Heike Sperling

From the series They Cometh! paintings by Steve Seeley. The body of work is an homage the comic master Jack Kirby and his insane ability to capture and portray emotion thru simple line work and expression.

Super-recognisers

Can reliably detect AI-generated faces, while typical observers cannot
November 29th, 2024

Via PsyArXiv: "AI-generated faces have become virtually indistinguishable from real human faces. In this study, we demonstrate that super-recognisers—individuals with exceptional face recognition abilities—can reliably detect AI-generated faces, while typical observers cannot. Super-recognisers (N=36) and typical observers (N=89) were shown images of real and AI-generated faces and classified each as real or fake. Super-recognisers performed significantly above chance, with decision confidence positively correlated with accuracy, indicating metacognitive insight. In contrast, typical observers performed at chance level, with no insight into their accuracy. Aggregating responses using a wisdom-of-crowds approach improved super-recogniser accuracy substantially but did not affect typical observer accuracy. To understand the basis of super-recognisers’ enhanced sensitivity to real faces, we examined the facial cues used by each group. Super-recognisers and typical observers showed qualitative differences, with super-recognisers relying less on perceived familiarity and memorability—cues that have previously misled typical observers when assessing face authenticity. These findings suggest that understanding individual differences in face-processing ability may help mitigate risks associated with hyper-realistic AI faces."

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“You maniacs, you blew it up!”

I tried to train my color vision

Neuroplasticity
November 6th, 2024

Via Sequencer Magazine: "We don’t understand color vision as well as you’d think from decades of academic study. We have classic theories of how red, green, blue, yellow, bright, and dark encode in the brain. […] 'That’s still the theory you get in textbooks. But it’s a very naive theory,' he said. 'There’s a whole mystery of how the brain really represents color.' […] In a pivotal study from 2009, their team at the University of Washington cured color blindness in monkeys […] Most color deficiencies come from anomalies in the cones, but one form called “dichromatism” is a genetic condition where one cone is entirely missing. The Neitzes treated dichromat monkeys with this categorically severe version of color blindness. And not only did they replace the missing type of cone with a first-of-its-kind gene therapy, they did this in adult monkeys, raising entirely new questions about sensory plasticity. I’m not getting this treatment anytime soon. The therapy is far from approval and, more importantly, I’m not so deficient that I want an eye injection that temporarily detaches the retina.

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Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts offers a unique master's degree program that enriches artistic jazz education in Germany. Their partner is the hr-Bigband – one of the world's most renowned ensembles of its kind.

Workshop @ HfMDK Frankfurt

Self-promotion: How to communicate your projects successfully
September 26th,  2024

Hendrika Entzian, professor for Bigband & Composition/Arrangement in Jazz and also current chair of the master's degree program in Big Band for players, writers and conductors at the prestigious Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts, invited me a second time to give a 2-days workshop on Self Promotion.

The workshop strengthens self consciousness and empathy by asking, what do you want to communicate and to whom?

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Kanreki

Cycles of sixty years: A celebration of re-born
August 8th, 2024

Via Wikipedia: "The traditional lunisolar calendars in the Sinosphere (Chinese calendar, Japanese calendar, Korean calendar) observe sexagenary cycles: cycles of sixty years. Thus, living sixty years had special significance as one completed a full cycle. Some saw it as the start of a second lifetime, and thus as an opportunity to give up some responsibility and return to enjoying life as children do."

Via Iromegane: "60th birthday is one of the biggest birthdays in Japan and is called Kanreki (還暦) in Japanese. This kanji, 還 (kan) means circulate and 暦 (reki) is a calendar and we can understand it as years. So kanreki literary means, your years completed a circle, in other word, you come back to the same year as when you were born.

Still puzzled? This comes from the way ancient Japanese people counted the years. They didn´t use the Gregorian calendar but the lunar calendar and each year was counted with 12 different animals, which is called Junishi (十二支) ; Ne (子/ mouse), Ushi (牛/ cow), Tora (寅/ tiger), U (卯/ rabbit), Tatsu (辰/ dragon), Mi (巳/ snake), Uma (馬/ horse), Hitsuji (未/ sheep), Saru (申/ monkey), Tori (酉/ chicken), Inu (戌/ dog), I (亥/ hog). This is still kept in the modern Japanese life. By the way, this year, 2015 is a year of sheep and the next year 2016 is a year of monkey.

Wait, if there are 12 animals, when it circulate completely, it only takes 12 years and you should be 12 but not 60. Mathematically incorrect. Each year is combined with one of Jikkan (十干), which indicate time and space and there are, Kinoe (甲), Kinoto (乙), Hinoe (丙), Hinoto (丁), Tuchinoe (戊), Tsuchinoto (己), Kanoe (庚), Kanoto (辛), Mizunoe (壬), Mizunoto (癸). For example, this year is a year of sheep and with jikkan, it´s Kinoto Hitsuji (乙未).

The combinations are 60 in total and that is why kanreki makes sense as one circle. As the person completes whole 60 combinations, the 60th birthday is also a celebration of re-born. The person will start a new circle of life."

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The Swimmer by Elisabeth McBrien: Study 3/4. Acrylic on Canvas. 9”x12”.

Consciousness makes sense

Keywords: Consciousness, Evolution, Amniotes, Feelings, Neurology, Nonconscious processing, Cognition
July 23rd, 2024

Via PsyArXiv Preprints: "In this paper, I try to add details and credence to a previously suggested, evolution-based model of consciousness. According to this model, the feature started to evolve in early amniotes (reptiles, birds, and mammals) some 320 million years ago. The reason was the introduction of feelings as a strategy for making behavioral decisions."

Thanks to my favorite blog the new shelton wet/dry!

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This fall, PST ART, presented by Getty Museum, will take over Southern California with over 70 exhibitions carrying the theme of science and technology. To inaugurate this event, Cai Guo-Qiang, known for his explosion events (pictured is Sky Ladder from 2015), will present a daytime firework event at the LA Coliseum, entitled WE ARE. Using organic, sustainable pigments and advanced AI, this will be the first choreographed drone formation equipped with pyrotechnics in US history.

What if absolutely everything is conscious?

More on panpsychism
July 13th, 2024

Via Vox: "The big problem for materialists is what contemporary philosopher David Chalmers dubbed the hard problem of consciousness. In a nutshell, the problem is this: You’re conscious. But if you’re just made of non-conscious matter, why and how exactly could consciousness arise from that? […]

Panpsychism lets you bypass the hard problem of consciousness altogether. That’s because the panpsychist starts out with the right ingredients. If you believe that consciousness resides, however minimally, in matter’s tiniest building blocks — atoms, electrons, quarks — then it’s much easier to explain how sophisticated forms of consciousness can eventually arise in, say, humans. This fits very well with the theory of evolution, which says that creatures gradually became more complex as they evolved. […]

In a landmark 2006 paper, Strawson took this idea and ran with it, making a radical argument: Materialism, he said, actually entails panpsychism. Consciousness is real. (We know that from our own experience.) Everything is physical. (There’s no evidence that immaterial stuff exists.) Therefore, consciousness is physical. There’s no radical emergence in nature. (We don’t get something from nothing.) Consciousness emerging from totally non-conscious stuff would be radical emergence. Therefore, all stuff must have some consciousness baked into it."

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A page from the manuscript for Galina Ustvolskaya’s Symphony No. 2. (Credit: Paul Sacher Foundation, Basel)

Where are the Female Composers

Evidence on the Extent and Causes of Gender Inequality in Music History
June 17th, 2024

Via Association for Cultural Economics International, "Ludwig van Beethoven, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Frédéric Chopin are household names, but few will recognize Francesca Caccini, Elisabeth Lutyens or Amy M. Beach, who are among the top-10 female composers of all time. Why are female composers overshadowed by their male counterparts? Using novel data on over 17,000 composers who lived from the sixth to the twentieth centuries, we conduct the first quantitative exploration of the gender gap among classical composers. We use the length of a composer’s biographical entry in Grove Music Online to measure composer prominence, and shed light on the determinants of the gender gap with a focus on the development of composers’ human capital through families, teachers, and institutionalized music education. The evidence suggests that parental musical background matters for composers’ prominence, that the effects of teachers vary by the gender of the composer but the effects of parents do not, and while musician mothers and female teachers are important, they do not narrow the gender gap in composer prominence. We also find that the institutionalization of music education in conservatories increases the relative prominence of female composers."

Read full paper by Karol Jan Borowiecki, Martin Hørlyk Kristensen, Marc T. Law here.

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Dagsson is an Icelandic cartoonist, comedian, and person.

Anekdote zur Senkung der Arbeitsmoral

A short story by Heinrich Böll
May 6th, 2024

Via Wikipedia: "Anekdote zur Senkung der Arbeitsmoral ('Anecdote on Lowering the work ethic') is a short story by Heinrich Böll about an encounter between an enterprising tourist and a small fisherman, in which the tourist suggests how the fisherman can improve his life. It was written for a Labour Day programme on the Norddeutscher Rundfunk in 1963, and is considered one of the best stories written by Heinrich Böll.

The story is set in an unnamed harbor on the west coast of Europe. A smartly-dressed enterprising tourist is taking photographs when he notices a shabbily dressed local fisherman taking a nap in his fishing boat. The tourist is disappointed with the fisherman's apparently lazy attitude towards his work, so he approaches the fisherman and asks him why he is lying around instead of catching fish. The fisherman explains that he went fishing in the morning, and the small catch would be sufficient for the next two days.

The tourist tells him that if he goes out to catch fish multiple times a day, he would be able to buy a motor in less than a year, a second boat in less than two years, and so on. The tourist further explains that one day, the fisherman could even build a small cold storage plant, later a pickling factory, fly around in a helicopter, build a fish restaurant, and export lobster directly to Paris without a middleman.

The nonchalant fisherman asks, 'Then what?'

The tourist enthusiastically continues, 'Then, without a care in the world, you could sit here in the harbor, doze in the sun, and look at the glorious sea.'

'But I'm already doing that', says the fisherman.

The enlightened tourist walks away pensively, with no trace of pity for the fisherman, only a little envy."

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Bazon Brock is a German art theorist and critic, multi-media generalist and artist. He is considered a member of Fluxus.

How political should art be?

Bazon Brock on artistic freedom between vandalism, activism, and censorship
May 4th, 2024

Bazon Brock supervised my dissertation in the late 90s. My first encounter with his disputability was in my early 20s in one of his seminars on aesthetics. For almost 40 years I have listened to his ideas, e.g. during my studies at Bergische Universität Wuppertal, on conferences, online, and when I invited him to talk about basecamps at the Institute for Music and Media. He was always supportive, and I am so grateful for his support.

This week I went to hear his keynote for the opening of the 70th International Short Film Festival in Oberhausen. Bazon Brock is now in his late 80s, still raging, still challenging his audience, and still relevant. I was quite impressed.

If you speak German listen - with an open, serene mind - to this interview from November 2023. Please consider his arguments in all earnestness and openess, do not let self defensiveness get in your way because then you would risk missing interesting ideas.

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The greatest danger for design

Interview for Campus Magazine at Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg
April 1st, 2024

In October 1998 I started to work for Germany's renowned film school, Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg (FABW). It has been a challenge, pleasure, and honor to chair the Motion Design class for almost 26 years now.

This year the FABW invited me to do an interview for their Campus Magazine with their head of press, Andreas Friedrich, he asked me among other things, "Your biography reads as if there must be at least 48 hours in a day. How do you manage all your activities?"

My answer, "I self-consciously perceive that I‘m ultra-fast, even when I‘m talking. What I have to deal with is that I make mistakes. This insanely high speed and the fact that I do many things at the same time is almost a kind of handicap. As a result, I always need people to look at things again. Here at FABW, for example, I could not do my job properly without Jürgen Klozenbücher, Motion Design Study Coordinator, and I feel deep gratitude for this kind of support. That‘s why I have a great openness to criticism, because I depend on others to correct my mistakes. I also often provoke backlash from people who shy away from my pushiness. Today I don‘t care so much what others think of me and I trust my inspiration more and more as I get older. The motto I like best at the moment is: Love what loves you back! So don‘t shake doors that won ́t open. And I just need a community, people who are specialists. I am a generalist, I can do a lot of things, I can talk about everything, but I am not an expert."

Happy to share the interview in German and English.

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