Walter Giers – Little Star (1990) – Digital Replica

Engagement with the question of how and whether electronic art (digital) can be reproduced, what a replica actually is, and how it works. The resulting by-product in JavaScript can be seen here.

QuBeenee

A punch card generator for quantum computers (hypothetical). Comparison of bit and qubit.
Practical thinking about interfaces for qubits starting from the idea that logic or computation by qubits can be understood with 3D vectors.

Manual: The left orb represents a bit. “State” controllable by clicking on it. The right sphere represents a qubit. “State” controllable in 3D space by drag’n’drop (x- and y-axis) and mouse wheel (z-axis) via the inner sphere.
Small orbs toggle punch card printing.

Conflict

Applying functions of interpersonal relationships to NPCs. Original concept: Something with dialectics

Hydromatrix Controller

100 virtual fountains (Blender particle systems) in the middle of a virtual water basin are controlled in height by a depth map (black/white video). Each fountain is illuminated by a virtual RGB LED (Blender spotlights), which is controlled in color and brightness by a color map (colored video).

Blender is controlled as a server by a client program written in Java to manage 3D animation via video.

There were difficulties in running a TCP server in Blender Python, which controls parameters and viewport of Blender, in a separate thread from Blender’s Python runtime stably – the server quickly became “overloaded”.
The experiment was thus successful in that it showed the limits of what I could do – reprogramming Blender’s threading was not possible for this experiment.

Pronoia

When you enter a name, that name becomes the sender of a positive message for the next recipient. Only then do you get to see the affirmation yourself.

Citizen

An affirmation to say “Hello” on the street in C++ and Java. Simulated virtual citizens, represented as colored circles, walk through the streets during the day and greet each other, exchanging colors.
The colors of those who communicate mix together. Groups form. At night, the citizens go home (each is randomly assigned a house) and regenerate their own color.
The recipient has the option to observe the simulation or take control of such a citizen and playfully steer them.

A small 3D engine for the Linux terminal can connect to the program as a client and render the houses from the first-person perspective of a citizen (with citizen selection and minimap functions)


Gender

Proposal to make gender selection fluid in role-playing games.

Comparison between Artificial and Real Intelligence

In the performance “Learning”, the action potentials of real and artificial intelligence are compared by having an actor and a 3D character (spatially visualized through Pepper’s Ghost effect) act in equivalent spaces in parallel.
Both are initially unable to stand and try to learn this during the performance. The actors repeatedly fall to the ground and try to learn from their mistakes.
The digital character is equipped with a genetic algorithm, a programmed intelligence, while the real character has an organic brain.
The avatar learns to stand faster than the human but simultaneously appears ridiculous in its uncoordinated actions, revealing the distance of digital technology to the real human.
In contrast, the human evokes emotional empathy in the viewer through their physical pain and desperate attempts to stand.

Andreas Bayer

Video of the working process, how the AI learned to stand:

Video Faceswap

Facial expressions from two videos are compared, and the most similar ones are swapped.
Facial features from two videos with one face have been mathematically analyzed, and the images have been cut out; the most similar facial expressions are found through Euclidean distance calculation, inserted into the other video, and color-corrected.
Similar principle as Deepfake, but without software to calculate “missing” images.

Pepper's Ghost Crystals


Ongoing research project in the fields of optical illusion and human-machine interaction. Virtual space / Interactive medium / Showcase for 3D objects.

There was a desire to create a convincing, human-like interaction with a machine to personify Gerkzeuk. The (pseudo-)holographic representation through the Pepper’s Ghost effect is one aspect of this; a crystal is also equipped with a camera, microphone, speaker, and microcomputer.
My reflections on simulating aspects of human appearance and interaction in the context of my work with artificial intelligence since 2015 had the greatest concrete intensity through its technical implementation in this subproject.


The head of a virtual humanoid as a persona of, and connected in the crystal to Gerkzeuk, seen at the exhibition ALLEZ ALLEZ

On the software side, experiments were conducted with:
OpenFace – Facial recognition. Deep-learning-based capability for the computer to recognize faces, distinguish them, assign names, and remember them.
Affdex – Expression recognition. Capability for the computer to interpret the viewer’s facial expressions based on the 7 basic emotions.
SpeechRecognition – Capability of speech recognition, experiments in the areas of keyword recognition and grammar analysis with the “Natural Language Toolkit”.
ChatterBot – Machine-learning-based dialogue system that allows a computer to learn the viewer’s/participant’s word choice and reproduce it in dialogue.
Watir Webdriver – Capability for the computer to independently use the internet, functioning as Google Translate to a text-to-speech program.
Unity – Game engine where the modules come together.

Further design ideas from the work process:

 

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