Emergent design and image processing : a case study

The digital revolution which has changed so many other aspects of modem life has yet to profoundly affect the working process of visual artists and designers. High-quality digital design tools exist, but they provide the user with an improved traditional design process, not a radically new way of designing. Conventional digital design tools are useful, but when design software emulates a paintbrush or photostudio many powerful possibilities of the computational medium are overlooked. This thesis explores emergent design, a design methodology based on a new process, enhanced interactive genetic programming. The emergent design methodology and tools allow designers to effectively create procedural design solutions (design solutions that take the form of a procedure or program) in a way that requires little or no programming on the part of the designer. The use of preliminary fitness functions in the interactive genetic programming process allows the designer to specify heuristics to guide the search and manage the complexity of the interactive genetic programming task. This document is structured in the form of a case study, in which the enhanced genetic programming process and emergent design methodology are described through their application to the specific problem of developing procedural image filters for still and moving images. Two interactive genetic programming systems for image filter evolution are described, GPI and evolution++, along with the Sol programming language that was used to create them. Results from the implementation and use of GPI and evolution++ are presented, including a number of filtered images and image sequences. These results suggest that fitness-agent enhanced interactive genetic programming and the emergent design methodology may play a useful role in the visual design process, allowing designers to explore a wider range of options with greater ease than is possible through a traditional, procedural, or conventional genetic programming design process.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture. Program In Media Arts and Sciences.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

1999

Author dc:creator

• DeVaul, Richard W. (Richard Wayne), 1971-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• John Maeda.

• Architecture. Program In Media Arts and Sciences.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/61107

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/61107