Category: IxD Evolution

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It’s Alive! Colloquy of Mobiles at ZKM — Progress Update #16

Colloquy of Mobiles at ZKM

Above and below: Replica of Gordon Pask’s 1968 “Colloquy of Mobiles” by TJ McLeish and Paul Pangaro at ZKM. Photo and video by TJ McLeish and Patricia Machado.

Today at the ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany, a fully-animated Colloquy of Mobiles was displayed at the opening of their exhibition titled »BioMedia: The Age of Media with Life-like Behavior«. Our replica of  Gordon Pask’s 1968 Colloquy is perfectly poised to respond to ZKM’s intentions as expressed on the exhibition’s web page: “Who or what defines what is alive and what is intelligent? … What does cooperation of human beings and artificial agents look like? … The exhibition »BioMedia« invites visitors to learn about and discuss possible forms of cohabitation between organic and artificial forms of life.”

When Pask conceived the Colloquy of Mobiles in 1968, those questions were hardly on everyone’s mind — though they certainly are today. Continue reading “It’s Alive! Colloquy of Mobiles at ZKM — Progress Update #16”

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#NewMacy 2021: Responding to Pandemics of “Today’s AI”

Recursion among Digital, Analog, and Cybernetics

This post is an overview of the direction of #NewMacy Conversations as of August, 2021.  Click here to read #NewMacy documentation, including more recent activities .

The need for #NewMacy Meetings arose at the start of COVID-19. Overpowering realizations about global systemic challenges, beyond the current biological pandemic, demanded response. Design began with a broad community of colleagues through conversation and critique. A comprehensive manifesto emerged, followed by a focused and justifiable path for responding to the pandemic of “Today’s AI”. Most recently a conference keynote has captured the rationale and overall plan.

Why “Today’s AI” as a phrase? Not all AI is negative—yet so much of the artificial intelligence inside of today’s tech is manipulating what we see and distorting the world we share. Fueled by massive increases in “big data” and compute power, the machine-learning algorithms behind “Today’s AI” are tirelessly fomenting polarization, spreading social bias, pushing irrelevant products, co-opting our attention, addicting us to harmful activities, and surveilling our lives. A single, unregulated, global social-media platform, implicated in that litany of harm, has 2.8 billion active users. The Internet and its ubiquitous digital devices touch over 4.5 billion people. Surely “Today’s AI” is a pandemic of technology at global scale.

Technology itself is not at fault. How we fashion it, the values we embed in it, and the motivations that promote it are at fault, serving the ends of companies that compromise the social fabric of our lives.

Exposing values inherent in code

Continue reading “#NewMacy 2021: Responding to Pandemics of “Today’s AI””

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Colloquy of Mobiles at ZKM — Progress Update #15

Colloquy of Mobiles at ZKM

Above and below: Replica of Gordon Pask’s 1968 “Colloquy of Mobiles” by TJ McLeish and Paul Pangaro now installed at ZKM. All photos courtesy of Morgane Stricot, ZKM.

Today we celebrate the  anniversary of the unveiling of our replica of Gordon Pask’s Colloquy of Mobiles on February 26, 2020, at Centre Pompidou in Paris where it was part of the extraordinary exhibition MUTATIONS / CRÉATIONS 4: NEURONES / LES INTELLIGENCES SIMULÉES.

Colloquy of Mobiles at ZKM

That opening was rich in energy and interactions as demonstrated in these short videos.

In March the exhibition had to close prematurely due to COVID.

Thereafter the great staff of Centre Pompidou and ZKM disassembled, transported, and reassembled Colloquy at ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany, where it has become part of the permanent collection.

We look forward to the museum’s reopening to the public and the opportunity for TJ Mcleish, Colloquy’s master fabricator, to travel to ZKM and animate the replica to make it fully operational once again.

Read more about Colloquy here.

 

 

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Colloquy of Mobiles displayed at Centre Pompidou — Progress Update #14

Image above: Replica of Gordon Pask’s 1968 “The Colloquy of Mobiles” exhibited in the gallery of Centre Pompidou in 2020.

The replica of Gordon Pask’s 1968 Colloquy of Mobiles, reproduced by Paul Pangaro and TJ McLeish in 2018, is now on display in Centre Pompidou’s exhibition entitled MUTATIONS / CRÉATIONS 4: NEURONES / LES INTELLIGENCES SIMULÉES through April 20, 2020.

Click here for a gallery of short videos of the installation.

Continue reading “Colloquy of Mobiles displayed at Centre Pompidou — Progress Update #14”

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Colloquy Arrives to Centre Pompidou — Progress Update #13

Image above: TJ McLeish calibrating light and sound in the gallery at Centre Pompidou for the public exhibition opening February 26, 2020.

Here at Centre Pompidou for the installation of Colloquy of Mobiles (its 2018 replica) to be displayed as part of a large-scale exhibition, with a conjoined history of brains, neural nets, AI, and cybernetic artifacts.

The exhibition entitled MUTATIONS / CRÉATIONS 4: NEURONES / LES INTELLIGENCES SIMULÉES is perhaps the largest retrospective connecting to cybernetics and art since Cybernetic Serendipity in London in 1968, where Gordon Pask’s original Colloquy was shown.

Connected to the exhibition is a 2-day symposium, including a panel named “Dead Ends and the Future of Cybernetics” where Andy Pickering (author of The Cybernetic Brain), Margit Rosen of ZKM (a great and long-time advocate for Colloquy), and I are joined by two French philosophers. Continue reading “Colloquy Arrives to Centre Pompidou — Progress Update #13”

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Colloquy Featured in INTERACTIONS MAG — Progress Update #12

Inside page showing Colloquy images

While the 2018 replica of Gordon Pask’s Colloquy of Mobiles is being crated in preparation for its time at Centre Pompidou, the magazine INTERACTIONS has printed a brief description of the project in their DEMO HOUR feature section. Here’s the text of the story: Continue reading “Colloquy Featured in INTERACTIONS MAG — Progress Update #12”

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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”

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Get your flashlights ready – Remaking COLLOQUY – Progress Update #7

Pangaro at The Exploratorium

COLLOQUY 2018 Project – Fab Board + flashlights
Flashlights ready for participants to interact with Colloquy

Our full-scale replica of Pask’s Colloquy of Mobiles is getting ready for interaction! Come to the the CCS Taubman Center from August 2nd through August 5th. The hours at the CCS Masters Program in Interaction Design will be 4pm to 8pm on Thursday & Friday, August 2nd and 3rd; and from 12pm to 4pm on Saturday and Sunday, August 4th and 5th. We have flashlights! (And free parking, of course.)

There have been many updates to the installation, including improvements that make everything more robust and ready for transport to other venues in the future.

During the summer we presented the COLLOQUY 2018 Project to The Exploratorium, which once housed a substantial percentage of the Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition from the ICA in London in 1968, where Colloquy was originally created. (Details are available here.)

We welcome your questions and interactions via colloquy2018@gmail.com and donations at our project site.

Review blogposts about the project here.

Pangaro at Exploratorium 2
Chair of MFA Interaction Design Paul Pangaro presents the COLLOQUY 2018 Project at The Exploratorium in San Francisco, June 13, 2018