Empathy

[aperson]

A piece made in the IFS generator Apophysis. The piece was based off of the following quote by Aldous Huxley:

"We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies--all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes."

[darkshark]

Re: Empathy

the quote doesnt quite match the feelings i get from the picture, i kinda like how its off-centered though, this image is definitely hard to explain, or even put into words......so......uhhh........ya?

[thyraxicmole]

Re: Empathy

how can you call that art its just squiggly lines divided down the offset middle eeeeeeeeeesqueek

[FFR4EVA_00]

Re: Empathy

how can you call that art its just squiggly lines divided down the offset middle eeeeeeeeeesqueek

I'm glad to see that you're banned.

Anyway, it's interesting, to say the least. I don't really like how it's off-center, though.

[Tyren]

Re: Empathy

I would say it is intentionally off centered. Im most curios to find out the logic behind creating a fractal from a quote...especially taking into consideration the level of thought required to touch upon metaphor (for example how would you code emotion or metaphor into a machine?). I took a quick look at the application used (Apophysis 2.2) It looks like quite a nice little program, didnt run across anything to do with texts...or quotes though. Do you know anything more about it aperson?

[aperson]

Re: Empathy

I would say it is intentionally off centered. Im most curios to find out the logic behind creating a fractal from a quote...especially taking into consideration the level of thought required to touch upon metaphor (for example how would you code emotion or metaphor into a machine?). I took a quick look at the application used (Apophysis 2.2) It looks like quite a nice little program, didnt run across anything to do with texts...or quotes though. Do you know anything more about it aperson?

Apophysis is an iterated function system which maps the trajectory of a particle across a specified system. I am a math major, math to me is more than equations and a tool for describing systems; it is inherently beautiful, and the patterns that emerge inside of it can be strinkingly emotional. I wouldn't consider a process devoid of beauty or emotion simply because some element of its creation can be parametrized.

The quote from Aldous Huxley describes the solitary nature of perception that humanity has. Though we can create languages which allow us to approximate the nature of experience, we are all ultimately island universes because we cannot convey the true 'isness' of an experience to another person.

This image is meant to represent that isolation. The mass on the left was an attempt to create a system which, on some level, could be understood by the mind to be a human face. The ambiguity and multilayering is intentional because of this. The brilliant orange object is leaving from the mouth area of the faces on the left and right, and it is meant to represent the notion of a thought. As you can see, the two sides of the flame are asymptotic: They try to connnect but either stop short or trail off to infinity. This is meant to symbolize the 'island universe' concept I described above.

[Tyren]

Re: Empathy

Thats a pretty enlightening perception of the picture, and conceptually speaking provides a good background behind what you find this image to represent. i also think you touched upon the inability to communicate thoughts completely effectively well. What about the specifics though? Are you familiar with the details of Apophysis? Such as how it actually can convey such an abstract image from something equally abstract? I know thats more CSE then math related, but i am continually fascinated with the human mind on how it plays god to machines.

[aperson]

Re: Empathy

Thats a pretty enlightening perception of the picture, and conceptually speaking provides a good background behind what you find this image to represent. i also think you touched upon the inability to communicate thoughts completely effectively well. What about the specifics though? Are you familiar with the details of Apophysis? Such as how it actually can convey such an abstract image from something equally abstract? I know thats more CSE then math related, but i am continually fascinated with the human mind on how it plays god to machines.

Our sensory system works by attenuating patterned signals out of walls of noise. Because of this, there is no specific threshold where a random pattern transcends the notion of randomness and becomes construed as a coherent pattern in our mind. Pretty much any stochastic system, through chance, can create some pattern which is interpreted by our mind to have significance on some higher order. This is the same reason you can look at textured floors or ceilings and force your mind to start seeing shapes and patterns expanding through them (even though the elements might be randomly distributed).

In this regard, thyraxicmole pretty much got the image right: It's nothing but a collection of lines.

[Tyren]

Re: Empathy

Im sure you would agree then that the image you painted for us is completely biased in your sense, and quite possibly not what Aldous Huxley had intentionally meant by it. As similar as it would be for us to view the painting and put meaning to it...one can only assume its increasingly harder to do so through a machine, which is just a human attempt to replicate such (via Apophysis), quite possibly flawed at that. Any ideas on this particular sensory system of Apophysis ? Directly questioning, that is, how the program might actually draw an image from this phrase.

[RandomPscho]

Re: Empathy

Tyren I think you are getting the whole program wrong. It basically graphs an equation. It is the human user who creates these equations, and puts them together like in the picture to create an intriguing image. The computer simple 'graphs' the equation the human wants it too, it has nothing to do with the quote. The human is the artist and the interpreter, and the quote is a source of inspiration. The computer is simply a tool to help with the drawing of a completely mathematical 'graph' that a person perceives as a picture with meaning.

[Tyren]

Re: Empathy

I see, so it is more in the genius of the artist, and is not even considered by the machine. So i suppose it really comes to the dedication to math, and as mentioned previously by aperson, the beauty which derives from putting it together in a system. Thats even more intruiging then what i was set out to find. Most excellent.