3-D Kinetic cellular Automaton -- Copyright 1995 Stewart Dickson
2) Motivation
The artist has demonstrated the direct computer-driven fabrication of sculpture
from the output of a compiler of natural mathematical language.
[6].
The Connection Machine is built from a
large number of very small processor/memory elements and a dynamic
interconnection network. The native language of the Connection Machine is
CMLisp. Central to the philosophy of the Lisp programming language is that the
structure of a program written in Lisp adapts to the structure of the problem
it has been presented to solve. Similarly, the interconnection structure of
the Connection Machine hardware dynamically adapts to the structure of the
problem it is solving, eliminating the data flow bottlenecks inherent in
centralized computing architectures.
The sculpture the artist is proposing will dynamically change its physical
form as it modifies the interconnection of its cells, thereby becoming a
three-dimensional representation of its internal logical functioning.
The idea of constructing a sculpture using a large number of replications of a
single cell type is also intended to take advantage of the vanishing cost per
unit of a mass-manufactured object.
At the limit of miniaturization, this system will become a nanoscale autonomous
system
[7].
At larger scale, it will be a directly observable demonstration of
the behavior of programmable macro xenomorphic "organelles"
[8].
<<<<<
>>>>>
3-D Kinetic cellular Automaton -- Copyright 1995 Stewart Dickson