Assignment 3 - Blog Response #17

Carson and I worked on the history of Cellular Automata. It originates from the field of computer science, which is a branch of mathematics that has garnered a lot of popularity in the last 50 years! Our presentation will feature 4 pieces of digital art. 

The first one is Stephen Wolfram's "Rule 30". This is a 1-dimensional cellular automata with elementary rules that are encoded by binary representation. We wanted to start with this to introduce the basics of what cellular automata looks like. It utilizes Python packages "numpy" and "matplotlib" to allow us to store the rule as an array with 1's and 0's as elements and subsequently plot to show the outcomes of the iterations. Here, the vertical axis represents time and any horizontal cross-section of the image represents the state of all the cells in the array at a specific point in the pattern's evolution. The rules are simple but it produces a complex and chaotic pattern! 

The next three examples utilize pygames, which is an open-source cross-platform library for the development of multimedia applications like video games using Python. It makes programming 2-D cellular automata intuitive thanks to the implementation of certain convenient functions. 

The second one is the classic "Game of Life" by John Horton Conway. We wanted to show it off as it represents a pivotal moment in cellular automaton history, representing the moment when the concept flew into mainstream and wasn't just exclusive to academia. This inspired many others to create their own rules and creative designs. The specifics of how Game of Life works will be expanded on during the presentation. We will showcase it with colours and various patterns like glider, gosper  glider gun, block, and switch engine. 

The third one is called "Reaction". This type of cellular automata is inspired by research done in chemistry, particularly the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction. Due to its spiraling and oscillating patterns, it is commonly studied through a mathematical lens through models and simulations. We hope to show it off in a cellular automaton context!

The last one is called "Brian's Brain". This is a particular rule set discovered by Brian Silverman. We thought it would be a great addition to our collage as it produces beautiful patterns. We wanted to capture history, mathematics, art, and philosophy through this creation. There is background music as well, so hopefully it's enjoyable to experience!

Here is the link to the slides:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1e4g0f9ziMtitHs39ReJUr_33CCBnJ21u1PiqiHKduo8/edit?usp=sharing

Here are some snippets of our artwork. To fully visualize the animation, a suitable source code editor like VS Code is convenient for running the .py files.

Here are the associated .py files:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/14WwBmJ-hpqTB0CyzKBXLSdpdYtixIvWh?usp=sharing