Chapter 79 14.4 Fight against mutants

Perhaps because of the visual nature of the biomorphic realm, it was artists who were the first to absorb Dawkins' idea of ​​computer reproduction.The first was William Latham, a young British man; since then, Carl Sims of Boston has pushed the research on artificial evolution further. In the early 1980s, William Latham displayed work like an atlas of parts for some unfathomable contraption, alien.On a paper wall, Latsam first drew a simple shape, such as a cone in the middle of the top, and then filled the remaining space with increasingly complex cone shapes.The generation of each new figure follows the rules preset by Latham.A shape and its descendant shapes are connected by thin lines.Often, a shape will have multiple deformations.At the base of this gigantic tableau, the cones morph into ornate pyramids and Art Deco mounds.Logically, the painting is a genealogy chart, but contains many cross marriages.The whole picture is crowded and looks more like a network or circuit.

Latsam calls this "rule-based forced process" for generating forms and selecting specific offspring for further evolution "form synthesis."Initially he used Form Synthesis as an inspirational tool to find possible sculptural forms.He would choose a particularly satisfying figure from his pile of sketches, and then carve this delicate and intricate form out of wood or plastic.A catalog of Latsam's work shows a medium-sized black carving resembling an African mask; it was created (or discovered) by Latsam's "form synthesis."But sculpting was so time-consuming and unnecessary that he stopped sculpting.What interests him most is the vast and unknown library of possible forms."My focus has shifted from completing a single piece to carving millions of pieces, each of which can lead to millions of carvings," says Latsam. "My current artwork is an evolutionary tree of sculpture." .”

Inspired by the rise of computerized three-dimensional graphics in the United States in the late 1980s, Latham began to use computer calculations to automatically generate forms.Working with a programmer at IBM Research in Hampshire, UK, he modified a 3D modeling program to generate the morphing forms.Artist Latham spent about a year manually entering or editing genetic values ​​to generate the full tree in its possible form.By manually modifying some form of encoding, Latham can randomly search the space.When mentioning the manual search process, Ratsam only said lightly that it was "very tiring".

In 1986, Latham encountered the fledgling "biomorphic" program.He combined the core of Dawkins' evolutionary engine with the refined exterior of his three-dimensional forms, giving birth to the idea of ​​an evolutionary art program.Latsam nicknamed his method "mutation." "Mutator" functions almost exactly like Dawkins' mutation engine.The program generates a descendant of the existing form, each slightly different from the other.Unlike Dawkins' line-segment graphics, Latham's forms are flesh and blood and highly sensual.They leap into the viewer's perception as three-dimensional, shadow-rendered images.Those eye-catching electronic monsters are all tinkered with by the tireless IBM graphics computer.The artist selects the best three-dimensional works among them and uses them as parents to reproduce other variations.Many generations later, the artist will evolve a new three-dimensional entity in a true Borges Curry.Such a huge "biomorphic kingdom" is only a subset of Latham's space.

"I never imagined that my software could create so many types of sculpting," Latham said. "There are so many forms that can be created this way, it's almost limitless." It is breathtaking, including exquisitely woven baskets, marble-textured giant eggs, double-body mushroom-shaped things, twist-shaped antlers from another planet, gourds, strange microbial monsters, punk-shaped starfish, Then there's the multi-armed Shiva from an alien dimension that Ratsam calls "the Y1 Alien." "A garden of whimsy," Latsam calls his collection.He wasn't trying to imitate life on Earth, but was looking for other organic forms - "something wilder" than life on Earth.He remembers stopping by an artificial insemination booth while visiting a country fair and seeing pictures of giant mutated super-cows and various other "useless" monsters.He found these exotic forms most inspiring.

The printed pattern has an unreal clarity, as if it were a photo taken in the airless environment on the moon.There is a striking organic feel to each form.These things are not reproductions of nature, but natural existences that exist outside the earth."The machine freed me to explore forms beyond my imagination that I hadn't been exposed to before," Latham said. In the depths of Borges' library of forms, layers of elegant antlers, rows of left-handed snails, rows of dwarf trees, and drawers of ladybugs are all waiting for their first visitor—this The visitor may be nature itself, or an artist.And before both have touched them, they remain outside consciousness, outside sight, outside touch, purely possible forms.As far as we know, evolution is the only way to visit them.

This library of forms contains all life forms from the past and the future, even life forms that exist on other planets.Limited by our own innate biases, we cannot think deeply about any of the details of these unconventional life forms.Our thoughts quickly slip back to our familiar natural forms.We might have a moment's reverie, but cringe at the thought of filling such a fantastical object with so much detail.Evolution is a violent wild horse that takes us where human beings cannot reach.With the power of this unruly foot, we came to a place full of strange shapes, as far as the imagination can imagine (but not of human imagination), as if they were virgins, with their faces facing the sky.

Artist-engineer Carl Sims, who designed Connector 5, told me: "I use evolution for two purposes: One is to breed things that I couldn't have imagined or discovered any other way. ; the second is to create something that I might have imagined but never had time to refine.” Sims and Latham have both hit form Curry breakpoints. "You get a growing sense of what's possible in the evolutionary space," Sims said.He also mentions that he sometimes bangs his head against a wall when he's feeling pretty good and complacent—evolution seems to have reached a plateau.Even the most aggressive option can't move the slouch--it seems stuck there.The succession of generations did not produce better forms; it was as if in a vast desert basin, the next step was indistinguishable from the previous one, while the summit towards which it was headed was still out of reach.

And Thomas Reed often needs to fall back as he devotes himself to tracking down the missing Holy Grail of the biomorphic kingdom.He may seem so close to the Holy Grail without making any progress.He often preserves the intermediate forms of the long journey.At one point he needed to back hundreds of steps to the sixth save to get out of a dead end.