Themes

The subject of this course is interdisciplinary: involving themes from computer science, cybernetics, theoretical biology, complex systems, philosophy, art & music, architecture & design, ...

The most closely relevant topics include biologically inspired computing, and its roots in Artificial Life, in conjunction with generative arts and design. We will begin by investigating some of these themes individually and in parallel, allowing them to naturally cross over and mutate into new streams of natural and artificial creativity.

Bio-inspired computing is the use of computers to model the living phenomena, and simultaneously the study of life to improve the usage of computers... It takes a more bottom-up, decentralised approach; bio-inspired techniques often involve the method of specifying a set of simple rules, a set of simple organisms which adhere to those rules, and a method of iteratively applying those rules. After several generations of rule application it is usually the case that some forms of complex behaviour arise. wikipedia

Artificial life (often abbreviated ALife or A-Life) is a field of study and an associated art form which examine systems related to life, its processes, and its evolution, through the use of simulations with computer models, robotics, and biochemistry. The discipline was named by Christopher Langton, an American computer scientist, in 1986. There are three main kinds of alife, named for their approaches: soft, from software; hard, from hardware; and wet, from biochemistry. Artificial life imitates traditional biology by trying to recreate some aspects of biological phenomena. The modeling philosophy of alife strongly differs from traditional modeling by studying not only “life-as-we-know-it” but also “life-as-it-might-be”. wikipedia

"...the study of artificial systems that exhibit behavior characteristic of natural living systems. It is the quest to explain life in any of its possible manifestations, without restriction to the particular examples that have evolved on earth... the ultimate goal is to extract the logical form of living systems." Christopher Langton, 1992.

Generative art refers to art that in whole or in part has been created with the use of an autonomous system. "Generative Art" is often used to refer to computer generated artwork that is algorithmically determined. wikipedia

"Generative art is a term given to work which stems from concentrating on the processes involved in producing an artwork, usually (although not strictly) automated by the use of a machine or computer, or by using mathematic or pragmatic instructions to define the rules by which such artworks are executed." Adrian Ward, 1999.

Generative design is a design method in which the output – image, sound, architectural models, animation – is generated by a set of rules or an Algorithm, normally by using a computer program. wikipedia

"Generative Design is a morphogenetic process using algorithms structured as not-linear systems for endless unique and un-repeatable results performed by an idea-code, as in Nature". Celestino Soddu, 1992.

Readings

Ten Questions Concerning Generative Computer Art. Jon McCormack, Oliver Bown,. Alan Dorin, Jonathan McCabe,. Gordon Monro and Mitchell Whitelaw. 2012

Artificial Life -- a Primer. Simon Penny, 2009

On Biologically Inspired Computation “a.k.a. The Field”. Jason Brownlee, 2005.