Cells and Culture

Cells and Culture is an adaptation of Conway’s Game of Life ↗, the cellular automaton devised by mathematician John Horton Conway. It explores how simple local rules can produce complex, unpredictable behaviour.

Life

A living cell survives with two or three living neighbours. A dead cell becomes living with exactly three. All other living cells die.

Culture

In Co-culture, colonies can be placed beside or on top of one another before the run begins. Living cells retain lineage; newborn cells inherit lineage from their living neighbours.

Memory

Palimpsest shows the most recent lineage to occupy each place. Collected memory accumulates repeated occupation through the run. Log and Rescale change only its display, not the stored counts.

Recipes

Stop defines the endpoint of a culture. A recorded culture can enter Recipes of the Ancestors and be run again.