Conscious Machine (photodynamic Art Generator V1) (2016)

Photo credit: Jessica Field

This Artificial Life project is a collective of agents that live in the competitive environment of genetic algorithms. Genetic algorithms are will only allow parents who have guessed the best text result to a target sentence the right to have children. All other parents are denied procreation rights and to save computer memory space, all parents are deleted and overwritten by their children replacements. This allows the program to find the right answer as fast as possible. 

Each agent does get to keep the legacy of their emotional experience which they pass down to their children so the work looks at how generational loops can make certain behaviour choices better suited to this kind of environment. The behaviours of bullying, pathos, lost, and being obsessive thrive in the environment, while behaviours like dancing, having faith and seeking out possibilities did not. 

The winning agent would then pick an artwork from the Station Gallery in Whitby’s permanent collection to be curated in the show. This Art selection would happen weekly where the curator of the gallery would hang a new work from the collection as the project evolved. This program allowed paintings that were rarely shown to be seen due to having a new criteria in what works to pick for exhibition.