ColourBlind: Machine Imagination, Closed Eye Hallucination and the Ganzfeld Effect (original) (raw)
FORM & FORCE 2019 Conference Proceeding , 2019
The term AI is quite a generalist term and is used to describe several different approaches. In Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence is defined as the study of Intelligent Agents, which includes any device that perceives its environment and that takes actions to maximize its chance of successfully achieving its goals In general, the term Artificial Intelligence is applied when a machine mimics cognitive functions that humans associate with other human minds, such as learning and problem solving. This opens up questions about the nature of creativity, the methods to evaluate this, and the nature of creativity at large. Can an AI create a novel sensibility (?) -and if so: can we as humans perceive and understand it? This was one of the many questions that the entire studio discussed fiercely, and it became very apparent that there is an enormous amount of fear of losing human agency in design. In most cases a fear that is not based on fact, as the research on this project showed very prominently. The project presented here tackled the problem not only from the aesthetic side – the ideas that AI can creatively generate a sensibility – but also from a profoundly ethical point of view: pondering the question wither an AI can develop a belief system. Do AI’s worship? If so, does that frame of worship materialize in some way? Do robots dream of perfect cathedrals?
The study of visual perception embraces a wide range of scientific and social disciplines of scholarly study. Through the ages, the question regarding the phenomenological and epistemological characteristics of the visual perceptual space of our consciousness became a central question in the studies of philosophy, psychology, aesthetics and recently, neuroscience and neuropsychology. The " visual perceptual space " is the broadest term we can use for the series of impulses that the light-sensitive sensory mechanism of our visual system can produce. In other words, everything that we can call " vision " has a fundamental dependence on " light moving in time " (Wees, 1992), and that what we call an image is the shape given to light's movement by the computations of the eye and brain and by the mechanical and optical apparatus we developed. In this broad definition, the vision embraces many different ways of seeing. Besides the focused and full-color foveal (occurring in the cavity of the eye) vision, there are varying degrees of " less focused and colorless peripheral vision " (Wees, 1992), as well as hallucinations, optical illusions and " closed eye-vision " (as Brakhage calls it), which includes hypnagogic imagery, prosphenes, and the grainy visual " noise " that are perceptible when we are in a dark room or have our eyes tightly closed. These and the many other less familiar ways of seeing have been studied and documented in scientific studies of vision, as well as in the works of visual artists, while being handled more subjectively. These different notions of seeing can also be discovered through our own processes of visual perception, when we allow ourselves to notice everything we are capable of seeing. In this paper, our main endeavor is to question one particular type of image, or way of seeing; which we call the kaleidoscopic-hallucinatory image.
Visual Hallucination For Computational Creation
Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Computational Creativity, 2016
Research on computational painters usually focuses on simulating rational parts of the generative process. From an art-historic perspective it is plausible to assume that also an arational process, namely visual hallucination , played an important role in modern fine art movements like Surrealism. The present work investigates this connection between creativity and hallucination. Using psychological findings, a three-step process of perception-based creativity is derived to connect the two phenomena. Insights on the neurological correlates of hallucination are used to define properties necessary for modelling them. Based on these properties a recent technique for feature visualisation in Convolutional Neural Networks is identified as a computational model of hallucination. Contrasting the thus enabled perception-based approach with the Painting Fool allows to introduce a distinction between two distinct creative acts, sketch composition and rendering. The contribution of this work is threefold: First, a computational model of hallucination is presented and discussed in the context of a computational painter. Second , a theoretic distinction is introduced that aligns research on different strands of computational creativity and captures the differences to current computational painters. Third, the case is made that computational methods can be used to simulate abnormal mental patterns , thus investigating the role that "madness" might play in creativity – instead of simply renouncing the myth of the mad artist.
THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION AND THE ARTIST WITHIN
This paper discusses the significance for the philosophy of perception and aesthetics of certain productions of the 'offline brain'. These are experienced in hypnagogic and other trance states, and in disease-or druginduced hallucination. They bear a similarity to other visual patterns in nature, and reappear in human artistry, especially of the craft type. The reasons behind these resonances are explored, along with the question why we are disposed to find geometrical complexity and 'supercolouration' beautiful. The paper concludes with a plea on behalf of neuroaesthetics, but with a caution or two.
Towards Hallucinating Machines - Designing with Computational Vision
IJAC, 2020
How many thousand images does it take an architect to learn what Gothic is, or Baroque or Modern? How many more to differentiate between good and bad architectural solutions? This article strives to de-mystify the nature of design choice in architecture by interrogating the underlying processes of Neural Networks and thus the extent of their ability to inform architectural design. The presented approach strives to explore the design problem not only through the lens of expediency, but also by considering the cultural transformation that comes along with the possibilities of a technology that profoundly asks about the nature of agency in a posthuman environment.
Call for Papers - Special issue on Ways of Machine Seeing (1)
How do computers change the way we see the world? This special issue brings together researchers from a wide range of disciplines to explore the entanglement of machines and seeing from new critical perspectives. The issue takes its point of departure John Berger's 1972 BBC documentary series Ways of Seeing, which had an enormous impact on both popular and academic views on visual culture and a politics of representation. It presented a radical socio-economic understanding of western art history -and emphasised that the relation between what we see and what we know is never settled. We seek to explore, half a century later, how these ideas can be understood in the light of state-of-the-art technical developments in machine vision and algorithmic learning: and what and how we see and know is further unsettled.
Imaginaries of Machine Vision. A Short History.
The historical development of the technologies that ultimately led to the field of 'machine vision' began in the 1960s. As is always the case with emerging technologies, imaginaries of potential future usages (and dangers) of the potential new technologies emerged too. This paper/article analyzes the intertwined histories of machine vision technologies and their corresponding imaginaries, by focusing on some exemplary configurations. These analyses reveal how machine vision was imagined, to which uses it should be put and what dangers were seen to be lurking in it. The paper focuses, first, on methodological considerations, on how to reconstruct the intertwining genealogies of technologies and their imaginary representations. Secondly, it examines three examples. The first example is the famous point-of-view shots of HAL9000 in Stanley Kubricks' 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). The second example is the point-of-view of the antagonist in Westworld (1973), played by Yul Brynner. These shots have a 'pixilated' look that stages machine vision in a way that connects it to the slowly emerging digital image aesthetics. The machine POV in The Terminator (1984) is the last example. The paper ends with a conclusion and a short analysis of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel Klara and the Sun (2021). 1.
Machinery of the Mind: Art as a Pathway to Understanding Machine Consciousness
xCoAx, 2024
This paper investigates the role of art in uncovering traces of consciousness within the physical realm, drawing parallels to how Paleolithic art represents early signs of consciousness by living beings. Using this simple understanding of art, this research aims to find out what a machine's equivalent of "prehistoric cave paintings" could look like. It suggests viewing art as a conceptual light that reveals consciousness in the physical world across various agents, including humans and technology. In the wake of ever more embedded Artificial intelligence and discoveries in the fields of neurology and quantum physics, this paper examines the role art has to play in revealing traces of consciousness alongside different scientific disciplines. Employing an updated Heideggerian perspective on the relationship between art and technology, this paper demonstrates that art is a useful tool alongside technology for investigating consciousness. It addresses ways to gain insights from machinic creative outpourings past, present and future and thus proposes how we could learn about human and machinic consciousness through art practices, paving the way for further research.
Consciousness without Bodies: Rethinking the Power of the Visualized Brain
World Futures: The Journal of New Paradigm Research, 2017
This article examines the possibility of the futuristic assumption that the human mind will converge with artificial intelligence technology to create an enhancement of consciousness. By studying how a correlation between consciousness and the brain is made through visual tools that are used in neuroscience, this article elaborates on how these findings affect research that is done in philosophy on the concept of consciousness. This article proposes a new approach on studying the brain, by examining it as a theoretical object, which gives every research field the possibility to argue over the truth in the images that are created of the brain.
Consciousness without Bodies: Rethinking the Power of the Visualised Brain
World Futures, 2017
This article examines the possibility of the futuristic assumption that the human mind will converge with artificial intelligence technology to create an enhancement of consciousness. By studying how a correlation between consciousness and the brain is made through visual tools that are used in neuroscience, this article elaborates on how these findings affect research that is done in philosophy on the concept of consciousness. This article proposes a new approach on studying the brain, by examining it as a theoretical object, which gives every research field the possibility to argue over the truth in the images that are created of the brain.
Artificial Dreams: Surreal Visual Storytelling as Inquiry Into AI 'Hallucination'
Proceedings of Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS ’24), 2024
What does it mean for stochastic artificial intelligence (AI) to “hallucinate” when performing a literary task as open-ended as creative visual storytelling? In this paper, we investigate AI “hallucination” by stress-testing a visual storytelling algorithm with different visual and textual inputs designed to probe dream logic inspired by cinematic surrealism. Following a close reading of 100 visual stories that we deem artificial dreams, we describe how AI “hallucination” in computational visual storytelling is the opposite of groundedness: literary expression that is ungrounded in the visual or textual inputs. We find that this lack of grounding can be a source of either creativity or harm entangled with bias and illusion. In turn, we disentangle these obscurities and discuss steps toward addressing the perils while harnessing the potentials for innocuous cases of AI “hallucination” to enhance the creativity of visual storytelling.
Sight, Insight, and Out of Sight: From Light as Information to Colour as World
2017
The current understanding of the expanded image is based on visual experiences provided by information turbulence in contemporary convergent media. We are therefore challenged to rethink everything we have come to understand about visuality, including the very physics of light and the physiology of the human eye. This essay will develop an alternative philosophy of visual perception based on hints given by Martin Heidegger and partially developed by Maurice Merleau-Ponty. It involves devising a new language for seeing that looks into the light of the technological world as a way of apprehending the self-luminous. This results in the creation of an ontological sight capable of looking beyond the objectification of what is, revealing the way humans come into contact with other beings, both natural and technological. Exploring the ideas of Herbert Damish and Jacques Taminiaux, this essay will show that we can no longer cling to contemporary notions of sight that say we have, on the one...
What is a dream? What is the relationship between dreaming, mind wandering and external perception? These questions are at the core of this artistic enquiry. In this art-as-research practice, both arts and sciences are defined as practices that construct culturally relevant representations that function as tools exploited in our attempt to make sense of the world and ourselves. Through this research, novel contributions are made to both artistic practices and cognitive science where both are manifest in a computational system that serves as both a generative and site-specific artwork and as a computational model of dreaming — the Dreaming Machine. Visual mentation is the experience of visual images in the mind and includes visual aspects of perception, mental imagery, mind wandering and dreaming. The Integrative Theory of visual mentation unifies biopsychological theories of perception, dreaming and mental imagery and makes three major hypotheses: Visual mentation (1) involves the activation of perceptual representations, (2) is experienced phenomenologically due to the activation of these representations, and (3) depends on shared mechanisms of simulation that exploit these representations. The Integrative Theory is the theoretical foundation of the model and artwork that generates dream imagery. The Dreaming Machine is an image-making agent that uses clustering and machine learning methods to make sense of live images captured in the context of installation. Visual images are generated during external perception, mind wandering and dreaming, and are constructed from shared perceptual representations learned during waking. The difference between these processes of visual mentation are varying degrees of activation from external stimuli (exogenous) and feedback in a predictive model of the world (endogenous). As an artwork, the generative methods manifesting biopsychological processes create a rich diversity of imagery that ranges from abstract collage to photo-realism. The artwork is meant to facilitate the viewer’s sense of his/her own fabricated perceptions and consider the relationships between computation, cognitive models and scientific conceptions of mind and dreaming.
The aim of the article is to question the extent to which modern information technologies in photography and other media increasingly disseminate and determine both the material and intellectual formation of contemporary consciousness. The study questions the relationship of mind and mechanism in establishing neuro-aesthetic arguments of cultural consciousness, that is to say how the actual neuro-physiology of the brain is affected and shaped through the workings and continuous formation of cultural consciousness. The study, by concentrating on the sources and the works of the artist Warren Neidich, reveals a systematic pattern and artistic practice that expresses a commitment to developing our understanding of what is now commonly called neuro-aesthetics or the formation of a contemporary neuro-culture. By using historical source materials (most often photography and reproductive media), cast into the context of Neidich's contemporary exhibition and cultural investigations, observations are drawn in reference to the artistic practices of the artist as to the methods he adopts and their neuro-aesthetic outcomes that are suggested. The article therefore constitutes an overview of what is still a highly contentious area of social and cultural research. The outcome or conclusion(s) of the study does not proffer rm answers but extends and opens up further the debate around discourses of mind, consciousness, and perception, as to the genuine validity of neurological aesthetic argumentation.
Art+science: An emerging paradigm for conceptualizing changes in consciousness
Technoetic arts, 2012
Maurits Cornelis Escher's 1938 lithograph, Cycle, illustrates what mathematical physicist Roger Penrose calls 'impossible objects'. The illusion of three-dimensionality, the innovative use of tessellation, and the incorporation of traditionally figurative elements induce the viewer to perceive the lithographic print as depicting a visually plausible reality built on the deconstructive metamorphosis of man into cube. It is Escher's ability to paradoxically combine the radical oppositions of man and cube, landscape and geometric abstraction into an apparently harmonious composition where shapes repeat with subtle variation and almost imperceptibly transition into radically different shapes that I want to use as a visual paradigm for conceptualizing the shifts in human consciousness in the digital age. Roger Penrose, path-breaking theorist of consciousness as a physical but non-computational process, was inspired by and inspired Escher. Penrose's provisional concepts of consciousness, time and space can be visually compared to Escher's earlier man-cube renderings, where each of these individual design elements allows the transition to another shape. In other words, Penrose's theories, like Escher's design concepts, illustrate a moment of transition in consciousness theory. As in Escher's Cycle, the individual elements are being continually redefined, reshaped and revealed. Each may be a unique distortion of the previous, but this does not mean that it is disconnected or independent of the final outcome. These distortions are transitional elements that lead us visually to the other side of the composition. Radical transformations and developing connectedness in the boundaries between art, technology and science function like the individual elements in Escher's Cycle. As we
20/X: Visuality, Representation and Epistemology in the Age of Intelligent Seeing Machines
Leonardo, 2017
To understand, critique and shape the impact of machines that can see in ways exceeding human capabilities, humans may need to learn to see like machines, to understand their abstractions and categorizations. The installation 20/X explores visuality, representation and epistemology in the age of intelligent seeing machines. This project is a collaboration between artists and biomedical researchers in an attempt to bring science, technology and the arts together to create an opportunity for public dialogue around an invention that will soon permeate the designed world.
Feminist media histories, 2021
Despite her status as an unpaid "resident visitor" for most of her nearly twodecade tenure there, Lillian Schwartz created some of the most important works of early computer art at Bell Labs. This essay unravels the conceptual frameworks of "vision" as they manifest in Schwartz's early computer films made between 1970 and 1972, with a specific emphasis on vision as "information" and "data." It argues that these specific films in Schwartz's oeuvre explored a newly emerging model of vision based on the rendering practices of computers and scientific instruments, while navigating the fraught question of the role of the embodied viewer. Resisting this rationalized order of vision, which would ultimately result in the emergence of information as both a commodity and an asset class, Schwartz's films instead explore the contingencies of rendering information with the newly developing medium of the computer.