Tag Archives: augmented humanity

Toronto’s ArtSci Salon’s Sept 20, 2023 event: Augmented Self: Can Generative AI be more than just a tool? and North Vancouver’s Polygon Gallery hosts Sept. 24, 2023 Phase Shifting finale event

Toronto

I stumbled across this while checking out Toronto’s ArtSci Salon website, from their Augmented Self: Can Generative AI be more than just a tool? event page,

Augmented Self: Can Generative AI be more than just a tool? Sept. 20 [2023] 6:00-8:00 @Fields

This event is a collaboration between ArtSci Salon and the Quantified Self Meet up Group led by Eric Boyd. Join us for a thought-provoking exploration into the world of “Augmented Self: Can Generative AI be more than just a tool?”.

While the era of the Quantified Self isn’t over, new tools have emerged which make the idea of JUST quantifying yourself (for personal growth or insight) seem outdated. The widespread assumptions is that ChatGPT and other Generative AI tools can do at least some of your thinking FOR YOU. Similarly, MidJourney can churn out passable images from just a prompt (that ChatGPT wrote for you), even if you aren’t an artist. This ability has raised many red flags and concerns regarding intellectual property and copyright infringement. And hundreds more such tools are arriving like a tsunami as venture capitalists pour billions into Generative AI startups. How do we navigate Generative AI for personal growth and creativity? What are its ethical uses? How do we use it for personal growth and creativity, for education or accessibility? What is it’s impact on our sense of self and on the conditions of our employment?

Event Schedule:

6:00-6:30pm. Reception and Networking

6:30-7:15pm. Panel Discussion (see below)

7:15-7:45pm. Q&A with the audience

7:45-8:00pm. Networking

8pm – option – retiring to a nearby pub for discussions

Panel Discussion:

Engage with a diverse panel of experts, each offering a nuanced perspective on the integration of AI into personal development:

  • Techie Viewpoint: Eric Boyd, will talk in general about the “Augmented Self” idea, and relate his experiences working with these tools on an unusual creative project – a solarpunk tarot deck. It’s a gigantic project, and “orchestrating artificial cognition” is the weird “augmented” experience at the heart of it.
  • Artist Viewpoint: Ryan Kelln, a software artist, has been using text-to-image tools to explore remixing, appropriation, and representation in his latest concert (https://www.ryankelln.com/project/transmigrations/). His exploration didn’t answer all his questions but left him changed for the better.
  • Other Viewpoints: Seeking project show & tell, brief opinions and constructive criticism!

This event will be recorded. If you wish to join us on Zoom, please, head to the Facebook event page here a few days before the event to get the link.

Audience Participation: We invite your participation! If you’d like to speak on the panel, we are still looking to flesh it out. Ideally we’re looking for an educator who is grappling seriously with the impact of e.g. ChatGPT on their students and the process and goals of education in general. And we’re open to other ideas and viewpoints! Please contact the organizer (Eric Boyd) via meetup message with a brief description of your background and what you might share/say in 5+ minutes. It doesn’t need to be formal, these are the frontiers!

And everyone, please bring your curiosity and your questions! We welcome all input, especially critical or out-of-frame input. We don’t even know what kind of language we should be using to discuss this!

If you are intrigued by the intersection of technology, self-improvement, and personal expression and seek a nuanced perspective on the augmented self, this event is designed for you.

Join us for an evening of generative AI collaboration stories (in the usual manner of QS “what did you do”), candid exploration, and thought-provoking dialogue. Chart your course through the potential and complexities of the Augmented Self with the guidance of insightful experts and a community of like-minded explorers.

This event description began from a series of prompts to ChatGPT. Can you spot the unedited sections? Does it matter if you can or can’t? It feels very new and different to make things this way. Let’s talk about it. see full description by organizer Eric Boyd.

If you have time, do take a look at Ryan Kelln’s Transmigrations June 2023 blog posting, https://www.ryankelln.com/project/transmigrations/, where you’ll see this and much more,

Migrations Without Borders

  • Composer: Dhaivat Jani
  • Visuals: Ryan Kelln & Stable Diffusion v1.5

Related: Atomised Migrations visuals remix

“Migrations Without Borders” is a modular piece of art that explores the potential of AI to mimic and remix cultural styles and elements [emphasis mine]. Incorporating eight distinct musical styles and corresponding visual elements, the piece allows for the dynamic composition of linked music themes and visuals.

But “Migrations” is more than just a showcase of AI’s abilities. It is a deliberate mixture of themes, including immigration, remix culture, AI bias, and the interplay of language and imagery. Drawing from Dhaivat’s personal experience and Toronto’s diverse cultural landscape, the piece creates a universe of cross-pollination that encourages reflection on the ways in which technology is changing our relationship to culture, identity, and acceptable thought.

The art invites us to consider the consequences of AI’s powers of mimicry and integration. What does it mean for likenesses and cultures to collide and mix so easily? How do we navigate the borrowing of styles and representations that may not be our own? What responsibilities and freedoms do we have in this rapidly evolving landscape?

North Vancouver

I wouldn’t ordinarily post about an art exhibition closing or finale event but this it a good companion event in Toronto and gives people in the Vancouver area an opportunity for something that’s more avant garde than I realized when the exhibition was announced in May 2023,, from the Phase Shifting Index Closing Celebration event page on the Polygon Art Gallery website,

Jeremy Shaw:
Phase Shifting Index

Closing Celebration

Sunday, September 24
5:00pm

[Location: The Polygon Gallery at 101 Carrie Cates Court in North Vancouver, BC, Canada]

Artist in attendance

Final day to see Phase Shifting Index—for the full experience of the seven-channel work please come at least 35 minutes before the exhibition closes at 5:00 pm.

Doors at 5:00pm
Screening of Jeremy Shaw’s short film Quickeners at 5:15pm
Conversation between Jeremy Shaw and The Polygon’s Audain Chief Curator Monika Szewczyk at 5:45pm
Reception at 6:15pm

[RSVP here]

About Quickeners
Quickeners: They live about 500 years after us and belong to the entirely rational- thinking species of Quantum Human, who are immortal and connected to each other through an abstract entity called “The Hive”. However, Quickeners have a developed a rare disorder named “Human Atavism Syndrome” – or H.A.S.- that prompts them to unexplainably desire to engage in long-forgotten behavioural patterns of humans. Detached from Hive, the Quickeners fall into an ecstatic state in which they sing, clap, cry, scream, dance and handle poisonous snakes [emphasis mine].

About Phase Shifting Index
Through a seven-channel video, sound, and light installation—the most ambitious use to date of Jeremy Shaw’s signature, evolving ‘post-documentary’ approach—visitors experience seven distinct subcultures that believe they can fundamentally alter reality.

About Jeremy Shaw
Born in North Vancouver and now based in Berlin, Jeremy Shaw works in a variety of media to explore altered states and the cultural and scientific practices that aspire to map transcendental experience. His films, installations and sculptures have gained worldwide acclaim with solo exhibitions at Centre Pompidou, Paris, MoMA PS1, New York, and Schinkel Pavillon, Berlin as well international surveys including the 57th Venice Biennale, 16th Lyon Biennale and Manifesta 11, Zurich. 

For anyone who does decide on the full experience, here’s more about Phase Shifting Index from the May 17, 2023 Polygon news release,

From June 23 to Sept. 24, 2023, The Polygon Gallery presents the North American premiere of Phase Shifting Index by North Vancouver-born, Berlin-based artist Jeremy Shaw. The immersive installation combines film, sound, and light to tell a story about an imagined future in which human beliefs and survival are at stake.

Phase Shifting Index is a seven-channel video, sound, and light installation that functions as a science-fiction pseudo-documentary about seven distinct subcultures that believe they can fundamentally alter reality. Each screen shows a group engaging in ritualistic movements while dressed in clothing that places them in periods ranging from the 1960s to the 1990s. Shaw uses outdated modes of 20th-century video technology (such as 16mm film and Hi-8 video tape), while interviews in indecipherable languages are subtitled in English. All seven channels are tied together by an overarching narrator who describes their belief systems and the significance of their movements: body-mind centering, robotic popping-and-locking, modern and postmodern dance, jump-style, hardcore punk skanking, and trust exercises, amongst others.

As the work progresses, the audiovisual elements of each screen draws the viewer into a dramatic narrative arc. At the climax, the seven autonomous subcultural groups align in a trans-temporal dance routine, with all subjects on all screens engaged in the same cathartic, synchronized movements, before disintegrating into abstraction and chaos. Sounds and sights collide on screen and then meld into a synaptic colour field. The result is a suspension of time and space, as the seven parallel realities fuse into one psychedelic art installation.

It was the ‘psychedelic’ in the last line along with references to the 1960s that dampened my enthusiasm for this ‘mind blowing’ experience. However, Ryan Kelln’s Transmigrations and proposed talk at Art Science Salon/Quantified Self Toronto’s event “Augmented Self: Can Generative AI be more than just a tool?” broadened my thinking on the matter.

University of Washington (state) is accelerating nanoscale research with Institute for Nano-Engineered Systems

A December 5, 2017 news item on Nanowerk announced a new research institute at the University of Washington (state),

The University of Washington [UW} has launched a new institute aimed at accelerating research at the nanoscale: the Institute for Nano-Engineered Systems, or NanoES. Housed in a new, multimillion-dollar facility on the UW’s Seattle campus, the institute will pursue impactful advancements in a variety of disciplines — including energy, materials science, computation and medicine. Yet these advancements will be at a technological scale a thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair.

The institute was launched at a reception Dec. 4 [2017] at its headquarters in the $87.8-million Nano Engineering and Sciences Building. During the event, speakers including UW officials and NanoES partners celebrated the NanoES mission to capitalize on the university’s strong record of research at the nanoscale and engage partners in industry at the onset of new projects.

A December 5, 2017 UW news release, which originated the news item, somewhat clarifies the declarations in the two excerpted paragraphs in the above,

The vision of the NanoES, which is part of the UW’s College of Engineering, is to act as a magnet for researchers in nanoscale science and engineering, with a focus on enabling industry partnership and entrepreneurship at the earliest stages of research projects. According to Karl Böhringer, director of the NanoES and a UW professor of electrical engineering and bioengineering, this unique approach will hasten the development of solutions to the field’s most pressing challenges: the manufacturing of scalable, high-yield nano-engineered systems for applications in information processing, energy, health and interconnected life.

“The University of Washington is well known for its expertise in nanoscale materials, processing, physics and biology — as well as its cutting-edge nanofabrication, characterization and testing facilities,” said Böhringer, who stepped down as director of the UW-based Washington Nanofabrication Facility to lead the NanoES. “NanoES will build on these strengths, bringing together people, tools and opportunities to develop nanoscale devices and systems.”

The centerpiece of the NanoES is its headquarters, the Nano Engineering and Sciences Building. The building houses 90,300 square feet of research and learning space, and was funded largely by the College of Engineering and Sound Transit. It contains an active learning classroom, a teaching laboratory and a 3,000-square-foot common area designed expressly to promote the sharing and exchanging of ideas. The remainder includes “incubator-style” office space and more than 40,000 square feet of flexible multipurpose laboratory and instrumentation space. The building’s location and design elements are intended to limit vibrations and electromagnetic interference so it can house sensitive experiments.

NanoES will house research in nanotechnology fields that hold promise for high impact, such as:

  • Augmented humanity, which includes technology to both aid and replace human capability in a way that joins user and machine as one – and foresees portable, wearable, implantable and networked technology for applications such as personalized medical care, among others.
  • Integrated photonics, which ranges from single-photon sensors for health care diagnostic tests to large-scale, integrated networks of photonic devices.
  • Scalable nanomanufacturing, which aims to develop low-cost, high-volume manufacturing processes. These would translate device prototypes constructed in research laboratories into system- and network-level nanomanufacturing methods for applications ranging from the 3-D printing of cell and tissue scaffolds to ultrathin solar cells.

A ribbon cutting ceremony.

Cutting the ribbon for the NanoES on Dec. 4. Left-to-right: Karl Böhringer, director of the NanoES and a UW professor of electrical engineering and bioengineering; Nena Golubovic, physical sciences director for IP Group; Mike Bragg, Dean of the UW College of Engineering; Jevne Micheau-Cunningham, deputy director of the NanoES.Kathryn Sauber/University of Washington

Collaborations with other UW-based institutions will provide additional resources for the NanoES. Endeavors in scalable nanomanufacturing, for example, will rely on the roll-to-roll processing facility at the UW Clean Energy Institute‘s Washington Clean Energy Testbeds or on advanced surface characterization capabilities at the Molecular Analysis Facility. In addition, the Washington Nanofabrication Facility recently completed a three-year, $37 million upgrade to raise it to an ISO Class 5 nanofabrication facility.

UW faculty and outside collaborators will build new research programs in the Nano Engineering and Sciences Building. Eric Klavins, a UW professor of electrical engineering, recently moved part of his synthetic biology research team to the building, adjacent to his collaborators in the Molecular Engineering & Sciences Institute and the Institute for Protein Design.

“We are extremely excited about the interdisciplinary and collaborative potential of the new space,” said Klavins.

The NanoES also has already produced its first spin-out company, Tunoptix, which was co-founded by Böhringer and recently received startup funding from IP Group, a U.K.-based venture capital firm.

“IP Group is very excited to work with the University of Washington,” said Nena Golubovic, physical sciences director for IP Group. “We are looking forward to the new collaborations and developments in science and technology that will grow from this new partnership.”

A woman speaking at a podium.

Nena Golubovic, physical sciences director for IP Group, delivering remarks at the Dec. 4 opening of NanoES.Kathryn Sauber/University of Washington

“We are eager to work with our partners at the IP Group to bring our technology to the market, and we appreciate their vision and investment in the NanoES Integrated Photonics Initiative,” said Tunoptix entrepreneurial lead Mike Robinson. “NanoES was the ideal environment in which to start our company.”

The NanoES leaders hope to forge similar partnerships with researchers, investors and industry leaders to develop technologies for portable, wearable, implantable and networked nanotechnologies for personalized medical care, a more efficient interconnected life and interconnected mobility. In addition to expertise, personnel and state-of-the-art research space and equipment, the NanoES will provide training, research support and key connections to capital and corporate partners.

“We believe this unique approach is the best way to drive innovations from idea to fabrication to scale-up and testing,” said Böhringer. “Some of the most promising solutions to these huge challenges are rooted in nanotechnology.”

The NanoES is supported by funds from the College of Engineering and the National Science Foundation, as well as capital investments from investors and industry partners.

You can find out more about Nano ES here.