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26:43
Computer-Generated Animal Model Stimuli
Published on: July 29, 2007
Art feature for 2008: electric sheep
1Spotworks, San Francisco, CA 94114, USA. spot@draves.org
Nonlinear Dynamics, Psychology, and Life Sciences
|December 26, 2007
Summary
Electric Sheep uses crowd-sourced user votes to evolve abstract animations via genetic algorithms. This approach combines human design with artificial evolution for unique digital art.
Area of Science:
- Artificial life
- Computational art
- Evolutionary algorithms
Background:
- The Electric Sheep is a distributed screensaver evolving artificial life-forms.
- It utilizes a render farm of idle computers for animation and evolution.
- Audience votes shape the evolutionary process.
Purpose of the Study:
- To explore the intersection of crowd-sourcing and artificial evolution in creating digital art.
- To investigate the use of genetic algorithms and the Fractal Flame algorithm for generating complex animations.
- To understand how user feedback influences the evolution of artificial life-forms.
Main Methods:
- A genetic algorithm is employed, with a fitness function based on 50,000 user votes.
- Users can manually design "sheep" (animations) to contribute to the gene pool.
- Images are generated using the Fractal Flame algorithm, a refinement of Iterated Function Systems.
Main Results:
- The process results in evolving abstract animations known as "sheep".
- User-designed "sheep" and evolved "sheep" coexist and compete.
- The Fractal Flame algorithm generates images as interference patterns from nonlinear transformations.
Conclusions:
- Crowd-sourcing and artificial evolution can collaborate and compete effectively.
- The genome, comprising hundreds of parameters, maps nonlinearly to the visual output.
- This visual language, driven by search and "incantation", animates the "sheep".
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