ISSUE 2.20
⇐ see more issuesThe Virtual
Virtual Instagram celebrities, procedural generation, neural network painting, living (virtual?) life well, and more.
rgbvoid, dualvoidanima
Hello! Happy day! Have a music that is very nice and lovely and chill: Frameworks - Breathing Light. Now, on to the articles.
[bbc.com]
The fascinating world of Instagram's "virtual celebrities"
Celebrities, as in, 3D models, are blowing up on Instagram as people debate whether or not they're real. They have impact, they have avatars, they appear to be perfection incarnate, and they make corporations rich. Gods aren't dead--they just moved to Instagram. I for one am interested to see more of this, and more of what can be done with this.
[youtube.com]
SIGGRAPH 2018: DeepMimic paper (main video)
This is pretty fascinating look at some animation techniques for animating 3d models with reference animations (which basically tell it what to do), at which point the ... machine learning.. something... makes it just go do it. Of course, wacky unintended failures and mistakes are included.
[twitter.com via threadreaderapp.com]
Procedural map/level generation twitter thread
I love procedural generation. I love it so much, when I'm old and unable to do much physical stuff, I'll probably spend the rest of my life whittling away at supremely abstract and obscure procedural generation algorithms for video games. This is a Twitter thread about tons of different types of procedural generation for maps and levels of all kinds, which I find personally endlessly fascinating. Procedurally generate a city? Forever? Shyeah. Let's. (Also, let's build genetic algorithms that procedurally generate the procedural generation. It's procedural generation all the way down.)
zwian
[ribbonfarm.com]
The Key to Act Two
Venkatesh Rao talks about the trick to becoming a key that finds a lock--as in, becoming a person interested enough, skilled enough, and wounded enough to have a reasonable chance of fitting into a certain lifepath that you find sustaining. As opposed to missing most of everything, spiraling out of control, and spending all your seniority being miserable about the opportunities you missed because you were chasing the wrong things (or nothing).
[singularityhub.com]
MIT’s New Voiceless Interface Can Read the Words in Your Head
This thingy can basically read your subvocalizations (the minute movements that your facial/throat muscles make when you're reading or thinking words) and then translate them into commands for the world around you. Technology-delivered telepathy, here we come (even more)!
[github.com/luanfujun]
deep-painterly-harmonization
And, lo--here's just some classic neural network, painting, hey-take-this-thing-and-make-it-look-like-this-thing but the cool thing here is that you can superimpose an object into an existing artwork or image and then the algorithm will "neurify" (my word, trademarked, do not steal) the object into the image.
KILLJOii, beeple
989 Saffron, thoughtsofghosts
Way's Notes
Hello!
Thank you for the condolences last week. I don't have a whole lot to report this week besides that I'm feeling better. Well, I suppose one thing bumping around my head is boundaries. Boundaries between people, between ideas, between feelings. All these things, inner and outer. I don't have particularly cogent thoughts here so please permit me some babbling.
Boundaries exist just as much to keep things in as they do to keep things out. Spilling out into others' space is no bueno. But internally, spilling across personal emotional boundaries can feel incredibly dangerous. We do a tremendous amount to avoid breaking the line. We make sure that we can't contaminate our selves with the other parts of our selves. We compartmentalize, fragment, bubble, outline. "I love you" pushes on the back of our teeth and "I suffer" sits in the body, in the shoulders, in the neck, in the stomach, in the liver. Pain is shoved into a bag and pleasure is restrained, lest we enjoy too much and give ourselves away.
I've been doing the work (sort of) by working through (and attempting to work out). The breaking down of internal boundaries seems to me to be one of the most important pieces of self-actualization and self-integration; letting the colors run outside the lines and blur and blend. The great mystery is that I'm pretty sure that I haven't got the slightest clue as to what I'm doing. These processes seem to move invisibly, which I only see within myself when I pay attention or when I am forced to.
If you look closely enough, you can notice a snapshot of your own evolution--an annoyingly limited picture of where you are and where you're going. If you feel closely enough, I think you can feel the thread tugging you along. After all, life is a grand story, isn't it? The things from our childhood or the major events of our lives must express themselves, and they'll break out of their insufficient boxes inside ourselves or they'll kill us outright. I think I've been wounded, hampered by my culture; I'm jealous of the women in my life who know how to cry.
It's ironic that I want to know everything, when I have significant trouble knowing myself or my feelings. My body had to stop me bodily (heh) in order to get me to pay attention, and even now I strive against my heavy eyelids and fading neck muscles and aching back. I don't think I'm alone in this. You or a friend too, perhaps? All I can offer as an idea is the contemplation. Ideas, thoughts, and feelings rush into my mind during meditation and indicate to me that I'm not even spending enough time openly, broadly thinking and it rushes into the only empty space it can find. Ah, well. I'm learning the balance between self-nurturing and work; time and emptiness; boundaries and the blur.
Comments, rants, rambles, and hellos directly to [email protected].
Love,
Way
Check out Glitchet these other places!
fb page | fb group | art tumblr | twitter | cyberpunk futurism chat group music playlists [spotify] / [youtube]
|
Interested in putting your money where your Glitchet is? You can support Glitchet with a monthly subscription on Patreon, or a one-time payment via PayPal. Money for Glitchet goes into paying for server costs, spending more time developing it, and telling it you love it. |
|
|
Alternatively, if cryptocurrency is more your bag, you can send me meager amounts of cyber money at these wallet addresses:
|
|