TechnoSphere
Encyclopedia
TechnoSphere was an online digital environment launched on September 1, 1995 and hosted
on a computer at a UK
university. TechnoSphere, created by Jane Prophet and Gordon Selley, was a place where users from around the globe could create creatures and release them into the 3D
environment, described by the creators as a "digital ecology." Earlier incarnations of TechnoSphere didn't have the advantage of web-accessible 3D graphics, but was still governed by chaos theory
and similar algorithm
s that determined each creature's unique behavior based on their components and interactions with each other and their environment. This online program was one of many digital artificial life
simulations that evolved as the World Wide Web
began to grow. Many museums and classrooms found the tool to be a valuable complement to learning material on natural selection
and ecosystem
s. The experiment operated online until 2002 and was unavailable until January 15, 2007 , when it was launched again at technosphere.game-host.org. As of September 2009 the host appears to no longer exist.
s, which were governed by a complex set of rules and algorithms that determined how the virtual ecosystem reacted. The program was capable of modeling such concepts as simple evolution
and carrying capacity
. Despite limited available creature designs, no two would ever behave in the same way, due to chance interactions with its environment and other creatures.
Physically, the virtual landscape of TechnoSphere consisted of 16 km² of terrain. It was capable of supporting approximately 4,000 creatures, though other sources suggest that as many as 20,000 creatures typically would coexist in the virtual environment at one time. After the relaunch, it was explicitly stated that the software limited the number of creatures at 200,000. Because each creature's behavior was unique, no single event could have been predicted, though some significant patterns developed. For example, even though there was no explicit flocking
algorithm written into the program, creatures could be found organizing themselves into groups, most likely impelled by urges to mate and eat. The programs that supported the website were scalable, and could be modified to support a larger or smaller community of creatures.
s or herbivore
s from a select few component parts (heads, bodies, eyes, and wheels). Their "digital DNA
" was linked to each component and the completed creature's attributes (speed, visual perception, rate of digestion, etc.) was determined by the combination of each feature's strengths and weaknesses--their "fitness for survival." Once a creature design was finished, users would name their digital creature, tag it with their e-mail address
, and enter it into the digital environment.
There they chased or evaded each other, ate, grew, and mated. They also produced offspring
, which were variants of the parents, sometimes incorporating aspects of both parents and other times favoring one parent creature's attributes over the others. General behavior patterns had emerged, but it was difficult to predict what was going to happen based solely on a creature's design. The one thing all TechnoSphere creatures did have in common was that they would all eventually die.
There was only one gender in TechnoSphere, so the creature that initiated mating was the parent that ended up carrying and caring for the offspring. Creature behavior was directed by a set of algorithms called Creature Comforts, designed by Julian Saunderson. It dictated, for example, that mating behavior (recombination
of digital DNA) could only be initiated if both creatures' hunger was at least 50% satiated.
When significant events occurred in the TechnoSphere, a user's creature would send brief email messages "home." Users were also able to visit the website and view 2D
snapshots of their creature, check family trees, "world" statistics, and search for other creatures and their users.
), Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre (Sydney
, Australia
), and the Donald R. and Joan F. Beall Center for Art and Technology at the University of California, Irvine
(Irvine
, California
, US
). Museum visitors created creatures using touchscreen
terminals and then released them immediately into the TechnoSphere. Once in the digital environment, the creatures could be observed within the world on a series of large projection screens, further expanding the popularity of the project.
Server (computing)
In the context of client-server architecture, a server is a computer program running to serve the requests of other programs, the "clients". Thus, the "server" performs some computational task on behalf of "clients"...
on a computer at a UK
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
university. TechnoSphere, created by Jane Prophet and Gordon Selley, was a place where users from around the globe could create creatures and release them into the 3D
3D computer graphics
3D computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data that is stored in the computer for the purposes of performing calculations and rendering 2D images...
environment, described by the creators as a "digital ecology." Earlier incarnations of TechnoSphere didn't have the advantage of web-accessible 3D graphics, but was still governed by chaos theory
Chaos theory
Chaos theory is a field of study in mathematics, with applications in several disciplines including physics, economics, biology, and philosophy. Chaos theory studies the behavior of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions, an effect which is popularly referred to as the...
and similar algorithm
Algorithm
In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm is an effective method expressed as a finite list of well-defined instructions for calculating a function. Algorithms are used for calculation, data processing, and automated reasoning...
s that determined each creature's unique behavior based on their components and interactions with each other and their environment. This online program was one of many digital artificial life
Artificial life
Artificial life is a field of study and an associated art form which examine systems related to life, its processes, and its evolution through simulations using computer models, robotics, and biochemistry. The discipline was named by Christopher Langton, an American computer scientist, in 1986...
simulations that evolved as the World Wide Web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
began to grow. Many museums and classrooms found the tool to be a valuable complement to learning material on natural selection
Natural selection
Natural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....
and ecosystem
Ecosystem
An ecosystem is a biological environment consisting of all the organisms living in a particular area, as well as all the nonliving , physical components of the environment with which the organisms interact, such as air, soil, water and sunlight....
s. The experiment operated online until 2002 and was unavailable until January 15, 2007 , when it was launched again at technosphere.game-host.org. As of September 2009 the host appears to no longer exist.
Description
TechnoSphere was a real-time, 3D simulation of an environment that was populated by virtual creatures. Users across the globe had the capability to create their own creatures through a website. TechnoSphere III, one of many incarnations of the original design, used an artificial life program and fractal landscapeFractal landscape
A fractal landscape is a surface generated using a stochastic algorithm designed to produce fractal behaviour that mimics the appearance of natural terrain...
s, which were governed by a complex set of rules and algorithms that determined how the virtual ecosystem reacted. The program was capable of modeling such concepts as simple evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
and carrying capacity
Carrying capacity
The carrying capacity of a biological species in an environment is the maximum population size of the species that the environment can sustain indefinitely, given the food, habitat, water and other necessities available in the environment...
. Despite limited available creature designs, no two would ever behave in the same way, due to chance interactions with its environment and other creatures.
Physically, the virtual landscape of TechnoSphere consisted of 16 km² of terrain. It was capable of supporting approximately 4,000 creatures, though other sources suggest that as many as 20,000 creatures typically would coexist in the virtual environment at one time. After the relaunch, it was explicitly stated that the software limited the number of creatures at 200,000. Because each creature's behavior was unique, no single event could have been predicted, though some significant patterns developed. For example, even though there was no explicit flocking
Flocking (behavior)
Flocking behavior is the behavior exhibited when a group of birds, called a flock, are foraging or in flight. There are parallels with the shoaling behavior of fish, the swarming behavior of insects, and herd behavior of land animals....
algorithm written into the program, creatures could be found organizing themselves into groups, most likely impelled by urges to mate and eat. The programs that supported the website were scalable, and could be modified to support a larger or smaller community of creatures.
Creatures
Users accessing the site were able to create their own artificial life forms, building carnivoreCarnivore
A carnivore meaning 'meat eater' is an organism that derives its energy and nutrient requirements from a diet consisting mainly or exclusively of animal tissue, whether through predation or scavenging...
s or herbivore
Herbivore
Herbivores are organisms that are anatomically and physiologically adapted to eat plant-based foods. Herbivory is a form of consumption in which an organism principally eats autotrophs such as plants, algae and photosynthesizing bacteria. More generally, organisms that feed on autotrophs in...
s from a select few component parts (heads, bodies, eyes, and wheels). Their "digital DNA
DNA
Deoxyribonucleic acid is a nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions used in the development and functioning of all known living organisms . The DNA segments that carry this genetic information are called genes, but other DNA sequences have structural purposes, or are involved in...
" was linked to each component and the completed creature's attributes (speed, visual perception, rate of digestion, etc.) was determined by the combination of each feature's strengths and weaknesses--their "fitness for survival." Once a creature design was finished, users would name their digital creature, tag it with their e-mail address
E-mail address
An email address identifies an email box to which email messages are delivered. An example format of an email address is lewis@example.net which is read as lewis at example dot net...
, and enter it into the digital environment.
There they chased or evaded each other, ate, grew, and mated. They also produced offspring
Offspring
In biology, offspring is the product of reproduction, of a new organism produced by one or more parents.Collective offspring may be known as a brood or progeny in a more general way...
, which were variants of the parents, sometimes incorporating aspects of both parents and other times favoring one parent creature's attributes over the others. General behavior patterns had emerged, but it was difficult to predict what was going to happen based solely on a creature's design. The one thing all TechnoSphere creatures did have in common was that they would all eventually die.
There was only one gender in TechnoSphere, so the creature that initiated mating was the parent that ended up carrying and caring for the offspring. Creature behavior was directed by a set of algorithms called Creature Comforts, designed by Julian Saunderson. It dictated, for example, that mating behavior (recombination
Genetic recombination
Genetic recombination is a process by which a molecule of nucleic acid is broken and then joined to a different one. Recombination can occur between similar molecules of DNA, as in homologous recombination, or dissimilar molecules, as in non-homologous end joining. Recombination is a common method...
of digital DNA) could only be initiated if both creatures' hunger was at least 50% satiated.
When significant events occurred in the TechnoSphere, a user's creature would send brief email messages "home." Users were also able to visit the website and view 2D
2D computer graphics
2D computer graphics is the computer-based generation of digital images—mostly from two-dimensional models and by techniques specific to them...
snapshots of their creature, check family trees, "world" statistics, and search for other creatures and their users.
Popularity
One report described the project's popularity by citing that the online version had attracted over a 100,000 users who had created 3,286,148 and growing creatures. Over the years in which the website was operating, the growing popularity facilitated necessary updates to the server software and hardware, causing website downtime and often slow response times.Museums and education
Many museums and educators found the digital ecology interesting and some teachers even used TechnoSphere as a teaching tool. The technological innovations and digital images produced by the project were of such interest that temporary installations were put in at several museums, including the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television (now the National Media Museum) (Bradford, UKBradford
Bradford lies at the heart of the City of Bradford, a metropolitan borough of West Yorkshire, in Northern England. It is situated in the foothills of the Pennines, west of Leeds, and northwest of Wakefield. Bradford became a municipal borough in 1847, and received its charter as a city in 1897...
), Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre (Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
), and the Donald R. and Joan F. Beall Center for Art and Technology at the University of California, Irvine
University of California, Irvine
The University of California, Irvine , founded in 1965, is one of the ten campuses of the University of California, located in Irvine, California, USA...
(Irvine
Irvine, California
Irvine is a suburban incorporated city in Orange County, California, United States. It is a planned city, mainly developed by the Irvine Company since the 1960s. Formally incorporated on December 28, 1971, the city has a population of 212,375 as of the 2010 census. However, the California...
, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, US
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
). Museum visitors created creatures using touchscreen
Touchscreen
A touchscreen is an electronic visual display that can detect the presence and location of a touch within the display area. The term generally refers to touching the display of the device with a finger or hand. Touchscreens can also sense other passive objects, such as a stylus...
terminals and then released them immediately into the TechnoSphere. Once in the digital environment, the creatures could be observed within the world on a series of large projection screens, further expanding the popularity of the project.
External links
- Screenshots and information
- June 25, 2003 internet archived version of the website
- Association for Heritage Interpretation - Prophet, Jane. TechnoSphere.
- "An A-Life Ecology on the Internet" - Gordon Selley. 4D Dynamics Conference, 20-21 September 1995. De Montford University, England.
- "Digital Beings" - Jane Prophet. European Media Art Festival. Kunsthalle, Osnabruck, Germany September 9 1995.
- "TechnoSphere: a case study in networked collaboration" - Jane Prophet. Agents of Change: the photographers guide to the future. Fifth National Photography Conference. 22-24 September 1995.
- "Get A-Life" - Jane Prophet. Virtual Futures Conference. Warwick University 27 May 1995.
- "Report on the Artificial Life Environment" - A report on TechnoSphere version I by Julian Saunderson (edited by Jane Prophet).
- "Get-A-Life Munchy Morsels" - A report on TechnoSphere version II by Rycharde Hawkes.
- http://www.janeprophet.com/leonardo1.html
- http://www.janeprophet.com/leonardo2.html