Artificial life links to explore

• > A few years ago i found a brilliant german implementation of conway's
  > Game Of Life,
  > Does anyone here know the
  > location of any such programs for the PC?
  

  Follow the links from my Java Life page, http://ddi.digital.net/~alanh/life/
• A collection of programs. You may not think that is the largest collection of programs, but for one, I've only just started, and two, all programs are quality checked. When you get the time, please visit my pages at: I'll try not to let you down.
• Zooland
• Misc. alife links from www.alcyone.com
• Emergent life: http://www.ylem.org/ylem/artists/krinaldo/emergent2.html
• Wired Arena Author Andrew Leonard enters Wired Arena to discuss "Bots Are Hot!" (Wired 4.04), his recent article about intelligent agents on the Net. Usenet, IRC, and the Web have seen the evolution of these digital life forms as hackers and hobbyists create more effective agents to gather information, regulate communication, and even combat other bots. Now cancelbots, catterbots, clonebots, floodbots, annoybots, hackbots, gaybots, and gossipbots are creating a world where you can never be sure if the person you're dealing with is really a person. Join us in Wired Arena on Friday, 12 April at 2 p.m. PDT (21:00 GMT) -- though who knows, maybe we'll just replace Andrew with a bot instead! (Of course, you could always send YOUR bots, too...)

  The article is at: http://www.hotwired.com/wired/4.04/netbots/index.html

  The Club Wired 'room', unlike most of the content at the HotWired site, is only accessible by registered HotWired users. Registration, however, is free -- just use the URL below and select "Register Now", then fill out the form. When you're fully registered, go to http://www.hotwired.com/club/ to enter Club Wired.

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• The Genetic Programming Notebook
  An updated web site dedicated to AI and Robotics. It specializes in genetic programming and genetic algorithms. It is located at: http://www.jjf.com/gp

• matsw@ekc.kth.se (Mats waltr‚) wrote:
  >Can anyone help me with an address where I can find software for
  >flocking (suitable for Macintosh)?
  

  Must be time for yet another shameless plug for my flocking page: http://reality.sgi.com/craig/boids.html. For Mac-specific software, I highly recommend Simon Fraser's Buzzz! After Dark screen-save moduler, see:
  http://www.santafe.edu/~smfr/ad.html
  ftp://mirror.apple.com/mirrors/Info-Mac.Archive/app/ss/buzzz-14-ad.hqx
  See also:
  http://fly2.biology.uiowa.edu/Eric/DuckandHawk.hqx
• Try Craig Reynold's BOIDS: http://reality.sgi.com/employees/craig/boids.html
• Also, Ric Colasanti's A-Quarium: http://www.shef.ac.uk/uni/academic/N-Q/nuocpe/aquarium.html
• Hi out there, at http://www.brunel.ac.uk:8080/research/AI/alife/al-vants.htm I found a simple description of the Vants invented by Langton. I used this description to implement a program. It was mentioned at the WWW-page that "When more than one vant was placed on the grid, the result was behaviour strikingly similar to that of social insects." I've seen some nice patters, but I wasn't able to recognice any `social behaviour'. This is why I'm looking for a more detailed description of these electronic beeing.
• The following message is a courtesy copy of an article that has been posted as well.

  In article <4lp2ck$km6@newsbf02.news.aol.com> clarksterh@aol.com
  (ClarksterH) writes:
  > Does anyone know where I can get the Tierran source code?
  

  Try the Tierra homepage, http://www.hip.atr.co.jp/~ray/tierra/tierra.html or the ``software'' link on the Santa Fe Institute ``A-life online'' page: http://alife.santafe.edu/network/www.html (A *GREAT* site --- but it gets =WAY= too much traffic !!! :-T)

• >Please where i can get some new informations about Larry Yaeger's
  >PolyWorld project. If you know some ftp or web places where i can get
  >recent informations, please let me know!
  

  You can find out about PolyWorld at: http://alife.santafe.edu/alife/software/polyworld.html
• My Web archive of alife software for Macintosh features a new program:
  Alexander Kasprzyk's implementation for Macintosh of a rule-set invented by Christopher Langton, for governing the motion of a small entity. The rule set is very simple but the resultant behavior is quite complex. URL address: http://www.bdt.com:80/home/brianhill/elsewhere.html
• Alife Online, at http://alife.santafe.edu/, has now been upgraded and is almost fully functional again. It has also received a facelift, so please take a look and let us know what you think. We are always keen to receive submissions for the site, of either software, articles, or relevant web links.

• >Hi there,
  >Can anyone please advise me what kind of books there are for a
  >beginner to read about Alife and related topics... ?
  

  • A good place to start is the general-audience ("non-technical") book "Artificial Life: Quest for a New Creation" by Steven Levy, see: http://mosaic.echonyc.com/~steven/alife.html
  • In addition to Levy, if you're interested in evolution in general, I would definitely read
    • * "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" by Daniel Dennett .
    • * "Virus of the Mind" by Richard Brodie.
  • Although many will say "Artificial Life" by Stephen Levy, i think the book has some problems. Perhpas you should try "The Garden in the Machine" by Claude Emmeche, the first 2 AL conference proceedings, and (for a simple start) the SAMS publishing book "Artificial Life" by Prata.
  • The most obvious title is _Artificial_Life_ by Steven Levy. A broad overview that's really easy to read with a couple of attractive pictures. Then I would reccomend _Out_of_Control_ by Kevin Kelly, which is less of an overview and more specific to emergent-behavior but discusses everything. Lastly, I would seriously put the FAQ for this group and comp.ai.genetic on the list. It's pretty good too.
• I have given Nova Genetica an extensive facelift; its new address is: http://www.aracnet.com/~wwir/NovaGenetica
  Please stop by for a visit.
• HTTP://WWW.CS.UMBC.EDU/agentnews/96/06/ is the URL for volume 1 number 6 of the AgentNews webletter (May 11, 1996).

  The monthly AgentNews webletter is composed from new items on the UMBC agentWeb http://www.cs.umbc.edu/agents, a collection of information about agent-oriented ideas, theory, technologies and applications as well as related topics such as knowledge sharing, intelligent information systems, and information retrieval.

  Each AgentNews issue will exist as a web page but you can get it via email in one of three forms -- ascii, html or url. The default is to receive each copy as ascii text (i.e., not marked up with HTML) with the URLs for the major links represented textually. The URL to the original source will always be listed just after the date at the top of each issue so if your mail client is web-aware, you can easily access it. If you prefer, you can get each issue as the full HTML source or as just a URL pointing to the source.

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• >I remember an animation of an artificial world, with basic creatures,
  >wich goals were moving/moving faster than other/...etc
  >does anybody remember sth like that (I know, it's very fuzzy, sorry...)
  Perhaps Karl Sims' virtual creatures:
  
  ftp://think.com/users/karl/Welcome.html