Strange Loop

Can Androids Conceive of Electric Sheep

What began as a hackathon project turned into a minor obsession...

A few years ago, I wrote a script that turns a photo into an animation of a hand drawing the photo. At first it was just a fun hack but as I ironed out the perfections, I encountered several interesting problems and found some novel applications. How can I tweak the animation to better simulate human biomechanics? How can I sequence the animation to simulate human cognition? How can I alter the original image to simulate human creativity? How can interpret the objects and symbols in the original image to simulate human insight? Can this digital algorithmic artist inspire us as much as it's analog human counterparts?

In this talk I'll answer those questions and more as I share the story behind my attempt to create an android artist.

Kwame Thomison

Magnetic Inc

Kwame is an engineering leader with experience at companies like Facebook, Asana, and Meebo. He's currently an engineering leadership coach and advisor. In his free time he most enjoys dreaming up ideas that didn't exist before and making them a reality.