Folks, a historical vignette:
I've been doing some research on Canadian artist David Rokeby where I
found reference to one "European Software Festival" which was, at the
time, initiated by the US-based business software company Borland (a
then competitor of Microsoft - check the interesting Wikipedia entry).
Here's a contemporary report:
Klaus Brunnstein, University of Hamburg (March 1, 1991: 5 p.m. GMT)
On February 19-20, 1991, Borland collected, on the occasion of its 10th
anniversary, a rare collection of gurus, experts, engineers, artists in
Munich (Title: European Software Festival). On the program:
- Niklaus Wirth on his Oberon language concept (lecture, workshop)
- Bjarne Stoustrup (AT&T) with 2 lectures on C++/Object Oriented
Programming
- Marvin Minsky: Lecture on Personal Software and Programs Who Know
You (but he really gave a survey of AI history) plus Lecture on
Artificial Animals
- Philippe Kahn: Back to the Future
- Joseph Weizenbaum against overestimation in research
- Izumi Aizu: Hypernetwork Society
Some more could not come (Alan Kay should not use plane), others really
did not come (Cyberspace guru Jaron Lanier was only virtually present in
a video).
One of the most stimulating (and generally uncomparable) events was a
concert of Tod Machover (composer, director MIT Media Lab) who
demonstrated his "conductor-aiding handglove" in a new composition,
after having demonstrated his concept of "hyperinstruments" with a piece
from his opera "Valis".
Also some native German speakers:
- Computer Art professor Herbert W. Franke on Experimental Esthetics
- Thomas von Randow on Cryptosystems ("If Mary Stewart had applied
cryptology...")
- my own contribution was on Risky Paradigms in Informatics' Box of
Pandora (starting from J.v.Neumann's assumption, that his EDVAC be
equivalent to the human brain, with peripheral devices analog to
"organs", I analysed risks in misconceptions, errors in realisations,
misunderstanding on the users side, and malicious misuse, with examples
well known to Risk Forum readers).
<snip ... more "About Risks in Believing AI Gurus (M.Minsky)">
from: The Risks Digest. Forum on Risks to the Public in Computers and
Related Systems. ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy, Peter G.
Neumann, moderator. Volume 11: Issue 19, Friday 1 March 1991
archived at: http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/11.19.html
P.S.: I assume that there must have been other artists involved, besides
David Rokeby (with the installation "(Perception is) The Master of
Space") and Werner Kiera (multimedia performance?).
Rokeby: http://homepage.mac.com/davidrokeby/mos.html
Kiera: http://museum.arch.rwth-aachen.de/Reiff2/Museum2/kiera.html
http://www.datenverarbeiter.com/werner-kiera.html
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