Algorithms enable designers to generate complex geometric compositions that are imbedded with design intents (Wood-bury 2010, Aish 2005). INTRODUCTION The work presented in this paper explores the potential of tangible interaction to setup algorithmic rules for computational models. The experiments demonstrate the possibility of utilizing tangible interaction to setup the initial cell state and the rules of a CA algorithm to generate complex geometric patterns. The digital-physical workflow is tested through enabling users to physically setup the rules of a Cellular Automata algorithm. The experiments included in this work are prototype-based, which link a digital environment with an artifact-the physical representation of a digital model that is integrated with a Physical Computing System. The method aims to address the challenges of designers implementing algorithms for computational modeling. The research proposes a workflow that allows designers to create complex geometric patterns through their physical interaction with design objects.
The work presented in this paper investigates the potential of tangible interaction to setup algorithmic rules for creating computational models. Despite functioning in a different way from traditional, Turing machine- like devices, CA with suitable rules can emulate a universal Turing machine (see entry), and therefore compute, given Turing’s thesis (see entry on Church-Turing thesis), anything computable. Thirdly, CA are computational systems: they can compute functions and solve algorithmic problems. Secondly, CA are abstract: they can be specified in purely mathematical terms and physical structures can implement them. They evolve in parallel at discrete time steps, following state update functions or dynamical transition rules: the update of a cell state obtains by taking into account the states of cells in its local neighborhood (there are, therefore, no actions at a distance).
At each time unit, the cells instantiate one of a finite set of states. Firstly, CA are (typically) spatially and temporally discrete: they are composed of a finite or denumerable set of homogenous, simple units, the atoms or cells. Cellular automata (henceforth: CA) are discrete, abstract computational systems that have proved useful both as general models of complexity and as more specific representations of non-linear dynamics in a variety of scientific fields.