Statement

From Synesketch Wiki

Science and technology multiply around us. To an increasing extent they dictate the languages in which we speak and think. Either we use those languages, or we remain mute. – J.G. Ballard

Synesketch is a result of two needs for integration.

First integration is a global one. Computers and people live side by side, and they should understand each other better. While we, people, share our feelings with each other on the Web, computers should at least try to have some empathy with us, to listen, read, and watch, and to enhance our communication and our aesthetic experiences. On the other hand, we, people, should see technology as a source of inspiration, not alienation, a medium for being in touch with ourselves. Synesketch is a small passionate proposal for crossing that chasm.

Second integration is a personal one. Loving and doing many different things in my life, from drawing to astronomy, I felt I need a synthesis. I felt I should put my passions – computing, visual arts, animation, and written words – together. Synesketch is a result of that feeling, of that need. We wish that you, while working on it, could feel the same ecstasy of discovering and creating as we felt.

To add one important final remark: Synesketch visualises recognised manifestations of human feelings, not the feelings itself! We strongly disagree with the strong AI, the idea that computers could have minds like humans. Our aim was not to make a program that could really feel and create art, but to make computers just a little bit more closer to humans – for the sake of enhancing human creativity.

Our NLP-based emotion recognition is not perfect at all. None is. The real meaning of words, one that causes emotions, is hidden somewhere else, not in words, and no algorithm could ever be truly empathetic. Yet, for Synesketch that is not crucially important: aesthetic experiences of visual art is also quite something illusive and evasive. Synesketch code, thus, provides just a small objective skeleton, around which the real body of feelings should be created – by us.

Uroš Krčadinac, October 2008