Metacreation: Art and Artificial Life is a comprehensive, critical account of "a-life art" - the work of artists using techniques from artificial life. It was published by MIT Press in March 2004. You can read more about the book at its page on the MIT Press Catalog. You can purchase it from MIT, or any of the usual retailers.

Some of the nice things people have said about the book so far:

"Whitelaw's text, will inspire ongoing and informed debate about the significance of Artificial Life Art. I would recommend its well-considered survey to any reader keen to explore the potential of the genre from the perspectives of its practitioners, critics and theorists. "
Alan Dorin, Centre for Electronic Media Art, School of Computer Science and Software Engineering, Monash University.

"[a] brilliant and important study of art and artificial life. With eloquence unusual for a scholarly book, Whitelaw surveys an impressive range of artists..."
Jonathon Keats, Artweek, September 2004.

"[A]n intelligent critical look at suggestions that evolving art has anything in common with evolution in nature..."
Daniel McBeal, Focus, September 2004.

"I just finished your book Metacreation and wanted to write to tell you how much I enjoyed it. I found your thinking quite helpful and profound and your writing clear and quite meaningful."
Carol Gigliotti, Director, Centre for Art and Technology, Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, Vancouver.

"Provocative, literate, subtle, and knowledgeable..."
Margaret Boden, Research Professor of Cognitive Science, University of Sussex, and author of The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms

"The search to understand and create artificial life is one of the grand interdisciplinary quests of our times, stretching from art through computer science to biology. Mitchell Whitelaw's Metacreation is its most complete study yet..."
Stephen Wilson, Professor of Conceptual and Information Arts, San Francisco State University, and author of Information Arts.

Metacreation reviews online:
RealTime 60 - Stuart Bunt
Res.com (RES Magazine) - Matt Epier.
Leonardo Digital Reviews - Pia Tikka
neural.it (in Italian)
Consciousness, Literature and the Arts - Brad Eden

Other media coverage:
"The Artist in the Machine" - Interview with Richard Aedy on The Buzz, ABC Radio National, 3 April 2004.