Special Section Introduction: A-Life in Art, Design, Edutainment, Games and Research

In recent years, Artificial Life (A-Life) research has left the purely academic realm and fostered new applications in the arts, design, architecture, edutainment and games. With the phenomenal success of the Tamagotchi and other A-Life-inspired game products, the notion of the "Artificially Living" has become widely accepted. In the interactive arts, artists have employed genetic programming techniques to create audience-
participatory artworks that change and evolve according to environmental inputs. Design and architecture as well have seen a growing interest in applying principles of evolution to the process of designing everyday objects, buildings and cityscapes. Research on autonomous and adaptive robots and software agents has also increasingly left its mark on edutainment and game production, with sophisticated toys and agent-based software products designed to capture the audience's attention on- and off-line.

During 1-6 August 2000, the Seventh International Conference on Artificial Life (ALifeVII) was held at Reed College, Portland, Oregon, U.S.A. [1]. Topics presented at this conference spanned a range from "Origin of Life, Self-Organization, Self-Replication" and "Development and Differentiation" to "Evolutionary and Adaptive Dynamics," which included modes of evolution and selection, artificial evolutionary ecologies and life games. Artificial evolution, a major concept in A-Life research, was discussed in relation to molecular evolution, cultural evolution, evolutionary computation and learning. Discussions also focused on evolvability and its impact on biological organizations.

Another important topic of A-Life research represented at the conference was "Robots and Agents," including autonomous and adaptive robots, software agents and evolutionary robotics as well as bio-inspired robots with embodied cognition. Within the topic of "Communication, Cooperation and Collective Behaviors," on the other hand, investigators looked at emergent collective behaviors, swarm intelligence, evolution of communication and cooperation, social and linguistic systems, and economic and social-technical systems.

In the area of "Applications of A-Life Technologies," the conference presented industrial and commercial applications, evolvable and self-repairing hardware, molecular computing, genetic engineering and nanotechnology, finance and economics, medical applications, and educational applications. A further category looked at "Simulation and Synthesis: Tools and Methodologies," including formal and mathematical foundations, clarification and evaluation of A-Life methodologies, simulation languages, experimental tools, artificial worlds and tools for large data sets.

Finally, under the title "The Broader Context," participants addressed the metaphysical and epistemological foundations and implications of A-Life, including ethical and social implications, as well as its applicability to A-Life-inspired art.

Thematically linked to "The Broader Context" category, I organized a workshop entitled "Artificial Life in Art, Design, and Entertainment," held on 2 August [2]. Seven selected presentations provided the workshop participants with various examples and applications of A-Life-inspired art, generative design, computer games and life games, A-Life edutainment, artistic robotics and evolutionary simulations. The papers of these presentations were published in the ALifeVII workshop proceedings [3]. The positive feedback and the large audience the workshop attracted showed that A-Life-art research has indeed become a broadly accepted field.

To acknowledge the growing importance and diversification of A-Life research in general and the growing impact of artistic endeavors in this field, Leonardo asked me to start a series on "A-Life in Art, Design, Edutainment, Games and Research" as part of the Leonardo special project on A-Life Art with co-guest editor Ken Rinaldo. The aim of this series is to provide Leonardo readers with an overview of the different streams within A-Life research and art, its theoretical background and methodologies, and its key concepts and thinkers as well as its practical applications to science, industry, art and entertainment.

Starting with several selected papers from the ALifeVII book [4] and the workshop proceedings, this series will deal with topics such as "Artificial Life in Art and Entertainment," "Evolutionary Design and Generative Art," "Complexity and Emergence," "Robotics and Hardware Evolution," "Philosophy of Artificial Life," and "Artificial Life, Cell Differentiation and Genetic Regulatory Networks." Authors for this series will include...