“You have never in your life experienced true personal equilibrium, for if you had, your life would be over. Equilibrium is deathly; nothing happens there. Equilibrium for the universe means Clausius’s heat death, a cosmos rendered totally homogeneous. Scientists care about equilibrium states, but to the rest of our world they are anathema. All life exists out of equilibrium …”

Shapes, Philip Ball, 2009

4 bit dance, W:Blut, 2010

Complexity, evolution, homeostasis … If I had to pick the three things that intrigue me the most, these would be the ones. I’m rather fond of them, and protective. It’s time to rant about misuse, abuse and curious lack-of-use.

Complexity needs no introduction. Any open-minded math or science course finds some room for esthetic and pseudo-philosophical ramblings on the damn thing. I guess it’s safe to say that complexity and its bastard child emergence have, more than any other idea, attracted flies looking for a trendy, post-modern justification of furry thinking. Well, at least former runner-ups quantum physics and chaos theory can get a rest from harassment by quacks and get back to creating interesting t-shirts.

For the record, I don’t believe in emergence in simple systems. Agreed, the unpredictable patterns created by Langton’s Ant are interesting but the only way to explain them is by running through the simple steps of the algorithm. There’s no higher level of explanation, nothing beyond the blind following of the rules, no meta system. I wouldn’t call that emergence. A real-life ant-hill is another bucket of invertebrates, the many complex interactions between the ants result in an entity that can almost be explained as a single organism, mrs. Hill. Even without knowledge of the algorithm, pheromones mostly, we can sensibly predict the behavior of an ant-hill. Getting swarmed and bitten in the unmentionables, now that’s what I call emergence! And the human ant-hill, we’re probably up five meta’s (ask any sociologist to explain the behavior of a mob by electromagnetic interactions). As a plus, swarming and unmentionable biting are far less common…

Nevertheless, complexity in its simplest form, small piecewise algorithms building complex forms, is a valuable paradigm of generative art. There’s something satisfying in creating a set of rules and the beautiful images that sprout from them. The question whether art in generative art refers to the code, or to the results of the code, is a fun one to discuss in mixed company. However further depth cannot be found in fast-and-cheap emergence. As in any art, meaning and significance are to be found in the artist and her intentions. I for one keep to constructs, devoid of meaning. Yep, I’m shallow.

Richard Dawkins refers to Darwin’s idea of evolution as an eye-opener, an idea so profound it changes the way you look at the entire world. I know it did for me. The idea itself is remarkably simple: any replicating system will favor the replicator that euh, replicates the most succesfully. I guess it’s more catchy if it involves a gazillion species of Galapagos finches… It resonates with generative creation, imagery beyond the control of the coder. A system that evolves will suit itself to purpose and circumstance in ways a designer could never imagine. Not only will the system work but it’ll keep working after some parts are removed, at least up to a certain level. It will adapt to changing requirements. If properly cared for, it will wag its posterior appendage and shed fur all over your furniture.

Yet, despite genetic algorithms and their like, human endeavor has only scratched the surface. Not only does evolution shape organisms, it shapes the environment around them. That’s another meta… The closest I’ve seen art approach this level is in interactive installations. These change the behavior of the people around them, at least very locally, and in turn they affect the installation. So, if you’ve ever build one of these, I guess you’re entitled to a bit of smugness. Good for you!

I encountered the concept of homeostasis only late in my academic pursuits. The ability of a living organism to maintain a stable, constant condition was the skeleton onto which my professor physiology built a clear picture of our inner workings (most of them rather yucky). Instead of a random collection of biochemical systems, the body suddenly made sense. The sheer elegance of the various systems that balance each other is an eye-opener of the same magnitude as Darwin’s idea. In fact, one could claim that homeostasis is a direct consequence of evolution, as any organism that can’t maintain its own condition is … doomed. And damnation tends to hamper procreation.

<sidetrack> Why hasn’t anyone written a general audience book on physiology? I mean, cosmology, check, evolution, check, pi, check, our own bodies, not a sausage. Com’on funky scientist/surfer charismatic dudes out there, there’s a goldmine of wonders in there, get writing… (I accept Amazon gift certificates). </sidetrack>

<sidetrack> The university I went to made religion, psychology and philosophy a mandatory part of every curriculum. At this stage I’m wondering if it wouldn’t be a good idea to add some modern biology and physiology. And something arty as well, if you insist. </sidetrack>

I’m not really plugged in into any scene, but so far I haven’t heard of homeostasis as a concept in modern design culture. As a buzzword it definitely has potential. A hint of biomimicry, a hint of complexity, a tad of evolution, touches of dynamism and intelligence. A post-modernist delight. I wish I had an academic career to spend exploring homeostatic structures. Buildings dynamically and intelligently, sorry, redistributing stress after some part fails (i.e. a floor drops out). Heating/cooling systems adapting to supply and demand, not just any plain-old adapting, no, homeostatic adapting! Traffic mimicing blood flow, self-regulating its pressure (and viciously attacking annoyances as-per-spec). Bookshelves changing shape!!! I could even get some eco in there. Now that would be a very lucrative book, the ecohomeostatic design paradigm. Pity, I have no time to write it.

From my very first steps with processing I’ve always been fascinated by the division of space, volumes and surfaces. In retrospect, many constructs can be seen as explorations of this theme. To my delight, a lot of the concepts I dabbled with in ignorance are actively explored in the field of algorithmic architecture, or to use a term coined by Kostas Terzidis, algotecture. On a whim, I bought a pamflet by Benjamin Aranda & Chris Lasch, Tooling. It was like lifting a pebble and finding a mountain.

I had this feeling only once before. When we moved to another house at age 10, I discovered an abandoned chemistry set in the garage. I happily wasted hours with the strange materials inside and as a highlight created a purple frothing expanse of foam staining the skin a sickly brown for days after. Surprisingly many random combinations resulted in malodorous vapors of amazing variety to delight family and neighbors. Fortunately I ran out of chemicals before I ran out of ideas. With their usual unyielding common sense my parents declined to restock the various vials and powders. My chemical days over, I resumed my favorite passtime, sitting in the middle of a big pile of Lego making ping-ping noises.(Much like a meteorite cooling in its impact crater after a superheated entry).

Anyway, yes, Processing, exactly… Years after my short stint in chemical horseplay, I was astonished to discover that chemistry was not merely a toy, it was a science, an industry, a possible lifetime devotion. It is a path I never followed, I went into physics instead.

Processing is my second chemistry set. With its low threshold it helps me imagine mathematical and geometrical whatifs. What if I take a cube and cut it up in smaller cubes, and do it again and again? What if I repeatedly divide a surface? What if… We play endlessly on the crowded beach of complexity, self-similarity and other fashionable concepts. The sandcastles we build are but tiny, pale reflections of the glass, concrete and steel mastodonts on the horizon.

I have fun building my sandcastles but realize all too well it’s just play. Complexity is easy and interesting but rarely usable. And nowhere is this more evident than in modern, parametric/algorithmic architecture. A design concept is one thing, getting a viable building out of it is evidently something else altogether. Somewhat ironically I feel, this is referred to as the problem of simplexity, in this context the reduction of an aesthetically pleasing form to a structural model. E.g. the random subdivision of cubes as explored in the early D5LV results in a self-similar swarm-like collection of boxes. However, these boxes often intersect, float freely, have no easily extractable relation to each other. Translating this into something real, like trying to get a STL out of it, would require extensive work, far more than the original piece. Complexity attracts all the attention, with spectacular imagery, huge promises and boastful lines. In the background simplexity quietly toils away, its achievements wrongly attributed to its loud brother.

In a way, there’s a danger inherent to Processing and the generative concepts it so readily allows access to: we might come to believe that it’s easy. Judging from questions I get, many already believe this. From absurdly complex projects to hundredfold increases in scale, the easy questions are often impossible to answer. (The hard questions are often quite easy.) I see similarities with the profileration of CGI industrial design models on the internet. Whole blogs thrive on pretty images of impossible to realize but beautiful concepts, reducing design to illustration.

Anyway, enough with the ramblings, I’ve got two small constructs, somewhat related to this post. My current fascination with the more practical side of generative algorithms leads me to rethink much of my past constructs. The aforementioned cube subdivision is fun but lacks a clear relationship between its elements, beyond the obvious self-similarity. Using my mesh code-in-progress, I sought an iterative subdivision algorithm that wouldn’t suffer from this kind of dissociative behavior. The end result should be interestingly complex but still be a single connected solid without selfintersection. I came up with two entries for this self-contest (actually three but I’m keeping the 3D Voronoi fractal for a bit later). They’re conceptually very simple so don’t expect anything revolutionary (or new), click on the images to go to the applet:

cut & twist, W:Blut, 2009

cut & slide, W:Blut, 2009

iSAW, hyper densification of Warsaw, Kokkugia, 2007

Rules of Six, Aranda/Lasch, 2008