Neosentient Design: From Interaction and Interface Design to Neosentient Design | From Recombinant Poetics to Recombinant Informatics Bill Seaman stellt seine künstlerische Forschung im Rahmen der unplugged heads 2.0 im INM-Kulturbunker vor. Dienstag, 13. März 2012, 19:30 Uhr Wir freuen uns außerordentlich, dass wir einen der Pioniere der Medienkunst gewinnen konnten, seine neueste künstlerische Forschung am INM vorzustellen. Mit dem Vortrag von Bill Seaman knüpfen wir an die Gründungsidee des INMs an, ein Inkubationszentrum für und zwischen allen Künsten und Wissenschaften zu sein. In seinem Forschungsgebiet, das Seaman als "Neosentience" bezeichnet, setzt sich der Künstler und Wissenschaftler mit der Frage auseinander, ob und in welcher Weise in künstlich-intelligenten Systemen Empfindungen möglich sind. Er stellt damit einerseits fundamentale Fragen zum Wesen von meist nur Lebewesen zugeschriebenen Qualitäten, die jeden von uns interessieren und verstört andererseits Skeptiker mit der konstruktiven Forschung, die auf eine Realisierung von Empfindungen in künstlich-intelligente Systemen abzielt. Für Bill Seaman stellen "empfindsame" künstlich-intelligente Systeme eine konsequente Fortsetzung von interaktiver Medienkunst und Mediendesign dar. Der Vortrag findet in englischer Sprache statt. Es folgt eine Einführung in "Neosentient Design" mit den Worten des Künstlers: Neosentience, a potentially new branch of scientific and poetic inquiry related to Artificial Intelligence, was first suggested in a paper by Bill Seaman as part of a new embodied robotic paradigm, arising out of ongoing theoretical research with Otto E. Rossler. Seaman, artist-researcher and Rossler, theoretical biologist and physicist, have been examining the potential of generating an intelligent, embodied, multimodal sensing and computational robotic system. Although related to artificial intelligence the goal of this system is the creation of an entity exhibiting a new form of sentience. New approaches to interface design will vastly expand the current ways we interact with both our computational systems and with each other. Initially, thought experiments exploring the rubric of Neosentience can contribute to innovative approaches to transdisciplinary production and in particular new approaches to the functionality of the internet. The internet will be transformed and will function as a transformative agent in terms of knowledge production exploring art, science, the humanities, and the future of gaming. Seaman is interested in the creation of new platforms to enable a transdisciplinary, multi-perspective approach to knowledge production. Given the predictions of Ray Kurzweil and others in terms of the Singularity, it is interesting to speculate on new forms of interface? relational systems that can be informed by artificial intelligence.
	Bill Seaman, Professor at the Department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA An internationally known media artist, scholar, and media researcher, has had over thirty major installation works and commissions around the world, a dozen solo exhibitions, and numerous performance collaborations, video screenings, and articles/essays/reviews in books and catalogues. His work often explores an expanded media-oriented poetics through various technological means. More recently he has been exploring notions surrounding "Recombinant Informatics" - a multi-perspective approach to inventive knowledge production. He has been commissioned on a number of occasions. He is currently working on a series of art/science collaborations ? poetic installations and scientific research papers. The book Neosentience | The Benevolence Engine with Otto Rössler has recently come out on Intellect Press. He is also collaborating with artist/computer scientist Daniel Howe on multiple works exploring AI and creative writing/multi-media and completing an album of experimental music with Howe entitled Minor Distance. He is developing a new VR work and undertaking interface research with Todd Berreth; is exploring the creation of a transdisciplinary research tool "The Insight Engine"; is collaborating with John Supko on a new generative audio work; and is working with Gideon May and Rachel Brady on re-articulating "The World Generator / The Engine of Desire" a virtual world building system. Bill Seaman's website
Neosentience: 'Sentience' is not yet used in the formal languages of either cognitive science or artificial intelligence. Two related approaches are (1) the generation of artificial minds via parallel processing, in a robotic system; (2) an alternative approach is the generation of an electrochemical computer as a robotic system. Biomimetics, along with state-of-the-art computer visualization are employed. The electrochemical paradigm has a complexity that exceeds standard computational means. The scientific and the poetic elements of the project are motivated by research related to human sentience. This transdisciplinary approach necessitates different forms of inquiry to inform this project such as cognitive science including psychology, education/learning, neuroscience, linguistics, philosophy, anthropology, biology, the humanities and the arts. The notion of building a model for a Neosentient computer and related robotic system is both an exciting and daunting task. In order to model and ultimately build such a device one seeks to borrow important operative concepts and processes from the body and re-understand them in the context of a mechanism that is not human in nature. We have articulated the following 'Operative Definition' of Neosentience - We consider a neosentient robotic entity to be a system that could exhibit well defined functionalities: -  It learns; -  It intelligently navigates; -  It interacts via natural language; -  It generates simulations of behavior (it 'thinks' about potential behaviors) before acting in physical space; -  It is creative in some manner (it has a sense of play); -  It comes to have a deep situated knowledge of context through multi-modal sensing; -  It displays mirror competence.

We have entitled this entity The Benevolence Engine. The interfunctionality is complex enough to operationally mimic human sentience. Benevolence can in principle arise in the interaction of two such systems. Along the path to generating the Neosentient one can begin to approach design through the filter of a series of thought experiments. What is Neosentient design? How can we bring the pragmatic notions discussed above to the service of new design practices? Can we create an "Insight Engine" to help us in this long term endeavor? What would Neosentient architecture be. How will the connectivity of the internet help articulate the nascent potentials of the Neosentient? Can we also begin to create new networks of computers that transcend our current notion of connectivity. Such a network might use more traditional computers and servers as a network switch but enable new connectivity to Electrochemical Computers, Nano computers, Quantum computers; Light computers; new forms of Analogue computers etc. (each having their own special qualities). Such an "Engine of Engines" may have a series of new properties to enable new forms of research. Along with this we need to explore the notion of polysensing and new forms of interface design, to enable learning systems to gleen multi-modal information about differing environments.