Mutations by William Latham

William Latham’s Mutations (1991-92) depicts a surreal journey of real-time evolutionary art, showcasing intricate breeding and growth processes through animated forms engaged in complex interactions. This significant work represents a watershed moment in the development of artificial life in the realm of art, providing viewers with a glimpse into a dynamic and evolving world now achievable due to the digital.

Latham’s work showcased his Mutator algorithm, combining chance mutations with creative choices to produce ever-evolving 3D forms of enormous complexity.

The work is actually a collaboration with Latham’s long-time collaborator Stephen Todd. Latham and Todd began working on the revolutionary generative art system, Mutator Evolutionary Art, together with a team at IBM beginning in 1987. Besides Latham and Todd, the team included Lance Putnam and Peter Todd. Their work displayed “strange organic, often serpentine, forms, produced using [an] “alternative evolutionary software system” (developed with Stephen Todd and team), which William uses to pick and breed 3D forms freed from the limits of the human imagination.”

Latham and Todd collaborated on Mutator and FormGrow between 1987 and 1993 so this piece marks a middle-point in their time creating together.

This evolutionary work of Latham and Todd can be considered proto-machine learning art, as the evolving, breeding features of the program—drawn directly from cybernetics and its feedback loops—are the predecessors of machines processing data to perform instructionless tasks, modern machine learning.