Chapter 81 14.6 Breeding a masterpiece of art in three easy steps

Russian programmer Vladimir Berkshirko reminded me that evolution for beauty alone might be a lofty enough goal.Berkshirko and his partner Alexei Pajanov (who wrote the addictive computer game Tetris) devised a very powerful program for breeding virtual aquariums.Berkshirko told me, “In the beginning we didn’t intend to use computers to generate anything very useful, but just to make something very beautiful.” Berkshirko and Pajanov didn’t intend to start Create an evolutionary world. "We started with ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arrangement. The idea was to make some sort of computerized flower arrangement that would be alive, moving, and never repeat itself." Since the computer screen "looks like an aquarium , we decided to make an aquarium that could be customized by the user."

Users are also artists as they populate screen aquariums with just the right mix of colorful fish and swaying seagrass.They will require a large number of different organisms.Why not let aquarium enthusiasts breed their own?So "electronic fish" came into being, and the Russians also found that they were playing an evolutionary game. Electronic Fish is a procedural monster.This program was written primarily in Moscow.At that time the entire mathematics department at Russian universities was often out of work, and a smart American entrepreneur could get the whole gang to do things for him for the salary of an American hacker.As many as 50 Russian programmers who coded for Electronic Fish rediscovered the methods and power of computational evolution without knowing anything about the work of Dawkins, Latsam, and Sims.

The commercial version of Electronic Fish was released in 1993 by the American software company Maxis.It condenses the kind of fancy virtual breeding programs that Latham runs on IBM mainframes and Sims runs on Connectors onto home computers. Each electronic fish has 56 genes and 800 parameters. (What a huge library!) Colorful fish realistically swim around the virtual underwater world, flipping their fins and tails like fish to turn around.They shuttle endlessly back and forth through strands of algae (also procedurally bred).When you "feed" them they swarm around the food.They never die.When I first saw an electronic fish aquarium from ten paces away, I thought it was a video of a real aquarium.

The really fun part is breeding the fish.First of all, I randomly cast a net in this sea of ​​electronic fish to pick up a few exotic fish as parents.Different areas hide different fish.This sea area is a form library of fish.I caught two fish and hauled them up: a fat, yellow body with green spots, a thin dorsal fin, and a protruding upper lip (this was the mother); color, with a dorsal fin like the sail of a Chinese sailboat (this is Dad).I could choose either way to evolve: I could choose either the fat fish or the little blue fish and reproduce asexually, or I could mate the pair and choose from their offspring.I chose to mate.

Just like any other artificial evolution program, a dozen or so mutated offspring appear on the screen.The degree of variation can be adjusted with a knob.I focused on the fins, chose a fish with giant fins, and made the body evolve with each generation towards more ornate and larger fins.I generated a fish that looked like it had fins all over its body, back, belly, and sides.I removed it from the incubator and animated it before throwing it into the aquarium (this process could take minutes or hours, depending on computer speed).After many generations of evolution, the fish I got was so weird that it could no longer be bred.This is also the means used by the electronic fish program to ensure that the fish is a fish.I'm already at the edge of the library, beyond which the form ceases to be a fish.Animatronics can't render non-fish creatures, and it can't animate fish that are too exotic—making a monster swim is a bit of a challenge. (The proportions of the parts of the fish need to be consistent so that the swimming feels realistic.) It is part of the game that users have fun trying to figure out the boundary between fish and non-fish and whether there are any loopholes to exploit.

Storing information for an entire fish would take up too much disk space, so the program only stores the genes themselves.These tiny gene seeds are called "fish eggs".Fish eggs are 250 times smaller than fish.E-fish enthusiasts exchange eggs online, or upload and store them in public digital repositories. Roger is the programmer responsible for testing electronic fish at Maxis.He found an interesting way to explore the boundaries of the fish form library.Instead of breeding or casting a net among existing specimens, he inserted his name directly into a roe code.A short black tadpole came out.Soon everyone in the office had a black tadpole in their electronic fish tanks.Roger wondered what else he could put in the eggs.This time he typed in the text of Lincoln's Gettysburg address, and the eggs grew into a ghostly creature—a pale face trailing a ragged batwing.The jokesters nicknamed it the "Gettysburg Fish."After a lot of messing around, they found that any sequence of about 2,000 digits could be used as "fish eggs" to hatch possible fish.Electronic Fish's project manager soon enjoyed it. He entered his financial budget spreadsheet into the program, and a monster with a fish head, fangs, mouth, and dragon body was born. This is not a good omen.

Breeding new varieties was once the exclusive art of gardeners.But now painters, musicians, inventors can get their hands on it.William Latham predicted that evolutionism would be the next stage in the development of contemporary art.Borrowing the concepts of variation and sexual reproduction can give birth to this art.Artist Sims didn't bother painting or generating texture maps for the CG model, he did it through evolution.He entered a woody patterned area at random, and later evolved a fine-grained, knotty pine-like texture, which he used to paint the walls in the video. Now one can do this on a Mac with a commercial template for Adobe Photoshop.The "Texture Variation" software written by Kaye Krause can breed eight offspring from a single pattern, and choose one of them to continue breeding.

Contemporary art design tends to use more methods of analysis and control, while evolutionism subverts this trend.The end goal of evolution is more subjective ("survival of the most beautiful"), less controlled, closer to the artistic conception of a powerful and unconstrained style, and more natural. The evolutionary artist creates twice.First, the artist plays the role of God, designing a world, or a system, for generating beauty.Second, he is the gardener and caretaker of this Eden, interpreting and presenting his chosen works.He is more like a loving heavenly father who guides each living being to come into the world, rather than a cold mold shaping each creation.

The current exploratory evolution method has its limitations, and the artist can only start from a random point or the most basic form.The next step in evolutionism is to be able to start with a human-designed pattern and propagate as you please from there.Ideally, you'd want to be able to pick and choose, say starting with an icon that still needs to be worked on or improved, and work your way up. The outline of such a commercial software is quite clear.The innovative Will Wright -- writer of SimCity and founder of Maxis and publisher of the Electronic Fish program -- even came up with the perfect name: "Darwin Mapping."In "Darwin Drawing," you scribble a new corporate icon.Every line, every point, is converted into a mathematical function.When you've done that, you have an icon displayed on the screen and a set of functions in the computer as genes.Then you start breeding the icon, allowing it to evolve into bizarre designs you might never have imagined, and at a level of detail beyond your reach.At first you wander randomly around archetypes, looking for inspiration; then you hone in on a pattern that catches your eye: you dial down the variability, fine-tuning with polygamy and anti-parenting, until Find the final version.You now have a delicate and dazzling artwork whose detailed shading and intricate writing is too beautiful to believe.Because this image is algorithm-based, it has infinite resolution; you can make it as big as you want, and even see any unexpected details.Feel free to print!

To demonstrate the power of evolutionism, Sims scanned the Connector 5 logo into his program, using it as a starting image to breed an "improved" logo.Unlike the dull modern style, the edges of its letters have organic fine wrinkles.The colleagues in the office liked this evolved artwork so much that they decided to make T-shirts with it. "I'd rather evolve the tie pattern," Sims laughs.He even suggested: "How about trying an evolutionary texture, wallpaper or typeface?" IBM has long supported artist William Latham's evolutionary experiment, as the global company recognized the commercial potential.Latham considers Sims' evolutionary machine a "cheaper, less controllable" entry-level product, while his software is more controllable and useful for engineers. IBM is giving the evolutionary methods developed by Latsam to car designers to use to change the body shape.One question they are trying to answer is whether evolutionary design is more useful in the original idea stage, or in the later stage of fine control, or both. IBM intends to use the technology profitably, and not just for the automotive industry.They argue that an evolutionary "pilot" approach is helpful for all design problems involving a large number of parameters, which often require the user to "return" to a previous solution.Latham sees evolution as essentially similar to packaging design—the external parameters are fixed (the size and shape of the container), but there is no set rule for what can be done internally.Evolution is capable of bringing in layers of detail that human artists would never have the time, energy or money to do.Another advantage of evolutionary industrial design is that Latham gradually realized that this design model is extremely suitable for group sharing and co-management.The more people involved, the better.

The copyright issue of works of artificial evolution is still in a legal vacuum.Who will be protected, the artist who bred the work or the artist who wrote the breeding program?In the future, lawyers may require an artist to document the trajectory followed to create an evolutionary work, proving that his work is not copied or attributed to the creator of the form library.As Dawkins points out, in a truly huge library of forms, it is impossible for a pattern to be found twice.Having an evolutionary path to a particular place proves beyond doubt that the artist was the original right-holder who first found that goal, because evolution does not visit the same place twice.