A Sequence of Lines Consecutively Traced by Five Hundred Individuals is an online drawing tool that lets users do just one thing – trace a line. Each new user only sees the latest line drawn, and can therefore only trace this latest imperfect copy. As the line is reproduced over and over, it changes and evolves – kinks, trembling motions and errors are exaggerated through the process.*
Once an accidental feature shows up, subsequent tracers try to reproduce it like good little replicators. Eventually you get a dancing chihuahua.
A Sequence of Lines Traced by Five Hundred Individuals from clement valla on Vimeo.
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or Paperback
*Please note:
Links to books and other items on this page and elsewhere on Greg Ladens' blog may send you to Amazon, where I am a registered affiliate. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases, which helps to fund this site.
That’s what my DNA feels like OK. Or else it’s just an aging back.
I know where this is headed, so I will say it is not biological evolution. It is cute, it is interesting, but resist the urge to draw an analogy with evolution, please. Reasoning by analogy is maybe the highest roadblock to understanding how evolution works.
I think this explains the evolution of the bible.
Neat. I see punctuated equilibrium! (Which basically means that most copiers try to be faithful, but every so often, someone really sloppy comes along, and that sends the drawing in a new direction.)
Needs more selection.
Well, there was at least one person who decided to play silly buggers and simply ignored the previous drawing.
Cherry: Reasoning by analogy has its uses and is sometimes the only way to address certain questions, but more often analogy is useful for something other than reasoning: Making a point. And this does that.