Additivism on Disnovation Research panel @ Transmediale, Berlin (4th Feb 2016)#Additivism will be part of the Disnovation Research Panel at the upcoming Transmediale Festival. Disnovation Research is a project by Nicolas Maigret inquiring into the mechanics and rhetoric of innovation. Considering the “propaganda of innovation” as one of the ideological driving forces of our era, it aims to explore the notions of technological fetishism and solutionism through speculations and diversions by artists and thinkers. The Disnovation panel will highlight a few outstanding projects on this issue, with Daniel Rourke introducing the #Additivism speculative research project – a collaboration with artist and activist Morehshin

Allahyari – followed by Ewen Chardronnet presenting the fifth issue of the Laboratory Planet newspaper.

LONDON — It was Game 8 of the World Chess Championship, and the four-time winner and defending champion, 42-year-old Viswanathan Anand of India, playing white, was a game down to the Israeli Boris Gelfand, 43. Gelfand, perhaps buoyed by his success in Game 7, had chosen an unexpectedly sharp line against Anand, who is renowned for his ability to calculate quickly on the board.

The screen of Deep Junior, the computer that the chess champion Gary Kasparov faced in 2003. Chip East/Reuters The screen of Deep Junior, the computer that the chess champion Gary Kasparov faced in 2003. Commenting live, the Hungarian grandmaster Peter Leko, a challenger for the world title in 2005, preferred Gelfand’s position. But just as he was expressing surprise at Anand’s strategy, Anand’s 17th move brought the game to a sudden close. Anand had deceived both his challenger and one of the strongest players in the world.

But many lesser players watching the game live with specialized computer chess engines weren’t flummoxed by Anand’s play; programs like Houdini had flagged Anand’s trap a few moves earlier. Computers have so flattened the game of chess that even novices like me can make some sense of the moves being played at the highest level.

Grandmasters of comparable skill now come to championship games with computer-generated analysis of their opponents’ opening lines and likely moves. Home preparation has always been important, but computers have made it much more so and have thereby changed the nature of the game. Now risky plays are almost inevitably punished because they’ve been anticipated, making Anand’s play in Game 8 of the recent championship a rare exception.

Computers don’t play chess perfectly — the game is far too complicated for that — but they play in a way that’s more exciting and more decisive. They also play better than humans. Which is why since chess is no longer about just two humans facing each other anyway — thanks to pre-game computer-assisted preparation — it makes sense to allow the use of computers during competitive games. (Of course, for the sake of fairness, the two players would have equal access to the same computer engine.) This idea, known as “advanced chess,” has been endorsed by the former chess champion Gary Kasparov.

So far, experiments with advanced chess suggest that the powers of man and machine combined don’t just make for a stronger game than a man’s alone; they also seem to make for a stronger game than a machine’s alone. Allowing chess players the assistance of the best computer chess engine available during top tournaments would ensure that the contests really do showcase the very best chess being played on earth.

It would also teach us important things about the world.

Take, for example, a game that’s winding down with this particular configuration: rook and a bishop versus two knights. This situation came up in a world championship qualifying game in 2007, and the match concluded in a draw. But computer analysis showed that the game was really a forced win for black in 208 moves. This revealed not just a strategic truth about chess, but also a phenomenological truth, a truth about reality, that would otherwise have remained inaccessible.

Computers have made possible a famous proof in mathematics — the four-color theorem — but most mathematicians continue to hope the proof can be found without the assistance of computers. With chess, though, some truths are simply unknowable without a computer. As computers get better at chess, letting the best chess players work with them more would give us a better understanding of the game, our own limits and the world.

Human flight began with laundry. In 1777, Joseph-Michel Montgolfier was watching clothes drying over a fire when he noticed a shirt swept up in a billow of air; six years later, he and his brother demonstrated their hot-air balloon, the first manned flying machine.

On the mutual influnce of science fiction and innovation http://t.co/kcf1zwyqb3 – Darren Wershler (alienated) http://twitter.com/alienated/status/421985489676419072

It's a testament to Turing's fascination with nearly everything that 76 years since his first major paper, there's still so much to write about his work. Expect this week to offer more events and glimpses into these projects: Neuro-computational studies into the functional basis of cognition. The ever forward march for genuine artificial intelligence. New methods of simulating the complexity of biological forms nearly 60 years after Turing's paper on the chemical basis of morphogenesis (indeed this area of complexity theory is now an established area of major research). The slippery mathematical formalist discoveries which define what can or cannot be computed. And not forgetting key historical developments in cryptography, perhaps the field which Turing is most respected for. Moreover, Turing wasn't just one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th Century, but also one of the greatest creative engineers; someone who wasn't afraid of putting his ideas into automation, through the ne

Grandmasters of comparable skill now come to championship games with computer-generated analysis of their opponents’ opening lines and likely moves. Home preparation has always been important, but computers have made it much more so and have thereby changed the nature of the game. Now risky plays are almost inevitably punished because they’ve been anticipated, making Anand’s play in Game 8 of the recent championship a rare exception.

Computers don’t play chess perfectly — the game is far too complicated for that — but they play in a way that’s more exciting and more decisive. They also play better than humans. Which is why since chess is no longer about just two humans facing each other anyway — thanks to pre-game computer-assisted preparation — it makes sense to allow the use of computers during competitive games. (Of course, for the sake of fairness, the two players would have equal access to the same computer engine.)

In which I string together a series of videos, links and text that use Mario as a base for Science. First is Mario and the Many World Interpretation of Quantum Physics

…So what’s this about quantum physics? Oh, right. Well, I kind of identify the branching-paths effect in the video with the Everett-Wheeler “Many Worlds Interpretation” of quantum physics. Quantum physics does this weird thing where instead of things being in one knowable place or one knowable state, something that is quantum (like, say, an electron) exists in sort of this cloud of potentials, where there’s this mathematical object called a wavefunction that describes the probabilities of the places the electron might be at a given moment. Quantum physics is really all about the way this wavefunction behaves. There’s this thing that happens though where when a quantum thing interacts with something else, the wavefunction “collapses” to a single state vector and the (say) electron suddenly goes from being this potential

To err is human; to err in digital culture is design. In the glitches, inefficiencies, and errors that ergonomics and usability engineering strive to surmount, Peter Krapp identifies creative reservoirs of computer-mediated interaction. Throughout new media cultures, he traces a resistance to the heritage of motion studies, ergonomics, and efficiency, showing how creativity is stirred within the networks of digital culture.

The History of Art is filled with forgeries, but are there fakes in digital art fields made from creative cut-and-pastes, collaborative works and infinite works? We approached four people who, pondering the notion of fake, point to characteristics specific to digital art.

Revolutions are often thought of in terms of conflict and disorder, but they just as often come on waves of peaceful obsolescence. The old way of doing things is allowed to linger as long as it likes while everyone else gets on with the future. In the last few years the "free-to-play" model— where games are given away on mobile phones or online while the developer makes money through advertisements or the sale of in-game items—has encircled the videogame industry. At first it seemed like a curiosity, a unique idea that made sense in China and Korea, where loot-hoarding games like Ragnarok Online, The Legend of Mir, and World of Warcraft found a perfect match with internet bar culture. Meanwhile Activision and Electronic Arts competed for dominance in a luxury business energized by dreams of $180 Rock Band bundles and franchises with the "potential to be exploited every year across every platform." When rumors began circulating last month that Nexon, one of the biggest free-to-play comp

It’s an age of unprecedented, staggering technological change. Business models are being transformed, lives are being upended, vast new horizons of possibility opened up. Or something like that. These are all pretty common assertions in modern business/tech journalism and management literature.

Then there’s another view, which I heard from author Neal Stephenson in an MIT lecture hall last week. A hundred years from now, he said, we might look back on the late 20th and early 21st centuries and say, “It was an actively creative society. Then the internet happened and everything got put on hold for a generation.”

Project by Daniel Franke & Cedric Kiefer produced by: onformative.com chopchop.cc Documentation: vimeo.com/38505448 Music: Machinefabriek "Kreukeltape" machinefabriek.nu/ The basic idea of the project is built upon the consideration of creating a moving sculpture from the recorded motion data of a real person. For our work we asked a dancer to visualize a musical piece (Kreukeltape by Machinenfabriek) as closely as possible by movements of her body. She was recorded by three depth cameras (Kinect), in which the intersection of the images was later put together to a three-dimensional volume (3d point cloud), so we were able to use the collected data throughout the further process. The three-dimensional image allowed us a completely free handling of the digital camera, without limitations of the perspective. The camera also reacts to the sound and supports the physical imitation of the musical piece by the performer. She moves to a noise field, where a simple modification of the random seed can consistently create new versions of the video, each offering a different composition of the recorded performance. The multi-dimensionality of the sound sculpture is already contained in every movement of the dancer, as the camera footage allows any imaginable perspective. The body – constant and indefinite at the same time – “bursts” the space already with its mere physicality, creating a first distinction between the self and its environment. Only the body movements create a reference to the otherwise invisible space, much like the dots bounce on the ground to give it a physical dimension. Thus, the sound-dance constellation in the video does not only simulate a purely virtual space. The complex dynamics of the body movements is also strongly self-referential. With the complex quasi-static, inconsistent forms the body is “painting”, a new reality space emerges whose simulated aesthetics goes far beyond numerical codes. Similar to painting, a single point appears to be still very abstract, but the more points are connected to each other, the more complex and concrete the image seems. The more perfect and complex the “alternative worlds” we project (Vilém Flusser) and the closer together their point elements, the more tangible they become. A digital body, consisting of 22 000 points, thus seems so real that it comes to life again. text: Sandra Moskova nominated for the for the MuVi Award: kurzfilmtage.de/en/competitions/muvi-award/selection.html see video in full quallity: daniel-franke.com/unnamed_soundsculpture.mov HQ Stills flickr.com/photos/37752604@N05/sets/72157629203600952/Cast: Daniel Franke, onformative and Laura KeilTags: cedric kiefer, daniel franke, onformative, wearechopchop, chopchop, sculpture, soundsculpture, laura keil, unnamed soundsculpture, unnamed and machinefabriek

Ever wanted to connect your Legos and Tinkertoys together? Now you can — and much more. Announcing the Free Universal Construction Kit: a set of adapters for complete interoperability between 10 popular construction toys.

Makego is another great example of the boundaries blurring between digital and physical play. The app was released in February 2012 by British artist and designer Chris O'Shea, who has worked on a number of installation artworks in recent years.

The Makego app runs on an iPhone or iPod touch, and takes the form of a series of cartoon vehicles, seen from a top-down perspective – a racing car, ice cream truck and a river boat. That means engine noises and speedometers, ice creams and a till, and leaks and bread for ducks respectively.

Digital games are important not only because of their cultural ubiquity or their sales figures but for what they can offer as a space for creative practice. Games are significant for what they embody; human computer interface, notions of agency, sociality, visualisation, cybernetics, representation, embodiment, activism, narrative and play. These and a whole host of other issues are significant not only to the game designer but also present in the work of the artist that thinks and rethinks games. Re-appropriated for activism, activation, commentary and critique within games and culture, artists have responded vigorously.

From Roger Ebert’s pedantic proclamation that “video games can never be art” to the clichéd fawning over the truckloads of revenue generated by each new release in the Modern Warfare series, gaming consistently inspires overarching conversations about media and culture. At this point, these ‘big conversations’ should surprise no one, as with each passing year gaming becomes less esoteric and permeates more and more demographic groups (e.g. the popularity of social games on Facebook, senior citizens embracing the Wii as an exercise platform, etc.). So while gaming may be everywhere, it is strange that it is often difficult to locate conversations about it that speak to how we actually integrate play and simulation into our everyday experience. What can games tell us about relaxation, work and routine? What do they have to say about movement and the body? How might we subvert gaming conventions through pranks and humour? Ian Bogost’s recent book How To Do Things With Videogames thoughtfully considers questions like these while endeavouring to re-frame the medium through a series of focused, topical texts that draw on familiar and engaging points of reference.

The Internet may well have its downsides, but it also has the potential to make us collectively smarter, according to open-science advocate Michael Nielsen. In Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science, Nielsen argues that networked digital tools, such as discussion boards and online marketplaces, can make it easier for scientists to pool their data, share methodologies, and find far-flung collaborators. Even non-scientists are participating in large-scale citizen science projects. In Nielsen’s view, however, public policy has yet to catch up to technology. The digital environment will amplify our collective intelligence, but only if there are incentives for people to share. Editorial assistant Lindsey Gilbert asks Nielsen about what science looks like now, the changing role of academia, and whether collective intelligence might also transform politics.

2011 was a tremendous year for the videogame.

A pile of big-budget, years-in-the-making blockbusters delivered on all of their promises and then some. Clever independent games pushed at the edges of the form. People are still hopelessly lost in Skyrim, their former meatspace lives abandoned without a thought for the promise of infinite adventure.

Wired magazine, Wired.com and Ars Technica editors teamed up this year to hash out a list of the most exquisite gaming pleasures of 2011. Some of our personal favorites didn’t make the cut; such was the extent of the competition this year.

Games don’t do storytelling well because they can’t deliver the four key components of story. There is no hero. Time is in the control of the player, not the creator. There is no inevitability or sense of being powerless. And the story cannot have the player’s full attention. So a videogame Hamlet is just a guy running around a castle flipping switches and collecting items to kill his uncle, the big boss at the end. All those speeches just get in the way.

The player is not treading the boards at the Old Vic. He’s solving problems, taking action, creating and winning. Sometimes designers think this is just a matter of technique or technology. But it’s not, it’s a fundamental constraint borne of the psychology of play. It will always be so, and is why in 40 years there have never been any good game stories.

The high arts of literature and music stand in a curious relationship to one another, at once securely comfortable and deeply uneasy – rather like a long-term marriage. At the securely comfortable end of the emotional spectrum we have those zeniths of song, the German lieder tradition, and high opera. In the best examples of both forms words and music appear utterly and indissolubly comingled. However, at the other end of this spectrum we have those kinds of music that attempt to be literary – so-called programme music – and those forms of literature that attempt, either through descriptive representation or emulation, to aspire to the condition of music. It is not my wish to denigrate works of these type, nevertheless there does seem to me to be an inevitable compromise – deterioration even – when an art form, rather than proceeding entirely sui generis, finds its ground in another form's practice.