This article examines the multispecies–algorithmic audiovisual installation Astrofin, focusing on the relational structures between multispecies behaviour, algorithmic systems and audiovisual generation. Drawing on theories of intermediality and intermedial interference, it proposes the concept of ‘conflict mechanisms’ to describe misalignments, temporal displacements and shifting intermedial relations within multispecies-algorithmic systems. Rather than understanding media relations through balance and coherence, the article argues that instability and ongoing relational displacement constitute conditions of audiovisual generation. The analysis develops through three dimensions. At the translational level, fish behaviour is transformed into behavioural data and distributed across parallel pathways of sound, image and spatial generation. While sharing the same behavioural data, different generative pathways unfold asynchronously, producing shifting intermedial relations. At the perceptual level, sound and image remain connected while repeatedly separating and recombining, rendering audiovisual synchrony and causal relations unstable. At the level of agency, agency cannot be stably attributed to animals, algorithms, or system structures, as it continuously circulates across different generative conditions. The article further considers the ethical implications of multispecies participation. Astrofin avoids treating animal behaviour as symbolic representation or a carrier of meaning, instead focusing on how multispecies relations are mediated through algorithmic and audiovisual structures.

This paper describes research carried out to develop a parametric urban shape grammar for the Zaouiat Lakhdar quarter of the Medina of Marrakech in Morocco. The goal is to create the basis for a system that could capture some features of the existing urban fabric and apply them in contemporary urban planning and architectural design. The methodology used is described, from the initial historical analysis and fieldwork to the identification of three subgrammars necessary to encode the complexity of the urban preexistences: the urban grammar, the negotiation grammar, and the housing grammar. Top-down and bottom-up approaches to grammar design are analyzed and compared. The bottom-up urban grammar developed is then described, and a hand derivation of the existing urban fabric is proposed. Visual, symbolic, and tagged computer implementations of shape grammars are briefly discussed and a novel design generated by the tagged interpreter is presented.

This paper argues from extensive research findings in design psychology and industrial design processes, as well as our own observations, that interactive generative systems can be powerful tools for human designers. Moreover, interactive generative systems can fit naturally into human design thinking and industrial design practice. This discussion is focused on aesthetic design fields like knitwear and graphic design, but is largely applicable to major branches of engineering. Human designers and generative systems have complementary abilities. Humans are extremely good at perceptual evaluation of designs, according to criteria that are extremely hard to program. As a result, they can provide fitness evaluations for evolutionary generative systems. They can also tailor the biases that generation systems use to reach useful solutions quickly. We discuss an application of these approaches: Kelly's evolutionary systems for color scheme design. Automatic design systems can work interactively with human designers by generating complete designs from partial specifications, that can then be used as starting points for designing by modification. We discuss an application of this approach: Eckert's garment shape design system.