The computational world of Artificial Nature consists of organisms interacting within an environment, consuming flowing energy and matter to grow and survive, generating continuous patterns of emergent beauty. Spectators can explore this world freely and endlessly, and influence it indirectly just as they might play in a stream or forest. Sensory data collected through a camera-eye and microphone-ear, and sometimes tactile touch, become the environmental conditions to which organisms must adapt.

Artificial Nature is an infinite game. It invites you to play and create, as continuation rather than toward a termination. It actively fuses intuition, artistic expression, and personal awakening with knowledge of complex systems, thermodynamics, physical biology, and computer science. In this way, art, research, and play are integrated into one aesthetic and creative experience of infinite depth, inspiring the growth of the artwork, the spectators, and the artists in a symbiotic circle.

Artificial Nature is proposed as ‘art-as-it-could-be’, suggesting the future-possible of art through its unconventional expansion. This is a vital role of contemporary art: to conceive and create the open ended world in which we are about to live. The Artificial Nature ecosystem draws upon artificial life and systems theory models of evolution, metabolism and dissipative structures, embodied within a real-time computational assemblage of physics and fluid simulation, evolutionary algorithm and agent-based modeling.

The immersion of the user as one component within the holistic ecosystem is essential to our design; this is carried out through projection and spatialization emphasizing presence, and both voluntary and involuntary interaction. The virtual world is infinitely explorable in any direction, and movements and sounds made by the user influence the shared environment of human and artificial organisms.

Diana has performed with various dance companies touring Mexico, US and Central America for over 20 years and has taught various forms of dance including modern/contemporary dance, butoh, ballet, improvisation, video dance, choreography among others. She also teaches yoga, pilates and improvisaton/experimental movement classes.

Along the way in her dance training and teaching, Diana began a lifelong search for the essence of true dance in herself and in others. This search has guided her to deepen into dance improvisation and composition and to create a variety of exercises for self-exploration, now called “nourishment for conscious growth. ” The search also led her to begin training, performing, and researching Japanese Butoh and Butoh Ritual Mexicano with Mexican master Diego Piñon (a combination of butoh, bioenergetics, and Mexican ritual practices) as well as Zen meditation techniques.

Diana has also always been interested in the relationship of dance and technology and has been collaborating with various artist to develop multimedia, site-specific, and video dance projects using butoh concepts.

diana-garcia.com

From 2003 to 2007, Sep was the head of personalization at Google. Prior to Google, he was founder and CEO of Kaltix, a personalized search company that was acquired by Google in 2003.

Sep is the author of two books and over 40 technical publications and patents in the fields of search and social computing. He is on the technical advisory boards of several companies, including Aardvark, Etsy, and Hunch. His artwork has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Victoria and Albert Musem in London, and the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens.
He lives in San Francisco and New York with his wife, Angie.
kamvar.org

Longpre’s interactive systems have been exhibited at digital arts festivals internationally including VIA and EXIT, France; Looptopia, the United States; Coprecupa, Italy; BUDi, Korea; FILE, Brazil; Nexus, Thailand. Exhibitions have also taken place at several contemporary art galleries and museums such as Parisian Laundry, DX Center, Oboro, UQAM Gallery, Beverly Art Center, Life Museum and SAT, The Society of Art and Technology of Montreal.

In 2003, she received several awards including, the New Media Prize of Excellence from the Hexagram Institute of Research. She was also accorded the Octas 2008 in Digital Art, the Judith Hamel Award in New Media in 2005, the Pinsky Medal in 2004, the Stanley Mills Prize Purchase 2002 and the CVM Culture Merited Award 1999.

She holds a BFA specializing in Digital Arts from Concordia University in Montreal, Canada and an MFA in Art and Technology Studies from the School of The Art Institute of Chicago. She pursued her research at the DXARTS Center in Digital Arts and Experimental Media at DXARTS, University of Washington. She is currently doing an SIP PhD on the topic of Screens and Senses – A multi sensorial approach to responsive
video membranes at Concordia University, Montreal Canada.

Philomene has also taught in the BFA in Art and Technology Studies from the School of The Art Institute of Chicago, as well as at DXARTS, University of Washington in Seattle, United States.

philox@philox.net
www.philox.net

For years now he has developed exceptional skills in designing for new interactive mediums, always trying to remain educated on the ever-changing world of interactive design. Chris is honored that he has a chance to work with great people and always become a better designer because of it.

An emerging technology Chris is keeping current on is multi-touch possibilities. He has built and demonstrated a multi-touch screen built using FTIR technology with they help of the NUI Group Community. He is working on integrating additional Flash technologies into the multi-touch environment including physics via Box2D Flash and Google Maps Flash API. His quickest update on experiments about this emerging opportunity can be found on www.cyancdesign.com