The images in the film #43 are generated by systems in which the pixels are agents that are, in some respects, comparable to organic cells. These systems are bumped into motion by disruptions that cause a difference between some pixels and their neighbours. These miniscule differences become seeds for processes of decay and growth, an imbalance that embodies a store of energy for the system as a whole, similar to electrical potential. Under some circumstances the cells in the system feed each other so that oscillations or other kinds of order are produced spontaneously, sometimes stable in themselves, sometimes feeding on noise to stay active. This film is part of a long-running exploration of algorithms that are based on propagation and local interactions. Originally triggered by an encounter with simulations of how nerve impulses organise themselves into oscillations in tissues like heart muscle, for example, the project has since expanded to include an interest in the more general emergence of patterns in time and space out of homogenous starting conditions. These explorations are inspired by a set of ideas from biology and mathematics that first came to prominence during the development of cybernetics in the 1950s and 1960s, and that have since evolved into more recent manifestations such as catastrophe theory, complexity theory and artificial life. The composition of this film was influenced by the work of logician G. Spencer Brown, who wrote his Laws of Form in 1969. The book is a wonderful account of a new kind of logic that lends itself especially well to describe the seeming paradoxes of selfreference.
