This video is the result of a research that simulated Darwinian evolution by way of hundreds of virtual creatures – which “live” within a CM-5, a supercomputer elaborated in the 1990s by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In the process of the experiment, each of these creatures really evolved, learning to execute determined tasks – such as swimming in a simulated aquatic environment.
Artist, scientist and entrepreneur Karl Sims is the founder of Genarts, a North American company that creates special-effects software for the filmmaking industry. He studied computer graphics at MIT and graduated, from the same institute, in life sciences.
by Adam Brown and Andrew H. Fagg (United States, 2006)
A network of sensors is linked to about one thousand devices that sing like living beings. Each one of these “lifeforms,” called a “bion,” communicates with the others and reacts to the presence of the spectators. The installation’s title refers to a primordial biological energy unit, identified as “orgone” by scientist Wilhelm Reich.
Artist Adam Brown works on the border between science, technology and art. He is interested, more specifically, by the relations between humans and synthetic life forms. Andrew H. Fagg is a doctor of computer science and works as an associate professor of bioengineering at the University of Oklahoma, United States.
by SymbioticA (Australia - United States, 2008–2009)
Robots move vertically along various columns, leaving traces that are actually the representation of the firings of neurons cultivated in a glass recipient located thousands of kilometers away. Parallel to this, sensors located around the installation capture the movements of the public, which, in turn, also move the robots about.
The collective SymbioticA is made up of artists Guy Ben-Ary and Philip Gamblen, composer Brett Murray, engineers Peter Gee, Nathan Scott and Stephen Bobic, as well as Dr. Steve Potter, a neuroscientist with the laboratory of neuroengineering at Georgia Tech, Atlanta, United States. Installed at the School of Human Anatomy and Biology of the University of Western Australia, the group blends art with science, encouraging critical thinking on the ethical and cultural questions involved in the manipulation of life.
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.
Three sculptures made of translucent polymer elaborated based on a genetic algorithm. When the distinct blocks thus constructed are brought together they recall Malevich’s architectural objects. The pedestal of each sculpture emits excerpts re-elaborated from “The White Doe,” a Scandinavian folklore song dating from remote times.
Nicolas Reeves is an architect with a degree from the University of Montreal, Canada. He is currently a professor in the Department of Design at the University of Quebec, in Montreal, and heads the NXI Gestatio, a laboratory for research and creation in computer science, architecture and design.
A work based on the romantic idea of constructing a corporeal mechanism that, by means of a multiple sensorial system can enable the appearance of something which resembles human consciousness.
Bill Seaman
An American artist. He earned his Masters in visual studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his phD at the Centre For Advanced Inquiry into the Interactive Arts, CAiiA.
The projection of the participants’ bodies is combined with the animation of a rain of letters, which respond to the participants’ body movements. If participants accumulate letters, they can form a word or a phrase.
Video in which the author plays the role of an employee accused by her boss of trying to incite a strike. The events were “filmed” by internal surveillance cameras and then edited. The work is an interpretation by the artist, of a true fact, which happened in 1998, in the city of Tijuana, Mexico.
Learn more about works of art and technology that deal with social issues.
Coco Fusco, who is a Cuban writer and multimedia artist living in New York, presents conferences, performances, exhibitions and curatorship management programs in the United States, Europe, Canada, as well as in the southern part of Africa and in Latin America. He has a virtual lab in the Web, with publications, videos and projects.
