Organisms

30th September, 2006

As I slowly churn through the insane coding side of this task, mentally trying to organise it into a workable system, I begin to think about whether our initial visual concept for the organism project is really the most appropriate. After all, what we are doing is enforcing our own preconceptions and reality on what should be a brand new lifeform with the ability to grow into its own shape and structure. Of course, in theory if our ‘flowers’ are broken down into enough building blocks, and a reasonable system of natural selection is created, then the organism should have enough freedom to take its own form.

Weird plants with petals growing from the roots perhaps? Must discuss this with Rob.

As it is now progressing, a new plant within our environment has an approximate lifespan of 400 seconds in which to develop, attract our bees which will have their own rules as to what type of organism they find attractive (but ultimately I foresee a symbiotic relationship where the bees are attracted more to what is available rather than a fixed ideal set by us) and eventually expire. The bee population will be determined by the number of flowers and the flowers and the survival of their set of ‘genetic’ attributes will rely on the bees to pollinate them.

Thought for the Organism Project (idat204)

28th September, 2006

Here begins the Organism Project, and following Chris Speed’s not-so-subtle hinting, its appropriate for me to start blogging about this project in an appropriate place. The general idea is to create a simulation of a living organism that can be distributed to an end user’s computer, so naturally the development environment of choice is going to be Macromedia Flash deployed in a web browser.

About the project

I will be working with Rob Gregory on this project.

To see the progress we’re making, you can view it being developed here: http://www.srjm.co.uk/portfolio/idat204/organism/

Research

Areas of research now include fibonacci in nature, the golden rule, average temperatures and optimal growing conditions for plants. I hope to be able to use Actionscript to simulate some of these phenomenon.

Back to i-Dat

25th September, 2006

Some scary stuff has been revealed in the introductory seminar welcoming us back to the course, namely the fact that the first year will have appeared easy in comparison to the second.

That and a lot faster pace.

And the lecturers won’t really be all that bothered with us or our work since we’re not in the first or final year. Additionally, they had some students come in from finishing the second year to fervently substantiate all of this. Sounds absolutely smashing.

Also, my Bamboo Landart Sculpture based on the works of Andy Goldsworthy has survived yet more terrible weather in the form of the heavy winds created by the dying hurricane Gordon. A few more months to go and it will become a year old! Hopefully we here in the Southwest will get some reasonable snow for once (not dartmoor though, they certainly get their unfair share) and I can take some interesting snowy photos…