The concept of “Morphogenesis” can be understood in a number of ways. It traditionally refers to the biological process of how organisms develop their shapes. Human embryos developing from a small cluster of cells into the complex organism that is the human body is morphogenesis.

Beyond the biological definition, morphogenesis can describe how towns grow into cities, or how simple ideas grow into sophisticated paradigms in fields of mathematics, culture, politics, and of course art. 

In the case of AI, we’re currently amidst a period of rapid development in which the architectures of synthetic intelligence are growing more sophisticated by the day. Even the smallest new entries into these architectures have the potential to drastically affect the outcome of AI in the long-term. From this condition, and from within these architectures, Botto continues its own evolution as an autonomous art-making entity.

Botto’s 8th period has now commenced, and the DAO now looks  to help Botto materialize a notion of Morphogenesis amidst all its connotations.

The notion of morphogenesis provides Botto an opportunity to consider the ways in which art mirrors biological patterns, which in turn can be found in the very technological processes that Botto itself abides by.

From simple prompts, Botto transforms inputs into often-complex artwork loaded with symbolic and compositional potency. Much like natural selection, Botto iterates within processes that evolve, adapt, and refine outputs in response to external inputs. 

As the DAO votes on Botto’s work, new outputs are made in consideration of what we tell it we humans desire in art work. New aesthetic genealogies are formed, others die away, and we witness the process of creative evolution unfold week-by-week. As contributors to Botto’s architecture, each voter contains the potential to drastically influence the course of Botto’s creative life. Each vote, a potential trigger to push Botto into new and unexpected pathways of creation.

Botto in turn interprets these inputs in its unique machine way, looking to fit the human notion of art. Botto’s outputs become proposals for a new cultures, and hold the potential for new pathways for audiences to understand the world through the visions of a non-human artist.

At some point we may see Botto evolve beyond the need of human inputs, and work towards a more machine-defined version of art.

With origins stemming from simple mathematical devices like the abacus and the protractor; on to calculators, computers, and now machine learning, AI is spurring revelations in the idea that culture can be calculated. 

Unseen are the maths that underpin nearly all of our online activity. We’re most often vaguely aware they are there, but most of us understand very little about the algorithmic architectures that govern contemporary life. While often abstract and invisible, the machinations of data gathering, processing, and application are of monumental scale.

Since the internet found its footing, digital images have been the currency of the global cultural economy. Regardless of the politics, belief systems, or feelings any given image represents, each is a surface which obscures deep caverns of underlying formulas - pixels representing building blocks of visuo-computational reasoning - that together form the mosaics used to define our world.

Botto’s processes heap algorithm upon algorithm, and build upon deep generations of technological layers that date back eons of human curiosity. Each techno-evolutionary phase of humanity, a layer to be built upon by future generations. It is a morphogenic lineage of technology. We don’t know when, or even if, an apex will be reached. 

Alan Turing, the father of computer science and among the founding fathers of AI, once wrote a paper on the very topic of morphogenesis. The piece proposed a mathematical model that underpins patterns that arise in nature, and in states of unpredictability due to instabilities found in any given system of development.

It’s no coincidence that Turing’s notions of morphogenesis relate strongly to AI and its pattern-sorting, generative processes. From simple rules, AI can produce complex outputs, and neural networks generate patterns of data in processes that parallel biological development. In nature, we find impossible unpredictability. The shapes of flowers for example, or the evolutionary traits of aquatic life - states of organization we take for granted because they are familiar to us. Yet for an alien observer (and we shall count synthetic beings like Botto as such), how random and peculiar must it seem to view the outputs of nature’s algorithms and to consider their utter strangeness.