Missing Links of Digital Evolution

A hyper-parasite producing two daughters.

Larger Reproduction at the Tierra site

Projects reviewed in this article:

One of the underlying narratives of current interactive arts projects is the exploration of the interconnectedness of digital and organic life-forms. Visitors of 1995's Arc Gallery--which presents the results of an annual international competition for innovation and excellence in interactive media--will find as many as 5 projects that offer diverse approaches to the subject. Since the exploration of space has gone cyber, there seems to be a desire to find a common denominator between the digital space and the world offscreen, a desire to establish communication between both worlds, or to integrate them by applying to the digital realm the 'natural' laws and conditions of our world. In the Arc Gallery, this desire takes diverse forms. One of the most ambitious of the featured projects is Tom Ray's Tierra (http://www.hip.atr.co.jp/~ray/tierra/tierra.html) A network-wide biodiversity reserve for digital organisms, it transports the concept of the wildlife reserve into the digital realm. "Tierra" takes as its premise that evolution by natural selection is able to operate effectively in genetic languages based on the machine codes of digital computers. The project explores the possibility of using evolution to generate complex software. "Tierra" is meant to allow digital life to reach its full evolutionary potential and to explore, through evolution, the possibilities inherent in the medium of networked computation. The network installation of "Tierra" will create a virtual sub-network that allows digital organisms to move and communicate freely. "Tierra" is not only a digital wildlife reserve, but also a software breeding ground: the biodiversity reserve allows natural selection to do most of the work of producing complex software. In order to create useful applications from it, the wild digital organisms will have to be domesticated, so that the captured and engineered software that can be delivered to the end user will be a salable product. The profits would go to any enterprise that makes the effort to bring the software from the digital reserve to the market. (Both Sun Microsystems and Microsoft are lending technical support to the project.) Tom Ray points out that at this point one surely cannot conceive of where evolution in the digital domain will lead (numerous documents about "Tierra" are available for online viewing or via annonymous ftp to ftp://tierra.slhs.udel.edu/tierra/doc). Christa Sommerer's and Laurent Mignonneau's A-Volve (http://www.mic.atr.co.jp/~christa) takes a different look at evolution by trying to create a crossroads of the 'real' and the 'virtual' world. "A-Volve" transfers digital creatures to a natural environment: a water-filled glass pool. Visitors 'paint' the shape of a creature by tracing a finger on a touch screen. The shape then evolves into a virtual three-dimensional creature that automatically becomes 'alive' and appears to swim in the real water of the pool. Aesthetics becomes the crucial factor in the survival of the fittest: The form designed by the visitor determines the virtual creature's movement and behavior in space and, ultimately, its adaptation to the environment. Survival depends on the creatures' ability to move within the pool, since they strive to accumulate as much energy as possible and the fittest hunt the weaker ones, in order to kill them and 'eat' their energy. The fittest creatures survive longest and are able to mate and reproduce. The newborn carries the genetic code of its parents, while mutation provides a natural reproduction mechanism that follows the genetic rules of Mendel. Visitors may interact with the creatures by moving their hands in the water: if they try to catch a creature, it will try to flee; if it gets caught, it stays still. "A-Volve" thus reinstates human manipulation of evolution in the digital realm: By protecting prey against predators, visitors are able to influence the evolution. "A-Volve"'s integration of virtual creatures into a natural environment is to some extent reversed by Tele-Garden, which enables a virtual community to generate ecological effects. "Tele-Garden" was created by Ken Goldberg, Joe Santarromana, George Bekey, Steven Gentner, Rosemary Morris, Carl Sutter and Jeff Wiegley. It is a tele-robotic project that allows WWW users to view and interact with a remote garden filled with living plants (http://www.usc.edu/dept/garden/). By directing the movements of an industrial robot arm, participants can plant and water seedlings as well as monitor the progress. Anyone can view the site and the rights to plant and water are granted to anyone willing to make his or her e-mail address known to the other members of the cooperative. While "A-Volve" attempts to create a spatial continuity for the virtual and natural realm--virtual creatures in real water--"Tele-Garden" disrupts the spatial continuity required in agriculture by disconnecting organic growth from spatial presence and tactile physical intervention. Genetic Images by Karl Sims establishes a more explicit link between aesthetics and evolution than "A-Volve." "Genetic Images" allows participants to influence a simulated evolution of pictures by making aesthetic decisions. Abstract computer-generated images are displayed on an arc of 16 screens, and viewers may choose the images they find most appealing by stepping on sensors placed in front of each screen. The selected images survive, mate, mutate and reproduce, while those not selected are removed. In this simulated evolution, however, the only creative control the users have is the aesthetic decision of preference, since the random alterations are executed by the computer. "Genetic Images" thus simulates the ability of evolution to create complexity without any apparent designer involved. The role of the observer in the interaction with a virtual ecosystem becomes the focus of Las Meninas created by Michael Tolson and George Lawson. The title alludes to the perspective associated with Velazquez' painting "Las Meninas," which--due to its use of space in reflection--inspires viewers to look over their shoulder. The installation presents a simulated (artificial life) ecosystem that is run on a Silicon Graphics computer. Viewers have access to two observation stations. The first is a low pedestal with a monitor facing upwards. Attached to it are a pair of stereoscopic (liquid crystal shutter) goggles--allowing observers to see a virtual space between the goggles and the surface of the monitor--and a Polhemus 3D sensor, which the observer can pick up and use to move around within the space. Observers get a simultaneous view of the creatures moving around in their virtual world and their own hand, holding the sensor, immersed in that world. This sensor also allows viewers to inject abstract food into the creatures' world, and thus to maintain the flow of energy driving the system. A second monitor is mounted in a corner of the ceiling and is only visible as a reflection in a mirror that is mounted in the opposite corner. In the center of the space, pointed at the mirror, a pair of binoculars is mounted on a tripod and focused on the monitor. Because the monitor is reflected in a mirror, the parallax is inverted: the projective space becomes exterior instead of interior and the monitor becomes a window instead of the bottom of a pool. With each view being literally an inversion of the other, the viewer's experience of the space is double: a reminder that the perceptions and bodily experiences of human beings are still crucial to digital evolution.