Audio Damage Automaton - Manual (Page 12)

to activate Automaton's effects at sixteenth-note intervals as you desire. The SEQUENCE WRAPPING
switch (described below) has no effect when this rule set is chosen.
Replicator
Worlds evolved with the Replicator rule set have the interesting property that any pattern of cells is
eventually replaced with several copies of the pattern (provided that the world is big enough). In this
rule set, any cell square will contain a live cell in the next generation if it has an odd number of live
neighbors (i.e., one, three, five, or seven live neighbors). With the Replicator rule set active,
Automaton's worlds tend to become denser as they evolve, sometimes jumping back to relatively
sparse populations at unpredictable intervals. The Replicator rule set is attributed to Edward Fredkin,
one of the early CA researchers and also creator of the somewhat legendary Triadex Muse algorithmic
music-generating device built during the 1970s.
Serviettes
In the Serviettes rule set, every live cell dies in the next generation. New cells are born in empty
squares if the square has two, three, or four live neighbors. Cell patterns governed by the Serviettes
rule set tend to grow into elaborate, symmetric patterns that sometimes resemble lace (hence the
name).
Gnarl
Of the rule sets available in Automaton, the Gnarl rule set is the simplest to describe: A square will
contain a live cell in the next generation, regardless of whether it is currently live or dead, if it has
exactly one live neighbor. Despite its simplicity, Gnarl can generate cell populations that rise and fall
in density in unexpected ways. This rule is attributed to Kellie Evans.
The SEQUENCE WRAPPING switch affects what happens to cells at the edges of Automaton's world grid. If the
WRAPPING switch is off, the edges are boundaries, as though the world grid was surrounded by a vast,
lifeless, digital wasteland. Hence, when applying a rule set to calculate the next generation, a cell in any of the
four corner of the world grid can have at most three live neighbors, and one on any of the four edges can
have at most five live neighbors.