This publication includes the contributions to the 8th German Workshop onArtificial Life (GWAL-8). The GWAL-8 took place from 30 July to 1 August 2008in Leipzig, Germany. Since its inception in the 1980s, Artificial Life is aninterdisciplinary field of science focused on abstracting the essentialfeatures and dynamics of living systems in order to create artificial, life-like systems. The GWAL meetings intend to provide the opportunity forbiologists, physicists, information and computer scientists, chemists,mathematicians and philosophers interested in this field to present anddiscuss their new results. Topics covered in this edition include: behaviorand cognition as a complex adaptive system; robotics experiments; noise-drivenstem-cell and progenitor population dynamics; micro-controller environments;bacterial meta-populations; discrete stochastic processes; cyclic co-evolutionary dynamics; and sub-system formation in a multi-agent system.