RESOURCES

The Fediverse is the buzziest new thing in social networking is a big deal. It’s also very confusing. And it’s not actually new. It’s an interconnected social platform ecosystem based on an open protocol called ActivityPub, which allows sharing of content, data, and follower graph between networks.

The industry responsible for laying the cables for the internet traces its origins back far beyond the internet, past even the telephone, to the early days of telegraphy. It’s invisible, under-appreciated, analog. Few people set out to join the profession, mostly because few people know it exists. 

The internet has become an extractive and fragile monoculture. But we can revitalize it using lessons learned by ecologists.

Researchers are developing a technique that uses the special synchrotron X-ray light from the Swiss Light Source SLS to non-destructively digitise recordings from historic audio tapes. Audio and video tape decays over time and can no longer be played back.

In 2018, the Fourth Portal curated delivery of the £5m EPSRC FAST programme to the music industry at Abbey Road studios, demonstrating the very latest technologies for end-to-end music production and delivery. The videos that follow provide an overview of the programme and demonstrators developed.

Genie, a foundation world model trained from Internet videos that can generate an endless variety of playable (action-controllable) worlds from synthetic images, photographs, and even sketches.

A simulator producing complex and realistic outdoor landscapes with vegetation growth and weather dynamics. With the ability to simulate more than 500,000 plants with individual geometries, the program can assist in predicting climate-response of vegetation to deforestation and changing weather patterns.

A study has uncovered a connection between individuals' musical preferences and their moral values, shedding new light on the profound influence that music can have on our moral compass.

Neural radiance fields (NeRFs) are a technique that generates 3D representations of an object or scene from 2D images by using advanced machine learning. NeRFs show incredible promise in representing 3D data more efficiently than other techniques.

Photorealistic editing of outdoor scenes from photographs requires a profound understanding of the image formation process and an accurate estimation of the scene geometry, reflectance and illumination. The technique allows simultaneous editing of both scene illumination and camera viewpoint using only a collection of outdoor photos shot in uncontrolled settings.

“Railway madmen” were thought to be activated by the sounds and motion of train travel. Thoughts of innovation and new technology would drive people completely crazy are not a new phenomenon.

This podcast touches on some of the most important ethical and creative challenges that AI poses to music-making and the creative industries more generally. Could a robot improvise in a jazz band? What is the difference between an AI playing a piano and a pianola?

No sooner has Mickey Mouse come out of copyright than there is a generative AI model that allows anyone to generate images of Mickey.

The School for Poetic Computation is an experimental school in New York City supporting interdisciplinary study in art, code, hardware and critical theory. It's a place for learning and unlearning.

2024 offers many of the promises of an online moment we haven’t seen in a quarter-century.

A camping festival with a power grid and high-speed internet access; a temporary village of geeks, crafters, and technology enthusiasts that's lit up by night, and buzzing with activity during the day. Thousands descend on our friendly open space to learn, share, and talk about what they love.

Decoupling our identities from our data and actions could safeguard our secrets

60's Abstract, Electronic, Experimental Music Compilation IBM 7090

Hype is everywhere, skeptics say, and practical applications are still far away

Hand-Plotting And Typewritings