Stop Making Sense
Links for 33/2023
Art and Design
The Cannibal Girl GID Jungle Ghost Edition By Utomaru x Tomenosuke. Reference: The famous impalement scene in Cannibal Holocaust that lead to several snuff film alegations.
Google Arts & Culture turned to Leonardo Da Vinci, featuring thousands of his sketches, 3D-versions of his inventions, macro-shots of his art and much more. Here's a writeup at The History Blog.
I think i blogged about the datascarfs from Glitchaus years ago but i just stumbled on them again and they are still great, like this ASCII-scarf featuring typography from watching an image file in a text editor on an Atari ST.
The BBC Archive on YT recently uploaded a short portrait of Denys Fisher, the self-taught engineer and inventor of the world famous Spirograph toy which i loved as a kid. I spent hours with this thing and today i see it as an analogue and manual handdrawing precursor to algorithmic art.
Time Lapse of Ants Invading a Document Scanner: "Five years ago, I installed an ant colony inside my old scanner that allowed me to scan in high definition this ever evolving microcosm (animal, vegetable and mineral). The resulting clip is a close-up examination of how these tiny beings live in this unique ant farm." // Unfortunately, the video is also overproduced and overstylized. This highly interesting concept could've and should've stoodd on it's own, and the basic rule of design applies here too: Everything you add to a piece of work actually subtracts.
"Hacking Gutenberg is an experimental letterpress workshop in Berlin dedicated to letters, printing and paper." // Erik Spiekermanns latest experiments in nostalgic typography.
Some guy built himself a Knife Throwing Machine: Part 1 - The B.U.I.L.D., KnifePart 2 - Accuracy Testing Trick Shots, Part 3 - Physics of Penetration
Aram Bartholls Streetview-artpiece "15 Seconds of Fame" is complete now, 15 years after the original spontaneous performance thingy.
"Fed up with everyone else dumping their existentialist dread on you? Why not sit back and relax with a trip to the ANGST FARM? This zine collects illustrations, short comix, and various other crises new and old, including a revist to 1989's Wired World."
"The Nib is wrapping up ten years of publishing and closing down at the end of August. But before we go, we are making all 15 issues of our Eisner and Ignatz award-winning magazine available for anyone to download for free. That’s more than 1,600 pages of comics"
"A digital archive of graphic design related items that are available on the Internet Archives".
Social/Media
The Uncensored Library // Reporters Without Borders built a library featuring banned texts in Minecraft: "In many countries, websites, social media and blogs are controlled by oppressive leaders. Young people, in particular, are forced to grow up in systems where their opinion is heavily manipulated by governmental disinformation campaigns. But even where almost all media is blocked or controlled, the world’s most successful computer game is still accessible. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) uses this loophole to bypass internet censorship to bring back the truth – within Minecraft."
In the paper Social media information literacy researchers development a measurement scale for socmed literacy and found that it is positively correlated to lower information overload and conspiratorial thinking, which is a bit on the nose but also reassuring.
Neuroscientist Erik Hoel writes about What the heck happened in 2012? His conclusion: The 2010 saw a cultural revolution in the combination of social media and wokism and in 2020 we'll see the ripples of economic consequences of that. I've written about some of this stuff in The Big Flat Now (in german) and in a piece of the viral Tourette-like tiks.
Mind & Psychology
Journeys Beyond: Contrasting Psychedelic Trips and Near-Death Experiences: "Researchers analyzed the similarities and differences between a near-death experience (NDE) while in a coma and the experience induced by a psychedelic drug." //
They found somewhat similarities and big differences, so psychedelics is nothing like death, phew.I know catnip ofcourse, and i knew that dolphins get high by chewing pufferfish , but i had no idea that insects are people too. Here's some interesting details from Do Insects Feel Joy and Pain?: "Many plants contain bitter substances such as nicotine and caffeine to deter herbivores, but these substances are also found in low concentrations in some floral nectars. Researchers wondered whether pollinators might be deterred by such nectars, but they discovered the opposite. Bees actively seek out drugs such as nicotine and caffeine when given the choice and even self-medicate with nicotine when sick. Male fruit flies stressed by being deprived of mating opportunities prefer food containing alcohol (naturally present in fermenting fruit), and bees even show withdrawal symptoms when weaned off an alcohol-rich diet. Why would insects consume mind-altering substances if there isn't a mind to alter?"
Here's a rat brain on LSD: How consciousness may rely on brain cells acting collectively: "We saw that the waves went up and down almost simultaneously in all parts of the brain where we could detect them—a phenomenon called phase synchronization. Such tight phase synchronization over such long distances has to our knowledge never been observed before." //
If Donald Hoffman et al are right and consciousness is fundamental to the universe, not matter or spacetime, and consciousness also is the composition of synchronized brainwaves, then my crazy hobby theory i described in We are neurons in a cosmic consciousness steering the universe along memetic fields towards the Noosphere might be kind of right, and psychedelic experiences on drugs might be actually a form of access to base reality in a simulation sense as described in Donald Hoffmans book The case against reality. That would mean that the experience of the world on drugs is more close to reality than what we experience while sober.
Climate and Environment
Montana Judge rules in favor of youths in landmark climate decision: "that the state violated the state constitutional rights of 16 young people by promoting the use of fossil fuels and ignoring the effects of greenhouse gas emissions, which cause global warming and climate change. (...) The ruling, a historic first in the U.S. for environmental law, could influence thousands of other pending climate change lawsuits in the country." //
The kids are winning these lawsuits all over the world with surely more to come. Next step would be: Make Them Pay.Plastic Plastic everywhere, from the highest mountains to the bottom of my heart: Microplastics Found In Human Hearts For First Time.
AI and Tech
In the latest neural-extraction papers researchers reconstructed songs with Brain2Music, more images from EEG-signals, and Pink Floyds Another Brick in the Wall with some remarkable results.
ANIME ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS 2 // A follow up to the viral AI-animation, not too well received during the ongoing Hollywood-strike. Technically, I'm impressed, but there seems to be a lot of editing involved. Still, AI-animation is here to stay.
Hackers now can use audio as keyloggers: New acoustic attack steals data from keystrokes with 95% accuracy: "A team of researchers from British universities has trained a deep learning model that can steal data from keyboard keystrokes recorded using a microphone with an accuracy of 95% (...) Such an attack severely affects the target's data security, as it could leak people's passwords, discussions, messages, or other sensitive information to malicious third parties."
"How Berlin would look like, if [Political Party] would reign for 100 years." // Green Liberalism gives you utopian futuristic outlooks, while convervatism creates industrial ruins and socialism gives you regress, and the AFD-Nazis create a post-war wasteland, all of which is to be expected.
I've written about the dangers of developing a theory of mind for mimetic artificial intelligence, and now Duncan Reyburn writing about The mistake of reading desire into machines does the same: "As Iain McGilchrist writes in The Master and His Emissary, our imitative capacities have driven us to imitate machines. We have begun to humanize machines even while we dehumanize ourselves. Imagine how much more we will read desire into our technologies as those technologies increasingly simulate human thought."
I said it before and i'll say this again: The AI-copyright question is a ticking timebomb only waiting to fully blow off the hats of AI-companies: Revealed: The Authors Whose Pirated Books Are Powering Generative AI: "Upwards of 170,000 books, the majority published in the past 20 years, are in LLaMA’s training data. In addition to work by Silverman, Kadrey, and Golden, nonfiction by Michael Pollan, Rebecca Solnit, and Jon Krakauer is being used, as are thrillers by James Patterson and Stephen King and other fiction by George Saunders, Zadie Smith, and Junot Díaz. These books are part of a dataset called 'Books3', and its use has not been limited to LLaMA. Books3 was also used to train Bloomberg’s BloombergGPT, EleutherAI’s GPT-J—a popular open-source model—and likely other generative-AI programs now embedded in websites across the internet." //
This is also one of the reason why i consider LLMs as public goods akin to public libraries, AI could be regulated as such and should be run by the public sector.School district uses ChatGPT to help remove library books // Don't ban books period.
Monumental Labs is building AI-enabled robotic stone carving factories: "With them, we'll create cities with the splendor of Florence, Paris, or Beaux-Arts New York, at a fraction of the cost." //
I believe it when i see it. Relevant: The fractal 3d-printed architecture artworks of Michael Hansmeyer.Waking up ingame NPCs to the fact they are in a simulation is wild: „Watch this guy go around in the Matrix Awakens (!) game explaining to AI NPCs they’re in a simulation.“
The vids from AI-Black Mirror are right down my alley: AI generated commercial Dental Tourism, Mcdonald's AI generated Commercial, Dr. Coke Better Than Just Regular Cola, Twitter "X" Identity Crisis
Entertainment
Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Peter Frampton, Mick Fleetwood and Dolly Parton will record a new version of Let It Be. I want McCartney and Starr make a new record with guest musicians, and add some AI-Lennon and synthetic Harrison too. Nope, i'm not a purist, at all.
My Animal: Bobbi Salvör Menuez (Euphoria) and Amandla Stenberg (Bodies Bodies Bodies) ignite in this genre-bending supernatural love story. Tormented by a hidden family curse, Heather is forced to live a secluded life on the outskirts of a small town. When she falls for the rebellious Jonny, their connection threatens to unravel Heather's suppressed desires, tempting her to unleash the animal within.
Anatomy of a Fall: Sandra, a German writer, lives with her husband Samuel and their visually-impaired son Daniel in a remote mountain chalet in the French Alps. When Samuel falls to his death in mysterious circumstances, the investigation cannot determine whether it's suicide or foul play. Sandra is ultimately arrested for murder and the trial puts their tumultuous relationship and her ambiguous personality under the microscope. As her young son takes to the stand, doubt starts creeping in between them.
El Conde: The story revolves around Augusto Pinochet who is not dead but an aged vampire who, after 250 years in this world, has decided to die once and for all, due to ailments brought about by his dishonor and family conflicts.
Stop Making Sense We’re bringing Jonathan Demme’s seminal Talking Heads doc STOP MAKING SENSE back to theaters for its 40th anniversary, newly restored in pristine 4K. Experience/re-experience the greatest concert film of all time in IMAX September 22 and theaters everywhere September 29!
Divinity Set in an otherworldly human existence, scientist Sterling Pierce dedicated his life to the quest for immortality, slowly creating the building blocks of a groundbreaking serum named “Divinity.” Jaxxon Pierce, his son, now controls and manufactures his father’s once-benevolent dream. Society on this barren planet has been entirely perverted by the supremacy of the drug, whose true origins are shrouded in mystery. Two mysterious brothers arrive with a plan to abduct the mogul, and with the help of a seductive woman named Nikita, they will be set on a path hurtling toward true immortality.
Hundreds of Beavers In this winter epic, a drunken applejack salesman must go from zero to hero and become the land's greatest fur trapper to defeat hundreds of beavers.
Misc
Dracula 'cried tears of blood,' says new study // Vlad the Impaler likely suffered from hemolacria, "a condition in which there is the presence of blood in a person’s tears."
Quotation in the paper may or may not include this filmstill from Freddie Francis Hammer Studios-classic Dracula Has Risen From The Grave.
„NASA only uses 15 digits of π for calculating interplanetary travel. At 40 digits, you could calculate the circumference of a circle the size of the visible universe with an accuracy that'd fall off by less than the diameter of a single hydrogen atom.“
Joscha Bach "pits four different Theories of Everything (each developed by a nerd with a planet sized intellectual self confidence) against each other as if they were monstrous universe filling titans". Joscha Bach is one of the smartest minds out there and this is quite a trip.
This answer takes the cake, but only 50% and 25% and zero percent of the time.
I meditate way too unfrequently for my own good, but when i do, i like to use White Noise for relaxation. Now Bloomberg revealed that Spotify looked into banning uploaders of White Noise because it costs them 38 million bucks a year in ad revenue. Thankfully, i don't care too much as Youtube is full of all kinds of noises and rainfall and ocean wave ambient sounds. But i love the fact that Spotify has a noise problem.