Generative Art with Swarm Landscapes.

We present a generative swarm art project that creates 3D animations by running a Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm over synthetic landscapes produced by an objective function. Different kinds of functions are explored, including mathematical expressions, Perlin noise-based terrain, and several image-based procedures. A method for displaying the particle swarm exploring the search space in aesthetically pleasing ways is described. Several experiments are detailed and analyzed and a number of interesting visual artifacts are highlighted.

Steady state particle swarm.

This paper investigates the performance and scalability of a new update strategy for the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm. The strategy is inspired by the Bak-Sneppen model of co-evolution between interacting species, which is basically a network of fitness values (representing species) that change over time according to a simple rule: the least fit species and its neighbors are iteratively replaced with random values. Following these guidelines, a steady state and dynamic update strategy for PSO algorithms is proposed: only the least fit particle and its neighbors are updated and evaluated in each time-step; the remaining particles maintain the same position and fitness, unless they meet the update criterion. The steady state PSO was tested on a set of unimodal, multimodal, noisy and rotated benchmark functions, significantly improving the quality of results and convergence speed of the standard PSOs and more sophisticated PSOs with dynamic parameters and neighborhood. A sensitivity analysis of the parameters confirms the performance enhancement with different parameter settings and scalability tests show that the algorithm behavior is consistent throughout a substantial range of solution vector dimensions.

KANTS: a stigmergic ant algorithm for cluster analysis and swarm art.

KANTS is a swarm intelligence clustering algorithm inspired by the behavior of social insects. It uses stigmergy as a strategy for clustering large datasets and, as a result, displays a typical behavior of complex systems: self-organization and global patterns emerging from the local interaction of simple units. This paper introduces a simplified version of KANTS and describes recent experiments with the algorithm in the context of a contemporary artistic and scientific trend called swarm art, a type of generative art in which swarm intelligence systems are used to create artwork or ornamental objects. KANTS is used here for generating color drawings from the input data that represent real-world phenomena, such as electroencephalogram sleep data. However, the main proposal of this paper is an art project based on well-known abstract paintings, from which the chromatic values are extracted and used as input. Colors and shapes are therefore reorganized by KANTS, which generates its own interpretation of the original artworks. The project won the 2012 Evolutionary Art, Design, and Creativity Competition.