A few years ago, there was an HN post about a similar algorithm: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4912964
Inspired by this, I wrote my own implementation in Perl: http://qumsieh.github.io/blog/2012/12/14/Evolutionary-Image-...
Pretty cool effect.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=389727
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=389727