Earlier today, I wrote about AI and photography based on an interesting panel conversation at Fotografiens Hus in Oslo. During the Q&A session, a musician in the audience said that he felt that the AI systems he had tried behaved so properly and asked if an AI can be “drunk” and whether we could “pour some alcohol into the machine” to make it a little freer and less “stiff” in its creative output. That is a very interesting question, hence this little reflection. ...
Today, I took part in an interesting panel conversation at Fotografiens Hus in Oslo in connection with the exhibition What We Call Real by Camila Urrego. This was the first time they had invited a photographer to exhibit works explicitly made “with AI,” and I was invited to contribute thoughts on the potential of AI for creative practice (in this case, photography). As MishMash picks up speed, I receive many requests for talks and panels on AI and creativity, and I try to say yes when I can make it. I have found this to be an excellent way to think about various AI use cases outside my core focus areas and to meet interesting people. Here are some thoughts based on my preparatory notes and reflections after the event. ...
Earlier today, I attended a lecture by Antonio Somaini at the University of Oslo’s seminar series on aesthetics. There were many interesting things in the lecture, which apparently was based on the manuscript of a forthcoming article. Here, I will focus on one thing that caused my interest: the thinking of latent spaces as an “anarchive”. Latent spaces A latent space is a mathematical representation used in machine learning where complex data (like images, text, or sound) is mapped into a lower-dimensional coordinate system so that similar items are positioned closer together. Instead of storing explicit labels or complete files, models encode underlying features and relationships, enabling interpolation, clustering, and the generation of new outputs by moving through that space. ...
I am at the Movement Computing Conference (MOCO) in Montpellier and have been discussing motion capture and analysis all day. Someone asked about my work on video visualisation, and this reminded me about a long wish for creating a browser-based visualiser. I have been developing video visualisation tools for more than two decades. In the beginning, I did it with Max/MSP/Jitter, then moved on to Matlab, and later Python. Until recently, web technologies were not advanced enough, and hardware was not powerful enough to do anything in the browser in real time. And, I didn’t have the programming skills to make it work. Now, with the help of CoPilot, I have finally made it happen: VideoViz is here! ...
Over the last few days, we have run a toolbox hackathon between the three music-related research centres of excellence in the Nordic countries (MIB, MMBB, and RITMO). Researchers across all centres are actively developing various toolboxes, including myself and the Musical Gestures Toolbox (MGT). Due to all the MishMash things happening lately, I was unable to spend much time myself on hacking. Instead, I thought of the opportunity to test how GitHub Agents could assist. ...
MishMash was formally opened yesterday with a full-day program featuring a hackathon, research application workshop, work package meetings, industry panel, match-making session, and, finally, the grand opening ceremony in the Aula of the University of Oslo. Research application workshop The day began with a research application workshop held by Thomas de Ridder (UiB) with good support from Siv Haugan and Anette Askedal from the Research Council of Norway (RCN). They gave an overview of different funding opportunities from both RCN and the EU and gave tips on how to write a competitive grant. ...
I wanted to test whether I could add a local chatbot to arj.no/chat/ that answers questions about my website content and not the whole internet. Since my blog is built using Hugo, a static site generator, I don’t have any server in the background that can host the Large Language Model (LLM). Instead I looked for a simple solution with standard web technologies and files. Running a model in the browser with WebLLM After discussing with CoPilot, I ended up using WebLLM, which allows language models to run inside the browser. It relies on WebGPU, which makes local AI processing possible, if you have Edge or Chrome available. ...
Some weeks ago, I wrote about how I made blinking MishMash bubbles. Today, I wanted to see if I could create more variations on this and make a longer animation. This was inspired by the dynamic RITMO emblem, which reconfigures itself once in a while: That is a video, though, and was made manually back in 2018. Now, I would like to know if I can get agential help creating dynamic GIFs from SVG files. ...
Many musicians rely on basic tools in everyday life, including a tuner, a metronome, and a keyboard. I support the kids in a marching band, and I see that they rely on numerous poorly developed apps that differ between iOS and Android devices. Many of them also include ads, and some even play video ads in the middle of a tuning session. I wanted to see if I could develop some web-based apps to solve the problem. ...
While part of the group that developed the Norwegian Career Assessment Matrix (NOR-CAM), I strongly advocated for the development of an “automagic” CV system. This was based on the fact that I (and many other researchers) spend too much time working on formatting our CVs for new templates. All funders have their own CV templates, which often change from year to year. Copying and formatting the same information over and over is (literally) a waste of time, so there is room for improvement. ...