rogeralsing.com/2008/12/07/genet … mona-lisa/
[quote]This weekend I decided to play around a bit with genetic programming and put evolution to the test, the test of fine art 
I created a small program that keeps a string of DNA for polygon rendering.
The procedure of the program is quite simple:
-
Setup a random DNA string (application start)
-
Copy the current DNA sequence and mutate it slightly
-
Use the new DNA to render polygons onto a canvas
-
Compare the canvas to the source image
-
If the new painting looks more like the source image than the previous painting did, then overwrite the current DNA with the new DNA
-
repeat from 1
Now to the interesting part
Could you paint a replica of the Mona Lisa using only 50 semi transparent polygons?
That is the challenge I decided to put my application up to.
The image below is the result of that test:
(The number below each image is the number of generations it took to reach that specific painting)[/quote]
Very cool. And the polygon Mona Lisa could probably be described in far fewer bits than the original. Even better if you want more quality you can keep running the algorithm for longer, so you could use it as a lossy compression algorithm.