Dec. 2025
Materials: Real-time evolutionary system, Cellular Automata, Genetic Algorithms, IMGs: city under reconstruction, IMGs: city under deconstruction
A/HLife is a real-time evolutionary, computational artwork that intimately intertwines the shared discourses of Artificial Life (ALife) and microhistory.
As a young, interdisciplinary field, ALife actively embraces the possibility of discovering life in unfamiliar settings and creating unfamiliar forms of life. In the work, ALife moves beyond the mere simulation of visible behavior or biological phenomena, instead employing technology including Cellular Automata (CA) and Genetic Algorithms (GA) to engage deeply with the formalization and reflexivity of the historical methodology. Microhistory—an unconventional perspective and decentralized approach to understanding the field of history—correspondingly transitions its particular observational lens into an autonomous, ever-evolving form of life.
Moving to the presentation, the system self-evolves following two main steps. First, the system operates on a decentralized cyclic grid configured through a one-dimensional elementary CA with Rule 110, where 46 individual cells interact implicitly with each other, exhibiting emergent complexity during the self-organizational process. Second, every cell is visually represented through historical photographs of worldwide urban skylines. These photographs, serving as historical indices, are divided into two categories, either in the process of reconstruction or deconstruction, which correspond to the binary state of the CA. When the holistic system shifts a cell state, the corresponding city evolves through GA as an individual self-evolutionary strategy.
In this computational ecosystem, the microhistorical approach is aesthetically materialized in A/HLife as an artistic experiment, focusing on the shift from grand narratives to analysis of finely textured micro-level entities. Influenced by the notion of "voids" in Berlin articulated by historian Andreas Huyssen in his essay The voids of Berlin, the artwork emphasizes the intervals of change, navigating a decentralized flux between urban reconstruction and deconstruction regarding their collective genetic state of becoming. The work, in this context, aims to juxtapose technology with the methodological practice of microhistory, which emphasizes macro-structure through the interplay among underlying, hidden, and individual units.
Accordingly, A/HLife transcends conventional technological roles, positioning computational systems and algorithms as active agents in the construction of collective memory. This ALife-microhistory convergence establishes the artwork as a resonant interface spanning past and future, inviting a critical reconsideration of the entanglement between ideologies and algorithms, as well as the humanities and artificialities.