Wiktionary
n. Any non-representational form based on the shape or appearance of a living organism
Wikipedia
Biomorph may refer to:
- A shape resembling that of a living organism (such as bacteria), though not necessarily of biotic origin
- One of the virtual creatures in a computer simulation described by Richard Dawkins in his book The Blind Watchmaker
- In biomorphism, shapes that derive their form from nature as with contemporary architecture art
- One of the organic creatures in the art of surrealist painters such as Salvador Dalí or Yves Tanguy
- In Biomorphic robotics, a robot inspired by or emulating the principles of biological systems
- One of the mysterious alien creatures in the book Империя Превыше Всего (Empire Above All) by Nick Perumov
- Various fractals, particularly Pickover biomorphs, which are computer generated graphics from mathematical chaos modelisation
Usage examples of "biomorph".
Alan Grafen and Will Atkinson advised on computing problems, and the Apple Macintosh Syndicate of the Zoology Department kindly allowed their laser printer to draw biomorphs.
Desmond Morris claims that his biomorphs 'evolve' in his mind, and that their evolution can be traced through successive paintings.
Since each member of the ring is only one mutational step away from the central biomorph, it is easy for us to see them as children of the central parent.
I think of the biomorphs as female, therefore, because asexual animals like greenfly are nearly always basically female in form.
Each generation of biomorphs is only a single mutational step away from its predecessor and its successor.
But after 100 generations of EVOLUTION, the biomorphs can be anything up to 100 mutational steps away from their original ancestor.
The main thing that surprised me was that the biomorphs can pretty quickly cease to look like trees.
On my wanderings through the backwaters of Biomorph Land, I have encountered fairy shrimps, Aztec temples, Gothic church windows, aboriginal drawings of kangaroos, and, on one memorable but unrecapturable occasion, a passable caricature of the Wykeham Professor of Logic.
Ideally, the hostile environment should include other evolving biomorphs: 'predators', 'prey', 'parasites', 'competitors'.
The particular shape of a prey biomorph should determine its vulnerability to being caught, for example, by particular shapes of predator biomorphs.
I shall begin with any more-or-less compact and brightly coloured biomorph.
The computer will simultaneously display a range of mutant progeny of the biomorph, differing from it in shape and/or colour pattern.
When a certain number of choices have been logged, the computer will wipe the screen clean, 'breed' from the preferred biomorph, and display the next generation of mutant progeny.
I wandered through Biomorph Land, moving through an endless landscape of strange creatures and things, but I couldn't find my insects.
The reason, which I shall come back to, is the astronomical number of possible biomorphs that a sufficiently long evolutionary pathway can offer, even when there are only nine genes varying.