Busby Berkeley

we are the virus

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2003/feb/14/environment.highereducation

"James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis conceives of the planet as an active control system. It posits the existence of feedbacks at the global level which, so far, have served to keep the earth's surface habitable within a tolerable range, despite significant external changes, including changes in the radiation from the sun. However, with severe human-induced activity, that is now beginning to change."

Social Computing

"I'm not a robot. I'm a unicorn"

First 'chatbot' conversation ends in argument - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14843549

We Are All Human Microphones Now -

http://www.thenation.com/blog/163767/we-are-all-human-microphones-now

Food Facility - http://www.mediamatic.net/page/298/en

‎"I am not a dystopian, I truly believe that everything is possible as long as…. It starts with chaos."

http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2011/11/design-fiction-a-report-from-the-field-by-nelly-ben-hayoun/

Visited: Thrilling Wonder Stories @ AA

http://www.thrillingwonderstories.co.uk/

Organised by Liam Young and Geoff Manaugh

Thrilling Wonder Stories 3

Date: 28.10.2011
Time: 12:00:00
Venue: London and New York

Created by Liam Young (AA Unknown Fields Division and Tomorrows Thoughts Today) and Geoff Manaugh (BLDGBLOG), in association with Studio-X NYC and Popular Science

OCT 28 1200 – 2200 at the Architectural Association London
OCT 28 1300 – 1600 at Studio X New York
OCT 29 1400 – 2200 at Studio X New York

Live in London and New York
Created by Liam Young [Tomorrows Thoughts Today] And Geoff Manaugh [BLDGBLOG]
In Association with Architectural Association Studio-X NYC Popular Science
We have always regaled ourselves with speculative stories of a day yet to come. In these polemic visions we furnish the fictional spaces of tomorrow with objects and ideas that at the same time chronicle the contradictions, inconsistencies, flaws and frailties of the everyday. Slipping suggestively between the real and the imagined these narratives offer a distanced view from which to survey the consequences of various social, environmental and technological scenarios.
Thrilling Wonder Stories chronicles such tales in a sci fi storytelling jam with musical interludes, live demonstrations and illustrious speakers from the fields of science, art and technology presenting their visions of the near future. Join our ensemble of mad scientists, literary astronauts, design mystics, graphic cowboys, mavericks, visionaries and luminaries for an evening of wondrous possibilities and dark cautionary tales.
For the first time, Thrilling Wonder Stories will be simultaneously hosted in London and New York and Popular Science will join the Architectural Association and Studio X NYC in coordinating the event this year. Join us for the third event in the series as we chart a course from science fiction to science fact with talks, a hands on taxidermy workshop, animatronic guests, swarm robotics demonstrations, datascapes walking tour and live movie soundscapes.
OCT 28 1200 – 2200 at the Architectural Association London OCT 28 at Studio-X NYC OCT 29 at Studio-X NYC

See www.thrillingwonderstories.co.uk
twitter: @wonderstories #tws3
tomorrowsthoughtstoday.com
live streamed via www.aaschool.ac.uk

LONDON
Hosted by
LIAM YOUNG (‘Tomorrows Thoughts Today’ and the AA’s ‘Unknown Fields Division’)
MATT JONES (‘BERG London’, Design technologists)

VINCENZO NATALI
Director of Splice and Cube and the upcoming films based on the JG Ballards ‘Highrise’ and William Gibson’s ‘Neuromancer’.

BRUCE STERLING
Science Fiction Author and futurist.

ANDY LOCKLEY
Academy award winning visual effects supervisor for ‘Inception’ , compositing/2D supervisor for ‘Batman Begins’ and ‘Children of Men’.

PHILIP BEESLEY
Digital media artist and experimental architect

CHRISTIAN LORENZ SCHEURER
Concept artist and Illustrator for video games and films including films as ‘The Matrix’, ‘Dark City’, ‘Fifth Element’ and ‘Superman Returns’.

CHARLIE TUESDAY GATES
Taxidermy artist and sculptor. Charlie will be leading a live taxidermy workshop.

DR RODERICH GROSS AND THE ‘NATURAL ROBOTICS LAB’
Head of the ‘Natural Robotics Lab’ at the University of Sheffield. Dr Gross will be running a live swarm robotics demonstration

GAVIN ROTHERY
Concept artist on ‘Moon’ directed by Duncan Jones

GUSTAV HOEGEN
Animatronics Engineer on Ridley Scott’s upcoming film ‘Prometheus’, ‘Hell Boy’ and ‘Clash of the Titans’


RADIO SCIENCE ORCHESTRA
Theremin-led, electro-acoustic ensemble

SPOV
Motion graphics artists for Discovery channel’s ‘Future Weapons’ and ‘Project Earth’

ZELIG SOUND
Music, composition and sound design for film and television

http://www.aaschool.ac.uk/VIDEO/lecture.php?ID=1611

Visited: Value Based Social Change Talk @ RSA

Value Based Social Change - Exploring new frontiers from The RSA on Vimeo.

Carl Poll, a Trustee of Manavodaya Institute of Participatory Development, explains how shared values are achieved through self-awareness, dialogue and reflection, and systems are adapted according to local needs and culture, empowering communities to effect their own change.

Workshop: Human Factors in Extreme Environments

Run by Charlotte Jarvis and Regina Peldszus

"Last month, I was invited to run a one-day workshop on human factors in extreme environments with 20 Design Interaction masters students at the Royal College of Art, together with Charlotte Jarvis. The workshop participants responded to a fictional but feasible future mission scenario involving a remote duty station in deep space, where a crew member has been experiencing – and initially hiding – a painful medical condition. After a morning of hands-on familiarisation with group dynamics in unusual or extreme settings, the participants plotted different chains of events in the mission scenario, and developed one particular situation with its ethical, emotional or logistical dimension in more detail. The associated issues and implications touched upon in the participants' final responses – in the form of speculative products, systems or services – ticked a number of boxes of exploration-related R&D taxonomies from preventative and onboard medical care, in situ restraint of individual crew members and onboard ambient intelligence to legal issues, risk perception, loss of crew and more." - Regina Peldszus

The Future is Not a Noun, it's a Verb from Charlotte Jarvis on Vimeo.

by Charlotte Jarvis

Seen: Lost Book Found by Jem Cohen

by Jem Cohen

Murmuration

Murmuration from Sophie Windsor Clive on Vimeo.

Cymatics - Bringing Matter To Life With Sound

The Itch

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/06/30/080630fa_fact_gawande?currentPage=1

Itching. Perception. Deceiving the brain. Phantom limb syndrome.

"The images in our mind are extraordinarily rich. We can tell if something is liquid or solid, heavy or light, dead or alive. But the information we work from is poor—a distorted, two-dimensional transmission with entire spots missing. So the mind fills in most of the picture. You can get a sense of this from brain-anatomy studies. If visual sensations were primarily received rather than constructed by the brain, you’d expect that most of the fibres going to the brain’s primary visual cortex would come from the retina. Instead, scientists have found that only twenty per cent do; eighty per cent come downward from regions of the brain governing functions like memory.

Richard Gregory, a prominent British neuropsychologist, estimates that visual perception is more than ninety per cent memory and less than ten per cent sensory nerve signals."