Peter Schröder: The Gold Triptych-Artifacts from an Alien Religious Site, Chaos (left panel)

 
  • ©,

Artist(s):


Title:


    The Gold Triptych-Artifacts from an Alien Religious Site, Chaos (left panel)

Exhibition:


Creation Year:


    1991

Medium:


    Photographic print

Size:


    30 x 37.5

Category:


Technical Information:


    Hardware: Connection Machine System 2, Matrix film recorder.
    Software: Artificial Evolution software by Karl Sims.

Other Information:


    The images were computed on a massively parallel computer, the Connection Machine System 2. The images are represented in symbolic, reso­lution-independent form and were record­ed for the submission slides on a Matrix camera at a resolution of 1280 by 1024 pixels. The final prints will be made from a 12.21 K by 1 OK resolution to insure that no pixel artifacts can be detected in the final print. The system uses artificial evolution to generate the images. Symbolic mathematical and procedural representations (the genes) are mutated to give rise to changing images. The act of selection (and thus guidance of the evolutionary process) is performed by the artist. Creating images with this system incorpo­rates a large element of chance while at the same time the artist is in ultimate con­trol (the God, so to speak, of this evolu­tionary universe) and can push the evolu­tion in a desired direction by mimicking the process of natural selection in the sense of best fit to the artist’s vision. This element of chance forces the artist to cooperate with the process of evolution, and thus to give up some autonomy, and at the same time gives to the artist images that would be impossible to generate if one had to actually come up with the algorithmic description of the final image oneself. By running this system on a mas­sively parallel computer, the interactivity necessary for this process of negotiation is made possible.