Paul Terry

This was part of a collaborative project with artist Fiona Gannon and architect Sorcha Murphy looking at finding forms with cellular automata. We focused on rules intuitive enough to build by hand rather than relying on software. This rule is adapted from the hexagonal snowflake rule outlined in Stephen Wolfram's book A New Kind of Science. Cubes are similar to hexagons in that they have six faces, in this rule a new cube is added to the structure where it will attach to one and only one face. Different parts of the structure may be grown at different rates to make new forms.

This animation is based on a model of movement of shoals of fish, the dots being members of the shoal and the lines mapping relationships between each member's small group of neighbours that they base their movement on. The patchwork of relationships continually changes as the shoal moves. Each member also makes a sound with a tone that changes in response to the closeness of their neighbours.