I reproduced one of Haeckel’s creatures today. The original is in the top-left quadrant. It is from Plate 17 of Kunstformen der Natur.
Hopefully I will be able to do some more in the near future, on a weekday I have now reserved for “creative endeavours”.
…two posts in one day? I must be busy. : D
I’ve been playing around with python, pygame, and cairo (through pycairo) the last few days. I needed an environment to quickly prototype ideas (after discarding processing for various reasons). With the above mentioned combination I can quickly whip up interactive vector-graphic driven systems. The following video demonstrates a trivial algorithm for generating shapes that takes two parameters which are changed over time. It’s nothing special but took a trivial amount of time to implement with my new toys. Something interesting to look out for are the emergent shapes and waves as the parameters are changed.
My own research focuses on biological development as a creative force, however I have been involved in this project and have been playing around with various ideas and prototypes. A very literal interpretation (from a computer scientists p.o.v!) is demonstrated in the following video. The virtual world (the white plane) contains various growing plants, which according to an internal genome grow leaves (the green parts), branches, and drop seeds. A seed inherits its genome from its parent, the genome is mutated slightly to provide a simple evolutionary capability. Initially the world is populated with seeds with randomly generated genomes, most of these aren’t capable of reproducing and so their species die out. The ones who can reproduce start to populate the space. Eventually a small set of species remains as the system enters a homogeneous state (where the most efficient species has survived and cannot improve anymore). A simple energy model is incorporated (energy is obtained via photosynthesis through leaves, growth of new parts costs energy, and reproduction costs energy).
The system results in plants which reproduce quickly and are efficient at filling space. The ecosystem abstraction used is quite naive but demonstrates competition between species (for the same niche: space), evolution, and interesting dynamics over short and medium term timescales. The system is interesting visually, primarily because of emergent shades: there are only two colours in the system but different plants fill space in different ways resulting in different shades of colour.
I have now finished all required work for my PhD probationary confirmation, and have successfully been confirmed. This means that the confirmation panel are convinced that I have a valid research proposal and a plausible schedule over the next 2 years.
I enjoyed my caek last night. It was a dodgy banana cake from safeway. It wasn’t bad.
My research involves the design and implementation of a creative system that grows geometry using principles from biological development. The shapes (organisms) consist of cells that grow, divide, move and die, following a genetic program specified by the user/artist. This general methodology has been successfully demonstrated with Lindenmayer Systems through Prusinkiewicz’ (and others) great work. My work looks at different structures and is directed at modelling organisms such as the Siphonophorae illustrated by the 19th century naturalist and artist Ernst Haeckel. One such illustration (my replication) is shown below.
And on other news I ran my first fun run on Sunday. The Run for the Kids fun run attracted nearly 30,000 runners and supports the Royal Children’s Hospital. I made it the entire 14km in under 80 minutes — which was my target. It wasn’t a fast time (1hr17m) but it’s a starting point and I hope to knock at least ten minutes off next year. It was an awesome experience and I think I’ll be running a few more over the years.
…working towards my 1 yr phd confirmation at the moment. A report (of, say, 20 pages) and a presentation are required. I have all the information scattered through both my own mind and a mind map; I just have to linearise it. I am also trying to get some proof of concept demos done …. here I am growing some protolimbs (though the growth is largely uncontrolled so they look more like tumours than limbs):
I implemented Jos Stam’s fast fluid solver into Processing and it works fairly well. You can find the simulation, documented code and reference here.
Now if I could only think of a novel way to use it… :|
I hooked the simulation output into povray, watch those cubes fly!
The cubes are dancing again … confirmation soon … must work harder …
The recent explosion of web2.0 apps and social-networking platforms (read: facebook) has made me realise how powerful these online applications and storage facilities are. The pc is becoming less personal (sorry hp!) for a wide range of people, merely providing a portal through which they can access their widely dispersed hodgepodge of data. PC’s are becoming terminals once again.
It is safe to assume that in 2007 it was possible to work as a [insert generic job title] using no desktop applications, moreover it may have been more productive, for a few reasons:
This is practically a little while off though, as there is still a vital application missing … the web2.0 browser within a browser.
A web browser is the primary interface to the web, and is used for browsing/navigation, tracking history, customising the appearance of the web, bookmarking, and running the plugins which some of these uber online apps provide and need. Tracking all this stuff online is the obvious next step for the web, which ideally means developing a web2.0 browser that works from within your computer’s browser.
The browser-in-a-browser (bib) would handle all navigation requests, site caches, bookmarks, history lists, etc .. and store them “in the internet” (ideally redundantly across many servers around the world). The pc’s browser would still handle all rendering/execution tasks, the bib would just act as a customised frame around that. The bib would act similarly to standard browsers today (e.g., with plugin support), or could use social browsing aspects (see e.g., flock.com). I would then only have to set up my bib once, and the bib site would be my first stop whenever I login to a computer. Moreover, the bib would be me-specific, so numerous users (of say, a family computer) can all have their own customised and secure browser.
Some first steps towards this goal exist in different flavours (gollum, palary, bitty), but I expect to see a nice clean browser (like palary) that works fast, integrates with the online apps mentioned above (e.g., delicious), allows multiple-page viewing, caching and password storage. I would expect the browser king to lead the charge on that front…
Steph and I just got back from a short holiday in Tasmania that included an 8 day hike on the Overland Track (including a side trip up the Acropolis). It was our first “big” hike and we both enjoyed it immensely. The weather was extraordinarily fine the entire time.
We also visited the Cascade brewery, drove from Hobart to Launceston via a great scenic route (7 hrs driving time!), ventured into the caves near Mole Creek, and checked out the local produce (cheese, chocolate, raspberries, and honey). Pics below (click to see full-sized images in online gallery).
I am very glad to be home however. :D
