i am very interested in the aesthetics and beauty of flocking/swarming systems (birds, fish, bees, ants, etc.). it amazes me how such a potentially chaotic system can contain such order and control. for my final project i would like to continue in the direction of my experimentation from week7 where i modeled a school of fish in a pond and how they search for food in order to grow:

although the movement of the fish seemed very smooth, i wasn't sure if it was completely convincing...there seems to be something missing from the environment. maybe there needs to be more intelligent behaviour. so what about adding a bit of genetic algorithms into the mix? will the behaviours of each school of fish adapt to the most efficient formations? are there optimal swarming patterns that allow for even food consumption opportunities for all fish? what about modeling the current of the water as the school swims about (and see how tight formations might benefit because neighboring fish get caught in each others current)?

all these questions highlight just how complex real flocking/swarming behaviour is in nature. i want to tackle this challenge by attempting to model a few different species and how they might morph from one to the other. it could be that only certain genes can pass through the borders. so the best genes can evolve into another species while the bad genes stay the same. possible as each species moves from one quad to the an assigned value/char could be typed out...

update 11.26.06:

and here are some bees to get an idea of what they might look like