CALENDAR
subject to changes

ALiCE:
Artificial Life, Culture and Evolution
"How to reason with technology."
Honors Collegium 69
Fall 2007

On the first day you will write a Windows application. Please come ready to work on the computer. You will need to bring:

• A Bruin-On-Line ID and Password.
• A Printer Account.
• One USB Memory Device.
• Twenty (20) Writable CD-ROMs.
• Twenty (20) Cheap CD-ROM Sleeves.
• Twelve (12) Letter-size Sheet Protectors.
• Two (2) Ultra-Fine Point Permanent Markers for CD-ROMs.

And the signifieds butt heads with the signifiers,
and we all fall down slack-jawed to marvel at words!
While across the sky sheet the impossible birds,
In a steady, illiterate movement homewards.

Joanna Newsome,
"This Side of the Blue"
(2004 Drag City Records).

Our calendar is subject to change to take advantage of interestes that develop during class, items in the news, and related activities on campus and in the community.

September 27

On the first day you will write a Windows application. Please come ready to work on the computer. And bring $20 for the course printed materials...

What is Multiagent Modeling?

Karl Sims (videos): including...
Compilation: Panspermia (1990), etc.
Evolved Virtual Creatures (1994).

An Introduction to Borland's C++ Builder & Windows:
Objects: Properties and Events
We build a small application that
doesn't do much...

We save the application and it's accompanying files to a folder and drag that folder to our USB memories as a backup. We open the project we were working on by double-clicking the .bdsproject file..

Coding from scratch...

Handouts:
Borland C++ Reference Guide
Review of Social Complexity by Gessler

Notes on what we covered on a particular day in the past are shown in black on a saturated yellow background.

Things we didn NOT cover are shown in gray.

October 2

Rafael on Evolving Clocks...

Coding from scratch...

SERIAL ALGORITHMS
We review what we did on Thursday and code an apochryphal story from scratch: "Half-Way-There."

Enhancements:
We add the dimension of color to our visualization of the settlement pattern.

Formatting your source code:
Variables - Functions - Event Handlers.
Indenting to show the scope of procedures.

C++ code on the fly:
We review some of the more common C++
commands as we write the code.

4:15 Steganography and Genomics

October 4

Dario talks about Burning Man...

SERIAL ALGORITHMS
Complexity and chaos in living systems...
The Lorenz and strange attractors...

Programming Challenge 0: "Half-Way-There"
Could we have reasoned how it would behave?
What to do and turn in.

We go through the Reference Guide:
More on C++: commands, variables, and scope
More on Graphics and math functions...
More on Borland/Windows components...

Enhancements:
IconEdit32

Recommended Films:

• Dark City
• 13th Floor
• Mulholland Drive

October 9

Good News: 3 Votrax Speech Synthesizers Ordered
Some National Instruments AD/IO Units to Come.

From Dave: Tell Us How You Really Feel

RE-PRESENTATION:
Models & Simulations

SERIAL ALGORITHMS continued...
Color theory, and colorRamp(), an introduction...
Bits, Bytes and ASCII code.
SynEdit, and ASCII and Binary file editor.

On our simulations pages:
Experiments with "Half-Way-There:"
Tweaking symmetry and asymmetry.
Tweaking the algorithm...

Somethings to understand and try:
Speed: Processing messages (i.e. talking to the graphics card) Application->ProcessMessages( );
Sleep(milliseconds); and Beep(frequency, duration);
Using PhotoShop with IconEdit32
Disappearing displays: the OnPaint() event...
Displaying more information in Edit boxes...
Changing parameters with the TrackBar
Running repeated experiments...

In-class development time..

SERIALLY ITERATED ALGORITHMS
The Lorenz Attractor
The Mandelbrot Set

October 11
PARALLEL ALGORITHMS

Due Today: Programming Challenge 0: "Half-Way-There"
Participant demonstrations!

RE-PRESENTATION:
Models & Simulations
Distributed Cultural Cognition
Embodiment, Situatedness, Materiality

We begin building Conway's "Game of Life."
Coding by copy and paste...

Borland "Help." (non-existant)

We finish Conway's Game of Life.

Recommended Book:

Symmetry in Chaos: A Search for Pattern in Mathematics, Art and Nature. By Michael Field and Martin Golubitsky, Oxford University Press (1995). Amazon.

October 16
(need an admin logon)

COLOR ONCE AGAIN:
A demonstration of additive and subtractive primaries.

CELLULAR AUTOMATA (continued...)
Conway's Game of Life

Scott Draves - "Bomb"
Some "shellular" automata...
Algorithms in nature... (books)

Mirek Wojtowitz' "Cellebration" Lublin, Poland.
Alan Hensel's initial conditions (1994).

Brainstorming: What enhancements can you devise to better understand its behavior?

Sounds? Images? Colors? MouseDown, Move and Up events? A button to place new configurations on the screen?

New components:
ComboBox, ListBox, RadioGroup, Timer, Shape and Image.

Using PhotoShop to import an image into IconEdit32.

In-class development time...

October 18

I will be away at the National Cryptologic History Symposium at Johns Hopkins...

Dave on Mark Kleiman's Deterrence Model...

Readings:
Forrester - "Coutnerintuitive..." (1971)
Fredkin - "New Cosmogony..." (2001)
Gessler - Review of "Social Complexity..." (2007)

Video:
Artificial Life, VPRO Amsterdam (1995, 90 minutes).
do take notes on the ideas discussed...

Discursive Challenge 0: (due Oct 25)
a thought piece...

Think seriously about the ideas presented by the authors and those in the video. What audiences are they directed towards? What visions do each of them project about the future of their respective discipline? Is there a cohesive and unified philosphy and epistemology behind their presentations? If so, what is it and what are its implications?

Assuming that you have found one, how do you feel it may be applied to research and creative work in your own major field of interest. What might your field gain or loose and why? Would you expect resistance to these ideas? If so, what kind and why?

Please write a well thought-out and composed essay of about 2-3 single-spaced pages (typed!)...

October 23

Note: I live in the "Mandatory Evacuation Zone" of the "Malibu Fire." I am waiting for a morning report from the Sherrif and Fire Marshall which hasn't been filed as of 7:40 a.m. If I do not get in to UCLA, let this be your challenge: As a class, "self-organize" and/or work in groups or individually to Explore, Experiment, Enhance and Enjoy one of the simulations on our Simulations / Segregation, Assimilation page... Unzip Dave's or any other model, study it, work with and improve it. Good luck and happy simulating...

Due Today:
Programming Challenge 1 : Conway's "GOL"
PARTICIPANT DEMOS...

(gifts from the dark side...)
The NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY - What they have to do with computation... Cryptanalysis at the leading edge of technological innovation... (Video)

SEGREGATION
A variation on Schelling's work

October 25

Due Today:
Discursive Challenge 0:
Class discussion: technological challenges and cultural impacts?

Mirek's "Cellebration" (if we can find a platform to run it on)...

SEGREGATION
Representations:
Raster (cellular) space, Random time (polling)
A variation on Schelling's work

Coding by building on unzipped project files...

Handout: Source code for May 2007 Segregation.

October 30

Handout: Outline of variables and functions.
Review of some simpler cases.
Adding a case, "love of empty spaces."

Discussion: Implementing tweaks and variations on the Segregation model.
How about...
MouseDown, MMove, MUp to paint in agents???
Using the bitmap to paint in agents???

Bending the model to simulate compliance and conformity (acculturation, assimilation, desegregation and group-think).

Work on Segregation model...

November 1

Due Today:
Programming Challenge 2: Shelling's Segregation
Participants' demonstrations of projects

In the News:
"No Lie" Functional (Nuclear) Magnetic Resonance Imaging for Lie Detection. WIRED article.
NSA Intelligence Budget = $43.5 billion.
Military Intelligence Budget = $10 billion.

FLOCKING -
New: Vector space.
New: Sequential polling.
New:
CLASSES as new data types (i.e. agents)
IMAGE component: the Transparent Bitmap (.bmp)
ARRAYS of components (i.e. Images)
SONIFICATION:
Beep();
PlaySound();
MIDI
Treasure of Sierra Madre: "badges"

November 6

Discussions of new tweaks and functionalities for the Flocking and/or Traffic simulations...

Segregation with barriers...

Flocking with tossable agents...

In class development time...

November 8

Due Today:
Programming Challenge 3: FLOCKING
Participants' demonstrations of projects
How different representations of time will change behavior.

Video Clips:
Dimitri Terzopolous
SIGGRAPH 2007

EVOLUTIONARY COMPUTATION
EVOLUTIONARY CONCERT TOUR
the user's perspective

(A vector world... with cinematic? scheduling)
What's new here?
EVOLUTION:
Variation, recombination, mutation.
Reproduction with inheritance.
Natural and/or Artificial Selection.
Static vs. Dynamic Fitness Allocation.

November 13

More from the SIGGRAPH DVD...
Flocking behavior in BatMan...

EVOLUTIONARY COMPUTATION
EVOLUTIONARY CONCERT TOUR
the programmer's perspective

(A vector world... with cinematic? scheduling)
What's new here?
EVOLUTION:
Variation, recombination, mutation.
Reproduction with inheritance.
Natural and/or Artificial Selection.
Static vs. Dynamic Fitness Allocation.
FILE INPUT & OUTPUT.
THE STANDARD TEMPLATE LIBRARY (STL)

Suggested tweaks:
Change tariff from a segment multiplier to a fixed (user selectable) amount.
Adjust the evolutionary parameters.
Replace asexual with sexual reproduction.

Readings for Discursive Challenge 1:
One or two thoughtful pages each, single spaced...
1A: Time - "The Thinking Machine..." (1950), and Computists then and Evolutionary Computer Scientists now. What expectations have been fulfilled? What did they not forsee? How have the philosophical ideas about computation changed?
1B: Adleman - "Computing with DNA..." (1998), and Critique, compare and contrast the DNA solution to the traveling salesmans problem with our own.
1C: Bentley - "Evolutionary Design..." (1999). Critique, compare and contrast the way the four schools of Evolutionary Computation might approach an evolutionary problem in a field of your choice (perhaps your major field).

November 15

Colossus Cracks Codes Once More...

More from the SIGGRAPH DVD...
Karl Sims: Galapagos
MIT: Leg Lab
Boston Dynamics: Dogs of War:
Rise, RHex, LittleDog, BigDog

Due Today:
Programming Challenge 4: EVOLUTIONARY CONCERT TOUR.
Explore, Experiment, Enhance, Enjoy.
Answer this question and implement it if you can:
How would you replace asexual with sexual reproduction? Pseudocode solutions are perfectly OK.
What if you substituted musical notes for the cities?

Participants' demonstrations of projects.

REAL WORLD INTERFACING
an Introduction
Sensors and Actuators
Votrax

In-Class work on ICT...

Fiction for Discursive Challenge 2:
Critique the philosophical and epistemological ideas presented (discursively and visually) in one of these works of fiction in light of what you know about Artificial Life, Artificial Culture and Evolutionary Computation today. Two or three thoughtful pages, single spaced:
A: Dark City, a film - (relatively straightforward), or
B: 13th Floor, a film - (quite richly nuanced), or
C: Avalon, a film - (richly metaphorical). or
D: Permutation City, a novel - (epistemologically sophisticated)

Demetri Terzopoulos is the Chancellor's Professor of Computer Science at UCLA.
Friday November 16 from 1 to 3 p.m.
Public Affairs Building, Room 2232

"VIRTUAL ANIMALS AND HUMANS: FROM BIOMECHANICS TO INTELLIGENCE" - Abstract The confluence of virtual reality and artificial life, an emerging discipline that spans the computational and biological sciences, has yielded synthetic worlds inhabited by realistic artificial flora and fauna. Artificial animals are complex synthetic organisms that have functional, biomechanical bodies, perceptual sensors, and brains with locomotion, perception, behavior, learning, and cognition centers. Virtual humans and lower animals are of interest in computer graphics because they are self-animating graphical characters poised to dramatically advance the state of the art of production animation and interactive game technologies. More broadly, these biomimetic autonomous agents in their realistic virtual worlds also foster deeper computationally-oriented insights into natural living systems. Furthermore, they engender interesting applications in computer vision, sensor networks, archaeology, and other domains.

November 20

In the theaters:
Beowulf 3d
Vantage Point

DVD: Institute for Creative Technology...
(Introduction to Discursive Challenge 2)

Zeve on the rolling sticky-ball...

Discursive Challenge 1: DUE TODAY
One or two thoughtful pages each, single spaced...
1A: Time - "The Thinking Machine..." (1950). Computists then and Evolutionary Computer Scientists now. What expectations have been fulfilled? What did they not forsee? How have the philosophical ideas about computation changed?
1B: Adleman - "Computing with DNA..." (1998). Critique, compare and contrast the DNA solution to the traveling salesmans problem with our own.
1C: Bentley - "Evolutionary Design..." (1999). Critique, compare and contrast the way the four schools of Evolutionary Computation might approach an evolutionary problem in a field of your choice (perhaps your major field).

REAL WORLD INTERFACING
Hands-On...
Sensors and Actuators
Votrax

November 22

HAPPY TURKEY DAY

November 27

Zeve - Final Project Presentation

EVERYONE PRESENTS A COURSE PROJECT PROPOSAL: What are your goals? How will you meet them?

Video: Robofest Osaka...

Discursive Challenge 2: DUE TODAY
Critique the philosophical and epistemological ideas presented (discursively and visually) in one of these works of fiction in light of what you know about Artificial Life, Artificial Culture and Evolutionary Computation today. Two or three thoughtful pages, single spaced:
A: Dark City, a film - (relatively straightforward)
B: 13th Floor, a film - (quite richly nuanced)
C: Avalon, a film - (richly metaphorical)
D: Permutation City, a novel - (epistemologically sophisticated)

Classwork on Projects

November 29

Albert - Short Presentation

Those who missed Tuesday:
EVERYONE PRESENTS A COURSE PROJECT PROPOSAL: What are your goals? How will you meet them?

DVD: Fast, Cheap and Out of Control
Rodney Brooks et al.

Due Today:
Programming Challenge 4: EVOLUTIONARY CONCERT TOUR.
Participants' demonstrations of projects.

Classwork on Projects

December 4

Kasra and Chris on DNA Computing...
3d Printing...

Creating a Web Site...

DVD: The Way Things Go. "Glorious, inspired & demented." "A Rube Goldberg drawing coe to life." Institute for Creative Technology
the Mission Rehearsal Exercise, etc. (lost)

Classwork on Projects

December 6
Coffee & Cookies

EVERYONE NEEDS TO ATTEND TODAY

Class Project Presentations

All Challenges and Assignments must be handed in today.

I leave for the Holidays right after class.