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Cybernetic Jellyfish Evolve
Take a look at this fascinating art/science/math video by Slovenian artist Teja Krasek; she creates a kind of virtual artificial jellyfish for computer screens.
(Artificial jellyfish by Teja Krasek)
Krasek says:
"Art and mathematics blend and swirl. They conjure images and emotions in unexpected and profound ways -- and allow us to transcend space and time."
Her work reminded Mac Tonnies (creator of the Posthuman Blues blog) of the artificial jellyfish from Bruce Sterling and Rudy Rucker's short story Big Jelly:
But when it came time for Tug's talk, his 15-terabyte virtual jellyfish-demo had crashed so hideously that he couldn't even reboot his machine...Imitating nature to the core, Tug found a way to evolve and improve his vortex sheet models via genetic programming. Tug's artificial jellyfish algorithms competed, mutated, reproduced, and died inside the virtual reality of his workstation's sea-green screen. As Tug's algorithms improved, his big computer monitor became a tank of virtual jellyfish, of graphic representations of Tug's equations, pushing at the chip's computational limits, slowly pulsing about in dimly glowing simulation-space. (Read more about chemotactic artificial jellyfish)
Update 05-Jun-2020: Read this very early mention of the idea of biomimicry (also called biomimetics) in the works of HG Wells; see robot biomimicry from The War of the Worlds (1898). End update.
If you liked the video, you might enjoy the movements of this underwater squid robot as well. Via Posthuman Blues.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 3/9/2007)
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