I've taken a long hiatus from blogging recently, but luckily I've collected a lot of biological goodies to post over the next few weeks. First up is Mutating Pictures.
Mutating Pictures is attempting to genetically evolve a group of shapes into the form of a face. On the main page, a simple graphic is displayed like the one above. The visitor to the website is asked to rank the image on a scale of one to ten for "faceness." At any one time 1000 faces are in a pool that randomly appear on the mainpage. The most highly rated "faces" are then mated to create the next generation. Overtime you can actually see the random shapes evolve into somewhat face-like projections. [Edit: the website now randomly picks an animal, body, or face for you to rate.]
It's very cool to see just how powerful artificial selection can be: from fruits and vegetables to livestock and pets to computer-generated faces and bodies. It's also interesting to note that the author has switched projects several times: faces to animals to bodies, and yet the final products do not look exactly like the desired form. I'm guessing that the author switched because the the images reached their peak fitness, i.e. they could no longer evolve in the given environment due to some programming constraint. It would be interesting to see if the author can change the code to optimize for selection and variability.
So check out the website and see if you can't help apply some selective pressure, you Darwinian Dogs, you.
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