Diptychs

[photoriot]

<p>Tim, in a way, it sounds like you are a painter criticizing the camera for not having feelings, merely recording the scene as it's told using some sort of algorithm to pick exposure (guessing most people aren't doing this manually these days). I'd love to hear your reaction to ostagram.ru, which gives me some of the same feelings you have, though I try to embrace it in spite of that sort of resistance, since the times they are a-changing. (PS - still waiting for Trippy Diptych 2!)</p>

<p>I'm right now adding 'click in the grey area next to the next-keyword-match icon' to show what keywords match, which may give a warmer feeling.</p>

<p>Although in the end I want my site to really have feelings, for now I view it as a tool to explore my own feelings, especially as I begin to see how I project agency on it that it doesn't have. It's like getting on a bike and riding around in Plato's metaphor of the cave, rather than sitting there and waiting for my mind to make the associations on its own.</p><div></div>

[Tim_Lookingbill]

<p>In the spirit of the mechanical here's a macro of my Bodum French Press filter components made by humans in Portugal.</p><div></div>

[Tim_Lookingbill]

<blockquote>

<p>Tim, in a way, it sounds like you are a painter criticizing the camera for not having feelings, merely recording the scene as it's told using some sort of algorithm to pick exposure (guessing most people aren't doing this manually these days).</p>

</blockquote>

<p>You personifying a camera as analogy to what I said in my previous post tells me you're on a thought wavelength that can't be reasoned with. You are in love with your own creation, an algorithm that you hope to provide valuable use for businesses, a value system I don't share. Due to your own love for your creation you will rationalize in order to compromise or define your own value system. An algorithm can't understand that complex human frailty.</p>

<p>My camera is a mechanical tool I tell it what to capture. It doesn't make random decisions based on an algorithm. I shoot manual all the time and process intuitively adjusting sliders and creating custom curves to feel my way into the results I want. An algorithm doesn't have intuition. It only attempts to emulate it. The process will always be the same which will always produce the same results which is the byproduct of artificiality which lacks intuition.</p>

<p>The human brain is a huge mass of trillions of cellular interconnected electrical pathways whose complexities are so vast that they can heal the sick person possessing it. There's a news story I saw last month where a woman with a painful rare condition who knowingly takes placebos to function. That's mind over matter no algorithm will ever come close to emulating. That's a mystery on a spiritual level.</p>

<p>I see no spirituality in your algorithm because of the reasons for and how it was sourced. And I'm not interested in going to a Russian site to check out more similar image generators.</p>

[Tim_Lookingbill]

<blockquote>

<p>(PS - still waiting for Trippy Diptych 2!)</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Here ya' go!</p>

<p>Love the discussion we're having BTW. I think my switching to French Press coffee brewing has fueled most of my comments. I wonder if an algorithm can emulate that.</p><div></div>

[Norma Desmond]

<blockquote>

<p>The process will always be the same which will always produce the same results which is the byproduct of artificiality which lacks intuition.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Artificiality provokes and inspires me. I work with it in my own (mostly non-abstract) photos.<br /> ______________________________________________________</p>

<p>artificial = made or produced by human beings rather than occurring naturally<br /> ______________________________________________________</p>

<p>Interesting that, in what I quoted above from Tim, artificiality seems to be related to a machine though it's typically been used to describe things humans make . . . like art (<em>art</em>ificial). A tree is natural. A painting of a tree is artificial.<br /> <br /> To my mind, abstract art has always had more artificiality than other types of art, and that's one reason I have such a fondness for it. If I compare a Monet to a Mondrian, the Monet seems more natural, the Mondrian more artificial. Same with a Van Gogh compared to a Kandinsky.<br /> <br /> I think in artifice there is a lot of revelation and it can sometimes be even more revelatory than what's more natural.<br /> <br /> I don't view what Bill is promoting as artificial, just as I think there's something misleading about the term "artificial intelligence." I might prefer to use a phrase something along the lines of "mechanistic intelligence."</p>

[photoriot]

<p>"neural nets trained to recognize images can be run in reverse, to generate them." I think that's how ostagram.ru operates. <br /> <br /> Anders, I agree with the mechanistic vs. artificial intelligence distinction, and mechanistic is how I think we ourselves are, projecting from what we understand of the world so far. I wonder where would the line would be if we could design a biomechanical device that seemed to have intelligence, if that would be mechanistic in the sense of a silicon computer. In any case, I bet the farm that something could come of the pursuit in silicon.<br /> <br /> TD2 - Tiny bubbles.. Tim, wouldn't it be interesting to feed those pics to ostagram.ru? :-) I haven't figured any pics I want to try, and not sure what signup info they want.<br /> <br /> On one level, I just want to see interesting shapes resulting from combos, the subject can be secondary, like this one.. oops, see next post.</p>

[photoriot]

<p>This one. Interesting enough to chew on for a few seconds as part of the general fare, though not a favorite for a gallery.</p><div></div>

[photoriot]

<p>Trippy Diptych II is somewhat like my 'terminal jump' in being variations on a theme, compared to TD1, which melds two into something new like The Shadow, above. Maybe someone has written a thesis on the ways two photos can interact. In a way, I find that scarier than mechanistic intelligence.</p>

[Tim_Lookingbill]

<p>Fred, not the kind of artificiality I was referring to. I was talking about an artificial creative process that has all signs for detecting intuition and spontaneity removed from the results. The signs of this can only be detected looking at a series or collection of work created with an artificial process. See enough of them and a pattern begins to emerge that becomes tiresome to look at. Bill is posting enough of them to prove this.</p>

<p>A painting is not artificial because it shows all signs that a human made it using a time consuming process involving a lot of spontaneity and intuition based fiddling around with the paint and brush to work with the surface texture as a tool of expression. Why else would some aficionado of the arts describe and/or study brush stroke styles in a painting? That and other elements in the painting is at the core of what makes it an original human creation.</p>

<p>Let's make a distinction between an artificial look as a style in a piece of work like a Mondrian or Kandinsky which can exhibit a human touch from an artificial process whose sole intent is to let the process determine the results without any human intervention or influence.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>I don't think that the human brain is any <em>less</em> based on an algorithm when compared to that of a computer or AI.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Phil, you're not looking deep enough, nor are you capable of knowing that or having any proof. I take it my mentioning the ailing woman being cured taking placebos got past you or you didn't read it. There's a deep connection to the power of emotions involved with helping that woman by taking placebos an algorithm will never emulate.</p>

[photoriot]

<blockquote>

<p>But we may not be as free in our ( creative ) choices as we nevertheless sense we are.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Sometimes I wonder if our consciousness gets out of sync with what we perceive: did I intuit that X was going to come around the corner, or did a part of my brain see this happening before it reached my consciousness?</p>

<blockquote>

<p>See enough of them and a pattern begins to emerge that becomes tiresome to look at.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Isn't that true with photos by most humans too? It is for me, anyway. Post some more for variety!</p>

<p>In case anyone has been pining to see the matching keywords, you can now click next to the green + on my pairs page and see them displayed for the current pair as long as the mouse is down, as in the wobbly pic.</p>

<p>Moreover you can toggle back and forth with the previous pic on either side by clicking in the grey area next to it, and clicking in the grey area next to the red minus toggles both photos to their current opposites. Holding that area down for a second will cause a reset to the latest pair, which is what new matches are always based on.</p>

<p>All this lets you puzzle out the choice of the software a step further.</p><div></div>

[photoriot]

<p>I wonder if this log entry would count as brush strokes, with the downstream process being analogous to paint flowing from brush to canvas. Numbers are picture counts for the keyword. (In that we don't necessarily expect to be aware of the editing done to a photo, brush strokes are a tenuous requirement - hiding artifice is the highest artifice in some quarters.)<br /> <br /> --- Thu Dec 8 23:39:51 PST 2016</p>

<p>Before</p>

<p>114 corner</p>

<p>--- Fri Dec 9 00:04:07 PST 2016</p>

<p>After</p>

<p>1 roof_corner<br /> 2 corner_points<br /> 21 corner_point<br /> 35 street_corner<br /> 52 corner</p>

[AJHingel]

<p>Bill, I have been out for a while, but see your comment on my collage above (9.38 a.m - whatever that refers to!)<br>

Yes, I agree, there might be an algorithm for that type of transformation. <br>

However, if you find or develop one, I believe that I have made my point and will look for other ways forward. <br>

What I tend with this type of collage, which I have done many of, is to try to create an image of what happens in our eyes, mind and soul when we contemplate a view - here a Chinese mountain forest - and slowly we seize seeing the distinct elements of trees, hills and mountains and some kind of essence of the view is developed inside you, which is, I think, more human and more real, than what we call "reality". This is what we bring with us when we close our eyes and leave the view.<br>

Below a contemplation of a brick wall, which is even a triptych !</p><div></div>

[photoriot]

<blockquote>

<p>There's a deep connection to the power of emotions involved with helping that woman by taking placebos an algorithm will never emulate.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Actually, the placebo effect is exactly how I intend to emulate presence: by meeting enough of your expectations that you believe there is life there, in spite of anything you know.</p>

<p>On my algorithm getting boring, you are actually just seeing my selections from many pairs of my photos (leaving out the ones with other photographers too), so it would be interesting to see if another person's selections from the same number of pairs generated in their own personal session would get boring as fast. (Not to mention someone using it on their own photos :-)..</p>

<p>Anders, I am totally on board with your approach, since we are both picking apart the process of perception. And I agree that when an algorithm is worked out, it is time to move on creatively, either to something new or by building on the algorithm, like with turning a photo classifier into a generator and other utterly creative stuff going on in that field. But I hope the algorithm will still go on to feed many souls, as a new shipping optimization algorithm will allow more mouths to be fed without the engineer who designed it needing to be around.</p>

<p> </p><div></div>

[Tim_Lookingbill]

<blockquote>

<p>Actually, the placebo effect is exactly how I intend to emulate presence: by meeting enough of your expectations that you believe there is life there, in spite of anything you know.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>So you're going the metaphysical route to rationalize the effectiveness of an algorithm. OK, I admit all of our existence could be a simulation defined by our senses and emotions. We don't know if this is real life. But when the lights go out for each of us at the end of our adventure on planet Earth nothing beats our reality as the best simulation over what we currently can accomplish with algorithms.</p>

<blockquote>

<p><em>See enough of them and a pattern begins to emerge that becomes tiresome to look at.</em></p>

</blockquote>

 

<blockquote>

<p><em>Isn't that true with photos by most humans too? It is for me, anyway. Post some more for variety!</em></p>

</blockquote>

<p>Not if they're photos that show me something I haven't seen before. Garbage in, garbage out. Right? An image of lines, forms, shapes and color is only as good as the smallest element. Have you tried including in your collection royalty free stock photographs to develop a more accurate algorithm? Yours are getting long in the tooth, don't ya' think. I mean they look like they were shot in '70's industrial complexes and vacant streets and buildings, not something that grabs the eyes.</p>

<p>And as for posting more of my abstracts I'm beginning to suspect you may add them to your collection to improve your algorithm. Who's to know years from now after your algorithm takes off and makes you a lot of money. mmh, I wonder why Fred and Phil haven't posted any photos? Maybe they suspect the same.</p>

<p> </p>

[Tim_Lookingbill]

<p>Anders, I like your colored brick wall photo, but why the thick red border?</p>

<p>Just a suggestion that I adopted from Bauhaus influenced typographical design and layout designers is any extra graphic element such as a dividing line or border should be no more than the thickness of a third of the dominant element which in your case is the thickness of each individual brick. </p>

[photoriot]

<p>Tim, I don't see the placebo effect as metaphysical. It's a cause-and-effect button I want to push. It's an interesting question whether it goes to the nature of our existence. I'm not banking on phobrain changing the experience of death, for example. A royalty-free stock collection would be great if I had time to find and master the open-source Google tagging AI. As it is, keywords are a huge manual labor that I'm not going to do for anyone's photos I don't have a relationship with and like enough. </p>

<p>Anders, on your wall, I think more about flags than the process of perceiving the wall, unlike your previous collage. The non-white parts are too dark to see enough detail to process, so I fall back on the symbolic. I like the details in the white part though. I agree with the rule of thumb for borders Tim proposes.</p>

[Tim_Lookingbill]

<blockquote>

<p>Tim, I don't see the placebo effect as metaphysical.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Then what did you mean by the second part of your statement referencing placebo?...</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>...by meeting enough of your expectations that you believe there is life there, in spite of anything you know.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Life where? And why is it in spite of what I know? I took that to mean that you think what appears to me as life like can be simulated by an algorithm to look authentic and fool me which I don't think an algorithm is capable, yet.</p>

[photoriot]

<p>I've <a href="/photodb/slideshow?folder_id=1094798">added another folder</a>, with more color matches this time, based on ~300 pairs seen so far in an hour of my second pass through the pairs page. It was pretty grim work at times, but I managed to snag a belly dancer and a frog for Tim, at least. Again the meta-slideshow is arranged by human hands to blow. your mind. and pump you up.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Life where? And why is it in spite of what I know?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Somewhere 'in' the screen. Because we all know that silicon isn't alive in the sense that we are. I.e. like the woman taking a placebo on purpose to get the placebo effect, you should experience the same effect as you do from something you really believe is alive. One step beyond suspension of disbelief, if you will. </p>

<p> </p><div></div>

[AJHingel]

<p>"Bauhaus influenced typographical design and layout designers is any extra graphic element such as a dividing line or border should be no more than the thickness of a third of the dominant element which in your case is the thickness of each individual brick." (Tim)<br /> <br /> Tim, Never heard of such a Bauhaus thumb rule - (have you got a link?) but it made me go back to my Bauhaus books to see if I could find examples. What I found was mainly examples of architectural designs by Florence Henri and Gotthardt Itting where indeed there steel structures use the dimensions you refer to, whereas a polyptych of Peter Keler used significantly larger lines and borders as does <a href="http://lunettesrouges.blog.lemonde.fr/files/2008/07/josef-albers-vitrail-rouge-et-blanc-salle-dattente-du-bureau-de-gropius.1215373308.jpg">Josep Alberts made a glass mosai</a>c for the waiting room for Gropius office in Bauhaus, with its black dividing lines which are significantly larger than the mentioned rule.<br /> <br /> After all, as so often when it comes to such thumbholes, they might be followed in design context by some - see the<a href="https://www.pinterest.com/gemakker/%2B-anni-albers/"> textiles of Anni Albers (1926)</a>, still Bauhaus - but creative freedom makes room for whatever variation the artist find appropriate. It might worthwhile looking into the renaissance diptychs and triptychs to see how they designed cabinets framing the paintings - but I will leave it here...</p>

<p>My own considerations concerning the brickwall was mainly, that I saw it as a vertical diptych with a base, more than a triptych, and wanted to use the separations to underline that by using the colour of the lower part and large separations. </p>

[photoriot]

<p>I just posted another folder, <a href="/photo/18321371">phobrains gone wild: spring break at the OK corral</a>, a celebration of a life event starting soonish. Before you click, the link is to a pair that has a quality that I find hard enough to define that I call it abstract, but it seems there should be a more specific word, like umami. The folder in general leans even more heavily on color matching, and after some downtime, I have plans to make it use multiple algorithms, in a permutation of what the single-page version does.</p>

<p>I culled a bunch of pairs from the two oldest folders (<a href="/photodb/folder?folder_id=1093981">glued pairs</a> and <a href="/photodb/folder?folder_id=1094511">glued pairs: series</a>) to make room, so slideshows there make different juxtapositions now. Now that I've reached my limit, there will be regular turnover of photos.</p>

<p>Due to toggling single pics back and forth with the previous ones by clicking next to them, on the color option especially, where each pair is opposite the previous pair in RGB 3D histogram space (for a few days at least), criss-cross comparisons can sometimes be interesting. (Clicking to the left of the '-' inverts both sides, and holding it down for a second reverts both to most recent.) The pair of flags is an example.</p>

[AJHingel]

<p>I think we need a "Algorithm forum" on Photonet :)</p>

[Tim_Lookingbill]

<blockquote>

<p>...the woman taking a placebo on purpose to get the placebo effect, you should experience the same <strong>effect</strong> as you do from something you really believe is alive.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>An algorithm doesn't and can't know what an effect is to a human, Bob. Besides that the placebo effect has nothing to do with how we humans perceive a life like experience. Algorithms know nothing about the meaning and the experience of being mystified and mystery itself.</p>

<p>Your meta slide show needs to be made in another program that doesn't require Adobe Flash, so I'm going to pass on it, sorry.</p>

[Tim_Lookingbill]

<blockquote>

<p>My own considerations concerning the brickwall was mainly, that I saw it as a vertical diptych with a base, more than a triptych, and wanted to use the separations to underline that by using the colour of the lower part and large separations.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Just want to clarify that <em>"1/3 thickness of dominant element"</em> suggestion is not a hardened rule of Bauhaus influenced design. It was meant as a purpose driven design approach for cohesive typographical and page layout relationship readability. The viewer sees it but it's not distracting but it does organize visual flow.</p>

<p>A diptych or triptych is basically a page or an entire frame. Any added nonessential graphic divider to create emphasis or visual organization should not distract from what is being said by the main idea behind the image.</p>

<p>I just saw the thickness of the border not blending well with the overall design as both an integral part of the bricks. I really don't have a problem with thickness. I have a problem with the red color blending into the red bricks and not the blue or white bricks so now it attempts to suggest that it's part of the idea behind the design. The border should either be neutral to the design or made more obvious that it's meant as part of the design. This is what makes it distracting and a bit confusing. Another suggestion would be to change the color to a gray that is the same darkness as the red.</p>

<p>Sorry, don't have a link to the 1/3 thickness of dominant element design readability suggestion. I do remember reading a book on page layout design that these guys implemented in their gorgeous typographical and page layout design magazine... http://www.google.com/search?q=Upper+%26+Lower+case+magazine&newwindow=1&biw=1552&bih=954&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjTtciZgfLQAhUO6mMKHcsHCU0QsAQIOQ</p>

<p>I have several old copies I'm hanging onto just to remind me of the good 'ol days of graphic design.</p>

[Tim_Lookingbill]

<blockquote>

<p>Before you click, the link is to a pair that has a quality that I find hard enough to define that I call it abstract, but it seems there should be a more specific word, like umami. The folder in general leans even more heavily on color matching, and after some downtime, I have plans to make it use multiple algorithms, in a permutation of what the single-page version does.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Great, Bob!</p>

<p>Now if you can only come up with an algorithm to measure the efficacy of your curatorial tastes, then the simulation of the human experience of feeling something made without human thought or feelings will be complete.</p>

[photoriot]

<p>Are you lacking feelings yourself, Tim?</p>