This is a collection of high resolution images generated through by an experiment based on an artificial life environment and inspired to the self-organization concept. This concept is related to the emerging behavior of a population of individuals interacting, reproducing and evolving in complex systems. Local dynamics have a chaotic behavior, but their evolution produces well structured graphic patterns evoking aspects of the natural life, social interactions and mind dynamics. (more info about the self-organization).

Neuron Landscape (98) - 283 Kb

The goal of these creations is to explore the self-organization using intuition, emotions and aesthetic sensibility. The idea is to drive a generative process to produce structures, shapes and complexity which are already present in our imagination, our dreams, our nightmares. The way to reach this resonance is to reproduce the same mechanisms of generation of our brain, mind, body and evolution paths. (more info about the generative process) 

Tendency (98) - 84 Kb

  This experiment is free from any theoretical implication about the simulation of the life-as-it-is or the life-as-could-be on which biologists and physicists (the alifers) of the Artificial Life are engaged. Simply, I want to walk through the borderline between art and science of the life-art operating in the perceptive domain through the evolution of black-white digital images. Eventually I could refer to this experiment as life-art-as-could-be (artlifers ?).

The basic criteria to drive and select the generative process is the identification of fragments of myself or the evocation of the development of a shape-thinking. The original inspiration is the myth of Nagual of the ancient Toltech culture. After the creation phase, often I recognize in these emergent behaviors the reflection of the conflicts of social interactions. By this point of view, the emerging pattern is the chaos revenge which produces global synergies by locally chaotic behavior: mind and society as "emergent behavior" of a self-organization process at different scales of observation.

Micro-organism of memory (98) - 121 Kb

Depending by the movement ruling on the generative process, I have established an emotive relation between the genetic characteristics and the graphic patterns. The straight lines represent the rational-analytic character or an unexpressed creativity. Lines with a constant bending represent a constant foreseeable behavior, while the variability of the paths is referred to the unforeseeable or to the irrationality. The evolutive character is represented by a line changing in progress its curvature. The environmental coercion forces the individuals to reduce the changes of direction. The case influence paths and birth of a new life. Through different characteristics of the individuals, chaos determine very complex shapes.

Creativity (98) - 147 Kb

Changing the parameters of the process (it is impossible to explore all the configurations), I can generate very different patterns remembering the growth of populations (plants, animals, neural networks, memory connections), landscapes (rivers, fractures, mountains, cultivated fields), human artifacts (chips, crystals, glass fragments, urban architecture), visions (anthropomorphous shapes, animals, sea shells, ordered spirals, chromosome filaments). All these shapes are characterized by a completely different distribution in the space and by different line and junction features (different fractal dimensions). The final global shape is strongly connected to the dynamics of growth. These aspects can be considered as a research of primitive (archetypal) patterns which represents similar growth dynamics for completely different phenomena.

Linear Logos (98) -158 Kb

During the evolution process, strong changes occur in the modality of the colonization of the life space. They represent bifurcation in the individuals behavior and interaction. Very dense zones are often alternate (adjacent) to low density zones. The image here reported shown an example of the importance of this effect. In this case it is possible to observe a different individual co-operation between different zones of the image. This image is one of the most interesting by the point of view of the self-organization. It seems that an internal complexity is developed in order to organize individuals with characteristics which evolve during the development. The name I have given to this image is Neuro-Society: it recall me the dynamics of society like the global effect of the synergy of mind dynamics of a community of people. Get a look to the full image and, try to navigate the high resolution image to discover details and the bifurcation effect.

Neuro-Society (98)- (Low Resolution) - 285 Kb

 Neuro-Society (98)- (Detail High Resolution) - 45 Kb

This mechanism, in most of the cases is due to the dynamic action of dominant individuals which act like pioneers creating strong divisions in the space. The subsequent colonization of the space is driven by these main streets which define the borders of self-organization of a local community of individuals.

Pioneers (98) - 222 Kb

An important condition, necessary to obtain self-organizing behaviors, is to use a high resolution for the image-lattice (wide life space at the initial conditions). The interesting characteristic of the resulting images is the very high density of graphic details. This feature gives to the observer the possibility to interact with the image at different scales outlining effects of self-similarity (this effect was utilized by the impressionists, which well realized the existence of a complex scale system under the perceptive level). Moving close or far from the image it is possible to perceive as the pattern emerging in the total image is the result of interaction of many local self-similar patterns frozen in the final image.

Rami (98) - 75 Kb Detail high res. - 61 Kb

Chaos Revenge (99) (presented at , TechnOasis Art Gallery)

The last example is taken from a series of images at very high resolution enhancing the possibility of the population to change its features during the evolution. The name of this image is Chaos Revenge. This image has a very high resolution (more than 9000 x 3000 pixels). It is difficult to appreciate it on a static digital image on a screen. So, I have reported here a low resolution picture and the horizontal central cut of the original image (9000x500) you can navigate in two directions.

Chaos Revenge (low resolution) - 160 Kb

Chaos Revenge (central cut, high resolution) - 165 Kb

All the images reported in this document are under Copyright (99) of M. Annnunziato

Contact: e-mail mauro.annunziato@casaccia.enea.it

Artificial Societies

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