Lenia
Lenia
Synopsis | --><br>Media |<br>Code & Web Demo |<br>Talks |<br>Collaborations |<br>Papers |<br>Mentions |<br>Timeline |<br>Directions
Synopsis
OSL website
Lenia is a system of continuous cellular automata , a form of artificial life.
It was derived from Conway's Game of Life by making everything smooth, continuous and generalized.
The project started in 2015 by experimenting with Game of Life variations, led to the discovery of continuous glider Orbium, and 400+ more species.
These digital creatures show lifelike features like self-organization, self-repair, bilateral and radial symmetries, locomotive dynamics, and sometimes chaotic nature.
In 2018, investigations on Lenia accumulated into a video and a paper, attracted some attention on the internet and academia.
Once a coding exercise, Lenia has now evolved into an art and science research project, sparking international collaborations with universities and research labs.
In 2020, further extentions of Lenia led to more emergent phenomena,<br>like interesting 3D/4D patterns, self-replication, pattern emission, self-boundary/individuality, aggregated patterns, polymorphism, intercommunicating colonies, etc.
Is there a limit on this digital universe? What kind of new pattern or emergent property will appear next? And what kind of questions or answers can we get from it?
Media
🎬 List of videos (movies, talks)<br>[YouTube]
🎬 Learning Sensorimotor Agency (2022-01)<br>[YouTube]
🎬 Asymptotic Lenia (2021-07)<br>[YouTube]
🎬 Lenia: Expanded Universe (2020-07)<br>[YouTube]<br>[Vimeo]
🎬 Lenia: Mathematical Life Forms (2018-07)<br>[YouTube]<br>[Vimeo]
🏅 Winner, Virtual Creature Contest @ GECCO 2018 Kyoto (2018-07)<br>[Website]
🏅 Honorable Mention, ALife Art Award @ ALIFE 2018 Tokyo (2018-07)<br>[Website]<br>[Photo @kyrre2000]
📰 List of tweets (project progress) (not updated)<br>[Twitter]
Code & Web Demo
Coding tutorial:
📊 "From Conway to Lenia" notebook —<br>[Full (with results)]<br>[Clean (w/o results)]
Lenia in VR:
🎮 "Lenia Room" by @Renard_VRC —<br>[Tweet]<br>[VR Chat]
Lenia on GPU:
🎨 WebGL testing —<br>species: [One]<br>[Two],<br>gradient: [Linear]<br>[Radial]<br>🎨 Shader demo @ Shadertoy<br>[List]
🎨 Shader demo @ Smoothstep.io<br>[#1]<br>[#2]
Lenia on web / Python:
⌨️ Lenia in EvoJAX<br>[GitHub]
🎮 (upcoming) Lenia educational demo @ Complexity Explorables<br>[Preview]<br>[Website]
⌨️ Lenia source — Python, R, Jupyter, Matlab, JavaScript<br>[GitHub]<br>Current version: v3.5 LeniaNDKC.py (see Timeline below)
🎮 Lenia web demo<br>[Play now!]<br>Version: v1.3 Lenia.html
Primordia (precursor of Lenia):
🎮 Primordia web demo<br>[Play now!]<br>[GitHub]<br>Version: v1.0 Primordia.html
Talks
🗣 [future] Talk @ Heidelberg University (2023)
📢 Tutorial @ ALIFE-Japan (2023-02)<br>[YouTube]<br>[Website]<br>[GitHub]
🗣 Talk @ Google Japan (2022-12)
🗣 Talk @ IBM Accelerated Discovery Seminar (2022-11)
🗣 Talk @ Google Zurich (2022-10)
🗣 Talk @ Inria Bordeaux (2022-10)
🗣 Talk @ Cohere.io (2022-04)<br>[YouTube]
🗣 Talk @ ALIFE-Japan (2022-03)
📢 Tutorial @ ALIFE 2021 Prague (2021-07)<br>[YouTube]<br>[Website]<br>[Slides]<br>[Teaser]<br>[ALIFE]
📢 TV talk show about Lenia and Artificial Life @ RTHK Talk Show Hong Kong (2021-07, cancelled)
📢 Plenary speech @ AROB 2021 Beppu (2021-01-23)<br>[Website]
📢 Invited live @ Cross Labs Tokyo (2020-08-21)<br>[YouTube]<br>[Website]<br>[Slides]
🗣 Presentation @ ALIFE 2020 Montréal (2020-07-16)<br>[YouTube]<br>[Website]<br>[Slides]<br>[Photo @HirokiSayama]
📢 Invited seminar @ Stanford University (2020-01-15)<br>[YouTube]<br>[Website]<br>[Slides]<br>[Photo]<br>Photo]-->
🗣 Presentation @ Hong Kong Code Conf (2018-11-24)<br>[Website]<br>[Slides]<br>[Photo @hkcodeconf]
🗣 Presentation @ PyCon Hong Kong (2018-11-24)<br>[YouTube]<br>[Website]<br>[Slides]<br>[Photo @jolliffe]
🗣 Presentation @ GECCO 2018 Kyoto (2018-07-15)<br>[Photo @kyrre2000]
Collaborations
Research:
👨🔬 Study of sensorimotor capabilities in differentiable Lenia (with Flowers team @ Inria 🇫🇷)<br>[PDF]<br>[Team]
👨🔬 Study of swarm cognition and primitive agency in Lenia (with Allen Discovery Center @ Tufts U 🇺🇸)<br>[Team]
👨🔬 Study of alternative formulations of Lenia (with Arita-Suzuki ALife Lab @ Nagoya U 🇯🇵)<br>[Team]
Software:
👨💻 As a target system in Automated Discovery software (with Flowers team @ Inria 🇫🇷)<br>[Team]
👨💻 "Vitrual creature" module in Artbreeder.com (with Joel Simon 🇺🇸, etc.)<br>[Website]
👨💻 Continuous cellular automata simulation on GPU (with Slakermanz 🇳🇿, etc.)<br>[Github]
Art & Education:
👨🏫 Interactive demo in Complexity Explorables (with Dirk Brockmann @ HU Berlin 🇩🇪)<br>[Preview]<br>[Website]
👨🎨 Appearance in film "Thoughts on Life" (with Will Cavendish @ Princeton / IAS 🇺🇸, & team)<br>[Website]
👨🎨 Appearance in art project "Codex Virtualis _" (with Interspecifics 🇲🇽 @ Ars Electronica 🇦🇹)<br>[Website]
Papers
Bert Chan, JP/HK
📄 Lenia and Expanded Universe (ALIFE 2020)<br>[arXiv]<br>[Proceedings]<br>Chan, Bert Wang-Chak (2020). Lenia and Expanded Universe. Artificial Life Conference Proceedings, (32), 221–229. arXiv:2005.03742.
📄 Lenia: Biology of Artificial Life...