Metacreation:
Art and Artificial Life
by Mitchell Whitelaw
The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2004
296 pp., illus. 34 b/w. Trade, $32.95
ISBN: 0-262-23234-0.
Reviewed by Pia Tikka
Researcher in University of Art and Design
Hämeentie 135 C, 00560 Helsinki,
Finland
Pia.Tikka@uiah.fi
Mitchell Whitelaw has provided a fresh
and easy-to-approach overview on the artificial
life, or a-life, as an interdisciplinary
meeting point for both scientists and
artists. Whitelaw creates a smoothly unfolding
path from the early a-life art experiments
in the 1980s to the very recent ones,
which mounts to a clear understanding
of the short history of a-life art practice.
The few carefully selected a-life artworks
help the unfamiliar reader to focus on
the essence instead of excess, while an
additional list of the related links allow
convenient online viewing of the artworks
in more detail.
Whitelaw develops background for critical
discussion on how both artists and scientists
share the a-life paradigm. The a-life
artists, in order to create the artificial
systems that mimic or manifest the properties
of living systems, adopt biological and
technical developments produced within
the scientific research field. Thus, a-life
artists also tend to adopt the overruling
conceptual and theoretical views of the
contemporary natural science. The artists
seem to assume, unquestioned, the life-creating
and life-preserving processes such as
evolution, genetic mutations, and reproduction.
In addition, the a-life artists use same
conceptual tools as scientists’,
such as computational genetic algorithms,
complex fitness landscapes, swarm intelligence,
agent-based systems, the Game of Life,
and cellular automata. Instead of offering
a detailed biotechnical textbook of these
tools, Whitelaw leads the reader towards
a deep understanding of the philosophical
and artistic goals of the artworks.
The underlying tone of the book ponders
how the a-life art as cultural practice
should formulate its critical and creative
approach to questions like what is definition
of life, or artificiality? A-life art
typically manipulates the available technology
with "misapplication and adaptation, rewiring
and hacking, pseudofunctionality and accident"
(5). Whitelaw describes four categories
of a-life art. The pioneering one is the
‘Breeders," which utilize
artificial evolution, mutations, and interbreeding
for generating aesthetic images and forms
(phenotypes) from the simple computational
algorithms (genotypes). In works characterized
as artificial ecosystems, or "Cybernatures,"
macro level life-like patterns emerge,
when artificial entities interact with
the real world phenomena. "Hardware"
introduces the robotic a-life art, where
emergence manifests itself in adaptive
affect-like behavior of embodied autonomous
agencies. "Abstract Machines" of
a-life art apply the analogues of e.g.
cellular automata in order to provoke
dynamic modular interaction, self-organization,
and other biomorphic phenomena.
In the latter part of the book the a-life
artists’ apparently uncritical acceptance
of the dominating epistemological science
paradigm is discussed (193-204). Whitelaw
presents some critical approaches, e.g.
Shanken, Penny, Hayles, or Helmreich,
revealing a-life science’s inherent
circularity. Also the a-life art is grounded
in cultural feedback loops that unquestioningly
harness predetermined structures of the
overruling cultural norms. The criticism
posits that in order to create fresh perspectives,
the a-life artists need to be aware of
the narrative structures of the social
and cultural production of scientific
meaning and the eventual implications
of the scientific knowledge (196).
The book’s highlight is Whitelaw’s
analyses on the phenomenon of "emergence",
as the a-life always seems to and is expected
to deliver something more than the sum
of the computational parts. According
to Whitelaw, the idea of the emergence
was introduced in the 19th
century, and was cultivated as an alternative
"to both mechanistic and vitalistic conceptions
of life" (210) in the first half of the
20th century. The discourse
faded away until it peaked again in the
1980s and 1990s, along with the developments
in complex systems and a-life science.
Practically all a-life artists use the
notion of emergence in order to describe
the life-like processes of their work
and for interpreting the appearance of
life-like behavior from non-life. As Whitelaw
notes, the notion of emergence often appeals
as "a form of antiexplanation, a vague
answer blocking off further investigation"
(208). Thus, this is the point where goals
of the a-life artists and scientists depart.
As the unexpected life-like behaviors
emerge spontaneously from the micro scale
interactions, the artist willingly becomes
an amazed witness of this auto creation
emerging from her own creative, but often
constrained, input. Whitelaw is convinced
that in this artistic process of creating
conditions for a-life, which he calls
metacreation, the dominant driving
force is the rewarding phenomenon of emergence.
Whitelaw’s personal voice is well
present throughout the book, adding to
a very enjoyable reading experience.
