[x] Watching and Dreaming (Blade Runner)

[B. Bogart]

Hello Jim,

That is difficult to articulate concisely; I think more in terms of
processes than goals. Though, I would say this excerpt from a grant
application covers my motivation sufficiently:

"Watching and Dreaming sets up a tension between the fictional
representations of AI in cinema and my literal exploitation of AI
methods manifest in the artwork's processes. Through my artistic enquiry
of these AI methods, my exploitation references their embodiment of a
scientific enquiry into the nature of human intelligence. The system
attempts to understand our cinematic fictional representations of AI by
exploiting corresponding literal knowledge in AI and brain science. This
tension between fictional representations and literal exploitation is
emphasized when using cinematic representations of AI that have gained
cultural prominence. To that end, I intend to examine a number of
culturally significant cinematic depictions of AI as raw material,
initially including: 2001: A Space Odyssey, 2010, Metropolis, Blade
Runner, TRON, The Terminator, and The Matrix, all of which feature AIs
as central characters and to varying degrees have shaped our cultural
conceptions of what AIs could be.
...
By building machines that dream, I hope the viewer confronts questions
such as: Can a machine literally or metaphorically dream? Are scientific
models metaphors or truths? What is the relation between scientific
conceptions of dreaming and our experience of them? Is there continuity
between the processes of mind that constitute us and the computational
operations of machines? Can art involve the creation of new knowledge,
or does it simply reflect implicitly what is already known? If we are
always dreaming, how can we differentiate between what is real and what
is simulation?"

In the end, it seems my work is often an examination of the tension
between concepts and reality, both in terms of scientific models of
mind, but also in the mechanisms of abstraction that constitute cognition.

Ben

On 15-07-30 02:37 PM, Jim Andrews wrote:
> Interesting, Ben. Thanks. What are the goals of this project, for you?
> 
> ja
> 
> On 7/30/2015 2:26 PM, B. Bogart wrote:
>> Hello all,
>>
>> For those not following me on G+, I thought I would share some very
>> early preliminary images of my new project "Watching and Dreaming (Blade
>> Runner)" where processes of my "Dreaming Machine" are applied to the
>> frames of Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner":
>>
>> http://www.ekran.org/ben/wp/2015/initial-results-blade-runner/
>>
>> Ben
>>
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