Tech Project

Description of the challenges faced by the Tech Project

The main challenge is to find an appropriate language to allow the communication for the mathematical concepts, the computer technology and the artist's point of view.

Brief description of technology

We work at understanding how visual perception works by building algorithms based on current knowledge on neuroscience. As such, we implement algorithms that can learn to see. One challenge in academia is to move beyond the classical displays that are used and to develop novel constructions to better understand vision. Example of such patterns are reminiscent to the images that are releveant to observers, such as the patterns that are seen in the natural world. Is there any common "language of shape" inside and outside the brain?

What the project is looking to gain from the collaboration and what kind of artist would be suitable

We are interested to learn from an artist how to develop a whole new kind of visual displays that could further advance of our knowledge in visual perception.

Resources available to the artist

The artist will be able to access different resources that we believe are unique in this project: - an expertise to specialised software for the unsupervised learning of shapes based on deep-learning technologies. This software is open-source but requires extensive expertise to be mastered. It also requires extensive hardware resources which we have on site (in-house cluster @ https://frioul.int.univ-amu.fr/ , university datacenter @ https://mesocentre.univ-amu.fr/), - There will be an extensive exchange with technological tools in imaging (fMRI, neurophysiology), in psychophysics (high resolution eye-trackers) and visualisation (high speed digital screens. This is not a direct dependency of the project, but will be essential in shaping - most importantly, the artist will be put in our workplace (dedicated office) and participate to our regular meetings to establish a common vocabulary.