Khazar DANM250 A
January 23rd, 2006
First Class Meeting in preparation for next quarter
Class Page
Project Groups Defined
Roundtable introductions...
Elliot: Undergrad in computer engineering, worked on Flight Simulators. Got laid off and didn't want to be an engineer anymore. MFA work in Philosophy and Art
Interested in the computer as a way of thinking. Intrigued with artificial life
"Unnatural Selection" re: Male Nipples(!) (0) (0)
Interested in forms that fall out of the evolutionary process, like female orgasm and male nipples. How do we think about these things? Why is there even an argument in science about the usefuness of female orgasm. Wants to look at places where Darwinian principles don't work.
Interested and horrified by Eugenics – Watson, discoverer of DNA said (notational paraphrase) "If there were a discoverable genetic determination for homosexuality, the fetus should be aborted."
Where do these cultures and technologies clash? What about things like genetic typing issues, like Down Syndrome. What are the societal issues.
Interested in making Useless robots. Sisyphus robots. Wants to build a (possibly bipedal) robot that pushes a block back and forth across a floor from sunrise to sunset, leaving tracks
No.e Exits
It is important to Elliot that his work has a sense of humor
Wants to look at genetics as an art material. He raises species orchids, adapted around the world, it is a different yet the same plant.
Wants to look at Selection Forces as Aesthetic Forces.
Brandeis has the Golem project. http://helen.cs-i.brandeis.edu/golem/ – a really good example of genetic algorithms. They got morphologies that they never could have predicted.
Elliot has been talking with James Davis in computer sci, will may be able to get students to come and work with us.
The project is "ideas." A lot of it is a thought project or conceptual project, but he also wants to make things. Some software and some robotics.
Wants to look at raising money and grants. Good experience for us in the process of acquiring grant money
The class will be structured each according to their wants and abilities. We will work together towards completing a project. We have to figure it out first. How do we publish, how do we show.
The platypus is our logo. (based on his reading of http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title_pages/8498.html)
Steven J. Gould will be in the readings. Perhaps we could create a taxonomy of our own. Create our own science.
Elliot Presents his web site:
Piece: Just Be Yourself (from Cassavetes' A Woman Under The Influence)
Two monitors facing each other with the same LaserDisc for each. The computer runs a genetic algorithm that's weighted to move the disc towards the end of the disc. Speaks R.D.Lang text from "Knots", (
at: arts.ucec.edu/faculty/enaderson/sculpture/jby/index.html
Goes from spring to fall 2006 quarters as a group. The summer will probably be required for grants to start coming in.