Jeffrey Ventrella
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Jeffrey Ventrella (born 1960) is an artist and programmer who has developed a series of interactive free-download software programs. He has written research papers on artificial life, and works in the virtual world industry. Ventrella created the animated artificial life program "Gene Pool", which is derived from Darwin Pond. His website, Ventrella.com includes these and many other free software programs, and also texts on a variety of topics related to evolution and creativity.
Ventrella was a gifted artist at an early age, and his creative talents enabled him to overcome his poor performance in school. In 1985 he discovered fractals and began programming. Originally trained at Virginia Commonwealth University in Art Education and Art History, Ventrella then went on to earn a Master of Fine Arts in Computer Graphics at Syracuse University. After four years of working in Scientific Visualization and teaching CAD at Syracuse and then briefly at the University of California, San Diego, under professor Harold Cohen, Ventrella went to the MIT Media Lab in 1992 to earn a second masters degree in Media Arts and Sciences.
Ventrella then moved to San Francisco and joined Rocket Science Games in 1995. Ventrella began prototyping a virtual world with Will Harvey in 1997, and in 1998 they co-founded There, Inc., creator of There, an MMOG. Ventrella is credited as the principle inventor of There's Avatar Centric Communication System, and worked closely with Chuck Clanton on avatar body language and online chat balloon logic and animation. He also was the main author on the company's first US patent, on avatar genetics.
After leaving There in 2004, Ventrella continued his ongoing work in artificial life research. In 2005 he joined Linden Lab, makers of Second Life.
[edit] Published works
Gene Pool, Exploring the Interaction Between Sexual Selection and Natural Selection, (published as a chapter in the book: Artificial Life Models in Software. 2005
Avatar Physics and Genetics published in Virtual Worlds 2000 (ed. Heudin, J.C.), Springer-Verlag Berlin/Heidelberg, 2000
Animated Artificial Life a chapter in the book: Virtual Worlds: Synthetic Universes, Digital Life and Complexity Ed. Jean-Claude Heudin Perseus Books, 1999
Designing Emergence in Animated Artificial Life Worlds published in Proceedings of the First International Conference on Virtual Worlds. Pages: 143-155. 1998. ISBN 3-540-64780-5
Attractiveness vs. Efficiency: How Mate Preference Affects Locomotion in the Evolution of Artificial Swimming Organisms] published in Artificial Life VI. ed. Adami et al. MIT Press. 1998
Sexual Swimmers, published in From Animals To Animats 4. ed. Maes et al. A Bradford Book. 1996
Explorations in the Emergence of Morphology and Locomotion Behavior in Animated Characters. Published in Artificial Life IV proceedings, ed. Brooks, Maes. MIT Press. 1994
