Complexes

Why people should vote for Obama ? Well, better the other way around: the only reason I can think of for people not voting for him is racism. A few months ago, I went to a doctor. He had been a pilot in WWII, made his way up the hard way, complained about the American youth. When I told that I hoped that Obama would be the next U.S. president, he was amazed: "What have black people done for this country?!". I was puzzled and amazed. I won't attempt to answer his question here (Michael Jackson?). He continued: "we need someone like McCain, to protect us from the Russians." One could think that the age of the doctor would explain his anti-Russian sentiment, but actually it is quite generalized, after almost 20 years of the end of the cold war. On the one hand, Russians have better things to do than to "threaten" the USA. On the other hand, there are much more dangers for the U.S. citizens coming from within, starting with incompetent leaders and ending ...

The Sigma Profile: A Formal Tool to Study Organization and its Evolution at Multiple Scales Abstract : The σ profile is presented as a tool to analyze the organization of systems at different scales, and how this organization changes in time. Describing structures at different scales as goal-oriented agents, one can define σ ("satisfaction") as the degree to which the goals of each agent at each scale have been met. σ reflects the organization degree at that scale. The σ profile of a system shows the satisfaction at different scales, with the possibility to study their dependencies and evolution. It can also be used to extend game theoretic models. A general tendency on the evolution of complexity and cooperation naturally follows from the σ profile. Experiments on a virtual ecosystem are used as illustration. [ Full paper ]

The impressive opening ceremony of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games exploited considerably the concept of self-organization in a very artistic fashion. To start the ceremony, 2008 drummers entered the stadium. Their drums and sticks had lights, so when the lights went out, beautiful patterns were formed. Then a countdown started (to 2008/08/08, 8:08 pm), and huge numbers were traveling through the drummers across the field in perfect synchronization: 60, 50, 40, 30, 20, 10. Then the last seconds were very quickly displayed with arabic and chinese numbers. Later, in the middle of the field a huge movable-type printer started generating beautiful waves and dynamic patterns, including the kanji for harmony. Which technology did they use for such an amazing and coordinated display? Well, humans, of course... Another amazing performance was given by 2008 tai chi masters. They were generating circles and spirals and moving all around in a perfectly coordinated fashion. How did they achieve al...

Following the Fractal Tessellation inspired by the Alhambra, I made a few more: here's one with octagons, and another with curved triangles...

I was among the researchers consulted for the production of this Slate video...

A special issue on the "Evolution of Complexity" I co-edited with Tom Lenaerts was just published in Artificial Life 14 (3) : Editorial Introduction Evolution of Complexity Carlos Gershenson , Tom Lenaerts Artificial Life Summer 2008, Vol. 14, No. 3: 241–243. First Page | PDF (55 KB) | PDF Plus (57 KB) Articles Hierarchical Self-Organization in the Finitary Process Soup Olof Görnerup , James P. Crutchfield Artificial Life Summer 2008, Vol. 14, No. 3: 245–254. Abstract | PDF (211 KB) | PDF Plus (217 KB) On the Gradual Evolution of Complexity and the Sudden Emergence of Complex Features Charles Ofria , Wei Huang , Eric Torng Artificial Life Summer 2008, Vol. 14, No. 3: 255–263. Abstract | PDF (180 KB) | PDF Plus (189 KB) The Emergence of Overlapping Scale-free Genetic Architecture in Digital Organisms P. Gerlee , T. Lundh Artificial Life Summer 2008, Vol. 14, No. 3: 265–275. Abstract | PDF (270 KB) | PDF Plus (253 KB) LinMap: Visualizing ...

I designed this pattern for a T-shirt of the New England Complex Systems Institute . I took the NECSI logo, which represents five "people working together". Then I overlayed different sizes of it over patterns of a Penrose tiling, which is a tesselation with five-fold symmetry. In other words, it fills the space without repeating itself. Since the logo appears of different sizes, I see this pattern as "people working together at different scales". You can find a high resolution PDF here.