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The Flame Algorithm and its Open Source

Culture
Authors - Scott Draves and Isabel Walcott Draves

What is the relationship between man and machine? Is open source a sustainable
way to organize cultural creativity? Can digital creations have the subtlety we
know in the natural world? Can computers be creative? Computer scientist and
software artist Scott Draves has made a life's work out of asking and trying to find
answers to these questions.
As a young teenager in the early 80s, Scott Draves began programming real-time
animation on an Apple II personal computer. Because he was both producer and
consumer of this experience, he was not interested in using the computer as a
predictable automaton to do his bidding. Instead he looked for ways the computer
could do something unexpected, to program complex behavior that held his
attention, getting more out than he put in.
Later, as a freshman in the math department at Brown University in 1987, he
began writing programs to create iterated function systems roughly, images
made up of smaller versions of themselves [Barnsley 1988]. The first version was
in PostScript and ran on the original LaserWriter. His interests soon led him to the
Graphics Research Group, where he rewrote this idea many times, including
animation and 3D, but using ordinary graphics libraries and workstations for
rendering.
As a PhD student in computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, he got a
summer internship at NTT Data in Japan. With access to an SGI supercomputer
and suddently unconstrained, for the first time he was able to solve his equations
completely to reveal the beauty contained within them. The algorithm treats every
pixel as a variable in an equation with thousands of parameters. The parameters
specify a collection of functions from the plane to the plane, and the algorithm
visualizes the interference pattern between them. This is the origin of the Flame
algorithm, a combination of fractals with a particle system [Draves and Reckase
2003]. The results are distinctive, recognizable, and extremely diverse.
At the suggestion of a mentor, Draves submitted this work to the Prix Ars
Electronica competition. One of the very earliest, Flame #149, won a Prix Ars
Honorary Mention in 1993. The nascent World Wide Web was a perfect place to
share the Flame algorithm and images, and inspired by his background in science
and his love of the emacs editor and the GNU philosophy, Draves decided to
release it as open source on his personal page in the CS department. This was,
quite possibly, the earliest application of the General Public License (GPL) to art.

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Spawning a Genre

From Animatrix 2003 "Matriculated" directed by Peter Chung

The decision to open-source Flame turned out to be seminal to creating a new
genre. Since then, Draves' code (now located at flam3.com) has been copied,
expanded, ported, and rewritten. Every day, people all over the world create
Flames.
Because Flame is an algorithm and an API, not an end-user application, one of
the first things to happen was the creation of graphical user interfaces to allow
non-programmers to create Flames. At first were plugins for Photoshop (as part of
Kai's Power Tools) and Adobe AfterEffects (by Andrew Davidson). Flame is on
millions of desktops worldwide, having shipped standard with Linux for years in
the GIMP.
Flames quickly spread, but the images themselves stood still. Draves, and others,
wanted to animate them, but the problem lay in creating quality resolution
animations when rendering each frame took literally hours. In 1999, Draves
learned about the new SETI@home project [Anderson 2002], which harnesses
the downtime of a network of participating desktops to co-opt their processors and
crunch numbers, sending results back to the server. A pivotal conversation with
fellow computer scientist Nick Thompson marked the conception of a similar
approach to render Flame animations. Programming the first version of the
Electric Sheep for Linux OS took Draves a week. It was, and still is, an open
source downloadable program that makes use of participants' CPUs to render
Flame animations frame by frame and share the results among all users [Draves
2005, 2006, 2007].
Results are uploaded to the server, where they are compiled into short videos that
play back on users' computers as a screensaver. As the news spread, thousands
of people downloaded the free screensaver. The more users who ran the
program, the more frames were rendered and the more animations were created,
quickly reaching into thousands upon thousands of animations. The trajectory of
the Flame algorithm was instantly and irrevocably transformed.

Stand-alone Applications

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Screenshot of Apophysis, a Flame editing GUI by Mark Townsend et al.

The image is Electric Sheep 244.01029, designed by the genetic algorithm
As the Electric Sheep screensaver and render farm grew in popularity, Draves and
other willing volunteers like Erik Reckase and Dean Gaudet added to the Flame
code and the Electric Sheep code. Reckase and Draves made substantial
improvements to the algorithm including the addition of Density Estimation, which
uses a dynamic filter to smooth out the noise remaining from undersampled areas
with few particles without making the well sampled areas blurry. Reckase has now
taken on responsibility for the code and rewritten it to run much faster and use
less memory.
Versions of Electric Sheep were created independently for Mac, and much later,
PC. Before long, stand-alone GUI apps to design Flames appeared such as
Aphophysis for Windows in 2004, Oxidizer for Mac in 2006, Qosmic for Linux in
2008, Apo3d in 2009, Flam4 for GPUs, and the cross-platform Fr0st in 2009.
Following Flame's open source GPL licensing, these applications are all also
GPL.
The creation of Apophysis by Mark Townsend made it easier for everyday
non-programmers to make Flames with much more control than the old and
limited plugins. The proliferation of great Flames being developed inspired Draves
to invite people to submit them to the Electric Sheep. There, they are turned into
animations and have a chance to contribute their genes to the reproductive
system of the Electric Sheep, which was already based on Darwinian evolution
with mutation and crossover, an idea inspired by Karl Sims [1991]. Viewers vote
"up" or "down" on sheep and the popular designs get to mate, contributing their
virtual dna to their offspring in a continuous process of death and rebirth carried
out by the program. Hence a human design team began to collaborate and
compete with the genetic algorithm. It pioneered fine-grained collaboration on the
internet and illustrated the process by which the more attention we give
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something, the more detail and structure appears.

A Do-It-Yourself Culture

Print and web advertisement for a ping pong brand

At this point in our story, we've seen how the original decision to open-source the
Flame algorithm led to plug-ins that allowed ordinary people to create still Flames.
The release of a free screensaver popularized Flames, inspiring the development
of stand-alone GUI programs to make creating them even easier.
Opening up the render farm to allow users to make the processor-intensive
animated Sheep themselves led to the rise of dedicated designers like Chris
Ursitti (Ursitti), Coppercat, and Sylvie Gallet (cqfd93). These experts challenge
themselves and each other to explore new styles of sheep design, and satisfy the
public's voting. Finally, CreativeCommons licensing meant anyone who wanted to
could reuse and remix Flames as they created their own content.
The impact of the decision to open source Flames and use CreativeCommons
licensing for Sheep is that there are thousands of YouTube videos and homemade
music videos that use Electric Sheep animations; award-winning artists that have
incorporated Flame images into their work; books, films, magazines and comics
that use the images; t-shirts, advertisements, television shows that use Flames;
Electric Sheep video clips for sale as stock footage; Flame prints for sale all over
the Internet; VJs and nightclubs running the Electric Sheep, Flame wallpaper,
Flame skins for Google Chrome and the Google homepage... the list (hyperlink to
anchor for the list below) goes on and on. One of the highpoints was the honor of
Siggraph selecting a Flame image designed by the Electric Sheep for their
graphic identity in 2008, where it appeared on the web site, t-shirts, posters, and
video screens all over the conference.
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Most of the time it's exciting to see how far the Flame algorithm has spread, for
example, the other day when Draves was idly flipping through a magazine
dedicated to Ping Pong at a friend's house and saw a Flame image advertising
the Gambler Outlaw Ping Pong Paddle or when a fan emailed a link to a comic
book cover featuring the Green Lantern and a green Flame.
These days there are many open source graphics packages, but nearly all of
them are based on the standard metaphors of the pen and camera, hence their
results are undistinguished. Flames are different because they are immediately
recognizable.
On the other hand, relinquishing control over who uses your work and how can
lead to some disappointing uses the artist would not otherwise have condoned,
like profiteering initiatives that combine the use of Flames with fake science for
"healing" and weight-loss. Notwithstanding that loss of control, the use of Open
Source has been a boon for Draves and society at large. Each step along the
way, the more open the process has been, the more programmers, artists,
designers and ordinary people have gotten involved with Flames.
As a generative artist, Draves work is not only about the images and animations
that he creates, but the interactive and participation and creativity the software
spurs in others.

Business Ramifications

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Cover of book The Store of Science by Joy Hakim, published by the

Smithsonian
Can giving source code away for free be a sustainable practice? Draves'
philosophy is that all creators "stand on the shoulders of giants", requiring
previous work to be accessible. It would feel wrong in his gut to create his work,
which he considers an initiative in the scientific tradition, without this openness.
But there are other advantages as well.
Open source code is a magnet for the labor and skills of other progammers, who
have contributed vastly to the Flame family of apps and plug-ins, growing it far
beyond what Draves could have accomplished on his own. The efforts of this
enterprising team of programmers introduced Flames to many new fans. In
generative art, the artist gives up control of the creative act to their own software.
Open source is the extension of this idea, where the artist gives up control of the
software itself.
In the case of the Electric Sheep this also applies to the genetic codes, images,
and animations created by the system, all of which are shared under Creative
Commons licensing. This allows artists (not just programmers) to participate via
reuse and remixing which provides incredible viral marketing power. Thousands of
do-it-yourself images of Flames and Sheep all over the web have a comment
section where someone asks "where is this from?" Someone says "it's done in
Apophysis" or "check out electricsheep.org" and another fan is born.
There are trickle-down effects too. The software engineers who wrote successful
programs based on Flame gained new respect and their own user base.
Professional graphic designers who incorporate Flames freely into their work,
often not knowing anything about the work that has gone into making Flames

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available, certainly profit from them.

However, for the majority of the programmers and designers, both professionals
and amateurs, who work extensively with the Flame algorithm, it's more likely to
be a passionate hobby than a moneymaking endeavor. Although Draves very
much wants the Electric Sheep to become self-sustaining, so far it has been a
labor of love, costing countless dollars to maintain and grow, plus volunteer labor
and donated server space. Donations have been much appreciated, but are
dwarfed by expenses.
Starting in 2006, Draves uses the part-human, part-machine cyborg mind to
create award-winning high-resolution, limited edition and custom fine art, which is
sold to support operations. A membership/subscription service is under
development, as are other experimental business models such as iPhone apps.
The question of how to support creativity in the digital age is a profound one faced
by programmers, musicians, and artists of all stripes. We have no definitive
answer, but we remain optimistic and committed to our philosophy. The nature of
information is to replicate and evolve. We believe in working with nature rather
than against it.

Conclusion

Loka, a music video by Glenn Marshall (Prix Ars Electronica winner)

Making the decision to open source one's art is a philosophical statement in
support of creating a better society, one with more creativity that is more
participatory, less prepackaged and broadcast. An artist who makes open-source
artwork actively relinquishes control, realizing that others will use it for
questionable ends. But the artistic rewards Draves has received by sharing the
code have been tremendous. It has been vastly expanded by contributions from
all over the world and totally rewritten in 2009. Flames have become their own
genre, currently ranking 7th in Google under the search term "Flames". Scott
Draves has spawned an immense loosely joined worldwide community of
designers, programmers, and passionate fans. The open sourcing of the flame
algorithm and how our culture has responded to it show how the free flow of
information allows an artist to exceed their own boundaries.

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About the authors

Scott Draves a.k.a. Spot

is a software artist living in New York City. He is best known as the creator
of the Electric Sheep, a continually evolving abstract animation with 350,000
unique participants each month. He created the Flame Algorithm in 1991,
the Fuse Algorithm (the first implementation of nonparametric texture
synthesis) in 1993, and the Bomb visual-musical instrument in 1995. He won
prizes from the Prix Ars Electronica and VIDA 2.0 and 4.0, his work is
permanently hosted on MoMA.org, and has been covered by Discover
Magazine, the New Yorker, and Wired. His artworks are installed in the Gates
Center of Computer Science at CMU, Google's headquarters, and Willow
Garage, in addition to private collections nationally. Draves has a PhD in
Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University, and a BS in
Mathematics from Brown University.

Isabel Walcott Draves

is the business manager of Spotworks LLC, the organization supporting
ElectricSheep.org and software artist Scott Draves. Additionally, she is a
tech startup consultant and an expert in strategic Internet marketing, social
media, and online communities. Ms. Draves started the first online
community written by teenage girls for teenage girls, SmartGirl.com, where
she was CEO from 1996 until its acquisition in 2001 by the Institute for
Research on Women and Gender at the University of Michigan. Ms. Draves
has a masters in Communications, Computing and Technology from
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Columbia University and a bachelors degree with honors in Literature from

Harvard College.

Bibliography
ANDERSON, D. et al 2002. Seti@home: An experiment in public-resource
computing. Communications of the ACM, 45:5661.
BARNSLEY, M. 1988. Fractals Everywhere. Academic Press.
DRAVES, S. and RECKASE, E. 2003 The fractal flame algorithm. http://flam3.com
/flame.pdf. (revised and expanded in 2008).
DRAVES, S. 2007. Evolution and Collective Intelligence of the Electric Sheep. Art
of Artificial Evolution, Romero, J. and Machado, P. eds. Springer Verlag.
DRAVES, S. 2006. The Electric Sheep and their Dreams in High Fidelity. In
Non-Photorealistic Animation and Rendering, ACM (invited keynote).
DRAVES, S. 2005. The Electric Sheep screen-saver: A case study in aesthetic
evolution. In Applications of Evolutionary Computing, LNCS 3449, Springer
Verlag.
SIMS, K. 1991. Artificial evolution for computer graphics. In Proceedings of
SIGGRAPH, ACM.
TAYLOR, R. and SPROTT J.C. 2008. Biophilic Fractals and the Visual Journey of
Organic Screen-savers. Nonlinear Dynamics, Psychology, and Life Sciences, Vol.
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