Why do I blog this? I know there are hundreds of artificial life demos, videos and prototypes but this one is perhaps relevant because of the kind of agency the "colored shapes" demonstrate. The way students (and perhaps myself after all these years) attribute a certain meaning, or attitude, to such movement is fascinating; especially in sequences in which the agents have trouble performing. It's about limping rectangles, falling cubes and clumsy assemblages... and of course us viewers interpreting behaviors.
There's another interesting aspect of this work. One that is not visible in the video : it's the evolutionary trope of Sims' work, as expressed in this academic paper, since his aim was to design " system for the evolution and co-evolution of virtual creatures which compete in physically simulated three-dimensional worlds. More specifically:
Pairs of individuals enter one-on-one contests in which they contend to gain control of a common resource. The winners receive higher relative fitness scores allowing them to survive and reproduce. Realistic dynamics simulation including gravity, collisions, and friction, restricts the actions to physically plausible behaviors. The morphology of these creatures and the neural systems for controlling their muscle forces are both genetically determined, and the morphology and behavior can adapt to each other as they evolve simultaneously. The genotypes are structured as directed graphs of nodes and connections, and they can efficiently but flexibly describe instructions for the development of creatures’ bodies and control systems with repeating or recursive components. When simulated evolutions are performed with populations of competing creatures, interesting and diverse strategies and counter-strategies emerge.