Loading World: (re)Creating Life, Nature and Cosmos in Evolutionary Computer Games

As a generalised field of study, artificial life has produced specific meanings and narratives about what it means to be alive: structured around the concepts of code, information, evolution, connectionism, emergence and cybernetics that connect silicon and carbon life together. Evolutionary computer games and popular programs have introduced the general player and user to advanced artificial life creations, with games based on the nurturing and breeding of silicon creatures placed within new digital natures conceived as computational regimes. Considered is the question of how it has become possible to talk of silicon entities as being alive, and to explore their relationship with carbon life as presented within evolutionary computer games. Similarities between digital and material proposed within computational regimes are also investigated. Playing computer games is developed as a productive practice that constructs meanings, stories and narratives within play. Tracing spiritual and scientific myths and narratives of construction, creation and change, reveals how common stories about life, nature and cosmos are employed in the building of bonds between silicon and carbon. Evolutionary computer games are presented as actively promoting themselves as artificial life products creating links with the life and biological sciences. Meaning produced within play is shown to naturalise and normalise specific definitions of life steeped in neo·Darwinian evolutionism and cybernetics, and how our digital creations have become perfected examples of the essence of this life. Whether this conceptualisation of life, nature and cosmos works within computational regimes is questioned and discussed. Reflecting similar arguments contesting the neo·Darwinian evolutionary perspective within biology, the assumptions employed within this framework are investigated and challenged. Utilising Bruno Latour's program of political ecology and his concepts of proposition and habit. An alternative framework is suggested to examine artificial life, utilising Bruno Latour's program of political ecology, his concepts of proposition and habit, and our relation with these entities

Biomimetic formation of CaCO3 particles showing single and hierarchical structures

The aim of this thesis was to study three biomimetic systems that imply the mineralization of calcium carbonate, CaCO3, an important biogenic mineral used by nature as an inorganic component in exoskeletons and tissues of many mineralising organisms. These systems can serve as models for the complex and often hardly accessible natural archetypes with the possibility to reveal principles of the complex hierarchical structure formation. Thus, the first system describes a possible influence of egg white lysozyme, an important protein which is present in the shell of eggs, on the precipitation of amorphous calcium carbonate (ACC) in vivo and its transition to calcite during eggshell calcification. The mineralization of the calcitic eggshell is simulated by starting from lysozyme-CaCl2-CO(OCH3)2-NaOH solution. A transformation to the final crystalline biomineral, calcite, is observed. This work may be also of general interest to understand protein-mineral interaction in the building of amorphous materials and their ageing. The second system contains the formation of hemispherical aragonite-vaterite microstructures formed in silicate-casein sols. The formed particles have a complex morphology and a hierarchical structure. The initiation of this mineralization process is due to the presence of silicate ions that interact with serine-monophosphate groups and modify the casein structure in aqueous solution and, as a consequence, promote crystal formation. This is an interesting system with a significant complexity, which is also often found in biominerals. The third system deals with the formation and the growth of novel curvilinear morphologies in inorganic composites containing crystalline aragonite and amorphous silica. These biomimetic morphologies show remarkable hierarchical structures with structural similarity to natural corals. The significance of this work is that the realm of biomorphs is shown to extend beyond the previously studied barium and strontium carbonates, to now include calcium carbonate. However, the helicoidal morphologies - the most outstanding features of barium or strontium carbonate silica biomorphs - were never achieved in this work. In an attempt to solve this task, we tried to seek answers to the following question: why calcium ions behave so differently from their homologue barium, in alkaline silica sols

Postantique soils as a source of land use information: a case study of an ancient greek agricultural area on the Northern Black Sea coast

This paper explores ancient land-use practices in order to reconstruct the original parameters of the land division system, as well as agricultural techniques employed. For postantique agricultural landscapes, an integrated geoarchaeological approach that includes GIS and remote sensing methodologies, in-field study of microrelief and soil registrograms, pedochronological dating technique, and physicochemical, geochemical, and biomorphic soil analyses has been developed and teste

CPU-less robotics: distributed control of biomorphs

Traditional robotics revolves around the microprocessor. All well-known demonstrations of sensory guided motor control, such as jugglers and mobile robots, require at least one CPU. Recently, the availability of fast CPUs have made real-time sensory-motor control possible, however, problems with high power consumption and lack of autonomy still remain. In fact, the best examples of real-time robotics are usually tethered or require large batteries. We present a new paradigm for robotics control that uses no explicit CPU. We use computational sensors that are directly interfaced with adaptive actuation units. The units perform motor control and have learning capabilities. This architecture distributes computation over the entire body of the robot, in every sensor and actuator. Clearly, this is similar to biological sensory- motor systems. Some researchers have tried to model the latter in software, again using CPUs. We demonstrate this idea in with an adaptive locomotion controller chip. The locomotory controller for walking, running, swimming and flying animals is based on a Central Pattern Generator (CPG). CPGs are modeled as systems of coupled non-linear oscillators that control muscles responsible for movement. Here we describe an adaptive CPG model, implemented in a custom VLSI chip, which is used to control an under-actuated and asymmetric robotic leg

Poaceae and Fabaceae of meadows of Poltava region and their protein value

The main representatives of meadow Poaceae and Fabaceae of Poltava region are established and their ecomorphic analysis is made 93 species of meadow Poaceae have been found in meadow phytocenoses, which are grouped into 44 genera. Among the found cereals on biomorphs are dominated by perennials (73.0%), on climamorphs among them approximately the same number of cryptophytes and hemicryptophytes, consideration of hygromorphs of the family indicates the predominance of mesophytic plants (56.0%), the bulk of species by tropomorphs belongs to mesotrophic (46.0%), viewing heliomorphs of identified family members indicates their photophobia. 71 species of Fabaceae belonging to 16 genera were found in the meadows. According to biomorphs, most of the identified species are perennials (73.0%). According to ecomorphs, mesophilic, light-loving species, which love soils of medium richness (more than half of all identified species), predominate among the studied species. The consequences of studying the protein in meadow Poaceae and Fabaceae of Poltava region are given. The total protein accumulation in the species studied by us was in the range of 2.5–25.8%. The average values for families are given and specific quantitative indicators of separate genera and species are given. The division of the studied species into three groups according to the content of the indicator is proposed: with low (up to 6.9%), medium (7.0-13.0%) and high (more than 13.0%) number. The studied species were analyzed on a scale of protein content (from 0 to 20 points). According to the given score, the studied cereals are in the group of species with low and medium content, and legumes - medium and high.  In the dynamics of protein content during the phases of the growing season you can see a certain trend. Maximum protein is accumulated by representatives at earlier stages of ontogenesis. Analysis of the indicator, depending on their relationship to the biomorph showed some patterns. Thus, annual species, on average, contain an indicator at the level of the second group, and perennial - all three groups. Two-year-olds most often have protein at the level of the third group. This is understandable because they need a lot of nutrients for overwintering and active flowering and fruit formation  next year. Moisture conditions also affect protein accumulation. Thus, the studied xerophilous Poaceae according to our research have 9.2 ± 0.4%, mesophilic - 8.2 ± 1.2%. Proven value biomorfy to quantify protein content. It is shown that the concentration parameter affecting growing conditions, including moisture

Artificially created stimuli produced by a genetic algorithm using a saliency model as its fitness function show that Inattentional Blindness modulates performance in a pop-out visual search paradigm

Salient stimuli are more readily detected than less salient stimuli, and individual differences in such detection may be relevant to why some people fail to notice an unexpected stimulus that appears in their visual field whereas others do notice it. This failure to notice unexpected stimuli is termed 'Inattentional Blindness' and is more likely to occur when we are engaged in a resource-consuming task. A genetic algorithm is described in which artificial stimuli are created using a saliency model as its fitness function. These generated stimuli, which vary in their saliency level, are used in two studies that implement a pop-out visual search task to evaluate the power of the model to discriminate the performance of people who were and were not Inattentionally Blind (IB). In one study the number of orientational filters in the model was increased to check if discriminatory power and the saliency estimation for low-level images could be improved. Results show that the performance of the model does improve when additional filters are included, leading to the conclusion that low-level images may require a higher number of orientational filters for the model to better predict participants' performance. In both studies we found that given the same target patch image (i.e. same saliency value) IB individuals take longer to identify a target compared to non-IB individuals. This suggests that IB individuals require a higher level of saliency for low-level visual features in order to identify target patches

Genetic algorithms for the generation of models with micropopulations

Proceedings of: EvoWorkshops 2003: EvoBIO, EvoCOP, EvoIASP, EvoMUSART, EvoROB, and EvoSTIM Essex, UK, April 14–16, 2003The present article puts forward a method for an interactive model generation through the use of Genetic Algorithms applied to small populations. Micropopulations actually worsen the problem of the premature convergence of the algorithm, since genetic diversity is very limited. In addition, some key factors, which modify the changing likelihood of alleles, cause the likelihood of premature convergence to decrease. The present technique has been applied to the design of 3D models, starting from generic and standard pieces, using objective searches and searches with no defined objective

CPU-less robotics: distributed control of biomorphs

Traditional robotics revolves around the microprocessor. All well-known demonstrations of sensory guided motor control, such as jugglers and mobile robots, require at least one CPU. Recently, the availability of fast CPUs have made real-time sensory-motor control possible, however, problems with high power consumption and lack of autonomy still remain. In fact, the best examples of real-time robotics are usually tethered or require large batteries. We present a new paradigm for robotics control that uses no explicit CPU. We use computational sensors that are directly interfaced with adaptive actuation units. The units perform motor control and have learning capabilities. This architecture distributes computation over the entire body of the robot, in every sensor and actuator. Clearly, this is similar to biological sensory- motor systems. Some researchers have tried to model the latter in software, again using CPUs. We demonstrate this idea in with an adaptive locomotion controller chip. The locomotory controller for walking, running, swimming and flying animals is based on a Central Pattern Generator (CPG). CPGs are modeled as systems of coupled non-linear oscillators that control muscles responsible for movement. Here we describe an adaptive CPG model, implemented in a custom VLSI chip, which is used to control an under-actuated and asymmetric robotic leg

Disney meets Darwin : an evolution-based interface for exploration and design of expressive animated behavior

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Media Arts & Sciences, 1994.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 68-70).by Jeffrey John Ventrella.M.S