Photodynamic Art Generator V2 (2022)

This book describes a ten-year research project that explores the lives of artificial agents living in a  simulated world of a drawing generator. The book describes the inner workings of an art installation  exhibited in Toronto and shows how the places we occupy can fulfill particular needs and create unique visual experiences.

The artificial life project is a simulation showing the spectrum of ways we strategize our actions and commit to behaviours that will provide us with basic human needs. The book is a sociocultural anthropological study of the entities’ residing in this world and shows how their “culture” affects the experience of the individual entities and communities, revealing a more complete understanding of their knowledge, behavioural customs, and ideologies. The images show the perspectives of these entities and their experience of living in an allegorical space about the struggles and accomplishments of being creative.

Unlike current Artificial life algorithms which are based on finding one right answer, this book shows a process of coding diversity and individualism into an artificial life system to create drawings that are about an emotional gesture to express an experience collectively. The work is also about the importance of accountability, to see an entity as a character of consequence who is an individual that contributed to something meaningful, rather than an anonymous bit never credited for the contributions it made.