Heike Sperling

Godfather of AI

They Keep Silencing Me But I’m Trying to Warn Them
November 29th, 2025

You might want to listen to what Geoffrey Hinton is explaining.

Via Wikipedia: "Geoffrey Everest Hinton (born 6 December 1947) is a British-Canadian computer scientist, cognitive scientist, and cognitive psychologist known for his work on artificial neural networks, which earned him the title 'the Godfather of AI'.
Hinton is University Professor Emeritus at the University of Toronto. From 2013 to 2023, he divided his time working for Google Brain and the University of Toronto before publicly announcing his departure from Google in May 2023, citing concerns about the many risks of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. In 2017, he co-founded and became the chief scientific advisor of the Vector Institute in Toronto.
With David Rumelhart and Ronald J. Williams, Hinton was co-author of a highly cited paper published in 1986 that popularised the backpropagation algorithm for training multi-layer neural networks, although they were not the first to propose the approach. Hinton is viewed as a leading figure in the deep learning community. The image-recognition milestone of the AlexNet designed in collaboration with his students Alex Krizhevsky and Ilya Sutskever for the ImageNet challenge 2012 was a breakthrough in the field of computer vision.
Hinton received the 2018 Turing Award, together with Yoshua Bengio and Yann LeCun for their work on deep learning. They are sometimes referred to as the 'Godfathers of Deep Learning' and have continued to give public talks together. He was also awarded, along with John Hopfield, the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics for 'foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks'.
In May 2023, Hinton announced his resignation from Google to be able to 'freely speak out about the risks of A.I.' He has voiced concerns about deliberate misuse by malicious actors, technological unemployment, and existential risk from artificial general intelligence. He noted that establishing safety guidelines will require cooperation among those competing in use of AI in order to avoid the worst outcomes. After receiving the Nobel Prize, he called for urgent research into AI safety to figure out how to control AI systems smarter than humans."

Via YouTube: "Geoffrey Hinton is a leading computer scientist and cognitive psychologist, widely recognised as the Godfather of AI for his pioneering work on neural networks and deep learning. He received the 2018 Turing Award, often called the Nobel Prize of computing. In 2023, he left Google to warn people about the rising dangers of AI."
 

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"Heaven" is a song by the American new wave band Talking Heads, released on their 1979 album "Fear of Music".

Heaven

Talking Heads, Fear of Music, 1979
August 28th, 2025

Via Wikipedia: "Cover versions:
In 1995 the song was covered by Iva Davies and Icehouse on The Berlin Tapes, the soundtrack album accompanying the ballet Berlin, for which Icehouse performed live on stage.
In 1996, the song was covered by Jimmy Scott on his album of the same name.
The song was covered by Eric Burdon on his 2004 album My Secret Life and in 1985 by Simply Red for their album Picture Book.
A German-language cover of the song, Der Weg in die Ferne, was recorded by Joachim Witt for his 1980 album Silberblick.
In 1986, Thomas Di Leva made a Swedish-language adaptation of the song, named Himlen. It was recorded for his album Pussel, and was also the B-Side of his single Snurra bakåt!.
Singer Q Lazzarus covered Heaven for the 1993 film Philadelphia (directed by Jonathan Demme, who had filmed Stop Making Sense). Her version was not available in its complete form until the release of the soundtrack from the documentary Goodbye Horses: The Many Lives of Q Lazzarus in 2025.
k.d. lang covered Heaven for her 2011 album Sing It Loud.
The National contributed a cover of Heaven to the 2024 Talking Heads tribute album Everybody's Getting Involved: A Tribute to Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense."

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From the series "Alphabet of Daisy" (2025) by Sarah Szczesny.

An odds ratio of about 4

Increased Prevalence of Synaesthesia in Musicians
June 17th, 2025

Via Center for Open Science: "There is convincing evidence for a relationship between synaesthesia and engagement in the visual arts, but the evidence with regards to music is sparser and mixed. For example, Rich et al. (2005) did not find that synaesthetes were more likely to be actively engaged in music as a hobby and did not report it as one of their strengths. Other studies have pointed to greater engagement in music by synaesthetes (Lunke & Meier, 2022; Ward et al., 2008), albeit with a qualification that the effect is particularly pronounced in certain synaesthetes (e.g., those synaesthetes for whom music, and other sounds, elicit visual experiences). The present study takes a somewhat different approach of investigating the prevalence of synaesthesia in musicians considering grapheme-color, sequence-space, and music tone - color. There are far fewer prevalence estimates for the latter owing to a lack of well validated methods for this type (i.e., based on an optimised cut-off between synaesthetes and non-synaesthetes), and we use a recently published approach (Ward et al., 2024). In brief, we find an increased prevalence of all three kinds of synaesthesia amongst musicians. In a secondary analysis we show that synaesthesia is particularly prevalent in people who engage, at a high level (supplementing their income), in multiple creative pursuits (i.e., music + art) relative to one or none of these domains.

The fact that sequence-space synaesthesia (for days, months, and numbers) is over-represented in musicians may seem surprising given that it is not directly relevant to music. It suggests instead that there are skills and traits within most, if not all, types of synaesthesia that facilitate engagement and success in music. This has sometimes been referred to as a synaesthetic disposition (Ward, 2019) or a general synaesthetic trait (Rouw & Scholte, 2016). These differences might include greater mental imagery across multiple senses, greater attention-to-detail, and higher openness to experience. There is also evidence that heterogeneous groups of synaesthetes (not just those with sound/music inducers) perform better in tests of auditory perception such as detecting a tone in noise (Del Rio et al., 2024) and in memory for musical phrases (Mealor et al., 2020). It may still be the case that those individuals with music-color synaesthesia have important differences relative to other synaesthetes in measures that we have not been able to capture here. Previous research suggests that these music-color synaesthetes gravitate to certain music genres that are musically complex and layered (Ward et al., 2024). It may also be that they occupy different roles within a band or orchestra (e.g., leading or composing versus following), are more commercially successful, or more able to detect nuances missed by others (e.g., how a current performance differs from a previous one). The latter could be directly aided by being able to 'see' the music. These would be important measures to collect in future research.

There is a paucity of research on the prevalence of sound-color synaesthesia, but it is generally considered to be rarer than grapheme-color synaesthesia in both self-selected samples of synaesthetes (Ward & Simner, 2022) and from screening of opportunistic samples in the general population (Simner et al., 2006). Here we do not find that to be the case which requires further discussion (in non-musicians the prevalence of sound-color was 1.3% and that of grapheme-color was 0.2%). Firstly, our approach for classifying a person as having this type of synaesthesia does not rely solely on consistency but takes into account other measures (e.g., the overall palette of colors). This was necessitated by the fact that consistency is a less reliable discriminator for this type than others. Rather than a simple pass-fail, one could interpret this as different degrees of evidence for having this type of synaesthesia. Importantly, the finding of increased prevalence in musicians is robust against this. Whilst it is also conceivable that some participants are false positives (i.e., do not have synaesthesia) we minimised this by only sending the tests to participants who indicated that they had these kinds of experiences in the first place. Another possibility is that our non-musician control group are not truly representative of the general population (i.e., they contain more people engaged in music than might be expected perhaps at a hobby rather than semi-professional level).

In conclusion, we provide convincing evidence that synaesthesia, in various forms, is more prevalent amongst musicians."

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Typeface Transito (1931) designed by Jan Tschichold.

Tattoo

Wear life like a loose garment
June 3rd, 2025

Via ChatGPT: "The phrase wear life like a loose garment is often attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, reflecting his teachings on detachment and humility. However, the exact origin of this saying is unclear, and it may not be directly traceable to his writings. Some sources suggest it encapsulates his philosophy of living lightly and without attachment to worldly possessions.

In the realm of spiritual teachings, a similar sentiment is expressed by Gautama Buddha, who is quoted as saying, 'Wear your ego like a loose fitting garment.' This advice encourages individuals to approach life with humility and flexibility, avoiding rigid attachments to one's sense of self.

The phrase has also been embraced in various contexts, including Twelve-Step recovery programs, where it is used to promote emotional resilience and detachment from material concerns. In this setting, it serves as a metaphor for not allowing the world to bind or define one's sense of self.

In summary, while wear life like a loose garment is often linked to St. Francis of Assisi, its precise origins remain uncertain. The concept resonates across different spiritual traditions, emphasizing the value of living with openness, humility, and a light touch."

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Into Eternity

Constructing Onkalo (Finnish for "hiding place")
May 25th, 2025

Via Wikipedia: "Into Eternity is a 2010 Danish documentary film directed by Michael Madsen, released in 2010. It follows the construction of the Onkalo waste repository at the Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant on the island of Olkiluoto, Finland. Director Michael Madsen questions Onkalo's intended eternal existence, addressing an audience in the remote future."

Via The Guardian: "'I'm interested in what this topic tells us about the world we live in," says Madsen. 'This timespan – 100,000 years. What does it mean? It is so incomprehensible that you have to film something different to create an experience in which people can relate to it.'"

Via The New York Times: "There is something apocalyptically awful about Onkalo, to be sure, but the impulse behind it is noble, and the installation itself has an undeniable grandeur. That theologians, engineers, ethicists and bureaucrats spend so much time and effort trying to protect the distant future from the consequences of present folly speaks rather well of our current civilization, or at least that sector of it devoted to clear thinking and rational problem solving.
But the fact of Onkalo points in the direction of mystery and paradox. If it lasts as long as it is supposed to — and every precaution is being taken to fortify it against earthquakes, political chaos and the ice age predicted in 60 millenniums or so — this enormous feat of engineering may well be the only thing that survives us. It may, in other words, constitute the whole of the human legacy for a long, post-human time to come. And this will be especially true, and especially fitting, if the place is forgotten and never found."

Consider watching Into Eternity as a double feature with Cave of forgotten Dreams by Werner Herzog.

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A day on Yoko Ono's music @ K20

Curated by the fanzine grapefruits
February 22nd, 2022

Former student and now colleague Elisa Metz has invited my friend, the fabulous poet, sound artist, and performer Swantje Lichtenstein, and me to present our lecture performance titled How’s Yoko Ono? Verstehen oder Nicht-Verstehen in Kunst und Musik at K20 – Kunstsammlung Düsseldorf on February 22nd.

Via K20: Named after Grapefruit (1964), Yoko Ono's collection of artistic instructions, the fanzine grapefruits, founded in Düsseldorf, deals with composition and sound art from a feminist perspective. On the occasion of the exhibition YOKO ONO. MUSIC OF THE MIND exhibition, a special edition of the magazine will be published that deals with works by Yoko Ono and artistic positions influenced by her.
On Saturday, February 22, 2025, the grapefruits team will present an all-day music and performance program at K20 that connects Yoko Ono's thoughts and works with various perspectives from contemporary art and music:
11:15-11:45
Lecture Performance How's Yoko Ono? Understanding or not understanding in art and music with Swantje Lichtenstein and Prof. Dr. Heike Sperling.
12:00-13:00
Listening session for the grapefruits special edition with the grapefruits team.
15:00-15:45
Guided tour through the exhibition YOKO ONO. MUSIC OF THE MIND.
16:00-16:30
Performance with singer and sound artist Elisa Kühnl.
16:45-17:30
Concert by she-dog. Somewhere between art-punk and dark post-punk, she-dog create their own sound. The Cologne trio's songs are hurtful and vulnerable, biting and sweet at the same time.

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Howl (2022) by Mel Bochner. Oil on velvet, 32 x 18 7/8 inches [81.3 x 47.9 cm], unique.

Arguments For God

Tier-list
February 16th, 2025

Read the My Favorite Argument for the Existence of God article by Ross Douthat in The New York Times, stumbled across these lines, "But do I have a favorite argument within this larger run of converging claims? I was thinking about this while reading the effort by the prolific and precocious (he’s apparently still an undergraduate) essayist who writes under the name Bentham’s Bulldog to rank or grade a long list of arguments for God’s existence." and had to follow the link down the rabbit hole:

Via Bentham's Newsletter: "Tier lists on arguments for God are all the rage! Tier lists rank arguments for God on a scale from F to S, where F is the worst, S is the best, and the rest follow a traditional letter grade—A better than B, B better than C, and so on. [...]

Fine-tuning (S)

The fine-tuning argument is widely seen as the best argument for God. But crucially, there are actually three kinds of fine-tuning, and two of them dodge most of the standard objections (for more on the argument, see my very long post about it):

1. A priori fine-tuning: this kind isn’t about the specific laws. Instead, it’s about the more general point that most ways the world could be wouldn’t produce anything interesting. If the laws are very simple, then probably they’d just result in a basic pattern—too basic to produce anything. For instance, the ultimate laws could have just involved particles aimlessly bouncing around, or moving in a circle, or disappearing after a second, or moving in a line. If the laws aren’t simple, then they’d be almost guaranteed to produce random chaos. This kind of fine-tuning is probably the most convincing, and isn’t threatened by findings from physics.

2. Anthropic fine-tuning from physics: this kind proceeds from the striking observations that the constants of physics—the values that are plugged into the laws—fall into an incredibly narrow range needed to give rise to life. For example, if the cosmological constant weren’t in a tiny range, on the order of one part in 10^120 of its possible values, no life or complex structures of any sort would arise.

3. Fine-tuning for discoverability: this builds on work mostly from Robin Collins. What Collins argues is that some of the constants are precisely set in a way ideal for scientific discovery. For instance, he claims that the masses of many of the particles in particle physics happen to be an ideal quantity for us to measure them. This is expected if God set the constants in ways ideal for us to do science, but unexpected if they took their values by chance.

Taking into account all three kinds of fine-tuning, this argument is utterly devastating. Maybe an atheist can explain the second kind by a multiverse—though, as I’ve explored, a multiverse has various problems—but certainly they can’t use a multiverse to explain the first and third kind.

The problem for the atheist is that the improbability is so vast—it’s so wildly unlikely that we’d get a fine-tuned universe by chance—that they must, for their view to be plausible, have some explanation of fine-tuning. But the explanations of the first kind of fine-tuning just transfer the fine-tuning back a level—if the atheist invokes a multiverse, for instance, the multiverse itself is just a physical system that generates universes. But to generate the right kinds of universes—and universes at all, rather than producing nothing—it needs fine-tuning. Thus, even the multiverse just transfers things back a level.

While there are some mild ways to criticize the likelihood of fine-tuning on theism, the atheistic replies are not enough to overcome the vanishingly low probability of fine-tuning on theism. Atheism predicts a barren wasteland—the fact that isn’t what we observe strongly undermines it."

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rand

Students in my Visual Music class acquire knowledge of design principles and techniques by producing visualisations of sound/music – e.g. as installations, videos clips, VJ sets, installations, and computer games.

Visual Music Studies 2025

Annual Show of Students' Visual Music Projects
February 12th, 2025

Every year composer and assistant professor Marcus Schmickler and I host the Visual Music Studies at Filmwerkstatt Düsseldorf. This year's class – Nora Bögel, Noah Foster & Dmitrii Shchukin, Max Kasch, Moritz Lörcks, Noah Ronneberger and Darwin Wagner – will present their final projects on February 12th, 2025.

Creating a work for this show is part of the assignment in my Visual Music class at the Institute for Music and Media Düsseldorf's Robert Schumann Conservatory. Many of the students decide to concentrate on transmedia installations, while others are interested in video clips, experimental film, animation, and audiovisual performances.

The students are supported by an amazing team of assistant professors: Leon Monschauer, Jan Höhe, and Christian Schäfer.

 

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Dal fuori by Francesco-Pirazzi, 80x110 cm, oil on linen, 2024.

Shot-by-Shot Analysis

Eyes Wide Shut
February 9th, 2025

This is an unbelievably deep well of inspiration drawn from so much hard work:

Via Juli Kearns: "With the exception of Fear and Desire, the Kubrick analyses are shot by shot, with screen grabs from each. I've been asked why I don't do videos for Youtube or podcasts, but the intensive immersion style of my analyses, the amount of cross-analysis I do between films, the books upon which they are based, and other works, would be impossible with a podcast or on Youtube.
I began putting the analyses online in 2007, beginning with Kubrick's The Shining and Antonioni's Blow-up. I followed with Eyes Wide Shut, A Clockwork Orange, Zabriskie Point, The Passenger, 2001, Lolita, Day of the Fight, and Killer's Kiss. The majority of the analyses were in place by 2011-2012. They were at first on my blog but the load was too much for my shared server situation so I moved the analyses over to static html in 2012. The Killing was completed and added in 2016, as well was a more intensive look at Fear and Desire added in 2016. Barry Lyndon has been nearly completed for a while, and I hope one day to get it done because of insights had when examining Thackeray. I have no plans to do Full Metal Jacket. I began Dr. Strangelove but it has been on the back burner. [...]

Kubrick
Most of the analyses have supplemental posts listed on the contents page for that analysis. [...]
Lolita analysis, table of contents
2001: A Space Odyssey analysis, table of contents
A Clockwork Orange analysis, table of contents
Barry Lyndon analysis, table of contents
The Shining analysis, table of contents
Full Metal Jacket analysis, table of contents
Eyes Wide Shut analysis, table of contents"

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“I felt relieved. It’s a great relief when you get up the ladder and you look through the spyglass and it doesn’t say ‘no’ or ‘fuck you’ or something, it said ‘yes.’” –John Lennon

Yes

Standing on the shoulders of giants
January 3rd, 2025

Via Wikipedia: "Ceiling Painting/Yes Painting is a 1966 conceptual artwork by the Japanese artist Yoko Ono. The work is made from paper, glass, a metal frame, a metal chain, a magnifying glass, and a painted ladder. The word YES is printed on the piece of paper. The work is interactive, with the viewer (or participant) expected to climb the ladder and use a magnifying glass to look at the word YES which is printed on paper beneath a sheet of glass suspended from the ceiling. [...]

Ceiling Painting/Yes Painting has been described by Ono as being representative of a journey towards hope and affirmation from pain. The difficulty in attaining hope and affirmation has been likened by Ono to the intimidating stature of a cathedral.
The relationship between Ceiling Painting/Yes Painting and Ono's 1964 work Cut Piece was extensively critiqued by James M. Harding in his essay Between Material and Matrix: Yoko Ono's Cut Piece and the Unmaking of Collage."

Via Wikipedia: "Cut Piece 1964 is a pioneer of performance art and participatory work first performed by Japanese American multimedia avant-garde artist, musician and peace activist Yoko Ono on July 20, 1964, at the Yamaichi Concert Hall in Kyoto, Japan. It is one of the earliest and most significant works of the feminist art movement and Fluxus. [...]

This act of giving and receiving connects past, present and future and makes the viewer/ participant into a bearer of memory. The optimism, however tainted with the violence of the past, evokes a promise for the future, if we can avoid future war and violence. The fragments from these performances serve as reminders of the devastation of that violence. The anti-war readings give space for the work to function as 'a gesture of reparation and a ritual of remembrance' as well as to explore the complex relationship between aggression and generosity in the work."

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