Re: CASSANDRA PROJECT

Scott deLahunta (sdela@ahk.nl)
Mon, 19 May 1997 11:33:00 +0200

Lisa -- I hope your 18th performance went well. Not possible for me to make
it as that would have been 5 AM here in Amsterdam -- although I suppose I
could have made an effort to get up then.

Just checked out the transcript and images from your rehearsal on the 5th of
May http://www.nyu.edu/education/music/up/casschat.html -- will you be
putting up the same information documenting the performance last night? It
would be very interesting to be able to compare the two... the rehearsal
document reads like many other chat, moo and cuseeme conversations I have
been part of, 90% of it is an attempt to sort out the technology. It seems
like you are getting quite a bit of tech support for the project... it would
be nice to know what sort of connection you had. The images seem very sharp,
not at all like what you find over normal phone lines, was it ISDN. Did you
ever get the sound to work well?

Speaking of internet/cuseeme performances: has anyone spent any time at the
Heaven site which Paul Sermon has been working on? The reflector was
194.94.211.200 -- I'm not sure if it's up any longer, but there were two
'bots' running the site(one named Dr. something or other, the other was 'Ex
Machina') delivering video and various bits and pieces of pre-scripted/
recorded information. I missed the opening on 14 May, so whenever I visited
only these 'bots' were there. They displayed very little 'real'
intelligence, and I was onto them in a few seconds. However, they fooled me
for a moment, and the arrival of more and more intelligent agents is
imminent. Given that Gary Kasparov has just made a major contribution to our
collective intelligence regarding AI by proclaiming that 'deep blue' made
it's first non-computer-like calculation... which may just speed up
developments in this area, I wonder when we will be participating in one of
these on-line performances with agents instead of humans?

As Negroponte's little saying goes (more or less) -- the amount of
information communicated across a room with a single wink far outpaces
anything we see in the communication activity on the net. Yet, we will
persist and in doing so begin to fill in the gaps with other mechanisms.
But, as these mechanisms will be part of the media framework within which
intelligent agents are also trying to evolve -- do we see a day in the
future when our efforts will converge?

Scott
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Scott deLahunta and Susan Rethorst
Writing Research Associates, NL
Sarphatipark 26-3, 1072 PB Amsterdam, NL
tel: +31 (0)20 662 1736
fax: +31 (0)20 470 1558
email: sdela@ahk.nl
http://huizen.dds.nl/~sdela/wra (WRITING RESEARCH ASSOCIATES)
http://www.art.net/~dtz (DANCE AND TECHNOLOGY ZONE )