A review of links on Metacreation: Art and A-Life (Empyre list)

Just to have a/life among the American war to the world...
O.
---------------------------------------
May be there is a little part of us no subscriber of [Empyre] server list
could interest you.
Here is the review (among any environmental extracts) of the links
published along the debat:
Theme:
Metacreation: Art and Artificial life

(which is not still closed)

http://www.subtle.net/empyre/

To see the archives to know the researchers' texts and their scientific and
bio-scientific languages (c++ etc++++:) and tehcnical references:
http://lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/2004-November/thread.html
http://lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/

++ Aliette

- - - - - - -


Remind the abstract by Melinda Rackham :

Following last month, the only thing we can be certain of is that life will
go on and new forms of art will emerge in response to our social, political,
technological and cultural contexts.

This months discussion on the field of Artificial Life or a-life Art
practices, looks at how some of those forms are evolving. Theorist Mitchell
Whitelaw will be joined  by eminent a-life practitioners Paul Brown (UK),
Mauro Annunziato (IT),  Ken Rinaldo (US), and Maria Verstappen (NL). Jon
McCormack (AU) will also be joining us as a peer interrogator/respondent.

Whitelaw's recently published book "Metacreation: Art and Artificial Life"
(MIT Press) has been described as  "provocative, literate, subtle, and
knowledgeable" [1]. It is the first detailed critical account of the new
field of creative practice of a-life art. This artform responds to the
increasing technologization of living matter by creating works that seem to
mutate, evolve, and respond with a life of their own. Pursuing a-life's
promise of emergence, these artists produce not only artworks, but
generative and creative processes: here creation becomes metacreation.

Over the month Whitelaw and guests will expand upon  the book's concepts,
including  how artificial evolution alters the artist's creative agency;
the  complex interactivity of artificial ecosystems; the creation of
embodied autonomous agencies; the use of cellular automata to investigate
pattern, form and morphogenesis; and well as examining the key tenet of
a-life, emergence.

and Quote:

October 2004 -Metacreation: Art and Artificial Life
Mitchell Whitelaw, Paul Brown, Mauro Annunziato,  Ken Rinaldo, and Maria
Verstappen.

Artist, writer and researcher Mitchell Whitelaw's new book "Metacreation:
Art and Artificial Life" (MIT Press 2004) is the first detailed critical
account of the creative field practice of a-life art. Whitelaw and eminent
a-life practioners explore how artificial evolution alters the artist's
creative agency;  the  complex interactivity of artificial ecosystems; the
creation of  embodied autonomous agencies; the use of cellular automata to
investigate pattern, form and morphogenesis; and well as examining the key
tenet of a-life, emergence.
---> Mauro Annunziato, artist and scientist, founded with Piero Pierucci in
'94 PLANCTON, to research the creative and aesthetical potentialities of
chaos and artificial life, the relation between art and science, mind and
society, communication and interaction.
---> Paul Brown is an artist and writer who has been specialising in art and
technology, especially computational and generative art for over 40 years.
He was recently described by Mitchell Whitelaw as "one of the unheralded
pioneers of a-life art".
---> Ken Rinaldo is an artist, theorist and author who creates interactive
multimedia installations that blur the boundaries between the organic and
inorganic. Integration of the organic and electro-mechanical elements
asserts a confluence and co-evolution between
living and evolving technological cultures.
---> Maria Verstappen and Erwin Driessens have worked together since 1990.
They received a 1st prize at LIFE 2.0 and LIFE 5.0, an international
competition for Art & Artificial Life, with their Tickle robot projects.



======================================================================


Mitchell Whitelaw
Program Director, Media / Multimedia Production
School of Creative Communication
University of Canberra
http://creative.canberra.edu.au/mitchell

Mitchell Whitelaw (http://creative.canberra.edu.au/mitchell) is an
artist, writer and researcher in new media and audio art and culture.
He has written extensively over the years on New Media, Sound and
A-life Art for journals such as Leonardo, Artlink and Digital
Creativity, and his new book, Metacreation: Art and Artificial Life,
was published in 2004 by MIT Press
(http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?tid=10080&ttype=2) He
is currently Head of Program, Media / Multimedia Production, School of
Creative Communication, University of Canberra.

Some resources: there's the book, but also some freeware options - some
of the main elements of the book are in various papers available online
here:
http://creative.canberra.edu.au/mitchell/pubs.php

A quick historical link-up which shows a parallel circuit to the one of
Paul's practice: happened across some work yesterday by US
generative/code artist Casey Reas, in which he begins by implementing
some of LeWitt's wall drawings, in code (with LeWitt's permission).
This is part of a wider investigation on Reas' part, of parallels
between conceptual and software art. See
http://artport.whitney.org/commissions/softwarestructures/map.html

Of course before LeWitt's instructions there were the instruction
pieces of Fluxus... like LaMonte Young's "draw a straight line and
follow it." Florian Cramer notes the parallel with code art here
http://beehive.temporalimage.com/content_apps43/cramer/oooo.html

But... there is a very clear link between "the life of art" and
artists' use of artificial life. Organicism is an ancient artistic
lineage which holds that the ideal structure for a work of art, is a
"natural" or "living" structure. In the book I use Klee and Malevich as
examples of a kind of formal organicism - one that proceeds by trying
to make rational or formal abstractions of nature, and then attempts to
set those abstracted elements loose with "a life of their own." There's
more of all this in my "Abstract Organism" paper, here...
http://creative.canberra.edu.au/mitchell/papers/abstractorganism.pdf

Lamarckian evolution theorises adaptive self-modification
which can be passed on to the next generation. While it's been
overtaken by Darwinian theories, it's not a done deal - there is some
controversial science that suggests that parts of the immune system can
pass on acquired traits (Ted Steele, Lamarck's Signature - see for eg
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s14075.htm). If you
stretch the idea of "self" out to a species (or in to a gene) then
Darwinian evolution is self-modification too.

My favourite example of self-modification and emergence is the work on
evolved circuit designs by Adrian Thompson of the COGS lab at Sussex
(http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/adrianth/ade.html). Basically he used
a programmable chip (a FGPA, field gate programmable array) to "breed"
and automatically test thousands of electronic circuits, on a task such
as distinguishing between two different frequencies at their inputs.


Thompson's experiments and other embodied approaches (even in
software!) are powerful counter-examples. The richness of their
approach is actually aesthetically as well as formally evident... I'm
thinking here of the work of Annunziato (http://www.plancton.com/) and
Driessens and Verstappen (http://www.xs4all.nl/~notnot); works using
cellular automata (like Paul's) also offer an alternative to the
"organism = gene = code" fallacy.

There's a mass of freeware tools for exploring a-life techniques...
check out http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Artificial_Life/

Some of these are "creative" tools, and some aren't... if you are
interested in images I would recommend Tatsuo Unemi's SBART - similar
to Karl Sims' image breeder (though the grammar is not so rich). SBART
is here - http://www.intlab.soka.ac.jp/~unemi/sbart/ (but note that the
Mac OSX download link is incorrect - it should be
ftp://ftp.t.soka.ac.jp/alife/SBART30aB.sit)

To develop original processes, there's not much alternative to
programming in some form... there are learner-friendly options; people
use Flash and Director; a nice freeware option that I've started using
is Processing (http://processing.org). Very cool, easy programming,
compiles to Java. There are some a-life examples on the web site.

(for more along these lines see my catalaog essay for electrofringe 04
- REPLICATE - http://www.electrofringe.org)


===============================================================
Paul Brown          PO Box 413, Cotton Tree QLD 4558, Australia
mailto:paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx            http://www.paul-brown.com
mob 0419 72 74 85                           fax +1 309 216 9900

Visiting Fellow - Birkbeck    http://www.bbk.ac.uk/hafvm/cache/
An example is Ihnatowicz - http://www.senster.com
http://www.danielbrowns.com/


Hi Komninos - long time!
nice shirt BTW   http://www.griffith.edu.au/ppages/k_zervos/

And apropos your comments about Hollywood soaps proving something or
other - did you see that Australian researchers have discovered a
lost race of Hobbits in Indonesia?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3948165.stm

If anyone is looking for courses to learn this stuff the MSc EASy at
U Sussex is excellent:
 http://www.informatics.susx.ac.uk/easy/

If anyone is interested to learn what working with these kind of
systems was like there's a fascinating (well, for me anyway) faq at:
 http://www.faqs.org/faqs/dec-faq/pdp8/section-3.html

In an early post I referred to Ihnatowicz's Senster.  This was run
on a clone of a Honeywell Series 16.  The codeset that Ihnatowicz used
to implement the Senster is here:
http://www.series16.adrianwise.co.uk/programming.html

The CACHe project in London have recently discovered a complete listing
of the Senster code and it's now online here:
 http://www.senster.com/ihnatowicz/senster/senstersoftware/index.html

One of my favourite pieces is Maciej Wisniewski's Turnstile II:
http://www.netomat.com/art/turnstile.php

Try leaving it on as a screen saver for a few hours...
Poetry via net art.  Although it's not "alife art" the
serendipity of the chance encounters of lines can often be very effective
and sometimes profound.

I like Ross-Ashby's concept of requisite variety - here's another of
his quotes:  "Division of the world's system into Natural and Man-made
died with Darwin."  A wonderful and neglected pioneer of cybernetics:
   http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/ASHBBOOK.html


Rob Saunder's work is of interest in this regard:
http://www.arch.usyd.edu.au/~rob/study/publications/thesis/index.html
(the pdf file referred to is over 25MB BTW!)
Also of interest:
 http://www.arch.usyd.edu.au/kcdc/conferences/hi04/
And:
http://research.it.uts.edu.au/creative/CandC5/

Also try googling "computational aesthetics" (no quotes) for an
interesting set of links.




=============================================================
Nemo Nox
http://www.nemonox.com

==============================================================
Alan Sondheim
recent http://www.asondheim.org/
WVU 2004 projects http://www.as.wvu.edu/clcold/sondheim/files/
recent related to WVU http://www.as.wvu.edu:8000/clc/Members/sondheim
Trace projects http://trace.ntu.ac.uk/writers/sondheim/index.htm
partial mirror at http://www.anu.edu.au/english/internet_txt


=======================================================================

Christophe Bruno
last, I would like to point out that there is an other approach to these
questions, which is the analysis of the prisoner's dilemma by J. Lacan in
his article "logical time and the assertion of antipated certainty"
you will find some references at the end of my paper
http://www.christophebruno.com/index.php?p=49

christophe

============================================================
Jim Andrews
http://vispo.com

"{5: No computer can reprogram itself; self-programming is only possible
within a limited framework of game rules written by a human programmer. A
machine can behave differently than expected, because the rules didn't
foresee all situations they could create, but no machine can overwrite its
own rules by itself.}"

But this is false. See for instance
http://www.fact-index.com/s/se/self_modifying_code.html . The technical term
is 'self-modifying code'.

i passed your fine essay, christophe, at
http://www.christophebruno.com/index.php?p=49 on to a group of largely
print-poets. we'll see what they make of it. i have read much of it and felt
it was full of surprising revelations. i haven't got as far as to start into
the lacan material you refer to but will, in due course.

==============================================================

komninos zervos
lecturer, convenor of CyberStudies major
School of Arts
Griffith University
Room 3.25 Multimedia Building G23
Gold Coast Campus
Parkwood
PMB 50 Gold Coast Mail Centre
Queensland 9726
Australia
Phone 07 5552 8872 Fax 07 5552 8141
http://www.gu.edu.au/ppages/k_zervos
http://users.bigpond.net.au/mangolegs
http://spokenword.blog-city.com


not a sublime experience
which is partially an interpretive response
searching the mind's database of memories
of not having anything to compare what i am experiencing to
a-life experiences have given me poetic moments
standing before
camille utterback's textrain
http://www.camilleutterback.com/textrain.html
catching letters with my hands
grabbing groups to make words
letting them slip through my fingers
laura giannitrapani's tango dancers
wearing vr glasses
the dancers came out of their stained glass 2d surface
and danced around me as i approached
http://scv.bu.edu/HiPArt/SpiritedRuins/Artists/laura/laura.html
richard brown's mimetic starfish
http://www.mimetics.com/starfish.html
just watching the video of an installation
the tentacles seemingly reaching out to touch
retracting when anyone tried to touch
and online
poetic moments abound
jason nelson's poetry
http://www.heliozoa.com/
reiner strasser
http://nonfinito.de/doorman/
jess loseby
http://www.rssgallery.com/index.htm
mark amerika's holo-x (no longer avail;able online)
nicholas clauss's
http://www.flyingpuppet.com
mez breeze's work
http://www.hotkey.net.au/~netwurker/
anna maria uribe
http://www.vispo.com/uribe/
in fact, everytime i surf, i get poetic moments, each time i follow a
suggested link from jim andrews or from rhizome artbase or from webartery
or
where-ever, i can't help being engaged by what i come across, can't help
being challenged as to what is possible.
cheers
komninos

===========================================================

Stephen Jones

I don't know how interested in emergence people might be but i  have a
long paper discussing how it works in Neuroquantology on-line journal at
http://www.neuroquantology.com/2004/03/ToC2004_3.htm which you might
find interesting

=========================================================

Bill Fisher

True, true, but we can try.  Please visit
http://billfisher.dreamhost.com/re-present.htm for a project on shared
authorship.  We hope to reanimate this project in 2006, and all are invited
to participate.

=========================================================

leegte@xxxxxxxxx

Have a look at this course. That should get you started.
Lots of example applications linked.

http://iaaa.nl/cursusAA&AI/

===========================================================

===========================================================

Aliette Guibert


http://www.criticalsecret.com/jeanjacqueskupiec/Heams344.pdf
http://www.biobitfield.com/

May be this infos will interest you?
Please check them.


Olivier Auber
http://poietic-generator.net/
 English:
http://poietic-generator.net/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=8
http://km2.net/IMG/pdf/article-auber.pdf
http://km2.net/auteur.php3?id_auteur=4

Antoine Schmitt
English:
http://www.gratin.org/as/

www.panoplie.fr prod French
bots
http://www.arte.fr/barte
http://www.distri-web.net/_bot/botfr.asp
game
http://www.villette-numerique.com/game/

Sienne Expo "Invisibles" (It)
English
http://www.papesse.org/papesse/eng/programma/mostrescheda.cfm?id=127
http://www.papesse.org/papesse/eng/programma/altro_curatore.cfm?id_anagrafica=56&id_contenuto=127&id_persona=164


Yann Le Guennec French
http://www.x-arn.org/w/wakka.php?wiki=ObjetAbsent
Genetic algorithm
http://www.x-arn.org/w/wakka.php?wiki=AlgorithmeGenetique
http://www.x-arn.org/w/wakka.php?wiki=EsthetiqueDuProjet

and tell me what

Regards,
A.

 Warren Neidich was a neuro-surgeon specialist
of the eye, in the United States ; of an artistic intuition stemming from
his knowledge, still young, he preferred to leave the medicine and dash into
the neuro-art (texts/photo/video/body art performances) and guarding a
relationship with emergent (in sciences) and materialist emergent (in
critical phylosophy) thinkers.
(...)
http://www.artbrain.org

an example
http://www.cmp.ucr.edu/photography/neidich2/

http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/ai/
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND A-LIFE
(...)


=====================================================================

C.Mendoza

a-life...

i propose to you that much like a genome (hey mr. craig venter, nice
try, but i'm sure that you are right... under the current political
climate), any piece of code, or anything that you can actually think of
nowadays, it is just a piece of property. thus, the fact is that any
sort of automated, and even self-aware (impossible at this point)
software, will always be subjected to ownership rules. if you can patent
"one click"
http://www-cse.stanford.edu/classes/cs201/projects-99-00/software-patent
s/amazon.html you can pretty much patent god if you cook Him in a lab,
or at least if you register Him with the US Patent Office. therefore, i
think it is interesting that this conversation happens outside of this
realm.