Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 5 Number 3, December 2004
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Mitchell Whitelaw. Metacreation: art and artificial life. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004. x, 281 p. ISBN 0-262-23234-0 (hardback; $21.95).
Reviewed by
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Artificial life (also known as a-life), is a relatively young, interdisciplinary field in the sciences concerned with the study and creation of artificial systems that manifest or mimic the properties of living systems. This book is the first real detailed critical account of this field, and of a-life art, which responds to this new field by creating works that seem to evolve, mutate, or respond with a life of their own. The artists that are described in the book produce not only artworks, but generative and creative artworks. The author explores how Western culture is exploding in its development and study of biological life and its manipulation, simulation, decomposition, engineering, and modeling.
A-life was founded in 1987 at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. A-life is different from artificial intelligence (AI), in that AI tried to make computer programs think, its approach was centralized or “top-down,” and it focused on cognition. A-life, on the other hand, attempts to understand behavior that emerges from the bottom up. Some of the key techniques that a-life has developed thus far include: genetic algorithms, agent-based systems, bottom-up robotics, and cellular automata. These techniques are also replicated and simulated by a-life artists, who use on- and off-line virtual environments; static robotic and biological-robotic sculpture; digital images; interactive CD ROMs; and animation to imitate a-life. The author provides an interesting intellectual history of a-life art from Plato through Goethe to current artists such as Paul Klee, Kasimir Malevich, and James Seawright, to name a few.
The majority of the book – Chapters 2-5 – deals with examples and explanations of the art material itself. Chapter 2, “Breeders,” looks at artists and art that focuses on the processes of artificial evolution, and includes the earliest works of a-life art. Chapter 3, “Cybernatures,” examines interactive computational systems that mimic the nature and structures of organic life. Chapter 4, “Hardware,” looks at a-life art that are physical manifestations and interactive robotic systems, and biorobotic composites that combine electromechanical systems with biological life forms. Chapter 5, “Abstract Machines,” looks at a-life art that has a “life” of its own. Chapter 6 looks at the theories surrounding a-life and its art and culture, providing major articles, writings, and people that have stimulated and historically captured the essence of this phenomenon. Finally, in Chapter 7, the author focuses on an interesting concept in a-life and a-life art, known as emergence. Emergence is the process where complex systems acquire new properties; that is, examining the complex interactions at the microlevel and how that gives rise to life at the macrolevel. In a nutshell, the author examines the history of this concept, and how it is a central tenet in this field, both in the science and the art that arises from the science. As the author states, this book is meant to be a starting point for the field, rather than to summarize and explain it as a static thing. The field itself is constantly evolving and expanding in its scope, understanding, and branches; it has a complex past, a fascinating present, and a very interesting and yet-to-be-seen future that cannot be predicted or determined.