In an enormous and constant effort, lichens transform the concrete deserts of our cities into green landscapes. This project develops a contemporary visual pattern language for urban constructions such as walls and facades to create an aesthetic common ground for human and non-human (lichen) artistic activity – not based on Artificial Intelligence, but on Lichen Intelligence. Lichens only exist in symbiosis which is why we believe that the purpose of their activity is not survival of the fittest, but cooperation with the best fit.
Lichens are first colonizers. They prepare wastelands for ecologically valuable habitats. Lichens mark the transition from natural to urban areas, in which they have been greatly reduced in their biodiversity and spread due to poor air quality, traffic, excess nitrogen and heavy use of herbicides. Citizens remove lichens from surfaces with great effort because they want to emphasize cleanliness and clarity, following a modernist ideal of architecture.
As a group of artists and scientists, we search the aesthetics to counteract the (modernist) disregard of lichens. Design patters, that follow the growth patterns of lichens make vegetation recognizable as an added value instead of seeing it as a flaw. We designed a graphic software which shows how buildings and façades can be designed without eliminating lichens. This is done based on modular growth pattern, which are derived from lichen hand drawings over lichen photos. In the software we use bottom up graphic algorithms to learn about their growth and AI to understand the colonization patterns. The resulting patterns are intended to serve as inspiration and blueprints for surface design of façades, sidewalks, roofs and walls where lichen growth is expected. This should shift the aesthetic paradigm from “neat and clean” to “naturally thriving”, questioning how the aesthetics of a healthy city has are looking like and if this coincidences with our design measures.
While investigating the growth of lichen on stones, trees and urban artifacts one can learn how lichen searches its location. This is done by different algorithmic approaches.
While investigating the growth of lichen on stones, trees and urban artifacts I wished to learn how lichen searches its location. So I came across the voronoi algorithm (which I still remember from my people tracking programming). Learning about the different types of voronoi calculations, I had to understand that a serious understanding of their spacial patterns cannot be described with ruler and compass. This is why we started to use programming to implement rules of the growth of the lichen thallus.
However, for the animation we used a pixel based approach which uses the step by step approach from nature instead of appying geometric calculations. Nevertheless, complex patterns appear.
Those patterns are forseen to be used in desing walls and facades to create an aesthetic common ground for human an non-human (lichen-) activity.
Description of the algorithmic approach (Konzept: Felix Bonowski)
1.) Comparision of distance
The software calculates the geometric distance to an origin (which can be the edge or centre of a lichen) from each pixel adjacent to an already populated pixel. The lichen that is closest to the unpopulated pixel “wins” and spreads to that location. A constant repetition of the process leads to a graphic that corresponds to an exact Voronoi diagram. Variants arise from a modification of the distances (e.g. additive, multiplicative, exponential) and the positions of the original locations.
2.) Diffusion and „survival of the strongest“
In the “concentration-based” approach, the presence of a lichen in a pixel is calculated as a quantity, which increases through growth until the quantity is full, and spreads to neighboring pixels through diffusion of small portions of the total amount. A distinction between populated and unpopulated pixels is made by a specified amount of “dying” lichens in each pixel. Only when the neighboring pixels are populated enough to supply more through diffusion than dies, the exponential growth process gets started.The resulting images approximate a Voronoi diagram, but with more rounded edges. These arise here fully emergent, as a result of a distributed process without central control.