The genetic art page is based on the International Genetic
Art II site (by John Mount, Scott Neal Reilly and Michael
Witbrock) which ran from 1994 through 1996. This site, in
turn, was inspired by the work of Scott Neal Reilly which
itself drew inspiration from Karl Sims. The International
Genetic Art II site was a very early example of CGI scripts
and HTML forms (which at the time were the only methods
available to produce interactive web pages). The central
site allowed a consistent view (different users saw the
same picture) and primitive collaboration (every user voted
and votes affected everybody). Some of the best pictures
were photo-reproduced and displayed in "The Coffee Tree"
cafe in Pittsburgh PA.
This version is written in Java and runs directly in the
user's browser. This allows a much more reactive user
interface and removes the need for a central site. However,
without a central site or protocol the system does not
allow collaboration or learning.
Most of the interesting patterns come from the properties
of an interesting number system called the "Quaternions."
I also experimented with "genetic movies." Though, at the
time they were too computationally expensive to allow
direct voting on movies.
