Welcome to the Artificial Life Online Expo

Welcome to the Artificial Life Expo, an online museum experience exploring the field of Artificial Life (or ALife). ALife is the science of building and studying life-like systems from the ground up using computer simulations, robots, physicochemistry, and more.

This expo was first presented as a physical exhibition at the ALIFE 2025 conference in Kyoto, Japan (6–10 October 2025), and has since grown into this permanent digital experience.

The expo is designed for anybody curious about artificial life, whether you're completely new to the field, or a student taking your first ALife class, or even if you're an existing researcher who wants to explore areas outside your own specialism. This expo is a broad overview, covering everything from the foundational question of what life actually is, through to core principles in ALife like emergence, self-organisation, evolution, and complexity. It will even showcase some of the diverse forms ALife takes — digital (like software), physical (robotics), and "wet" (chemical systems), as well as the big societal and philosophical questions the field raises and tackles with. Each of the nine zones has a combination of short video, explanatory text, and live interactive simulations that you can play with directly in your browser. We encourage you to take your time with each zone, and to play around with the simulations as much as you like — experimentation is a core part of learning about ALife, and the best way to understand it is often to jump in and tinker with it yourself.

Since this expo was originally designed for public attendees of the ALIFE 2025 conference, it does not assume any prior knowledge. We only ask that you bring your curiosity and an open mind. ALife is a highly interdisciplinary field, drawing on insights from biology, computer science, physics, chemistry, philosophy, and more. So even if you don't have a background in any of those areas, you'll still be able to follow along and enjoy the expo. We also hope that this expo can serve as a springboard for further exploration, whether that's diving into the research behind the exhibits, trying out some ALife software tools yourself, or even getting involved in the community. Some excellent resources are the ALife Encyclopedia, the ALife Newsletter, and the International Society for Artificial Life (ISAL) — all of which are great ways to stay up to date with the latest research, events, and discussions in the field.

In true ALife style, this expo is constantly evolving. The version you see here is already more expansive than the original physical exhibition at ALIFE 2025, and we plan to keep growing it. If you've spotted an error, feel something is missing, or have a suggestion for how we can improve something, we'd love to hear from you via our feedback form. We're also actively looking for volunteer translators to help make this expo accessible in more languages over time. If you're interested in translating content into your language and helping maintain it, please get in touch.

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