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Emergent Art

By PeterOMalley
February 5, 2006 - 20:57
PeterOMalley's picture
Projects: 
Emergence 361
This isn't directly related to the recent discussions of purpose and determinism, but I stumbled upon this on the web and I thought it was too good to pass up: Complexification and the gallery thereof. I don't know how simple the algorithms are, or how emergent the phenomena are, but I think it definitely deserves a link.

Comments

Kathy Maffei's picture

Submitted by Kathy Maffei on February 6, 2006 - 13:51

I think that's terrific stuff - I'm so glad you found & shared it! Notice that the programmer/artist says
    For this reason I distribute the source code of my programs in modifiable form to encourage life and spread love. Opening one's code is a beneficial practice for both the programmer and the community. I appreciate modifications and extensions of these algorithms. Please send me your experiences.
I couldn't find anything more about the programs online - I'll email him to see if he can offer us an example.
BhumikaPatel's picture

Submitted by BhumikaPatel on February 6, 2006 - 17:50

Thanks for sharing this link, I had a lot of fun going through the art. I looked at the source code for a couple of them and was surprised to see that it was not very complicated at all. That makes sense because the code outlined the simple rules that resulted in the pretty art. I don't even know why I was surprised by this after 3 weeks of emergence!
Kathy Maffei's picture

Submitted by Kathy Maffei on February 7, 2006 - 13:08

I'm glad you posted before I emailed him - my pop-up windows for the larger sizes I'd tried were hiding the Source code link just below sight and I couldn't see them until I checked it further after reading your post. One thing I found really interesting about the code was the addition of randomness - some small random numbers are added to the calculations of the couple I looked over. If you watch the same one a few times you may notice some minor variation, which I think mkaes them all the more fascinating.
Lisa Spitalewitz's picture

Submitted by Lisa Spitalewitz on February 8, 2006 - 14:12

Now I can even have emergence-themed wallpaper!