Chapter 77 14.2 The space of all possible images

The "Connecting Machine 5" (CM5) manufactured in 1993 was the most powerful computer at that time, capable of generating the Borges library in the form of books without any difficulty. CM5 can also generate vast and mysterious Borges libraries in the form of complexes other than books. Carl Sims, the maker of the CM5, is an engineer at Thinking Machines.He created a Borges library of artwork and pictures.Sims initially wrote special software for the Connector, then built a "big thousand" (some call it a library) of all possible images.The same machine used to generate a possible book can also be used to generate a possible picture.The former are letters printed in linear order; the latter are pixels displayed in a rectangular area on the screen.Sims are after patterns of pixels rather than letters.

Thinking Machines' offices are in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and I visit Sims in his somewhat dimly lit office cubicle.There are two oversized bright monitors on Sims' desk; the screen is divided into a matrix of 20 rectangular boxes, 4 vertically and 5 horizontally; each rectangular box is a window displaying a realistic Marbled ring diagrams of ; each has a slightly different pattern. Sims use their mouse to click on the rectangular box in the lower right corner.In the blink of an eye, all 20 rectangles are transformed into new marbled circles, each slightly different from the rectangle you just clicked.By clicking on a series of pictures, Sims can use the "method" to walk through the Borges Curry in visual mode.Sims' software can figure out what the pattern at seven yards would look like logically (since it turns out Borgescu is extremely orderly), so there's no need to run to seven yards yourself (in multiple directions). yards away.He displays these newly acquired patterns on the screen.Starting from the last selected pattern, the "linker" can get new patterns in 20 directions at the same time, and it can do this in milliseconds.

There's no limit to what kind of picture Curry will have.In true Borgesian fashion, this "big thousand" contains all colors and all stripes; it includes the Mona Lisa and all its imitations; swirls of every kind, the blueprints of the Pentagon, Van Gogh's All the sketches, every frame of the movie, and all the spotted scallops and all that stuff.But these are just wishes.Sims wandered erratically through the library, reaping mostly the irregularly shaped spots, stripes, and dizzying swirls of color that filled the windows. The "method"—that is, evolution—can be thought of as reproduction, not travel.Sims describes the 20 new images as 20 children of parents.These 20 images appear as different as the children.He selected the "best" of the offspring and bred 20 new variants at once.Then, from this batch, the best one is selected and another 20 variations are propagated.He could start with a simple sphere and end up with a cathedral through cumulative selection.

Watching these shapes emerge, multiply in change, be selected, branch out of the shape, be selected again, and then evolve through generations into more complex shapes.Neither intellect nor intuition can avoid the impression that Sims are actually multiplying images.Richer, wilder, and more pleasing images are gradually revealed through iterative evolution.Sims and fellow computer scientists call this process artificial evolution. Breeding images is no different than the mathematical logic of breeding pigeons.Conceptually the two processes are equivalent.Although we call it artificial evolution, it has nothing to do with whether it requires more or less artificial effort than breeding dachshunds.Both ways are artificial (from an artistic point of view) and natural (in essence).

In The Great Thousand at Sims, evolution is stripped from the world of life and exists in pure mathematics.Remove the cover of tissue and hair, take away the blood and flesh that inhabit it, inject the soul into the electronic circuit, and the important essence of evolution is transferred from the natural world to the artificial world, from the original only carbohydrate field to the algorithm An artificial silicon world in a chip. What shocked us wasn't that evolutionary behavior shifted from carbon to silicon; silicon and carbon are actually very similar elements.What's really amazing about artificial evolution is that it's completely natural to computers.

Within ten cycles, Sims' captive breeding was able to create something "interesting".Often it only takes five jumps to get Sims somewhere, resulting in a much better image than random doodles.Sims, like Borges, talks about "walking through the warehouse" or "exploring the space" as he clicks through one image after another.Images are always "right there", even if they have not been rendered into a visual form before being found or selected. The same goes for the electronic version of the Borges Library.The text in the book exists abstractly, independent of form.Each text sleeps in its designated place on a virtual shelf in this virtual library.When selected, the magic silicon chip infuses form into the virtual body of the book, awakening the text and making it appear on the screen.When a magician travels somewhere in ordered space, he awakens a certain book that must inhabit it.There is a book at each coordinate; each book has a coordinate.As the traveler sees it, a view reveals many new locations from which further views can be seen; one coordinate of the library leads to many subsequent related coordinates.The librarian moves through space in sequential jumps; a path is a sequence of choices.

Six relatives are derived from that original text; they share a family form and information seed.The difference between them in the library is equivalent to the difference between siblings.Since they are relatives descended from the previous generation, they can be called descendants.The selected "best" offspring becomes the parent for the next round of reproduction; one of its six grandchildren will become the parent of the next generation. When I was in the Borges library, I found myself following a path that began with gibberish in search of a readable book.Yet looking at it this way, I can see that I am breeding an incomprehensible book into a book of merit, just as one can, through multiple generations of selection, breed a haphazard wild flower into a graceful rose-ball.

Carl Sims breeding gray mottling into vibrant plant life on CM5. "Evolution's creativity is limitless. It is capable of surpassing human design capabilities," he asserted.He devised a way of delimiting areas in this immense library, so as to keep his wanderings within range of all possible plant forms.As he moves through the space, he replicates the "seeds" of those forms that he finds most fascinating.Sims later reconstituted his results, rendering them into imaginary three-dimensional plants that could be animated.The plantations he has bred include a giant spreading fern, spindle-shaped pine-like trees with bulbous tops, crab-claw-like grasses, and twisted oaks.In the end, he put these evolved weird plants in one of his video works called "Embryon".In this video, alien-like trees and strange giant grasses start from seeds, sprout and grow, and eventually evolve into an exotic jungle with tangled roots, covering a barren planet.Evolved plants reproduced their own seeds, which were blasted into the air by the plant's spherical cannons, and made their way to the next barren world (this is the process of zygospermism.)