Graph-Based Evolutionary Art

A graph-based approach for the evolution of Context Free Design Grammars is presented. Each genotype is a directed hierarchical graph and, as such, the evolutionary engine employs graph-based crossover and mutation. We introduce six different fitness functions based on evolutionary art literature and conduct a wide set of experiments. We begin by assessing the adequacy of the system and establishing the experimental parameters. Afterwards, we conduct evolutionary runs using each fitness function individually. Finally, experiments where a combination of these functions is used to assign fitness are performed. Overall, the experimental results show the ability of the system to optimize the considered functions, individually and combined, and to evolve images that have the desired visual characteristics.