AL: Artificial Life (Insects)

AL: Artificial Life is a three-part art project directed by Japanese CG artist Daizaburo Harada. All three portions of the project come bundled together in a single package, each portion in a different medium.

Part one, AL: Artificial Life (Insects), is a full colour art book containing Harada's surreal CG artwork. The imagery depicts his "insects", a kind of strange otherworldly creature that's unrecognizable as any form of real life from our world. They were created using a novel procedural generation technique using audio waveforms as a seed. The second part, Judgment Engine, is a sci-fi novel by American author Greg Bear. Set at the end of the universe, it focuses on a debate between far-future scientists over what kind of message to send to the as-yet-unborn future universe, and imagines Harada's insects as artificial lifeforms being created to prove a hypothesis about the nature of life.

The third part, School World, is a CD-ROM game. While it doesn't explicitly state who players control or what their goal is, it sets players in the role of a scientist or observer examining Harada's insects. The first section of the game, Capture, lets players traverse the School World planet via satellite imagery and select an insect to examine. The second section, Breed, takes place inside the UI of a scientific examination station, and allows players to examine and manipulate their captured insect. The specimen can be exported to an external file to share with other players.