Goals for the week
- Keep reading Relph – I need to get through more of it
- Keep developing updated graphics – begin with the character, THIS WEEK then the setting… with a view to then creating a new prototype that has all my own assets in it
- Continue developing a time-space framework
Main thing:
Read – write – make
This week, I think I need to start making stuff again…
Mon
Something I remember seeing ages ago was a simulated flock of birds, called ‘boids’
Craig Reynolds (https://www.red3d.com/cwr/) coined the term after developing the algorithm in 1987: Reynolds, C. (1987). Flocks, Herds, and Schools: A Distributed Behavioral Model.
An of course, then I stumbled across the whole “International Society for Artificial Life” site: https://alife.org/ – they are having conferences still…
An example that can be played with: https://eater.net/boids
There is a link to some pseudo code, which is handy: http://www.kfish.org/boids/pseudocode.html
And, a video, going through a bunch of stuff:
The video is interesting, but he does suggest that the thought behaviour is based on a mathematical algorithm called ‘boids algorithm’. Well, no, that’s not right – the algorithm SIMULATES the behaviour…
Tue
I got a desk lamp. Its a nice one:) I have found that by the time I get home from work, and make a start on this project, its not long before the daylight is waning and its hard to see. Yes, I could shut the blind and turn the room light on, but I like the connection to the outside end of the day, and a small desk lamp is just the thing:)
Wed
Chaos has been reawakening in my understanding of the world and my place in it. It is very exciting. I am starting to re-explore some of the ideas for this project, from a chaos theory lens.
I think the thing I find most appealing is that it is so applicable to the micro and the macro. For example: the coast is pure chaos which is totally the appeal for me: it is ever changing, but there are patterns. It is a living expression of chaos. This is not of course to isolate it in any way as something unique, just something that is of particular appeal, and more about me exploring the reasons why for me.
Thu
I am back to reading Relph “Place and Placelessness” again. I have found it interesting how he develops and refines his schema for understanding the nature of our relationship with space.
Schema development process – started with some specific cases and then generalised – bit also looked at all of the other possibilities and drew conclusions and developed them out – the stuff about time in terms of scale, depth and direction… then what it applies to
Fri
And so, to some docos about facets of chaos…
Don’t watch this one – it’s a bit bleak… The more I watched it, the more I wondered just what on earth the presenter was talking about – he had so many flawed arguments that came out of nowhere…
Chaos is neither good or bad, it just is. There is an assumption that it is negative and bad. Perhaps that’s when we want to control the universe, rather than live with it. People really get freaked out when they think they don’t have control. When were we ever actually in control?
They keep saying things like “the mathematics that governs the world” – it MODELS and SIMULATES the world as a best guess. The Map is NOT the territory.
“The mathematics that created the anxiety…” – really? Its interesting that the presenter is saying that we are now anxious when we used to be more optimistic – but who are we actually talking about? The elite were the ones that were likely to actually HAVE a voice, for the masses, they had no voice, and it would have been an incredibly bleak world. The difference now is that the masses have more voice and agency, but are still locked into a deeply unfair system. Its an elite fantasy. Or am I missing the point?
Here is an interesting exploration of disciplines in which Chaos Theory has been applied:
Mashuri, A., Adenan, N. H., Abd Karim, N. S., Siew, W. T., & Zeng, Z. (2024). Application of Chaos Theory in Different Fields—A Literature Review. Journal of Science and Mathematics Letters, 12(1), 92–101. https://doi.org/10.37134/jsml.vol12.1.11.2024
Sat
- Finish off tasks or, if done – start another task…
Sun
A quick catch up session
The last bit for the week is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_automaton#Classification
There are lots of interesting things here not the least of which being cellula automata.
Seems like the 80s was a really fun time for all this stuff…
And finally, from the wikipedia page for ‘Conway’s game of life” :https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life
By Lucas Vieira – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=101736
Oh, and the final final bit – there is a whole free book that goes through MANY of the patterns and you can code them up: https://conwaylife.com/book/