Ghost Diagrams
Thursday, 8 September 2005
Ghost Diagrams
Ghost Diagrams is an application that tessellates sets of tiles with symmetry to produce patterns that echo the work of MC Escher. This is particularly true when it processes Rule 110, a cellular automaton known to be capable of universal computation.
For me the really exciting part is where a fundamental philosophical idea of computer sentience is touched upon. The author of Ghost Diagrams, Paul Harrison, says that:
‘An organism is more than the sum of its organs. When the organs are fitted together, the organism becomes something more. This surprising something more we call “spirit” or “ghost”. Ghost Diagrams finds the ghosts implicit in simple sets of tiles.’
