The Journey So Far...

[Alright, there's no avoiding it: you'll see the phrase 'Cellular Automata' a lot here; basically just think of a grid of squares, where each square can be “on” or “off.” At every moment (each generation), every square updates its state based on a simple rule that looks at the state of its neighbors. Even though the rules are very simple, the grid can show surprisingly complicated patterns. That’s what a cellular automaton is: a window into how complex behavior can come from just a few basic steps repeated over and over.]

 

I first encountered Cellular Automata when I was really young, watching my Dad run Conway’s Game of Life on his old Commodore PET. It felt almost magical that such simple rules could produce such mesmerising and complex forms. My Dad tried to teach me the BASIC coding language, but I never quite took to coding back then. My interest in mathematics and physics ebbed and flowed as I grew up, and I went on to study astrophysics at uni—but I dropped out at the end of my second year—and found myself increasingly drawn to deeper questions of metaphysics and consciousness.

 

It wasn’t until around 2018, after watching a TED talk by Stephen Wolfram, that I was properly reintroduced to Cellular Automata. I was once again struck by how, from the simplest of rules, these systems could generate delicate patterns or boundless chaos. This echoed ideas I’d long been circling in my own thinking: that the universe might be shaped by deep computational principles - with recursive and fractal motifs everywhere you look closely enough. I started experimenting, spending hours trawling through the patterns on Wolfram Alpha and fiddling with simple art ideas.

 

By 2020, I was creating ‘islands’ (hence the 'Atlas')—images generated by selectively colouring portions of Cellular Automata grids. Manually stitching together screenshots, painstakingly colouring cells by hand in cafes on rainy winter days in the UK. I eventually found ways to automate the process (with more than a few hiccups, thanks to my lack of coding skills). What started out as a quest to produce island-like shapes led to an ever-widening exploration of “mining computational space”, making graphs, heatmaps, and discovering intriguing patterns hiding within the data.

 

As my scripts and ideas evolved, I began to see these activation maps—heatmaps of the “most active” regions in large automaton grids—as artistic objects in their own right. They struck me as simultaneously having both synthetic and organic feeling qualities, forming and dispersing at different scales. Through trial, error, and a few interesting accidents, I honed an aesthetic that defined much of my exploration in 2021 and 2022—a few of which you can view on the website’s splash page.

 

In 2022, I moved from the UK to Los Angeles, which shifted my focus for a time, though I continued to refine my earlier art and investigate the ‘islands’ I’d produced from a more mathematical perspective - conducting vast statistical studies into the emergent variation space for each parameter-set. In 2024, I made the decision to invest in a pen plotter to transform my digital experiments into physical pieces. Converting pixel-based art into the vector formats required for plotting proved challenging, but resulted in fresh ways of thinking about—and generating—new images. 

 

Later in 2024, with the rise of more capable coding assistants, I revisited my old scripts and dramatically sped up the process - and altering my workflow. What once took days to render could now be done in less than an hour. This shift enabled me to generate multiple images in batches, sift through them for the most aesthetically striking results, and push my computational explorations even further.

 

Now in 2025, I’ve launched this website to properly share my emerging journey as an artist. I remain fascinated by how mathematics, physics, and computational theory can merge to reveal new layers of complexity and beauty. I’m continuing to learn about increasingly abstract areas of mathematics, such as group theory, tensor fields, and developing other tools to see what fresh territory they can open up.

 

My ambitions for Atlas Automata are threefold: to create truly novel aesthetic works, to generate an income that lets me devote more time to studying these phenomena, and to contribute meaningfully—however modestly—to the broader mathematical discourse. In the long run, I’d love to explore three-dimensional sculptures, interactive pieces, and other immersive ways to bring Cellular Automata to life. Whether you’re here for the art, or just out of curiosity, or you’re just a supportive friend of mine, I hope you find something that sparks your imagination, and is worthy of your time.

 

Thank you for being here.