Karl Sims

Timeline

1. 1984–1987

   Life sciences and the Media Lab

   He earns a B.S. in life sciences at MIT in 1984 and an M.S. in computer graphics from the MIT Media Lab in 1987. From 1984 to 1987, he is also affiliated with Thinking Machines Corporation.

2. 1987–1989

   Co-founding Optomystic

   After his master's degree, he works on special effects software at Whitney/Demos Productions and then co-founds Optomystic. His 1988 animation Particle Dreams uses particle systems to create a waterfall, a snowstorm and an explosion. At Optomystic in 1989, he writes Connection Machine 2 software that animates the water in Leonardo da Vinci's deluge drawings for Mark Whitney's film Excerpts from Leonardo's Deluge.

3. 1990–1996

   Artist-in-residence at Thinking Machines

   From 1990 to 1996, he is artist-in-residence at Thinking Machines, a supercomputer maker and artificial intelligence company, and his particle-system animation Panspermia wins a Golden Nica at Ars Electronica in 1991. His 1991 SIGGRAPH paper "Artificial Evolution for Computer Graphics" uses genetic algorithms, guided by a human, to evolve abstract images, and he applies the method in Primordial Dance. Primordial Dance and Liquid Selves win him a second Golden Nica in 1992.

4. 1994

   Evolving Virtual Creatures

   His SIGGRAPH paper "Evolving Virtual Creatures" in July 1994 describes block creatures whose artificial neural networks read virtual sensors and drive virtual muscles. Simulated on a Connection Machine CM-5, the creatures are selected for swimming, jumping, following, or competing for control of a green cube. In 1994, he also coauthors a paper in Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence on handwritten character classification using nearest neighbor search in large databases.

5. 1996–2016

   Founding GenArts

   He founds GenArts in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1996 and becomes its CEO; its special effects plug-ins help create effects for films such as The Matrix and The Lord of the Rings, including the blue glow of Frodo's sword. He moves to the board of directors in 2008, when Insight Partners acquires a majority stake. Boris FX acquires the Sapphire plug-in suite from GenArts in 2016.

6. 1997–1998

   Galápagos and a MacArthur Fellowship

   In 1997, he creates Galápagos for the NTT InterCommunication Center in Tokyo, an installation in which visitors choose which of twelve animated forms survive, mate and mutate. In 1998, the MacArthur Foundation awards him a five-year fellowship for his use of computational evolution in interactive graphics and animation.

7. 2018–2019

   Flow and an Engineering Emmy

   In 2018, he builds Flow, an interactive exhibit of fluid flow and particle simulations that react to visitors, commissioned by MIT CSAIL for the lobby of the Stata Center. In 2019, he and GenArts co-founder Gary Oberbrunner receive an Engineering Emmy for Outstanding Achievement in Engineering Development for the Sapphire plug-ins.

8. As of October 2026

   An interactive Mandelbrot exhibit

   He is a digital media artist and visual effects software developer whose interactive works have been shown at the Pompidou Center, Ars Electronica and the Boston Museum of Science. In 2026, he develops an interactive exhibit from GPU renderings of the Mandelbrot set.