IdeaFestival

Worlds from algorithms

Characterizing it as the "science design movement," the current issue of SEED features a number of articles related to the convergence between disciplined observation - science - and design.

While fractal art has gained popularity, the use of the term "fractal architecture" in a Salon video featuring Paola Antonelli, the senior curator of Architecture and Design at The Museum of Modern Art, and Benoit Mandelbrot, the father of fractal geometry, attracted me.

Paola Antonelli:

What is really amazing to me right now is how contemporary architects are using the idea that is behind fractals, the idea of a rule that lets them work at different scales indifferently, at least until the moment when the real design application, the reality of the client or manufacturer wanting a building or a toaster, sets in. I am thinking, for instance, of Ben Aranda and Chris Lasch, who you may remember spoke right after you when we had the salon at MoMA. They are two architects that have founded their practice on understanding algorithms and finding ways to take scientific concepts and translate them for architecture's benefit and evolution. So, it seems to me that it is not only and simply about the formal beauty of fractals, it is the idea of growth that your theory has really given to architects and designers. And now we're seeing the algorithm become the principle, and the subject of research, for so many architects today. They're hoping that they can ultimately input an algorithm, give it a push, and then all of a sudden an object, a building, a city, and a world will grow out of it.

I'll add a couple of thoughts:

Natural objects such as ferns and blood vessels can be described in the language of fractals, which means that their unfolding can be described as an algorithmic progression. Fractals, interestingly, can produce nearly limitless two-dimensional shapes, but a finite number of things in three dimensions.

Secondly, I really appreciate Mandelbrot's description of the movement of a cognitive discipline like math toward its biological and physical roots, a point recently driven home in Pulse, a book about the "coming age" of biologically inspired design, which makes just that point about economics. There is no denying the essential natural processes that can be found in presumptively cognitive pursuits.

A transcript of the Antonelli-Mandelbrot exchange is here.

Paola, by the way, also created the MOMA exhibit, "Design and the Elastic Mind," mentioned previously.

Wayne

Wikipedia: fractals

Growing compassion

Having first read a story about how experiments with the cooperation of Bhuddist monks had shown a marked change in brain structure as a result of meditative practices - particularly those areas thought responsible for compassion and consciousness -I was gratified to see that Newsweek's Sharon Begley recently brought the story forward.

New research demonstrates that the voluntary generation of compassion thought and feeling can result in long lasting changes for the better in our brains. We can indeed grow the areas of our brain responsible for compassion.

Cool, isn't it?

Similarly, UCLA psychiatrist Jeffrey Schwartz touched on the idea last September in Louisville while arguing that practiced "reframing" can curb obsessive-compulsive behavior.

Wayne

Breaking the "mixed reality" barrier

Jaron Lanier popularized the term "virtual reality" and we're all familiar with, well, reality. But is there a mixed reality?

In a post yesterday, Jennifer Ouellette describes some experimentation reported at the American Physical Society meeting this week that points to a Matrix-like mixed reality state. Get this:

[University of Illinois professor Alfred Hubler used] a real system -- in this case, a standard mechanical pendulum -- coupled with a virtual system (a virtual pendulum) that was programmed to follow the well-known equations of motion. He and his colleagues sent data about the real pendulum to the virtual one, while sending information about the virtual pendulum to a motor that influenced the motion of the real pendulum. They found that when the two pendulums were of different lengths, they remained in a "dual reality state" in which their motion was uncorrelated, and thus not synchronized....

But then they discovered that when the pendulum lengths were similar, they reached a critical transition point and became correlated, or, in Hubler's words, 'They suddenly noticed each other, synchronized their motions, and danced together indefinitely.'

...Hubler thinks his lab-induced mixed reality states could be used to better understand real complex systems with a large number of parameters, by coupling a real system to a virtual one until their constant interactions result in a mixed reality state -- for instance, modeling neurons by coupling a real neuron with a virtual one.

Being a lapsed private pilot and fan of all-things-flying, my mind went to the transition state reported by 1940's era pilots who approached the sound barrier. There was intense buffeting, poor axis control and no certainty about what might happen next.

Sounds about right.

Alfred Hubler's web site is here.

Wayne

"Fastest global diffusion of technology in history"

What does it mean when there is one cell phone for every two people on the planet? The Washington Post reports. Hat tip: Putting People First.

Wayne

"Tipping Point" toppled?

Malcom Gladwell's idea that certain influential people can be trend makers has come under fire from Duncan Watts, a network theorist, in a recent issue of Fast Company.

In the past few years, Watts--a network-theory scientist who recently took a sabbatical from Columbia University and is now working for Yahoo--has performed a series of controversial, barn-burning experiments challenging the whole Influentials thesis. He has analyzed email patterns and found that highly connected people are not, in fact, crucial social hubs. He has written computer models of rumor spreading and found that your average slob is just as likely as a well-connected person to start a huge new trend. And last year, Watts demonstrated that even the breakout success of a hot new pop band might be nearly random.  Any attempt to engineer success through Influentials, he argues, is almost certainly doomed to failure....

Actually, if you believe Watts, the world isn't just complex--it's practically anarchic.

Influential people can, of course, help a trend along. Watt's point is that they cannot by themselves will a trend into existence.

Part of the reason is that we live together in an increasingly interconnected world. Reading the article, I realized that Watts was the author of a New York Times article that I blogged about last spring. It described a music download experiment that demonstrated that given our preferences and the knowledge of the preferences of others, predicting what music would become the most popular was a practical impossibility. Given constant feedback, huge variability takes hold in such systems.

While Gladwell also points out that the social environment must be ready to accept certain trends for them to "tip," the idea that certain tastemakers can cause that to occur is taken to task by Watts.

Watts is the author of the book, Six Degrees.

Wayne

Wikipedia: Cybernetics, Complex adaptive systems

When I'm Sixty-Four

PBS has just announced a major new television series, On the Record: the Soundtrack of Our Lives, an eight-hour series that traces the history of recorded music and its impact on popular culture. Sir George Martin, who produced the Beatles, will host.

So why do I blog this? Sir George Martin appeared at the 2004 IdeaFestival, where he discussed the making of Sgt. Pepper, perhaps the most influential album of all time.

You never know what you'll find at the IdeaFestival.

Wayne

What, really, do generalists DO?

Curiosity is a wonderful thing. It cannot be overstated how important the simple act of asking a naïve question can be.

That's one of many good quotes from a post at Creative Generalist yesterday. In it, Steve Hardy describes just what generalists do, tracing their generative ability as "wander and wonder," "synthesize and summarize," "link and leap," "mix and match," and "experience and empathize," each of which is backed by quotes and examples from working creatives elsewhere.

I don't know about you, but I'm at my most expansive when I balance a strong tendency to conceptualize things with frequent trips outside my head. There's no substitute for experience. And the older I get I realize how important empathy, the ability to genuinely warm toward the object of my thoughts, is to the (good) life of the mind. I'm working on my generalist cred, Steve.

Wayne

Ars et Veritas

Who's afraid of a little visual thinking? Citing a new emphasis on creativity at Stanford and Yale, Harvard has established a working group to find ways to better integrate the arts with the university mission. The basic idea is that while creative pursuits are a major part of the lives of students, the university has thus far failed to emphasize the role of visual and creative thinking university wide.

Wayne

Creativity needs constraints

As jazz great Charles Mingus famously said, 'You can't improvise on nothing, man; you've gotta improvise on something.'

In "Get Back in the Box" Fast Company points out that creativity needs constraints.

Wayne

Playing with molecules

Well I guess this fits today's science and art theme. Roland Piquepaille links to this nanoart and molecular sculpture site, which is holding a contest for the public to select its favorite images. "Nanoart" is

created by artists or scientists through chemical or physical processes and visualized with powerful research tools like scanning electron or atomic force microscopes. The scientific images of these structures are captured and further processed using different.... techniques to convert them into artworks.

Piquepaille displays a number of images that might interest you. His post put me in mind of this fractal art contest and another on what Alexander Fleming found collecting colored bacteria. Linking all three in my view is the notion that play often precedes discovery.

Wayne

Wikipedia: play