Computational Thinking

Joel Gethin Lewis

Lecture 8: Thinking

What I'm going to talk about today:

  1. Seymour Papert and Alan Kay
  2. Conway's Game of Life, Cellular Automata and rules 30 and 110.
  3. Boids, Evolved Virtual Creatures and emergence.
  4. Joscha Bach and a Computational Universe.
  5. Pace layering, Pattern Language and the purpose of Art.
  6. Bonus: System Art, Everywhere and Another Sky.

1. Seymour Papert and Alan Kay.

2. Conway's Game of Life, Cellular Automata and rules 30 and 110.

3. Boids, Evolved Virtual Creatures and emergence.

  • Boids was an artifical life system developed by Craig Reynolds in 1986. It simulated realistic flocking with just three simple rules. Compare the simulation to this murmuration.
  • Evolved Virtual Creatures was a film created by Karl Sims in 1994 that showed how virtual creatures could evolve the ability to walk.
  • Both are examples of emergence - or the idea that "the whole is greater than the sum of the parts".
  • A great interactive essay on complex systems, how things spread - from viruses to knowledge. This area of interactive essays is interesting in itself - a good Twitter thread on the subject.
  • Learning JS Data - "this guide teaches the basics of manipulating data using JavaScript in the browser, or in node.js." - very useful tutorial on reading in data in Javascript.

4. Joscha Bach and a Computational Universe.

5. Pace layering, Pattern Language and the purpose of Art

6. Bonus: System Art, The Digital Commons, Everywhere and Another Sky.

  • I am a Systems Artist. I make systems that people interact with to make new things.
  • I want to re-establish the Digital Commons, and eventually the Analogue one.
  • Everywhere uses solar powered computers to allow people to make their own networks and to put content in the real world around them via Augmented Reality.
  • Another Sky is a global scale sculpture that creates a new ecosystem in the sky above our heads, fed by interaction with a an augmented reality layer based on the topography of the planet, inverted.

Thanks!