Two robots, Vincent & Emily, are connected to each other as if deeply in love: where at the heights of romance, every motion, utterance, or external influence is shared in an acutely empathic, highly attuned ’emotional’ response:
The creation of German artists Nikolas Schmid-Pfähler and Carolin Liebl, the robots take in sound and motion data–from each other and from spectators– via sensors, which causes them to react–via gears and motors–with certain expressions. Shown in a gallery and open to the interaction of visitors, the project aims to explore the ideal of the human couple by distilling it into a more basic form. Simple lines represent bodies. Reacting to inputs replaces complicated decision-making.
Like in any relationship, miscommunication is a factor – so an intimate moment can lead to conflict, and eventual resolution. This gives a certain texture to their ‘dance of love’ that makes it hard not to anthropomorphise, or indeed relate to!
I’ve been lucky enough to own this domain name for a number of years, and populate it with loads of content along the way. For a while, I ran a dedicated Tumblr sideblog of the same name which I have since merged into this site. More recently, I founded Digital Cortex Ltd., a formal means of handling a clutch of consultation projects. And now, this site is the front-end to my hosting business, offering virtual private server space to a few happy clients, as well as a playground for a few of the other little projects I’m working on.
Meanwhile, plenty of other people / groups / products have laid their claim to the Digital Cortex name, and I wanted to provide a quick review of them here, just for fun, but also to signpost should anyone have got lost in the ether.
I guess this is a tattooed guy who I assume wears glasses, eats pasta, and likes beer. He describes himself as “PhD -Piled Higher Deeper enuff said 😉”
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A chap called Serhan Meewisse, a storyteller from the Netherlands, is making a film. He posted the below trailer to his YouTube channel:
About the film (autotranslated from Dutch):
Digital Cortex is a fiction story about Matt, who has just graduated from the film academy. Matt, the speed of the eternal accelerating system not keep after his studies. He gets his unattainable vision into depression and have thoughts about suicide. In desperation get Matt to his friend Andrew. Andrew may be the only solution for him.
A device that he can continue. system
Digital cortex makes the flow of information along the human visual cortex digital. Thoughts and fantasies are visual and are immediately visible on screen. Matt’s life is gaining momentum. Success is his second name. Because Matt is continuously working to become reality and fantasy begin to merge. Together his fantasy reality Matt is getting delusions and hallucinations. He stands for choice, back to his unhappy existence or lose himself in his imagination.
Sounds kind of cool – wonder if I’ll get an invite to the screening!
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The leading social media marketing and customer experience agency. We help Business understand the power of having a marketing and communication presence through the Social medium.
Hmm… Not sure if they realise, but their web address redirects back here. Further googling suggests they might not be doing too well.
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Three guys named KyRow, Nebtune & Aaronson, who make Drum & Bass that sounds like this:
I recommend you also check out ‘Skull Fucker’, ‘nothing like a bowl of frosties’ and their remix of ‘Lana Del Rey – Born To Die’. They are also on Facebook and YouTube. Good shit, lads.
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DIGITALCORTEX.COM
Not active, but the WHOIS record indicates Brian Winn, a Professor of Telecommunication, Information Studies, and Media and Director of the Games for Entertainment and Learning (GEL) Lab at Michigan State University. We emailed a couple of years ago, and he provided some interesting backstory about the domain:
In terms of releasing digitalcortex.com, I am not interested at this point. I actually had a consulting company called Digital Cortex back in the late 90s and digitalcortex.com was the domain name for the company. Interestingly enough another company wanted the domain name and bought it for a substantial amount of money. Enough that we changed our company name and got a new domain name. Well, the story goes that a year or two later, that company went belly up in the .com crash and I bought the domain name back. I am not holding out for a big sale in the future (though I would not oppose it). I just have a sentimental connection with the domain … and I am thinking of using the name again for a new company.
Best of luck with it all, Brian.
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Digital Cortex in the US Trademark Records
COMPUTER SOFTWARE, WHETHER EMBEDDED IN ANOTHER PRODUCT OR ON A STAND-ALONE BASIS, WHICH ALLOWS THE USER OR ANOTHER COMPUTER SOFTWARE PROGRAM TO CAPTURE ANY DIGITAL CONTENT, AND TO USE, MANIPULATE, PROCESS, AND ROUTE THAT CONTENT, INCLUDING ORIGINAL ATTRIBUTES, TO AND FROM ANY COMPUTER SOFTWARE APPLICATION
The registrant was AnySoft, a tech company based in Newton, MA. From what I can dig up, their software ‘Digital Cortex 2.0′ was an approach to solving system and application interopability’ acting as a sort of software layer between various networked machines. More info here. Possibly the same guys who bought the domain from Brian Winn? Anyway, the trademark was cancelled a couple of years ago. A shame, too, because they also had this super snazzy logo:
Digital Cortex is a small animation studio specializing in educational videos. We just completed work on ‘Echo’ a computer animated accent reduction tutor, prior to that we created a series of videos to accompany medical textbooks.
Sounds pretty cool, but couldn’t uncover any of their work.
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Hi, I’m Matt Hileman, chief do-it-all at Digital Cortex […] Contact us any time with issues regarding any aspect of IT, networking, wireless, software installs and/or upgrades, PC’s, servers, storage, disaster recovery, backups and more…
Seems like there’s lots more going on behind the scenes.
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And that’s all I could find! Hopefully, I can remain the top site for the keyword, but if not the crown is bound to go to one of the above contenders. My money is on the trio of drum+bass producers – those search bots seem to love ’em!
There’s this guy called Matthias Müller, and he makes beautiful abstractions out of virtual dust on his supercomputer. He’s some kind of motion-art superhero, probably sent to us from the exploding Planet 3DS Max by his scientist parents.
In this post I’ve picked out a few examples of his work, because as well as being simply gorgeous viewing material, they’re great examples of what’s possible with a few gigs of RAM, a graphics card and some imagination.
Probably my favourite due to it’s relative simplicity, this tech demo plays with texture in surprising ways:
This next one is so epic! Like an underwater fireworks show of electric choreographed jellyfish, or something…
Watch as millions of particles merge and blend with infinite complexity in this piece of seemingly generative fludity:
This final clip is almost a love story. Watch as two swirling masses collide, explode and dance in time with the music:
An undoubtedly talented guy, Matthias has done commercial work for Honda and Vodafone (as featured last year). His YouTube channel is certainly worth a look, as are his lovely image renders on CGPortfolio.
I can barely get the most out of MSPaint, however…
Father Xmas brought me a Sonos S5, which has been duly blasting out the grooves ever since.
But there’s one track that’s had more airplay than any other in the last couple of weeks, Midnight Magic’s ‘Beam Me Up’, a superb piece of modern disco that I just had to share:
You gotta love that video, right?! Oh yeah, and here’s a brilliant remix by Jacques Renault to kick it up a sonic gear. Can’t tell you much else about this group I’m afraid, except that I’ll be on the lookout for more.
