Art Evolves Life - A Sound-Driven Game of Life

Timotheus Kampik
Umeå University

Pursuing PhD at Umeå University, Sweden
Scientist in Residence (Product), Signavio (software start-up, latest valuation 400m€)
Focus: automated reasoning, engineering intelligent systems
Amateur musician

#### AI & Artificial Societies * Some AI research deals with the modeling and creation of artificial societies * The behavior of individuals ("agents") in a society may be simplistic * The observation of the evolution of a society at large is interesting * A simple example/starting point is John Conway's Game of Life

Conway's Game of Life

Grid of tiles
Each tile represents "agent"
Simple rules and neighbor activity decide: is agent off or on?
Initially: random state
Fascinating patterns can emerge, based on initial state

Game of Life

Playing God in Game of Life - Example

Societal "Rules" Evolve

"[H]ere are exposed those deeper formations in the mountain of humanity which usually remain concealed."

- Friedrich Nietzsche. Menschliches, Allzu Menschliches.

Playing God with Sound in Game of Life

The Interactive Game of Life as a Metaphor (Art)

The Interactive Game of Life as a Metaphor (AI)

Formal Models as Cultural Artifacts

"Research universities [...] are part of a cultural fabric. Culture is gauged by how interesting and challenging it is, and not by the benefit it brings."

- Ariel Rubinstein. Opinion Piece, FAZ, 2013.

Evaluation of Art and Science

#### Looking Ahead * Heterogenous artificial societies * Artificial societies that interact with the subtleties of music/arts * Musicians/artists who _jam_ with artificial societies

Questions?

Contact me at tkampik@cs.umu.se

*This work was partially supported by the Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program (WASP) funded by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation.*