Comments on: Michael Lebowitz on Universe

By: Grand Text Auto » Façade, Petz, and The Expressivator

Grand Text Auto » Façade, Petz, and The Expressivator — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 02:38:17 +0000

[...] Tale-Spin (1 2), Scott Turner’s Minstrel (1 2), and Michael Lebowitz’s Universe (1). Now I’m pleased to continue the series with some information from GTxA’s own Andrew [...]

By: noah

noah — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 23:39:17 +0000

I just heard from Michael Joyce, who tells me that it’s the “Markle Foundation” (with an “a”) and reminds me that some of his work with them is discussed in chapter two of his book Of Two Minds (which I haven’t read for years and should clearly pick up again). Apparently the first funding for Storyspace came from Markle as well — and this year is the 20th anniversary of Storyspace and Michael’s groundbreaking fiction afternoon. (There will be a panel at this year’s MLA to mark the occasion: “Electronic Literature: After Afternoon.”) He also sent me some further info on which I’ll be following up.

David, I’ll drop Michael Lebowitz a note and ask if he can send you any leads. Thanks for the offer!

Scott, I think you’re absolutely right. One of the problems with story generation projects in general may be that, from a computer science standpoint, there’s no institutional reward for time spent authoring data – and it’s very time consuming. But from a media-making perspective, it’s absolutely essential. But in many cases we can’t simply bring on media makers to create content for these systems, because the authoring requires a deep understanding of how the system actually functions – and most media makers aren’t very “procedurally literate.” I understand this is part of what has lead this blog’s Michael (Mateas) to start thinking seriously about how we could create AI-supported tools for authoring content for AI-driven systems…

By: David Elson

David Elson — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 20:29:37 +0000

As a current Columbia grad student I’d be happy to poke around and see if anyone has an archived copy of UNIVERSE, if Michael can give me a place to start. It would likely be with a story generation fan, since most people’s code seems to wither away after graduation…

By: Scott Turner

Scott Turner — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 18:53:11 +0000

A couple of comments…

On one occasion the AI Lab at UCLA hosted a half-dozen or so TV script writers to talk about MINSTREL, etc. I don’t recall their exact affiliation after all this time, but “Merkle” rings a faint bell, so it might have been the same crew Michael mentions. I do recall that nothing became of it :-)

OMNI also published a fairly lengthy article on AI that mentioned some of the work from the UCLA AI Lab. IIRC, I wasn’t around on the day the reporter visited the lab, so no mention of MINSTREL. I believe that Erik Mueller’s work was highlighted.

It’s interesting that Michael notes one of the same stumbling blocks I highlighted — the lack of a very large database to fuel the creative/authoring process.