Liquid Selves

Dream sequences created using 3D particle systems techniques. Behavior rules are applied to thousands of individual particles to model complex phenomena such as an explosion, a snowstorm, a tumultuous head, and a waterfall. A Connection Machine CM-2 computer was used to perform physical simulations on thousands of particles simultaneously, one processor for each particle.

This video shows results from a research project involving simulated Darwinian evolutions of virtual block creatures. A population of several hundred creatures is created within a supercomputer, and each creature is tested for their ability to perform a given task, such the ability to swim in a simulated water environment. Those that are most successful survive, and their virtual genes containing coded instructions for their growth, are copied, combined, and mutated to make offspring for a new population. The new creatures are again tested, and some may be improvements on their parents. As this cycle of variation and selection continues, creatures with more and more successful behaviors can emerge.

Twisted computer animated short from 1989. The fire effect was impressive for the time, created on the massively parallel Connection Machine 2.

Primordial Dance is an experimental animation containing a progression of abstract textures and colours. It is a study of emerging and transforming mathematical equations. These effects were created using an interactive process of "artificial evolution." The artist and computer collaborate to produce images and movements that neither could easily produce alone. The computer generates and displays a collection of experimental abstract images. The artist chooses the most aesthetically interesting images, and those survive and are "bred" to produce a new collection of images.

Panspermia is the name for the theory that life exists and is distributed throughout the universe in the form of germs or spores. This animation places the viewer in the middle of a virtual world of an aggressively reproducing inter-galactic life form, and depicts a single life cycle of this unusual self propagating system.