Evolutionary Methods for Ant Colony Paintings

We investigate evolutionary methods for using an ant colony optimization model to evolve “ant paintings.” Our model is inspired by the recent work of Monmarché et al. The two critical differences between our model and that of Monmarché’s are: (1) we do not use an interactive genetic algorithm, and (2) we allow the pheromone trail to serve as both a repelling and attracting force. Our results show how different fitness measures induce different artistic “styles” in the evolved paintings. Moreover, we explore the sensitivity of these styles to perturbations of the parameters required by the genetic algorithm. We also discuss the evolution and interaction of various castes within our artificial ant colonies.