Essentially, if we have criteria of ``fitness,'' anything which can be turned
into a bit string can be evolved by genetic algorithms. As should be evident
to anyone reading this, literature, pictures, sound and movies can all be
turned into strings of bits. Once we have a measure of fitness, there
is no a priori reason we could not turn standard techniques loose on
an initial population of pictures, or sonatas, or sonnets. There are even
techniques, outlined at least by Holland, which will allow our system to modify
the means it uses to evalute fitness. In particular, rather than mutating and
recombining essentially random lengths of bits, the system could come to
recognize that certain blocks of bits are meaningfully connected.
It also does not seem impossible, or even terribly difficult, to modify the
standard techniques of genetic programming so as to work directly on
two-dimensional or three-dimensional objects. Whether it would be worthwhile,
I cannot say.