Author: Paul Pangaro

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Colloquy 2018 is going to Centre Pompidou and ZKM — Progress Update #10

Image above: TJ McLeish, master fabricator of Colloquy 2018, presents to guests of Design Core Detroit

Last viewing of Colloquy at College for Creative Studies in Detroit, Winter 2018

Colloquy 2018 will be exhibited in Paris!
Centre Pompidou from  February 26 through April 20, 2020

Colloquy 2018 has a permanent home!
ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany

(Click here for a brief video overview. Read the full story of the COLLOQUY 2018 Project or visit the project’s student website, ColloquyOfMobiles.com.)

Updated September 1, 2019: We have just received an important piece of Colloquy history. Mark Dowson, responsible for the electronics of the original Colloquy of Mobiles from 1968, had an exchange in 2005 with Margit Rosen, long-time devotee of Colloquy. Dowson reveals additional details  about Colloquy’s behaviors, especially in regard to the sounds made by the mobiles (no known audio recording exists). This increases the importance of the funding we are seeking for upgrades before shipping Colloquy 2018 to Europe. Please visit our funding campaign. Thank you!

We need your help to get Colloquy ready! 
There is much to be done to prepare Colloquy—updating specific mechanical parts for longevity and upgrading the software to most closely match Gordon Pask’s original vision. We are seeking $15,000 via GoFundMe and are grateful for your donations and for forwarding this post to your friends and colleagues.

Colloquy awaiting reanimation and upgrades at Omnicorp Collective, Detroit

The Colloquy replica represents the design power of the city of Detroit!

The COLLOQUY 2018 Project was undertaken at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, with generous support from private donors as well as the University of Waterloo (Canada) and Design Core Detroit.

Continue reading “Colloquy 2018 is going to Centre Pompidou and ZKM — Progress Update #10”

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I Want a “Turning Test for Conversation”

After Dubberly Design

(Diagram after Dubberly Design Office)

That’s not  a typo — A Turning Test. For Conversation.

We all know the Turing Test for Intelligence — when a human will judge if a machine is “intelligent.” I want a machine that will judge if a conversation is “intelligent.”

That’s right, “intelligent” — the quotes mean it’s ambiguous and we ought to discuss it. The meaning of “intelligent”  is subject to opinion and personal values. For me, intelligent conversations are forward-moving, collaborative, generative — they go to new and interesting places. And for you?

I like this proposal for a Turning Test because: Continue reading “I Want a “Turning Test for Conversation””

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Computing Conversation — A Lecture

Is it possible to ‘compute conversation’? I mean — is it possible to write heuristics that respond in surprising and stimulating ways, enabling a back-and-forth exchange among intelligent participants?

Gordon Pask not only thought so, he designed and built a series of machines that did so, as far back as 1953. Sure, some of those conversations were simple and his machines could not understand language or listen to speech — but all the mechanisms he built had memory (and so could learn) and displayed novel, unexpected behaviors (and so kept their co-participants engaged in the interaction). As a result, all of Pask’s machines could hold a form of conversation with humans (or sometimes, with other machines!).

The photo above is a control panel from 1958: Pask’s ‘Eucrates‘ environment, where a ‘teacher’ machine attempts to train a ‘pupil’ machine comprising neural nets (yup, neural nets in 1958). There are knobs labelled ‘awareness’ and ‘obstinacy’ — and don’t miss the wackiest one, ‘oblivesence.’ (Pask was British, so I hold to the definition in British dictionaries: ‘willful forgetfulness.’)

Wait… what? Continue reading “Computing Conversation — A Lecture”

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New Presentations and New Venues – COLLOQUY 2018 Project – Progress Update #9

Our project in replicating Gordon Pask’s Colloquy of Mobiles at the College for Creative Studies (CCS) in Detroit has moved into a new phase: Even as we discuss new venues for showing and ultimately housing the replica permanently, we have wonderful opportunities to present the work to international audiences.

Continue reading “New Presentations and New Venues – COLLOQUY 2018 Project – Progress Update #9”