The Heart of the Story

 

Michelangelo used to say that the sculpture he was creating was already in the stone. His job was simply to clear away the rubbish.

It has struck me that the same can be said of writing. In developing a story whether it was for live action or machinima my best results have not come from sticking on a new element but clarifying aspects that already exist in the substance of the story.

Another useful way of looking at it is archaeology. It requires a lot of skill and care. You carefully brush away dust from bones and broken pottery that is sometimes the same colour as the dust. With patience you can uncover something that has been true about us for a very long time.

Talking Robots

This is a regular science podcast that covers all aspects of artificial intelligence including cognitive robotics to the extent of schizophrenic robots and general behaviour. They have an episode on a robot that both swims and walks, wall climbing robots and even water striding robots and robot navigation. They go down to the scale of a Swarm of miniature helicopter robots and nano robots. They look at artificial life and Machine self-replication, robots that are constructed by robots.

Talking Robots
http://lis.epfl.ch/resources/podcast/index.html