My baby is 4 months old today, as I write these words. He’s been smiling for weeks already, but it has just started feeling like his smiles really mean something.

Corinna Kern: George’s World

We just finished a 3 day marathon we called GLTI.CH Portals, at CRYSTALLIZE exhibition. Part of a 3 day New Media art installation at the 2013 Korea Brand & Entertainment Expo, held at Old Billingsgate, London. Below are photos from the event. You can also listen to a brief interview we did with BBC Radio’s Dan Damon for World Update (listen from about 17mins in). We really want to thank everyone who took part and all those who brought this exhibition together, especially Stephanie Seungmin Kim, Heejin Cho and Hyemi Na for inviting, curating and welcoming us into the Korean/UK collaborative fold. This might very well be the last time GLTI.CH host a Karaoke event. We have news of this soon, but for now, please enjoy the wondrous smiles on all the GLTI.CH Portal participants’ faces.

Image spam is one of the many dark matters of the digital world; spam tries to avoid detection by filters by presenting its message as an image file. An inordinate amount of these images floats around the globe, desperately vying for human attention.2 They advertise pharmaceuticals, replica items, body enhancements, penny stocks, and degrees. According to the pictures dispersed via image spam, humanity consists of scantily dressed degree-holders with jolly smiles enhanced by orthodontic braces.

THE news of the day often includes an item about some development in artificial intelligence: a machine that smiles, a program that can predict human tastes in mates or music, a robot that teaches foreign languages to children. This constant stream of stories suggests that machines are becoming smart and autonomous, a new form of life, and that we should think of them as fellow creatures instead of as tools. But such conclusions aren’t just changing how we think about computers — they are reshaping the basic assumptions of our lives in misguided and ultimately damaging ways.

I myself have worked on projects like machine vision algorithms that can detect human facial expressions in order to animate avatars or recognize individuals. Some would say these too are examples of A.I., but I would say it is research on a specific software problem that shouldn’t be confused with the deeper issues of intelligence or the nature of personhood. Equally important, my philosophical position has not p