[Adan] Actually, the content of this post is provided by Jennifer: she's asked me to link to a FastCoDesign blog entry describing this amazing machine:
The article describing it, and especially the video showing it in action, is fantastic. It's a bit confusing at first: I thought it was recreating patent drawings from patents in a way that showed the evolution of solutions to a given problem. Instead, it seems to be choosing the patents (and, subsequently, the images) by finding keywords that relate to a story that's been provided in text form. So it really does earn its name, "The Arbitrary Apparatus," but there are still some conceptual connections between the images in the sequence.
I think it has a way of putting your mind in a storytelling mode: you see things in a format that leads you to believe you ought to be able to figure out a plot or meaning, and you force yourself to come up with one or both.... though it may be entirely different from the input text. Brilliant! This could be an incredibly powerful brainstorming tool, inducing drastically lateral idea generation.
I think it has a way of putting your mind in a storytelling mode: you see things in a format that leads you to believe you ought to be able to figure out a plot or meaning, and you force yourself to come up with one or both.... though it may be entirely different from the input text. Brilliant! This could be an incredibly powerful brainstorming tool, inducing drastically lateral idea generation.