CELLULAR AUTOMATA SOFTWARE: A MINI-WORKSHOP

http://www.cs.ioc.ee/~silvio/cas-mw.html

* Introduction

Many people nowadays know about cellular automata, especially Conway's
Game of Life. Browsing the Web, it is easy to find applets and scripts
that display on screen the temporal evolution of specific cellular
automata. The instances of general-purpose cellular automata software,
however, are quite rare.

The purpose of this mini-workshop is to provide an occasion and an
environment where cellular automata theorists and practitioners can
meet with software developers and enthusiasts, to exchange knowledge
and opinions on some of the cellular automata software available to
the researchers and to the wider public.

* Contact

Silvio Capobianco, Institute of Cybernetics at TUT
Email: firstname at cs dot ioc dot ee

* Program

The mini-workshop shall take place in the afternoon of Tuesday, August
31, 2010, in room B101 starting from 2PM.
The program will follow these guidelines:

- A short introduction to cellular automata.
  Speaker: Prof. Jarkko Kari (University of Turku)
- Three presentations of cellular automata software:
  - ACML, developed by Guillaume Theyssier, a general-purpose cellular
    automata software developed in OCamL.
    Speaker: Pierre Guillon (University of Turku)
    Abstract: http://www.cs.ioc.ee/~silvio/acml.txt
  - Golly, developed by Andrew Trevorrow and Tomas Rokicki, a Game of
    Life simulator which implements several algorithms, comes with a
    rich library of initial patterns, and supports scripting in Perl
    and Python.
    Speaker: Charalampos Zinoviadis (University of Turku)
    Abstract: http://www.cs.ioc.ee/~silvio/golly.txt
  - SIMP/STEP, developed by Ted Bach as his PhD thesis project under
    the supervision of Tommaso Toffoli, a general cellular automata
    simulator that implements the philosophy of "programmable matter"
    (Toffoli and Margolus, 1991), is built as a Python module and
    performs "experiments" written in that language.
    Speaker: Silvio Capobianco (Institute of Cybernetics)
    Abstract: http://www.cs.ioc.ee/~silvio/simp.txt
  Each presentation will last no more than 30 minutes.
- An "install fest" where people will be able to try the software on
  their personal computers.
- An "exercise session" where the different "teams" suggest specific
  cellular automata for other people to implement on the installed
  software.

* Bureaucracy

The mini-workshop is open to everyone and will follow a "free-for-all"
formula. Everyone is invited to contribute, ask questions, or just
watch.

It would be good to have an indication on how many people will
participate. If you plan to attend, please contact Silvio Capobianco.

This workshop is supported by EXCS:
Estonian Centre of Excellence in Computer Science
http://cs.ioc.ee/excs/

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Last updated: August 29, 2010