Interesting to hear Brent's experience. Thanks for the interview.

talk to me

ABOUT THE EPISODE
Thanks for joining us for another SIGGRAPH Spotlight! In this episode, SIGGRAPH 2021 Retrospective Chair Andres Burbano (associate professor, Universidad de los Andes) sits down with computer graphics industry icon Alvy Ray Smith. Here, Alvy discusses his rich history with computer graphics and takes a deep dive into the three parts of his upcoming book, “A Biography of the Pixel.” Finally, Andres and Alvy share hints about the Retrospective program at SIGGRAPH 2021. 

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MUSIC 
Podcast theme, "SIGGRAPH," composed by Julius Dobos. 

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LINKS
*Episode*
http://alvyray.com/ | https://s2021.siggraph.org/ | https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/biography-pixel 

*Social Media*
http://blog.siggraph.org/ | https://www.facebook.com/SIGGRAPHConferences | https://twitter.com/siggraph | https://www.youtube.com/user/ACMSIGGRAPH | https://www.instagram.com/acmsiggraph/ | https://www.linkedin.com/company/acm-siggraph/  

*Conference Website*
https://s2021.siggraph.org/

SIGGRAPH Spotlight

44 – A Conversation With Alvy Ray Smith

For 15 years Brent Lee not only believed in conspiracy theories but helped produce and popularize them. Today, he warns others about both the danger and the appeal of conspiratorial world-building. We have been taught to imagine that people fall into the proverbial "rabbit hole" because of isolation, idiocy and paranoia. But in this interview, Brent explains how he and many others came to it from through critical thinking, skepticism towards the operations of social power and empathy with those who were suffering. We explore with him why he stayed in the conspiracy world thanks, in part, to the sense of righteous community  it provided.  And we cover how the right-wing weaponization of conspiracy theories in the mid-2010s triggered Brent's exit from the community. Today, motivated by contrition for what he helped create and compassion for those who, like him, are taken in, he dedicates his time to helping those inside and outside conspiracy worlds understand and challenge them.

Brent Lee, a former conspiracist who now seeks to challenge and reveal the lures and dangers of conspiracism, maintains a blog (http://brentleetv.blogspot.com/) and a YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/c/BrentLeeTV) and can often be found on Twitter (https://twitter.com/BrentLeeSDCIC). His new podcast Some Dare Call it Conspiracy, dedicated to reverse-engineering conspiracy theories, launched in June 2022 (https://anchor.fm/somedarecallitconspiracy)

An interview with an (ex)conspiracist - with Brent Lee (CGCG20)

Algorithms can compose music, write poetry and generate art. Artificial intelligence wins literature contests and has work exhibited in galleries, but experts contend we’ve only scratched the surface of what is possible. Aleksandra Przegalińska is an academic, working in the field of AI philosophy, affective data and machine learning. She explores the question of how AI can accelerate the human potential for producing art. In conversation with Ewa Drygalska.

Unsound Talk 01: Non-Human Aesthetics - Rethinking Creativity in the Age of AI

In this inaugural episode of The Order of Unmanagable Risks we talk with artist and writer James Bridle, about the politics of algorithmic opacity, populist technologies, and new ways of seeing through capitalism’s darkness.

James' artworks have been commissioned by galleries and institutions and exhibited worldwide and on the internet. Their writing on literature, culture and networks has appeared in magazines and newspapers including Wired, the Atlantic, the New Statesman, the Guardian, and the Observer. "New Dark Age", their book about technology, knowledge, and the end of the future, was published by Verso (UK & US) in 2018, and they wrote and presented "New Ways of Seeing" for BBC Radio 4 in 2019 (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000458m). Their work can be found at http://jamesbridle.com.

The Order of Unmanagable Risks is an occasional podcast hosted by Dr. Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou and Max Haiven about capitalism, anxiety and points inbetween. It is produce by the Common Anxieties Research Project (http://anxious.community) and supported by the ReImagining Value Action Lab (RiVAL) and UCL's Institute for Advanced Study.

"The gifts of darkness?" with James Bridle (OUR001)

'A dazzling, vibrant, vision-changing book. I ended it wonderstruck at the fungal world. A remarkable work by a remarkable writer’ Robert Macfarlane, author of Underland

The more we learn about fungi, the less makes sense without them.

Neither plant nor animal, they are found throughout the earth, the air and our bodies. They can be microscopic, yet also account for the largest organisms ever recorded. They enabled the first life on land, can survive unprotected in space and thrive amidst nuclear radiation. In fact, nearly all life relies in some way on fungi.

These endlessly surprising organisms have no brain but can solve problems and manipulate animal behaviour with devastating precision. In giving us bread, alcohol and life-saving medicines, fungi have shaped human history, and their psychedelic properties have recently been shown to alleviate a number of mental illnesses. Their ability to digest plastic, explosives, pesticides and crude oil is being harnessed in break-through technologies, and the discovery that they connect plants in underground networks, the ‘Wood Wide Web’, is transforming the way we understand ecosystems. Yet over ninety percent of their species remain undocumented.

Entangled Life is a mind-altering journey into a spectacular and neglected world, and shows that fungi provide a key to understanding both the planet on which we live, and life itself.

'One of those rare books that can truly change the way you see the world around you. Astounding' Helen MacDonald, author of H Is for Hawk

Entangled Life - written and read by Merlin Sheldrake

ABRIDGED BY ISOBEL CREED AND JILL WATERS | PRODUCED BY LIZZIE DAVIES AND THE WATERS COMPANY FOR BBC RADIO 4, FIRST BROADCAST NOVEMBER 2020 | MUSIC: ISLANDS BY COSMO SHELDRAKE

BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week

Introduction to Entangled Life, as featured on BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week

The ReImagining Value Action Lab (RiVAL) is a research and creativity workshop for the radical imagination active around the world and locally in Thunder Bay, Canada.

An interview with an (ex)conspiracist - with Brent Lee (CGCG20)

The ReImagining Value Action Lab

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