Generative music composition using Cellular Automata (Game Of Life)

HenrySmith

Hi there!

I bummed into a interesting article about how to create a generative music composition from 2D Cellular Automata. The following is the link of the mentioned article: cmr.soc.plymouth.ac.uk/publications/CapturingTheAesthetic.pdf

This idea is to perform the mapping from a Game Of Life generation based on a polar co-ordinate system with the origin at the grid center. This approach is illustrated below:

I am trying to implement this idea in processing. The authors provided a brilliant algorithm how this can be achieved:

I was doing quite well until I got stuck in point 3 (the highlighted part). Can anyone suggest how it is possible to iterate from the center of the grid to the boarder for every value of tita? (in order to examine the state of each cell along the line which is by an angle tita from the centre).

This is what I've got so far:

The red line represents the the iterations of tita around the boarder. A new generation is created with each revolution.

Any tips of how step 3 (of the algorithm above) can be implemented will be greatly appreciated! :)