Studio Rocker use cellular automata as a tool. It generates a code, and they dictate some form of representation upon it. For me Melissa says it well when she defines the designer's role as merely a chooser of representation.
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When Pawel talks about Deleuze's complexity as being relational, and Wolfram's as being sequential, he got me thinking about what that means in terms of time. Matt talked about this too, saying that both systems relate to time. To me it initially seems as if Wolfram's complexity is that of a progressively increasing nature, and Deleuze's complexity already completely exists - it is just waiting to be discovered. But then that gets me thinking about the setup of both theories.
Wolfram's complexity emerges from simple rules - and so does Deleuze's. [smooth = this, striated = this, they interact thusly]. For Deleuze, the complexity emerges from how the two ideas interact, and how they relate.
Although Wolfram presents his diagrams of cellular automata in a linear and progressive format - what would happen if we relate them differently? We talked in class about the Rocker studio having issues with modes of representation. What if these rules related to each other in a different method - radially or as numbers, as random examples. The type of representation and relation determines in part the level of complexity. (If you only allowed the rules to progress two steps, with a three square wide grid, the diagram would be a lot less complex than an 18 step 50 square wide grid)
So it seems that both Wolfram and Deleuze present complexity in terms of a relational and representational means. Starting with a simple definition (rules for squares, and two ideologically different spaces) in relating the two spaces, or in relating how the rules operate in space, complexity develops. The rules in and of themselves have no complexity, just as the definition of a smooth or striated space has inherently no complexity.
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The image is of the Hydrogen House in Austria by Michael McInturf, Greg Lynn, and Martin Treberspurg.
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