The Word of God (II) from Adam Rokhsar on Vimeo.Is it sacrilegious to have a computer read (and, in all fairness, totally butcher) the Bible? We’re not really sure, but the results are certainly fascinating and make for an unusual kind of audio-visual remix of the word of God. Artist Adam Rokhsar spent six years as a practicing psychologist, but these days he’s devoting his time to the study of digital signal theory, machine learning and computer science. Many of his projects focus on algorithmically replicating neurological processes of the human brain via his computer, experimenting with the concepts of memory, recognition and comprehension in artificial intelligence.His most recent work, The Word of God (II) is an audio/video representation of a machine trying to understand the Bible. Rokhsar writes about the work:The red network of lines is a live video of the machine's brain, built using a custom artificial intelligence algorithm. Each line is like a neuron that fires whenever it sees a particular word. As time goes by, the brain gets better at reading. It adapts to recognize words, starting with the words it sees most frequently.The text on the right is the original text, the text below is what the activated neuron thinks it's reading. The piece is run as a live installation; it takes approximately two days for the machine to read The Bible.This video is a short excerpt of that process, taken as the machine is beginning to understand its first words.Check out Rokhsar’s other intriguing projects on his website.
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