3D Cellular Automata, San Jose Art
Today’s big news is that my San Jose State University computer science student Harry Fu has gotten three-dimensional Belousov-Zhabotinsky-scroll cellular automata (3D BZ CAs for short) working for his Master’s degree writing project.
Way to go, Harry. Nobody’s ever seen three-dimensional CAs before except on supercomputers or using special hardware, especially not 3D BZ CAs, and our man Fu has these mofos working as a Java applet running Open GL!!!
Note the spontaneously forming scrolls. The first 3D BZ CA picture shows a 3D version of the Hodgepodge Rule, and this one is the 3D Winfree Rule.
Gnarly much? Live mushrooms, vortices, jellyfish.
So how can you, too, run Fu’s applet?
Three steps:
(1) Make sure you have the latest and greatest version of Java, this would be version 1.5. (When the heck is Sun they ever gonna get to release 2 anyway? It's been like fifteen years of Release 1.whatever by now!) Anyway, go to Sun’s download page and get the J2SE 5.0 JRE (Runtime Environment) for your system. You don't need the full developer's kit. Don't skip this step, as otherwise, installing JOGL may not work.
(2) Get JOGL (Java bindings for Open GL). You can either get it direct from Sun by downloading some files and putting them into certain locations on your computer or, if you’re using Windows and you trust me and Fu, you can get Fu’s JOGL package which will do this a bit more automatically. If you get Fu’s JOGL package, unzip it to a temporary directory and double-click on install.bat to install the JOGL library. You can get rid of the temporary diretory after that.
(3) Go to Fu’s CA3D Applet page.
Geekin’ OUT! And lovin’ it. You realize, of course, that your brain is a 3D BZ CA?
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What else I did yesterday.
After meeting with Fu, I walked over to downtown San Ho and skated on this cute rink beneath the palms right beside the Fairmont.
And then I went into the ADMISSION FREE San Jose Art Museum. Frankly, the art there is more interesting to me than anything I saw in Milano. I think spending so much psychic time with Peter Bruegel cured me of feeling like I have to care about religious art at all anymore. But that’s another topic.
Is this great, or what? It’s “Desire for the Other” by Brian Goggin, also the creator of that amazing Defenestration building in San Francisco at Sixth and Howard, with all the furniture jumping out the windows. In this piece we see an airport-lounge-style sofa devouring a wing-back armchair. Note the bulge of its last meal in its gut.
This last picture shows a piece by Tony Oursler, a really slimy looking object, it’s a curvy fiberglass shape with a video of eyes and mouth projected onto it, the mouth is babbling. In general I despise art that makes noise in a museum, as IMHO it’s unfairly detracting from the many silent works here. But other than being noisy, this is a really cool work.
Of course it would be gnarlier if it used 3D BZ CAs. If they ever make a movie of one my WARE books, I really hope they use 3D BZ CA projections for the bodies of the boppers.