As humans, we create life. And we’re all familiar with the idea of artificial intelligence. But what about artificial life? What is it, and why should we care?

Artificial Life is a recently labelled but truly ancient field in which technology is used to imitate biological life. From the earliest stone and clay figurines, to puppets, through hydraulic and pneumatic creations, on to clockwork, through electrical robots and even to flesh, artificial life has a long history that now also extends into the abstract computational realm.

My own interest is as much in the current examples of this phenomenon as in its earliest examples, a prevailing fascination with not only “life-as-we-know-it”, but “life-as-we-have-interpretted-it”.

Since the very earliest days of humankind, we have represented life using whatever technology was available. This has allowed us to observe the traits of life, even our own, in devices over which we have control.

In this way we have embodied our theories of life’s vital principles in artefacts, and tinkered like any Creator from poetry and fiction.

In short, artificial life is central to our attempts to understand who we are.