What is an Ecosystem?
How to make artificial one?
What kind of generic ecosystems might be developed?
How it can reflect the general processes of evolution through competition and cooperation?
How it could be used in real life or lab research?
As a base for discussion we offer - an abstract marine/space ecosystem – Puerta del Mar.

Andrey Krel, digital artist from Moscow living and working in Barcelona, author of the project.
Igor Line, interactive designer, ecosystem Python programming.
Ismael Tito Freire, M.A., UPF, 2D Ecosystem.

We are porting a curent 2D ecosystem from Processing to Python and converting it to a 3D ecosystem and later we will develop it to abstraction level of generic ecosystem to play various scenarios and use it as visualization tool.

Early Processing 2D prototype was developed in UPF by Ismael, Andrey Krel and Clara Lipkau as a final project for Virtual Reality. Later Ismael continued on it solely and developed fully working 2D ecosystem as a master final project, full documentation could be found here (Esp.): www.infoaliveproject.wordpress.com   

Now we are porting ecosystem to Python and making it 3D. At the moment the ecosystem functionality is kept as it is, changing only 2D -> 3D. 
Please find some general information on principles it was built on by watching this video from Daniel Shiffman: http://vimeo.com/channels/natureofcode/64663043  

We are full of ideas and would love to share em with you, same time expecting you to participate!

First of all we want to implement in ecosystem (besides classic Darwinian butchery) things like Collective action,  Cooperation, Game Theory, Gaia hypothesis etc. As a starting point for this direction I take Peter Kollock researches, if you interested in this part, please watch this seminar Peter made in Stanford on social dilemmas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPwUkL1jatY  

We just start to explore WebGL/Three.js and looking forward to make online version of ecosystem with this powerful technologies. Any theoretical or practical effort is welcome here! Please see this examples on WebGL:

http://webglsamples.googlecode.com/hg/aquarium/aquarium.html  

http://aleksandarrodic.com/p/jellyfish/

http://alteredqualia.com/three/examples/webgl_terrain_dynamic.html

And the most crazy idea we have - to abstract ecosystem to a level when it could be used to visualize processes. Take a look on some examples please:

• Bio ecosystem (from cell to space levels)
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spore_(2008_video_game)

• Programming Languages Ecosystem - to show differences between language families for non-programmers
  http://blog.interfacevision.com/design/design-visual-progarmming-languages-snapshots/

• Memes ecosystem to visualize Richard Dawkins theory
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFn-ixX9edg

• Ant simulator
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qk4Masp8tsQ

• Your suggestion?

We are looking for:

1. Python developers for ecosystem core

2. GLSL developers to make from scratch separate shaders for species/seascape or even programm species fully in GLSL

3. 3D designers to design species and environment

4. Anyone interested in a project!

For the future development we are looking for prototypes and proof of concept:

1. Functional programming developers for next gen ecosystem

2. Psychologist and experienced programmers to develop next gen abstractions for behavioural modeling (according to Peter Kollock)

3. WebGL/Three.js gurus for online version

4. Anyone interested in a project!

Please feel free to ask any questions and make suggestions,
Looking forward to see you!

Andrey, Igor and Ismael