Artificial Life, Death and Epidemics in Evolutionary, Generative Electronic Art.

This paper explores strategies for slowing the onset of convergence in an evolving population of agents. The strategies include the emergent maintenance of separate agent sub-populations and migration between them, and the introduction of virtual diseases that co-evolve parasitically within their hosts. The method looks to Artificial Life and epidemiology for its inspiration but its ultimate concerns are in studying epidemics as a process suitable for application to generative electronic art. The simulation is used to construct a prototype artwork for a fully interactive stereoscopic virtual-reality environment to be exhibited in a science museum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]