Finding Fluid Form: Presentations, performances and works in progress, 9.30am - 5.30pm both days at the Sallis Benney Theatre, Brighton.

A two-day interdisciplinary symposium exploring the dynamics of situated behaviour, development and learning that brought together creative practitioners working with interactive technologies, biologists, artificial life researchers, cognitive scientists and interested members of the public.

This event was organized in collaboration with the School of Architecture and Design, University of Brighton; the Centre for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics, University of Sussex; and the Centre for Interactive Technologies and Architecture, Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Copenhagen.

You can download a symposium programme by clicking here.

The 6 speakers at this event were:

Margaret Boden
D'Arcy Thompson and the origin of biological form

D'Arcy Thompson (1860-1948) was a grandfather of A-Life. In his book On Growth and Form (1917), he pioneered a type of mathematical biology which rested closely on physics, and asked many questions that are asked today by researchers in A-Life. His theme was the nature and development of biological form, i.e. "morphology" (a word he borrowed from Goethe). He argued that biological form isn't determined only by Darwinian evolution but also, and more fundamentally, by physical constraints and by laws of form that apply to all species. He used geometry to display (for instance) the similarities between the skulls of various vertebrate species, or between the body-shapes of different kinds of fish. Of Growth and Form excited many people, and was one of only six references given by Alan Turing in his 1953 paper on morphogenesis. However, it was too far before its time to be really useful. He himself recognized that he needed a more powerful mathematical language to describe series of morphological transformations. Without computers, D'Arcy Thompson's ideas couldn't be put into practice. Were he still alive today, he'd be doing A-Life.

Richard Brown
Emergent Form and Behaviour in the context of Interactive Art

The presentation will draw upon the development and exhibition of the interactive Artificial-Life artworks Biotica and the Mimetic Starfish. Biotica sought to capture the powers of emergence for the creating of form and interactive behaviour, whereas the starfish was a carefully sculpted work designed specifically to create an engaging and captivating user experience. The two works used a combination of simulated physics and A-Life techniques to produce illusions of living form in order to raise the question "what is it for something to be thought of as alive?"

Both works addressed the generation of form and behaviour by taking inspiration and scientific basis from biological and physical systems such as crystals, cells, DNA, molecules, tensegrity, neural nets and a snails eye. The works will be contrasted in terms of user experience and epistemological issues concerning illusion, emergence, knowledge, depth and representation. Reference will also be made to the deep complexity and generative capabilities of "real systems", using the artworks "The Electrochemical Glass" and "The Preservation of Entropy".

Videos, images and live computer simulations will be used to illustrate the presentation. Biotica was a collaborative Sci-Art project with Igor Aleksander, funded by Intel and implemented with the researchers Jonathan Mackenzie and Gavin Baily. The research findings of Biotica are published in the book Biotica: Art, Emergence and Artificial Life (available on Amazon).The Starfish was shown for a year in the Mind Zone of the Millennium Dome and rated by the Times as the best thing in the Dome!

Peter Cariani
Design principles for self-organizing adaptive systems

How does one go about building artificial devices that are capable of growing new structures that create novel functions in an open-ended manner? How does one organize a system that can continuously construct itself? How do we construct autonomous systems with intentions of their own, i.e. whose embedded purposes steer their behavior? How do we construct neural networks that can create new internal signals for themselves that can be imbued with meaning? We will discuss various primitive artificial mixed analog-digital systems (von Neumann’s kinematic self-reproducing automaton, Ashby’s homeostat, Pask’s electrochemical assemblage), their underlying functional principles, and their similarities to biological systems. We will also consider the brain as a self-organizing mixed analog-digital cybernetic system in which feedback loops link internal and external events to create anticipations of consequences (meanings) and to steer behavior in accordance with internal goals (pragmatics). Finally we will outline an alternative vision of neural networks in which the basic signals are temporal patterns of spikes. Such temporal coding makes possible signal multiplexing, broadcast and selective reception, statistical nonlocal storage of temporal memory traces, and creation of new signal types (i.e. topologically more like radio or internet than telegraph network or phone switchboard).

You can download a copy of Peter's PowerPoint presentation - Design Principles for Adaptive Self-Organizing Systems (113 slides!, 6MB) - by clicking here.

Click here to read an excellent introduction to the early work of Gordon Pask written by Peter Cariani: To Evolve an Ear: Epistemological Implications of Gordon Pask's Electrochemical Devices, Systems Research 10(3): 19-33, 1993.

Bill Seaman
The Thoughtbody Environment and the Benevolence Engine, First Steps Toward the Generation of a Sentient Computer

Otto Rössler and Bill Seaman have been having an extensive conversation about the potential of generating a sentient, situated computer. The central contention is that a sentient computer can be created. Two related but different initial approaches have been spawned through ongoing discussion. One involves the creation of such a machine via embodying a series of specific algorithms on a non-biological computer: The Benevolence Engine (Rössler and Seaman). In particular, a project entitled Intelligent Computerized Dolls as Companions in Old Age was articulated in a paper delivered by Rössler earlier this year (co- authored by Hiwaki, Ratjen, Seaman, Locker, Lasker, and Aydin). The other approach seeks a long term approach to posit a new paradigm for computing through the generation of an Electrochemical Computer: The ThoughtbodyEnvironment.

The latter approach is informed by bio-mimetics and bio-abstraction as a bottom-up methodology, potentially working in conjunction with the top down approach informed by Rössler's seminal ideas functioning as well as with new research agendas. The deepest question is as follows: what kind of computer are we and how does this computer enable sentience to arise? How can we make sure this sentience will function in multiple "sensed" physical contexts? The potential is to explore these questions as a long term advanced set of robotic projects. This paper seeks to lay out a series of initial approaches to these different, yet related endeavors, and to articulate their shared and/or alternate qualities. The paper will cover multiple areas: the use of Rössler's concepts including The Brain Equation, An Artificial Cognitive Map System; An Artificial Cognitive-plus-motivational System; and a branch of brain theory called Benevolence Theory for the Benevolence Engine.

Elements of these concepts will form top down perspectives informing both projects. Simultaneously, we will employ the potentials of a bottom up approach: exploring Seaman, Verbauwhede and Hansen's The Poly-sensing Environment as it might be used to form the machinic senses for both "entities"; Seaman's notion of Pattern Flows; new models of neural nets which take advantage of deep contemporary approaches to mapping and or abstracting biological processes; the long term goal of mapping and abstracting specific neural processes; and the potential exploration of a bio-synthetic neuron farm and/or related bio-synthetic nervous system.

Click here to download a copy of Bill Seaman's paper on how ideas about the Thoughtbody influence his artistic works: The Elusive Nature of Context: The Negotiation of the Thoughtbody

Paul Sermon
Puppeteers, Performers or Avatars - A perceptual difference in telematic space

The audiences form an integral part within these telematic experiments, which simply wouldn't function without their presence and participation. Initially the viewers seem to enter a passive space, but they are instantly thrown into the performer role by discovering their own body-double in communication with another physically remote user on video monitors in front of them. They usually adapt to the situation quickly and start controlling and choreographing their human avatar. Nevertheless, the installation, set up in the form of an open accessible platform, offers a second choice of engagement: the passive mode of just observing the public action, which often appears to be a well-rehearsed piece of drama confidently played out by actors. Compelling to watch, it can be a complex issue to discover that the performers are also part of the audience and are merely engaging in a role. The entire installation space then represents two dynamic dramatic functions: the players, controllers, or puppeteers of their own avatar, absorbed by the performing role; and the off-camera members of the audience, who are themselves awaiting the next available slot on the telematic stage, soon to be sharing this split dynamic. However, the episodes that unfold are not only determined by the participants, but by the given dramatic context. As an artist I am both designer of the environment and therefore 'director' of the narrative, which I determine through the social and political milieu that I choose to play out in these telepresent encounters.

Neil Theise
Plasticity, complexity, uncertainty: Exploring stem cells, bodies, and life

Problems in "the new" stem cell plasticity of the last few years have found possible solutions by considering how cells fulfill all criteria likely to give rise to emergent self-organization and, therefore, are agents of a complex adaptive system. This has further implications for how we interpret and model the body. For example, levels of scale are central in determining how a complex system appears: as a population of interacting units on a lower lever or, higher up, as a single unified entity with characteristics defined by the emergent self organization of the population. So, bodies may be conceived of as a thing, or may instead be seen as the phenomena arising from the interactions of cells, comprising the agents of a complex system. Likewise, in turn, cells can be considered as entities or, instead, as the emergent phenomena of interacting bio-molecules.
This concept of a laddered hierarchy of complex systems, variously appearing as unitary things on a higher level of scale or as interacting agents on a lower level of scale may be important in many ways. For example, the debate in the United States over whether a "theory of intelligent design" is required to explain the appearance of design in nature, unexplained by evolution, could be answered by showing that the appearance of design can be a result of self-organization through the entire range of biological entities, from single cell organisms upward. Similarly, extending such hierarchies downward further, through cells, to biomolecules, to interacting atoms, subatomic particles and, ultimately, strings or some other smallest entity, yields descriptions of reality which appear identical to those reached by mystics and contemplatives from diverse traditions.

There were 2 performance workshops at this event:

Escape Design & Carol Brown
Sea Unsea

Concept: Mette Ramsgard Thomsen and Carol Brown
Programming: Chiron Mottram (VR Centre for the Built Environment, UCL) and Teis Draiby
Music: Alastair MacDonald
Dancers: Carol Brown and Katsura Isobe

If life is process and nature patterns of dynamic formation through interactions between systems, how do we construct subjectivity and presence within an environment of artificial and biological constraints? As an emergent dance architecture, Sea Unsea seeks to establish a fragile ecosystem of shared behaviours, generating a lifeworld where action and interaction are continually thrown into processes of iteration. Digital presence as an anthropomorphic structure of mimesis is negated; instead we propose the forming of an ephemeral movement state, seeking to sustain the fluidity of life as evolution. Local rules create emergent patterns of behaviour, establishing a realm of shared presence taking place across the interface. Here, evolution is explored across axes of time and dimensions of space expanding the feedback loops of interaction through morphogenesis as immediate actions and interactions are juxtaposed and incorporated through the evolving strata.

Sea Unsea is informed by the rhythms and lifeforms of an ever-changing seascape. The image of a rootless seaweed, the Sargasso Sea, drawn by thick gravities, becomes the point of departure for a hybrid form of sonic and visual particles that shape and dissolve as mnemonic traces. At times ephemeral, at times crystallizing into petrified formations this hybrid visualisation is projected back into the installation space generating a performance state of playful probing and enchantment.

Konic Thtr

Konic Thtr is a multimedia label based in Barcelona specialising in the creation of artistic projects that incorporate real time systems and developing exhibition pieces and live performances that rely upon interactive technology, audiovisual and multimedia languajes, music, theatre and dance. Konic thtr have pioneered the use of intermedia instalations and performance at an international level.

Parallel to their creative process, konic thtr have opened other areas of work, specifically, research and training. Their research in the development of tangible interfaces and software applications aims to facilitate the audience and/or actor's communication with the digital information in interactive projects. The goal of their training is to show young artists how to use technological tools.

Konic Thtr's work questions the concepts of identity and representation in our globalized culture by adopting diverse technologically oriented strategies in which the implication with the audience is a constant.

Konic thtr work explores the relation between stage, dance and technology. Since the year 2000 they have developed a close collaboration with Nuria Font and her projects linked to Image, Dance and New Media. In 2001 they took part in directing the "Laboratory of Motion Capture". In 2002 they won financial support for the production of the video Blank e_motive from the 'Mostra de Videodansa' call for projects. In 2003 they were guest artists in the international seminar "Virtualities of digital body". They were also speakers in the seminar "Dance and Technology" at the CaixaForum Mediateca (Barcelona) in February 2004 and they took part in the international meetings "Movements and Digits" in Autumn 2004 at l'Animal a l'Esquena creation centre.