Ollie Bown is an electronic musician, programmer and researcher working in live electronic music performance and creative systems. His musical output is best known through his work in the band Icarus with his cousin Sam Britton, and he has projects underway with Tom Arthurs and other members of the Not Applicable artists. He recently finished a PhD at Goldsmiths College on multi-agent modelling of biocultural coevolution, and is now working at Monash University in Melbourne with visual artist and programmer Jon McCormack, exploring the use of ecosystems modelling in creative contexts.
In this project a simple population model is embedded in a musical domain. Any population affects its own environment in inadvertent ways and has to adapt to the environment it created, rather than the environment that existed before it arrived. In this evolutionary simulation, the environment is a circular line, and its inhabitants are simulated creatures that need specific conditions to survive, a certain combination of radius and curviness. The environment starts out low and flat, but individual creatures inadvertently place forces on the line, producing sounds along a spectrum. Over time, the population adapts in terms of which conditions individuals find preferable for survival, how they affect the line, and how their offspring are distributed. Rather than simply adapting to flat lines, individuals become adapted to environments that they then have to create for themselves. Consequently, the model evolves over time through qualitatively different states.

> www.olliebown.com
> www.icarus.nu
> www.not-applicable.org
 
Appearances:
> CTM.09 > NETLABEL-MEETING PT. II – NETAUDIO