Art and Science may not always be the best of friends, but when they do get together they throw one hell of a party. The Undivided Mind art show opens tonight, Friday November 19th, in San Francisco with free admission, wine, and conversation with those interested in the Singularity, Transhumanism and technology. The show will feature oil paintings created from digital images originally designed by the mysterious and provocative Imaginary Foundation. I had a chance to talk with Micah Daigle, the “Director of Meta-Pattern Affairs” for The Undivided Mind. He promises a great evening of art and science to those who make the journey to the Fifty24SF gallery space tonight. If you can’t make it, more’s the pity, but the work will be on display this week (Nov 20 to Nov 28) everyday in the afternoon. As you can see in the photos below, The Undivided Mind promises to be a unique experience. Why are there chalkboard equations covering the walls? Guess I’ll have to go and find out.

Those who make it to The Undivided Mind should find it full of futurists and aficionados of the Singularity. Expected attendees include Jason Silva, Michael Annissimov,and Michael Vassar. While there won’t be any planned presentations or speeches, Daigle told me there would be a hunt for the Higgs boson. The person who finds the ‘God particle’ will win a free painting from the show. (Someone should warn the guys at CERN).

Despite the wacky particle hijinks, tonight’s discussion should be a fairly pertinent one. The Imaginary Foundation has made it its mission to enable human progress through the use of art (and clothing) and The Undivided Mind is aimed at exploring how art and science could combine to guide us through the disruptive technological changes on the horizon. In other words, the art show should be enlightening as well as fun. Sounds like my cup of tea. Those who attend should feel free to post some comments on the event below.

[image credits: Imaginary Foundation]
[sources: Micah Daigle, Imaginary Foundation]

The SF Opera expects 30,000 at their upcoming simulcast event in a ballpark. Garlic fries and Sopranos are a powerful combination.

This Friday will mark the fifth time that the San Francisco Opera simulcasts its performance to AT&T Park, home of the San Francisco Giants baseball team. The SF Opera’s rendition of Aida will be free for all attending, yet the company reports that they hope to make money off the event. How? By gathering information. Those who wish to get into the ballpark early have to register and provide contact information. According to the Wall Street Journal, the SF Opera has been able to track new ticket sales generated by the simulcasts and found them to be around $880k in total, which more than covers costs ($800k). Yet economics aside, the SF Opera success at the ballpark has fascinated me for completely different reasons. It’s a great example of how technology can affect even very traditional art forms. Also, in a society that increasingly wants its entertainment on-demand and in the comfort of their homes, the choice to watch opera in a baseball stadium stands out. Are people simply enticed by the free product and the novelty, or is there something about watching classic art with a crowd that simply refuses to die?

I don’t just write for the internet, I’m also a member. I spend a lot my time online and I get the majority of my content from net sources. As I mentioned during the discussion about Google TV, I’m pretty sure that the majority of media, including television, will and should move online. You can find many wonderful opera performances on the internet, and DVD sales should let you see the performances upclose and personal in ways that you would never experience in a real opera house unless you paid hundreds of dollars.

So why is sitting in an arena hundreds of feet from a screen popular? Obviously people want to attend this event, the SF Opera is expecting 30,000 for the Friday simulcast, up from 25,000 last year. This free performance accounts for a good portion of their yearly attendance (300,000 for the 2008-2009 season). In fact, the performance is certainly increasing attendance in general – the 2007-2008 season saw 240,000 in the opera house. These are expensive seats (many over $100) during a recession. The opera at the ballpark (a free event) is pulling a significant number of people into paying for the real thing. I’m not surprised by the fact that a free performance brings in regular attendees (that’s a bet many theaters have been making for years), it’s just that I don’t think of the ballpark experience as being all that seductive. Watch the brief video below to see a clip of someone’s experience at a SF Opera Simulcast to see what I mean:

I don’t think that the sound, the video, or the temperature is going to be as nice at AT&T park as it would be at the opera house, yet this experience is still drawing people in. Is it just the magic of the opera? Maybe. But I think it also has to do with the magic of a crowd, and the opportunities provided by modern technology.

There’s a certain excitement that comes from watching an event you know is live, and that excitement is amplified by being shared with people around you. The “anything could happen” mindset lends an edge, and increases the feelings of importance, to a performance. Modern fiber optic cable and video equipment allow the SF Opera to be in two places at once, so that viewers at the ballpark can watch something they know is alive and happening not too far from where they sit. Not only that, but they do so in an environment that is public, friendly, and inviting. You never know what could happen. Exhibit A, taken from another SF Opera Simulcast:

Ok sure, so there’s something very enticing about watching a live theatre event with a crowd. You already knew that, though. Here’s how the Opera at the Ballpark is unique: that ‘crowd’ isn’t just a few hundred people as you would experience with a play, or a classic performance of an opera, it’s 30,000 adults and children in an arena. That’s a much bigger and more powerful group to interact with. It’s the kind of energy you get from a sports event, only with fewer chest bumps.

It’s probably no wonder then, that this kind of simulcast is having success with Opera, which is probably the most showy, dramatic, and arena-friendly of classical art forms. Bringing in crowds of tens of thousands makes sense when you have performers belting out five minute solos about love, death, and war. It’s a rock concert with subtitles and better costumes.

And it may be a sign that we aren’t ready to crawl inside our computers and shut out the physical world. Until the internet can provide us the visceral energy of sharing a a crowd of thousands, there’s going to be a need for arena performances. Entities like the SF Opera are wise to leverage modern technology to take advantage of that need and use it to re-imagine their art forms. It will be interesting to see if other art forms follow the trend, and I’m curious to see if other opera houses can replicate San Francisco’s success. The Washington National Opera is already trying it out. Who knows, stadiums may be the way theater, opera, symphony, and other classic art forms save themselves from an early death.

[image credit: MLB]
[video credits: Dexxx, JenniferP192]
[source: SF Opera, Wall Street Journal]

The RoboGames are returning to San Francisco in April. Hey, Robots, you're on the same team!

RoboGames, now in its 7th year, is the world’s largest robotics competition. For this year’s contest they secured the 5,000 person San Mateo Expo Center, just outside of San Francisco. From April 23-25 this will be the hallowed grounds where thousands of contestants, controlling more than 500 robots, compete in 70+ events. Many of these events will be robot-on-robot battles such as biped kung-fu and robot sumo wrestling. There will also be an exciting new event this year called “mechwars.” Contestants will battle using walking robots, but their view will be restricted to a bot-mounted pov camera. They will then compete in a scale-model city with flamethrowers and CO2 powered rifles to take out their opponent. How hardcore is that! I was able to talk with founder David Calkins and get the scoop on how that competition and others makes the RoboGames better every year.

Most events will take place in the shadow of the biggest draw at RoboGames- robotic combat. In these games, robots go after each other in a lexan-enclosed arena with everything from buzz saws to pneumatic hammers.

But RoboGames is about more than just honing the combat capabilities of our future overlords, the competition includes robot marathon and sprinting competitions, hockey, soccer, basketball, and junior events. In talking with RoboGames founder David Calkins, he said that events will continue to be added going forward based on what the robot designers are interested in. In the past, this meant adding the many artistic categories that are now part of the games, “we found we had a lot of requests from robot artists to compete.”

On a side note, I’ve always wondered why robot sprinting isn’t a bigger deal. The 100m dash is probably the marquee event at the human Olympics, but sprinting is just another event at the RoboGames (actually, it’s three events, for different sized robot sprinters). But I’m not blaming the organizers, it just seems like nobody takes the “world’s fastest robot” title seriously (of course at SingularityHub, we do). If you Google “world’s fastest robot” you get videos of quick working sorting bots, not Usian Bolt wannabees. Organizers of the yearly RoboCup, where humanoid robots play soccer, have stated their goal to field a robot team that can beat the human winners of the World Cup by 2050. That’s a pretty distant goal (mind the pun), but it’s distant for a good reason- playing a good match of soccer would required just about every aspect of a humanoid to be perfected, and then some. Beating the world’s faster runner to 100 meters seems more like it’s within the realm of possibility, at least something that a researcher could both start and finish. Plus, it just looks cool.

Toyota’s humanoid running robot, the world’s fastest:

Last year, teams from all over the world came to RoboGames and this year will be no different. Newcomers from Pakistan and Egypt will join traditional powerhouses like Japan and Taiwan, as they go for the gold. The games are a huge deal for many of the foreign teams, some of whom publish research papers based on their experiences at the games, and a few, like winners from Mexico and Indonesia last year, get an invite to meet their country’s president.

This international flavor goes a long way towards accomplishing one of the main goals of RoboGames- strengthening the bonds between different groups of robot engineers. Many of the events at RoboGames involve only a small subset of robotics. For instance, combat bots are very mechanical engineering heavy, whereas the automated events are often very computer engineering heavy. Other events have strong electrical engineering, or artistic components. David thinks the games help cross-pollinate the various fields with information from other researchers.

But cultural exchanges, spirited competition, and gold medals aren’t the only thing that the RoboGames share with the Olympics. When I asked David how the competition changes from year to year, he told me “the games are pretty much the same, but the contestants just keep getting better.”

The 7th annual RoboGames will be held from April 23rd through the 25th. For more information, head to http://robogames.net/
The San Mateo Expo Center is also the location for the Maker Faire, coming May 22nd. More on that, later.

[photo credit: Kaist]
[video credit: Blogphilo New Media, Toyota via Smart Machines]

Health 2.0 Con 2009 will have over 100 speakers, many hundreds of live demos of products in an exhibit hall, and a keynote address by Aneesh Chopra, the newly appointed Chief Technology Officer of the US government. Discussion groups will focus on everything from “Gaming and Healthcare” to “defining Health 2.0″. It’s a great opportunity to be at the cross roads of healthcare technology and healthcare philosophy.

The list of speakers, presenters, and exhibit hall displays is epic. You’ve got web based groups like Google Health, WebMD, and Microsoft. There will be discussion abouts the future of health plans with the likes of BlueCrossBlueShield, Cigna, and Kaiser Permanente. I personally would love to discuss games and healthcare with Gaming4Health and the American Heart Association. There are too many mind-blowing panels to mention. Check out the agenda to learn more.

Of course, with a conference comes big name sponsors like Athena Health, Pfizer, Cisco, Oracle, Johnson & Johnson, and many more. As an individual concerned with the future of healthcare, I honestly often see these large corporations as the enemy. That’s naive and paranoid of me, I know. Part of what Health 2.0 is all about is getting people like me to interface with the giants of healthcare in a mutually beneficial way. I’m really interested to see how sponsors and speakers and attendees set the discussion at this conference.

Speaking of attendees, do you have $1800 laying around? That’s the full price of a conference ticket. All the exhibitors (but presumably not the panelists) are tossing up that much green to display their wares. Practicing physicians have options for attending for free. If you’re a doctor interested in the conference make sure to see if you can avoid shelling out the two grand.

The future of healthcare will be shaped by democratized technology (like ubiquitous biosensors, or smart toilets) as well as aggregate patient groups. As Clay Shirky mentions in the video, patients outnumber professionals in the industry by 100 to 1. Patients are healthcare. As that realization spreads, and technology works to make it a reality, the way we live and heal is going to change. I can’t wait to see what insights the Health 2.0 Conference brings. Rest assured that whatever Singularity Hub learns, we’ll be passing on to you.

[video credit: Health2.0 TV through Vimeo]