Short Film
2021

“Vital Signs — Red Nose Hexagliders” documents the discovery of a novel family of continuous state cellular automata. This algorithm generates a remarkable array of stable, moving patterns called gliders, which travel across a grid of interacting color cells. These simple patterns are uniquely resilient to collisions, allowing their interactions to give rise to higher-order emergent structures.

The film, presented in the style of a nature documentary, showcases these emergent patterns in action. The film consists of screen recordings, captured during early studies of the algorithm’s behavior, with narration and music composed by myself, to evoke the feeling of watching a living ecosystem unfold. By adopting this familiar documentary approach, the goal was to make the complex world of cellular automata accessible to a broader audience, blurring the line between artificial life and the natural world.

This film is slated to be the first installment of a broader a documentary series which explores emergent virtual structures.