3-D Kinetic Cellular Automaton -- Copyright 1995 by Stewart Dickson

7) The Sculptural Problem

It can be seen that the system being specified here is not so much a sculpture as an apparatus for forming dynamic sculpture. The intent is to create a physical manifestation of a system with minimal restrictions to the forms which may be created using the system. What can be presented in this proposal is probably at most some definition of the process of creative technique which may be possible using this sculpture. Actual and specific manifestations of the forms this sculpture may take may not be entirely predictable.

It is likely that the initial means by which forms will be specified to the sculpture will be through the currently known and available computer modeling and animation tools. For example, the algorithms are well known for sampling space with a cubic grid, creating a pixel volume from an implicitly-defined Combinational Solid Geometry (CSG) or polygon mesh closed surface model. The problem of arringing sculpture cells into such a pixel volume is at the basic level of addressing and moving cells in the sculpture.

It is hoped that the sculpture itself will catalyze the development of new methods for interactive development of three-dimensional ideas and communication.

Of course the real problem which must be solved is how one is to use this dynamically metamorphic sculpture to make statements which are philosophically relevant to the lives of the viewers of the sculpture.

The author has proposed that a compiler of mathematical symbols may also process image and shape symbols and their corresponding ideographic word symbols in order to manipulate image and shape compositions based upon their composite philosophical content. [11] To use the cellular automaton sculpture as a user interface for such a system may be an interesting way to explore this language.

Initially, I believe that there is little way to avoid treating the sculpture as a physical extension of a computer and the piece will very much exhibit ideas from the interactive computer idiom. All of these ideas can be shown initially in an immersive Virtual Reality context, as proposals for the actual piece. The VR-simulated versions of the following examples can be coded using standard, serial and centralized style, while it must be remembered that the cellular automaton implementation will be different, if only by virtue of having been processed by a compiler for the cellular automaton.

The artist realizes the danger of the piece being perceived as a work of technology rather than a work of art. The reader is urged to look beyond the surface of the machine to the intelligence and sensitivity with which the artist wishes to endow the work.

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