39. Vale ´ ry (1973), p. 47 (transl. O.G.). 40. Albert Borgmann, ‘‘Information, nearness, and farness,’’ in Goldberg (2000). 41. Hubert Dreyfus, ‘‘Descartes’s last stand,’’ in Goldberg (2000), pp. 58ff. 42. Martin Jay, ‘‘The speed of light and the virtualisation of reality,’’ in Goldberg (2000). See esp. note 55. 43. Lovelock (1979). 44. hwww.artcom.de/projects/t_vision/welcome.eni. 45. Davis (1998), p. 305. 46. ‘‘Das absolute Sehen (Gottes) . . . alle Scha ¨ rfe, Schnelligkeit und Kraft aller tatsa ¨ chlich Sehenden und aller, die zu Sehenden werden ko ¨ nnen, u¨ bertrifft.’’ Nicholas of Cusa: ‘‘Vom Sehen Gottes,’’ in Gabriel (1967), vol. 3, pp. 93–219. 47. Ibid. 48. Ianka (1957). 49. Bolz (1993), p. 14. 50. Zec (1991), p. 112. 51. Loeffler (1992), p. 68. 52. Bolz (1993), p. 121. 53. See Bredekamp (1997b). 54. See Ascott (1997), p. 35. 55. See Haraway (1997). Chapter 7 294 6641 FM UG 9/12/02 5:38 PM Page ii This Page Intentionally Left Blank 9 8 Evolution Genetic Art: Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau The current renaissance of the classic alliance between art, technology, and science has seen the rise to prominence of a number of artists who are also affiliated with centers of scientific excellence. Two of the most important contemporary media artists, Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau, are representatives of this new alliance. Their works show at top interna- tional festivals and exhibitions and are discussed and published worldwide. Over 100 international exhibitions since 1992, when their collaboration began, document Sommerer and Mignonneau’s public acclaim and success. Christa Sommerer, from Austria, and Laurent Mignonneau, from France, have received many international awards for their work,1 and extensive press coverage has cemented their reputation. As scientists, they have lec- tured at universities and international symposia and have authored many research papers. At an advanced technological level, Sommerer and Mignonneau’s work engages with the upheavals wrought in contemporary art by the revolu- tions in imaging media and bioscience. They pioneered the use of natural interfaces that, together with artificial life, or ‘‘A-Life,’’ and evolutionary imaging techniques, began a new chapter in the history of interactivity. The ideas driving their art are impressive for the scope of their engage- ment with the patterns of living nature, the idea of life itself, and people’s interaction with artificial ‘‘natural’’ spaces. Sommerer and Mignonneau create exotic, sensuous worlds populated by luxuriant plants, countless A-life forms, amoebas, picturesque swarms of butterflies, or colorful sym- phonies of microcosmic organisms. Their unique aesthetic distinguishes their installations, for example, Anthroposcope (1993), Trans Plant (1995), Intro Act (1995), MIC Exploration Space (1995), GENMA (1996), Life Spacies (1997), Life Spacies II (1999), HAZE Express (1999), VERBARIUM (1999), PICO_SCAN (2000), and IKI-IKI Phone (2001), which have exhibited all over the world and are now permanently installed in media collections and museums. All these works deal specifically with the representation of life processes and human interaction with artificial beings in technological image spheres that have been ‘‘brought to life,’’ reflecting the incisive transformations brought about by telecommunication. Whether in Nor- way, Korea, or Canada, Sommerer and Mignonneau’s ingenious software and interface developments impress not only exhibition visitors interested in media art but also scientists. Evolution 297 Sommerer and Mignonneau are among the most well-known exponents of genetic art, which attempts to integrate the forms, processes, and effects of life into art. In conjunction with the visual principle of immersion, this comparatively young branch of digital art has begun to play an increas- ingly important role in the creation of illusions. From the beginning, a salient feature of this artist team’s work was its naturalism. Sommerer studied biology and sculpture in Vienna, and Mignonneau studied video art, performance, and computer graphics at the Academy of Fine Arts in Angoule ˆ me. Prize money for a video film and an exchange program took him to the Institut fu¨ r Neue Medien (Institute for New Media) in Frank- furt, then under the direction of Peter Weibel, where the two young artists met. There, Mignonneau’s visual vocabulary and virtuoso computer skills combined with Sommerer’s more conceptually oriented explorations. She had just completed sculptures and reliefs of leaf forms based on the Lin- naean system and was looking for more realistic possibilities of represen- tation, of including growth and differentiation as well as the time factor, processuality, in her artificial world. The result of this artistic symbiosis was their first installation, Interactive Plant Growing, in 1992 (fig. 8.1). This work is already very clear in its in- tention to design a connection between virtual and real spheres as directly as possible, for which they coined the term ‘‘natural interface.’’ Interactive Plant Growing visualizes principles of evolution, growth, and random mu- tation.2 In a darkened room measuring 12 Â 6 m, the visitors face a screen of approximately 4 Â 3 m. There are five wooden stands in front of the screen, each with a different potted plant—a fern, a vine, moss, a sapling, and a cactus. This combination of plants does not exist in nature; it is a manifestly artificial, artistic order like the one shown in the Roman fres- coes of the Villa Livia. When visitors touch one of the real plants, which are wired to a Silicon Graphics workstation, they activate graphic repre- sentations of more than 25 programmed types of plants. The system is capable of registering the varying voltage of the plant at a distance of 0 to 70 cm. This was the revolutionary principle of Interactive Plant Growing:to trigger computer images by touching a plant—a natural interface. Visitors watch as the colorful, screen-high, virtual plants grow on the screen in real time. The intensity of touch, the electrical potential difference of the user, is registered by the plant and relayed to the computer, which directs the growth of the virtual plants on the screen. Sommerer and Mignonneau Chapter 8 298 developed special algorithms to determine the variables of size, color, morphology, and growth characteristics, which are also very flexible and allow virtual plant growth that is not predetermined. Five or more visitors at a time can interact with the virtual vegetation until at some point, a ‘‘killer cactus’’ wipes out the plant population and a completely new and different artificial nature starts to grow again. The art critic and curator Erkki Huhtamo saw Interactive Plant Growing at the Institute for New Media in Frankfurt and exhibited it in Finland; after that, the installation traveled round the world, reviewed extensively by the press and on TV.3 A grant from Austria enabled Sommerer and Mignonneau to visit the Electronic Visualization Lab (EVL) in Chicago for six months where Dan Sandin and Tom De Fanti were working on the CAVE. In 1993, Donna Cox4 invited them to work at the National Cen- ter for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the Beckman Institute in Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, as artists in residence, where they remained until 1994. Since then, Sommerer and Mignonneau moved to Japan, Figure 8.1 Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau, Interactive Plant Growing , 1992. Interactive real-time installation. By kind permission of the artists. Evolution 299 where they were supported by the media art curator Machiko Kusahara and sponsored by the Museum of Photography and the InterCommunica- tion Center (ICC) in Tokyo, which was just being set up. From 1994, they worked as scientists at the Advanced Telecommunications Research Lab (ATR)5 near Kyoto. In addition, Sommerer was professor for media art at the International Academy of Media Arts and Sciences (IAMAS) in Ogaki, founded in 1997 by Itsuo Sakane, pioneer and grand seigneur of Japanese media art, theoretician, curator, and science policy maker.6 In the summer of 2001, Sommerer and Mignonneau began working at MIT. A-Volve Recently, artist-scientists such as Thomas Ray, Christa Sommerer, Karl Sims, and Jane Prophet have begun to simulate processes of life: Evolution, breeding, and selection have become methods for creating artworks. With the help of genetic algorithms, image worlds generated by computers are endowed with the semblance of being alive.7 The debate on genetics and artificial life conducted at first within the life sciences8 was later comple- mented by models, visions, and images developed by artists, which have become reference points and catalysts in this controversial debate. Som- merer and Mignonneau’s real-time installation A-Volve, developed in the United States and Japan with the support of ICC and winner of Ars Elec- tronica’s Golden Nica award in 1994 for interactive art, allows observers to create artificial life forms, to interact with them, and watch them live, procreate, and die.9 The goal is to make the virtual space come alive, this time not with simulated plants but with virtual creatures: subjectlike software agents. The observers create ‘‘their’’ creatures by drawing an out- line and cross-section on a small digital touch screen, which a high defi- nition projector10 throws onto a mirror measuring 100 Â 150 cm, which is the floor of a shallow pool of water with the dimensions 180 Â 135 Â 15 cm. The pool stands on a podium 3 m 2 in the center of a room with black walls that is almost completely dark (fig. 8.2). The enveloping blackness of the surrounding space makes the artificial image creatures appear even more plastic and alive as they move in the illuminated water, automatically powered by the computer in real time. Gathered around the pool, their ‘‘creators’’ watch the survival of their amorphous, surprisingly lifelike creatures, which appear to swim and wiggle in the water, obeying the dictates of evolutionary programming (fig. 8.3). In this bright virtual Chapter 8 300 Figure 8.2 Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau, A-Volve . Interactive real-time installation, > 1994. Visitors interact with the creatures they have created. Supported by NTT-ICC Japan and NCSA Urbana/Champaign, USA. Figure 8.3 A-Volve . By kind permission of the artists. Evolution 301 habitat, Sommerer and Mignonneau stage the popular version of Darwin’s principle, ‘‘survival of the fittest’’: Eat or be eaten. By designing the creatures on the touch screen, the observers can, the- oretically, sketch any kind of outline; this is converted automatically into twenty coordinates by the software. In a further step, the information re- garding length and size is implanted in the ‘‘genetic code’’ that exists for each creature and added to the randomly generated information about color and texture, which the program derives from the pressure of the hand on the touch screen while sketching.11 Each artificial life form, each ‘‘phe- notype,’’ has a ‘‘genome’’ with ninety variable parameters so that no two creatures look alike (fig. 8.4). Life, as understood by bioinformatics, ap- pears to consist of information and here, too, the images of life are based on a form of code, which only through reiteration, the reproduction of texts as Hans-Jo ¨ rg Rheinberger notes, allows the creatures to reproduce. A possible conclusion is that code/writing, RNA, DNA, and evolution are interdependent.12 All the colorful creatures owe their ‘‘existence’’ to the interaction of the visitors and the random interaction among them- selves. Constant change and processual development are the work’s salient characteristics. Figure 8.4 A-Volve . Supported by NTT-ICC Japan und NCSA Urbana/Champaign, USA. Simulation of cross-over and mutations. By kind permission of the artists. Chapter 8 302 Their forms decide the movement and behavior of the virtual creatures. The algorithms developed by Mignonneau ensure that movements are smooth and natural, behavior is ‘‘animal-like’’ and in no way predeter- mined. A creature moves by contracting its virtual muscle: the intensity and frequency of this movement follow its level of stress, which is partic- ularly high when it predates or tries to flee. During the growth phase, isolation, or under the protection of the viewers, the stress level decreases to almost zero.13 Obviously, speed of propulsion is crucial for survival here. The virtual swimming muscle is equally pronounced in all the creatures, but certain forms can swim faster, compete more successfully, and mate and reproduce, thus passing on their ‘‘genes’’ to the next virtual genera- tion. Behavior is thus dependent on the form that the user has given the virtual creature. This ranges from a streamlined shape, suited to predators, to a spherical form that is highly maneuverable. After approximately one minute of life, the selection mechanism of hunger has gotten rid of the weakest creatures in the pool. Some creatures begin as predators and, when stronger creatures are ‘‘born,’’ they become prey. On its appearance in the pool, each creature possesses an energy level of E ¼ 1.14 When the energy level sinks below 1, hunger increases to refuel the energy supply above the critical level so that other creatures become potential food. Sommerer and Mignonneau have equipped their agents with a visual system that registers the surroundings at a 110  angle. The virtual creatures, images resembling life forms, are able to recognize potential prey or predators and avoid obstacles. The virtual eyes can also process information about the distance and energy level of other creatures. This decides who will be prey and who will be predator, for only agents with a lower level of ‘‘fitness’’ are attacked. When one creature attacks another, the visual system calculates the relative distance of the prey after each contraction of the muscle and continues this movement until its target is reached. The residual energy of the prey then transfers to the predator. The observers ‘‘play God’’: they create new creatures and control the simulated biotope. Stroking the water gently, another ‘‘natural interface,’’ lures the artificial creatures, which can then be held, wriggling, have their reproduction manipulated, or be ‘‘killed off ’’ through withdrawal of ‘‘nourishment.’’ The suggestive power of the images is so strong that the art theorist Machiko Kusahara wrote that the projections of the artifi- cial aquatics feel as though they are made of jelly.15 Technically, user Evolution 303 [...]... Lindenmayer-systems, or L-systems for short PruChapter 8 3 08 Figure 8. 5 P Prusinkiewicz, Simulation Modeling of Plants and Plant Ecosystems In Art@ Science, ed Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau et al., New York: Springer, 19 98, p 89 sinkiewicz used cellular automatons and recursive graphics programming to generate his convincing computer images of plants A cellular automaton is a mathematical construct that consists... fascinates the users with the creatures of its artificial creation whose survival and welfare depends on the inspired game of the visitors The game communicates an experience, which may not be confined to dealings with art but in the future may give rise to a new experience of art. 22 The dream of a collective art, resulting from the multifarious combinatory talents of the participants and masterly use of what... conditions prevent humans from being able to imagine how such an existence ‘‘feels.’’ The Turing test’s superimposition of the concept of what is human onto machines is the reason it takes the wrong direction The Netlife artificial life form, which Ray wants to bring to life with his work, lives an inconceivably foreign but totally independent life A-Life’s Subhistory To create artificial life, whether... constructor of all—who could write ‘‘cogito ergo sum.’’ This machine sent chills of horror up and down the spines of contemporary audiences, conjuring Evolution 321 Figure 8. 11 Salomon de Caus: Les raisons des forces mouvantes Frontispiece, Frankfurt/M (Abraham Pacquart) 1615 Chapter 8 322 Figure 8. 12 ´ Jacques Vaucancon, Canard digerant (mechanical duck), 1 783 From Le monde des ¸ automates (19 28) hhttp://www.culture.com.au/brain_proj/neur_net.htmi... conflate art and technology and bring it to life, from male envy of parturition to playing God Such male fantasies, however, are not the only motives that have led to the creation of ideal images of the female; an essential element of the drive to create artificial life touches on the connection of the nature of machines with dreams of immortality In the entire history of artificial life, the search for the... festival Stuttgarter Filmwinter, SonoMorphis was on view in the CAVE of Stuttgart’s Fraunhofer Institute, which took aesthetic immersion to a new level.33 This innovative strategy of Lintermann is a logical step, to connect the apparently living images produced by evolutionary techniques with the most developed apparatus for immersion: Today, this is CAVE technology Like no other work of genetic art, A-Volve... plans for automata and drawings of gardens (fig 8. 11), Les Raisons des ´ Forces mouvantes Rene Descartes knew de Caus’s work very well and went on to envision an imaginary android of his own, which differed in no respect from a carbon-based human being;59 Descartes also interpreted organic processes as mechanical experience According to some contemporary accounts, in 1640 he built an automaton himself... generations of researchers and engineers to invest enormous energies in their work To observers of later eras, their artifacts seem like curiosities and artistic gadgets, rather like the early spaces of illusion and immersion that have lost their illusionary potential but continue to fascinate because they condense the mechanical achievements of their time To later generations, the idea that they represent... and l art pour l art Each new art form makes its own rules and develops its own methods It is not possible to discuss this question in depth here;65 it is sufficient to Chapter 8 324 recall that if science rests traditionally on a particular combination of methods (an idea that Paul Feyerabend already opposed in 19 78 with a plea for pluralistic methods in research, claiming that ‘‘anything goes’’), art. .. scientific analogue to a highly complex illusionism with its immersive essence that denies critical analysis To put it bluntly, according to its logic, a critical and distanced appreciation of art corresponds to scientific reductionism where complexity and immersion can be described as antagonistic They may present fascinating new programs and worlds of images but in essence, they are inaccessible to sober appreciation . confined to dealings with art but in the future may give rise to a new experience of art. 22 The dream of a collective art, resulting from the multifarious combinatory talents of the participants and. ‘‘genes’’ to the next virtual genera- tion. Behavior is thus dependent on the form that the user has given the virtual creature. This ranges from a streamlined shape, suited to predators, to a spherical. short. Pru- Chapter 8 3 08 sinkiewicz used cellular automatons and recursive graphics programming to generate his convincing computer images of plants. A cellular automa- ton is a mathematical