| city halls by charles sandison .............................................................................................................................................................................................. | |||||||||||
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| charles sandison / city halls what is life? what separates lower forms of life from higher forms? biology measures the difference between complex and simple life forms by the behavioural characteristics exhibited by the organism. yet all forms of life share the same basic patterns of birth, death, and reproduction. how, as humans, can we separate ourselves from any other living organism? we claim superiority as a life form through our ability to solve complex problems. we are intelligent, we can think in non-linear ways, we are artistic, we are emphatic towards others and utilitarian by nature. science tells us we are a highly complex organism, that the neural activity within our brains works at a quantum level, that it is impossible to fully understand the human mind. we are, by our own definition, unique. scientists use computers to simulate the world to help them understand nature. I have written my own ‘artificial life’ software to simulate ‘human’ nature and behaviour. this installation uses data projectors and computers to fill a space with moving, living, and reproducing words. this work is changing and growing all the time. it is like a movie with no end other than the death of all the actors. the installation reacts to the architecture of the space, projected words can move around physical obstacles, using artificial intelligence. words react to each other when they hit, breeding new words or killing each other. words hunt and avoid each other. the population balance of the words is the same as in any other living system, depending on competition over food, space and mates. the ultimate outcome is something like a book that writes itself, a self-generating open narrative. although it is impossible to predict the outcome of the simulation the viewer can still recognise the struggle that happens around them. the words I have chosen for this work refer loosely to possible social interactions of living creatures. the way the words move and interact with each other is determined by the stereotype role the words refer to. males compete for food. immature males are avoided by females until they have eaten food. mature males chase females to reproduce. fathers replace used food. a deadly virus starts to spread when population levels get too high. everything is ageing and eventually becomes old and then dead. these simple rules coupled with varying degrees of random movement have the possibility to generate what seems like organised patterns of behaviour. perhaps the viewer will witness the emergence of an organised society within the work. charles sandison , 2001
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 'city halls' installation by charles sandison courtesy the artist     |
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