cellular automata, explained

a cellular automaton is a grid of cells that flick on and off by one simple rule, applied to every cell at once, again and again. from that simplicity, complex and lifelike patterns appear. the demo below is conway's game of life. draw on it, and watch it come alive.

the rule, in full

every step, each cell counts its eight neighbours. a living cell with two or three live neighbours survives. a dead cell with exactly three live neighbours is born. everything else goes dark. that's the whole game, and yet it produces gliders that walk across the grid, oscillators that breathe, and patterns nobody could have predicted from the rule alone.

why it matters

the game of life, invented by mathematician john conway in 1970, is the classic proof that complexity doesn't need a complex cause. simple local rules, repeated, are enough. that single idea underpins a huge amount of generative and computational art.

how it connects to gaogao

gaogao isn't built on cellular automata, but it lives by the same principle: small rules, repeated, become something you couldn't have drawn by hand. in gaogao those rules are genes, and running them over a genome grows a whole organism. same spirit, different alphabet.