I had allot of fun this week making this futuristic sounding electro beat pop rock style tune called “Gem Droids”.

Free MP3 Download: Gem Droids.mp3 - Creative Commons Music License

Listen for the robot bleeping sound that is kind of like the R2D2 android from Star Wars.

I’m also looking forward to this podcast interview with Christina L. Ibbotson on her Blog Talk Radio station coming up this Tuesday February 23, 2010 at 7:00 PM EST.

Robot Fortune Tellers

Even better was browsing all the creative commons robot art on Flickr. For instance this hardworking fortune telling robot on the streets on India reminded me of:

PsychicZora.com which is a chatbot I built that uses artificial intelligence to predict the future, well sort of - see what you think. She works using AIML from the ALICE AI Foundation.

I had in my mind that Zora would promote my song “The Time Isn’t Right”…but it turns out she has a mind and personality all her own. Even though she is basically a super high tech magic 8 ball.

Mental Matrix

Whenever I think of intelligent robots my mind darts back to Neo “awakening” from his pod in the Matrix.

For me there has never been a better visual representation analogous to the mind being set free from countless generations of mental stories.

Wikipedia gets real detailed about this…

“The Matrix makes numerous references to recent films and literature, and to historical myths and philosophy. These include Vedanta, Advaita Hinduism, Yoga Vashishta Hinduism, Judaism, Messianism, Buddhism, Gnosticism, Christianity, Existentialism, Nihilism, and occult tarot. The film’s premise resembles Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, Calderon de la Barca’s Life is a Dream, Edwin Abbott Abbott’s Flatland, René Descartes’s evil genius, Georges Gurdjieff’s The Sleeping Man, Kant’s reflections on the Phenomenon versus the Ding an sich, and the brain in a vat thought experiment.”

Lots of complicated religions and ideas here worth knowing about. But I think the film pretty much sums it up:

Neo: I thought it (the matrix) wasn’t real
Morpheus: Your mind makes it real

Creative Commons Photo: ROBOTS {Read Description} by striatic

…wake up, Neo!

Dan-O

New Creative Commons Song

Hello. I finished a new track this week that has kind of a dark emo sound but is also still a bit pop rock style. There are some spacious arpeggio guitar riffs, electronic spheres and a chime like chorus. I call it “Today then Tomorrow”.

Free Royalty Free Download: Today then Tomorrow.mp3 - Creative Commons Music License - More

I hope you enjoy the song and find it useful as background music for YouTube videos, as an instrumental music bed for a new song, just for listening, or whatever else you need.

Presentations, Podcasts, Band

If you missed my Web 2.0 Social Networking presentation at the Danbury Area Computer Society last Tuesday you can view it here. Of course this leaves out lots of details and examples, but you can probably get the idea.

I also have a interview with podcaster Christina L. Ibbotson coming up on February 23. Check out info about this and all my other upcoming appearances like the Connecticut Film Festival. I will be running a couple of workshops and performing with my band Phoenix Tree.

Planet of the Apes

I make all my kids watch what I think are classic “required watching” movies. This week it was the original “Planet of the Apes” (1968). They (and Michelle) always think I’m crazy when I rent these old movies, but they usually have a million questions at the end.

What I love about “Planet of the Apes” is how the film takes the creation vs. evolution controversy and turns it on its head. The irony of a group of elitist orangutans denying their common link to man in order to “protect” the common apes is just so elegantly sardonic!

What I find most amusing about all the arguments of Darwin, Creationism, and Intelligent Design is that:

No matter what side you stand on when you dig deep, look under the surface and keep asking questions, what you find…

…is still a mystery.

Creative Commons Photo: “How did i get here?” by katutaide

Amen!

Dan-O