The Whitehead Lectures in "Cognition, Computation and Culture"
The Departments of Computing and Psychology at Goldsmiths organise regular seminars by guest speakers throughout the academic year encompassing various aspects of cognition, computation and culture. All are welcome to attend.
All seminars to be held at 4pm in the Pimlott Lecture Theatre, (Ben Pimlott Building), unless otherwise stated. (For directions to Goldsmiths see: www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/find-us).To be added to the seminar mailing list, please contact Mark Bishop by email: m.bishop (@gold.ac.uk)
Lent 2012
Whitehead Lecture 1 - Simon Colton - Computational Creativity in a post-Turing Test World
18 January 2012
email: sgc@doc.ic.ac.uk
web: http://www.thepaintingfool.com/
Abstract:
In Computational Creativity research, we study how to engineer software that can take on some of the creative responsibility in arts and science projects. In recent years, we have undertaken a practical approach to addressing questions arising in Computational Creativity. In particular, we have built software that can perform mathematical discovery; software that automates cognitive and physical aspects of the painting process; software which helps in game design; and most recently, a corpus-based poetry generator. We have applied our research to projects in automated mathematics, video game design, graphic design and the visual arts. This broad spectrum of applications has enabled us to take a holistic view, and develop various philosophical notions, resulting in a set of guiding principles for the development of autonomously creative software, and a fledgling formalisation called Computational Creativity Theory, which will be the subject of a major EPSRC-funded project that has just started.
In the talk, I will describe our practical applications, the guiding principles and the formalisations. I will then focus on one of the the most thorny issues in Computational Creativity, namely how to assess the creativity of the software we write. We have argued that Turing-style comparison tests are wholly inappropriate in Computational Creativity research, as they encourage pastiche and naivety. We will discuss this issue with reference to The Painting Fool system - which we hope will one
day be taken seriously as a creative artist in its own right. Like any other artist, The Painting Fool should be horrified if people confuse its creations with those of someone else - whether human or machine. So…. should we really apply Turing-style tests to this aspiring creative talent?
Bio:
Dr. Simon Colton is an AI researcher and Reader in Computational Creativity at the Department of Computing of Imperial College, London. He leads the Computational Creativity research group of around 10 people and is an EPSRC Leadership Fellow, employed as a full time researcher on the "Computational Creativity Theory" project. In the past four years, he has been the principal investigator on six EPSRC/TSB funded projects. He has published more than 130 papers on various aspects of AI research, and his work has been recognised by national and international awards, as well as being covered in the print, TV and radio media.
Whitehead Lecture 2 - Mohammad Majid al-Rifaie & Patrick Tresset - Computational Creativity: Swarms and Paul Jump out of the Box
25 January 2012
email: map01mm@gold.ac.uk (Mohammad) & tressetp@gmail.com (patrick)
web: http://www.arcofbeing.com/ & http://www.aikon-gold.com/
Mohammad briefly introduces a novel hybrid swarm intelligence algorithm followed by a discussion on the 'computational creativity' of the swarm. The discussion is based on the performance of the swarm through a cooperative attempt to make a drawing. We raise the question on whether swarm intelligence algorithms (inspired by social systems in nature) are possibly capable of leading to a different way of producing 'artworks' and whether the swarms demonstrate computational creativity in a non-representational way.
Bio:
Mohammad Majid al-Rifaie obtained a BSc in Computing and Information Systems from University of London, Goldsmiths College, External Programme in 2005. His background is in computing, craftsmanship and journalism and his artistic interests focuses on the inter-connections between artificial intelligence, swarm intelligence, robotics and digital art. Postgraduate study took him to do a PhD course which touched upon Aritificial Intelligence, Swarm Intelligence, Cognitive Science and Robotics at Goldsmits, University of London. Mohammad's thesis focuses on the significance of information sharing in population-based algorithms (e.g. Swarm Intelligence). Mr. al-Rifaie's current research interests, in addition to the role of information sharing, lie in understanding the impact of freedom and autonomy in computational creativity.
Whitehead Lecture 3 - Harry Witchel - You Are What You Hear: How Music and Territory Make Us Who We Are
1 February 2012
email: witcheloffice@gmail.com
web: http://www.harrywitchel.com/
Abstract:
Have you ever wondered why we evolved to have music? And if we need it, what does it do to us? Dr Harry Witchel reveals the answers with the most up-to-date science, relating it to humorous anecdotes from the history of pop culture, to unveil why music makes us feel so good — or why the wrong music makes us feel so bad. Dr. Witchel, who researches music, pleasure and the brain, provides a wealth of evidence pointing to one answer: like birds, gibbons, and other musical animals, we use music to establish and reinforce social territory. In this way music can influence what you think, what you decide to buy, and even how smart you are.
Biography:
Dr. Harry Witchel is a Senior Lecturer at the Brighton and Sussex Medical School in UK. In 2004 he received the national honour of being awarded The Charles Darwin Award Lecture by the British Science Association. He has consulted and run experiments for Honda, Tesco, Nike and Nokia, and his writings have in appeared in the Financial Times, the Times Higher Educational Supplement. His regular appearances internationally as a commentator on radio and television include shows ranging from Big Brother
to the BBC and the Discovery channel. His new book on music You Are What You Hear was published in January 2011.
http://www.youarewhatyouhear.co.uk/
Whitehead Lecture 4 - Marco Dorigo - Swarm-bots and Swarmanoid: Two Experiments in Embodied Swarm Intelligence
14 March 2012
email: mdorigo@ulb.ac.be
web: http://www.swarmanoid.org/ & http://www.swarm-bots.org/
Abstract:
Swarm intelligence is the discipline that deals with natural and artificial systems composed of many individuals that coordinate using decentralized control and self-organization. In particular, it focuses on the collective behaviors that result from the local interactions of the individuals with each other and with their environment. The characterizing property of a swarm intelligence system is its ability to act in a coordinated way without the presence of a coordinator or of an external controller. Swarm robotics could be defined as the application of swarm intelligence principles to the control of groups of robots. In this talk I will discuss results of Swarm-bots and Swarmanoid, two experiments in swarm robotics. A swarm-bot is an artifact composed of a swarm of assembled s-bots. The s-bots are mobile robots capable of connecting to, and disconnecting from, other s-bots. In the swarm-bot form, the s-bots are attached to each other and, when needed, become a single robotic system that can move and change its shape. S-bots have relatively simple sensors and motors and limited computational capabilities. A swarm-bot can solve problems that cannot be solved by s-bots alone. In the talk, I will shortly describe the s-bots hardware and the methodology we followed to develop algorithms for their control. Then I will focus on the capabilities of the swarm-bot robotic system by showing video recordings of some of the many experiments we performed to study coordinated movement, path formation, self-assembly, collective transport, shape formation, and other collective behaviors. I will conclude presenting recent results of the Swarmanoid experiment, an extension of swarm-bot to heterogeneous swarms acting in 3-dimensional environments.
Biography:
Marco Dorigo received his Ph.D. degree in electronic engineering in 1992 from the Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy, and the title of Agrégé de l’Enseignement Supérieur from the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium, in 1995. From 1992 to 1993, he was a Research Fellow at the International Computer Science Institute, Berkeley, California. In 1993, he was a NATO-CNR Fellow, and from 1994 to 1996, a Marie Curie Fellow. Since 1996, he has been a tenured Researcher of the FNRS, the Belgian National Funds for Scientific Research, and a Research Director of IRIDIA, the artificial intelligence laboratory of the Université Libre de Bruxelles. He is the inventor of the ant colony optimization metaheuristic. His current research interests include swarm intelligence, swarm robotics, and metaheuristics for discrete optimization. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Swarm Intelligence, and an Associate Editor or member of the Editorial Boards of many journals on computational intelligence and adaptive systems. Dr. Dorigo is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and of the European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence (ECCAI). He was awarded the Italian Prize for Artificial Intelligence in 1996, the Marie Curie Excellence Award in 2003, the Dr. A. De Leeuw-Damry-Bourlart award in applied sciences in 2005, and the Cajastur International Prize for Soft Computing in 2007. He is the recipient of an ERC Advanced Grant (2010).