Evolutionary Computing

How cool is it trying to reproduce a picture using evolutionary computing as an approach. Roger Alsing implemented it, showed it to the world, and got slashdotted for it. Receiving an increase of 120000 page views over the next few months.

I can understand some of you are not that familiar with evolutionary computing, so I will try to explain it a bit. As a student of Artificial Intelligence we are pretty familiar with these kind of problem solving approaches. In this case the “problem” can be described as to find a set of 50 semi-transparent polygons of different colors, sizes and locations in order to form look-a-like of a given picture.

The problem is now solved using a genetic algorithm, which sounds like we are using DNA and evolution in our computer code. But in fact, we just do that, why not? (Or we use an abstracted form of course, but the general idea is more or less the same.)

It is very simple. First we create a digital “organism” which has some sort of digital DNA. In our case in the Mona Lisa problem, this DNA is a set of 50 units. Every unit represents a polygon, and every polygon has parameters like its size, color and position in the drawing canvas. Now, if we would create such an organism with randomized polygons as its DNA, we could say that the organism represents a picture. Namely, the picture we get when we draw out all the polygons given the information of size, color and position represented in its DNA.

So now we have one organism, representing a random painting which will look like noise and chaos. Not much fun yet, is it? Well, lets not create one organism, but a population of them. Let’s create a thousand, all with randomly generated DNA, all probably unique. The thing now is that they aren’t doing anything yet, they just sit there. Why not let them have sex? Paintings can have sex too you know.

But as we all know, not every painting wants to mate with just some random other painting. And as god and creator of the computer program, we introduce a guideline, a pretty cruel one. Only the fittest paintings may sleep with one and other. In order to define this fitness, we say that a painting is more fit if it looks more like the Mona Lisa painting. In other words, every organism in our created world has some weird fetish for Mona Lisa.

The funny thing now is that we prohibit contraceptive devices in our little world. This new cruel law results in our mating organisms have children! These children will have a new set DNA constructed out of their parents, just like in our world. After this, we kinda kill the parents and the ones who weren’t fit enough. (If there wasn’t any moral talk to be said yet, it will now.)

When a set of parents is selected and they created offspring, one generation cycle has come to an end. What we beautifully see now, is that the next generation looks a little bit more similar to the Mona Lisa than the last. This is because of our fitness function: only the most similar to the Mona Lisa could reproduce themselves. This results in children which are also more similar to the Mona Lisa. Do you catch the drift?

Now we run close to a million generations. Every generation coming closer to representing the Mona Lisa more perfect. In the end we can select the fittest individual, which will look like the picture above!

What is solved here is of course a fun visualizable problem. If you dive into the web you’ll find loads of useful and intriguing applications of evolutionary computing. For example, I once followed a lecture at an University in Edinburgh about this topic where they successfully designed an optimized antenna. Antenna are all about form in order to catch a signal proper. In this case, the genetic algorithm found an oddly looking shape which no man could possibly have invented on its own. And this strange shape happened to catch a desired signal at best. (Edit 03-01-2009: I found the paper about this subject at NASA. “Automated Antenna Design with Evolutionary Algorithms”, at page 5 you’ll see a couple of evolved antenna!)

Well, as you can see I wrote quite a bit. During the holidays I happen to have some spare time left to invest here. If you have any questions regarding this subject, you can always post them in the comments, or email me personally. I would be happy to answer them. : ) Also, Roger Alsing put up his source code of the program on his site. He is still updating it, so if you’re interested, I’d suggest you take a look at his weblog!

Furthermore, some additional pictures after the jump about the progress over the generations! Full Story »

Art > Rights?

Miquel Barceló created an astonashing paint sculpture on the ceiling of the U.N. Human Rights and Alliance of Civilizations chamber. The 4,600 square-foot dome took two years to complete, used 35,000 kilos of paint and the services of 20 assistants. It also cost around 20 million euros, which is a bit of a controversy considering you could also spent it on Human Rights. Let’s hope the diplomats get more productive by this piece of art, and maybe it will pay off eventually… ; )
A few more smaller pictures after the jump! Full Story »

Laboratory for Visionary Architecture

 

Wohoo another update, first one this month. And a big one! Only one image. : )
I don’t have time for this blog, I don’t have time for anything right now. My to-do list is evergrowing with stuff of higher priority than this. Although I do keep updating my gallery, but that’s my primary hobby, so that better be. Anyway, this picture is a nice example to sell your architecture. (Not that I sell architecture ; ) )
The tower is a design of LAVA, and it will be built in, guess… Dubai!

Zorb Ball - Because it Can

When I failed to get any sleep, I decided to turn on the computer again in order to install 3dsMax 2009. Sometimes I get creative after midnight, especially after midnight… Installing the program and therefore waiting on a lot of processing cycles to complete, I wandered the web and stumbled on a movie about Zorb Balls. It is XKCD’s dream come true: Rolling around in a life size hamster ball. As alternate text of his comic strip the creator of XKCD writes: “Reportedly, double-walled inflatable balls like this exist somewhere. Now to find that place.” I kinda found that place! I’ll check XKCD’s fora tomorrow and post the info when necessary for his wish to come true. Zorb Ball is a nice combination between reckless uncontrolled movement and a giant airbag for compensation of the danger. I like. Be sure to check the video after the jump, it gives an (somewhat altered) impression of how Zorb Ball is outside your imagination that this entry triggered inside your brain.

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Radiohead - Illusionary House of Cards

Although everywhere on the blogosphere people write about Radiohead’s latest video, I can’t help it to do it also myself. The video fits perfectly on this weblog, for it is aesthetic in multiple ways. Remarkably this is the second post in a row here with the same subject, though that’s purely coincidental. To make it even more random: merely two weeks ago, I saw Radiohead playing live at Rock Werchter. The show was one of the best I’ve ever seen, almost inducing hallucinations due to the ingenious light effects.

The new video for their song “A house of Cards”, is amazingly made with lasers. Rotating and scanning the environment, the lasers produce 3D computer model of dots, moving over time. The data is then edited and combined with the music, resulting in a pretty unique music video.

In line with Radioheads current approach to the community, summing up forces together, they even released the original Data for fans to play around with. If you want to give it a try, you can do it here. Whilst doing that I found optical illusion which has strong resemblance with the Spinning Dancer illusion. Basically that illusion holds that certain moving figures can be interpreted ambiguously and that the human mind can only focus at one interpretation at the same time. What I did to force this illusion was taking a single frame of 3D-space coordinates of the face of Tom Yorke. Viewed from start perspective I rotated the camera around the center of the head. So the head actually seems to rotate. Because the head is represented as one single thin “sheet” of datapoints, you can recognize the face seen from the front, as well as seen from the back. However the interpretation of the perspective sometimes seems to flip while moving the camera. I can understand the latter is hard to imagine, so in order for you to visualize this feat, I made a video you can view after the break. The youtube-quality is not best as always, so you could try it out yourself here in order to attain the maximal effect. In the video I made the head move counter-clockwise. The first 10 seconds, nothing unusual can be seen. However, when passing at the back of the head, two interpretations can occur. One is you see the back of the head moving in the normal direction ( the hard interpretation ). The other interpretation is that the head follows the path in which it came there in the first place ( the easy interpretation ). It takes effort to see both interpretations, but they’re there. When your interpretation flips to the other, it is pretty confusing as well as astounding to experience.

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Radiohead’s Nude played by old computer parts

James Houston made remix of Radiohead’s Nude, using old computer parts as the instruments. In fact, Radiohead wrote out a contest to remix their song, which resulted in 2,239 remixes in one month. The video first minute is kinda lame, but after that it’s simply amazing. You can see it after the jump. : )

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Karma

Although I’m not a car freak, there is a intersection where cars and art meet. The Karma from Fisker Automotives (no, I haven’t heard from it either) is a hybrid car.  It runs on a electric motor but also has a gasoline backup. The main energy source comes from integrated energy packs, but they can be charged with either a plug, or the gasoline motor. It’s roof also contains solar panels for some extra charge. But damn, it’s design is stunning to me. The shape reminds me of the Dodge Viper, lovely, really. It’s selling for $ 80.000, that’s like € 53.000 nowadays. It’s environmental and I want one! (Blue preferably)

Last.fm goes Stream-on-Demand

Last.fm is going to stream music on demand! At first you could only listen to a radio station, fine tuned to your musical taste (or even others). Every song played there is a good one, but you couldn’t play any specific songs. That’s gonna change, or at least in the beginning for the Beta-testers in the US, UK and Germany. When successfull, other regions may join the party. There is a downside though: you are allowed only 3 plays of each track, after that you may pay a fee of 2,50 dollars/month to listen more. Last.fm also raises money through advertising, which will be donated to artists themselves. Pretty nice of them!

Although three plays per song sounds fair to me, you may disagree. And I have a solution for that: http://www.freemusiczilla.com/
While listening to music online, the streamed music has to be saved somewhere in some format, this little program helps you intercept that info. : ) Streamed stuff can now be easily saved! The saved song has no tags though, so you will have to do that yourself..

Enjoy : )

Sister Shoot

Once in a while I simply have to take some pictures of my little sister. Little sisters grow up pretty fast, changing rapidly along the way. With memories fading eventually, framing reality often will become quite handy for your memory later on. Although she didn’t really wanted to be shot, she is always quite curious about the event.
Her hair isn’t blueish by the way, just the same color as my own. But while editing together, we couldn’t resist altering it anyway. A bigger version of this one will be posted in my gallery soon : )
After the jump some more results, these ones all in black and white. Enjoy.

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Computer Monster

Haha, this made me laugh today, good old-skool television! No cookies for dinner today : )
Watch the video after the jump!

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