Cell language (Re: Rikchik Postscript Files)

In answer to my translation attempt, Denis M. Moskowitz wrote:
>
> >    Rikchik-Agent-N-0
> >    Talk-Source-I-1
> >    Happy-End-V-1
>
> ...
>
> > I give up and wait for your help. I definitively don't seem to
> > have seven tentacles and a Rikchik brain =:*)
>
> Me neither, but I try. :)
>
It remind me an old conlanging attempt I made some years ago
when I was a fan of Conway's Game of Life -- well, I am still a
fan, but I do not spend anymore my time at watching evolving
patterns for hours and hours :*).

For those who do not know this amazing game, it is a mathematical
cell automata where each two-state cell may be either alive or dead.
There are simple rules that dictates the birth, death and survival
of a cell (a living cell dies from suffocation if it has more than
3 neighbours alive, it survives if it has 2 or 3, and dies from
solitude below 2; a dead cell comes to life if it has exactly
three living neighbours).

The thrilling thing about this automata is that it constructs
meaningful macroscopic 'life' structures (such as gliders that
moves along diagonals, oscillators... etc... and even prime number
calculators), though each cell only knows its immediate neighbours
and has therefore no consciousness of its global role in the
structure. Detailed information on Conway's Game of Life can be
found at this excellent web site:
     http://www.cs.jhu.edu/~callahan/lifepage.html
(for a sample, try
     http://www.cs.jhu.edu/~callahan/patterns/p15.html)


I wanted to see if I was able to imagine a language that could
follow similar rules, and I envisioned small worm-like marine
creatures that would live as parasites in corals. Though very
simple, they could express basic ideas by illuminating themselves,
and each creature was influenced by its neightbours and reacted
with a limited set of behaviours. But on a macroscopic point
of view, the host coral would appear to have a kind of language
and to be able to exchange information with the surrounding
corals.

Needless to say, apart from drawing many creatures in my
roughbooks  -- I was still a student then -- I never
succeeded in inventing such a weird language.

Didier.
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