Turning an analysis of Asimov's Foundation into art

In caller years, galore machine scientists and artists worldwide person worked connected projects that merge integer creation and machine science. For instance, immoderate introduced computational models that tin make archetypal artworks, portion others utilized information investigation tools to analyse literate works oregon paintings.

Milan Janosov Ph.D., main information idiosyncratic astatine Datapolis and probe affiliate astatine the Central European University, and Flora Borsi, distinguished integer artist, person precocious carried retired a survey that merges information subject and integer creation successful an innovative and intriguing way. Their paper, pre-published connected arXiv, was aimed astatine analyzing Isaac Asimov's subject fabrication publication bid "Foundation," portion simultaneously producing a unsocial integer artwork based connected this analysis.

"Our insubstantial is an archetypal probe project, portion we besides relied connected results and methods presented successful erstwhile studies," Milán Janosov, 1 of the researchers who carried retired the study, told TechXplore. "This is simply a wholly caller project. In the past, I had a fewer other projects besides rooted successful fashionable culture, but their objectives were rather different. Its main nonsubjective was twofold: connected the 1 hand, to recognize the main patterns successful Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" series, and connected the different hand, to represent these patterns arsenic a integer portion of (data) art."

Janosov's co-author, Borsi, is simply a Hungarian good creation lensman known for her usage of photograph manipulation methods to make surreal and originative images. Her enactment was presented astatine exhibitions successful renowned galleries crossed Europe and the US, including the Louvre successful Paris and Saatchi Gallery successful London.

Credit: Janosov and Borsi.

Janosov focused connected the information subject facet of the project—the investigation of Asimov's "Foundation" series, portion Borsi worked connected translating the results of this investigation into a integer artwork. The last artwork tin beryllium viewed some on Instagram and on the NFT level Foundation.

Initially, Janosov and Borsi examined Asimov's vocation past to amended recognize however important and applicable the "Foundation" publication bid was passim his career. Remarkably, they recovered that implicit fractional of Asimov's visibility and popularity tin beryllium credited to the "Foundation."

Subsequently, they started analyzing the books themselves utilizing information subject techniques. In total, the substance files they analyzed included implicit 350,000 words.

"We started to bash a fewer statistical explorations, for instance, to spot what the main keywords and what the astir predominant words mentioned were," Janosov explained. "We recovered that among the astir mentioned keywords determination were 3 antithetic planets. If idiosyncratic is acquainted with "Foundation," they cognize precise good that it is simply a travel crossed the postulation and besides crossed time, due to the fact that it is acceptable successful the acold future. So we started to look astatine the planets themselves and however their storylines unfold."

In their analyses, Janosov and Borsi could intelligibly observe however the antithetic plots successful the "Foundation" books evolved. For instance, they could find whether a satellite featured successful the books was lone applicable to a fewer plots oregon was cardinal to the story, specified arsenic Trantor and Terminus.

"Of course, antithetic planets play antithetic roles successful the book," Janosov said. "That's wherefore we started to look astatine the affectional arcs of these planets."

The thought that stories travel circumstantial affectional patterns, oregon 'arcs," was archetypal introduced by American writer Kurt Vonnegut successful 1995. However, a fewer years ago, Andrew Reagan and his colleagues astatine the University of Vermont's Computational Story Lab successful Burlington uncovered six affectional arcs that look peculiarly communal successful storytelling.

They called these arcs:

• "Rags to riches": Marked by a dependable affectional rise
• "Riches to rags" oregon "Tragedy": Marked by a dependable affectional fall
• "Man successful a hole": Fall-Rise
• "Icarus": Rise-Fall
• "Cinderella": Rise-Fall-Rise
• "Oedipus": Fall-Rise-Fall

When analyzing the Foundation, Janosov and Borsi looked much intimately astatine the antithetic planets successful the books to spot if they had their ain affectional arcs. Interestingly, they were intelligibly capable to observe the affectional trends of plots acceptable connected each satellite successful the data.

"We extracted a bid of sentences astir each planet, and we utilized a happiness scoring algorithm to make their affectional arc," Janosov said "It was precise absorbing to see, for example, that the arc of Trantor was going down, and that coincided with the information that some Trantor and the galactic were besides falling during the series; portion connected the different hand, Terminus, which is the bosom of the Foundation, dilatory rises."

After completing their analyses of Asimov's "Foundation," the researchers acceptable retired to construe the books into a network. The adjacent measurement would beryllium to alteration this web graph, a information visualization, into a unsocial integer artwork.

"I person a Ph.D. successful web science, truthful networks are precise adjacent to my bosom and my halfway expertise," Janosov said. "There are galore ways to alteration a substance into networks, but 1 of the richest ways with this benignant of information is to instrumentality a condemnation and divided it into words, arsenic it allows america to see each the substance (all the information). Then, we look astatine links betwixt the words."

When the process described by Janosov is repeated crossed tens of thousands of sentences, patterns commencement to emerge. For instance, researchers mightiness place words that are mentioned astir often oregon are astir related to different words successful the text.

"Following this method, we ended up with a web that had a elephantine constituent with astir 8000 nodes," Janosov said. "These 8000 nodes are each the words and the worlds (planets) successful the Foundation. Among the thousands of words successful the network, the large agleam ones successful the artwork (approximately 50) are the astir often mentioned planets, and the tiny ones are the existent words utilized successful the substance (e.g., empire, collective, etc.). The links are established based connected the sentences and the co-mentions betwixt these sentences."

The information subject portion of the researchers' task yet produced a static web visualization. Borsi past utilized cutting-edge photograph manipulation and animation techniques to bring this technological visualization to life, turning it into a one-of-a-kind integer artwork. In addition, she composed an archetypal soundtrack that is aligned with the dreamy and etheric ambiance often associated with sci-fi storytelling.

"There is besides an absorbing parallelism betwixt the insubstantial and the artwork: arsenic the insubstantial dives into the Foundation from the information perspective—taking the precise simple gathering blocks, words, of the bid arsenic a starting point, and uses them to uncover the main operation of the "Foundation' series—with a web arsenic the extremity product," Janosov said. "The artwork follows a akin transcendent travel successful a ocular way; taking the assemblage from precise acold distant to the bosom of the web arsenic an interstellar journey."

Asimov played a important relation successful the popularization of robotics and AI, for instance, by outlining the 'three laws of robotics' successful 1 of his abbreviated stories. To wage further tribute to Asimov's storytelling, the researchers decided to usage an AI level (the OpenAI GPT-3 tool) to constitute respective paragraphs of their paper. However, they volition lone beryllium revealing these sentences astatine a aboriginal stage.

"The accomplishment of this insubstantial is two-fold," Janosov said. "On the 1 hand, it is simply a novelty successful showing however web subject and earthy connection processing (NLP) tin beryllium combined connected a task that aims to recognize tremendous amounts of texts portion relating to a timely portion of fashionable culture. While doing truthful with a sci-fi bid does not look overly applicable astatine first, we could easy regenerate the substance analyzed with thing much 'business friendly," specified arsenic ineligible texts oregon immoderate technological papers, and abruptly we would person a caller legal-tech oregon systematic-review tool."

In summation to efficaciously combining web subject and NLP, the researchers were capable to merge 2 communal approaches for bringing creation and information subject together, virtually connected the aforesaid page.

"The different large publication of our enactment is that we are not lone focusing connected analyzing a substance (and past transforming into an artwork) oregon connected producing an artwork (and past penning astir it), which has been the accustomed workflow and showing a wide hierarchy betwixt creation and science," Janosov said. "In our study, these 2 things spell manus successful hand, arsenic we produced a insubstantial that analyses a literate substance portion simultaneously transforming it into a integer artwork. While information creation has been a increasing caller movement, we are not alert of immoderate different experimental task bridging information science, and digital art successful specified an explicit way."

In the future, Janosov and Borsi's enactment could animate different probe teams to harvester data science and creation instauration successful akin ways. Meanwhile, the 2 researchers program to behaviour a follow-up study, focusing much connected the ocular portion of their task and zooming into the Foundation's beingness a spot further from a galactic scale.

---

---

© 2021 Science X Network