Pfeiffer - A Distributed Open-ended Evolutionary System

Abstract

Pfeiffer contains a population of fractals which has been evolving continuously for more than three years. The animations are developed from embryos using a Lindenmayer grammar (L-System). These open generative representations potentially allow gene duplication and the evolution of higher order genetic operators and might be a step towards the emergence of social intelligence in swarms of artificial life (alife) agents. The fitness function is simply do the snowflake patterns appeal to the users: interactive evolution (IEC). To this end, images are placed in animated snow globes (computerised snowstorms) by world wide web (www) browsers (Netscape, Mozilla, Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc.) anywhere on the planet. More than 600 people have used http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/W.Langdon/pfeiffer.html