Artificial Culture - HCS 110

CALENDAR
subject to changes

Artificial Culture
Simulation using Multiagent
& Evolutionary Computation
Human Complex Systems 110
Spring 2007

	We are going down on August 8th. Here is registration information for: Exhibits-Plus-One-Day pass for $40 Electronic Theater Matinee for $25 Total of $65 Your confirmed registration should look like THIS.	SIGGRAPH San Diego Exhibition 7-9 August 2007 You can register on-line! Included with your Registration. Exhibits Plus one-day pass $40.	Exhibits Floorplan. Art Gallery. Installations. Monitor-Based Work. Wall-Based Work. Animation Theatre (Over 100 top animations - probably another $50 but worth every penny.) Electronic Theatre (Over 30 films). Emerging Technologies.
	"This Side of the Blue" 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. (2004 Drag City Records).	Joanna Newsome	BOOKS MOVIES
	Tuesday	Thursday	Notes
	Please come prepared to work on the computer. Make sure you have a BOL account, a printer account and a USB memory stick the first day. Also please purchase 10 writable CDs (and paper sleeves) and 10 letter-size plastic sleeves. Also please bring $20 for a collection of readings which will be distributed periodically.
Week 1	April 3 Photo Opp in the Hall: Pictures for our participants' page. Collect $20 for readings (handed out periodically). Please fill out and turn in the questionnaire. Introduction: A Critique of Artificial Culture What we gain and what we loose... Video: Karl Sims on the bleeding-edge of Evolutionary Computation: Panspermia (1990), Primordial Dance (1991), Liquid Selves (1992), Evolved Virtual Creatures (1994). Challenge 0: Half-Way-There, an apocryphal story. We write a Windows program using Borland. (Coding from scratch. Serial complexity.)	April 5 Photo Op for our Participants' page... We go over Challenge 0 once again, especially for those who didn't get a chance to work with Borland. Review of C++ programming langage and our source code. Review of the Borland C++ Integrated Development Environment. Enhancements: Color Theory: The RGB Color Cube and ColorRamp(). Visualizing the density of the points with color.	Tentative List of Challenges: 0 Halfway 1 Conway's GOL 2 DLA Growth 3 Segregation and/or x Assimilation 4 Flocking, Traffic x and/or Networks 5 Evolution x Programming
Week 2	April 10 Participants' Page Photos... Review the Borland and C++ Reference. Finishing Challenge 0: Half-Way-There. Adding an Icon using IconEdit32. Adding a TrackBar and Edit component.	Special 8:00 a.m. REVIEW SESSION for those who need help getting started or missed a class...	Tentative List of Readings/Discussions: 0 Fredkin 1 "Non Serviam" & "13th Floor" 2 Software Design 3 Artifacts of Space, and Time. Architecture of Greg Egan's "Permutation City." 4 Evolution of Intermediated Cultural Cognition: Representation, Models, Visualizations and Computation. 5 Minsky, Computation, Society of Mind and Evolution
Week 2		April 12 Challenge 0 is due today: Create at least four (4) variant patterns by tweaking the dot pattern or the code. It looks like those who have been attending class AND who are also on the waiting list will get in! Dave on the VirtuSphere... Emergence, what is it? From local simplicity to global complexity. Readings 0: Ed Fredkin "New Cosmogony" & "Finite Nature." Challenge 1: Conway's Game of Life (Stealing code. Parallel complexity. Cellular automata.) Enhance the application. Study its behavior.
Week 3	April 17 Binary Bits & Bytes: 1s and 0s - Artifacts from Early Computer Memory to ASCII Code... A brief survey of Cellular Automata. Enhancements to Conway's Game of Life.	Office hours will regularly be before class at 8:00 a.m. and after class on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Week 3		April 19 Binary Encodings: Punched Cards and Tape, Disks and Drums, Printed Markings, Mag Stripes, Radio Frequency ID. Challenge 1 (Conway) is due today. Enhance, Experiment, Explore, Enjoy... Readings 0 (Fredkin) is due today. Discuss the relevance of his theories to complexity in individual behavior, society and culture. Challenge 2: Diffusion Limited Aggregation. Handout: The complete source code. Explore, Experiment, Enhance, Enjoy. Continued next Tuesday...
Week 4	April 24 - INTERMISSION The first computer "bug." Some enhancements to Diffusion Limited Aggregation. Help - IconEdit32 - SynEdit - Pause An introduction to the Midi synthesizer and PlaySound. Handouts: "Midi-Ramp" information for sonification. "Non Serviam" by Stanislaw Lem for Readings 1. "Software Design" by Robt. Glass for Readings 2.	April 26 - INTERMISSION I will be at the "Arrowhead Conference." We will show a film which will form half of the basis for Reading 1. The other half is the story by Stanislaw Lem. Handout: "The Thirteenth Floor" transcript and questionnaire. Movie: "The Thirteenth Floor"
Week 5	May 1 Challenge 2: Diffusion Limited Aggregation due today. Readings 1: "Non Serviam" & "13th Floor" due today. Readings 2: "Software Design" due today. Segregation & Assimilation Focus on Segregation: Segregation - a Growth model Segregation - Schelling's model Handout: Sweet Spots in Segregation simulations.	May 3 Segregation and Assimilation (continued...) Focus on Assimilation - things to try: Probability, e.g. 30%: if(random(100) < 30) Conservatism: introduce a new array. Considering empty space. More things to try: Combining Segregation & Assimilation. With a growth model - allowing settled agents to leave if they don't like their new neighbor. Work on this during class... Handout: Sweet Spot in Assimilation simulation.
Week 6	May 8 June 6 deadline for Bragin Prize submission (open to minors only). Challenge 3: Segregation & Assimilation due today. Participant demonstrations of new agent rules and behaviors... Crowds, flocking and traffic and networks - an introduction to agents in vector spaces. Image objects. File save and open. Handouts: Artifacts of Space & Time Selection from Greg Egan's PERUMTATION CITY.	May 10 Countries, Cultures, Communication - Digital Innovation at UCLA: from 4-8pm room 1302 Perloff Hall June 6 deadline for Bragin Prize submission (open to minors only). Note from Daisuke Imai: While the trial version of Borland Developer Studio 2006 will expire by 30 days, Borland Turbo C++ Explorer, which is the trial version of Turbo C++, won't expire. Our SIMULATIONS page has been reorganized. Last quarter's participant projects. Darryl's Segregation. Saeid's Language Evolution. Seminar on creating new rules, new perceptions, new cognitions, new behaviors, etc... Handout: Flocking sweet spot. Crowds, flocking and traffic and networks - an introduction to agents in vector spaces. Image objects. File save and open.
Week 6
Week 7	May 15 Lives depend on simulations. Discussion 4: Evolution of Intermediated Cultural Cognition: Representation, Models, Visualizations and Computation. Film: National Security Agency with Johnny Depp (1998). The origins of computation and the state-of-the-art in "intermediated cultural cognition." Google Earth - zoom way in to 7000 feet: 38° 15' 55.76" N 105 °57' 20.13" E Google Earth - stay high at 316 miles: 33° 50' 11.70" N 79° 7' 27.35" E Don't Got Google Earth? Check our "Sandbox" page. Evolutionary Computation - An Introduction. Challenge 5: Evolutionary Concert Tour. Challenge 4: Crowds, flocking, traffic and/or networks due today. Readings 3: Artifacts & Architectures due today.	May 17 PARTICIPANT PRESENTATIONS Informal, but everyone must present a feasible project proposal... It's time to share your plans with the class... (Or, "This is where the rubber meets the road.") This is a time to pull together your ideas and experiences with multi-agent thinking and focus them on a simulation you can finish in two weeks. You are free to borrow (or steal) code from our website, from the Internet, from books and integrate them into your application, but please credit your sources... Artifacts and Architectures - revisited Our Winter 2007 "Artificial Culture" class project webpage has been fixed, and there are zipped files of three exemplary effots there as well... A "new and improved" Evolutionary Concert Tour has been added to our simulations website. ATSAC tour planned for 24 May 2007	Comsol Multiphysics Simulation Workshop May 30, 2007 Los Angeles Public Library Westwood Branch 1246 Glendon Ave. Los Angeles, CA 90024
Week 8	May 22 Developing the agents in the flocking simulation. Work on Course Projects. Discussion 5: Last words and first thoughts on multipe-agency - selections from: Tooby & Cosmides: Psychological Foundations of Culture. Minsky: Computer Science is Not About Computers, Public Lecture, Nara, Japan. Minsky: Society of Mind. Koza: Design by Darwin, Invention Machine. Don'ts of Mathematical Modeling.	May 24 Developing the agents in the flocking simulation. Work on Course Projects. Challenge 5: Evolutionary Concert Tour due today. Discussion 4: Evolution of Intermediated Cultural Cognition: Representation, Models, Visualizations and Computation. due today.	May 25 Ed Fredkin 10:30 a.m. 11th Floor Large Conference Room USC/ISI Marina del Rey
Week 8		RSVP tour of ATSAC departs PROMPTLY at 12:00 noon from the McGowan Hall turnaround.
Week 9	May 29 RFID: Radio Frequency IDentification -or- Real Fears about Intelligent Devices. Coordinating text, shapes and images for more complex visualizations of agent states. Work on Course Projects. Comsol Multiphysics Workshop tomorrow.	May 31 Graphs: From scratch, near bottom on our Networks page. Borland Visual Components >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Work on Course Projects. Discussion 5: Last words and first thoughts on multipe-agency - selections from: Tooby & Cosmides: Psychological Foundations of Culture. Minsky: Computer Science is Not About Computers, Public Lecture, Nara, Japan. Minsky: Society of Mind. Koza: Design by Darwin, Invention Machine. Don'ts of Mathematical Modeling. due today.	Under ADDITIONAL: tchart.exe tchart.txt tchart.zip
Week 10	June 5 COFFEE AND COOKIES Final Project Presentations (ORANGE) June 6 deadline for Bragin Prize submission (open to minors only).	June 7 Dreams in High Fidelity by Scott Draves COFFEE AND COOKIES Final Project Presentations (BLUE) Last day to turn anything in is Friday, June 8th, in the HCS box in Anthropology, Haines Hall, 3rd Floor.
	No Final	No Final
	We are going down on August 8th. Here is registration information for: Exhibits-Plus-One-Day pass for $40 Electronic Theater Matinee for $25 Total of $65 Your confirmed registration should look like THIS.	SIGGRAPH San Diego Exhibition 7-9 August 2007 You can register on-line! Included with your Registration. Exhibits Plus one-day pass $40.	Exhibits Floorplan. Art Gallery. Installations. Monitor-Based Work. Wall-Based Work. Animation Theatre (Over 100 top animations - probably another $50 but worth every penny.) Electronic Theatre (Over 30 films). Emerging Technologies.