[NetBehaviour] Facecoin

Mon Jan 20 00:51:27 CET 2014

Ps... object oriented non object oriented art:
http://pallthayer.dyndns.org/microcodes/contr.php?code_id=73

On Sun, Jan 19, 2014 at 6:50 PM, Pall Thayer <pallthay at gmail.com> wrote:

> I think we need a cryptocoin based on unmarketable art (I'm really getting
> into this new term that's floating around, "NOOArt - Non Object Oriented
> Art... http://www.nooart.org"). We need a mining algorithm that will
> search for non-marketable art. The less likely it is to be sellable, the
> more it's worth in the cryptocurrency.
>
>
> On Sun, Jan 19, 2014 at 6:42 PM, Rob Myers <rob at robmyers.org> wrote:
>
>> On 19/01/14 04:36 AM, Annie Abrahams wrote:
>> > Maybe now Michael, you can explain it to me ....
>> >
>> >
>> > On Sun, Jan 19, 2014 at 1:19 PM, Michael Szpakowski <szpako at yahoo.com
>> > <mailto:szpako at yahoo.com>> wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> >     Rob
>> >     This is sleek and smart work! I like it very much ( although I did
>> >     have to do quite a lot of googling to fully understand what you were
>> >     doing...)
>>
>> Part of the reason for starting this series ("Coins") is to encourage
>> people to engage critically with the concepts behind cryptocurrency, so
>> I'm glad to see this discussion.
>>
>> Facecoin is Bitcoin with a different Proof Of Work system. I'll try to
>> explain what this means here but I also recommend the following articles
>> about Bitcoin and its protocol:
>>
>>
>> http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/04/economist-explains-how-does-bitcoin-work
>>
>> http://www.michaelnielsen.org/ddi/how-the-bitcoin-protocol-actually-works/
>>
>> Proof of Work
>> =============
>>
>> Whenever a computer in the bitcoin network wants to record transactions,
>> it must perform a simple but unguessable and time-consuming calculation
>> then send the results to other machines on the network to verify. It is
>> therefore computationally (and monetarily) expensive to record a
>> transaction if you are not actually performing one. This discourages
>> abuse of the Bitcoin network.
>>
>> This calculation and its output are the "proof of work", they prove that
>> the computer's user has been willing to do some work and expend some
>> resources in order to prove their good faith:
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof-of-work_system
>>
>> In Bitcoin, an algorithm called SHA-256 is applied to the transaction's
>> data. Give SHA-256 any data and it will output a string of characters
>> that cannot be used to recreate the original data but that will always
>> be the same for the same data. They are a kind of identity for data:
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptographic_hash_function
>>
>> For example, on the UNIX command line:
>>
>> $ echo annie | sha256sum
>> 7eb9d8162722f815b8aeb728d4112d24c2a2ea821fc0af7286bddab0df79baa9  -
>>
>> $ echo michael | sha256sum
>> bb472c3cc2b662a74956c8539fec9fe73f2b8a9f9124506aa0474698b3bac62d  -
>>
>> $ echo rob | sha256sum
>> 30d71981944699f23038164f4eb8189950b4dcf9b39ea2c1ecbda13aea8b7d4a  -
>>
>> $ echo rob | sha256sum
>> 30d71981944699f23038164f4eb8189950b4dcf9b39ea2c1ecbda13aea8b7d4a  -
>>
>> Bitcoin uses SHA-256 to repeatedly make such an identity string for the
>> transaction data and a number that it increases by one each try called
>> the "nonce". Eventually, and there's no way of predicting precisely when
>> but it should take about ten minutes, the output string will start with
>> several zeroes. When it does, Bitcoin uses that as the proof of work for
>> the transaction:
>>
>> https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Proof_of_work
>>
>> Machine Pareidolia
>> ==================
>>
>> Pareidolia is when we mistakenly see faces in clouds, or electrical
>> sockets, or in photographs from space probes:
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia
>>
>> Machine pareidolia is when a face detection algorithm gives a false
>> positive, locating a face in an image when there isn't one:
>>
>>
>> http://urbanhonking.com/ideasfordozens/2012/01/14/machine-pareidolia-hello-little-fella-meets-facetracker/
>>
>> There's been some nice art done using this:
>>
>> http://www.di12.rca.ac.uk/projects/pareidolic-robot/
>>
>> Not every image can be mistaken for a face by a face detection
>> algorithm, in particular finding a face in a series of randomly
>> generated pixel images takes some time.
>>
>> The amount of work required to do so will be greater than nothing, and
>> cannot be guessed precisely. We can therefore use machine pareidolia
>> with random images as proof of work.
>>
>> Facecoin
>> ========
>>
>> Facecoin replaces Bitcoin's search for leading zeros with a machine
>> pareidolia search for faces.
>>
>> SHA-256 output is used as an 8x8 256-level greyscale pixel map, and a
>> face recognition algorithm is used to try to find one or more faces in
>> it. If no faces are found, the nonce is increased and another attempt to
>> find a face is made. This can take from one to several hundred tries.
>>
>> When a face is found, the nonce and the face bounding rectangle are
>> recorded so the proof of work can be validated.
>>
>> Why?
>> ====
>>
>> Bitcoin is a very interesting development in cyberculture. It's a
>> repository for the hopes and fears of various ideologies, and a frontier
>> or dark space for the imagination and social or economic activity in a
>> 90s Internet way. Its protocol is a communication model of existence,
>> identity, community and proof, with a CCRU-ish market worship at its
>> base. Because of all of this I think it's worthy of and desperately
>> needs artistic investigation.
>>
>> Artworks are proofs of aesthetic work, used as unique value identities
>> both in the market (art is used as an investment, signifier of status,
>> and symbolic resolution of lacks in free market ideology by oil
>> oligarchs and trust fund managers) and by organized crime (stolen art is
>> used as a medium of exchange by criminal gangs).
>>
>> If Facecoin was widely adopted these two value identity systems would be
>> trivially but critically mapped onto each other by millions of machines
>> cranking out imaginary portraits across the network as part of a
>> financial network, and vice versa.
>>
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>>
>
>
>
> --
> *****************************
> Pall Thayer
> artist
> http://pallthayer.dyndns.org
> *****************************
>

-- 
*****************************
Pall Thayer
artist
http://pallthayer.dyndns.org
*****************************
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