The five parts are: Evolution and Design Evolutionary Optimization of Designs Evolutionary Art Evolutionary Artificial Life Creative Evolutionary Design
Peter Bentley argues that digital life created inside computers is not merely a simulation, but is just as real as "real" life. He surveys many areas of biology -- brains, insects, plants, immune systems, growth -- and shows how these are inspiring corresponding digital versions inside computers, and some of the not-so-obvious uses they are being put to. Finally he pulls together theses various areas, and shows what they all have in common -- they are all complex systems, made of many components interacting with feedback, perturbed by the environment -- a model which could promise to unify various areas of biology. He covers some very deep material in a light chatty style, with lots of illustrative examples -- not all of them the usual ones.
A good overview of a fascinating and exciting new area of computation.
The five Parts are: Evolutionary Creativity Evolutionary Music Creative Evolutionary Design Evolutionary Art Evolutionary Innovation
The conference papers are collected in six sessions: Applications of AIS; Memory and AIS; Self or Non-Self?; Conceptual Papers; Learning Strategies; Hybrids and Augmentations.