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January 18, 2009 6:32 PM
Posted By Peter Bentley
I'm still receiving lots of mail after the BBC Radio 4 programme I made. Some are a little unusual, like the typed letter heavy on corrective fluid from a 70 year old woman who believed she had thought of the replacement to Darwin's theory of evolution in 1973, but somehow nobody quite recognised it... However the message below was slightly less controversial:

Dear Peter Bentley, Unfortunately I missed your letter to Charles Darwin last week on Radio 4 and it's not available on iPlayer! I would love to listen to it, but in the meantime thought you may be interested to know about the 'ceramics' that I'm currently designing. As part of my recent MPhil at the Royal College of Art I worked with a French company who have developed some very interesting processes and materials for use with ZCorp Rapid prototyping. I designed and made a piece called the Wedgwoodn't Tureen (see http://wedgwoodnt.blogspot.com for info) and am now working on a group of pieces with Charles Darwin as the theme.

They will be Rapid Manufactured once I've completed adding the texture to the pieces. I intend to pierce them with a section of AGTC genetic code. An alternative construction method will be to use an algorithm that will build within the constraints of the 'envelope' of the piece. I am working on this project with Established and Sons and will be showing the completed work at their gallery in Duke Street St. James. I am about to place an order on Amazon for Evolutionary Design by Computers and look forward to further engaging with the subject.

Nice to hear from you. Go to my book blog and you'll be able to listen to the radio programme (they sent me a copy). Your work looks great - there's certainly potential for evolving forms such as this by computer. Good luck with it!

Many thanks for the swift response Peter. I'll go straight to your book blog instead of my usual bedtime reading! Looking forward to receiving your book & CD. I'll let you know of how it affects my work.

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Categories: Evolutionary Design by Computers, TV Radio and public talks
 
January 9, 2009 8:32 PM
Posted By Peter Bentley
As mentioned in a previous entry, BBC Radio 4 commissioned me to write and record a fictional "letter to Darwin." It was broadcast on 8 Jan, 3:45pm. They also used a fragment of my recording as a trail for the whole series. So far the feedback seems to be positive from listeners. It's only available on the BBC website for a limited time, so I've put the final version on my website. You may need broadband for the file is around 7Mb.

You can listen to the mp3 version by clicking here.

You can also download a pdf of the letter itself by clicking here.

I hope you enjoy it!

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Categories: TV Radio and public talks
 
January 8, 2009 8:23 PM
Posted By Peter Bentley
A new UK version of the American science and tech magazine WIRED is being launched this year. Perhaps brave in the current financial climate, but they have good publishers and their older brother in USA has a long and excellent reputation. There'll also be a UK version of the WIRED website. One of the new editors got in touch recently and today I met him for lunch. Apparently he found one of my books recently and liked what he saw. So he invited me to be a contributing editor for the magazine. Not a full time position, but it means that I may well be writing a few articles for WIRED now and again. My other duty is to keep an eye out for interesting stories suitable for features relating to science and technology... which I tend to do anyway.

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Categories: TV Radio and public talks
 
December 18, 2008 11:21 PM
Posted By Peter Bentley
I've been asked by the Royal Institution whether I'd like to be the "face" and host for a cafe scientifique to be held each month in their new cafe in the newly revamped London building. I was there today, seeing it all and discussing the details. Like all cafe scientifiques, the format will be to have a friendly scientist speak for 15 or 20 minutes without any slides, and then just have a nice relaxed chat with the audience in the cafe. I'll be there to make introductions, help everyone understand how it works, and to ask a few questions to get people talking. They have one or two planned with someone else hosting early next year; I'd take over in March or April I think. I think it sounds like great fun. Those who know me may recognise that I sometimes like to ask a question or two...

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Categories: TV Radio and public talks
 
November 30, 2008 8:44 PM
Posted By Peter Bentley
Yesterday I went to the BBC radio studio and read my "Letter to Darwin" for my 15-minute programme (to be broadcast on Radio 4 on January 6 at about 3:30pm). I've done radio before, but always when being interviewed or chatting. It's fascinating to see how that differs from reading something out. Rather like the reading of an audio book (only more so) the reader has to inject enthusiasm and "life" into their voices constantly. We're so used to hearing it done by newsreaders, that we perhaps only notice when overdone on some adverts. If we wrote in the same way using formatting for each new tone I think it would become quite irritating.

I think I managed it without difficulty, but there's a part of me that cringes to hear my voice sounding slightly patronising with different tones. So I now have slightly more patience for the TV advert voiceover people who often sound like idiots - it's not really their fault - they've been trained to speak like that.

However I'm not really that patient. I still think the guys who do voiceovers for popular Saturday evening shows and some adverts go ten steps too far... I swear the guy who does The X-Factor has invented his own unique form of speech - somehow a cross between Circus Ringmaster, TV Evangelist and the Wizard of Oz amplified wizard voice. Why is it that speaking to excitable audiences requires a silly voice? Or is that the only way to make them excited? Perhaps academic conferences are missing this trick: "Welcome to the GENETIC and evolutionary computation cooooonference!"

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Categories: TV Radio and public talks
 
November 8, 2008 10:12 AM
Posted By Peter Bentley
BBC Radio 4 has commissioned me to make one of a series of radio programmes celebrating Darwin's 200th birthday next year. The series is to be called "Dear Darwin." Darwin was a prodigious letter-writer, communicating with nearly 2000 individuals and conducting most of his research in this way. It was not unusual for him to be contacted by scientists and interested members of the public. You can read some of the letters on-line here: http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/

Radio 4 has asked five "well-known" scientists and historians who specialise in different aspects of evolution (myself included) each to write a letter to Darwin explaining what we do and how we have been influenced by his ideas. We'll read out our letters in a series of 15 minute programmes, to be broadcast in the afternoons during one week in early January.

I've written my letter to Darwin now so we'll be recording it in the next week or two. I guess they'll make it available on the BBC website later, so I'll provide an update then. It was great fun to write. As you might imagine, it's an unusual challenge to describe genetic algorithms and artificial life to a man who would struggle with the even the idea of an electronic computer...

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Categories: TV Radio and public talks
 
October 31, 2008 6:24 PM
Posted By Peter Bentley
Sometimes I get some unexpected requests as people read my books or discover the webpages. This recent one surprised me for many reasons, particularly when a quick web search revealed that the sender was based in Auckland, New Zealand. You've got to admire the ambitions of this teacher, but perhaps not her spelling:

I am contacted you from Birkemhead playcentre where many budding robot makers exist!

We are a pre school facility (0 - 6 years old) and we are looking to find someone to come into our centre and show the children how to make a robot that is at their level...that is something that they could do themselves...not necessarily a real one.

I appreciate that this is not necessarily something you proberly do but could you forward this to someone who could help us? Many thanks.

this is a rather unusual request, especially since you seem to be based in Auckland. I'm afraid I'm not able to help you - it's a little too far away and I don't know anyone in your area with those interests. You may find this book interesting, however:

http://www.amazon.com/Robots-Kids-Exploring-Technologies-Interactive/dp/1558605975

Good luck!

wonderful

thanks for your repsonce, sorry I thought I was on the nz massey university website, not london!!

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Categories: TV Radio and public talks
 
July 18, 2008 3:30 PM
Posted By Peter Bentley
I recently came across the video of the talk I gave for Ars Eectronica in 2003. Not much to see - just me on stage with a microphone and a few slides, but the (slightly fuzzy) audio is now online. My audience was a bunch of computational artists who as usual I managed to insult (always a good trick to make 'em listen). One tried to be a bit rude at the end with her question, but you'll note the admirable patience I showed :) I talk about code, and how programming computers and biological systems relate to each other. Those who know where my research went in the following 5 years will find many of the concepts I describe familiar. You can listen to the 40 minute talk, including questions, here:

http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/p.bentle y/arstalk.mp3

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Categories: Digital Biology, On Growth Form and Computers, Creative Evolutionary Systems, Evolutionary Design by Computers, TV Radio and public talks
 
June 24, 2008 6:08 PM
Posted By Peter Bentley
I'm a collaborating Prof in KAIST, Korea so I go over there now and again. At the beginning of this month I was in Jeju, Korea giving a talk for some high school children. The organisers just sent me some photos. Although in this picture I look like I'm teaching karate, I was talking about evolutionary computation and showing some of the videos from my first book Evolutionary Design by Computers (and also gave them a Korean version of Digital Biology). The school specialised in science education, and you could tell. Not only did the kids cope with a talk in English, but they asked detailed technical questions on genetic algorithms. I've had less intelligent questions from fellow scientists in academic conferences! I'm afraid they put British school children to shame...

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Categories: Digital Biology, Evolutionary Design by Computers, TV Radio and public talks
 
June 19, 2008 7:03 PM
Posted By Peter Bentley
I gave a talk for TESLA (our arts-science group at UCL) in November 2007. The topic is a common one for me - the nature of computation in biological or natural systems. If I ever get around to writing a sequel to Digital Biology it'll be on this kind of stuff. At the end I also talk a little about science communication in general. They've recently put a rather noisy recording of the talk online here:

http://www.arts- humanities.net/audio/peter_bentley_viewing_systemic_computation

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Categories: Digital Biology, TV Radio and public talks