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The artificial intelligence boom is here. Here’s how it could change the world around us.

A future with highways full of self-driving cars or robot friends that can actually hold a decent conversation may not be far away.

That’s because we’re living in the middle of an “artificial intelligence boom” — a time when machines are becoming more and more like the human brain.

That’s partly because of an emerging subcategory of AI called “deep learning.” It’s a process that’s often trying to mimic the human brain’s neocortex, which helps humans with language processing, sensory perception and other functions

From allowing us to be understand the Earth’s trees to teaching robots how to understand human life, deep learning is changing our world. Read more (5/26/17)

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Transformation Mask

Installation from Shawn Hunt and Microsoft Vancouver combines 3D Printing, robotics, Hololens Mixed Reality and indigenous symbolism:

The Raven, the ultimate trickster, has become a cyborg. In this Creative Collab, Shawn Hunt moves away from engaging with the handmade; exploring authenticity and our expectations of what it means to be indigenous through the removal of the hand-carved surface. The work Transformation Mask, features Microsoft HoloLens, creating an experiential sculpture piece that engages with mixed reality.

In this work, the mask appropriates the traditional aspects of metamorphosis with the transformation from bird mask to human, yet in this adaptation the human mask has been altered, upgraded, and merged with the machine. Incorporating aspects of technology, sound and space, each part of the work reflects Hunt’s interest in how we understand and identify with the term indigenous.

This work presents a new trajectory for engagement and exploration of First Nations practice; one that points towards technology and innovation as aspects that expand traditional practices and open new avenues for interpretation.

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Why virtual reality is perfect for creativity

Second part to Nat & Friends look at Virtual Reality tech, this time focused on how it can be a creative platform, including Tiltbrush, 360 video and Blocks:

In this video (part 2 of a two-part VR series) I explore VR creativity tools and how artists and creators are using them. I do a Tilt Brush chicken dance, play with brains, and help YouTuber Vanessa Hill make a video about how your mind reacts to VR

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Part One can be found here

[Patreon] Best of 2017 - Augmented Reality Photography

For Patreon backers, I have put together a brief look at some projects that creatively explores the potential of Augmented Reality, which has been brought into the mainstream via Apple’s ARKit technology.

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Regressing 24 Hours in New Orleans

Another machine learning experiment from Samim explores regression method to moving image, breaking down each frame into visual compartments creating a polygon / Modernist style:

Regression is a widely applied technique in machine learning … Regression analysis is a statistical process for estimating the relationships among variables. Lets have some fun with it ;-)

… This experiment test a regression based approach for video stylisation. The following video was generated using Stylize by Alec Radford. Alec extends Andrej’s implementation and uses a fast Random Forest Regressor. The source video is a short by JacksGap.

You can find out more about the machine learning experiment here

Example-Based Synthesis of Stylized Facial Animations

Graphics research from Daniel Sýkora et al at DCGI, Czech Republic, presents a method of realtime style transfer focused on human faces, similar to their previous StyLit work.

It should be noted that the video below is a demonstration of results, is silent, and the official paper has not been made public yet:

Results video for the paper: Fišer et al.: Example-Based Synthesis of Stylized Facial Animations, to appear in ACM Transactions on Graphics 36(4):155, SIGGRAPH 2017.

[EDIT: 20 July 2017]

An official video (no audio) and project page has been made public on the project:

We introduce a novel approach to example-based stylization of portrait videos that preserves both the subject’s identity and the visual richness of the input style exemplar. Unlike the current state-of-the-art based on neural style transfer [Selim et al. 2016], our method performs non-parametric texture synthesis that retains more of the local textural details of the artistic exemplar and does not suffer from image warping artifacts caused by aligning the style exemplar with the target face. Our method allows the creation of videos with less than full temporal coherence [Ruder et al. 2016]. By introducing a controllable amount of temporal dynamics, it more closely approximates the appearance of real hand-painted animation in which every frame was created independently. We demonstrate the practical utility of the proposed solution on a variety of style exemplars and target videos. 

Link

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. #Bitcoin via @kyletorpey

More than 400 U.S. school districts are using augmented reality to teach students. Is AR the future of education?

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Face Maker

iOS app by Tim Sears for iPhone X lets you make your own Augmented Reality face masks which you can draw or import an image from your camera roll:

Face Maker Augmented Augmented is an exciting new way to shape the face around you. Using the TrueDepth camera technology of the iPhone X, along with new capabilities of ARKit, you can create incredible face experiences like never before.

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LASER SOCKS!

Game developed by Glen Chiaccchieri where players lose life bar when opponent’s feet is hit with a laser from a pointer, and is a proof-of-concept implementation of the computing concept ‘Hypercard in the Room’:

In the video above two people are playing Laser Socks, a game I invented in an afternoon using a research programming system, common household items, and a couple lines of code.

Players try to point a laser pointer at their opponent’s socks while dodging their opponent’s laser. Whenever they score a hit, the health meter closest to their opponent’s play area fills up with blue light. Whoever gets their opponent’s meter to fill up first wins.

In August 2015, my research group (The Communications Design Group or CDG) had a game jam — an event where participants create games together over the course of a few days. The theme was to make hybrid physical/digital games using a prototype research system Bret Victor and Robert Ochshorn had made called Hypercard in the World. This system was like an operating system for an entire room — it connected cameras, projectors, computers, databases, and laser pointers throughout the lab to let people write programs that would magically add projected graphics and interactivity to physical objects. The point of the jam was to see what playful things you could make with this kind of system. We ended up making more than a dozen new and diverse games.

I made Laser Socks, a game about jumping around and shooting a laser pointer at an opponent’s feet. It was fun, ridiculous, and simple to make. In some ways, Laser Socks became one of the highlight demonstrations of what could be done if there was a medium of expression that integrated dynamic computational elements into the physical world.

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