Wolfram Cellular Automata Rule 22 rendered as ASCII art

Overview

CAd nauseam is a browser-based, pure-text implementation of Wolfram’s one-dimensional cellular automata. It is a simple toy designed to make it easy to quickly play with and explore the rule systems behind the automata.

Instead of rendering black and white pixels, CAd nauseam renders its binary output to text characters. The grid-honoring nature of monospaced typefaces preserve a sense of the grid, and the browser provides a few handy affordances without complaint:

  • Anchor-based navigation to specific rules.
  • “Infinite” scroll-back to review the history of a pattern.
  • Easy cut and paste of sections of interest.
  • Compact and comprehensible source code.

The name acknowledges a certain exhaustion related to the immense time and resources which have gone into the study and appreciation of this emergent system.

Additional notes on process and implementation are available in a related post.

A live interactive version of CAd nauseam is available here.

Images

Wolfram Cellular Automata Rule 57 rendered as ASCII artWolfram Cellular Automata Rule 153 rendered as ASCII artWolfram Cellular Automata Rule 169 rendered as ASCII artWolfram Cellular Automata Rule 165 rendered as ASCII art

Video

🚧 Coming soon…


Components

  • Custom software

Related Courses

Related Links

Related Posts

Source Code