[Synapse elist] Cognition and AI

[Vicki Sowry]

Hello list

Firstly, my apologies for the short delay in kicking this month's  
discussion off. I have been quarantined at home with the flu and my  
ability to work remotely has been limited by the phone and internet  
services at ANAT's new office (we relocated last Friday) not working!

So, with no further delay, I'd like to introduce the June discussion,  
focusing on the fields of cognition and artificial intelligence (AI).  
Artists have a long history of engaging with the mind as subject  
matter, so it is no surprise that contemporary artists are  
particularly interested in current developments in the fields of  
cognition and AI.  As well as pointing to examples of such work, the  
discussion will also look to the broader impacts of these rapidly  
advancing fields of research - not the least being changes to what it  
means to be human, to be sentient, to be individuals.

Now, to introduce this month's guests:

DANIEL BISIG was born in 1968 in Zürich, Switzerland. He holds a  
Master's degree in Natural Sciences and a PhD in Protein  
Crystallography, both from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.  
He has taught web-design and worked as designer and programmer and,  
in 2001, joined the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the  
University of Zurich as a senior researcher. He has also held  
research positions at the University of Applied Sciences, Aargau, the  
University of Art and Design, Zurich and, since 2006, at the  
Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technology, Zurich. Through  
all of this, he has been an active artist in the fields of computer  
animation, experimental video and software art. In recent years he  
has collaborated with Tatsumo Unemi (see below) on a variety of  
projects, with one winning a Vida 9.0 award. http://www.bitingbit.org/

GORDANA DODIG-CRNKOVIC holds PhD degrees in Physics and Computer  
Science and is a Senior Lecturer in Computer Science at Mälardalen  
University in Västerås, Sweden. Her current research interests are in  
computing and philosophy, with a particular interest in the process  
of knowledge generation and the production of meaning. She has  
presented papers on these subjects at numerous international  
conferences, including the 2nd European Congress of Philosophy of  
Science (2006) and the International Conference on Knowledge  
Generation (2007). Gordana has also published widely, most recently  
co-editing 'Computation, Information, Cognition: The Nexus and the  
Liminal' in 2007. http://idt.mdh.se/personal/gdc/

PHILIPPE PASQUIER is an Assistant Professor in the School of  
Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University in  
Vancouver, Quebec. He holds a PhD in the field of artificial  
intelligence from Laval University, Quebec. He was a Postdoctoral  
Fellow at the University of Melbourne, focusing on multi-agent  
systems prior to taking up his current post. He conducts both a  
scientific and an artistic research agenda and is interested in  
studying and exploiting the relationships and synergies between art,  
science and technology. His most recent works engage with  
metacreation - the development of machines endowed with creative  
behaviour. http://www.sfu.ca/pasquier/

REVA STONE is a Canadian artist who creates computer-assisted  
installations engaging with a variety of digital technologies. She is  
interested in the drive to model, simulate, engineer and manipulate  
biological life, which has led her to situate her work at the  
increasingly blurred boundary between what is born and what is  
manufactured, what is animate and what is inanimate. She has worked  
across video, interactive installations, robotics and responsive 3D  
environments and is currently combining voice and face recognition  
software, video capture and graphics to create a work that appears to  
have sentience. http://www.revastone.ca/

TATSUO UNEMI was born in Kanazawa, Japan in 1956. He has researched  
AI and A-Life since 1980 and holds a PhD from the Tokyo Institute of  
Technology, where he later worked as a research assistant. He has  
also held teaching and research positions at Nagaoka University of  
Technology, the Laboratory for International Fuzzy Engineering  
Research,Yokohama, and Soka University, Tokyo, where he is currently  
based. In 2000, he was a Visiting Professor at the AI Lab, University  
of Zurich. He has recently collaborated with Daniel Bisig on a range  
of projects, with one winning a Vida 9.0 award. http:// 
www.intlab.soka.ac.jp/~unemi/


Please make them welcome!


Vicki