Evolutionary Art and Computers

by Stephen Todd, William Latham

"Evolutionary Art and Computers" sets out to provide the how and why of William Latham's use of computers to create art, and outlines his development of "evolution" as a new form of art. Both his work and this book are a result of a collaboration between artist William Latham and mathematician and computer graphics expert Stephen Todd. It brings together the worlds of modern art, geometry and computer graphics employing the underlying themes of natural evolution and artificial life. Latham design evolutionary art forms using an artistic system based on natural geometry and implemented on the computer. Inspired by shapes such as horns, amenities and skeleton, he than uses a selective mutation process to breed aesthetic and extraordinary sculptures. The book is richly illustrated and details the steps involved in using the computer to create these evolutionary artworks. The creative process in traced from the first concepts and hand drawn sketches, through defining and applying the artistic system, to rendering the three dimensional forms and creating gallery prints and animations. Todd brings to the partnership state-of-the-art interactive computer graphic techniques which allow sophisticated animation, texture, colour, lighting and solid geometric modelling for rendering the stunning visual creations. Their new concept of subjective human computer interaction by mutation presented in this book is a radical contribution to computer science. This book provides an insight by two of the foremost collaborators in the field of human-machine creativity, which fuses modern art, mathematics, computer and evolution.

288 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1992

Reviews

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

although the computer graphics look retro by today's standards, the explorations of fractaline forms, through both algorithms and also through sketchbook drawings, remain relevant and interesting to anyone exploring the intersection between fractal mathematics, art, and computer graphics.