Metacreation: art and artificial life Whitelaw M. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2004. 281 pp. Type: Book Reviews: 1 By: General (I.2.0), Design, Theory, Algorithms In this book, Whitelaw discusses the metacreation of art using the paradigms of artificial life. The monograph succeeds in providing both a bird’s eye view and a critical evaluation of the important works in the field, and the conceptual and discursive structures that surround it. I enjoyed reading this book. Even though the text is relatively short, it is well presented, with inspiring art illustrations and several online references. The book will be a treasure chest for artists who are eager to use modern technologies. Academics and students in the arts will find this book very motivational and informative. Artificial life is an interdisciplinary scientific field, concerned with the creation and study of artificial systems that mimic the properties of living systems through complex algorithms. Artificial life paradigms include genetic algorithms, swarm intelligence, agent-based systems, and cellular automata. It is interesting to note that new media arts provide a rich environment for the transformation and translation of the concepts and techniques of artificial life. This book presents a perfect blend of technology and application, one that will leave a lasting impression with readers. Various artists, most of whom were followers of the biological and computational sciences, started applying artificial life shortly after its inception in 1987. Earlier work demonstrated the viability, and some of the potential, of the conjunction of artificial life and art making. The formal analogy that draws a similarity between a work of art and a living organism is traceable to Plato and Aristotle, who used the body as a model of organization and coherence in discussions of rhetoric and drama. While some artificial life artworks were focused on exploring the progressive and futurist tendencies, and the cultural discourses, that the practice has inspired, others approached the process critically, questioning the assumptions that underpin its techniques. Still others draw on the technical resources of artificial life, but alter or reengineer them to serve particular aesthetic and conceptual concerns. This book is made up of seven chapters. The introductory chapter explains the key paradigms of artificial life, and the different art forms. Chapters 2 through 5 address four different artificial life art practices, based on its most prominent techniques and tendencies. Chapter 2 presents the first of these, “Breeders,” which addresses the processes of artificial evolution. The second practice, “Cybernatures,” is illustrated in chapter 3. Cybernatures are, basically, interactive computational systems that mimic the tangled interrelations of organic life. Chapter 4 discusses hardware, and focuses on physical manifestations, as well as interactive robotic systems. This is followed by a discussion of abstract machines, in chapter 5. The concept of abstract machines is based on the fact that the life in artificial life recedes momentarily, in works in which the analogy implicit in these techniques is less important than the formal, generative properties. Some of the theoretical aspects of artificial life practice are presented in chapter 6, in which artists and critics set out a range of aspirations, explanations, manifestos, proposals, and critiques. This chapter also explains a variety of ways in which artificial life art is being defined, justified, contextualized, and interrogated, and the range of conceptual projects it contains. Chapter 7 concentrates on an elusive concept, emergence, which is at the core of both artificial life science and artificial life art practice. In emergence, complex systems seem to acquire new properties due to the interactions of inert matter at the micro level, giving rise to life at the macro level. The author not only explains the concept of emergence, but also investigates its provenance and history, the claims of its manifestations in artificial life and artificial life art, and the forces and structures that act to limit and condition its operation. The book ends with an appendix, which lists a number of categorized online resources. Whitelaw hopes that the ideas provided in the book will serve as starting points for the modeling of wider complex systems; the aspirations derived from them must extend outward to interact with ongoing cultural dynamics, especially in the case where the subject matter is itself in flux. Artificial life is still an evolving paradigm, with many research efforts going on around the globe. It is to be noted that only a subset of the available techniques are used for art creation. From a scientist’s point of view, this book is shallow, since it fails to provide much technical detail. From the presentation style, it is clear that the author has targeted artists and arts admirers as the primary readers of the book. Review #: CR129834 Review by: Ajith Abraham Copyright © 2000-2004 Reviews.com