Audio Damage Automaton - Manual (Page 11)

contain when you release the mouse button. In other words, establishing the initial state while the transport is
running is something of an exercise in hitting a moving target.
The SEQUENCE LIFESPAN knob controls how rapidly the world evolves. That is, it controls how often a new
generation of cells is calculated within the world grid. The generations are synchronized to your host's
transport, so the Lifespan knob works in units of beats. It has a range of a 1/32 note up to a quarter note,
and dotted and triplet values are available.
The SEQUENCE RESET and SEQUENCE LIFESPAN knobs have related roles. The RESET knob controls the
duration over which the world will evolve before being reset to its initial state, and the LIFESPAN knob
controls how rapidly the world will evolve during that duration.
The RULE SET popup menu lets you choose between several different rules which govern how the world
evolves from one generation to the next. The rules are as follows:
Life
In the Life rules, if a living cell has two or three live neighbors, it stays alive in the next generation,
otherwise it dies. If an empty cell has exactly three live neighbors, a new cell is born in the next
generation. CA worlds that use the Life rule set tend to become less populous or die out althogether as
the world evolves, but there are some cell patterns that will grow indefinitely or repeat themselves
periodically. The Life rule set uses the set of rules invented by John Conway. Life is easily the most
well-known cellular automaton rule set and was introduced to the (real) world in 1970 via an article in
Scientific American magazine written by Martin Gardener
1 .
Sequencer
The Sequencer rule set is a specialized rule set that makes Automaton's world grid act like a familiar
step sequencer. Live cells move from left to right, advancing one square with each new generation.
For example, you can set the SEQUENCE RESET knob to one measure, the LIFESPAN knob to 1/16,
and draw a vertical strip of live cells along the left edge of the world. When your host's transport is
running, the vertical strip of cells will move one space to the right with each sixteenth note and jump
back to the left edge at the beginning of each measure. Then you can place triggers on the world grid
1 Yes, this effectively makes it ancient history as far as computers are concerned. The article suggested using checkers and
a checkerboard to iterate generations by hand. No, the author wasn’t kidding.