The Virginia Modeling and Simulation Center (VMASC) is prototyping a narrative modeling tool that expands on my original design – a platform that annotates how interpretation changes over time, in the real world. This modeling platform is planned to include the lyrical flow dynamics of Niccolo Casas, a follow-on from our collaborative project supported by the National Academies Keck Futures Initiative, and enable us to produce…
Extreme Interdisciplinarity
My team are halfway through developing an approach to computational reasoning that represents interactions between whole systems, such as neural circuits and cognition. I’ve led other interdisciplinary projects but never with such dramatically different disciplinary members: neuroscience, narrative analysis, computer science, biology and design. As a visual example, consider the different modes of modeling we…
The Intelligence in Beautiful Form
Computers can’t see evolution. The changes that humans understand so well – decay, emergence – make computers blind. This means machines can’t assist medicine when a disorder fundamentally changes as it progresses. Like a cellular response to a virus that cascades until it attacks the body it was protecting. Or the way a physical shock can disrupt sleep, years later. What might be possible…
The Language of Microbes
Watch. The water falls on the bridge and then travels along the pipe. It goes along the pipe. Are you watching? Watch the water. I’ll show you again. There are microbes all over us, in every orifice and covering our skins, but those in the gut have special influence. This internal village plays…
A Tour of the Future of Storytelling Summit
A few years ago, Charlie Melcher was a successful book publisher who realized his industry was being swept away. So he invited the best storytellers, technical experts and brandmakers to a roundtable discussion about the future of storytelling, in order to embrace whatever was coming next. He asked the group: what are the most…
The Safe Place
I’m collaborating on a system called redframer, which would be a site that allows people to draw on and comment on films. On the edge of my attention, a hurricane has been raging: women who give their opinion online, usually about depictions of women, are being harassed at a criminal level. I’ve finally realized that the system I’m…