This thesis involves three topics: benchmarking discrete optimization algorithms, empirical analyses of evolutionary computation, and automatic algorithm configuration. The objective is... Show moreThis thesis involves three topics: benchmarking discrete optimization algorithms, empirical analyses of evolutionary computation, and automatic algorithm configuration. The objective is benchmarking EAs on discrete optimization for the selection and design of better optimizers.In practice, we start with building the IOHprofiler benchmark software, which supports us in testing algorithms on a wide range of problems and allows us to perform and visualize the statistical analysis on algorithms' performance.While performing numerous benchmark studies, we study the impact of mutation rate and population size on the EAs and investigate how crossover and mutation interplay with each other and the impact of population size on the GAs. Moreover, we analyze a smooth way of interpolating between local and non-local search by proposing a new normalized bit mutation.We apply Irace, MIP-EGO, and MIES to configure the GA for ERT and AUC, respectively. Our results suggest that even when interested in ERT, it might be preferable to tune for AUC for the configuration task. We also observe that tuning for ERT is much more sensitive with respect to the budget that is allocated to the target algorithms.At last, we leverage our benchmark data of static algorithms to study dynamic algorithm selection. Show less
Boonstra, S.; Blom, K. van der; Hofmeyer, H.; Emmerich, M.T.M. 2021
Three methods for early-stage building spatial design optimization are presented, demonstrated, and compared for their qualities and limitations. The first, an evolutionary algorithm, can find well... Show moreThree methods for early-stage building spatial design optimization are presented, demonstrated, and compared for their qualities and limitations. The first, an evolutionary algorithm, can find well-distributed approximations of the Pareto front, but it uses many design evaluations and it can only explore a limited part of the entire design search space (i.e. the collection of all possible design solutions). The second, simulations of co-evolutionary design processes, can find improved design solutions relatively fast within an unrestricted design search space, however, they typically only find discretely distributed Pareto front approximations. For the third method, hybridization is proposed to combine the first two methods into two new hybrid methods, such that their advantages are combined and their disadvantages are diminished. The methods have been applied in an initial case study, which shows that hybridization can improve search efficiency and speed, and it can search larger design search spaces. Show less
'What is the desire of the medium?' is both a rhetorical question and a fundamental one. The rhetorical question serves as a framework for investigating the interplay between the artist/designer... Show more'What is the desire of the medium?' is both a rhetorical question and a fundamental one. The rhetorical question serves as a framework for investigating the interplay between the artist/designer and the medium during the creative act. Arts and design operate on the level of problematising: they do not reproduce the visible, they make visible. By this, I am suggesting that there is no preconceived objective criterion: all perception needs to be produced. A critical supposition is that the complexity of the world cannot be reduced to either macro- or micro-systems or models (anti-representation). The only interesting route to pursue is to investigate what a medium does (asignification), not what it is (essentialism). My interest lies in affective capacities, not inherent properties and their respective place in any taxonomy or ontological setting. This requires the exploration of a non-hierarchical, flat ontology based on the equality of all parties (human and nonhuman). I propose four backgrounds against which to investigate the desire of the medium: ethoscape (which deals with affect), ideoscape (which deals with concepts), mediascape (forms of expression) and technoscape (forms of content). The desire of the medium is located somewhere in the middle between affect, concept, expression and content. Show less
