As a science, creating robotics that are self aware is a field that is on the verge of creating artificial intelligence. Hod Lipson has a great TED talk in which he introduces two robotic experiments that touch on self awareness and evolution. One is a four legged machine that becomes self aware and teaches itself to walk. It is a fascinating and somewhat scary thought that we can create machines that have an understanding of a goal and not only have the means to reach the goal, but have the means to teach themselves to reach the goal.
This animated short by street artist Blu, was drawn on public walls in Buenos Aires. Needless to say, this animation technique has a lot of constraints, and the result is organic and jawdropping. The theme reminds me of the fractal bubbling infinity of life. Go full-screen on this one, and turn on your sound.
Building on the work of kinetic installation artists such as Fischli & Weiss and makers of Japanese educational TV show Pitagora Suitchi, ClustaRack advertise their print media stacking product with a witty and slightly unbelievable video of a printshop Ruby Goldberg machine.
Signal and Noise, the interdisciplinary arts festival presented by VIVO, is underway in Vancouver, BC. This year’s theme is “Media Intercourse”, featuring artists from Sweden, Austria, Holland, the UK, France and North America. There are live shows tonight and tomorrow (Friday April 18th and Saturday April 19th). The programming consists of a closed-door event, “Diffusion” from 9pm sharp until about 10pm., Live music from 10.30pm, and ongoing installations. Doors open at 8pm. and tix are $15 for a whole night.
![muto animation by blu [blublu.org]](http://intwo.ca/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/muto-tape.jpg)
