Chapter 6 – Preserving Artificial Life

The beginning of this chapter relates the creation of computer generated organisms that
exhibit lifelike behavior and semi-living entities in Petri dishes. Tom Ray, a zoologist, actually
wrote little pieces of code and released them onto his hard drive to reproduce, in such a way a
one celled organism would. His findings are quite eerie in the fact that his code takes on the
activity of a living thing. Semi-living work is also discussed, with such artists mentioned like
Steve Potter, William Latham, and Kari Simms. All of who have work that have opened my eyes
to this interesting form of art. Considering that it is art, breaks away from convention that
typically defines art by medium. Problems of recognition, problems of perseverance, and modes
of perseverance are also discussed in this chapter.
The passion of these artists is quite inspiring. While working on pieces far beyond my
comprehension, they are able to write and discuss them in a way that museum curators and
others will understand, just to be recognized for their work. Although artificial life is something
I’m not at all familiar with, it is something to be appreciated because of the intelligence these
mentioned artists posses. Philip Galanter steps a little further outside the conventional forms of
artistic expression. I really liked his work entitled 100 Random Chromosomes which displays the
images that result from various recombinations of a predetermined number of pictoral ‘genes’.
His work is so inviting and energetic it makes you want to look at it. This revolutionary process
is what I found to be really compelling.