Posted: October 28, 2011 at 12:42 pm

On one hand we have the deep machine learning systems discussed in the previous post, which are quite complex (from a mathematical perspective) and only roughly informed by neuro and cognitive sciences. On the other hand are cognitive architectures that are inspired by biological knowledge (BICAs). These are systems that attempt to balance high level (psychological knowledge) with low level (neurological knowledge) in a tractable system that models mind-brains. These systems can be purely symbolic, connectionist (sub-symbolic) or hybrids of the two. While they are biologically inspired they favour a high level abstraction of cognition over fine details of brain (neuron) function. (more…)

Posted: October 28, 2011 at 9:53 am

As part of stepping back to see the big picture I’ve turned a second look at deep machine learning systems and biologically inspired cognitive architectures (as suggested by my supervisor), the latter of which will be discussed in another post.

Deep machine learning systems attempt to resolve an issue with “shallow” learning which has increasingly become the following process: Input → Feature Extraction → Machine Learning. An argument against this approach is that the “intelligence” shifts from the machine learning system to the human-centred, and domain specific, art of feature extraction. Deep learning systems excise the middle man, allowing Input → Machine Learning, without the intermediary. (more…)

Posted: October 20, 2011 at 1:41 pm

After writing the previous post I had a meeting with my supervisor yesterday. He suggested that the answers to these questions of feature abstraction should be contextualized by the machine learning method used to organize these perceptual units. So I’m putting further development on the back burner to look at the big picture and do more reading. Following is a figure of the overall structure of the whole system, as I currently imagine it. (more…)

Posted: October 20, 2011 at 11:55 am

Since it’s time to explore some clustering methods for these perceptual patches, I first calculated a RGB histogram for each patch, making use of the mask. In attempting to make sense of the structure of the openCV hist (1 channel, but 3 dimensions) I realized that perhaps the hist is not appropriate for this project. The central question is: what is important about colour for the purpose of associating perceptual units? Perhaps the histogram should be abstracted into a set of concepts (for lack of a better term) representing major colour clusters. (more…)

Posted: October 5, 2011 at 3:01 pm

I’ve finally managed to get the segmentation data into a useful form. Following is a reconstruction of the original image from extracted patches, and a corresponding image that shows the segments, filled in random colours.

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Posted: September 1, 2011 at 6:05 pm

Now that I’ve passed my comps I’ve been getting back into working on image segmentation.

Here is the current state of segmentation (using the same test image as in previous posts), where every region, no matter now small, is coloured in a random colour:

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Posted: July 29, 2011 at 10:36 am

I successfully defended my comprehensive examination yesterday. The exam consists of three questions, two written and a third orally presented. Here are my answers:

1. Breadth Question: Propose your own typology of generative arts and choose relevant examples to illustrate it.
2. Depth Question: Present, discuss and contrast two current models of dreaming and two current models of mental imagery and/or imagination. For each of the four models, discuss their relevance to computational creativity (the field concerned with using computers as creative means).
3. Methodology Question (limit 30 minute presentation): What methods are available to evaluate generative art systems inspired by cognitive sciences? Present and compare at least three methodologies.

Posted: July 14, 2011 at 4:03 pm

My written questions have been submitted, and I’ll be defending on July 28th.

Posted: June 30, 2011 at 4:35 pm

This is a sketch of the system as I’m currently thinking about it. I’m not entirely happy with it, and some aspects are unclear. For example the use of object location in space and time is not known yet. Also there needs significantly more detail in the description of the Neuron-Like Network. (more…)

Posted: June 30, 2011 at 3:50 pm

One of the points of discussion with the philosophers was whether the dreaming machine will have analogues of all the characteristics of human sleep. Some of these don’t make sense to include, as in the alteration of self-consciousness (as the machine has no consciousness), but one in particular, the stages of sleep ranging from REM sleep to Slow-Wave-Sleep, could be relevant. (more…)

Posted: June 28, 2011 at 11:32 am

I tried doing the segmentation in CIE Luv colourspace, as its perceptually oriented, but it appears to actually do a worse job of extracting components than RGB space:

Posted: June 24, 2011 at 4:44 pm

I’ve been keeping my rough notes on DM3 for quite a while now, since doing the directed readings with Steven, through IAT 888, and now for the “actual” development. I’ve also been keeping notes through the early IAT888 development. I’ve gone through the documents and commented and/or striked out stuff that is no longer relevant, is too dependent on development, or is just out of scope with the time limitations of the project. I wanted to post an archived version before I remove the striked out text. I’m using the information contained in it to start sketching out a system design. I hope my next post will be a start of that document, and a diagram of the system as I’m currently thinking about it.

Posted: June 22, 2011 at 10:44 am

I’ve finally had a chance to listen to the recording, made during my meeting with Neurophilosophers Lyle Crawford and Simon Pollon, and one of my committee members, Dr. Steven Barnes, and write some rough notes. The purpose of the meeting was to explore philosophy as a overarching framework to constrain choices that impact artistic, computational and physiological aspects of the project. The discussion was valuable and we discussed a number of issues I had not considered. We discussed a philosophical perspective on the project and particular issues around conceptual development and meaning. This post is organized into sections that reflect the various themes covered.

(more…)

Posted: June 20, 2011 at 4:15 pm

My Annotated_Bibliography has been formally accepted! It contains lots of background and contextual information on the project.

Posted: June 17, 2011 at 11:17 am

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Posted: June 16, 2011 at 4:36 pm

During a recent committee meeting after discussing my Annotated Bibliography I returned to discussing the current sketch of the system:

The “S” boxes on the left are the raw stimulus from the world, the banks in the middle are the VQ codebooks that represent the visual prototypes (they represent classes of inputs). The black dots are neuron-like structures that learn associations between prototypes. These are the high level “concepts”. During a dream, latent activation will activate these neurons, which will result in the associated prototypes being activated. This is how a dream would be “imagined”. (more…)

Posted: June 9, 2011 at 2:51 pm

After reading the previous post I am struck by the fact that I have not come very far at all conceptually. After reading so many refs in order to finish my annotated bibliography I’m still left with the same essential question. Indeed this question, the search for a middle ground between causal and intentional conceptions of meaning, may not be (re)solvable.

I met with a specialist in constructivist development, Jeremy Carpendale, to triangulate and clarify my readings in infant development. The corner stone of development is that meaning is that which can be done with an object (everything is an object to be sucked), and/or the sensation that it fulfills. Both require that the organism have two things: biologically rooted needs/desires and will. (more…)

Posted: May 26, 2010 at 12:20 pm

As I’m reading on mental imagery, and mental representation I’m torn between the Constructivist and Empiricist positions on development, as described by Muller, Sokol and Overton. On one hand their is the idea that mental representation is consciously constructed in relation to the world in an embodied fashion. The cornerstone of this position is that representation exists to serve the intentionally directed will of the agent. On the other hand there is the notion that the relationship between mental representation and the world is a causal one. The world  impacts itself on the agent, who passively receives signals that are transformed into representations. (more…)

Posted: May 13, 2010 at 3:15 pm

Following is the final presentation and paper created for IAT888 (metacreation) for the perception and synthesis system of DM3. Here is a teaser of one of the automated accumulations:

DM3 Perception-Synthesis IAT888 Final Paper

DM3 Perception-Synthesis IAT888 Final Presentation

Posted: March 29, 2010 at 9:22 am

It appears that all the SOM weights fed by edge-detection are very similar:

Corresponding to these resulting accumulations:

I think the poor accumulations are due to poor distance measures considering the edge-detections. The next step is to break the objects into a few Euclidean blocks, and calculate hists from those blocks. They should be much more flexible regarding object edges than the edge-detection. Basically it appears that two edge-detections of the same object in different orientations are as different as edge-detections of two different objects.