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Electronic Life Makes Evolving Art

Posted by timothy on from the would-make-a-good-new-order-video dept.

brilanon writes "Good news! On Sept 4, critterdrug, the a-life lab for the twenty-teens, was updated to make generating a species almost trivial. A new video shows semi-random artificial animals gaining neurons and synapses as they compete to draw a gradient on an animated shared canvas which constitutes 1024 frames spread through time. The canvas is a 10-megabyte digital background for the lossy neural nets that populate the world. What you get are cellular automata run by psychic neural nets that are bound by the rules of a survival contest with physics. Features implementations of telepathy, Rupert Sheldrake's morphic fields and five types of drugs. The key assignments have changed since critterding; check the changelog on the web page for the new ones. Happy hacking!"

6 of 54 comments (clear)

  1. Five kinds of drugs, you say? by somersault · · Score: 5, Funny

    The summary probably makes more sense when you're high.

    --
    which is totally what she said
    1. Re:Five kinds of drugs, you say? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      I can assure you sir, it does not.

  2. What is it? by migla · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's critterdrug.

    Yes, but what is is?

    It's a fork of critterding.

    Yes, but what is it?

    It's an a-life lab for the twenty-teens.

    Yes, but what is it?

    It's semi-random artificial animals gaining neurons and synapses as they compete to draw a gradient on an animated shared canvas which constitutes 1024 frames spread through time.

    Yes, but what is it?

    --
    Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
    1. Re:What is it? by statusbar · · Score: 5, Funny

      All you need to do is to watch that linked youtube video.

      It doesn't explain anything at all but will give you epilepsy after two viewings.

      --jeffk++

      --
      ipv6 is my vpn
    2. Re:What is it? by emurphy42 · · Score: 5, Informative

      It's semi-random computer-simulated artificial animals moving, eating, breeding, evolving and surviving (or not). The link to critterding doesn't directly state this, but gives enough information that you can reasonably figure it out:

      How the program works

      Critters are informed by sensors:

      • if their head touches food unit
      • if their head touches another critter
      • if they are able to procreate
      • about their energy state
      • about their age
      • about the state of their joints
      • what the world looks like (RGBA vision)

      Critters can make use of the following motor neurons (actions):

      • bend joint
      • bend joint in other direction
      • eat
      • procreate

      At default, the program sets up a small world with a relatively large amount of food units and keeps throwing in critters with randomly generated brains and bodies.

      (picture omitted)

      After a while, one of these idiot critters will unavoidably be good enough to maintain a small population:

      (picture omitted)

      Slowly but surely, their behaviour will become a lot less random as they demonstrate increasingly better survival skills:

      (picture and video omitted)

  3. A fine example of evolving art by zoom-ping · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The Electric Sheep.
    Best. Screensaver. Ever.