Virtual Kinka Kuji, built in 1998

Researchers took a game system called “Unreal” modeled the temple and grounds, then created an artificial life ‘firefly’ that would come out at dusk and fly through the forests. Each firefly was connected to an American stock on the NASDAQ market, and depending upon how the stock was performing dictated much of the firefly’s behavior.

The question being explored was simple; “Could an unpredictable complex system be considered emergent enough to create true artificial life? The stock market had rhythms but never exactly repeatable patterns. Every day was something different. Since the Kinka Kuji virtual environment was connected in real-time to the stock market, it was fantastic to watch the fireflies emerge every night, and exhibit unique and individual traits every time. Yes there were behavioral patterns, but the interesting thing that started to emerge was flocking of fireflies. This meant that stocks did follow sector movements and were heavily affected by them.

Citations:

REFERENCES

	1	Proceedings of the First International Conference on Virtual Worlds, July 1998
	2	R. Livi and B. Ciliberto, Forward to <i>Proc. Workshop on Chaos and Complexity,</i> R. Livi and B. Ciliberto, eds., Institute for Scientific Interchange, World Scientific, Singapore, 1987, pp. vi-vii.
	3	T.S. Ray, <i>An Approach to the Synthesis of Life: Artificial Life II,</i> C.G. Langton et al., eds., Santa Fe Institute Studies in the Sciences of Complexity, Addison-Wesley, Redwood City, Calif. 1991, Vol. 10, p. 371.
	4	E.N. Lorenz, “Deterministic Nonperiod Flow,” <i>J. of Atmospheric Sciences,</i> 1963, Vol. 20, pp. 130-141.

CITED BY 2

	Meehae Song , Thomas Elias , Wolfgang Müller-Wittig , Tony K. Y. Chan, Interacting with the virtually recreated Peranakans, Proceedings of the 1st international conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques in Australasia and South East Asia, February 11-14, 2003, Melbourne, Australia
	Scot Thrane Refsland , Takeo Ojika , Robert Berry, Jr., Enhanced environments: large-scale, real-time ecosystems, Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, v.11 n.3, p.221-246, June 2002