About
Since its origins around 1990 (unofficially even earlier), the Artificial Life scientific community has investigated how to extract the “logical form of living systems” (Christopher Langton, First ALife Conference, 1989) by using soft, hard, and wet systems as support for the investigations. Since this is such a broad topic, ALife researchers focus on a range of specific questions within it. In many cases, the common thread uniting their work is the use of similar scientific methodologies and tools, based on both experimental and analytical approaches. Indeed, besides contributing to our knowledge on the logical form of living systems, ALife research has produced a number of powerful research tools and methodologies in areas such as Digital Evolution, Swarm Robotics, Swarm Chemistry, and Social Learning. Many of these methodologies, such as statistical tools and modelling techniques, have the potential to be applicable across many subfields within and outside of ALife. However, these techniques are rarely discussed outside the context of the subfields they were developed for, inhibiting such generalization. The goal of the first Workshop on the Methodology in Artificial Life (MethAL Workshop) is to bring together people who have designed innovative methods for studying Artificial Life in a context where discussion can focus on these methods specifically, rather than the results they produced. In so doing, we hope to promote the generalization of methods across ALife research as a whole.
This workshop is intended to be a platform to present and discuss current approaches, advances in implementation, future vision for methodologies, and reflections of past implementations. We will aim to provide an opportunity to meet people with interests in formalizing approaches, to be exposed to current research methodologies (with emphasis on hybridization of modelling techniques) and to exchange ideas in an informal setting. Throughout the workshop, notes will be taken and synthesised to create a resource of methodologies linked to relevant publications. We anticipate that this project will strengthen the links between researchers and improve understanding of the current and future methodological needs of our community.
MethAL is a workshop at the 2019 Conference on Artificial Life in Newcastle, UK. Registration for the main conference is necessary to attend MethAL.