REALFICTIONS A Guide to Unreality
ALEKYA MALLADI Entertainment Studio Research Seminar 2019-20 | UCLA AUD Natasha Sandmeier
POTEMKIN WORLDS : ARCHITECTURAL FAKERY
Alekya Malladi
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These days, when people talk about a Potemkin village, they’re usually referring to a ruse to make something appear better than it actually is. It’s a useful metaphor, but also a reflection of people’s fascination with fake cities and questions about the line between authenticity and artificiality in man-made environments. All cities are “fabricated,” of course, in the narrowest of terms. They’re constructed by humans. But Potemkin Villages are fabrications of another order. The distinction between a real village and a Potemkin one might seem stark, but under close examination the definitions can blur.
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The term Potemkin village dates to the 18th century, when the Russian Minister Grigory Potemkin was said to have built fake villages throughout newly the annexed Crimea of Ottoman empire to prevent the Russian empress, Tsarina Katharina II, from seeing the grim reality of the provinces. As soon as the barge carrying the Empress and ambassadors arrived, Potemkin’s men, dressed as peasants, would populate the village. Once the barge left, the village was disassembled, then rebuilt downstream overnight. In politics and economics, this term is used to describe any construction (literal or figurative) built solely to deceive someone into thinking that a situation is better than it really is. These artificial towns and cities were built for all kinds of reasons. Following this Legend, a town in Russia called Suzdal, located northeast of Moscow, was dressed ahead of a visit from the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, in 2013. With no time or money to renovate the homes along the main road, local authorities decided it was best to put facades over many of the dilapidated buildings. Instead of renovating, the unkempt traditional wood was draped in large tarpaulin prints, camouflaged to look like well-tended facades. The structures were covered in fake facades, complete with window sills, potted plants and even cats, to give the appearance of an occupied and well-kept home. Putin did not visit Suzdal, but would 4
this have worked? One City, Nine Towns Situated about 30km from central shanghai in Songjiang District is the city of “Thames Town”. A massive experiment was launched by the Shanghai Planning Commission in 2001, in hopes of luring half a million people off the crowded streets of the world’s largest city and gentrifying its unfashionable outskirts as a “One City, Nine Towns” plan. These nine towns were designed to resemble the cities of some western nations like Holland, Italy, Canada and Scandinavia.
“These Potemkin villages are for me an interesting symbol of the sometimes absurd developments of our society.” - Gregor The most striking feature of the Thames town is the remarkable accuracy. The responsibility of the construction was given to an England based architecture firm Atkins. This may be because English architects are forever imitating their own mythologised image of the ideal British village. Cars and double decker buses were remodelled to fit in, actual lampposts were imported from a scale replica of Potemkin worlds: Architectural Fakery
Christ Church. A picturesque Gothic parish church in Bristol was built on the town square. The town is complete with mock Victorian and Tudor frontages, a church, cobbles, squares, and corner shops. Houses were sold quickly and yet the mission failed as the middle class didn’t come as planned. The real estate prices were out of reach for most Shanghai residents as most of the houses were bought by the wealthy as investments or second
Fig. 03: A couple getting a wedding picture outside the Christ Church in "Ghost
homes. Hence, most of these “nine towns” have never been completed. Now, Thames town has become a favourite destination for wedding photography. Alekya Malladi
Images of this town were featured in Gregor Sailer’s book “Potemkin Villages”. In sync with the unreal nature of the structures, some of the photos are presented without any people, as most of these places are either deserted or sparsely occupied, rendering them as ghost towns. However, in a few images, the people walking through these places become a part of the installation, increasing the weird character of these towns.
The Russian city of Ufa Ufa officials went out of their way to prepare for the high-profile BRICS and SCO summits in 2015, urging residents to go on vacation, paint5
ing all the wooden houses in the city center grey and camouflaging run-down buildings behind giant banners depicting other things. Large pieces of material depicting trees were being erected around old and derelict buildings in a bid to make the city look presentable. Sailer is careful to capture the edges of the canvas that peel away revealing the structure behind, reducing the flatness of the building and adding dimension to it. In contrast to Sailer’s images, the images by photographer Vadim Braydov of Ufa show people either passing by these places or attempting to put the places together. Hence, the opposition between real and unreal is made tangible. Images from this event reveal the giant posters of forests and sky to give an improved appearance. Municipal workers fixed banners to hide old and dilapidated houses outside the Congress hall. Nearby hills were covered with an artificial grass carpet to give it a better look. This makes us wonder about the illusions and manipulations that governments and companies employ to maintain and extend power.
photos of beauty salons, delis, and other shops in New York’s Harlem neighbourhood. What’s bizarre about this place is that there is no reason why they chose Harlem, or what the relationship to Sweden was. Some of these places have a surreal character imposed by juxtaposing the modern landscape of Scandinavia in contrast with the New York neighbourhood of Harlem in an attempt to provide realistic urban environments in which to practice manoeuvres or test new tech.
“It’s always very important for me to include the aesthetic aspect Even if it’s the beauty of the apocalypse or oppression, it is beautiful.” - Gregor Sailer
AstaZero’s (named after Active Safety Test Area) testing site constitutes building lining four blocks of its “city area” which is nothing more than boards propped up by two by fours and plastered with full scale
The structures reveal bare boards and walls, stripping the viewer to absorb the construction and mechanics of the stimulated world. The unusual, colorful coverings on the buildings resemble whimsical dollhouses rather than solid structures. These sites provide a glimpse into these places that operate as unique environments that have their own systems and networks.
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Potemkin worlds: Architectural Fakery
What is strange about Carson City in Sweden?
Fig. 05: “AstaZero” in Sweden has plastered neighbourhood from New York
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Fig. 06: Incomplete and worn down buildings in Ufa and suzdal were covered in Tarpaulin before President Putin’s visit.
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Potemkin worlds: Architectural Fakery
“If you don’t understand how the world works, then everything is a mystery to you. If everything is magical and mysterious, then you really don’t work on logic anymore. Then, everything is all about belief.” — Joy Reidenberg
Fig. 07: The worn out tarpaulin reveals the structure behind
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Fig. 08: The buildings were painted to make them look like they were occupied and well kept home, by painting the banners with not just the facades but with flower pots, cats and even people.
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Potemkin worlds: Architectural Fakery
Fig. 09: Is that a cat?
Fig. 10: A “pretend� office supplies shop
Fig. 11: Municipal workers fix a banner depicting a forest
Fig. 12: A hill in Ufa covered with an artificial grass carpet
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Fig. 13: If the daily life of “The Other” was only a scenery?
Fig. 14: AstaZero
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Potemkin worlds: Architectural Fakery
REFERENCES Kaushik, Amusing Planet, 2017. Modern Potemkin Villages. Retrieved from https://www.amusingplanet. com/2017/11/modern-potemkin-villages.html Ken Jennings, Conde Nast Traveller, January 4, 2016. The British Ghost Town in the Middle of China. Retrieved from https://www.cntraveler.com/stories/2016-01-04/the-english-ghost-town-in-the-middle-of-china Vadim Braydov, Designyoutrust.com, July 5, 2015. “Potemkin Village” – A Fake Urban Decorations Among The Ufa City Retrieved from https://designyoutrust.com/2015/07/ potemkin-village-a-fake-urban-decorations-amongthe-ufa-city/
[05] Gregor Sailer & Laurie Woods, Vice. (2016). Carson City VI, Vargarda, Sweden. Photos of Fake Towns Around the World, Built Only as Props. Retrieved from https://www.vice.com/en_in/article/9kxk9p/photos-of-fake-towns-around-the-worldbuilt-only-as-props [06] Gregor Sailer, Kehrer Galerie. (2016). Russia, Ufa & Suzdal. Potemkin Villages. Retrieved from https://payload.cargocollective. com/1/18/602020/13213090/GregorSailer_ThePotemkinVillage_5_1000.jpg [07] Gregor Sailer, Kehrer Galerie. (2016). Potemkin Villages. Retrieved from https://www.gregorsailer.com/Books [08] Gregor Sailer, Kehrer Galerie. (2016). Potemkin Villages. Retrieved from https://payload.cargocollective.com/1/18/602020/13213090/GregorSailer_ThePotemkinVillage_8_1000.jpg [09] Sergei Rzhevsky, Russia Travel Blog. (November 2013). Cat painted on Tarpaulin. Perfect illustration of a phrase “Potemkin villages”. Retrieved from https://russiatrek.org/blog/society/ perfect-illustration-of-a-phrase-potemkin-villages/
LIST OF FIGURES [01] AstaZero, Carson City, Sweden Craig Lawless, ferrovial world. (March 2018).The Fake Architecture of the film world. Retrieved from https://blog.ferrovial.com/ en/2018/03/the-fake-architecture-of-the-film-world/ [02] Christ Church, Thames Town, China Gregor Sailer, Kehrer Galerie. (2016). Thames Town V, Songjiang, China. Potemkin Villages. Retrieved from https://www.gregorsailer.com/ The-Potemkin-Village [03] Lisa Miller, Huffpost. (December 2017). Fake English Town In China: Deserted ‘Thames Town’ Is Abandoned... Minus The Newlyweds, China. Retrieved from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ fake-english-town-in-china_n_3907820 [04] The simulated vehicle testing track of AstaZero, Sweden Peter Janevik, AstaZero. (January 2019). AstaZero accredited by Euro NCAP to perform tests of active safety systems and automated driving. Retrieved from https://www.ri.se/en/press/astazero-accredited-euro-ncap-perform-tests-active-safety-systems-and-automated-driving Alekya Malladi
[10] Kaushik & Bryan O’Brien, Amusing Planet, The Irish Times. (2017). Modern Potemkin Villages. Retrieved from https://www.amusingplanet. com/2017/11/modern-potemkin-villages.html [11] Dmitry & Vadim Braydov, Design you trust, AP Photo, (July 2015). “Potemkin Village” – A Fake Urban Decorations Among The Ufa City Retrieved from https://designyoutrust.com/2015/07/ potemkin-village-a-fake-urban-decorations-amongthe-ufa-city/ [12] Dmitry & Vadim Braydov; Design you trust, AP Photo, July 07, 2015. “Potemkin Village” – A Fake Urban Decorations Among The Ufa City Retrieved from https://designyoutrust.com/2015/07/ potemkin-village-a-fake-urban-decorations-amongthe-ufa-city/ [13] Zacharie Gaudrillot-Roy. (N.D.) Facades #2 Retrieved from http://www.zachariegaudrillot-roy. com/fr/portfolio-20290-0-40-facades-2.html [14] AstaZero, Carson City, Sweden Gregor Sailer, Kehrer Galerie. (2016). Carson City VI, Vargarda, Sweden. Potemkin Villages. Retrieved from https://payload.cargocollective. com/1/18/602020/13213090/GregorSailer_ThePotemkinVillage_3_1000.jpg 13
FAKE CITIES FOR REAL WARFARE : POTEMKIN WORLDS OF SIMULATED BATTLEFIELDS Alekya Malladi
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Simulation offers realism with mitigated risk to personnel. The act of seeing is subjective to environments and emotional conditions. This format offers a plethora of real and virtual opportunities for military training. So, how do fake cities simulate real warfare?
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Fort Irwin is a U.S. army base in the Mojave Desert, northeast of Barstow, California. It is a fake Afghan town known as Ertebat Shar. This is a base for the National Training Center, or NTC, at which all U.S. troops, from all the services, spend a twenty-one-day rotation before they deploy overseas. This is the vast desert training area that includes fifteen simulated towns, tunnel and caves, as well as expansive gunnery ranges and tank battle arenas. A Potemkin world built for training and simulation. The fort organises simulated battlefields with gun fires and explosions, in which imaginary conflicts loop, day after day, without end. This gives us a glimpse into the economics and culture of how a nation prepares its soldiers for war. What happens “In the Box”? Fort Irwin is the only place where the U.S. military can train using all the systems it will later use in war. The base’s 1,000 square miles of desert is large enough to allow “great manoeuvrability”. Its airspace is restricted, and its truly remote location ensures an uncluttered electromagnetic spectrum, allowing the troops to practice both collection and jamming. The military also owns the ground beneath Fort Irwin, which they have used to carve out an extensive network of tunnels and caves to flush pretend insurgents. The one twenty-person strong insurgent troop is drawn from the base’s own 4
Blackhorse Regiment, a division of the U.S. Army that exists solely to provide opposition. They assume the role of the “enemy” and are specially trained with a mission to stay alive and wreak havoc. In the interests of realism (sparing no expense), troops train using their own equipment, which include bringing in and transporting their tanks and helicopters from their home base at Fort Drum or New York to California and back again.
Soldiers use Fort Irwin’s facsimile villages to practice clearing structures, navigating unmapped roofed alleyways through cities without clear satellite communications links. Texture of the culture The base offers free tours to public twice a month to witness the routine. Here, visitors are greeted by actors trying to sell plastic loaves of bread and piles of fake meat. Fort Irwin employs more than 350 civilian role-players, many of whom are of Middle Eastern origin. Although according to commander Ferrell, they are still trying to recruit more Afghans, in order “to provide the texture of the culture.” Though the visitors are obviously aware of the Fake Cities For Real Warfare : Simulated Battlefields
fact that these people are actors, it makes the fiction believable. What adds to the strangeness is that the actors disperse back into the fake city behind these visitors, as if called upon by the visitor’s presence. Immersive theatre of war Apparently, the footprint for the village came from actual satellite imagery of Baghdad, in order to accurately recreate street widths, and the step sizes inside buildings are
Fig. 03: A house in the town
Iraqi, rather than U.S. standard. Notwithstanding the dimensions, this city is made of cargo containers, their Orientalized facades plastered on it. The Afghan town is not modernised with plumbing, so there are Alekya Malladi
Porta-Johns available for the visitors to use. The visible wooden frames and the flawed joints of the surfaces can be seen from the visitor’s deck, making it clear that it is a set. Urban Warfare This kind of test village has a long history in U.S. war planning. As As journalist Tom Vanderbilt writes in his book Survival City, a series of “enemy villages” were built In Dugway (Utah) by the U.S. Army Corps,
as a detailed reproduction of the typical housing found in the industrial districts of cities in Germany and Japan. The point of the villages at Dugway, 5
however, was not to train soldiers in urban warfare with simulated street battles or house-to-house clearances, but simply to test the burn capacity of the structures themselves. What sorts of explosives should the U.S. use? How much damage would result? The attention to architectural detail was simply a subset of this larger, more violent inquiry. As Vanderbilt explains, bombs at Dugway “were tested as to their effectiveness against architecture: How well the bombs penetrated the roofs of buildings (without penetrating too far), where they lodged in the building, and the intensity of the resulting fire.” During the Cold War, combat moved away from urban settings, and Fort Irwin’s desert sandbox became the stage for massive set-piece tank battles against the “Soviet” Blackhorse Cavalry. Mock villages began to pop up in the desert of Fort Iwin. They started out as “sheds” before being replaced by containers, which have now been enhanced by cases and furniture. This fake city started with just thirteen buildings but has since expanded to include more than two hundred structures. In his report Combat in Hell: A Consideration of Constrained Urban Warfare, Russell W. Glenn puts it bluntly that “Armed forces are ever more likely to fight in cities as the world becomes increasingly urbanized.” Architecture in War The point of these architectural reproductions is not just limited 6
to testing the villages but to find better or more efficient methods of architectural destruction. Instead, these fake worlds are used to equip troops to better navigate the complexity of urban structures; both physical and socio-cultural. However, at least in the training activities accessible to public visitors, the architecture is primarily a stage set for the theatre of human relations: a backdrop for meeting and befriending locals, controlling crowds, rescuing casualties (though all actors)and, ultimately, locating and eliminating the “enemy”.
“It’s always very important for me to include the aesthetic aspect even if it’s the beauty of the apocalypse or oppression, it is beautiful.” - Gregor Sailer The sense of being on an elaborate, extremely detailed film set is made explicit when visitors are encouraged to participate in this mediation of the events by urging them to take as many photographs as possible and to share the resulting images on social media. But there is something missing… Fake Cities For Real Warfare : Simulated Battlefields
Fig. 05: Actors selling fake meat to the visitors
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Fake Cities For Real Warfare : Simulated Battlefields
Fig. 06: A view of the Fort Irwin's streets where the city comes to life. People are seen interacting. The activities in the area like the bomb blasts and attacks, add a texture to the facades.
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Typically, the services employ role players to act as adversaries during training scenarios, but under law, they cannot employ child actors. Greg Welch, professor of computer science and co-director of the Synthetic Reality Laboratory at the Institute for Simulation and Training at UCF said: “Children are important from a military perspective, because if you’re on patrol and you walk into a village and all of the kids are missing … that’s often a sign that something bad is going to happen.” So, what can be done? The ability to incorporate a mixed reality child into the scenario would help the training feel more realistic. In order to adequately train for this new reality, the Defense Department is leveraging advancements in robotics, cognitive science and mixed reality systems. The service has begun experimenting with computer-generated humans to address this significant training issue. Over the next 20 years, U.S. troops will fight simultaneous battles on the ground, in the air, at sea, in space and in the cyber realm, against adversaries that may be human or, increasingly, machine. The U.S. military has been investing in live, virtual and constructive technologies at training sites, such as the infantry immersion trainer at Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton in California. The training facility at Camp Pendleton includes an indoor and outdoor complex spanning nearly 150,000 square feet of mock villages for training uses, with sever10
al areas that can support mixed reality technologies. Image Fidelity Improvements in image fidelity (inferred by the ability to discriminate between two images) for head-mounted displays will make the props even more appealing for training purposes. Previous generations of displays didn’t have enough resolution, so things just didn’t look good enough to provide a realistic environment. Several businesses have been working to apply virtual and augmented reality technologies to training over the past 25 years. John Burwell, U.S. business development director for Bohemia Interactive Simulations said “The industry is moving toward 4K ultra-high-definition screens, which could be widely used within three years. Emerging technologies such as enhancements that target the fovea, a small depression in the back of the retina that provides sharp focus on a given object, could be available within the next year, he added. Foveal renderings would allow systems to track a user’s eye movements and provide much higher resolution in specific areas of visual focus, rather than across the entire display.” It is also predicted that not only will the military use more sophisticated systems to mimic battlefield surroundings, but personnel will increasingly rely on implantable or Fake Cities For Real Warfare : Simulated Battlefields
Fig. 09: Perched in the rafters are projectors that cast lifesize images of civilians and insurgents on wall after wall in the building.
Fig. 10: Mastering the Human Element of Immersive Training. Soldiers train in virtual reality environments.
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or wearable technologies that could enhance a user’s cognitive functions. Predicted Training and Simulation Artificial intelligence capabilities are expected to improve within 10 years. James Canton, CEO and chairman of the Institute for Global Futures in San Francisco, sees intelligent machines who operate both in the virtual realm - via gamification, bots and mixed reality technologies - and in the physical realm with advanced humanoid avatars, as key to training the military of tomorrow. His company is working towards building instructors who are no longer exclusively human but “digitally engineered personalities” that can be designed on demand to adapt to real-time simulations. The design enables them to switch between languages or skill sets as needed to fit the situation. These digitally engineered personalities will help the soldier, sailor, airman or Marine move through training grounds that are increasingly developed with sophisticated blended reality technologies, where instructors can quickly change the environment to realistically mimic any given scenario. Welch and other experts are also working on ways to make augmented reality entities responsive to real-world sounds and events. Currently, such an entity can only respond to situations that have been programmed into the system. 12
For example, it would not react to a siren going off in a nearby area. “If somebody fires a session round … then all of the [augmented reality] units that are nearby should be aware of it and act appropriately,” he said. “They should be aware of everything, including people who are not part of the simulation.”
“Every individual serving will have a handful of collaborators that are both physical and virtual,” - James canton In conclusion The most arresting thing about these places is their ability to use an array of methods like plywood sets and projection of human figures, to generate the very complex fabric of a war zone. However, the afore mentioned type of sophisticated augmented reality may improve the experience and yeild better results. These techniques would mix the real world with computer-generated images, which may appear so natural that they are barely distinguishable from reality. Mixed or blended, reality is the result of combining elements of the physical world with the digital world. So, are simulated battlefields advancing from “fake cities” to virtual ones?
Fake Cities For Real Warfare : Simulated Battlefields
Fig. 07: The Army’s new Integrated Visual Augmentation system is a single platform that uses augmented reality where Soldiers and Marines can fight, rehearse, and train.
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Fig. 11: A close up of the Mosque reveals the facades poorly plastered on the plywood sets.
Fig. 12: The IIT provided the Marines with “hands on� practical application of tactical skills and decision making in an immersive, scenario-based training environment.
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Fake Cities For Real Warfare : Simulated Battlefields
Fig. 13: Actors selling plastic bread to visitors at Fort Irwin.
Fig. 15: Soldiers use the Integrated Visual Augmentation System during a training session at Fort Pickett, Va.
Fig. 14: The market place mannequin selling artificial goods to make the environment more real and motivate the soldiers.
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Fig. 16: A Stryker Vehicle Commander in a local training area interacts in real time with the envisioned avatar of a Soldier participating remotely from a collective trainer.
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REFERENCES
LIST OF FIGURES
Defense Dept & Vivienne Machi, National defence. (November 2017). The Future of Training and Simulation: Preparing Warfighters for Tomorrow’s Battlefields. Retrieved from https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2017/11/22/the-future-of-training-and-simulation-preparing-warfighters-for-tomorrows-battlefields
[01] Junction City Gregor Sailer, Kehrer Galerie. (2016). Junction City. Potemkin Villages. Retrieved from https://payload.cargocollective. com/1/18/602020/13213090/GregorSailer_ThePotemkinVillage_37_1000.jpg
Geoff Manaugh & Nicola Twilley, The Atlantic (May 2013). It’s Artificial Afghanistan: A Simulated Battlefield in the Mojave Desert. Retrieved from http://v-e-n-u-e.com/In-the-Box-ATour-Through-the-Simulated-Battlefields-of-the-US-Army Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/ technology/archive/2013/05/its-artificial-afghanistan-a-simulated-battlefield-in-the-mojave-desert/275983/ Jennifer Cappuccio Maher, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG. (August 2019). Soldiers at the National Training Center at Ft. Irwin leave their mark when they leave. Retrieved from https://www.pendleton.marines.mil/ Photos/igphoto/2000781935/ Joe Lacdan, U.S.Army. (May 2019). Augmented reality training on the horizon to give Soldiers edge in combat Retrieved from https://www.army.mil/e2/c/images/2019/05/15/552998/original.jpg
[02] Aerial view of the town Gregor Sailer, Kehrer Galerie. (2016). USA, Junction City. Potemkin Villages. Retrieved from https://payload.cargocollective. com/1/18/602020/13213090/GregorSailer_ThePotemkinVillage_34_1000.jpg [03] Geoff Manaugh & Nicola Twilley, The Atlantic. (May 2013). It’s Artificial Afghanistan: A Simulated Battlefield in the Mojave Desert. Retrieved from https://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/ mt/assets/science/FortIrwin-1.jpg [04] Porta-Johns outside Fort Irwin L.T. Original G., DuffleBlog. (May 2018). National Infantry Museum to host gallery of porta-potty artwork. Retrieved from https://www.duffelblog. com/2018/05/porta-potty-art-on-display-at-infantry-museum/ [05] Geoff Manaugh & Nicola Twilley, The Atlantic. (May 2013). It’s Artificial Afghanistan: A Simulated Battlefield in the Mojave Desert. Retrieved from https://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/ mt/assets/science/FortIrwin-11.jpg [06] Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley, The Atlantic. (May 2013). It’s Artificial Afghanistan: A Simulated Battlefield in the Mojave Desert. Retrieved from https://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/ mt/assets/science/FortIrwin-10.jpg [07] Joe Lacdan & U.S. Army, (May 2019). Augmented reality training on the horizon to give Soldiers edge in combat. Retrieved from https://www.army.mil/article/221766/ augmented_reality_training_on_the_horizon_to_ give_soldiers_edge_in_combat
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Fake Cities For Real Warfare : Simulated Battlefields
[08] Mixed Reality in Military training Defense Dept & Vivienne Machi, National defence. (November 2017). The Future of Training and Simulation: Preparing Warfighters for Tomorrow’s Battlefields. Retrieved from https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2017/11/22/the-future-of-training-and-simulation-preparing-warfighters-for-tomorrows-battlefields [09] Noah Sachtman, Wired. (January 2008). Tomato Factory Becomes Marines’ High-Tech Trainer Retrieved from https://designyoutrust.com/2015/07/ potemkin-village-a-fake-urban-decorations-amongthe-ufa-city/
[15] Joe Lacdan, U.S.Army. (May 2019). Augmented reality training on the horizon to give Soldiers edge in combat Retrieved from https://www.army.mil/e2/c/images/2019/05/15/552998/original.jpg [16] USA, Tiefort City Gregor Sailer, Kehrer Galerie. (2016). USA, Tiefort CityPotemkin Villages. Retrieved from https://payload.cargocollective. com/1/18/602020/13213090/GregorSailer_ThePotemkinVillage_33_1000.jpg
[10] John L. Williams & Unimersiv, Naval Science and Technology Future Force. (October 2014).Mastering the Human Element of Immersive Training Retrieved from https://futureforce.navylive.dodlive. mil/2014/10/mastering-the-human-element-of-immersive-training/ [11] Geoff Manaugh & Nicola Twilley, The Atlantic. (May 2013). It’s Artificial Afghanistan: A Simulated Battlefield in the Mojave Desert. Retrieved from https://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/ mt/assets/science/FortIrwin-17.jpg [12] Cpl. Jacob Pruitt, The official website of the United States Marine Corps. (July 2018). Inside the Infantry Immersion Trainer Retrieved from https://www.mcbhawaii.marines.mil/ News/News-Stories/Article/1572841/inside-the-infantry-immersion-trainer/ 13] Geoff Manaugh & Nicola Twilley, The Atlantic. (May 2013). It’s Artificial Afghanistan: A Simulated Battlefield in the Mojave Desert. Retrieved from https://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/ mt/assets/science/FortIrwin-13.jpg [14] Jennifer Cappuccio Maher, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin/SCNG, Daily Bulletin. (August 2019). Soldiers at the National Training Center at Ft. Irwin leave their mark when they leave. Retrieved from https://www.pendleton.marines.mil/ Photos/igphoto/2000781935/
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MIND READING MYTH? OR REALITY? Alekya Malladi
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Scientists around the world have been developing algorithms that can train brains to read what we are thinking and draw a picture of it. What if we get things right? 3
In 2012, there was a restoration attempt of the fresco in the Santuario de la Misericordia. The painting was so obscured that authorities had suspected vandalism. News of the disfigured painting spread rumors and it became an internet phenomenon, having been jokingly dubbed “Ecce Mono” (‘Behold the Monkey’; ecce is Latin for ‘behold’, whereas mono is Spanish for ‘monkey’; in Latin, it is simius). It was later determined that an elderly parishioner, Doña Cecilia Giménez, was responsible for this.
tive computer-generated composites were of even poorer quality than hand-drawn sketches, with around 5 percent accuracy. These inaccuracies are not necessarily a question of the artist’s skill.
She tried to restore the painting from memory and the result was an online rush of global hilarity and the incident was compared to the plot of the film Bean. Since then the church actually had several visitors who had come to see the unique version and photograph it.
The major issues with creating spitting images of suspects rests not just on their hands, but the victim’s or witness’ memory retrieval processes. In an article on APM Reposts, Journalists Jennifer Vogel and Madeleine Baran describe the human face as a chess set. “Our brains don’t capture that image as a collection of knights, pawns and other discrete pieces, which would rely on our recall memory -- memory that requires no priming, such as being shown a picture of someone and asked to identify it. Instead, our brains summon our recognition memory, which relies on cues, such as spotting someone on the street, in order to form the associations that allow us to put, for instance, names with faces. For that reason, we might all know what Brad Pitt looks like and easily identify him strolling down the street, but we’d have a much harder time describing his appearance from scratch.”
The Analogue way Forensic sketches are based on memory too. The sketch artists have no information about the person being described. All they have is a memory of the victim or a witness. So, often they are not accurate. For decades, they have been trying to translate those memories into pictures by interviewing victims and sketching, till the likeliness of the victims are satisfied. It is estimated that hand-drawn composites by trained artists are roughly 9 percent accurate in terms of producing a recognizable likeness to a suspect. However, primi4
They are not photographs, they are misunderstood composite sketches.
So, why spend time and resources Mind reading - Myth? or Reality?
Fig. 03: Fresco restored from memory
on them if they’re neurologically doomed for inaccuracy? Often, the objective of police sketches isn’t to construct a perfect portrait of the perpetrator but to publicize crime, attract leading clues and get the public to look out for the suspects. That’s why the artists highlight easily recognizable key features about a person like a tattoo, scar, facial hair etc., that might jump out at passerby.
According to New Yok- based Innocence project, a nonprofit legal organization, this has occurred in more than 70 percent of the cases. Even assuming a person remembers a face accurately, the ability to relay an image in one’s mind to someone with a sketch pad, no matter however skilled, does provide some obstacles. What might seem like a large nose to someone might not to another.
Since this process relies heavily on memory and recollection, mistaken eyewitnesses accounts were a primary factor in the hundreds of wrongful convictions that have been overturned by DNA evidence.
Magic or Informed skill?
Alekya Malladi
A sensation in his native England, Derren Brown, a mentalist and mind reader, practices “psychological illusionism”. A term he has made 5
up, launched his career of tricking people, sometimes millions at once. In one of his acts, he handles them cards with simple shapes like a square, circle or waves and asks them to mentally visualize one of the shapes at random. As one can guess, he was accurate in predicting which one. So, can he read minds?! No, he is not a psychic or a magician. In his performances he can be seen using various methods to achieve his illusions including traditional magic/conjuring techniques, memory techniques, hypnosis, body language reading, cognitive psychology, cold reading, and psychological, subliminal (specifically the use of PWA – “perception without awareness�), and ideomotor suggestion. In an interview in New Scientist in 2005, when asked whether he can detect lies, Brown claimed to be able to read subtle cues such as micro-muscle movements that indicate to him if someone is lying. This is a result of incredibly training the mind to read micro expressions and body language. What if machines could be taught how to read minds?
challenging to reconstruct internal imagery because the mental contents of perception and imagery are thought to be encoded in hierarchical representations in the brain. According to an article in NCBI, recent work showed that visual cortical activity measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) can be decoded (translated) into the hierarchical features of a pre-trained deep neural network (DNN) for the same input image, providing a way to make use of the information from hierarchical visual features.
Can we tell for sure if someone is telling the truth or making up a story or whether someone intended to do the crime with a certain level of certainity? Deep Image Reconstruction
While the externalize of states of the mind has mostly been a theme in science fiction, only recently has the advent of machine learning based analysis of functional magnetic imagining (fMRI) data is being put to potential use in real world. Scientific methods have found it
In an experiment conducted by them, participants were asked to produce mental imagery of natural and artificial images shown prior to task session. While the reconstruction quality varied across subjects and images, primitive reconstructions were obtained for some of the artificial shapes. In contrast, natural images were not constructed well,
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Mind reading - Myth? or Reality?
Fig. 05: This man is not a criminal. He was hired as an actor to test the memory and descriptions of APM Reports employees.
Fig. 06: Deep Image Reconstruction of shapes
Alekya Malladi
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possibly because of the complexity of imagining them. The pixel wise spatial correlation evaluations of reconstructed artificial images did not show high accuracy, possibly because of disagreements in positions, colors and luminance between target and reconstructed images. Furthermore, separate evaluations of color and shape reconstructions of artificial images suggested that shape rather than color had a major contribution to the high proportion of correct answers by human raters. Taken together, these results provide evidence for the feasibility of visualizing imagined content from brain activity patterns. Reconstruction of artificial shapes was also successful, even though the reconstruction models used were trained only on natural images. Glimpse into our brain’s activities This approach provides a unique glimpse at out internal world by translating thoughts and memories into images via hierarchical visual features. By choosing appropriate DNN with substantial homology with neural representations, brain decoded DNN features could be rendered into movies, sounds, text, or other forms of sensory or mental representations.
Other cool things it can do Imagine if this technology existed during Stephan Hawking’s time, 40 years ago. This technology would definitely help those people who have trouble communicating for various reasons, such as ALS patients. This technology could give an insight about the human body while it is experiencing coma. We could literally map out thought patterns, bringing us one step closer to achieving artificial intelligence. Autocorrect and speech recognition could be improved to attain accuracy by combining existing technologies with mind-reading applications to understand intent or thought processes. Lights and sounds may turn up or down based on mental preference. Ethical Discussions Experts predict important debates about how and when can this technology be used. As seen in the human sketches based on memory, absence or misinterpretation is an obstacle in achieving accuracy. One of the important questions that is being discussed regarding this technology is whether imagining is like testimony or instead like DNA or blood evidence.
What would happen if this technique is perfected and an entire movie can be reconstructed based on memory? Will forgetting even an option?
Given our current appetite for sharing carefully selected chunks of our personal lives, where every image is curated carefully before being posted on the internet, is the idea of recording and sharing images exaggerated?
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Mind reading - Myth? or Reality?
Fig. 07: Subjects viewed a random sequence of images of faces and houses and were asked to look for an inverted house like the one at bottom left. They were able to predict what people are seeing based on the electrical signals coming from electrodes implanted in their brain - and say it could allow ‘locked in’ patients to communicate.
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Fig. 08: The black and gray surrounding frames indicate presented and reconstructed images respectively.
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Mind reading - Myth? or Reality?
Alekya Malladi
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REFERENCES Jennifer Vogel and Madeleine Baran, ATMreports. (September 2016). Not photographs: The misunderstood police composite sketch. Retrieved from https://www.apmreports.org/story/2016/09/20/police-composite-sketch Cristen Conger, howstuffworks, (N.D.). How Police Sketches Work Retrieved from https://people.howstuffworks.com/ police-sketch3.htm Jill O’Reilly. NCBI. (January 2014). Deep image reconstruction from human brain activity Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/ articles/PMC6347330/ Clare Wilson. NewScientist. (July 2005). Deception special: The great pretender Retrieved from https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18725101-700-deception-special-the-greatpretender/
LIST OF FIGURES [01] Can Computers read your mind? Vaishnavi patil, Science ABC. (February 2017). Can computers read minds? Retrieved from https://www.scienceabc.com/innovation/can-computers-read-minds.html [02] In theory you can decode the internal states of the brain without an external stimulus Andrew Rich & Lynne Malcolm, All in the mind & Getty Images. (July 2016). USA, Junction City. A computer that can read your mind? It’s closer than you think Retrieved from https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/allinthemind/technology-assisted-mind-reading-closer-than-you-think/7631788
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[03] Ashifa Kassam, The Guardian. (August 2015). Amateur art restorer admits to damaging Ecce Homo mural. Something to sing about: ‘worst art restoration ever’ inspires an operaRetrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/aug/20/ something-to-sing-about-worst-art-restoration-everinspires-an-opera [04] Machine Learning for Brain reading Agsan Drew & Michael Irving. New Atlas & Depositphotos. (June 2017). Using machine learning, researchers have been able to read more complex thoughts from brain scans . “Mind reading” technology can now decode complex thoughts Retrieved from https://newatlas.com/mind-readingcomplex-thoughts/50228/ [05] Jennifer Vogel and Madeleine Baran, ATMreports. (September 2016). Not photographs: The misunderstood police composite sketch. Retrieved from https://www.apmreports.org/story/2016/09/20/police-composite-sketch [06] KamitaniLab. (May 2013). Deep image reconstruction: Geometric shapes. [Video Clip] Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHj0xaoW84k [07] Mark Prigg, Kai Miller & Brian Donahue, Daily Mail & HSNewsBeat (January 2016). Augmented reality training on the horizon to give Soldiers edge in combat. Retrieved from https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3423290/Mind-reading-computer-INSTANTLY-knows-thinking-about.html [08] Kimberley Mok, The Newstack. (March 2018). Mind-Reading AI Optimizes Images Reconstructed from Your Brain Waves. Retrieved from https://thenewstack.io/mind-reading-ai-optimizes-images-reconstructed-brain-waves/ [09] Casey Fiesler, Next. (October 2018). In “The Entire History of You,” anyone with an implant can play back memories directly in front of their eyes. Black Mirror, Light Mirror: Teaching Technology Ethics Through Speculation. Retrieved from https://howwegettonext.com/ the-black-mirror-writers-room-teaching-technology-ethics-through-speculation-f1a9e2deccf4
Mind reading - Myth? or Reality?
Alekya Malladi
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