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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? I’ve updated these links on March 12, 2011. You can go to Fu’s Welcome to CA 3D page for an overview.

And then proceed to o Harry Fu’s CA3D download page, which walks you throug three steps

(1) Make sure you have the latest and greatest version of Java, this would be version 6 today. Anyway, go and get the JRE (Runtime Environment) for your Mac or Windows system. You don't need the full developer’s kit, just the JRE.

(2) Get JOGL (Java bindings for Open GL).

(3) Run Fu’s application, ca3D.jar.

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.

4 Responses to “3D Cellular Automata, San Jose Art”

  1. daneVal47 Says:

    do u hav a javascript code that will make continuously unfolding belousov-zhabotinsky scrolls on my blogger page? btw, i luv flurb, and ur articles in makezine 12, ir photos and gnarly cas wur awesome!

  2. Rudy Says:

    Hi daneVal47. That would be an interesting program to have, but I haven’t written anything like that, and don’t see it in a quick Google search…which you probably tried as well. And I’m not planning to write it, I don’t like to progam anymore. I’ve done my time in the mills…

    Maybe you should write the program. Almost no other CA programmers are using continuous valued CAs like me—and those give the nicest Zhabo scrolls. I don’t understand why people are being so slow to adopt continuous-valued CAs.

    Alternately, you could fake the desired effect by tiling the background with an animated GIF of maybe eight frames. You could screen-capture the frames from my continuous-valued CA CAPOW software..

    CAPOW is where I got the screen capture for my own blog page background. I was running perhaps the
    “2D Zhabo AI Worms (pattern).CA” rule—or some other “2D Zhabo…” rule, all available as presets with the free downloadable CAPOW program.

  3. MarcL Says:

    I first read that as “beloved zhabotinsky scrolls.” And what’s not to like?

  4. rose Says:

    hello.i am rezvan yaghobi.i living in iran.my thesis nee to 3d
    cellular automata.is it possible for you that send me the source code
    of 3d cellular automata .
    please help me.i need source code of this software.or source code of
    3d cellular automata.


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