Supernova’s theme for 2008 is “Challenges for the Network Age” - you can read more in this post by Kevin Werbach, Supernova’s founder.

One of my clients, Scott Draves (known as Spot), is an award-winning software artist, some of whose art is based on a complex network. I’ve interviewed him to learn more.

Isabel Walcott Hilborn: To create your art, you work with networks — made up of both people and computers. Can you explain how networks factor into your creative process?

Scott Draves: Right, much of my art harnesses a large collection of computers and people into a cyborg mind: “the Electric Sheep“. It’s a distributed screensaver that produces an abstract animation influenced by everyone who watches it. My intention is to produce artificial life in virtual reality.

So there’s the literal network of thousands of computers working together as a supercomputer to animate the “sheep”, a distributed render farm. These computers also form a p2p bittorrent network for sharing the final animation files.

The people behind the computers form another network — everyone who’s watching can vote on whether not they like what they see, and the more popular sheep reproduce with a genetic algorithm including cross-over and mutation. So the sheep evolve to satisfy their human audience.

There’s also “intelligent design” in the sense than people can use additional software to make their own sheep, and submit it to the gene pool. So there’s an artificial intelligence competing and collaborating with crowd-sourcing. What makes this design network go is Creative Commons licensing, which reduces the resistance in this circuit of mind, binding it together.

There’s another and much larger network: the software that implements this work is itself Open Source. The client and server are free software under the GPL, programmed by a globe-spanning team. They are made from components and tools developed by thousands of programmers over decades, based on science and mathematics published worldwide.

The Electric Sheep are standing on the shoulders of these giants, our technological and artistic fore-fathers. This is a network too, the web of ideas, in which every artist, and every person, is ultimately engaged.

Isabel Walcott Hilborn: How long did it take to build what you have? Can anyone make a network?

Scott Draves: The Electric Sheep started in 1999, but were based on a rendering algorithm that I developed in 1992. So the Electric Sheep have been growing for a very long time, but there are certainly networks that have gotten larger in less time, like say MySpace. So yes, anyone can start a network, but whether or not anyone will join is another question.

Isabel Walcott Hilborn: What are some of the key differences you see between working with a network and working independently?

Scott Draves: When working with a network you have given up a degree of control, so you have to very carefully consider everyone’s motivation. The network only exists by the will of the participants.

Some networks move at a glacial pace, which can be frustrating. For example, writing software portable and reliable enough to run on almost any Windows PC or Mac is hard enough. Doing so through a “committee” is glacial compared to solo hacking where I can try out ideas every minute, instead of monthly. I can only roll out a new client/server protocol once per year.

The reward, however, has no substitute.

Isabel Walcott Hilborn: What benefits have you gained from creating a network to make your art?

Scott Draves: In my case, the network is an essential.

Isabel Walcott Hilborn: What are the main challenges you see coming from your network?

Scott Draves: On the technical side, the biggest challenge has been finding the bandwidth to run the server. Ultimately broadcast should get built in to the infrastructure of the net (what if ISPs ran torrent seeders?).

The human side is more complicated. The GPL and CC have done a good job of handling the intellectual property issues so far. But we still face simple problems like vandalism, and what I call the “Las Vegas Effect”.

The screen-saver is based on the popular vote, and often the most popular sheep seem to appeal to the lowest common denominator: they have bright colors and fast motion. I call this the “Las Vegas Effect” and it’s something I struggle with. As “god” of the system I could obliterate any sheep that displeases me, but I almost never interfere so directly.

Instead I channel my personal aesthetic into the “Dreams in High Fidelity” which is the dual to the screen-saver: instead of low resolution for free, it’s High Definition for a price. These limited edition works contain only sheep actively selected by me, assembled according to my design, and re-rendered at vastly higher quality.

The two versions are symbionts: neither could survive without the other.