On Wed, 27 Oct 2004 04:40:39 +0100 (BST), Marcel Gonzalez Corso wrote
> --- Dave Griffiths <dave_at_pawfal.org> wrote:
> > On Sun, 24 Oct 2004 16:22:26 +0100 (BST),
> >
> > another idea is to look at universal machines that
> > could be programmed
> > visually so that the description, process and the
> > execution are the same -
> > conway's "life" springs to mind - you could have
> > pixels that trigger sounds,
> > and build glider guns to fire patterns at them....
> > you can build the basic
> > logic gates out of glider guns and glider "eaters" I
> > believe.
>
> cool info on the subject:
> http://website.lineone.net/~edandalex/camus.htm
>
> Doing music with cellular automata is not new.. it
> would be cool to see it live! (lots of colors and
> flashes!).
> But the programmer in stage doesn't have much control
> of it...
If it's used in a way that takes advantage of it's universal machine status -
not just for it's random pretty colours, ie you were to build mechanisms that
(for instance) passed gliders to and fro to create a complex system - you'd be
programming it in a deterministic way.
The reason this would be better than a written language is that the audience
would immediately understand what you were doing - you'd see the process
working, not the *description* of the process in an abstract computer language.
I think this is the central point I'm badly trying to describe :)
dave
Received on Wed Oct 27 2004 - 09:07:01 BST