WIVACE 2008Workshop Italiano di Vita Artificiale e Computazione Evolutiva

Artificial life (commonly Alife or alife) is a field of study and an associated art form which examine systems related to life, its processes, and its evolution through simulations using computer models, robotics, and biochemistry. There are three main kinds of alife, named for their approaches: soft, from software; hard, from hardware; and wet, from biochemistry. Artificial life imitates traditional biology by trying to recreate biological phenomena. The term "artificial life" is often used to specifically refer to soft alife.Artificial life studies the logic of living systems in artificial environments. The goal is to study the phenomena of living systems in order to come to an understanding of the complex information processing that defines such systems.Very often agent based systems are used in artificial life studies to observe the emergent properties of societies of agents.