A Word from the Team

Welcome to the 19th issue of the Alife Newsletter! The theme for the newslettert is "Together", thinking about the holidays seasons that are fast approaching.

If you get together with your friends over the New Year's break, how about showing them some alife-y news from this newsletter, as a conversation starter?

This time we are recommending a youtube channel about cute (and sometime scary) bears that evolve, and also an interactive slime mold simulation for those feeling more adventurous. Or maybe you would appreciate a psychedelic video about artificial plants?

On a more academic side, we bring a call for a special issue on Artificial Life in the Nature Portfolio Journal (NPJ series), and a review of the recent Low Carbon Computing Workshop. Also don't forget to prepare yourself for ALIFE 2025, in Kyoto this year.

And if you are feeling lost, we bring a message from a company that is reaching out to young alifer's researchers to help them figure out possible career paths after they acquire their PhDs.

If you are Japanese or a Japanese speaker, you might be interested in the Japanese Version of the Alife Newsletter, recently released by ALIFE researchers in Japan with the goal of strenghtening the community over there!

If you have any suggestions for future content, or would like to help us edit the newsletter, you can leave us a message in the contribution form. We specially appreciate messages from Master and PhD students who want to talk about their recent work. Send us a line! If you got something to share that other Alifers would be interested in, we want to know about it!

Lana, Imy, Mitsuyoshi, Claus and Gabriel

Another Simulation Youtube Channel: 8 Little Bears

By Claus

In recent years, several youtube channels featuring evolution simulators have sprung into existence. They are great, and we hope to feature more of them here (send us your favorite!).

You might remember "The Bibites", featured in the 4th edition of the newsletter, with virtual individuals with a quite detailed internal biology.

This time we want to feature "8 little bears", a channel which also describes an evolution simulation using the Unity engine. This time, the simulator focuses in the environment and the ecological relations between the creatures, such as predation, competition, grouping and migration.

In this simulation, each cell has different temperature, rainfall, and amount of biological matter, affecting the ability of the cell to support the virtual creatures. This in turn leads to interesting emergent ecological relations such as overpopulation, competition, migration, etc.

Each video lasts between 10-20 minutes, and features some small change to the creatures or the environment of the simulation, such as new diets, or a bigger map. The authors has a great eye to the visual site, with cute graphics for the creatures and environment that makes the simulation come alive, and fun to watch.

I hope you enjoy them, and again, let us know if you have a suggestion of a nice channel with alife-y content!

Interactive Physarum

shared by Lana

You may have seen Slim Mold simulations before, but have you seen many interactive slime mold simulations? "Interactive physarum" by user Bleuje (Etienne Jacob) on github is an interactive exploration of the parameter space leading to slime-mold-like patterns. This work is based on the work of Sage Jenson. Go visit Etienne Jacob's project to see beautiful screenshots and run the simulation, or watch the demo video here. In fact, go have a look at the entire channel, you won't regret it!

Image credit: Etienne Jacob

Call For Papers: Unnatural Histories: Investigating the Improbable with Experimental Evolution and Artificial Life

Shared by Lana

NPJ Complexity is launching a special collection on Artificial Life. Submission deadline: September 2025!

"Unnatural Histories: Investigating the Improbable with Experimental Evolution and Artificial Life"

The study of life has traditionally focused on documenting and understanding what exists and what has existed — the actual rather than the possible. However, as François Jacob astutely observed, our scientific understanding is inherently shaped by the limitations of our collective imagination. It is only through confronting the vast landscape of what could be with what actually is that we begin to comprehend the fundamental principles governing living systems.

By leveraging modern tools from Experimental Evolution, Synthetic Biology, and Artificial Life, researchers can now empirically investigate paths not taken by natural evolution and gain concrete experimental insights rather than being limited to theoretical speculation. In this spirit, npj Complexity is launching a special collection on "Unnatural Histories". This collection will showcase research that goes beyond conventional natural history to examine alternative biological worlds and unexplored evolutionary trajectories.

Low Carbon Computing 2024 Workshop

By Claus

With the growing cost of computing in ICT and Machine Learning, and concerns about climate change and sustainability, some researchers have started to look at how to develop alternate computing systems, including new devices, programming languages, and computational processes, that have a smaller impact on our environment.

In this context, the 1st International Workshop on Low Carbon Computing (LOCO) was held early in December, gathering people with all sorts of interesting ideas about how to measure and reduce the environmental impact of computing. The abstracts and short papers presented at the workshop are now available online, and soon the videos of the presentations will be as well.

For me as an ALIFE researcher, there is something about low carbon and permacomputing that goes beyond the (very important) concerns about sustainability and environmental impact.

The evolution of life on earth was a process that took hundreds of millions of years. Even though it was a world spanning process, it took many false starts and a long process for life to evolve from the "primordial soup" to the diversity of species that we have today. How can we expect our computational process to be any different?

Although we are not there yet (?), I do believe that eventually we will want to create digital evolution simulations, or even robots, that will run for decades, if not more. This goes against the trend of our technological landscape, where the lifetime of each generation of digital devices seems shorter than the last.

I invite the Alife community to consider computing platforms that can robustly work for years, independently from changes around itself and without putting undue burden on the environment.

Odd: bizarre plant forms

Shared by Lana

"Odd" is a beautiful, psychedelic exploration of artificial plant forms by artist Hiroshi Takagishi. From the video description:

"Odd is inspired by the contradictions of bizarre plant forms that reveal hidden regularities and beauty within seemingly chaotic nature. The unique curves and protrusions of the bizarre plants suggest potential movement. I imagines the moment when this stationary plant is in motion and recreates it as media art."

Image credit: Hiroshi Takagishi

Career Development Hints for Emerging Researchers

Shared by Andrew Cusick, ProPhounD Co-Founder, and Jevin Lortie, PhD

ProPhounD and the Emerging Researchers Association (ERA) recently hosted a career development event for organizations hiring talent with advanced degrees and professionals that are a match for those roles. To respond to the call from attendees seeking guidance on how to find a purpose-driven career, Andrew Cusick, ProPhounD Co-Founder and Jevin Lortie, PhD, compiled a road map from PhDs who’ve pursued alternate career paths with their advanced degrees to help you “get unstuck”.

More details about this road map, and ideas about the many possible paths for a PhD can be read at ProPhound's full blog post

Recruiting: ALife 2025 reviewers

By Lana

The ALife 2025 conference is looking for reviewers!

Are you involved in ALife or ALife-related research? Are you interested in reviewing papers, helping authors improving their work, and making sure that high quality papers are presented at the conference? Self-nominate by emailing lana.sinapayen@gmail.com. Student nominations welcome!

About the Artificial Life Newsletter

The Alife Newsletter is a bi-monthly publication that aims to bring interesting news to the Artificial Life community.

The current editors of the newsletter are: - Lana Sinapayen - Imy Khan - Mitsuyoshi Yamazaki - Claus Aranha - Gabriel Severino

The newsletter is sent by e-mail and can also be acessed by RSS. You can subscribe here or follow the RSS feed here.

If you have any suggestions for future content, or would like to help us edit the newsletter, you can leave us a message in the feedback form. We specially appreciate messages from Master and PhD students who want to talk about their recent work. Send us a line!