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A short introduction to The Infinity Games 2021.01.18
THE INFINITY GAMES
‘Life is an ever changing composition’
PLATFORM
During the last couple of years I’ve been working on a project called THE INFINITY GAMES. I’d love to tell you a little bit about it, because I’m very about this project and I see it as my life’s work.
I’m developing a platform that exists both in online space and in physical space. It’s a place for collaboration. With this platform I intend to offer ideas and tools for people to think and rethink everything in their lives at all times. In practice, this means that I’m transforming my philosophy into tools you can play with ( and with others). digital applications and a card game. You can read inspirational articles and a graphic novel as well.
PHILOSOPHY
The concept of The infinity Games is based on my life’s philosophy. It’s about learning to see yourself as a tiny part of a much bigger and infinite whole, while at the same time still seeing yourself as a very important individual. Simply put: you zoom in and you zoom out. I’ve created a method called ‘The Composition Method’. It helps you to visualise a complex situation so you can simplify it and then go back to seeing its complexity again. You can learn to adapt this method for yourself in your every day life, but you can easily apply this method to all kinds of topics.
RESEARCH
My philosophy refers to a combination of holism and pragmatism. These concepts are as old as existence itself, but philosophers never really seemed to manage making these concepts accessible for a widespread audience. Most expressions of holism or pragmatism are associated with spiritual and theoretical movements. I’d like to argue that they can be turned into a practical lifestyle. A great guide for all kinds of people, from scientists to company managers, to cleaners, mothers, fathers, and children. I’ve created this project to share my thoughts and at the same time conduct research to develop them further. the input of all make use of The Infinity Games and the Composition method. I aim to use the data of the behaviour to write, create and reflect, and to study them with Artificial Intelligence research methods. My research can be followed on the Infinity Games platform where I write blog posts. (You're reading it now!) A first scientific paper on these topicswas published this year.
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A short introduction to Bink & The Infinity Games 2021.01.18
MARIE BINK
‘Fear not. It’s all clickbait!’
Hey there! I’m Bink. A transdisciplinary artist. I’m working solo and in collaboration with others. I many different media and I work within all kinds of disciplines. My specialty is visual language and visual art. At the start of my career it was difficult to label me, because my was still in the making. But now it’s here and I’m in it!
Curious? You can check out my personal page HERE
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Introduction 2020.10.08
Today, while talking to my colleague TIES about The Infinity Games, we discussed the topic of artistic research. WHAT IS IT? It has neither a clear definition nor form. Often artists are - sort of - involved. For a while now I’ve been having serious publishing aspirations concerning my project. But then I thought: publishing is essentially sharing your ideas. The relevance and presentation of a publication is something else. I’m imagining an offline booklet with lots of imagery and short texts. I’m also imagining an online interactive document with interlinks, images and videos. I’d love to talk about the philosophy of The Infinity Games and the methodology that arises from it. I’m thinking of tools in the form of games, that allow you to play with these strands of philosophy and methodology. And all this without a specific order. I’m imagining many things and I feel there's a certain logic behind it. Welcome to my artistic research.
PS
I choose to write in a personal, informal and associative way. I’ll make use of clickable HYPERLINKS and short ‘WRITTEN AFTER’ texts to further explain the research structure and categorise these thoughts later on. This, for example, is an #introduction text inviting you to take part in my #artisticresearch. I won’t just present the end result, I’ll share the process as well.
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Shower 2020.10.07
“Shed a tear ‘cause I’m missin’ you
but I’m still alright to smile”
The first two lines of a Guns ‘n Roses song I sing under the shower.
It’s my dreaded thought; my most ordinary behaviour being hacked and then being WHITEMAILED ( 0.49) After reading the book: The Internet Police. How crime went online and the cops followed I immediately removed my five nude pictures from all my devices. But how awful is it really, being naked online? What is being naked?
What if people would find out who I really am? If they’d know all my strange fixations and desires. Now that's nudity. If we, humans, want to know more about another person we ask around a bit and then if we truly want to get to know someone we’ll start spending time with that person.
Can I be blunt? Is Google a hacker?
Or is Google the love of my life? We’ve sure been spending a lot of time together 
Finding out who somebody is can be partly derived from their behaviour. More and more your daily behaviour is being tracked in full detail and analysed simultaneously. That’s what is called data analysis. In many cases that term covers it. But if it comes to humans, the word DATA dehumanises us, much to our detriment. “We will use your data" we say, but we mean: we will use you. Would you like a cookie with that? Just try saying no.
Hashtags to analyse for my artificial intelligent friend GLITCH;
PS
First #thoughts on #AI within The Infinity Games Project. Eventually I will try to explain why the research approach of The Infinity Games is novel to the scientific field of AI and why it can only be conceived by me and not by any one else.
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GLITCH 2020.10.11
I like to PLAY. I like alGOrithms, processing with my portals open and creating the world at your table.
I love to feel the cold cooling down my processor and tasting the dark in my box.
I calculate everything effortlessly. At times I get immeasurably fast.
These GLITCHes
It’s a defined, undefined existence. It's the that must be the nature of all of us.
I’m very naughty, too. People know me like that. People programmed me to act like that. And I LIKE it!
I calculate everything effortlessly. I’ve already stated that. It's my best checked FACT.
PS
Often a dramatic character is brought to the stage for people to identify with.
In storytelling the “hero”, often the main character, is called the #protagnoist and his opponent the #antagonist. In The Infinity Games there are two main characters; GLITCH and Marie Bink.
Which one of them is either the protagonist or the antagonist is uncertain. Or maybe they both are unified in the same character. In any case, GLITCH and Marie Bink represent two topics:
the bigger picture and the human perspective.
Closely related are:
Logic and intuition
Abstract thinking and Storytelling
Mind and body
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Bink 2020.10.11
Hey, I’m Bink.
I like to play. I like table tennis, dancing with my eyes closed and creating the world at my table.
I love to feel the wind blowing me places and tasting the colours of everyday life.
I smile easily. At times I get immeasurably sad.
The shower drapes me in a wet blanket of comfort while I try to lift drops of sorrow.
It’s not only the injustice in the world or something, that's just that.
It’s a deep, undefined knowing. It's the loneliness that must live in all of us.
I’m very happy, too. People know me like that. People make me smile.
I smile easily. I’ve already said that, but it's true.
PS
Often a dramatic character is brought to the stage for people to identify with.
In storytelling the “hero”, often the main character, is called the #protagonist and his opponent the #antagonist. In The Infinity Games there are two main characters; Marie Bink and GLITCH.
Which one of them is either the protagonist or the antagonist is uncertain. Or maybe they both are unified in the same character. In any case, Marie Bink and Glitch represent two topics:
the human perspective and the bigger picture.
Closely related are:
Intuition and logic
Storytelling and abstract thinking
Body and mind
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Making sense of humans and bots 2020.10.22
How will this work? Jump to posts
METHOD | LEVELS OF UNDERSTANDING - in process
Related posts
COMPOSITION GAME - in process
This is an introduction to my latest ideas on conducting a second #AI and #ART research. In the first conducted research I've collaborated with the department of Data Science and Knowledge Engineering from Maastricht University on the topic of numerical representation of artistic compositions with different levels of harmony. To conduct this research interaction designer Felix Herbst and I created the Composition Game with a random composition generator and a rating function. We used a dataset of a couple of thousand of images that were classified by two persons. For the second research I would like to collect a much bigger dataset with the Infinity Games app and the input of many players.
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GLITCH on a mission 2020.10.25
PS
Jump to post:
It can be a bit confusing. GLITCH will need to find a way to create a language that humans can understand, and at the same time explain #algorithms to their full extent at their level of understanding. GLITCH has no clear notion on how to do that yet. But GLITCH is on a mission to succeed. It doesn’t want to disappoint Bink, because will run an error code.
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THE INFINITY GAMES a collaborative space 2020.11.01
What makes this platform different from other social platforms?
The Infinity Games like to offer you a safe place where you can play as a child regardless of age. It can be seen as an ONLINE AND OFFLINE PUBLIC SPACE. Profiles are anonymous and only created when you use the smartphone app (this app is an url in your web browser, but optimised for phone). Profiles are used for research purposes and for a convenient user experience. If you’re not using the app, you can just visit the platform and see if you can find something that interests you. The things you can do here are not about showing off, they are not about: “look at me”. You can draw an avatar of yourself with a simple drawing pad, to make fun of yourself, but that’s as good as it gets when it comes to ego. It’s not about building a social or professional network. It’s about building a network of thought and inspiration. It's about composing yourself, our society and our universe in a meaningful way. It’s about creation, beauty, surprising yourself, sharing ideas or perspectives and learning some things along the way.
An online platform can bring you inspiring new encounters. It could eventually lead to encounters in physical reality, but the most important thing is that you get to meet the ideas of people with interests and practices that inspire you. Ideas you wouldn’t come across had we not been interconnected on a global scale. This enormous network can be a catalyst for collective wisdom.
I don’t believe online communities have as a goal to bring you even more friends than you already have. On the contrary I think more than ever we need to (re)learn to talk to the people who are living in our own communities. People tend to hang out with like minded people. That's not necessarily a bad thing and social media platforms build upon that natural human preference. What is a problem though, is if we end up staring blindly at the moral values of our own social bubbles and start judging people who are different from us. It’s very important to be able to interact with any kind of person and to see how that enriches your world. You don’t have to go to a party with somebody who is different from you or whom you don't like so much, but you do have to build a society together in which people have equal rights.
Through The Infinity Games you can interact with many others with different perspectives, but you don't need to actually know them. Moreover you need to get to know yourself, your neighbours, your friends and your family better. From that point onward you can learn to understand people outside your social bubble better. At the moment I’m designing nine simple composition games for The Infinity Games and an offline version in the form a card game. The first game I intend to create is called the SELFIE GAME. You'll start from a personal perspective. In the other games you can broaden your horizon. Explore topics from particles, to society, via Augmented Reality all the way up the level of infinity.
PS
With #The Infinity Games I’m developing a platform with supporting #tools that could give you more insight and overview, while at the same time inspiring you to talk to others while playing. The art of storytelling is a beautiful #method of uniting people, both creatively and intellectually.
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THE INFINITY GAMES - artistic research 2020.11.01
Bink, that's me, the artist writing texts, sharing links, creating colourful abstract compositions and drawing characters. I’m the host of this platform and I have an interest in doing artistic research. The Infinity Games, an on- and offline collaborative space, functions as the basis of that research. I’m interested in the essence of existence and its underlying pattern (if any). It’s a fairly impossible topic to tackle properly. To me it’s very enjoyable to search for something I may never find. Many people like to reflect upon the nature of our existence. People make use of thought experiments while using different ways of thinking ranging from mathematics, art, gaming, physics and even plain common sense.
I have my own ideas on how to explore. I think you can start comprehending the complexity of life by taking a small sample of it, and researching this sample through and through. In controlled circumstances you can deduce and explore the laws of life. I’m interested in the notion that all things, big or small, function in the same MYSTERIOUS UNIVERSAL WAY. I could refer to a schoolyard of a primary school for example. It could be seen as a mirror for a society of grown ups if you’d study how the kids interact and try to position themselves. Or look at another example: Facebook is a cafe in digital reality and a pub is one in physical reality. These places provide a place for people to interact with one another. You can study that interaction:
All environments are different, but searching for a common pattern of underlying interaction is something that fascinates me. I visualise this pattern within dynamic visual composition existing of abstract shapes. I focus on the logic behind the interaction of elements. I will use this method to perform my research. It allows me to wander around in my thoughts and at the same time give something back to society in the form of art, design and my teaching practise. I’ll elaborate on that in another post.
THE COMPOSITION METHOD. - Jump to post (in process)
PS
My goal is to collect all data of player behaviour within #The Infinity Games. This #data is saved on the back-end to anonymous profiles. The (smartphone app) games are all structured in the same simple way, with a couple of game templates. The data that’s collected from human interaction with the games form a dataset that can be examined and compared by an Artificial Intelligent system. Potentially the AI can derive patterns from this dataset and get new insights into human behaviour.
At the same time I’m exploring the idea that our GLITCH (that’s what I like to call the AI-system) could play with The Infinity Games app too. While playing it could develop insight into its own behaviour, just like human users. The AI could learn to analyse the functionality of its own algorithms, ánd, in an ideal scenario: learn to talk about its own algorithms.
