Project Diaspora
I'm fascinated by the growing capability of computers. As we learn more about the human mind it might become possible to simulate cognition in a machine.
I don't think these simulated minds would like to live in a hollow virtual environment. You may have seen examples of digital 3D graphics going wrong as the camera viewpoit moves through a polygon because there is nothing really there.
Project Diaspora was just a simple program that I made where virtual trees grow in 'nourishing' virtual rain. However, each pixel is an active component and follows rules that define how it changes over time. The pixels are crude approximations of atoms but perhaps one day we will be able to simulate environments complex enough to support a virtual mind.
I made a few versions of the program that change the way the trees grow. Descriptions of the rules are in each video. Their shapes depend on several environmental factors a bit like real evolution. It is feasibly possible to make more complex organisms capable of running on existing computers. Perhaps in the not too distant future a swarm of computers might use distributed programming to run a whole virtual ecosystem.
The main youtube chanel can be found here.
