The creature editor is an integral part of a computer game developed by the game company Electronic Arts. It is an epic of artificial life that involves the origin of a life, its evolution, the creation of a technological civilization, and eventually its end.
Will Wright is a creator of classic games such as SimCity and The Sims.
An artwork involving artificial life composed of the two previous works Biomes and Randomseeds. It is formed by five displays resembling Petri dishes – glass recipients used in scientific experiments and for the culture of bacteria in laboratories – which are “inoculated” with two “seeds.” In the virtual biomes, artificial microorganisms are born, evolve and die.
See also Eden, by Jon McCormack, an ecosystem of artificial life.
Boredomresearch is an English artist collective formed by Paul Smith and Vicky Isley, researchers in the field of animation and computer art at Bournemouth University, England.
A work of web art in which a dynamic model of autonomous agents – in the form of words in a grammatical network – eat each other. In this process, the “bacteria” exchange genetic information and give rise to the emergence of uncommon narratives.
Learn more about autonomy, a central concept to some breeders of the art technology.
Santiago Ortiz is an artist, mathematician and researcher in the areas of art, science, and fields of representation. He works with techniques of communication, creation and expression that combine narrative and literature as well as digital and architectural spaces.
Several devices communicate with each other by means of ultrasonic waves. They reach vibrations which act on the threshold of human hearing, but that can be seen on a large screen thanks to a data visualization system.
Learn more about interactivity, a central concept to some breeders of the art technology.
Usman Haque
He teaches at the Bartlett School of Architecture, in London.
Robert Davis
An artist and professor of the Department of Psychology of the Goldsmiths University of London.
A virtual garden whose plant life is composed of six varieties of colorful digital plants. Each one of them evolves according to its “genetic” characteristics and by its interaction with the public who, by means of sensors, cause the flowers to cross-pollinate each other, giving rise to new and unexpected blossoms.
Learn more about interactivity, a central concept to some breeders of the art technology.
Miguel Chevalier is known as one of the pioneers of digital art. Born in Mexico and residing in France, he graduated from the National Superior School of Fine Arts, in Paris, in the early 1980s. In 1994, he participated as a resident artist at Villa Kujoyama, in Kyoto, Japan.
When the participants type a text on the keys of an old typewriter, they form creatures based on a genetic algorithm that determines their behavior and movement.
Learn more about emergency, a central concept to some breeders of the art technology.
Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau
Austrian biologist Christa Sommerer and French artist Laurent Mignonneau are professors at the University of Arts and Design in Linz, Austria, where they also head the Department of Culture Interface in the Media Institute.
An evolutionary installation of artificial life, which forms an ecosystem. The agents are cellular automata which interact with each other and with the environment.
Learn more about autonomy and interactivity, two central concepts to the creators of art technology.
Jon McCormack
An Australian artist. He is a senior professor of Computer Science and co-director of the Centre for Electronic Media Art of the University of Monash in Melbourne.
An online interactive editor on which the users fill in a form with messages that in their turn transform into the genetic code of a collective and complex three-dimensional image. This “creature” enters a kind of a virtual herbarium, made up of other filled forms, based on verbs from various messages. Hence the name Verbarium.
Learn more about interactivity, a central concept to some breeders of the art technology.
Christa Sommerer, biologist born in Belgium, is a researcher at the Telecommunications Advanced Research Laboratory in Kyoto, Japan. Married to French artist Laurent Mignonneau, partner in her works, she uses principles of genetic engineering to produce beings that do not exist in nature. She is a teacher associated to Advanced Institute of Arts and Mediatic Sciences, Iamas, in Gifu, Japan.
This work applies aesthetic elements to the world of materials engineering. A ray of nitinol – a material with super elastic properties – is connected to a terminal. This way, the participants can “stimulate” the surface of the rubber creature on a computer terminal and see its undulating movements projected onto a large screen.
Learn more about interactivity, a central concept to some breeders of the art technology.
Computer Interface Java: Fabricio Anastácio and Vanessa de Almeida
Driver Interface Java: Pedro Garcia
Research Assistant: Flávia Amadeu
Artificial Organism: Skedio Tecnologia
Natural rubber Membrane: Chemical Technology Laboratory, Brasília University, UnB – www.unb.br/iq/labpesq/lateq
Sponsorship: Instituto Itaú Cultural
Tânia Fraga is an artist and doctor in communication and semiotics from the Catholic Pontific University in Sao Paulo. She has carried out Post-PhD research with a scholarship from Capes at the Interactive Arts Research Center at Plymouth University, CAiiA-Star, England. She was coordinator of the master’s degree program in arts and a professor at the Visual Arts Department of Brasilia University where she is an associate researcher and at the Integrated Systems Laboratory in the Polytechnic School of Sao Paulo University. Her research focuses on the development of interactive poetics.
