Genetic Programming: Evolution of Mona Lisa

December 7, 2008 · 2 min read

Founder, Asynkron Systems

Added FAQ here: http://rogeralsing.com/2008/12/09/genetic-programming-mona-lisa-faq/
Added Gallery here: http://rogeralsing.com/2008/12/11/genetic-gallery/

This weekend I decided to play around a bit with genetic programming and put evolution to the test, the test of fine art 🙂

I created a small program that keeps a string of DNA for polygon rendering.
The procedure of the program is quite simple:

Copy the current DNA sequence and mutate it slightly
Use the new DNA to render polygons onto a canvas
Compare the canvas to the source image
If the new painting looks more like the source image than the previous
painting did, then overwrite the current DNA with the new DNA
Repeat from 1

Now to the interesting part:

Could you paint a replica of the Mona Lisa using only 50 semi transparent polygons?

That is the challenge I decided to put my application up to.

The image below is the result of that test:
The number below each image is the number of generations it took to reach that specific painting.

So what do you think?