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Some possible principles of cultural evolution

Posted Odile AuroraLeave a commentPosted in Evolution, Science

Fol­low­ing is a brief essay on some prin­ciples of evo­lution that could be use­ful in ana­lysing the spread of ideas, con­cepts, and ideo­logical com­plexes in human cul­ture. While there will be many prac­tical diffe­rences between evo­lution in bio­logical entit­ies and cul­tural ones, some gen­eral prin­ciples of evo­lution may per­haps apply to both.

Two recent books on biological, cultural, and spiritual evolution

Posted Odile AuroraLeave a commentPosted in Evolution, Poetry & Prose, Religion, Science

Over the past few years, I’ve be­come more and more con­vinced that the concept of evo­lution is not only a power­ful ex­plan­ation of chan­ges and pat­terns in the bio­logic­al world, but also, by exten­sion, of changes and pat­terns in human cul­ture, or the world of ideas. If the sur­vival of (spe­cies of) organ­isms ulti­mately depends on their abil­ity to adapt to ever-chan­ging en­viron­ments, then the same might very well be true of ideas and con­cepts, and I believe it is a fruit­ful line of study to pur­sue this idea.

Tale of Tales - The Graveyard (2008)

Posted Odile Aurora1 CommentPosted in Death, Digital Media & Videogames, Music

While devel­op­ment and play on The End­less Forest, the first pub­lic release by Tales of Tales was still going strong, Aur­iea and Michaël had been work­ing on new con­cepts. One of them, which bor­rowed ele­ments from their unfin­ished pro­ject 8, would later become The Path, which was released in 2009, and which will be the sub­ject of our next and most exten­ded fea­ture on this Flem­ish design stu­dio. The other was a shorter, more mod­est pro­ject, and quicker to develop for a final release as well. It was the digital vign­ette called The Grave­yard, and the first of the Tale of Tales titles to be dis­trib­uted semi-com­mer­cially online, bey­ond the con­fines of their own website.

Tale of Tales - The Endless Forest (2005 - present)

Posted Odile AuroraLeave a commentPosted in Digital Media & Videogames, Social Interaction & Networks

First released in 2005, The End­less Forest is a “mul­ti­player online game” and “social screensaver” developed by Flem­ish stu­dio Tale of Tales. It was ori­gin­ally com­mis­sioned by the Musee d’Art Mod­erne Grand-Duc Jean in Lux­em­burg in 2003, and has passed through vari­ous stages of devel­op­ment since its ori­ginal incep­tion. Ver­sion 3.3 was released in Novem­ber 2009 and presents only the latest of these devel­op­ments: the addi­tion of a new loc­a­tion in the forest.