William Latham

Form synth: the rule-based evolution of complex forms from geometric primitives

Artists through history have used many different methods to invent new forms, shapes and images. Picasso and Braque invented cubism and Jackson Pollock started action painting. These methods in art historical terms are called art styles. Often several artists will share a particular art style. For example, Malevich, Tatlin and Rodchenko all worked in a Russian constructivist style. This means they all used a similar method for inventing new shapes, forms and images. When an art style is taken up and used by a large number of artists there will be felt a marked influence in the culture they live in—for example, baroque art in Europe. As a result of this, original work by artists will widely influence the design of artefacts.

The emergence and growth of evolutionary art: 1980--1993

One of the most interesting--if frustrating--aspects of charting the history of computer art is trying to understand the intersections of specific technologies and artistic experimentation. It is rarely as clear-cut as a simple linear influence of one to the other, partly because artists are able to envision all kinds of possibilities that technology might enable them to realize in some kind of form, but as they do so, the technology is itself shaped, especially in terms of how it is perceived by others. Do artists find a way to give technologies an aesthetic outlet, or do some technologies possess--or facilitate--a characteristic aesthetic that finds its expression through specific artists? Certainly, in the history of computer art it would seem that particular aesthetics, technologies, and artists are closely intertwined in certain periods. This intertwining of art, technology, and ideas stolen from the natural world has never been so arguably merged as the period in the history of computer art from 1980 to 1993. We take as the defining start of this period the initial work of Mandelbrot on fractals that became known as the Mandelbrot set and led to his famous illustrated art-science book The Fractal Geometry of Nature. In 1993, this first highly creative period in evolutionary computer art came to an end with major publications by pioneers Karl Sims, Stephen Todd, and William Latham.

Using DNA to generate 3D organic art forms

A novel biological software approach to define and evolve 3D computer art forms is described based on a re-implementation of the FormGrow system produced by Latham and Todd at IBM in the early 1990’s. This original work is extended by using DNA sequences as the input to generate complex organic-like forms. The translation of the DNA data to 3D graphic form is performed by two contrasting processes, one intuitive and one informed by the biochemistry. The former involves the development of novel, but simple, look-up tables to generate a code list of functions such as the twisting, bending, stacking, and scaling and their associated parametric values such as angle and scale. The latter involves an analysis of the biochemical properties of the proteins encoded by genes in DNA, which are used to control the parameters of a fixed FormGrow structure. The resulting 3D data sets are then rendered using conventional techniques to create visually appealing art forms. The system maps DNA data into an alternative multi-dimensional space with strong graphic visual features such as intricate branching structures and complex folding. The potential use in scientific visualisation is illustrated by two examples. Forms representing the sickle cell anaemia mutation demonstrate how a point mutation can have a dramatic effect. An animation illustrating the divergent evolution of two proteins with a common ancestor provides a compelling view of an evolutionary process lost in millions of years of natural history.

On writing and reading artistic computational ecosystems

We study the use of the generative systems known as computational ecosystems to convey artistic and narrative aims. These are virtual worlds running on computers, composed of agents that trade units of energy and emulate cycles of life and behaviors adapted from biological life forms. In this article we propose a conceptual framework in order to understand these systems, which are involved in processes of authorship and interpretation that this investigation analyzes in order to identify critical instruments for artistic exploration. We formulate a model of narrative that we call system stories (after Mitchell Whitelaw), characterized by the dynamic network of material and conceptual processes that define these artefacts. They account for narrative constellations with multiple agencies from which meaning and messages emerge. Finally, we present three case studies to explore the potential of this model within an artistic and generative domain, arguing that this understanding expands and enriches the palette of the language of these systems.

Swarmic autopoiesis and computational creativity

ABSTRACT In this paper two swarm intelligence algorithms are used, the first leading the “attention” of the swarm and the latter responsible for the tracing mechanism. The attention mechanism is coordinated by agents of Stochastic Diffusion Search where they selectively attend to areas of a digital canvas (with line drawings) which contains (sharper) corners. Once the swarms attention is drawn to the line of interest with a sharp corner, the corresponding line segment is fed into the tracing algorithm, Dispersive Flies Optimisation which “consumes” the input in order to generate a “swarmic sketch” of the input line. The sketching process is the result of the “flies” leaving traces of their movements on the digital canvas which are then revisited repeatedly in an attempt to re-sketch the traces they left. This cyclic process is then introduced in the context of autopoiesis, where the philosophical aspects of the autopoietic artist are discussed. The autopoetic artist is described in two modalities: gluttonous and contented. In the Gluttonous Autopoietic Artist mode, by iteratively focussing on areas-of-rich-complexity, as the decoding process of the input sketch unfolds, it leads to a less complex structure which ultimately results in an empty canvas; therein reifying the artworks “death”. In the Contented Autopoietic Artist mode, by refocussing the autopoietic artists reflections on “meaning” onto different constitutive elements, and modifying her reconstitution, different behaviours of autopoietic creativity can be induced and therefore, the autopoietic processes become less likely to fade away and more open-ended in their creative endeavour.

Computational Ecosystems in Evolutionary Art, and Their Potential for the Future of Virtual Worlds

In this chapter we look in detail at digital artworks which employ a technique from Artificial Life (ALife) called Computational Ecosystems (CEs). These are systems where digital agents are organized in a hierarchical structure (of a food chain) and trade symbolic units (energy and biomass) as a way of promoting community dynamics. We analyze a set of forty (40) CEs communicating works created in the past two decades. We classify these according to an adapted taxonomy. Then, we proceed to a study of cumulative analysis to delineate common patterns and characteristics that can help analyse this area of creativity and knowledge. We conclude discussing the diversity and heterogeneity of the practice and then suggest how CEs, in the context of virtual worlds, could be used as powerful generative multimedia tools, helpful in building bio-mimicking ecosystems as well as in the animation of non-player characters (NPCs) with human-like behaviors.

FoldSynth: interactive 2D/3D visualisation platform for molecular strands

FoldSynth is an interactive platform designed to help understand the characteristics and commonly used visual abstractions of molecular strands with an emphasis on proteins and DNA. It uses a simple model of molecular forces to give real time interactive animations of the folding and docking processes. The shape of a molecular strand is shown as a 3D visualisation floating above a 2D triangular matrix representing distance constraints, contact maps or other features of residue pairs. As well as more conventional raster plots, contact maps can be shown with vectors representing the grouping of contacts as secondary structures. The 2D visualisation is also interactive and can be used to manipulate a molecule, define constraints, control and view the folding dynamically, or even design new molecules. While the 3D visualisation is more realistic showing a molecule representation approximating the physical behavior and spatial properties, the 2D visualisation offers greater visibility, in that all molecular positions (and pairings) are always in view; the 3D mode may suffer occlusions and create complex views which are typically hard to understand to humans.

The Initial Teaching Alphabet Experiment: Note of Correction

Some minor statistical errors occurring in research papers on the Initial Teaching Alphabet need correction. Comments on alternative modes of computation and on the light that these shed on the validity of already published results are added.