Autechre Exai Cover Art - Life Pattern

Has anybody talked about how the artwork is based off John Conway's Game of Life and Life Patterns?

It's basically Autechre going even further into the idea of regenerative music, but this time giving the hint that its more human than what they played with in the past.

  On 3/12/2013 at 5:25 PM, kiya said:

Has anybody talked about how the artwork is based off John Conway's Game of Life and Life Patterns?

"no"

  On 12/14/2012 at 9:45 PM, Miblo said:

Regarding Conway's Game of Life, the initial Exai population of 53 cells lives for 666 generations before settling at a population of 98, with: 12 blocks, 2 boats, 1 ship, 1 pond, 1 hive, 5 blinkers and 1 glider escaping north-west.

 

1355516967_exaigol-1024x1696.png

  On 3/12/2013 at 5:25 PM, kiya said:

It's basically Autechre going even further into the idea of regenerative music, but this time giving the hint that its more human than what they played with in the past.

so, just to make sure i'm clear on this... as long as i'm always listening to exai, i can never die?

  On 3/12/2013 at 10:25 PM, Ron Manager said:

 

  On 3/12/2013 at 5:25 PM, kiya said:

It's basically Autechre going even further into the idea of regenerative music, but this time giving the hint that its more human than what they played with in the past.

 

so, just to make sure i'm clear on this... as long as i'm always listening to exai, i can never die?

isn't it tdr who comes up with those things in stead of ae? maybe ae don't even know, man

Interesting, I just read an interview in which ae talked about using cellular automaton in their patch

So this hasn't been brought up in any of the 400 pages of talk about Exai besides here?
It's obviously straight off John Conway's idea.

That was really fucking interesting. Who knows if Exai artwork was based on it though.

I have used this instrument in Reaktor before. It follows the game of life to create generative and evolving sounds. It's very fun to watch it just run :D

  On 3/13/2013 at 2:33 AM, kiya said:

So this hasn't been brought up in any of the 400 pages of talk about Exai besides here?

It's obviously straight off John Conway's idea.

It popped up maybe 40 pages into the original Exai thread - certainly one of the early things that came to mind when I saw the artwork.

  On 3/13/2013 at 5:00 AM, Maxwell said:

 

I have used this instrument in Reaktor before. It follows the game of life to create generative and evolving sounds. It's very fun to watch it just run :D

i played with this a bit on the reaktor trial, it just seems too easy to make interesting generative beats. i couldn't really control explicitly what was happening, maybe i just didn't spend enough time at it though?

  On 3/13/2013 at 5:00 AM, Maxwell said:

 

I have used this instrument in Reaktor before. It follows the game of life to create generative and evolving sounds. It's very fun to watch it just run :D

0:20-0:25 is almost exactly the same as some drums used in the Portal 2 soundtrack. It's certainly exactly the same sounds, the pattern is slightly different. Ergo, Mike Morasky must've used this for drums on the soundtrack

Interesting to note that the Game of Life grid represented by the Exai cover is 11 x 11, and also reaches a state of equilibrium after 376 generations that results in a population of 12, the next album number, in a series of three stable squares. (Triple album omg.)

If you don't have Reaktor but want something similar for free, the GlitchSequencer is a pretty solid Game-of-Life-based sequencing tool that outputs raw MIDI for hardware control, etc:

http://www.glitch-sequencer.com/videos.php

  On 4/2/2015 at 4:51 PM, skytree said:

(Triple album omg.)

yes pls

I thought it was binary, the sum of each row's binary number being the (original) release date.

  On 4/2/2015 at 7:08 PM, WeAreOceans said:

I thought it was binary, the sum of each row's binary number being the (original) release date.

If they managed to do both with one configuration, that would be an immensely daunting logic problem. So I wouldn't be surprised. It would be cool to see a breakdown/explanation of your observation, because it is definitely an equilibrating Conway pattern.

  On 4/2/2015 at 11:23 PM, skytree said:

 

  On 4/2/2015 at 7:08 PM, WeAreOceans said:

I thought it was binary, the sum of each row's binary number being the (original) release date.

If they managed to do both with one configuration, that would be an immensely daunting logic problem. So I wouldn't be surprised. It would be cool to see a breakdown/explanation of your observation, because it is definitely an equilibrating Conway pattern.

 

ok so maybe this has already been said or is really obvious but i just thought, do you think this could be where the title Confield came from? Because the area over which the cells move is called the field, so it's a Conway field....a Confield

  On 4/3/2015 at 12:08 AM, misc said:

 

  On 4/2/2015 at 11:23 PM, skytree said:

 

  On 4/2/2015 at 7:08 PM, WeAreOceans said:

I thought it was binary, the sum of each row's binary number being the (original) release date.

If they managed to do both with one configuration, that would be an immensely daunting logic problem. So I wouldn't be surprised. It would be cool to see a breakdown/explanation of your observation, because it is definitely an equilibrating Conway pattern.

 

 

ok so maybe this has already been said or is really obvious but i just thought, do you think this could be where the title Confield came from? Because the area over which the cells move is called the field, so it's a Conway field....a Confield

 

 

 

 

This is a nifty hypothesis.

  On 4/3/2015 at 12:23 AM, skytree said:

 

  On 4/3/2015 at 12:08 AM, misc said:

 

  On 4/2/2015 at 11:23 PM, skytree said:

 

  On 4/2/2015 at 7:08 PM, WeAreOceans said:

I thought it was binary, the sum of each row's binary number being the (original) release date.

If they managed to do both with one configuration, that would be an immensely daunting logic problem. So I wouldn't be surprised. It would be cool to see a breakdown/explanation of your observation, because it is definitely an equilibrating Conway pattern.

 

 

ok so maybe this has already been said or is really obvious but i just thought, do you think this could be where the title Confield came from? Because the area over which the cells move is called the field, so it's a Conway field....a Confield

 

 

 

 

This is a nifty hypothesis.

 

and i'm pretty sure i remember them saying somewhere that a lot of confield was generative, with them setting up parameters and then letting the sound evolve from a starting point, which is basically conways game of life

hope i'm not misquoting there but i'm pretty sure it was something along those lines

  On 4/2/2015 at 11:23 PM, skytree said:

 

  On 4/2/2015 at 7:08 PM, WeAreOceans said:

I thought it was binary, the sum of each row's binary number being the (original) release date.

If they managed to do both with one configuration, that would be an immensely daunting logic problem. So I wouldn't be surprised. It would be cool to see a breakdown/explanation of your observation, because it is definitely an equilibrating Conway pattern.

 

Not my observation, just a link/suggestion I saw floating around the net:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oKvRJqTTx7q5XD4aaqsNrfygPadTFrskEGmMZOgOEVs/edit?pli=1

It's a little tenuous, but Exai was originally down to be released earliest March 4th 2013: http://warp.net/news/exai/

... so, suddenly, all my (pathetic) digressions on the perception of life as an evolving super-individual, linked to Autechre, I wrote in the "autistic media" tread, find a mathematical correspondence. If before I could have doubts, it is now clear: Ae are the musical dimension of the monolith.

Yes! It was Confield...

guys, hate to be a party pooper, but it's just a cool tDR typography exercise

  On 4/3/2015 at 3:52 AM, modey said:

guys, hate to be a party pooper, but it's just a cool tDR typography exercise

Personally I'd be really surprised if they haven't ever used Game of Life patterns to generate output. There's just a certain feel to it if you're familiar with triggering synths and such with them, and it's not that uncommon of a thing.

But hey, you could be right. Just my two cents.

...did anyone flat out ask them during the q&a?