Page 9 - The Revolution Will Be Automated

Weak Meta-Creativity with Programmable Minions

Large groups of uncreative minions can collectively

achieve a creative outcome for a meta-creator just by

following a simple algorithm. Just think of the poor

unfortunates who hold up the colored cards in North

Korea’s mass games. By holding the right colors in

the right sequence, each person contributes a single

pixel to a larger stadium-wide image that they

themselves cannot see or appreciate.

Instead of poor benighted humans, we can use software ants. Our ants are let

loose on a digital image of our choosing, and given some simple rules of life.

Each ant is programmed to look for food, which might be defined as pixels of

brightness or high-intensity color. Each is programmed to leave a pheromone

trail of color pixels in its wake, so that other ants can follow a successful

forager to the most bounteous areas of the image. Let the ants loose, and they

will collectively overpaint the underlying image in quite artistic ways.