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Running Artificial Life "Lenia"

Artificial Life Python

Let's explore and play with the artificial life model "Lenia."

Introduction

There is a beautiful artificial life model called "Lenia."

Check out these demo videos:

It looks like something alive is moving under a microscope—quite beautiful.

Let's run and play with "Lenia".

# Environment in this post
Windows 10
Python 3.7.6

Note: This article was translated from my original post.

Running Artificial Life "Lenia"

What is Lenia?

Lenia is a system of continuous cellular automata, a form of artificial life. It was derived from Conway's Game of Life by making everything smooth, continuous and generalized.

Ref. Lenia Portal

For more details, refer to the research papers:

Running Lenia

Now, let's run Lenia!

github.com

Lenia supports multiple programming languages like Python, Matlab, and JavaScript. We'll use the Python version.

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/Chakazul/Lenia.git

# Navigate to the Python directory
cd Lenia/Python

# Install virtualenv if not installed
pip install virtualenv

# Create a virtual environment
virtualenv .venv

# Activate the virtual environment
source .venv/Scripts/activate

# Install dependencies
pip install -r requirements.txt

Now we're ready to run Lenia.

python LeniaND.py

If you see the Lenia window, it's running successfully!

Exploring Different Lenia Patterns

By adjusting parameters from the top tabs in the Lenia window, you can explore various forms and behaviors.

Here are some examples:

It's fascinating to see such diverse patterns emerge!
Try experimenting with different settings and see what you can discover.

Conclusion

Today, we played with the artificial life model "Lenia."

Cellular automata have been studied for a long time, but seeing something as "lifelike" as Lenia in action really highlights the depth of this field.

There are many other interesting artificial life models out there—I’d love to explore more of them!

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References