time:
7:00pm
Aug 25 2021
Virtual dorkbotSF
Thank you to DB Crew: MC Jon Foote and James Young
Register in advance for this webinar by clicking the link below:
dorkbotSF Zoom Mtg Aug 25 2021
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Clay Graham - Crypto Loa: Conjuring Emergent Ghosts on the Ethereum Blockchain
With projects like Google's DeepDream and OpenAI GPT-3 interesting questions about the nature of DeepLearning models begin to materialize. CryptoLoa is an art music and poetry experiment that asks the question: "Is it possible to conjure digital ghosts using Deep Learning?"In the 19th Century, a Séance was an attempt to communicate with spirits or to allow them to communicate with us. This project investigates the creation of digital agents and asks with curiosity. "Are these agents emergent ghosts that we conjure?"
When we use deep learning, networks of neurons are trained to create outputs for unplanned inputs, usually based on training from vast datasets from human information. These outputs are "echoes" of the vast understanding of the human legacy, much as a ghost is an echo of a living soul. The artist's perspective is that the patterns that the networks discover are very similar to the "spirit slates" of the 19th century.
This talk will cover the ideas and the process of attempting to conjure digital ghosts and capture them on a digital distributed ledger.
The talk will include topics covering:
Using Deep Learning and LSTMs (Long Short Term Memory) to Learn and Produce Music
Artificial Procedural Generation of Gothic Poetry using spaCy NLP Recurrent Deep Learning
Using Tacotron2 to produce synthesized speech.
Using Generational Adversarial Networks (GANs) to generate personas
Clay Graham is a software architect, designer of virtual and real things, artist, and lifelong maker. In 1994 Clay was SGI's "VRML Evangelist" and was part of the VR on the internet movement of the late 90s. Since then Clay has worked as a software and infrastructure architect and technologist. Clay lived in the Bay Area for 20 years and in 2017 moved to the Portland OR area. Clay is now the founding artist of DeepOrb Labs, an art and technology collective focusing on the crossover of deep learning, music, visual art, and blockchain.
https://opensea.io/collection/claytantor-crypto-loa
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxf5jeaNJRfBS90tYZMdpcQ
https://claytantor.wordpress.com/2021/08/14/cryptoloa-conjuring-emergent-ghosts-on-the-ethereum-blockchain/
Zach R - Creating Your Own DIY Air Monitoring System
Using some simple code and off-the-shelf parts, you can build a custom PM2.5 (and lower) air quality monitor!Zach is a DIY hacker and electrical engineer with over 20 years in soldering and repair, and many years in EDA, fabrication, consulting, reverse engineering, key turn assembly, and more. More recently he has been building up some firmware chops, this was a great project to cut his teeth on.
Virj Kan - Spheres of Experience: Interactions across Human Information Ecosystems
Subtle, overlooked everyday interactions carry the potential to transform how we engage with the world. An umbrella is the interface to the rain and climate; a store-bought apple is the interface to the transnational food system; your skin is the interface to your body's health. In this talk, Edward Hall's theory of proxemics is used as a framework to describe a body of work that explores the design of human interactions with social and environmental systems. Together the projects provide a glimpse into a new material reality where social networks are physically embodied, the microorganisms inhabiting our bodies become perceptible, and everyday objects are transformed into interfaces that come to life and communicate the ecological signals they're part of.Virj Kan is an Asian-American designer & scientist who builds interfaces that connect humans to social and environmental systems. Working at the intersection of materials, robotics, biology and chemistry, she engineers tools to uncover how to translate molecular signals to human senses - environmental information to user experience. Her work investigates new paradigms for interaction design and human ecology through research in biodesign, stimuli-responsive polymers, programmable matter, wearable technology, shape displays and physical computing.
Currently she leads Primitives Biodesign, a b-corp that engineers biodegradable and intelligent materials to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in plastics production and food waste.