Go-box is a name used for a number of electronic devices. The "Go-Box" is often a box, crate, carry-case, modified briefcase or similar construction containing electronic equipment pre-setup and ready to function. The box can then be taken into the field or placed at a remote site with minimal effort. These are often used by radio amateurs (or "Hams") for emergency communications, experimental work, or field communications. This has also led to similar equipment being used in the Emergency Services, utility companies, military, and government agencies. A search of the YouTube website can reveal a number of ideas for these devices mostly built by people at home. Terms created after the use of "go-box" include the "go-bag" which is an 'essentials' bag of items needed for evacuations or quick departures, i.e. medicines, clothes, torch, Broadcast radio receiver, batteries, etc. In Austria it is a radio transmitter used in trucks as part of the Videomaut toll collection system. One use of the term in the United States it is a device which is supposed to change traffic signals from red to green. U.S. Fire trucks have a similar device, called an Opticon, that uses an infrared beam. Two residents of Miami, Florida, were arrested for selling fake go-boxes online. Several hundred were sold, prices ranging from $69 to $150. In reality, the boxes contained nothing more than strobe lights.
Flektor
Flektor was a web application that allowed users the ability to create and "mashup" their own content (photos, videos, music, etc.) and share it via email, on social networking websites MySpace, Facebook, Blogger, Digg, eBay or on personal blogs. The company's website (Flektor.com) launched on April 2, 2007, and over 40,000 people began utilizing its features just one month later. Flektor closed down in January 2009. Flektor offered tools and widgets that included audio, video, photos, text, and approximately 100 effects, transitions and filters to be used with media. Users could create personalized slideshows, polls, postcards, and streaming video projects which the website calls "fleks". Flektor also offered Chat (used as a MySpace addon) and Movie Editor, which provided the ability to edit content and assets together. Users of Flektor could import media from websites like Photobucket and Google's YouTube, and then edit their content with the site's editing tools. Flektor's erstwhile competitors include Slide.com (founded by PayPal co-founder Max Levchin), RockYou!, Yahoo's JumpCut and Brightcove. == History == Flektor was created by Jason Rubin, Andy Gavin and former HBO executive Jason R. Kay. Both Rubin and Gavin spent most of their careers in the video game industry developing games for publishers like Electronic Arts, Universal Interactive Studios and Sony Computer Entertainment America. They founded a successful game development studio called Naughty Dog and were responsible for games such as Crash Bandicoot and Jak and Daxter. After selling Naughty Dog to Sony, Rubin focused on a comic book series called Iron and the Maiden before teaming up again with Gavin to venture into the web industry with Flektor. Jason Kay spent four years at Home Box Office, working as a consultant to the EVP of Business Development. They recruited former employee and then Naughty Dog Lead Programmer Scott Shumaker to lead the technology team along with Gavin. Ryan Evans joined shortly thereafter, spearheading product development. Flektor is based in Culver City, California. In May 2007, the company was sold to Fox Interactive Media, which is a division of News Corp., for more than $20 million. The deal coincided with Fox's acquisition of Photobucket, an image-hosting and sharing website. Fox Interactive Media already holds possession of MySpace, IGN Entertainment, FOXSports.com, AmericanIdol.com and Rotten Tomatoes. After the acquisition, Rubin, Gavin and Kay departed, leaving the studio in the hands of Shumaker and Evans. In the fall of 2007, Flektor partnered with its sister company, MySpace, and MTV to provide instant audience feedback via polls for the interactive MySpace/ MTV Presidential Dialogues series with presidential candidates Senator Barack Obama, Senator John McCain and John Edwards. Use of Flektor's polling system, enabled hosts John McLaughlin and Geoffrey Garin to cater their questions towards subjects of voter-interest. In the fall of 2008, Flektor built the official site for the 2008 Presidential debates, hosted at MyDebates. In January 2009, due to a company directive to focus on the core MySpace property, Fox Interactive announced that Flektor would be shut down, with some of its technology being incorporated into MySpace.
Hyperion Cantos
The Hyperion Cantos is a series of science fiction novels by Dan Simmons. The title was originally used for the collection of the first pair of books in the series, Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion, and later came to refer to the overall storyline, including Endymion, The Rise of Endymion, and a number of short stories. More narrowly, inside the fictional storyline, after the first volume, the Hyperion Cantos is an epic poem written by the character Martin Silenus covering in verse form the events of the first two books. Of the four novels, Hyperion received the Hugo and Locus Awards in 1990; The Fall of Hyperion won the Locus and British Science Fiction Association Awards in 1991; and The Rise of Endymion received the Locus Award in 1998. All four novels were also nominated for various science fiction awards. == Works == === Hyperion (1989) === First published in 1989, Hyperion has the structure of a frame story, similar to Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron. The story weaves the interlocking tales of a diverse group of travelers sent on a pilgrimage to the Time Tombs on Hyperion. The travelers have been sent by the Hegemony (the government of the human star systems), the All Thing, and the Church of the Final Atonement, alternately known as the Shrike Church, to make a request of the Shrike. As they progress in their journey, each of the pilgrims tells their tale. === The Fall of Hyperion (1990) === This book concludes the story begun in Hyperion. It abandons the storytelling frame structure of the first novel, and is instead presented primarily as a series of dreams by John Keats. === Endymion (1996) === The story commences 274 years after the events in the previous novel. Few main characters from the first two books are present in the later two. The main character is Raul Endymion, an ex-soldier who receives a death sentence after an unfair trial. He is rescued by Martin Silenus and asked to perform a series of rather extraordinarily difficult tasks. The main task is to rescue and protect the daughter of Brawne Lamia (one of the main characters of Hyperion), Aenea, a messiah coming from the time period just after the first books via time travel. The Catholic Church has become a dominant force in the human universe and views Aenea as a potential threat to their power. The group of Aenea, Endymion, and A. Bettik (an android) evades the Church's forces on several worlds through use of the Consul's spaceship, ending the story on Earth. === The Rise of Endymion (1997) === This final novel in the series finishes the story begun in Endymion, expanding on the themes in Endymion, as Raul and Aenea battle the Church and meet their respective destinies. === Short stories === The series also includes three short stories: "Remembering Siri" (1983, included almost verbatim in Hyperion) "The Death of the Centaur" (1990) "Orphans of the Helix" (1999) == Development == The Hyperion universe originated when Simmons was an elementary school teacher, as an extended tale he told at intervals to his young students; this is recorded in "The Death of the Centaur", and its introduction. It then inspired his short story "Remembering Siri", which eventually became the nucleus around which Hyperion and The Fall of Hyperion formed. After the quartet was published came the short story "Orphans of the Helix". "Orphans" is currently the final work in the Cantos, both chronologically and internally. The original Hyperion Cantos has been described as a novel published in two volumes, published separately at first for reasons of length. In his introduction to "Orphans of the Helix", Simmons elaborates: Some readers may know that I've written four novels set in the "Hyperion Universe"—Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, and The Rise of Endymion. A perceptive subset of those readers—perhaps the majority—know that this so-called epic actually consists of two long and mutually dependent tales, the two Hyperion stories combined and the two Endymion stories combined, broken into four books because of the realities of publishing. == Influences == Much of the appeal of the series stems from its extensive use of references and allusions from a wide array of thinkers such as Teilhard de Chardin, John Muir, Norbert Wiener, and to the poetry of John Keats, the famous 19th-century English Romantic poet, Norse mythology, and the monk Ummon. A large number of technological elements are acknowledged by Simmons to be inspired by elements of Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World. The Hyperion series has many echoes of Jack Vance, explicitly acknowledged in one of the later books. The title of the first novel, "Hyperion", is taken from one of Keats's poems, the unfinished epic Hyperion. Similarly, the title of the third novel is from Keats' poem Endymion. Quotes from actual Keats poems and the fictional Cantos of Martin Silenus are interspersed throughout the novels. Simmons goes so far as to have two artificial reincarnations of John Keats ("cybrids": artificial intelligences in human bodies) play a major role in the series. == Setting == Much of the action in the series takes place on the planet Hyperion. It is described as having one-fifth less gravity than Earth standard. Hyperion has a number of peculiar indigenous flora and fauna, notably Tesla trees, which are essentially large electricity-spewing trees. It is also a "labyrinthine" planet, which means that it is home to ancient subterranean labyrinths of unknown purpose. Most importantly, Hyperion is the location of the Time Tombs, large artifacts surrounded by "anti-entropic" fields that allow them to move backward through time. In the fictional universe of the Hyperion Cantos, the Hegemony of Man encompasses over 200 planets. Faster than light communications technology, Fatlines, are said to operate through tachyon bursts. However, in later books it is revealed that they operate through the Void Which Binds. The Farcaster network was given to humanity by the TechnoCore and again it was another use of the Void Which Binds that allowed this instantaneous travel between worlds. The Hawking Drive was developed by human scientists, allowing the faster than light travel which led to the Hegira (from the Arabic word هجرة Hijra, meaning 'migration'). The Gideon drive, a Core-provided starship drive, allows for near-instantaneous travel between any two points in human-occupied space. The drive's use kills any human on board a Gideon-propelled starship; thus, the technology is only of use with remote probes or when used in conjunction with the Pax's resurrection technology. The resurrection creche can regenerate someone carrying a cruciform from their remains. Treeships are living trees that are propelled by ergs (spider-like solid-state alien being that emits force fields) through space. === The Shrike === The region of the Tombs is also the home of the Shrike, a menacing half-mechanical, half-organic four-armed creature that features prominently in the series. It appears in all four Hyperion Cantos books and is an enigma in the initial two; its purpose is not revealed until the second book, but is still left nebulous. The Shrike appears to act both autonomously and as a servant of some unknown force or entity. In the first two Hyperion books, it exists solely in the area around the Time Tombs on the planet Hyperion. Its portrayal is changed significantly in the last two books, Endymion and The Rise of Endymion. In these novels, the Shrike appears effectively unfettered and protects the heroine Aenea against assassins of the opposing TechnoCore. Surrounded in mystery, the object of fear, hatred, and even worship by members of the Church of the Final Atonement (the Shrike Cult), the Shrike's origins are described as uncertain. It is portrayed as composed of razorwire, thorns, blades, and cutting edges, having fingers like scalpels and long, curved toe blades. It has the ability to control the flow of time, and may thus appear to travel infinitely fast. The Shrike may kill victims in a flash or it may transport them to an eternity of impalement upon an enormous artificial 'Tree of Thorns,' or 'Tree of Pain' in Hyperion's distant future. The Tree of Thorns is described as an unimaginably large, metallic tree, alive with the agonized writhing of countless human victims of all ages and races. It is also hinted in the second book that the Tree of Thorns is actually a simulation generated by a mystical interface which connects to human brains via a strong and pulsing (as if it were alive) cord. The name Shrike seems a reference to birds of the shrike family, a family of birds that impales their victims on thorns, spines, or twigs. === Worlds and Systems === In the fictional universe of the Hyperion Cantos, the Hegemony of Man encompasses over 200 planets. The following planets appear or are specifically mentioned in the Hyperion Cantos. Planets of
Refik Anadol
Refik Anadol (born November 7, 1985) is a Turkish American media artist and the co-founder of Refik Anadol Studio and Dataland. Recognized as a pioneer in the aesthetics of data visualization and AI arts, his work merges art, technology, science, and architecture. Through media embedded into existing architecture, live audio-visual performances, immersive rooms, exhibitions, AI data paintings and sculptures, and digital collections, Anadol explores collective memories, humanity's relationship to nature, the perception of space and time, and human-machine collaborations. His work has been exhibited in more than seventy cities on six continents. == Early life and education == Anadol was born and raised in Istanbul and grew up in a family of teachers. He taught himself basic programming on a Commodore 64 when he was eight. His connection to machines began with coding and video games. Anadol saw Blade Runner for the first time when he was eight; his mother said the way he perceived his surroundings shifted the day after he saw the film. He was fascinated with its futuristic depiction of downtown Los Angeles, and transfixed by as a scene during which a replicant discovers that her memories are an implanted component of her machine mind, In a 2024 interview with the Financial Times, he said: "Since that moment, one of my inspirations has been that question: 'What can a machine do with someone else's memories?" Anadol attended Istanbul Bilgi University, where he received a BA in photography and video in 2009 and an MFA in visual communication in 2011. In 2014 he earned an MFA in design media arts at UCLA. He was mentored by Casey Reas, Jennifer Steinkamp, and Christian Moeller. == Career and selected works == === 2008–2012: Data painting, Quadrature and Quadrangle, Istanbul Biennial === As an undergraduate, Anadol read a paper by Lev Manovich on augmented space. Manovich's assertion that collaborations between architects and artists could make the "invisible flow of data visible" triggered Anadol's imagination, and in 2008, he altered built space for the first time. Bringing a projector outside, he projected large-scale images onto a concrete to create the illusion of movement. Coining the term "data painting," the piece inspired Anadol to use light as material and data as pigment. In 2010 he created Quadrature with Alican Aktürk, a fellow graduate student, at the SantralIstanbul Art and Culture Center's main gallery building. A live audio-visual performance that examined the relationship between architecture and media, Quadrature used video projection techniques to manipulate footage of quadrilaterals. He followed Quadrature with Quadrangle at SANAA School of Design in Essen, Germany, using the entire 360 degrees of the building as a canvas. In 2011, he was invited to create a media installation at the Istanbul Biennial on the heavily trafficked İstiklal Avenue. He created a site-specific large-scale interpretation of sounds he recorded during different times of day, and used nine projectors to project reinterpreted images. The work was titled Augmented Structures v1.0. Anadol's first solo exhibition, Sceptical Interventions, was held at the Piveneli Gallery in Istanbul in early 2012. Later that year he moved to Los Angeles to attend UCLA's Design Media Arts program. The first place he went after his arrival was downtown Los Angeles. [6] === 2013–2016: Visions of America: Amériques, Infinity Room, Google AMI === In 2013, at Microsoft Research's annual Design Expo, Anadol presented his idea to use the external walls of Walt Disney Concert Hall as a canvas. His presentation brought him to the attention of Gehry Technologies, and with the support of Gehry and his team, Anadol was offered the use of the original 3D model of the concert hall. For his 2014 thesis project, with assistance from architects and UCLA researchers, he created a site-specific architectural video installation inside the concert hall that accompanied a Los Angeles Philharmonic performance of Edgard Varèse's Amérique. Titled Visions of America: Amériques, Anadol used algorithmic sound analysis to listen and respond to the music in real-time. He tracked conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen's heartbeat with a sensor and used a 3-D camera system to integrate Salonen's movements. He created Infinity Room at the Zorlu PSM for the 2015 Istanbul Biennial. Rather than creating an illusion only with mirrors, Anadol used pixel and 3D projection mapping to transform every surface of the room into an abstract infinite moving space. A temporary immersive environment, Infinity Room was also exhibited at events including South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, the New Zealand Festival in Wellington, New Zealand, and Jeffrey Deitch in Los Angeles. In 2016, Anadol was awarded the first Google Artists and Machine Intelligence Artist Residency; it was just after a team at Google opened up the algorithm for DeepDream, a computer vision program that prompted Anadol's realization that if a machine could learn, it could remember, dream, and hallucinate. === 2017–2018: Winds of Boston, Archive Dreaming, Melting Memories, WDCH Dreams === In 2017, he created the data painting Winds of Boston, a 6' x 13' foot video installation in the lobby of a Boston office building, using software he created to read, analyze and visualize wind speed, direction, and gust patterns along with time and temperature at 20-second intervals recorded over a one-year period at Logan International Airport. Later in the year, he used AI to generate infinite new outputs based on a massive dataset for Archive Dreaming, an immersive installation at Salt Research, a contemporary gallery and library in Istanbul. Inspired by his idea of consciousness and its context within AI, as well as Jorge Luis Borges' The Library of Babel, Anadol used AI and machine learning to look at and discover interactions and correlations between 1.7 million items culled from 40,000 publications covering Turkish contemporary and modern art, architecture, and economics from 1997 to 2010. Archive Dreaming, which could be controlled by users with a joystick, dreamed of unexpected correlations among documents when idle. In 2018, after his uncle was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, Anadol created Melting Memories. Working with scientists from the neuroscape laboratory at the University of California, San Francisco, he used academic data from the neuroscience archives and EEG scans of an anonymous Alzheimer's disease dataset to create AI-generated visuals related to memory, health, degeneration, and decay.Melting Memories was projected on the walls of Pilevneli Gallery; visitors to the exhibition could watch as millions of pixels reconstructed people's memories. Anadol won the Lumen Prize Gold Award for Melting Memories. Anadol was commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic to create an installation to celebrate the orchestra's centennial anniversary in 2018. He worked with Google's Kenric MacDowell to create WDCH Dreams, using algorithmic visualizations of data to mimic the process of human dreaming. Projected across the exterior walls of Walt Disney Concert Hall using 42 large-scale projectors with 50K visual resolution, 8-channel sound, and 1.2M luminance, Anadol painted with data points culled from the orchestra's archives, including 587,763 images, 1,880 videos, 1,483 metadata files, and 17,773 audio files. Because Gehry gave him access to the 3D architectural files of Walt Disney Concert Hall, Anadol knew the exact contours of the building. WDCH Dreams debuted in September 2018. A 12-minute performance in three parts staged every 30 minutes over ten nights, "Centennial Memories,” the first piece, used 44.5 terabytes of historical data from the Phil's archives. It was followed by "Consciousness", which processed every note the orchestra has ever recorded, using billions of data points to generate connections; and "Dream," which merged "Centennial Memories" and "Consciousness" to create hallucinations that were described in the New York Times as "a sort of combinatorial Fantasia. === 2019–2021: Machine Hallucinations: NYC, Machine Hallucinations: Nature Dreams, Machine Memories: Space, Quantum Memories === In 2019, Refik Anadol presented Latent History at Fotografiska Stockholm. The site specific installation transformed photographic archives of Stockholm into a large scale, machine generated visual projection displayed in the museum’s main exhibition hall. Drawing on thousands of archival images spanning approximately 150 years, the work used artificial intelligence to reinterpret the city’s historical imagery as a continuously evolving visual narrative.. Anadol began thinking about the work that would become the Machine Hallucinations series while in residence at Google. In 2019, he completed the first work in the series, Machine Hallucinations: NYC, which used 300 million photos of New York City and 113 million additional data points, including subway sounds, ra
Willy's Chocolate Experience
Willy's Chocolate Experience was an unlicensed event based on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory that took place in Glasgow, Scotland, in February 2024. The event was promoted as an immersive and interactive family experience, illustrated on a promotional website with "dreamlike" AI-generated images. Once it was discovered that the event was held in a sparsely decorated warehouse, many customers complained, and the police were called to the venue. The event went viral on the Internet and attracted worldwide media attention. The event drew comparisons to the 2008 Lapland New Forest controversy, the 2014 Tumblr fan convention DashCon, and Billy McFarland's 2017 Fyre Festival. == Background and advertising == The event was stated to take place over the weekend of 24–25 February 2024. Promotional material advertised "stunning and intricately designed settings inspired by Roald Dahl's timeless tale" and "an array of delectable treats scattered throughout the experience". Both the website and promotional material used poor-quality AI-generated images, which included several spelling errors such as "cartchy tuns" and "a pasadise of sweet teats" and nonsensical words such as "catgacating" and "exarserdray". Tickets cost up to £35 per person. While the event was being promoted in early February, a Reddit user who saw Facebook advertisements suspected it to be a scam and was surprised that people were apparently buying tickets based solely on AI-generated images. The event was organised by House of Illuminati, a company registered to Billy Coull which claimed to offer "unparalleled immersive experiences". An investigation by Third Force News conducted after the event described Coull's previous "murky involvement in the charity sector." Coull had previously registered several other companies and claimed to work as a "consultant" for the now-defunct brand Empowerity, formerly known as the charity Gowanbank Community Hub. In 2021, Gowanbank was forced to remove claims of a £95-per-ticket fundraising "gala" at DoubleTree Glasgow which had been falsely advertised to feature TV personalities and performers including Gok Wan and Joe Black. Coull had claimed to be a doctor with a fake degree from a false university that provided "metaphysical degrees", and had attempted to use the charity to win the 2022 Glasgow City Council election in the seat of Greater Pollok, though he never registered for the election. In the summer of 2023, he independently published 17 AI-generated books on various topics, including vaccine conspiracy theories. Rolling Stone concluded that House of Illuminati's websites and event descriptions were likely written by an AI chatbot, such as ChatGPT. Three actors were hired to portray "Willy McDuff", a character based on Willy Wonka. One of them, Paul Connell, said that the cast were given one day to learn the script. Another actor playing Willy McDuff was 18-year-old Michael Archibald; the experience was his first ever acting job, and he was given the script at 6 pm on Friday before the event began on Saturday. Kirsty Paterson, an actress who played one of the Oompa-Loompas (called "Wonkidoodles" in the script), said that the job offer had been posted on Indeed.com and offered £500 for two days of work. The day before the event, the actors attended a dress rehearsal at the sparsely decorated venue. They were told that others would be working through the night on the production. When they returned on the day of the event, the venue was in the same condition. Paterson was given her costume an hour before the event opened, saying that "We were just handed an Amazon box that probably arrived that morning." == Script == The script for the event is titled Wonkidoodles at McDuff's Chocolate Factory: A Script, and describes Willy McDuff leading an audience through the Garden of Enchantment and the Twilight Tunnel. Once there, they are confronted by a character called The Unknown, described as "an evil chocolate maker who lives in the walls" who seeks to steal the magical "Anti-Graffiti Gobstopper" from McDuff's Imagination Lab. The gobstopper is "a sweet so powerful, it can make any room sparkle without lifting a finger". McDuff defeats The Unknown by amplifying the power of the gobstopper and causing his enemy to be "gently swept up by a robotic vacuum, humorously ending the confrontation". The script was unusual in that it included stage directions for the audience, and descriptions of their reactions. Connell described it as "15 pages of AI-generated gibberish of me just monologuing these mad things", and compared the vacuum cleaner plot point to that of the Nintendo video game Luigi's Mansion. Interviewed after the event, Coull claimed to have written the script himself, using AI only to "check spelling, grammar, and continuity" as he said he had dyslexia. == Event == The event was held at the Box Hub Warehouse event space in Whiteinch, an industrial area of Glasgow. Customers described the venue as "little more than an abandoned, empty warehouse", with set dressings including a small bouncy castle, AI-generated backdrop images pinned to some of the walls, and props which were "strewn about on bare concrete floors". The venue's windows were dirty and its air conditioning systems were left exposed. Paterson has stated that by the time she saw the venue, she had already signed her contract and "didn't want to disappoint the kids", and thus chose to proceed with the work. The Unknown was played by a 16-year-old actress named Felicia Dawkins, who wore a silver mask and a black cloak. Young children were frightened by the character, who appeared from behind a large rectangular mirror. Despite the script calling for The Unknown to be defeated with a vacuum cleaner, no such prop was provided, and actors were instead asked to improvise. Connell said that he and other employees were told to give each child "two jelly beans and a quarter of a cup of lemonade", although the limited supply of jelly beans quickly ran out. Paterson and another "Wonkidoodle" actress, Jenny Fogarty, said that after the first three 45-minute performances, the cast were told to abandon the script and instead let guests walk through the venue, a process that Paterson said took "about two minutes". The character of The Unknown, previously introduced as the main antagonist, was now "scaring children for no reason". One of the actors playing McDuff improvised the idea that children should pull a "silly face" at The Unknown to scare them away, but Dawkins said that, in other cases, she "just had to awkwardly walk back to my corner". Connell was told he would be given a 15-minute break every 45 minutes, but on the day of the event, he played Willy McDuff for three and a half hours without a break. After returning from a lunch break, Connell encountered a crowd of customers demanding refunds from Coull, and the other actors were unsure what to do next. After being told that the event was now cancelled halfway through its opening day, the actors left and went to a pub. Upon returning to the venue some time later, Connell said that he felt "the threat of violence had become quite high" and that there were two police vans and two squad cars at the scene. == Customer reviews and response == Willy's Chocolate Experience was widely criticised by those who attended it, many of whom demanded refunds. One customer, who had driven with his children for two hours to reach the event, described it as an "absolute con". Other visitors who arrived after the event was closed and were not informed of its cancellation requested compensation for wasted rail fares. Following the event's cancellation, Coull offered to refund 850 people, a statement repeated by the event's Facebook page. Some Facebook users stated that they had received their money back. Paterson and Fogarty stated that they only received half of their paycheque. Box Hub, the organisation that had rented the warehouse to House of Illuminati, issued an apology on House of Illuminati's behalf, stating that they "either have no regards for the families and young children they have disappointed or are too embarrassed to comment", and offered to provide a venue free of charge for those who attended the event. House of Illuminati later stated that they would not host any future events. Coull deleted his LinkedIn profile, his YouTube channel, and his personal website in response to the controversy. A few days after the event, Connell said he felt that Coull was "probably one of the most disliked people in Glasgow right now". In an interview with The Sunday Times, Coull apologised for how the event turned out, saying he would accept responsibility. == Fundraising == In an interview with Wired magazine, Connell stated that he and the other actors were working with parents to provide a free show for the children who attended. Some items from the event were later auctioned for charity. The venue auctioned the leftover hand-written "even
Data cube
In computer programming, a data cube (or datacube) is a multi-dimensional array of values. Typically, the term "data cube" is applied in contexts where these arrays are massively larger than the hosting computer's main memory; examples include multi-terabyte/petabyte data warehouses and time series of image data. Even though it is called a cube, a data cube generally is a multi-dimensional concept which can be 1-dimensional, 2-dimensional, 3-dimensional, or higher-dimensional. The data cube is used to represent data (sometimes called facts) along some dimensions of interest. In satellite image timeseries, dimensions would be latitude and longitude coordinates and time; a fact (sometimes called measure) would be a pixel at a given space and time as taken by the satellite. For example, in online analytical processing, an OLAP cube about a company would have dimensions that could be the company subsidiaries, the company products, and time; in this setup, a fact would be a sales event where a particular product has been sold in a particular subsidiary at a particular time. In any case, every dimension divides data into groups of cells whereas each cell in the cube represents a single measure of interest. Sometimes cubes hold only a few values with the rest being empty, i.e. undefined, while sometimes most or all cube coordinates hold a cell value. In the first case such data are called sparse, and in the second case they are called dense, although there is no hard delineation between the two. Data cubes may be stored in database management systems (DBMS) as part of array DBMS. Spatio-temporal databases and geospatial databases may also be represented as coverage data. == History == Multi-dimensional arrays have long been familiar in programming languages. Fortran offers arbitrarily-indexed 1-D arrays and arrays of arrays, which allows the construction of higher-dimensional arrays, up to 15 dimensions. APL supports n-D arrays with a rich set of operations. All these have in common that arrays must fit into the main memory and are available only while the particular program maintaining them (such as image processing software) is running. A series of data exchange formats support storage and transmission of data cube-like data, often tailored towards particular application domains. Examples include MDX for statistical (in particular, business) data, Zarr and Hierarchical Data Format for general scientific data, and TIFF for imagery. In 1992, Peter Baumann introduced management of massive data cubes with high-level user functionality combined with an efficient software architecture. Datacube operations include subset extraction, processing, fusion, and in general queries in the spirit of data manipulation languages like SQL. Some years after, the data cube concept was applied to describe time-varying business data as data cubes by Jim Gray, et al., and by Venky Harinarayan, Anand Rajaraman and Jeff Ullman. Around that time, a working group on Multi-Dimensional Databases ("Arbeitskreis Multi-Dimensionale Datenbanken") was established at German Gesellschaft für Informatik. Datacube Inc. was an image processing company selling hardware and software applications for the PC market in 1996, however without addressing data cubes as such. The EarthServer initiative has established geo data cube service requirements. == Standardization == In 2018, the ISO SQL database language was extended with data cube functionality as "SQL – Part 15: Multi-dimensional arrays (SQL/MDA)". Web Coverage Processing Service is a geo data cube analytics language issued by the Open Geospatial Consortium in 2008. In addition to the common data cube operations, the language knows about the semantics of space and time and supports both regular and irregular grid data cubes, based on the concept of coverage data. An industry standard for querying business data cubes, originally developed by Microsoft, is MultiDimensional eXpressions. == Implementation == Many high-level computer languages treat data cubes and other large arrays as single entities distinct from their contents. These languages, of which Fortran, APL, IDL, NumPy, PDL, and S-Lang are examples, allow the programmer to manipulate complete film clips and other data en masse with simple expressions derived from linear algebra and vector mathematics. Some languages (such as PDL) distinguish between a list of images and a data cube, while many (such as IDL) do not. Array DBMSs (Database Management Systems) offer a data model which generically supports definition, management, retrieval, and manipulation of n-dimensional data cubes. This database category has been pioneered by the rasdaman system since 1994. == Applications == Multi-dimensional arrays can meaningfully represent spatio-temporal sensor, image, and simulation data, but also statistics data where the semantics of dimensions is not necessarily of spatial or temporal nature. Generally, any kind of axis can be combined with any other into a data cube. === Mathematics === In mathematics, a one-dimensional array corresponds to a vector, a two-dimensional array resembles a matrix; more generally, a tensor may be represented as an n-dimensional data cube. === Science and engineering === For a time sequence of color images, the array is generally four-dimensional, with the dimensions representing image X and Y coordinates, time, and RGB (or other color space) color plane. For example, the EarthServer initiative unites data centers from different continents offering 3-D x/y/t satellite image timeseries and 4-D x/y/z/t weather data for retrieval and server-side processing through the Open Geospatial Consortium WCPS geo data cube query language standard. A data cube is also used in the field of imaging spectroscopy, since a spectrally-resolved image is represented as a three-dimensional volume. Earth observation data cubes combine satellite imagery such as Landsat 8 and Sentinel-2 with Geographic information system analytics. === Business intelligence === In online analytical processing (OLAP), data cubes are a common arrangement of business data suitable for analysis from different perspectives through operations like slicing, dicing, pivoting, and aggregation.
Pop music automation
Pop music automation is a field of study among musicians and computer scientists with a goal of producing successful pop music algorithmically. It is often based on the premise that pop music is especially formulaic, unchanging, and easy to compose. The idea of automating pop music composition is related to many ideas in algorithmic music, artificial intelligence (AI) and computational creativity. == History of automation in music == Algorithms (or, at the very least, formal sets of rules) have been used to compose music for centuries; the procedures used to plot voice-leading in counterpoint, for example, can often be reduced to algorithmic determinant. Now the term is usually reserved, however, for the use of formal procedures to make music without human intervention. Classical music automation software exists that generates music in the style of Mozart and Bach and jazz. Most notably, David Cope has written a software system called "Experiments in Musical Intelligence" (or "EMI") that is capable of analyzing and generalizing from existing music by a human composer to generate novel musical compositions in the same style. EMI's output is convincing enough to persuade human listeners that its music is human-generated to a high level of competence. Creativity research in jazz has focused on the process of improvisation and the cognitive demands that this places on a musical agent: reasoning about time, remembering and conceptualizing what has already been played, and planning ahead for what might be played next. Inevitably associated with pop music automation is pop music analysis. Projects in pop music automation may include, but are not limited to, ideas in melody creation and song development, vocal generation or improvement, automatic accompaniment and lyric composition. == Automatic accompaniment == Some systems exist that automatically choose chords to accompany a vocal melody in real-time. A user with no musical experience can create a song with instrumental accompaniment just by singing into a microphone. An example is a Microsoft Research project called Songsmith, which trains a Hidden Markov model using a music database and uses that model to select chords for new melodies. == Melody generation == Automatic melody generation is often done with a Markov chain, the states of the system become note or pitch values, and a probability vector for each note is constructed, completing a transition probability matrix (see below). An algorithm is constructed to produce an output note values based on the transition matrix weightings, which could be MIDI note values, frequency (Hz), or any other desirable metric. A second-order Markov chain can be introduced by considering the current state and also the previous state, as indicated in the second table. Higher, nth-order chains tend to "group" particular notes together, while 'breaking off' into other patterns and sequences occasionally. These higher-order chains tend to generate results with a sense of phrasal structure, rather than the 'aimless wandering' produced by a first-order system. == Lyric composition == Automated lyric creating software may take forms such as: Selecting words according to their rhythm The Tra-la-Lyrics system produces song lyrics, in Portuguese, for a given melody. This not only involves matching each word syllable with a note in the melody, but also matching the word's stress with the strong beats of the melody. Parsing existing pop music (e.g. for content or word choice) This involves natural language processing. Pablo Gervás has developed a noteworthy system called ASPERA that employs a case-based reasoning (CBR) approach to generating poetic formulations of a given input text via a composition of poetic fragments that are retrieved from a case-base of existing poems. Each poem fragment in the ASPERA case-base is annotated with a prose string that expresses the meaning of the fragment, and this prose string is used as the retrieval key for each fragment. Metrical rules are then used to combine these fragments into a well-formed poetic structure. Automatic analogy or story creation Programs like TALE-SPIN and The MINSTREL system represent a complex elaboration of this basis approach, distinguishing a range of character-level goals in the story from a range of author-level goals for the story. Systems like Bringsjord's BRUTUS can create stories with complex interpersonal themes like betrayal. On-line metaphor generation systems like 'Sardonicus' or 'Aristotle' can suggest lexical metaphors for a given descriptive goal (e.g., to describe a supermodel as skinny, the source terms “pencil”, “whip”, “whippet”, “rope”, “stick-insect” and “snake” are suggested). Free association of grouped words Using a language database (such as wordnet) one can create musings on a subject that may be weak grammatically but are still sensical. See such projects as the Flowerewolf automatic poetry generator or the Dada engine. == Software == === More or less free === BreathCube by xoxos. Simple lyrical vocal content is generated with simple music. CubeBreath by xoxos. Audio input is vocoded in tune with the music. Midi Internet Algorithmic Composition infno, infinite generator of electronic dance music and synth-pop. Algorithmic Trap, trap beat generator. === Commercial === Band in a box generates any element, potentially creates whole new songs from scratch. Musical Palette - Melody Composing Tool SongSmith: Automatic accompaniment for vocal melodies Ludwig 3.0 automatic accompaniment, writes arrangements for given instruments, plays its own songs for an infinitely long time. Automated Composing System creates music in many different styles