Variations on Life (2003)

John Conway's Game of Life is an example of emergent complexity and self-organizing systems. "It helps us understand, for example, how the petals on a rose or the stripes on a zebra can arise from a tissue of living cells growing together. It can even help us understand the diversity of life that has evolved on earth." Life is probably the most often programmed computer game in existence.

Variations on life is a series of (re)implementations of the Game of Life. For Variations, Eidolon has created a kernel-based system for the generation of cellular automata.

A kernel is a two dimensional matrix, each element holding a number. Each number represents one of 4 rules: null, invert, on, and off. 'null' ignores the state of a pixel, while 'invert' changes an active pixel to inactive and vice versa. 'on' and 'off' turn pixels on or off, regardless of its current state. The simulation 'slides' this square matrix of rules over each pixel, applying the rules to the pixel and each pixel around it. For example, a kernel composed of a 3x3 matrix of 'invert' rules applied to a single active pixel with no active neighbors would create a square with a hole in the middle. In short, kernel-based methods allow the state of a pixel to be determined by examining and altering the state of both the pixel and its immediate neighbors.

This kernel allows much greater versatility in the systems and rulesets which can be used to develop varying degrees of automation in a grid-based system. Each of the four implementations of the kernel represents a possibility for the generation of life.

Each implementation (outside of the refiguring of the original Life ruleset), is a distributed data-collection project. Using the unique kernel method to create a computationally similar environment to the Game of Life, each provides instead of one deterministic and unknown end-state for a given start-state, an archived partial set of possible beginning states from a static and given end state.