The area of computer-generated artificial life-forms is a relatively recent
field of inter-disciplinary study that involves mathematical modelling, physical
intuition and ideas from chemistry and biology and computational science.
Although the attribution of “life” to non biological systems is still controversial,
several groups agree that certain emergent properties can be ascribed to
computer simulated systems that can be constructed to “live” in a simulated
environment. In this paper we discuss some of the issues and infrastructure
necessary to construct a simulation laboratory for the study of computer generated
artificial life-forms. We review possible technologies and present some
preliminary studies based around simple models.
