A short Story created by Random Word Generators and AI

In a fearless Setting, garrulous Basics smiled. Not a little bit, but very happily. "Well, you have, on one of your teeth, been taped a part of a CD label for one of those putrid dreck known as Cool Vibrations Records. Right?" "This is it!" A blossom of excitement in his voice. "Not these nasty slip - the - card - in - and - snicker - snicker ones, this is the real deal. Cool Vibrations. The world is full of crap, but they put out the good stuff." Well, she didn't even bother to reply to that. She was too busy staring at the small squares of paper stuck to her tooth. "Do I really look like that kind of person, all green and forlorn?" And indeed, her features had lost their earlier cheer, and were worn, drawn and bored. "Just follow me," he said, standing up and heading for the door. "Be at the meeting place in five minutes." Somehow, he was already there when she got there. She was struck, as she ran into him, by the fact that she was wearing sneakers and he was not. A few minutes later, he reappeared with two other people, one of whom she recognized as someone she had come across before, in a sort of "scrapper" situation, and whose name was Ripley. In the other she was only vaguely aware of: Dr. Blits.

[the chemical Dr Blitz appraised the separate Ripley, who was endangering an Orangutan. "There's a tiger," Blitz muttered as he took one, and I met Trask, who appeared at the far end of the room, looking pained. He held a cage of huge, slavering beasts. "Ripley, don't-" "I have to help this poor girl." Dr. Blitz's mouth twisted wryly as he turned to Blitz and his new captives. "We must quarantine her." "What about you?" the old man asked. "You're safe in there." "I... I'd like to see what you have to do." I glanced at Trask. He nodded slightly. "What do you need?" he asked. "And don't try to get out before you do what you're going to do." "Don't you want to see it?" I asked the doctor. "I'm sure she'd be... willing." "No, please. If I do see it, I'll be here till the end of time. Don't spoil my rest, please. I'd rather go out of my mind in a sane way than go mad screaming." Dr. Blitz took off his coat and secured it around Ripley's throat.] As she started talking to them, they drifted off to one side, and she began to hear distant noises. Almost directly behind her, under the basket where her head was resting, she could feel a vibration begin to grow, and she realized that it was going to get worse, much worse. As the sound got louder, she knew that, somewhere, a mechanical alarm was going off. And soon... "There!" he shouted, pointing to the figures ahead of them, ahead of them at a fast walk. At a casual glance, it might have been a married couple, walking down the sidewalk. But she knew better. In the window above their heads were two number plates, each bearing a single letter. The [letters were S & C] "Congratulations," the elderly, white - haired man said, his blue eyes sparkling. "You have succeeded in the Great Quest. Now, you must make the final and most vital decision before you can enjoy the rest of your blessed life." I must be dreaming, she thought. I must be really tired, because it sure doesn't seem that way at all. She didn't care about anything. She didn't even seem to have to choose a name. With those words, the young woman vanished. But she did stay in that room long enough to laugh so hard that her head shook like a rag doll, which was saying a lot, she knew. She He nodded, and then he got back to work. He made one last name - less choice: he called his ship X8 - 225 and told it to "Go and look for her." Almost as an afterthought, he pressed the button to "Ready the probes." Al's [Done for Now!]

//The opening Sentence and the middle interlude were created by combining words from these 3 sites:

https://www.randomlists.com/random-adjectives?dup=false&qty=2

http://thewisepath.org/verb/

http://www.desiquintans.com/articles/noungenerator.php

https://app.inferkit.com/generate created the story text//

Inspiration & Synchronicity

OK so I haven't written here in OMG 3 years.  I feel like I've meandered off the path I was off chasing rabbits, undergoing some major changes of camouflage & seeking others like myself*...

Re-immersing myself in my hunt for technological solutions to our growing social unease; the cause of my re-immersion?  [Strange how this is still apt even though It's from, yup, 3 years ago!]

I guess COVID-19 is the cause of my latest attempts to kick myself up the butt.  Like many, I have been feeling afraid for my life, and that of those around me (I hastily add to appear less narcissistic).  Like many I have been thinking deeply about what my place is in the world, and like many, I have been in isolation, digging out old hobbies and developing new skills.

So, what drives me?  What am I looking to achieve? What or who inspires me?

Well, I guess I've always felt like an outsider, for one.  That has made me long for a sense of community.  And that is something that the internet, gaming and IT have been held up as exemplars of.

Yet for me the those worlds are still lonely places - perhaps it's me, my self-imposed alienation, perhaps my ADHD mentality, yet I find the existing online community communications methods patchy and fleeting, without warmth and empathy. I am frightened of really expressing myself, because I don't always think in a PC way, and I want to challenge the status quo, but perhaps I'm not stable enough or positively assertive enough to withstand the backlash.

And don't get me started on OL gaming.  OK, I don't actually do any, but this is mostly because I am soo put off by the paradigm that  don't even feel it's worth investigating.  The thing that really upsets me is either  VIOLENCE or VACUOUSNESS - most games which involve group play seem to fall into these two camps - Fortnite or Animal Crossings! Is there nothing deeper out there?

As for IT in general, I feel sad for my father^'s hopes of an online utopia; it feels like technology, our constant reliance on handsets and kindles and laptops and smart fridges, is separating us more and more from the real world, from nature, and from each other.

So that's the moaning part over; what drives me is looking for a solution to these problems - trust, empathy, psychological stability, self-reflectivity, non-violent communication, alienation, separation.  Can we turn the existing paradigm on it's head and create a vision for a more humane, intuitive and hopeful future?

I've just been talking about all this with a housemate: the lack of vision and narrative behind modern politics and political movements, neolithic/bronze age age monument building as team building exercise, how removing a statue doesn't create a sense of achievement, 1960s: the age of optimism including Yippie movement, what are  our technocrats doing with their  money?  I also talked about thee Netflix doocumentary "john was trying to contact aliens", and  the strange absence of signals from other planets, and how the less is out there, the more we  should care for what's here. hopefully I'll expand on these theses later.

I must remind myself also to write about trying to affect subconscious bias with computer games (and the inefficiency of the Implicit Association Test) , and Annalee Newitz' article about fluffiness and Netizenship in this week's 29th August 2020 New Scientist.

*My Chinese birth-year is Tiger, so perhaps you'll get what I mean by that analogy more now ;)

Bientôt l'été

Here's a strange poetic meditation inspired by a opaque french adventure game

Not sure if this is tongue in cheek or not, but it's weirdly beautiful and make we want to play the game too!

Audigraft at OVADA

I'm standing in OVADA's empty warehouse space, buffeted between two sonic installations. Upstairs, snippets of speech, laughter, jingles and electronic twitterings are emitted from an array of tiny, tinny speakers. I'm reminded of 90s samplists like Meat Beat Manifesto (who's use of commercials and public service announcements has been influential) and Scanner (who appropriated private conversation using a CB radio). The artist here, Ben Gwilliam, studies at Oxford Brooke's. It's apocalyptic, deranged and unnerving; the sound of civilisation breaking down. 

The other, constant, rumbling, thunderous noise  comes from an imposing circular tower of cardboard boxes. Walking inside through an opening, the sound is less organic, more fractal; the appearance of thousands of ping pong balls on wires attached to motors create a link to the rumble machines of futurist Luigi Russolo.  Another visitor compared it to a giant hive, invisible workers beavering meaninglessly away, producing nothing but sound.  It's empty, hollow, sinister. Its creator, Zimoun, is from Bern, Switzerland, and is interested in that tension between the natural and mechanical in modern life.

The most inventive and complex of the sound installations is a Lego Technics construction which constantly churns out acid techno. 

The device, built by Alex Allmont, resembles the set of a Sci fi film, rows of gears and moving parts made out of colourful Lego blocks. The hundreds of cogs and mess of wires and chips are plugged into an M303 which was used for tracks like Josh Winks Higher State of Consciousness and Chime by Orbital. Here it creates languidly evolving soundscapes thanks to the mechanisms slowly, almost imperceptibly, twisting its banks of knobs.  It's a clever, whimsical piece, and the sounds it makes are as hypnotic as the colourful, intricate machinery that produces them.

Also in this collection of sound generating devices is a recording of Christina Kubisch's magnetic sound recordings, made with specially doctored magnetic headphones which pick up the constant fluctuation of electromagnetic waves in our environment. Hear you can hear recordings from a bank, "public transport" and a sinister of a security system. Her work can be further explored over the next week by visiting Oxford Brookes  university.

These pieces are part of audiograft, an annual celebration of sonic sculpture and experimental music.

The brothers

I keep meaning to plug "2 brothers", a really sweet and innovative indie game from Denmark (I think!)

It's mythological,y influenced story features two young boys who've lost a mum and fear losing their dad to sickness. They go looking for a cure and along the way have to outwit trolls, ride goats and solve puzzles. The great twist is that the brothers must cooperate in this platform environment, and each brother must be controlled by a user, making it a truly collaborative game.

Whilst mostly free of overt violence it did have some grizzly scenes, however these reflected its Norse storytelling origins. It also had sympathetic female characters who actually had personality and intelligence! Just a shame they didn't allow for two sisters too.

Highly recommended with beautiful scenery, jaw dropping set pieces and some genuinely tense, sad and scary moments.

The city song

Just 'played' the city song on ipad. Designed by endless loops and cfc media labs it's an interactive music video using tweets and a simple game to unlock pictures of an ordinary family. Made me think of my own love, Martine, who's moved back to Oslo. It was a nice break from nutty animal blaring noise and anime graphics. Sent a tweet, so who knows, maybe it'll end up in the game...

are messages in gaming harmful?

"The inherent interactivity of videogames, I believe, makes moral messages more effective, because it’s unto the player in the end to initiate it. Reading a book or interpreting a movie doesn’t quite compare to enacting something yourself, even if it is in a virtual manner."

Read more: http://dispatches.cheatcc.com/597#ixzz2nOYjgX9v 
Under Creative Commons License: Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives"

the rise of Compassionate Gaming?

This new Scientist article caught my eye; it examines a few recent games (namely the Arma2 Mod DayZ) which reintroduce compassion or at least morali decision making into FPS games:

"In one video, for example, two players try to decide whether or not to shoot a third approaching in the distance. "Please turn around, please turn around," one of them says. But the third player keeps approaching, they shoot, and then they talk through their guilt. "I didn't want to shoot them." "Me either! But you know what happens when we don't shoot first."

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24325-buttonmasher-the-rise-of-consequences-in-video-games.html#.Um2RWnB7J8E

Other games such as Fable from Lionhead studios and Star Wars: The Old Republic allow gamers to make choices which will develop the character in 'good' or 'evil' directions, but this is one of only a handful of Multiplayer games which force users to question the morality of killing.

Alter Ego: 7 Ages of Woman/Man

This 1986 branching expert system was marketed as a game, and is a precursor to The Sims and other non-violent sociological games.  I investigated it after reading about it in my history of computer games (citation needed) and saw especially that it purported to contain material from "Dr" Tim Leary.

it's a multichoice questionnaire which takes you through infancy,m childhood, adolescence etc, asking you how you would behave in certain situations - future situations are dictated by previous choices, thus allowing for statistics to be drawn up which in turn decide whether certain attempts (to chat up boys for an e.g.) are successful or not.

Despite being only text and radio buttons, the situations and responses are entertaining, penetrating and amusing, a sort of grown up Leisure Suit Larry.

you can play an online version here: http://www.playalterego.com/alterego

there's an interview with one of the contributors here: http://www.gnomeslair.com/2007/03/few-gnomish-questions-dr-peter-favaro.html

ANT COLONY SIMULATOR

Watching Planet Ant on the BBC. Have already emailed Andy Hart - will contact Bristol Uni's Ant Lab. Renergised an old idea of mine, inspired by living with Ants, both in India as an 11 year old

(when we were at Dharwad University accommodation visiting family friends working there. I was chased around the 70s open plan living room, and seriously frightened, by a pair of angry hornets , one of whom I later found on the floor next to my bed when I awoke the next day. A trail of ants were slowly dissecting it, and had laid its body parts out like a dismantled toy aeroplane, and I was fascinated by the way they had done this, how they organised themselves, and how I felt that they were my protectors, having clearly fought and killed my tormentor of the previous day)

...and when I've lived in Turkey, Thailand and Vietnam more recently, and realised how destructive they can be, both to crops, and to bags of sugar unwisely left on kitchen surfaces! Oh the flying termites in rainy season!


Main game idea:

On individual machines (including smart phones and tablet devices) mimic the behaviour of ants in a colony, each device modelling the behaviour of one ant. One can take control of one's ant, or transmit identity through pheromone exchange with another user.

Game play would involve negotiating the landscape to find food sources, new colony sites when old areas exhausted or too small, dealing with Acts of God ( or Mod! ) such as flooding, cave ins, attacks by Praying Mantides and eventually inter colony raids.

Aim is to grow the colony to allow more users to join. Different ant types could be modelled, allowing users to take on different tasks. Rock, fire, leaf cutter, etc

It would be a much simplified visual environment, pheromone trails represented as slowly fading coloured lines - green for leaves, red for alert, blue for queen etc. possibly black or white screen, vector edges.

Inspiration

THEM! Communist terror! 1950s giant ant movie and 80s Amiga game...

The ant colony is a computer, used in terry Pratchet's disk World Series, which, along with Tron, inspired my aesthetic ideas.

Empire of the ants, novel by Belgian, read as a late teen.

Travelling Salesperson Problem - ACO ant colony optimisation used to find shortish routes

CoMeCo - Computer Mediated Communication

Subheaded "Social Interaction & the Internet" this is a course book for students of online sociology written by Crispin Thurlow, Laura Lengel and Alice Tomic*.


This book has loads of interesting insights into how people interact with each other via machines.

Companion website resources can be found here: http://faculty.washington.edu/thurlow/cmc/

And specifically a great list of resources online here http://faculty.washington.edu/thurlow/cmc/resources_intro.html

Boy I wish the iPad blogger ap made automatic links!

*she must have the email atomic@aiu.ac.uk or she's missed a serious trick!

How to get a job in the Game industry

Chet Faliszek from Valve Software on how to give yourself a job in the games industry, at the Eurogamer Expo 2012 Developer Sessions.

 Key points: just start - just go with what you have - limit the scope, make a realistic goal - start small

He mentions a game called 30 Flights of Loving: http://blendogames.com/thirtyflightsofloving/ which I'd love 2 play if I could figure out how to pay ;)

Automatogenesis

I was looking up how to fix the Hexbug  that my buddy Hugo gave me (it's going round in circles)  when I wandered into the world of early robots (I was looking up the Greek for "someone who designs robots" - Automatodemiurge is the best I can do).  Below are some of the Tales of Talos, a cross between Pinocchio and the Terminator!

The World’s First Robot: Talos

in ADRIENNE MAYOR, HISTORY AND SCIENCE

by Adrienne Mayor, Wonders & Marvels contributor

Uncanny mechanical humanoids, automatons, robots, and replicants, so popular in modern fiction and film, are usually thought to be inventions of the 17th century (Louis IV commissioned several mechanized figures). But the creation of artificial humans is a very ancient dream—or nightmare. Daedalus, the most ingenious inventor of Greek myth, was credited with making many marvelous mechanical wonders. His well-known experiment with man-made wings ended tragically with the death of his son Icarus., but Daedalus also created the first “living statues.” These realistic bronze sculptures   appeared to be endowed with life as they moved their limbs, rolled their eyes, perspired, wept, and vocalized. Such animatronic statues were not just figments of the mythic imagination—they were actually constructed in classical antiquity.

Robots made to obey commands were also engineered by Hephaestus, the Greek god of invention and technology. Talos, the gigantic animated bronze warrior programmed to guard the island of Crete, was one of Hephaestus’s creations. Like Hollywood’s imaginary Robo-Cop or the Terminator, Talos was the ancient forerunner of autonomous cyborgs capable of deploying lethal force. 

Sounds totally like the ancients had robots! The concept of an artificial man or woman seems anachronistic to  the age, although the Antikythera Mechanism clearly indicates that the Greeks had much higher technical skills than previously thought.

more here... http://www.wondersandmarvels.com/2012/03/the-worlds-first-robot-talos.html

This page contains a good timeline of Robots in History

there's also this Ancient Greek Programmable Robot with instructions!  It's very similar to the hexbug, it can go forwards backwards and turn, depending on the winding of string round it's axles, and it uses gravity as an automotive power source. Here's a video from New Scientist about the same device:

The Internet Before the Web: Preserving Early Networked Cultures

http://www.newmuseum.org/calendar/view/the-internet-before-the-web-preserving-early-networked-cultures

This Event at the New Museum in Nyork marks the first in a series of talks about the art / technology frontier entitled Rhizome: New Silent. It's not obvious if its got an online component, but it would seem doh not to. Btw, rhizome.org is a venerable resource for online artists.

I remember the Internet before graphics, the bbs and unix networks. 1993, The Word, university.

Event ;
my father took me to the Lab, logged me on to play "Adventure", read messages from scientists, told me how the first message on the proto-net was "who left the spanner in the Parking lot?" not realising that everyone in the global scientific community was picking it up.

He wants to tell his story, despite or because of his Parkinson's; of how he & his team helped liberate the Internet from oppressive corporate clutches, in the 80s when no-one except a handful of people realised its potential.

I'm going to do my best to include some of those stories on here, or in a conjoined blog, under the title "Tales from the Telecommunications Frontier" ( or something like that! )

The Neon Bible - The Art of the Digital Age

This post is to record some thoughts about an incredible treasure trove of ideas inspirations I found by accident while visiting Kingston uni library.

It's called The Art of the Digital Age by Bruce Wands and every page is paved with gold

I am reminded of my first experience of a computer art installation at Manchester's Green Room Gallery. It was a captivating room edged by sensors which triggered different sounds as one crossed it; skipping, zigzagging & loping all produced different cacophonous noises.

I am fascinated by the possibilities that robotics, mechanism and natural participants raise.

There's so much in this book, but here's the Things / people to look at in further detail...

Korot & Reich - 3 tales

Rokeby

Lleo Midiverso

Klima Glasbead & Earth virtual data representation

Rain Anne ashford Dustharps

Arcangel Urbandale & I shot Andy Warhol game

Cuba, Dove, Sims

Muntadas This is not an advertisement & the file room, also on translation

Vesna Nano manipulating virtual molecules with ones shadow, cf also bodies incorporated

Mohr fractured cubes

Kak genesis translated bible passage into morse then DNA then grew bacteria containing the sequence.

Ruin

Weinbren's Frames allows viewers to turn actors into madmen

Noah Wardrip Fruin eat al Screen bombards user with sound word, can deflect with hand

Lesson Synthia reacts to stock market by dancing or sleeping

#1 Josh On They Rule www.theyrule.net allows users to connect business, politics

American views smithsonian lederman interfict

#0 Alexander Galloway Software Group Carnivore Pe

Simon Every Icon, Complexity

Levin Floccus & Yellowtail, Levin et al Scribble

.Legrady pockets full of memories, Walczak / Wattenberg's Apartment

#5 Ruiz's Bang Bang (you're not dead) resurrect the dead by shooting them! Cf also Stunt Dummies

Paley Textarc.org uses Alice to analyse word frequency

#2 Jodi untitled me, Carl efspace, my%desktop malfunctions subvert abstract

Goldberg Telegarden allows people to grow remote garden, plant seeds

Rate Artechno Group Serpentarium explores experience of being a snake with robotics

#3 Andy Deck Glyphiti, user generated art wall, online: andyland.net arts next on artcontext.net

Patrick lichty sprawl looking at urban landscape and our reaction to it.

Wortzel Eliza Redux Internet psychiatrist

Wisniewski Netomat software for automated Internet art

#4 Alexander Galloway, mark tribe, Wattenberg Starrynight represents reading habits on rhizome.org as constellations. Cf theyrule, textarc

More links etc from book's page ... Thamesandhudson.com/en/1/0500238170.mxs

Hmm the word Artbot appeared in the title; now I want to know more about what it is....

No time!

The Shape of Posts to Come

A sneak peak at the posts I'll be putting up first - a backlog of ideas, & the reason I've created this blog.

1) Blast Theory - searching for the other Matt Adams!

2) The Night Journey courtesy of Rachel Gater

3) non violent danes!

4) innovative games list

5) 360 spherical view on the ipad

6) A rogue clone with ascii charcters

7) karma game

8) alex’s ted link

9) skyrim & stealing article

10) augmented reality, pattern recognition

11) a whole new mind

12 ) Art of the digital Age

13) CoMeCo - what is it?

The Wall of Wishes

Wallwisher is a nifty "corkboard" site which allows any1 2 add thoughts, links, pics etc

http://wallwisher.com/wall/the-techno-hippy

come along & pin something up :)

The Techno Hippy Manifesto

Why Techno Hippy?

5 reasons:

. to explore ways to bring people together using modern networks & technologies

: to examine our relationship with the natural world, our cities, our neighbourhoods

⋮ to understand our inner selves, navigate the realms of conscious & unconscious thought patterns, delve into the wellspring of the I

:: Be playful, creative, artistic - be as children, filled with wonder at the world 

¦⋮ Oppose injustice & inequality; demonstrate a better way of being in the world through togetherness & sharing


The aim is to reinvigorate the aims of the original Hippy movement in the 60s & 70s

I am Electro!