Set Conway's Game of Life on a 4way-symetrical pattern starting from simple rules. Set it on a slow speed and play around with the scale, and stare into it for a long time. You can read each succesive pattern as a face, with eyes nose and a mouth expressing a succesion of emotions. Coordinate your own emotions with the ones you see on the screen. Now you know what it feels like to have your emotions follow a simple algorhythm. Maybe emotional problems are like knots where there is a jump in complexity that needs to get worked out. Now that you know how it feels to follow a simple emotional algorhithm you will be better able to tell when you are deviating from the natural ebb and flow -- tieing a knot.
-- JesusHChrist, Jun 03 2005

Exploring Emergence http://llk.media.mi...projects/emergence/
put one white dot in each of the 4 corners and hit start for an example of a symetrical pattern. for really good faces you need a larger scale than this though. [JesusHChrist, Jun 03 2005]

Game of Life - my take http://www.fastlane.../index.cgi?gol.html
Modify algorithms, do it in colour... [Detly, Jun 04 2005]

Wouldn't you be perceiving the apparent emotions from your own emotional perspective? I know there's a picture of Winston Churchill just looking into the camera that makes a pretty good emotional inkblot test.
-- baconbrain, Jun 03 2005


Hmm, I'll have to think a bit about this, bun anyway.
-- zeno, Jun 04 2005


I've added a link to my own implementation of the Game of Life, and some modifications. I set up a decent GUI to draw starting patters and modify the algorithm (it still needs some work, but it's coming along). I've also implemented a colour version, which is a little slow but nice to watch.
-- Detly, Jun 04 2005


Thanks [zeno] and [Detly].

[bacon] I'm using LifeLab for Macintosh and I am running the "Persian Rug" pattern and focusing pattern for about 15 minutes at a time -- it helps if you go out of focus.

The faces go through a pretty predictable pattern - the eybrows go up and down, the mouth goes from smile to frown and the eyes go from wide to squint - the progression is something like calmness, happiness, ecstacy, surprise, fear, anger, sadness, calmness etc. pretty simple and universal. The goal would not be to interpret any one human emotion from a certain pattern but to understand the progression which seems simple and universal enough to be something that is basic to patterns and not just human emotions.
-- JesusHChrist, Jun 05 2005



random, halfbakery