Comunicazione orale all’interno del minisimposio Applicazioni della Matematica all’Industria Culturale
Storytelling: creating artificial worlds using mathematical models Storytelling: creazione di mondi artificiali usando modelli matematici Pier Augusto Bertacchini, Marcella Lorenzi Adriano Talarico Dipartimento di Lingustica Universit´a della Calabria Via Bucci, cubo 17/b 87036 Arcavacata di Rende (CS) pa.bertacchini/
[email protected]
Abstract Mathematical models have been offering to artists, during the last years, new methods and instuments to generate artistical and creative forms, ways of creating artificial worlds through which new experimentations can be carried out and cultural products of high expressiveness can be created. ESG group creates images, sounds and videos using mathematical models related to complexity, chaos and artificial life, among the others. A short video will be presented, as an example of storytelling, in which characters, landscapes and other objects realized using one and two-dimensional cellular automata are used in creative ways in order to develop a story. The evolution of a robot will lead to the exploration of mathematics in artificial worlds. Introduction The mathematical models related to complexity, chaos and artificial life offer to artists and researchers new ways of creating cultural products of high expressiveness. In this framework Evolutionary System Group (ESG) realizes theoretical and applied researches in order to find efficient methods to transform mathematical models into artificial worlds. Continuous and discrete dynamical systems have been used to realize representations of different types, through various coding systems [3], [4]. A report on the artistical activities of the group is in [1]. In this work an example of storytelling in artificial worlds will be presented. The video represents the evolution of a robot and the exploration of artificial worlds whose characters, landscapes and music are made with different configurations of one- and two-dimensional cellular automata. The narrative model of the agent’s travel becomes a way 1
of understanding his personal development with respect to that universe [6]. Some potentialities of the self-reproducers have been investigated through the realization of artificial worlds and animals [1]. The animals of the video have been constructed assembling different structures of fractal solids. Characters Robot. It is the protagonist agent of the video, that presents a very simple anthropomorhic structure (Figure 1[a]). There are also three clones, each characterized by the different color of his eyes and heart. Snake. It lives in the yellow desert planet, and it is made by three segments of a part of a cellular automata, whose color has been modified according to the context (Figure 1[b]). Fish. It represents the fauna of the blue underwater planet and it is formed by several copies of a two-dimensional cellular automata (Figure 1[c]). Butterfly. It appears in the green forest planet and it is made by parts of three different cellular automata: a glider (body), two fractal solids (wings) and another glider (antennas) (Figure 1[d]).
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Figure 1: Characters:[a] Robot, [b] snake, [c] fish, [d] butterfly Artificial worlds Deep Space. It is constituted by three-dimensional geometrical structures, represented by two-dimensional cellular automata in their spatio-temporal development (fractal solids). Planets. There are three settings: the desert, the underwater world and the forest. The pyramid structures are made by one-dimesional cellular automata and fractal solids, the vegetation only by one-dimesional ones (Fig. 2).
Figure 2: Planets
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Mathematical models Cellular automata are mathematical models we have used to realize the components of the story. In a recent work [2] it has been demonstrated that many self-reproducers emerge in two-dimensional cellular automata called k-totalistic. From the spatio-temporal representation of their evolution some artistically relevant figures emerge. Sound track The music in the sound track derives from the evolution of one-dimensional cellular automata, except from the second part, in which the piece Drops, produced musifying a mathematical structure generated through two-dimensional cellular automata, has been used. Screenplay The video is composed of twenty-two sequences divided into eight scenes, for which an appropriated musical sequence has been chosen. Using a storyboard we have designed the following scenes. Scene 1: the robot is in a scenario made by grey walls and floor, in a quiet state. At the same moment the music starts, he begins to move. At the end of the scene the wall behind him is cracked. Scene 2: the robot makes a kind of dance, spinning in the deep space. In the background there are some structures made by two-dimensional cellular automata of different colors, anticipating the meeting of the robot with his clones. Scene 3: its a one shot scene, that bridges the second to the fourth one. Time seems to stop, the robot stands motionless in the space. Scene 4: the three clones appear, the music track is slow and monotonous. The robots float into the void, each near its relative world, in fetal position. The scene ends with their fusion. Scenes 5-7: after the robots joined, their essence is revealed: so the relative settings (desert, underwater and forest) are shown. The music, till now simple, since produced by one-dimensional cellular automata, is now richer, since obtained by the musification of two-dimensional cellular automata. At the end a butterfly in the foreground flies guiding the audience into a pyramid. Scene 8: a tracking shot leads to a big room in the center of the pyramid. In the middle there is a metal cube, that opens showing the same room from which the robot started his journey. He reappears after a bolt, in the same conditions of the initial scene. The video ends in this way, its narrative structure is circular. Further developments foresee the realization of smart interactive agents start3
ing from these characters [7]. REFERENCES 1. P.A. Bertacchini, E. Bilotta, P. Pantano, E. Di Bianco, D. Fiorelli, A. Gabriele, S. Gervasi, M. Lorenzi, F. Sposato and S.Vena, Report sulle attivit`a artistiche dell’Evolutionary Systems Group, I Workshop Italiano di Vita Artificiale, 2003, Arcavacata di Rende (CS) 2. E. Bilotta, A. Lafusa and P. Pantano, Is self-replication an embedded characteristic of artificial/living matter?, Artificial Life VIII, R.K. Standish, M.A. Bedau, H.A. Abbass (eds.), MIT Press, Cambridge, 2002, 38–48. 3. E. Bilotta and P. Pantano, Artificial Life Music Tells Complexity, Proceedings of Artificial Life Models for Musical Applications (ECAL 2001 Workshop), 2001, 17–28. 4. E. Bilotta and P. Pantano, Self-reproducers use contrapuntal means, Artificial Life VIII Workshops, University of New South Wales, Australia, 2002, 3–8. 5. E. Bilotta, P. Pantano and V. Talarico, Evolutionary music and Fitness Function, Progress in Industrial Mathematics at ECMI 2000, A.M. Anile, V. Capasso, A. Greco (eds.), Springer, 2002, 126–139. 6. J. Cassell and J. Smith, The Victorian Laptop: Narrative Engagement through Place and Time. Proceedings of the AAAI 1999 Fall Symposium on Narrative Intelligence, November 5-7, North Falmouth, MA, 1999, 72–77. 7. B. Hayes-Roth, An architecture for adaptive intelligent systems, Artificial Intelligence, 1995, 72, 329–365.
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