Chain Reaction

This is a major project I will be working on in the Spring. The idea here is to create a series of cellular automata, in which "each element induces or influences" other elements. The cool thing is that each element or automata can be anything that can talk to everything else., via local interaction or via the internet to two or three other institutions.

Barney Haynes writes about several aspects of the project, suggesting, light and sound interaction, physical interaction between machines and humans, remote control, and terms the 'ethernet' or connecting substrate as "Connective Tissue." This is a alluring term to use, at once warm and inviting while also coldly clinical. It conjures imagery of biological interactions, the truly most amazing cellular automata - the body. How much of interactive art is an experiment in mimicking life. Renaissance artists tried to do it visually, we are simply trying to it conceptually.

Phenomenology
In his explanations Haynes also brings up phenomenology, a concept I couldn't have named prior to reading this, but now realize that it describes concepts that I am excited about. This is a philisophical feild that is concerned very much perception, not how things are perceived. If a tree falls and no one is around to hear it does it still make noise? Do things even exist if we don't perceive them? Quantum mechanics made some interesting discoveries about this concept. The heisenburg prinicple basically states that the act of observing changes whatever it is that you are observing. In the words of Wayne Dyer, "If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change."