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The Virtual Animate — Nic Lee

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The Virtual Animate examines how AI tools can empower designers to collaborate with organic systems. Even the simplest forms of biological life contain machinery capable of nano-scale fabrication, self-healing, and the production of materials that remain inaccessible to humans. These processes occur as a complex network of behaviors that are often impossible to separate without ending the life that sustains them. However, designers are uniquely empowered to influence the behavior of living systems through the manipulation of the environments that they respond to. This project, completed in satisfaction of the Harvard Graduate School of Design MDes Thesis requirements, represents a case study in a generalized approach to the design of chaotic, living systems. The work described here uses artificial intelligence to learn the behaviors of a living organism and mediate its behavior with the intention of a designer. This top-down approach to design begins with an organism’s intended behavio

The Virtual Animate The Virtual Animate examines how AI tools can empower designers to collaborate with organic systems. Motivation Even the simplest forms of biological life contain machinery capable of nano-scale fabrication, self-healing, and the production of materials that remain inaccessible to humans. These processes occur as a complex network of behaviors that are often impossible to separate without ending the life that sustains them. However, designers are uniquely empowered to influence the behavior of living systems through the manipulation of the environments that they respond to.

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