20 April 2006:: A Crystalpunk Workshop for the Chain-Reaction Glitterati

- Posted: 12.Mar.2006.





PSWAR [Public Space With A Roof] 7PM-11PM
Overtoom 301,1054 HW Amsterdam


Crystalpunk is a rally cry for people to come together and start making all sorts of weird things, things slightly of kilter that need a crystalpunk to have its delights appreciated, things that are radical but hurt nobody.

Other people, “professionals”, are making things too. In art, in architecture, in computer science, in biology, crystalpunks want to share in their excitement, often feeling it more than they do, but understanding it through reverie not formalism.

At socialfiction.org we have been thinking about gargoyle computation [rococo automated search & gargoylisation not optimisation], software as a crystal ball [cellular automata as discrete little worlds that hide complex operations creating a universe to be discovered by its users], pattern formation [put your fingers on your closed eyelids & press gently], non conventional computing [molecule based & sea based], unintentional intelligence [the wildtype adaptivism of BacterioPoetics]. Somewhere in the middle we started writing a chain-reaction automaton: on the GUI a Grid, inside it rectangles are activated to rotate one step, activating others to rotate one step of 4 on close contact. The crystalpunk can interact with it: creating patterns, signalling it and monitoring its output. But the rules that guide its movement are mind boggling gargoyly. Can it Compute? Can it loop forever? These and many other questions are to be explored during this workshop.

The script we have made is a sloppy bit of Python code and in this workshop we invite you to make things [fractalline patterns, logic gates, literature, self-destructing embroidery forms] on top of it.

Please bring your computer if you have one.

The *new* version of the script, documentation and explanation can be downloaded: http://socialfiction.org/gargoyle.html

Download Python: http://www.python.org

MetaBolic Pathways; the Chain-Reaction Glitterati

- Posted: 07.Jun.2006.




In this diagram of a few of the chemical reactions in a cell each dot is a molecule. The lines are chemical reactions that transform the molecules.
VIA

most of the World, animal, vegetable and mineral, is laid waste in the process

- Posted: 26.Sep.2006.




Kekulé dreams the Great Serpent holding its own tail in its mouth, the dreaming Serpent which surrounds the World. But the meanness, the cynicism with which this dream is to be used. The Serpent that announces, "The World is a closed thing, cyclical, resonant, eternally-returning," is to be delivered into a system whose only aim is to violate the Cycle. Taking and not giving back, demanding that and keep on increasing with time, the System removing from the rest of the World these vast quantities of energy to keep its own tiny desperate fraction showing a profit: and not only most of humanity — most of the World, animal, vegetable and mineral, is laid waste in the process. The System may or may not understand that it's only buying time. And that time is an artificial resource to begin with, of no value to anyone or anything but the System, which sooner or later must crash to its death, when its addiction to energy has become more than the rest of the World can supply, dragging with it innocent souls all along the chain of life.

Thomas Pynchon. Gravity's Rainbow.

VIA

BacterioPoetics is a Chain Reaction

- Posted: 17.May.2006.




A [part of the] schematic of all pathways of E. coli metabolism. Bacteria are a circuit.

VIA

Self-Organized Autocatalytic Networks

- Posted: 20.Mar.2006.




Living systems are considered autonomous self-reproducing entities that operate on the basis of information. Information is originated at the molecular level by covalent chemistry, transferred and processed through noncovalent chemistry, expanded in complexity at the system level, and ultimately changed through reproduction and natural selection.

VIA

Dynamics of self-propagating fronts of motile bacteria

- Posted: 13.Mar.2006.


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"Self-propagating reaction fronts occur in many chemical and physical systems including flames, free-radical initiated polymerization processes and some aqueous reactions. All of these systems are characterized by two key features: a reactive medium (for example a fuel-air mixture in the case of flames) and an autocatalyst that is a product of the reaction which also accelerates the reaction (for example thermal energy in the case of flames). Self-propagation occurs when the autocatalyst diffuses into the reactive medium, initiating reaction and creating more autocatalyst. This enables reaction-diffusion fronts to propagate at steady rates far from any initiation site."

VIA

CHEMOTON

- Posted: 07.Mar.2006.


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"The chemoton model was introduced by Gánti in 1971 (see review Gánti 2002) as a fundamental unit model of living systems. It consists in three functionally dependent autocatalytic subsystems"


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FISSION

- Posted: 07.Mar.2006.


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