CALENDAR

Human Complex Systems 110
Artificial Culture
Exploring Human Complex Worlds

Winter 2006

"That's another thing we've learned from your Nation," said Mein Herr, "map-making. But we've carried it much further than you. What do you consider the largest map that would be really useful?"
"About six inches to the mile."
"Only six inches!"exclaimed Mein Herr. "We very soon got to six yards to the mile. Then we tried a hundred yards to the mile. And then came the grandest idea of all! We actually made a map of the country, on the scale of a mile to the mile!"
"Have you used it much?" I enquired.
"It has never been spread out, yet," said Mein Herr: "the farmers objected: they said it would cover the whole country, and shut out the sunlight! So we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well.

From Sylvie and Bruno Concluded by Lewis Carroll, first published in 1893.

And the signifieds butt heads with the signifiers,
and we all fall down slack-jawed to marvel at words!
While across the sky sheet the impossible birds,
In a steady, illiterate movement homewards.

Joanna Newsome, "This Side of the Blue." (2004 Drag City)

"In times of fear people turn to fundamentalist mindsets, and I don't mean that only in terms of religion. There's economic fundamentalism; there's political fundamentalism, and so forth. And that's really a reducing of the complexity to very clear black versus white, right versus wrong, issues. When that happens, it is very easy for people to take stark, and harshly polarized, points of view and simply lob bombs back and forth at one another verbally. I think there is no question that that is, to some extent, the nature of the discourse in this country right now. And I long to have us move to an understanding of the complex nature of these things."

Rushworth Kidder (President, Institute for Global Ethics). Radio Interview, "The World," November 22, 2005

January 10 - INTRODUCTION
The Human Complex Systems Program
Artificial Culture

Films on Simulation including Dark City & The 13th Floor
"The Slipstream of Mixed Realities" by Gessler & Hayles.

Movies on Complexity: Syriana - Munich

Epistemology: We know the world around us through representations (literally re-presentations of reality):
Cognitions, performance, art, discourse, models, mathematics, computation, simulation. Cultural and scientific constructions, e.g. kinship vs genetic affinity. What are the pros and cons of each in terms of representing the external world? What fitness advantages do each have?

Things-That-Think: The cognitive intermediation between outselves and our technologies: artifacts, living and work spaces, architectures, settlement patterns and our social and physical environments.

Evolution - the Creative Force behind our Intelligence captured in Evolutionary Computation.

Video - Karl Sims, "Evolved Virtual Creatures."

Our mission: To describing, understanding and explaining the complexities of our world computationally.

We jump right in to Borland C++ Builder and write "Half Way There" from scratch.

Handout: Borland and C++ Basics / Language and Functions

January 12

Collect $20 for "course reader" to be handed out in segments throughout the quarter.

For those who are advanced. Please use this time to develop ideas or prototypes for three simulation projects. I will distribute some "inspirational" books for you to look at. The projects should focus on "social" or "cultural" problems and I would like to see progress on a weekly basis. This is a good opportunity to work up something publishable!

USC's Institute for Creative Technology (ICT): A collaboration between Paramount Studios and DARPA to "build the holodeck." DVD introduction...

DVD - ICT, "60 Minutes."

Break: Photos for our "Participants" page, which will look something like this!

Handout: Managing and Turning in Your Borland Projects.

Handout: "Half-Way-There" as a sample programming challenge, the project files of which are conveniently available for download from our Simulations pages.

For the rest of us, I will go over the basics of Borland and C++ again, the sample program, and the handouts, in detail. If you have any questions, now is the time to ask them. I would like you to practice "cranking out code" so that you begin to feel comfortable with it. Have fun. Write silly stuff. Experiment now before we get into more serious simulations, hopefully next week...

You will make mistakes. I will make mistakes. Borland will sometimes be flakey. That is how we all learn. Once we get over the first hump on the learning curve we can begin to have fun... "I guarantee it!"

January 17

DUE TODAY: "Half Way There."

DVD - ICT, "Overview."

Color space: the RGB Color Cube - PhotoShop.
Scope - where variables exist and where they don't.
As with games, we are writing interactive Event-driven applications.

Representing agency, space and time - some formalisms.

We cut-and-paste a simulation using:
RASTER (CELLULAR) spatial representation, and
FIXED SCHEDULING temporal representation:

Growth by Diffusion Limited Aggregation...

Enhancements?
Release two agents from opposite sides.
Only stick if you encounter 2 stuck neighbors.
Create 3 agent types with different neighborhood preferences (begins to look like Segregation).
Stick only where there is no more than 1 stuck neighbor.

January 19

!!! Survival Research Labs !!!
"Producing the most dangerous shows on earth."
SRL at Fringe Exhibitions
Saturday, January 21, from 6 - 8 PM
504 chung king court
los angeles 90012
MapQuest
(213) 613-0160

SWARM Exhibition, Philadelphia

Brian introduces Andy Lomas on aggregation.
What rules might produce these configurations?

Borland Help.
Borland Newsgroups.
Build sample applications to learn to use new components.

Other ideas for the Growth application:

1. Cyan, magenta and yellow agents are released. The sticking rules for settling are different for each.
2. Release differently colored agents at different times.
3. Release agents from only one edge at a time, and procede clockwise around the perimeter.
4. Only stick if there is only one neighbor, or exactly two, or exactly tree only along one side of the neighborhood, etc.
5. Expand the neighborhood and only stick to certain shapes.
6. Only stick on the Nth encounter with a neighbor.
7. Build a 3d version in Open Graphics Language.
8. Slow the ShowPath routine with a TrackBar.
9. Reverse the color rendering.
10. Create an OnPaint() event-handler.
11. Introduce a swirling current.
12. ...

January 24

Growth Application is due today.

Participant Demonstrations of "tweaks" to "Growth."
Some debugging hints: Pause, Help, NewsGroups, WebRing.
TrackBar, Edit, Timer, Shapes...

The best way to learn a component is to play with it!

January 26

• Software "Bending" - http://hjem.get2net.dk/in70mm/
• Survival Research Labs - Report and Photos: Brian's, mine...
• Using Borland's NewsGroups.
• The Optimal Size of a Terrorist Network.

We cut-and-paste a simulation using:
RASTER (CELLULAR) spatial representation, and
CINEMATIC SCHEDULING temporal representation:

Conway's "Game of Life." This is a well-known and well-studied cellular automata rule-set that exhibits many of the notions embraced by the idea of emergence.

??? Ideas for tweaks and experiments ???

January 31

Mirek's Cellebration - A Compendium of Cellular Automata.

VPRO Amsterdam - Documentary Video on Artificial Life

February 2

Conway's "Game of Life" Application is due today.

More complex agents, random polling:
Shelling's Segregation Model.

February 7

February 9

February 14

February 16

February 21

February 23

February 28

March 2

March 7

March 9

March 14