roughedges:

i love the hard transition blips, but i’m not so keen on the overly bright shapes. the monochrome shape, floating above the planet, invokes a sense of fear & doom that i find oddly appealing. it’d be interesting to see what one could do using just sound files/images available from nasa’s archives. possible future assignment?

postspectacular:

Engineers working for NASA know a lot about physics. They know exactly which characteristics make for a good communications antenna. But the process of designing an antenna so that it has the necessary properties is hard. Even though the engineers know what is required from the final antenna, they may not know how to design the antenna so that it satisfies those requirements. NASA’s Evolvable Systems Group has used evolutionary algorithms to successfully evolve antennas for use on satellites. These evolved antennas have irregular shapes with no obvious symmetry (one of these antennas is pictured below). It is unlikely that a human expert would have arrived at such an unconventional design. Despite this, when tested these antennas proved to be extremely well adapted to their purpose. (via When are Evolutionary Algorithms Useful?)