Dorin, Alan. “Artificial life, death and epidemics in evolutionary, generative electronic art.” In Workshops on Applications of Evolutionary Computation , pp. 448-457. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2005.
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This paper explores strategies for slowing the onset of convergence in an evolving population of agents. The strategies include the emergent maintenance of separate agent sub-populations and migration between them, and the introduction of virtual diseases that co-evolve parasitically within their hosts. The method looks to Artificial Life and epidemiology for its inspiration but its ultimate concerns are in studying epidemics as a process suitable for application to generative electronic art. The simulation is used to construct a prototype artwork for a fully interactive stereoscopic virtual-reality environment to be exhibited in a science museum.