Tuesday 22-Jan-2008, 18:00 – 19:00
UCL Garwood Lecture Theatre, South Wing
(Details how to get there at the bottom of the page)
I am delighted to announce our first speaker at Tesla in 2008: Professor Igor Aleksander of Imperial College London. Professor Aleksander is a distinguished electrical engineer and computer scientist who has a strong personal and working interest in many of the Tesla group themes – I think we have all been waiting for a long time to hear such views from someone whose background is so deeply rooted in technology.
Born in Zagreb, Yugoslavia, educated in Italy and South Africa, Igor Aleksander came to the UK in the late 50s. He first joined STC as a graduate engineer and then entered the academic world as Lecturer (at Queen Mary College, London, 1961), Reader in Electronics (University of Kent, 1968), Professor of Electronics (Brunel University, 1974), Professor of the Management of Information Technology (Imperial College, 1984), Head of Electrical Engineering and Gabor Professor of Neural Systems Engineering (Imperial College, 1988), Pro-Rector (External Relations) (Imperial College, 1997). He is now Emeritus Professor.
He has researched Artificial Intelligence, Neural Networks and IT Management. His recent work lies in the area of Artificial Visual Awareness which arose from a collaboration with the California Institute of Technology. He has published over 200 papers in these fields and 13 books including "Impossible minds: my neurons my consciousness" published by Imperial College Press 1996 ' How to Build a Mind: Machines with Imagination' Weidenfeld and Nicolson (May 2000) and 'The World in My Mind, My Mind in the World' Academic Press (2005).
In the 1980s he was responsible for the design of the world's first neural pattern recognition system (the WISARD, commercialised by CRS, Wokingham), and in 1991 he and his students designed the MAGNUS neurocomputational system (now commercialised by NTS as Neural Representation Modeller). He has consulted for many computer manufacturers and IT providers. In 1988 he was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering. In the year 2000 he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Medal for Informatics by the Institution of Electrical Engineers. He is currently prominent in the emerging field of 'Machine Models of Consciousness'
Phenomenology in computation (and visual art?)
Phenomenology primarily relates to discussions of consciousness by philosophers of the 20th century: Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre and Heidegger. It is a philosophy of personal, individual reality rather than the absolute reality of ontologists and functionalists. I shall try to give thumbnail sketch views of these forbidding sounding concepts as they have affected me as a computer scientist who tries to understand whether machines may help us to understand consciousness. So I shall describe virtual machines in general as they offer an opportunity in information science to discuss consciousness without crashing into 'the hard problem' of links to a physical substrate. I shall explain what are functional virtual machines that are judged by their behaviour and then phenomenological virtual machines which are judged by their ability to create usable inner worlds. I shall suggest that visual artists are special as they make explicit some aspects of their phenomenal worlds. This type of communication is still an open question in computer science but one where interest in art may prove to be beneficial for both the artist and the scientist.
Getting to UCL:
How to find the Garwood Lecture Theatre: Once you enter the main gate of UCL in Gower Street, you will face the Portico in the UCL quadrangle courtyard. Please take the right hand side diagonal and walk to the right corner of the building. You will see the brass tablet indicating South Wing. Enter the second entrance door at the South Wing, and you will find the Garwood Lecture Theatre on the first floor. There will be signs from the entrance that will help you to find the exact location easily.
You may also consult the UCL maps at:
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/about-ucl/location/mapsFree entrance - all welcome!
Happy New Year!
Best wishes,
Gordana
--
Gordana Novakovic
artist in residence
Tesla Art and Science Research Interest Group
Convener
http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/people/G.Novakovic.html
http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/research/tesla/Department of Computer Science
University College London
Malet Place, London WC1E 6BT
Email:
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