This book describes in historical detail three complementary artistic systems involving computers, which are used to generate artificial life-like forms. The system known as "Form Grow" generates lifelike forms using geometric rules; "Mutator" is a system based on mutation and natural selection; and "Life Cycle" animates the forms by the life cycle rules of birth, growth, and death. A considerable amount of human-computer interaction is involved in the creation process, with the human participant making choices from computer-generated forms to somewhat "guide" the evolutionary process of form creation. The computer software essentially generates new form variations from the selected choices. The final, resulting forms can be considered "virtual sculptures" invested with life-like evolvement characteristics.
The creation of the sculptures is described in copious detail in this book, including the programming code, algorithms, and mathematical formulaic detail. There are two sections of beautiful color plates of the resulting sculptures to view, many of them breathtaking and quite unique. A glossary is also included, consisting primarily of pertinent graphics programming terminology. For those readers who are interested in pursuing this topic, two other kinds of art - organic art and genetic art - are closely related to the subject area of evolutionary art; in fact, evolutionary art and organic art are often used interchangeably.
One of the authors of this book, William Latham, has a web site for his company, which is called Computer Artworks Ltd.. There
is an online introduction to the "Mutator" program through this site.
There is downloadable software to produce evolutionary
art at Programs to Produce Evolutionary Art.
Two locations on the World Wide Web offer a chance to interact with online art works, at Interactive Genetic Art and International Int eractive Genetic Art II.
The Organic, Genetic, and Evolutionary Art web site offers definitions and descriptions of each type of art, along with descriptions of and links to software programs which produce evolutionary art.
An interactive Java Applet consisting of genetic art images can be found at Genetic Art. Click on one of the images, and watch as a new patch of images is randomly mutated from the one you chose.
A section of the Artificial Intelligence Subject Index is Evolutionary Computation (scroll down to the "Evolutionary Computation" heading), which offers links to sites involving Genetic Art and Movies, Genetic Music, Genetic Algorithms, Genetic Programming Code, and Papers.