The Electric Sheep Software Artwork

The Electric Sheep is an infinite animation created by the collective intelligence of 450,000 computers and people. It is an artificial life-form based on a combination of mathematics, genetic algorithms, crowdsource, and open source. This talk will review the mechanism and purpose of the Electric Sheep project, as well as its history and related software artworks by Scott Draves. Along the way we will address questions such as: Can a finite program produce an infinite artwork? Can computers be truly creative, or do they merely recombine what is fed to them? What is the essence of life, and can it be reproduced in digital form? What is the relationship between man and machine?

Speaker Details

Scott Draves is a pioneering software artist and computer scientist. His work has been shown at LACMA, MoMA.org, Prix Ars Electronica, ZKM, Art Futura, and the Emoção Art.ficial Bienial. His work is in collections world-wide including the 21c Museum Hotel, MQS Capital, the Simons Center for Geometry and Physics, and MEIAC. Clients range from Skrillex to the Adler Planetarium. Electric Sheep apps are available for iPad and Android, and Draves still performs live as a VJ. In 1990 he received a BS in Mathematics from Brown University and in 1997 a PhD from the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University for a thesis on metaprogramming for media processing. He has worked for Transmeta, PDI/DreamWorks, FastForward Networks (Inktomi), Google, and Two Sigma Investments.

Date:
Speakers:
Scott Draves
Affiliation:
Two Sigma Investments
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Series: Microsoft Research Talks