Simple Poietic Generator

The (real) Poietic Generator is a creative game by Olivier Auber http://poietic-generator.net/
It is a game with no rule.
All players see the same matrix, displayed on their screen, but they control only one portion of the matrix. In the real game, players have a rich control of their portion of the screen, in which they can draw coloured shapes. In the absence of any instructions, players spontanesously self-organize somewhat, with structures emerging from time to time, either locally or globally.

    
This page is about a simplified version of the Poietic Generator that we call SPG.

    
ex: 7 colours - Size = 5 - Horizon = 16

In the SPG, each cell of the matrix consists in only one pixel. Each player, as a result, can only control one among K colours.
Moreover, all players are instantiations of the same decision rule.
This experiment shows that a simple strategy, the "principle of maximum unexpectedness", leads to seemingly creative actions. When several instances of the strategy play together the SPG, we observe an emerging behaviour which consists in visiting simple patterns in an unpredictable way.

    
Research article:     Saillenfest, A., Dessalles, J.-L. & Auber, O. (2016). Role of simplicity in creative behaviour: The case of the poietic generator. Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Computational Creativity (ICCC-2016). Paris, France: To appear.

    

Other experience below.

    


    


    


    


    


    


    


    


    


    


    


    

    4 colours - Size = 6 - Horizon = 17