Joseph Weizenbaum died at the ripe old age of 85 last month (NYTime Obituary). Weizenbaum was best known for ELIZA, a program designed in 1966 to establish natural language conversation with a computer by emulating a Rogerian therapist (Online Version of ELIZA). Weizenbaum was the first to note that the ELIZA conversations weren’t an example of computer “thinking,” but really consisted of some clever programming techniques. His argument that computers were merely tools to assist humans in their everyday lives put him in opposition to many of the leading researchers in the emerging field of artificial intelligence.
A few years after he wrote ELIZA, the idea of the thinking computer gained popular credence. A famous article in Life magazine in 1970 entitled “Meet Shakey, the First Electronic Person” was testament to this. Shakey was a Stanford University robot and one of Weizenbaum’s colleagues at MIT was quoted in the Life article as saying: “In from three to eight years we will have a machine with general intelligence of an average human being.”
Shakey the Robot was the first mobile robot to be able to reason to some degree about its own actions.
Soon, the popular media was trumpeting the impending arrival of thinking machines and it was left largely to Weizenbaum to put the issue in perspective and to note that computers as thinking machines weren’t right around the corner. He drew more fire from the AI community from his book, “Computer Power and Human Reason” that argued in part that man from the view of information processing is looked at as a means and not as an end. He worried that many computer scientists were following paths that were dehumanizing. Weizenbaum argued, essentially, that computers impose a mechanistic point of view on their users on us and that that perspective can all too easily crowd out other, possibly more human, perspectives.
Weizenbaum considered himself a gadfly and even heretic of the artificial intelligence community, which has had soaring flights and deep drops in acceptance and interest since he wrote ELIZA in the mid-1960s. AI currently is in a down draft as the firms that were built around it in the 1980s have largely faded from view. In 2007, Il Mare Film created an 80-minute documentary entitled “Weizenbaum. Rebel At Work.” Trailer The film is a personal portrait of the man and his life, with him telling mainly stories. Originally produced in German, an American version is available with subtitles and voice-over. The site also has a photo gallery of Weizenbaum’s life supported by audio clips from the film.
Here’s another competition that has come out of the Interactive Architecture Workshop at the Bartlett by current student Harry Parr. You’ve got one month to get your jelly mould designs in for the Architectural Jelly Competition. Any submitted media may be auctioned for Architects for Aid. I’ve seen these moulds up close and they look fantastic so come on, have a go.
“Jelly had its heyday in the late 19 Century: exquisite copper moulds were made that transformed the jelly into the most noble of desserts. The key features of these moulds are regular geometry, tiered designs and plastic forms. Forget all this! Bompas & Parr are giving you the opportunity to reinvent the jelly.”
The rules:
i) Design how you want the jelly to look, not how the mould will be made
ii) Use any techniques you want to show off your design: drawings, models, renders – there are no restrictions
iii) Provide a 3D cad file in IGES format so that a mould can be fabricated (alternatively include scale drawings)
iv) Maximum size is 15cm in any direction
v) Make sure there are no ‘undercuts’ in the shape as this will prevent the jelly from unmoulding
Think carefully about the structural nature of jelly as anything too tall and thin will collapse. But remember there is fine line between outstanding ‘wobble factor’ and disaster. You can design one jelly, a series of jellies or perhaps a jelly that can be repeated for a particular effect: the choice is yours.
I’m pleased to announce after a lot of very high quality proposals, the INTERArChTIVE commission has been given to Mette Ramsgard Thomsen and Karin Bech, to develop their interactive installation ‘Slow Furl’ for the Architecture 08 festival in June at Lighthouse in Brighton. The proposal is to make a room size textile installation that acts and reacts on its inhabitation. The installation exists as a soft and pliable skin that lines the Lighthouse space. The skin shifts. As guests enter and move within the foyer, the skin moves creating new cavities and spaces, revealing slits and apertures. Full Press Release
INTERArChTIVE is a consortium of Lighthouse (Brighton), Architecture Centre Network, interactivearchitecture.org and RIBA (Sussex branch)
The Poème électronique was a unique experience, originated from the request made by Philips to Le Corbusier for the design of the company’s pavilion at the Brussels World Fair in 1958. The whole project was initiated and directed by Le Corbusier, who also created and/or selected the images for the audiovisual show, with the organized sound composed by Edgar Varèse, and the stunning surfaces of the building designed by Iannis Xenakis. The result was a ground breaking immersive environment, since the space of the Pavilion hosted the audio and the visual materials as integral parts of the architectural design.
Unluckily, such a visionary synthesis of innovative ideas could not stand with its times, and the paradigm was never repeated, or even attempted, again: the Pavilion, notwithstanding the incredible number of spectators (2 millions), was turned down a few months after its inauguration, at the end of the Exposition. The disappearance of the Pavilion makes the Poème électronique a destroyed masterpiece.
What we stl have today are only fragments of the various components (i.e. photos and drafts of the architecture, the projected video in videotape from the Philips archives, a stereo reduction of Varèse’s and Xenakis’ musical pieces).
Virtual Electronic Poem (VEP) is a project realized as a virtual reality (VR) environment that reproduces the experience of the dismantled masterpiece through an accurate philological reconstruction of the original installation. The website looks a bit out of date but the first of two films in this post shows the results of the work. The second shows the Poème électronique as a film rather than in its architectural context. Perhaps someone out there would be good enough to bring the building into a public setting on Second Life?
The Hybrid Insect Micro Electro Mechanical Systems project aims to create literal shutterbugs — camera-toting insects whose nerves have grown into their internal silicon chip so that wranglers can control their activities. DARPA researchers are also raising cyborg beetles with power for various instruments to be generated by their muscles. via spatialrobot
Urban Screens Melbourne 08 is the third, ground-breaking international conference and multimedia exhibition in a series of worldwide Urban Screens events. It will mark the official launch of the International Urban Screens Association and will take place 3.-8. October at Federation Square, Melbourne.
There are 2 calls for the event which can be found here
Interactive Architecture dot Org explorers emerging practices within architecture that aim to merge digital technologies & virtual spaces with tangible and physical spatial experiences. Instead of defining a fixed architectural product it is an architecture in constant flux best suited to protyping and semi-perminant installations. It is maintained by Ruairi Glynn. Bartlett School of Architecture.
Interactive Architecture
