation in Latvia. Through five 
passages the reader is spinning into a making_thinking constellation of 
bacteria, breath, bone china porcelain, ether, coincidence, sap, glass, semen, 
installation, soil, linen, ghost, light, anthocyanin, Aronia_Baroacentrism, 
brain reader, pigment, musicians, electricity, pH, leaky loops, play, protocol, 
pipette, gift intervention, DNA and mulberry paper.morphings of a plant´s name, 
its shape and of plant-art perception and cognition.

Through a method of play as in improvisational music, a meshy constellation 
comes to be with a mixture of entities playing along. The leaky loops of 
making/thinking include micro- and photobiologists, bio-, solar and fake labs, 
clay, a brain reader, ceramists,artists, designers, herbalists, 
alchemists,chance, a JMW Turner painting, joyful accidents, re-enactments, 
hand-painted photovoltaics, microbes and their fluorescent pigments and 
plantations....The focus of the narration is on experiences with detailed 
accounts of the applied protocols for in vitro plant and microbial 
growth,dye-sensitised solar cells and ceramix, as well as for invented gifts 
and imaginary solutions....
>>

https://aaltodoc.aalto.fi/handle/123456789/107574

we live in restless times, dear compostists, so:  Unruhig bleiben!

regards
Johannes Birringer
Schmelz, Saarland



________________________________________
From: NetBehaviour 
<netbehaviour-boun...@lists.netbehaviour.org<mailto:netbehaviour-boun...@lists.netbehaviour.org>>
 on behalf of Alan Sondheim via NetBehaviour 
<netbehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org<mailto:netbehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org>>
Sent: 16 July 2021 19:32
To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity


NI sounds cool but the video sounds more like a typical advertisement; every ad 
I see here for medicines for example uses similar rhetoric.
NI isn't going to work unless it's accompanied by something that will stop, 
say, the Bransons from spending money on useless egoistic space travel and 
investing hard cash in working to transform the planet.
Otherwise, NI ends up being as rhetorical as so much of the ecological claims 
of the 60's on.
I wonder if re: Finsbury park, there will be any attempt at rewilding part of 
it? In other words, like Alan Sonfist worked on years ago, fencing an area off, 
letting it be/bee?

Best, Alan

On Fri, Jul 16, 2021 at 10:21 AM Graziano Milano via NetBehaviour 
<netbehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org<mailto:netbehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org><mailto:netbehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org<mailto:netbehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org>>>
 wrote:
Hi Eryk & all,

Here is the other video by the The Centre4NI:
The secret to innovation is NI (why biology will save 
us)<https://vimeo.com/501683043>

The Centre4NI<https://www.centre4ni.com> says on its website that:
“Natural Intelligence is the intelligence that is as old as time. It knows what 
works, what lasts and what contributes to the future of life on Earth. It is 
the driver behind 3.8 billion years of continuous innovation, adaptation and, 
ultimately, regeneration. It is what enables nature to survive and thrive – 
despite limited resources and endless change and disruption. Tapping into NI is 
how we shift from tragedy to prosperity and build businesses, organisations and 
institutions that foster a healthier, wealthier and more viable future.”

They could add that "Natural Intelligence has also built and will carry on 
building our artistic human creativity because as Da Vinci said Nature is the 
source of all true knowledge."

Graziano


On Fri, 16 Jul 2021 at 14:20, Eryk Salvaggio via NetBehaviour 
<netbehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org<mailto:netbehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org><mailto:netbehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org<mailto:netbehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org>>>
 wrote:
>
> Max, Paul & all;
>
> Thanks for all the thought-provoking links, everyone.
>
> Sometimes there are shades of panic in the way I see AI art. It’s like the 
> machine is getting deep into my psyche, colonizing the culture as data and 
> spitting something out that barely resembles art or beauty or play. I think 
> that reflects the weaponized ideology of broader data practices today: this 
> is exactly what machine learning is doing, often to catastrophic results. And 
> much of that comes from how we imagine the links between our imaginations and 
> the machine’s “imagination.”
>
> The machine’s "imagination" (whatever happens in "latent space," which seems 
> to be the term we're using) is reaching to find patterns and relationships, 
> even when such patterns and relationships may not exist. We hope that the way 
> we take art into our minds is something different. But I don’t know for sure.
>
> At the moment, I can only respond to this machine “imagination” in the same 
> way that we find meaning within a human-produced painting, or poem, or film, 
> or television advertisement. We imagine ourselves within those worlds. We do 
> this within our private mental spaces, but we hand over some internal control 
> to the artists, poets, or marketing agencies. When we do, our story and their 
> stories become temporarily intertwined with something external. Whether we 
> are being manipulated by poets or design houses, we know it was human, and 
> trying to meet us.
>
> With few exceptions, even the most alienating and experimental of these 
> communication forms are shaped by that desire for human comprehension. 
> Machines, in simulating art, do so without any desire to connect or reassure 
> us. The machine is not concerned with being understood, because it doesn’t, 
> and cannot, understand. It’s the cold indifference of a machine. In the 
> distance between us and it, we project all that we fear from the Other: 
> infallible, all-knowing, all-aware — and so we imagine the very things that 
> make them so frightening. I am used to the sense that the screen is always 
> there to take something from me, package it up, and offer it back through the 
> recommendation of some distant system. So, I am also bringing that to my 
> interactions with the system, in how I interpret (imagine) what it is doing. 
> Generative art systems don't "do this," I do it to them.
>
> The uncanniness — that close-but-not-quite-human quality of machine generated 
> text and images — is a different way of intermingling imaginations because we 
> imagine it to be different. The image quality is not so clear, and so the 
> limits of the machine imagination intertwines with a human desire to be 
> immersed. I can see my own imagination reaching, and how sometimes 
> imagination fails, and unmasking that lie can be terrifying. (The Lacanian 
> "Real," etc.)
>
>
> -e.
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jul 14, 2021 at 3:38 PM Paul Hertz via NetBehaviour 
> <netbehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org<mailto:netbehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org><mailto:netbehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org<mailto:netbehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org>>>
>  wrote:
>>
>> There's an essay, "Intelligence Without Representation" that Brooks wrote in 
>> 1987, http://people.csail.mit.edu/brooks/papers/representation.pdf, that 
>> offered what was then a new point of view on how to consider AI.
>>
>> // Paul
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Jul 14, 2021 at 2:10 PM Paul Hertz 
>> <igno...@gmail.com<mailto:igno...@gmail.com><mailto:igno...@gmail.com<mailto:igno...@gmail.com>>>
>>  wrote:
>>>
>>> Hi Max,
>>>
>>> The robotics researcher Rodney Brooks back in the late 1980s argued the AI 
>>> based on the construction of a "knowledge base" was bound to fail. He made 
>>> the case that a robot adapting to an environment was far more likely to 
>>> achieve intelligence of the sort that humans demonstrate precisely because 
>>> it was embodied. Some of his ideas are presented in the movie Fast, Cheap, 
>>> and Out of Control, directed ISTR by Errol Morris. If you haven't seen it 
>>> yet, I can recommend it.
>>>
>>> -- Paul
>>>
>>> On Wed, Jul 14, 2021, 1:38 PM Max Herman via NetBehaviour 
>>> <netbehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org<mailto:netbehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org><mailto:netbehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org<mailto:netbehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org>>>
>>>  wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Hi all,
>>>>
>>>> I know virtually nothing about AI, beyond what the letters stand for, but 
>>>> noticed this new article in Quanta Magazine.  Does it pertain at all?  
>>>> Interestingly it concludes that in order for AI to be human-like it will 
>>>> need to understand analogy, the basis of abstraction, which may require it 
>>>> to have a body!
>>>>
>>>> https://www.quantamagazine.org/melanie-mitchell-trains-ai-to-think-with-analogies-20210714/?mc_cid=362710ae88&mc_eid=df8a5187d9
>>>>
>>>> I have been interested in the book GEB by Hofstadter for some time, and 
>>>> have been researching how it was referenced (specifically its Chapter IV 
>>>> "Consistency, Completeness, and Geometry" and its Introduction) by Italo 
>>>> Calvino in Six Memos for the Next Millennium, so Mitchell's connection to 
>>>> Hofstadter and GEB is interesting on a general level.
>>>>
>>>> Coincidentally I contacted her a year ago to ask about the Calvino 
>>>> connection but she replied she hadn't read any Calvino or the Six Memos.  
>>>> However, his titles for the six memos -- Lightness, Quickness, Exactitude, 
>>>> Visibility, Multiplicity, and Consistency -- might be exactly the kinds of 
>>>> "bodily" senses AI will need to have!
>>>>
>>>> All best,
>>>>
>>>> Max
>>>>
>>>> https://www.etymonline.com/word/analogy
>>>> https://www.etymonline.com/word/analogue
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> -----   |(*,+,#,=)(#,=,*,+)(=,#,+,*)(+,*,=,#)|   ---
>> http://paulhertz.net/
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