Ellen Smith

Bio [2008]
In May 2008 Ellen Smith graduated from New York University with a BA in individualized study. She studied French and American Sign Language in the Gallatin School, finishing with a colloquium that discussed the construction of a Deaf minority-group identity within existing American cultural spaces.

Project Title Cellular Automata with Different Motifs

Project
This project begins with looking for different motifs to replace the traditional squares or cubes used to visualize cellular automata, in the hopes that a different representation could lead to new observations. A Truchet tiling was tried that created organic shapes of different sizes. Below is a picture of rule 30 with some of the spaces colored in--many of which are cut off by the image but not necessarily bounded by future steps. These shapes and their boundaries will be explored, depending on each automaton's rule and initial conditions.

Favorite Radius 3/2 Rule
Rule chosen: 2000

I've picked Rule 2000--I originally ran it for 50 steps and I thought something interesting would happen later when the two seeds met. It turns out that nothing interesting happens, but it sort of looks like people looking at their shadows.