Welcome to the first episode of the What ALife! Podcast! In this episode, I speak with Hiroki Sayama - Professor in the Department of Systems Science and Industrial Engineering, and the Director of the Binghamton Center of Complex Systems (CoCo), at Binghamton University (USA) - about all things cellular automata (CA): what they are, where they came from, what they are useful for; as well as his own ground-breaking work in CA systems in the late 90s. We also talk about continuous CA, and what the future of CA might look like. 
We also discuss his more recent work modelling the spread of covid-19 and how artificial life researchers can help address complex societal problems, based on a ⁠short paper of the same name (https://direct.mit.edu/isal/proceedings/isal2021/33/21/102961)

Video of Evoloops in action (YouTube): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbpoTZlNTiw 
Follow Hiroki:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/HirokiSayama
Mastodon: https://mstdn.science/@hirokisayama
BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/hirokisayama.bsky.social

Follow Imy: 
Twitter: https://twitter.com/imy_tk
Get in touch! podcast@imytk.co.uk

Artwork credit: Gabriel J. Severino

Episode 01: Hiroki Sayama

Please enjoy “Incantation II,” the seventh piece from my new album “NetWorks 11: Unfamiliar Order.” 

NetWorks is a music-generating algorithm that seeks to tap into the ceaseless creativity, and organic coherence, found in nature through fine-tuning the connectivity of networks, which channels how information flows through them, and the rules that modify the information as it interacts via their nodes.

Constraints on the connections and interactions between the parts of systems are central to their coherence. Alicia Juarrero in her book, Context Changes Everything writes: “Coherence-making by constraints takes place in physical and biological complex systems small and large, from Bénard cells to human organizations and institutions, from family units to entire cultures. Entities and events in economic and ecosystems are defined by such covarying relations generated by enabling constraints.”

“Incantation II” consists of eight interacting voices. Voices can interact such that, for example, the depth of vibrato performed by one voice can influence the timbral characteristics and movement through 3D (ambisonic) space of a note played by another voice.

Headphone listening is recommended as the piece was mixed using ambisonic techniques.

Unfamiliar Order

Incantations II

Incantation II

Artificial Life

Josh Kaelen - Artificial Life - CC006

Josh Kaelen - Artificial Life (Original Mix) SC Edit

Composer, educator and interactive media artist and professional dedicated to creativity and multidisciplinary collaboration. Interested in constructionist approaches to new media education and how interactive technologies and complexity theory enhance and expand the creative process in the traditional arts, new media and game design.

Developed NetWorks, a body of musical work as well as an interactive music-generating algorithm based on scale-free networks. Developer of ~zomes, a sound synthesizer based on a-life models. 

Interest in metacreation dates back to Voices From The Edge of Chaos (1998), a CD of emergent, self–organizing computer music. Received a FACTOR international distribution grant and was subsequently awarded a residency at Lovebytes Labs in Sheffield, England (1999), to produce a piece for Digital Space CD and CD ROM of “innovative new work using digital sound and multimedia”.

Sello discográfico mexicano fundado en 2024. Nos especializamos en sonidos oscuros y envolventes, siempre diseñados para conquistar la pista de baile.

New tracks tagged #Artificial Life