Another project developed last month during Vision Play, one of the Interactivos? workshops organized by Medialab Prado in Madrid. This time I asked Horacio González and Paola Guimerans to tell us something about biophionitos, a project they developed together with Igor Gonzáez and other collaborators.

Biophionitos generates artificial life using a system similar to the zoetrope, an early animation device that produces an illusion of action from a rapid succession of static pictures. Horacio González, Paola Guimerans and Igor González added to the concept a touch of Processing and a whiff of Arduino to develop an interface able to create a physical animation which runs in an old-style but interactive phenakistoscope (one of them reacts to your caresses, another one wakes up when you talk to it, etc).

This virtual pet created with the system is made of a limited series of simple polygons which the program has modified in order to give the drawing what looks like a biological life.

The artists also uploaded online a tutorial to do your own Biophionitos.