July 30, 2015

Introducing DeepDream Architect

Sleeping Beauty has awakened. (source)
GoogleNet Places205, inception_4b/pool_proj, 10 iterations, 10 octaves, scale 1.2

Google’s DeepDream has been called “dazzling, druggy, and creepy” (Slate), “weirdly mesmering” (Wired UK), and “utterly psychedelic and surreal […] Lovecraftian nightmare fuel” (Le Bonbon). One month after Google Research loosed their creation on the world, this artificially intelligent image recognition-turned-generation neural net has turned vast swaths of the internet into dark, globulous, glistening nests of hairy eyes and alien dog-worm larvae. Techies and laymen alike have now used DeepDream to profane everything from pizza and presidents to, unsurprisingly, porn. (Also, ahem, brass instruments—see previous post.)

But even AI needs a break from puppyslugs. What else can it do? Well, as of mid-July, various incarnations of DeepDream have been specifically trained on images of flowers (8,000), faces (27,000), cars (137,000), and, oh, ~2.5 million images of PLACES.

Bingo. DeepDream’s new job: ARCHITECT.

July 28, 2015

DeepDreams in Brass


May 20

After being stored next to each other for days on end, my trumpet and cornet have formed some sort of bond. It’s not exactly metal. Think it may involve exchange of genetic material, because I see evidence of changes on the cellular level.

May 22

Discoved no longer have to clean trumpet or cornet: they clean each other. Would worry about this, but both are perfectly playable as long as you clear membranes off the mouthpieces and ignore the sweating.