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“Game of Life” by Charlotte Dann (2016)
Charlotte Dann is an artist interested in using p5.js to create a more exciting visualization activity of hexagonal Game of Life. She found that establishing the data structure for hexagons and defining how they relate to one another was really difficult in the beginning. With the use of random variables in her code, she strived to create a clustering effect across the hexagons. I like how she showcased her whole range of exploration in her project, where she played with coded, linear agents to random agents, describing how they aligned or misaligned with her design intentions. In terms of the randomness in Game of Life, she coded for the ‘ants’ to leave a trail behind it, moving shapes either left, right, or go straight ahead. She also established relationships between this randomness and their aim for emptier areas on the canvas through this algorithm. In the final form, Dann discovered over 1416 possible combinations for every hexagon, and she played with how she could represent her aesthetic sensibilities through every iteration.