Jack Armitage will be in Copenhagen, Denmark for ALIFE 2024 to present a paper from the lab. For full details about the conference, visit the ALIFE 2024 website.

Conference on Artificial Life 2024 (ALIFE2024) is being held in Copenhagen

Commingling Artificial Life and Interactive Machine Learning in Diffractive Artistic Research Practice

Jack Armitage, Victor Shepardson, Miguel Crozzoli and Thor Magnusson

Read the full paper: PDF.

Abstract

As research and artistic practices increasingly combine diverse techniques from across artificial intelligence, the integration of artificial life (ALife) and interactive machine learning (IML) represents an underexplored yet promising area. While seemingly disparate, both approaches have been popular with artists due to their potential for lightweight, real-time interaction with complex behaviours. This paper investigates the hybridisation of ALife and IML through diffractive artistic research practice. We developed an ALife-IML integration by combining two creative AI tools; Tölvera for ALife and Anguilla for IML. Focusing on two artistic works – Ex Silens, an immersive performance art piece, and Strengjavera, a generative installation – we report on how our co-creative exploration with this hybrid system led us to offering a new descriptor, Intra-Active Perturbations (IAP). The influence of ALife on the learner-teacher relationship common to IML-based workflows gave way to a dialogue of experimentally probing for artistically useful behaviours. We believe this approach has potential in experimental scientific practice, where real-time interaction is under-utilised.

Anguilla IML mapping visualised in Tölvera.