[-empyre-] making a meta-living / a-life & generative art
Dear Mitchell
Dear all,
Sorry. I cannot participate actively in the followed subject of the list
although it fascinates me and although it develops in a extremely
interesting way.
At present I tempted the breakthrough of paper and multimedia publishing
under ISBN approval which represents a sum of inextricable tasks within the
framework of the French administration; and it wasted all my time.
But really I look at all and I guard affectedly all these
e-mails which quickly cross and most ceaselessly make bounce the ideas.
I come this evening to say that one fortnight ago I have made
a review of the links with brieve cut-up of their surrounding texts
and I had sent them by inviting to see the site and the
archives of Empyre. I sent it to Syndicate, Rekombinant, and nettime-fr,
and also to the French-speaking artists whom I have quoted,
as well as to the concerned scientists, Jean-Jacques Kupiec
and Sergei Atamas.
I sent them to Syndicate, Rekombinant, and nettime-fr,
and also to the French-speaking artists whom I had quoted, as well as
to the concerned scientists, Jean-Jacques Kupiec and Sergei Atamas
( http://www.biobitfield.com/ ) and before I leave you this day,
I forward the answer by Sergei Atamas - anyway reagarding the contents
of which it is a sort of undirect answer to the list...
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sergei P. Atamas" <satamas@umaryland.edu>
To: <guiberta@criticalsecret.org>
Sent: Saturday, November 20, 2004 6:46 PM
Subject: Re: Message from a biobitfield.com visitor
> Aliette,
>
> Thank you very much for sending me this very interesting discussion. There
> is so much info in it, including various links, that it will take for me
to
> digest it.
>
> Sorry for the delay with the reply - I have been overwhelmed by various
> things in the lab.
>
> Best regards,
Your regards
>
> Sergei
A.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sergei P. Atamas" <satamas@umaryland.edu>
To: <guiberta@criticalsecret.org>
Sent: Saturday, November 20, 2004 6:46 PM
Subject: Re: Message from a biobitfield.com visitor
> Aliette,
>
> Thank you very much for sending me this very interesting discussion. There
> is so much info in it, including various links, that it will take for me
to
> digest it.
>
> Sorry for the delay with the reply - I have been overwhelmed by various
> things in the lab.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Sergei
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <visitor@biobitfield.com>
> To: <satamas@umaryland.edu>
> Sent: Wednesday, November 17, 2004 6:04 PM
> Subject: Message from a biobitfield.com visitor
>
>
> >
> >
> > guiberta@criticalsecret.org wrote:
> > Hello Serguëi!
> >
> > Here is a review of a debate on the list Empyre (as I do not know your
> email to right your address with others Bcc)
> >
> > Aliette Guibert
> > http://www.criticalsecret.com
> >
> >
> > Chers tous, je pense que cela peut vous intéresser :
> >
> >
> > Voici la réquisition des liens dans l\'environnement de courts extraits
> > (hors de leur contexte - je passe l\'évocation du c++
> > etc++++:))) du débat thématique :
> >
> > Metacreation: Art and Artificial life
> >
> > sur la liste Empyre (débat non clos)
> > http://www.subtle.net/empyre/
> >
> > Pour les références des textes des chercheurs et citations scientifiques
> > voir les archives
> > http://lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/2004-November/thread.html
> > http://lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au/pipermail/empyre/
> >
> > Rappel :
> >
> > 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.
> >
> > - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
> >
> >
> > 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@paul-brown.com 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@xs4all.nl
> >
> > 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.
> >
> >
>
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