Category: Deliverables-08

bumble_b – 08-LookingOutwards

I had such a hard time narrowing down which project I wanted to talk about! I had so many tabs open that they were all too small to even read the first letter of the tab! But after a very difficult March Madness bracket, the one that stuck out most to me was Simpsons vs. Family Guy by Parag K. Mital.

Basically, he created a database of segmented frames from the Family Guy intro and then created a video resynthesis of the Simpsons intro using only images from that Family Guy database. It resulted in this beautifully chaotic mosaic of the Simpsons intro, and his side-by-side shows it beautifully:

Simpsons vs. Family Guy from Parag K Mital on Vimeo.

Being a huge fan of adult cartoons my whole life (you remember my Family Guy option on the TV of my Bitsy game?), this was so striking to me. I could pick out parts of Family Guy characters’ faces repurposed as Simpsons objects, and it was sooooo cool.

I find this seriously cool and inspiring, and now all I want to do is make my own version of this!!

bumble_b – FaceReadings

In Nabil Hassein’s article “Against Black Inclusion in Facial Recognition”,  they make this really interesting point: “This analysis clearly contradicts advocacy of ‘diversity and inclusion’ as the universal or even typical response to bias. Among the political class, ‘Black faces in high places’ have utterly failed to produce gains for the Black masses.” I think it’s really fascinating and sad that people have to look at a concept that statistically excludes a minority and say “Please keep it that way” because their inclusion would only be used as a deadly weapon against them… it just shows that anti-racism is way more complex of a system than “just make sure everyone is included and equal!”

Also, I really liked this slide in Joy Buolamwini’s talk:

I think this is a really simple and powerful message. Yes, who is in the room when decisions are being made is essential for any company/organization to think about. How people make things and why they’re making them are also very important considerations. I’d go as far as to say that even if your “why am I making this?” is positively impactful, you need to consider how your code could be used if it got into the wrong hands, too.

Also, really quickly, the SkyNet thing in Last Week Tonight felt straight out of a dystopian movie. I mean, seriously? It made me laugh out loud in the most terrified/uncomfortable way.

gaomeilan – Pix2Pix

A heart with eyes, a stegosaurus, and the word “кошка” (cat in Russian). I think I’ve used this site before, and I find it really interesting that it tries to detect smaller circles and transform them into eyes.

shrugbread- Pix2Pix

I think pix2pix is fun but somewhat not serious. If the program was more heavy-duty and equipped with better brushes/bigger canvas it would be much more interesting, but I also recognize that browsers can’t handle huge programs with huge resolutions, so the simple and more or less instantaneous pix2pix works