{"id":996,"date":"2022-02-16T02:11:07","date_gmt":"2022-02-16T07:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.ideate.cmu.edu\/60-212\/s2022\/?page_id=996"},"modified":"2022-02-19T20:28:20","modified_gmt":"2022-02-20T01:28:20","slug":"4-monster","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/courses.ideate.cmu.edu\/60-212\/s2022\/deliverables\/4-monster\/","title":{"rendered":"#4: Monster"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Your job, Dr. Frankenstein, is to create new life. Your project might be a sensate creature, a dynamic flock or swarm, an artificial cell-culture, or an ecosystem. Your software should algorithmically generate the appearance and behavior of your new life form. Will it\/they be able to sleep, reproduce, die, or eat one another?\u00a0 Your creature may benefit from inhabiting an ecosystem or environment with abiotic elements that present additional constraints or opportunities. If there is more than one, consider the relationships between the individuals in your species and how you might support this with a corresponding interplay of simulated forces such as attraction or avoidance. Give consideration to the potential for your creature to operate as a cultural artifact<\/em>. Can it attain special relevance through metaphor, or commentary, or by addressing a real human need or interest?<\/p>\n

As the myths of Pygmalion, Golem, and Frankenstein show, the god-like desire to create artificial life persists throughout our folklore. This impulse also underlies the history of robotics, where gestures are mechanically automated in the Karakuri of Japan and in the early automata of Europe, like Turriano\u2019s \u201cPraying Monk\u201d (c. 1560) or de Vaucanson\u2019s \u201cDefecating Duck\u201d (1738). With computers, software simulations of life systems allow behaviors and interactions to be programmed and scaled across massive multiagent systems. Many of these systems exhibit emergence, where self-regulation, apparent intelligence, and coordinated behaviors arise from simple rules followed by many actors.<\/p>\n

Whether the medium is hardware or software, the goal of is to create the impression that an engineered system is alive. Unlike the work of \u201ccharacter design,\u201d where the creator’s focus is often on visual appearance, this assignment is concerned with the construction of a creature with responsive, dynamic behaviors that are contingent on environmental interactions.<\/strong><\/p>\n

A creature without a context is boring\u2014with nothing to do, and no one to do it to. Stories happen, character is perceived, meanings are made when an agent operates on or within an environment that likewise acts on it. By placing a creature into feedback with external forces or subjects, and especially with the actions of an interacting user, we can create companions that stave off loneliness or appear to have feelings, virtual pets like the Tamagotchi that evoke empathy through their fragility, or sublime simulated ecosystems that evolve in surprising ways.<\/p>\n

\n

Project: A Virtual Creature<\/h3>\n

In OpenProcessing (#26), create an interactive virtual creature. Your creature is due at the beginning of class on Wednesday, February 23. There are three constraints:<\/strong><\/p>\n