conwayice

(18 comments)
2007.10.21

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conwayice sourcecode / built with Processing

Conway's Game of Life with subsequent generations plotted in 3D to make ethereal sculptures.

The viewer may click form a new sculpture; the higher in the window the click, the denser the initial populating and resulting sculpture. The view is of 32 generations of a 32x32 wrapping grid. The rotation roughly tracks the mouse, but will start on its own if left idle.

Inspired by the traditional 2D plots of 1D Cellular Automata and the realization that the same use of a spatial refactoring of the dimension of time might be informative for 2D CA. Or at least pretty.

(Basic "life" code lifted (with thanks) from Mike Davis.)

For a more advanced version, see Conwayice2 that lets you set up the initial pattern and see how it runs as well as zoom in.