game_of_life

Mika Satomi


If you think about life and society as a game with a set of rules, the life we live in might be a vast system that each of us are behaving just by a set of simple rules. Maybe the life is determined beyond our knowledge. We may believe that. Or we believe that we have a chance to choose with our will. But even this will maybe within the range of determination."game_of_life" is an interactive art installation that attempts to caricature the system of our society in a manner that the behavior of each member of the society is affecting the other members’ behavior.



"game_of_life" is an interactive art installation that lets spectators walk through the virtual city by using their own eye gaze movements. An eye-tracking device is used as an interface to detect the eye gaze of the spectator. The city's behavior is based on a "Game of Life" 2D cellular automata . As a spectator walks through the virtual city by simply looking at it, his/her position in virtual space is counted as an active cell , which affects the status of other cells in cellular automata.

"game_of_life" was exhibited at Interface Culture exhibition at 2006 ARS Electronica.
exhibition movie >>


The movements of the spectator’s eye are captured by USB infrared camera and translated into the yaw and pitch movement of the 3D camera. During the interaction, the dark-pupil position of the spectator’s eye is compared with the calibrated coordinate and converted into yaw and pitch movement of the 3D camera.

"Game of Life" cellular automata follows 3 simple rules.
1. The cell will be ON in the next generation if exactly 3 of its neighboring cells are currently ON.
2. The cell will retain its current state if exactly 2 of its neighbors are ON.
3. The cell will be off otherwise..

The spectator's position in the virtual space makes the cell at the same position ON for the cellular automata calculation. As the spectator walks around the virtual space, the cells he/she steps on are counted as ON s