By David Ponce
It’s interesting to see what happens when you let algorithms run amok, free to accomplish whatever distant folly their architects never intended. In this particular case, Sebastian Schmieg of the Netherlands made the above video by feeding Google’s Image Search a transparent PNG, asking it to find the closest match, taking the top result and feeding that back into the loop 2,951 times. The result is an unpredictable, ever evolving metamorphosis that features a lot of stars and galaxies in its infancy, but eventually blossoms into a cacophonous sea of images with occasional seas of similarity. The images are then turned into a 12fps video
Aside from being interesting from a purely nerdy standpoint, I believe it does show a fascinating point of biology: that evolution doesn’t occur towards something specific and it is, as Dawkings would say, the conceit of hindsight that places us humans at the pinnacle of life. This video does a good job of illustrating that.
[ Project Website ] VIA [ BoingBoing ]
