Heike Sperling
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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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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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Heidegger, Martin: Identität und Differenz (1955–1957)

Absprung

Last and First Men  (2020) by Jóhann Jóhannsson
February 22nd, 2024

Via Wikipedia: "Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson directed and scored a multimedia Last and First Men, 'combining a film narrated by actress Tilda Swinton and accompanying score played by the BBC Philharmonic' at the 2017 Manchester International Festival. The 16mm black-and-white film is predominantly of memorial sculptures erected in the former Republic of Yugoslavia. Jóhann collaborated with José Enrique Macián on writing the narration adapted from Stapledon's novel. [...] In 2020, a film of this work was released as Jóhann's debut and final directorial work, with composer and sound artist Yair Elazar Glotman completing the work after Jóhann's death in February 2018."

Outstanding cinematography by Sturla Brandth Grøvlen.

Via The New York Times: "Based on the 1930 science fiction novel by Olaf Stapledon, the film mainly consists of 16-millimeter black-and-white images of abandoned monuments, identified in the credits as being in the Balkans. No humans appear. While the camera surveys the asymmetries of the monolithic sculptures, often pondering the sky through negative space in the stonework, Tilda Swinton delivers a voice-over that begins with an epic poem-style invocation ('listen patiently') and is framed as a dispatch from two billion years from now, when our descendants, bracing for extinction, share a telepathic hive mind and have appearances that would look grotesque to us."

Via Variety: "To the accompaniment of Swinton’s measured voiceover and Jóhannsson’s alternately shiver-soft and stormy score, Grøvlen’s camera slowly and gradually explores these vast, eerie forms of stone and concrete as if they were natural wonders, sometimes opening on peculiar, unidentifiable architectural details before revealing their looming place in the landscape. That no historical or even geographical context is given for these harsh, magnificent tableaux of indestructible human folly is somehow apt: Their meaning will inevitably be as lost and open to interpretation by future generations (or, in our narrator’s wording, 'species') as they are here. The crisp, hard lines and contrasts of Grøvlen’s monochrome compositions allude to the Spomeniks’ stubborn permanence: Perhaps they’re all the eighteenth species has left of ours, after however many intervening apocalypses.
That underlying theme of what we leave, of endurance in the face of the ephemeral, is hard not to consider in the light of Jóhannsson’s own 2018 passing. Intended or otherwise, Last and First Men finally stands as a brutally beautiful memorial to his own life and artistry, ready to be reinterpreted and appropriated by any audiences who stumble upon it in years to come. That makes it a severe work, but not a bleak one:
As it prompts consideration of how and when our species will end — see it as a tactful climate change warning if you will — it also invites wonder at our capacity to evolve and invent, and a kind of zen respect for the universe that, as Swinton’s unnervingly unfazed messenger gently reminds us, will outlive us all, even when our mightiest monuments tumble."

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Do[o]mestic Bliss series by Cristina Rizzi Guelfi inspired by Betty Friedan's book The Feminine Mystique.

End of 2023

My Gratitude List: 10 things
December 31st, 2023

Book Another role model on my path to become that dangerous, old women is larger-than-life artist Grace Jones. Her autobiography I'll Never Write My Memoirs, as told to Paul Morley, is breathtaking, surreal, and hilarious. A quote from Barbara Ellen's review for The Guardian, "Before she leaves, I ask her – what does she think helped her survive all those years in worlds that have chewed other people up? 'Again, it’s that thing of selling your soul – that would chew you up. I can’t be bought and people hate that. Everybody has their price – but not me.' "

Concert In September a friend took me to see Colombian multi-instrumentalist Lucrecia Dalt performing ¡Ay!’s contents, accompanied by the drummer/ percussionist Alex Lázaroin at Cologne's philharmonic as part of Tobias Thomas' wonderful Round series. I was blown away by the extroverted and humorous show.

Documentary Saw Saudi Runaway, directed and written by Susanne Regina Meures. The film shows a young woman in Saudi Arabia filming herself as she attempts to flee before her arranged wedding. A a suspenseful and courageous documentary. "Although the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is at the centre of world affairs, very few authentic images of life there exist. Muna’s story is of great urgency and relevance and essentially summarises a human rights drama at its core."

Exhibition The Ludwig Forum Aachen presented Ya Estamos Aquí [We’re Here Already], the first survey exhibition of the Cuban artist Belkis Ayón (Havana, 1967-1999) in the German-speaking world. Curated by Eva Birkenstock and Annette Lagler. Material, themes, craftsmanship, intensity, and the sublime presentation were jaw-droppingly exciting. Thank you, Sarah Sczcesny for making me go!

Film SUM is a transdisciplinary performance art project by Kelvin Kilonzo and Pablo Gīw. This year they worked with filmmaker Maurits Boettger on Dyschronia, a stunningly beautiful video questioning the notions of movement in a post-apocalyptic scenery. I had the great honour to work with Kelvin and Pablo as they prepared to premiere Dyschronia at Julia Stoschek Foundation in Berlin.

Health This year saw me reading quite some books on women's health pre, during, and post menopause. I could not believe that most of the information is not available to every women entering her forth decade. Ladies, it is ultra important to get yourself educated on this topic, and all the wonderful options you have. A good place to start is here and here [in German].

Record My favorite this year was without a doubt Róisín Murphy's album Hit Parade produced by DJ Koze. The track I still hear in a continuous loop is Free Will, and I wholeheartedly recommend to read some Alan Watts with it. Can't wait to see her perform in my hometown in March.

Talk Went to see Thomas Metzinger at phil.Cologne, was surprised about his unexpected handsomeness, and received a reminder on Immanuel Kant's Innere Redlichkeit [intellectual honesty]. Being honest with myself is necessary for me in order to stay sane and healthy. If interested you might also want to consider this 2017 essay by Thomas Metzinger.

TV Series Food might be the single most time-consuming subject of my life, in almost every way – good and bad. I wasn't sure if I really wanted to watch The Bear. But the reviews were all in favor of it, "Flawless performances, boundlessly beautiful direction and a spare, allusive script, all of which are as good in the quietest moments as the more plentiful loud ones, turn the story into something properly special." (The Guardian). I so loved both seasons.

VMD23 Colleague and friend Christian Schäfer invited Vicky Wehrmeister to perform at IMM's annual Visual Music Day. Her performance, her humble but powerful posture, singing with this incredible lightness, kindness, and inscrutability got really under my skin. We are so honored and pleased that she is now part of our fabulous faculty for the post-graduate Klang und Realität program at IMM.

So, here we are... And what is next?

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One of the first color images of Earth, a digital image mosaic taken in 1967 by the ATS-3 satellite, was used as the cover image of Whole Earth Catalog's first edition.

Whole Earth Index

A nearly-complete archive of Whole Earth publications
October 18th, 2023

Via Whole Earth Index: "Here lies a nearly-complete archive of Whole Earth publications, a series of journals and magazines descended from the Whole Earth Catalog, published by Stewart Brand and the POINT Foundation between 1970 and 2002. They are made available here for scholarship, education, and research purposes."

Thanks to the New Shelton wet/dry!

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Beverly Hills pink clown trespassers by Imp Kerr.

News is bad for you

We are beginning to recognise how toxic news can be
Oktober 1st, 2023

Via The Guardian: "In the past few decades, the fortunate among us have recognised the hazards of living with an overabundance of food (obesity, diabetes) and have started to change our diets. But most of us do not yet understand that news is to the mind what sugar is to the body. News is easy to digest. The media feeds us small bites of trivial matter, tidbits that don't really concern our lives and don't require thinking. That's why we experience almost no saturation. Unlike reading books and long magazine articles (which require thinking), we can swallow limitless quantities of news flashes, which are bright-coloured candies for the mind. Today, we have reached the same point in relation to information that we faced 20 years ago in regard to food. We are beginning to recognise how toxic news can be.

News misleads.
News is irrelevant.
News has no explanatory power.
News is toxic to your body.
News increases cognitive errors.
News inhibits thinking.
News works like a drug.
News wastes time.
News makes us passive.
News kills creativity.

Society needs journalism – but in a different way. Investigative journalism is always relevant. We need reporting that polices our institutions and uncovers truth. But important findings don't have to arrive in the form of news. Long journal articles and in-depth books are good, too.

I have now gone without news for four years, so I can see, feel and report the effects of this freedom first-hand: less disruption, less anxiety, deeper thinking, more time, more insights. It's not easy, but it's worth it."

TED Talk Four reasons you should stop watching the news by Rolf Dobelli.

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Scenes from the Quarantrain by Jim Merullo.

What the heck happened in 2012?

On the year the modern world was invented
August 25th, 2023

Via The Intrinsic Perspective: "The point to all this is just to make explicit what I think so many already know and feel: if we were forced to pinpoint a year, 2012 appears to be a good choice for when the modern world was invented, and we’ve been living in it now for a little over a decade.

And to go back to the decade theory: certainly it’s arguable that, ten years into existence, our world feels, at least in terms of vibes, very similar to the world at the end of the previous cultural revolution of the 1960s. Even just politically, while the cultural revolution of 2012 grained a great deal of ground in institutions, it has spent much of its initial momentum, and is being combated institutionally by, e.g., the Supreme Court’s recent decision to ban affirmative action. A fundamental detente has been reached. The cultural revolution that people now call “wokeness,” and the debates around it are still ever-present, but also feel somewhat spent.

The degree to which this is true can be judged by one cultural artifact in particular: Barbie. The movie. For yes, the biggest movie of the summer is about patriarchy, and its openly political plot and language and messaging would have contained a lot of academic gobbledegook for the average citizen in 2011. But, at the same time, the movie is a clear commercialization about a toy, and can be interpreted ambiguously, parodying itself; ripe for interpretation, it has been championed by liberals and conservatives alike. See how, for instance, that even within that most conservative institution, The Daily Wire, there is disagreement on whether Barbie is actually a left-leaning movie (as Ben Shapiro believes) or, secretly, a subversively right-leaning movie (as Michael Knowles believes). The confusion over the messaging of Barbie is a synecdoche for the confusion over our own post-revolution world, which now looks corrupt and run-down, much like the depressive “malaise” of the 1970s. [...]

Surely, things must be more complicated than these decade theories, no? Of course. Obviously so. As a level of analysis they are nearly mystical. But if you had used this model of [cultural revolution → inflationary period→ lasting economic and cultural malaise] back 2012 I think you’d have a claim to near-Nostradamus levels of precognition. And that third stage would predict, much like the post-1971 world, a coming permanent change in long-standing economic trends (followed, potentially, in the 2030s with the return of Big Hair, leg warmers, and cocaine).

If we are to spend the 2020s mirroring the 1970s, and therefore occupied with domestic turmoil as the post-revolution cultural tremors play out, I suppose we might as well begin to ape it as much as possible."

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From the Still Austin Seasonal Bottled in Bond Series by Marc Burckhardt.

3 ways

AI is transforming music
July 31st, 2023

Via The Conversation: "Here are three ways AI is changing the way music gets made – each of which could threaten human musicians in various ways:

1. Song composition
Many programs can already generate music with a simple prompt from the user, such as Electronic Dance with a Warehouse Groove.
Fully generative apps train AI models on extensive databases of existing music. This enables them to learn musical structures, harmonies, melodies, rhythms, dynamics, timbres and form, and generate new content that stylistically matches the material in the database.
There are many examples of these kinds of apps. But the most successful ones, like Boomy, allow nonmusicians to generate music and then post the AI-generated results on Spotify to earn money. Spotify recently removed many of these Boomy-generated tracks, claiming that this would protect human artists’ rights and royalties.
The two companies quickly came to an agreement that allowed Boomy to re-upload the tracks. But the algorithms powering these apps still have a troubling ability to infringe upon existing copyright, which might go unnoticed to most users. After all, basing new music on a data set of existing music is bound to cause noticeable similarities between the music in the data set and the generated content.
Furthermore, streaming services like Spotify and Amazon Music are naturally incentivized to develop their own AI music-generation technology. Spotify, for instance, pays 70% of the revenue of each stream to the artist who created it. If the company could generate that music with its own algorithms, it could cut human artists out of the equation altogether.
Over time, this could mean more money for giant streaming services, less money for musicians – and a less human approach to making music.

2. Mixing and mastering
Machine-learning-enabled apps that help musicians balance all of the instruments and clean up the audio in a song – what’s known as mixing and mastering – are valuable tools for those who lack the experience, skill or resources to pull off professional-sounding tracks.
Over the past decade, AI’s integration into music production has revolutionized how music is mixed and mastered. AI-driven apps like Landr, Cryo Mix and iZotope’s Neutron can automatically analyze tracks, balance audio levels and remove noise.
These technologies streamline the production process, allowing musicians and producers to focus on the creative aspects of their work and leave some of the technical drudgery to AI.
While these apps undoubtedly take some work away from professional mixers and producers, they also allow professionals to quickly complete less lucrative jobs, such as mixing or mastering for a local band, and focus on high-paying commissions that require more finesse. These apps also allow musicians to produce more professional-sounding work without involving an audio engineer they can’t afford.

3. Instrumental and vocal reproduction
Using tone transfer algorithms via apps like Mawf, musicians can transform the sound of one instrument into another.
Thai musician and engineer Yaboi Hanoi’s song Enter Demons & Gods, which won the third international AI Song Contest in 2022, was unique in that it was influenced not only by Thai mythology, but also by the sounds of native Thai musical instruments, which have a non-Western system of intonation. One of the most technically exciting aspects of Yaboi Hanoi’s entry was the reproduction of a traditional Thai woodwind instrument – the pi nai – which was resynthesized to perform the track.
A variant of this technology lies at the core of the Vocaloid voice synthesis software, which allows users to produce convincingly human vocal tracks with swappable voices.
Unsavory applications of this technique are popping up outside of the musical realm. For example, AI voice swapping has been used to scam people out of money.
But musicians and producers can already use it to realistically reproduce the sound of any instrument or voice imaginable. The downside, of course, is that this technology can rob instrumentalists of the opportunity to perform on a recorded track."

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