Babel

The multilingual, multicultural online journal and community of arts and ideas. There's a heaven above you, baby.

Babel

Archives for April, 2008

Robots, Religion, Science Fiction

Robot officiates wedding: June 2007, South Korea … A robot has acted as master of ceremonies at a South Korean wedding in what its creators claim is a world first. Tiro the robot assisted at the wedding of Seok Gyeong-jae, one of the engineers who designed it, and his bride at Daejeon, 130km south of [...]

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Honda Robot Will Conduct Detroit Symphony

Interesting developments in Motor City …. Yo Yo Ma and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra will soon submit to a robotic overlord in the form of Honda’s Asimo, which will pick up a baton to conduct the orchestra. The robot will lead the humans in a performance of “Impossible Dream” from the musical “Man of La [...]

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Geometry of Music

“We can now see that there is a logical structure linking many, many different musical concepts.” Three music professors — Clifton Callender at Florida State University, Ian Quinn at Yale University and Dmitri Tymoczko at Princeton University — have devised a new way of analyzing and categorizing music that takes advantage of the deep, complex [...]

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Get Ready for the Cartographolution

Exploring the City of Tomorrow: “The full potential of maps, in terms of improving the quality of life in cities, is just beginning to be realized …. Get ready for the cartographolution.” – Brendan Crain A hypothetical Aura Map of Istanbul’s Golden Horn. You’re happy. You’re entertained. You click a button on the screen that [...]

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