1.2 Energy Encounters
Lab 1.2 in the synectics journey. The challenge is to explore interaction of two different fields of force across a single reference plane. To research the concept I tweaked Conway’s game of life algorithm to create two competing forces: the edges and the rounds. They clash over territory, turning red when they’ve taken a resource previously belonging to the other. The standard rules of life apply, if an empty cell is surrounded by 3 living neighbors it is reborn, if 2 it maintains its current state and any less or more, it dies (lack of resources or overcrowding.)
Click to restart. Other implementations of this lab will differ, of course, but with cellular automata it was interesting to see how fields of force can create standing “islands” of energy. These standing waves may oscillate or maintain a fixed form until impacted by traveling forces and may or may not preserve identity through the waves. Sometimes it seems that intruders spark a regenesis that expands the dormant island vigorously toward new terrain. Sometimes a single contact will destroy a colony. There appears to be all sorts of visual analogy to psychological and biological processes. And each click tells a different story.
Eventually it seems entropy wins. But what sculptures in time lie preserved in its wake? Can they be re-energized as stores of ancient knowledge? Some seem to retain their own regenerative energy oscillating in potentiality. I have many questions.
Heuristics: repetition, animation, combine, superimpose, random