Marie's IDAT203 Project

Shaun Murray

2009-04-20T12:18:00.000-07:00

The above image is created by a modern artist called Shaun Murray. Although I'm unsure whether it is based on path tracking, the image does show the sort of aesthetic I am after.

Project progress

2009-04-20T11:43:00.000-07:00

I've begun playing around with the idea of path tracking, enabling my AI organisms to create generative art by marking their path (like a snail's trail). This was initially inspired by my Idat101 Site Specific Project. This involved 6 offset maps of the Drake Circus space, and tracked peoples changing positions over time.
The images, and the feedback recieved, are shown below.

Feedback:
"Timelapse: Timelapse approach looking at colour, sound analysis and flow of liquid through space. Applied to the mall space. Looking at a range of visual techniques. Good blogging and workbook material and all of it leads a strong trajectory towards mapping space and objects within and through time. The final resolution is quite simple but very effective. Maybe has not revealed its full potential due to technical reasons and would benefit from levels of interaction and a freeing up of the visuals."

The blog for this project is here

As the feedback given by Mike points out, the project didn't reach its fullest potential, as a still image, and with poor quality graphics, the impact is lost. However, the concept was good, and I feel that including an aspect of this sort of path tracing and tracking, woulg allow my Schooling model to be a lot more interesting.

...Now to work out if, and how, it's possible to impliment this in Processing.

Background and idea

2009-04-20T10:29:00.000-07:00

Background
In my essay, I looked at Artificial Life, and it’s position within the wider art context. The research I undertook for my essay was really interesting, and encouraged me to pursue my interest in the area.
We also recently began the Artificial Intelligence for Interactive Media module with Angelo, which further sparked my curiosity in the area.
One of the areas of Artifical Life I am most interested in, is individual Artificial Life organism’s interactions and relationships between them.
The interactions between organisms in Artificial Life can sometimes lead to surprisingly complex results. This is known as emergence, and is exhibited by Langton’s Ants’ road building behaviour.
The area of flocking has been studied by Craig Reynolds, who produced the Application “Boids”.

Idea
The idea I have come up with is an Artificial Life Simulation of the ‘Schooling’ principle in nature, as shown by fish. I'd also like to incorporate some sort of path tracing, which will allow my AI fish to create generative art, by drawing vector trails.
Schooling in nature works using a line of special neuromast cells that runs down either side of a fishes body. These two lines (acoustico laterals) are sensitive to the displacement of water as the fish swims close to a neighbour. These differing pressures lead to changes in behaviour of the fish, to keep the school in a neat, orderly pattern.
Assuming that schooling, like flocking, is a complex natural phenomena consisting of simple basic rules (like a maximum distance from neighbours) and randomness, I am going to attempt a simulation of fish schooling behaviours.

Crowd Dynamics research

2009-04-18T07:34:00.000-07:00

Crowd: A large group of individuals in the same physical environment sharing a common goal. May act in a different way than when they are alone.

Non-real time applications: (films, cut-scenes of games) crowds used more and more, usually to increase epic dimensions
Real-time applications: (games, training simulations) crowds are still rare, most interactive worlds are “ghost towns”

Entertainment industry (animation production, computer games)
Training of police & military (demonstrations, riots handling)
Architecture (planning of buildings, towns, visualization)
Safety science (evacuation of buildings, ships, airplanes)
Sociology (crowd behavior)
Physics (crowd dynamics)

From Crowd Simulation, available here

I am intending to build a particle system of individual, agent based models.

Project Proposal

2009-04-18T07:15:00.000-07:00

My essay was about the field of artificial life. It interests me as it sits between art and science, much like most of our course, and is a relatively established field. A quick definition from Langton.

[Artificial Life]… is the quest to explain life in any of its possible manifestations, without restriction to the particular examples that have evolved on earth.
This includes biological and chemical experiments, computer simulations, and purely theoretical endeavours.
(Langton, 1989)

And a few other definitions.

Emergence ...simple rules give rise to complex life-like structures and behaviours.

Flocking (behaviour)...the collective motion of a large number of self-propelled entities.

The Flock - Michael A Ponse

One of the main pieces of example artwork I looked at in the essay was Craig Reynold’s Boids, bird-like Artificial Life entities, which exhibit complex flocking behaviour from a few simple rules. Those rules are...

Separation: steer to avoid crowding local flockmates
Alignment: steer towards the average heading of local flockmates
Cohesion: steer to move toward the average position of local flockmates

However, I have not yet come across any Artificial Life artwork focussed on another grouping behaviour commonly expressed in animals.

Schooling (behaviour)...the collective motion of a grouping of fish based on mutual attraction and exhibiting a geometrical relationship.

Schooling is exhibited by almost 80 percent of fish species.
Schooling fish respond quickly to changes in the direction and speed of their neighbours.
Each fish responds to the movements of the other fish, there is no leader.

I feel that the path tracing, crowd tracking, crowd dynamics, and artificial life aspects of a project based on schooling, would allow me lots of scope for development.

I would also like to challenge myself by attempting to use a new programming language, that of Processing. Processing is an open source programming language & environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions. It is used by students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists for learning, prototyping, and production. It is created to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context and to serve as a software sketchbook and professional production tool.

To be able to use processing for a project of this kind, I will need to install a physics plugin to allow my artificial life organisms to react to eachother and their surroundings. One I may use is
Traer Physics, a plugin for Processing that will allow me to generate particle systems and to establish a simple physics world.