Sunday, August 11, 2013
Thursday, August 8, 2013
Final Project Ideas
I want to create a piece that shows how reality and technology are merging. I don't have any official ideas but I might re-create the background of the photo in Blender.
I could also use my Nexus 7 as a window into a digital recreation of the background, showing part of my leg and the table leg on the screen. I could possibly use the screenshot as a holographic display, but considering that there isn't really much interesting going on behind the Nexus, I'm not sure if I want to go with this idea.
My favorite idea is to replace my hand with a very geometrical 3D model of a hand. This could be interesting, because then the Nexus, a piece of technology, would be more real than the human hand. The only issue is that I can potentially see this message working better if I also model my leg in Blender, but I don't think I'd be able to sculpt my shoe...
Tuesday, August 6, 2013
Thursday, August 1, 2013
The New Aesthetic: Robot Friends?
Looks like alien wildlife
This post on The New Aesthetic Blog shows Darpa's robotic pack mules being showcased in a calendar. It shows the attachment these people have with their work, and how they've been "elevated to pets or robots". I find this interesting because I've always enjoyed the topic of humanizing robots. Since I'm into sci-fi, I enjoy the subject of consciousness in robots, and what is it that makes something "alive" or "human", and can it be something that can exist in a machine?
These kinds of questions are becoming less and less fantasy, and more of a reality as robotics continues to develop. What I find remarkable is that people seem to very easily attach personalities to inanimate objects, or cartoon characters, just anything that isn't human that we still identify as human in their own right. There's even this experiment that shows the interesting dynamic between technology and humans, which shows random pedestrians actually help a little, lost robot find its way home. It's just a a few boxes on wheels, but put a simple smiley face on it, and people begin to get emotionally attached. Darpa's pack mule robots don't even have faces and yet people still seem to like them. It makes me think about the issue of civil rights and robots... If people can act this way toward robots that aren't even meant to be conscious, maybe in the far future when we cross that bridge it won't even be an issue.
Overall, this is a fun topic in my opinion, and examples like this New Aesthetic post show a compassionate side of humanity that a cynic like me hardly believes exists. But it's these sort of things that restores some of my faith in humanity. Some of it.
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