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I’ve never been in good relationship with math. Especially with high school math. I don’t think I’m alone with this problem, am I right? :)
But I cannot deny the importance of mathematics, and when I have the opportunity, I use its results shamelessly. The same is in this article where I decided to present you an attempt to visualize some art created by math and simulated on an Arduino Pro Mini microcontroller module. For this I used a game created by a Cambridge mathematician, John Conway. It’s about Conways Game of Life.
The first appearance of this concept was in an article by Martin Gardner in the Scientific American (october 1970) - MATHEMATICAL GAMES - The fantastic combinations of John Conway’s new solitaire game “life”. It is not a game in the strict sense of the word but it is a so-called cellular automaton, a mathematical structure, an observer creates the start structure and follows the structure evolution without any further intervention. This kind of mathematical structures began to be researched since the 1940’s when the concept was invented by von Neumann, but only with the appearance of the article in the Scientific American this concept came to the public’s attention.
Since then, more and more discoveries have been made in this field, more and more research, and if you search the Internet, you will be completely spoiled when you will see the latest findings in this field of mathematical research. Moreover… WIth this game you can simulate complex biological, chemical, social processes and this cellular automaton can also have applications in computing and cryptography. Insane!
Ok ok
As I have told you, since I don’t have too much affinity with math, it is too high for me but I want to show you that math can be beautiful. With a 16x16 RGB LED display available, I’ll try to visualize the artificial world from Conway’s Game of Life and other ”Life Like” worlds.”

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