2c:null 2d:["$","title",null,{"children":"#CellularAutomataMovement | stevenzhou01 | Observable"}] 32:T57e,md`## Nov. 18, 2021 -- Critical Argument of the Algorithm Reading response: *Should generative art be political?* by Boris Magrini According to Magrini, since there is a growing demand for new media art to be related to politics and society, generative art needs to focus on the social and political context. Also, generative art is capable to raise the discussion of social problems beyond its aesthetics-oriented tradition. As an art practice, what matters is to problematize the people's initial ideologies of social life. For example, as the artwork MEART mentioned in the article, the purpose of the artwork is to question the technologies applied in the work ethically and politically. From this example, another thing to notice is, in the category of social-oriented generative art, it is also significant to clarify how generative art talks about social-related topics. Back to the rough idea, it mentioned using cellular automata to project the online movement. The purpose is to create social and political-oriented generative art. However, it is also important to figure out the logical argument between the algorithm and the social-related topic. Why does this project use cellular automata? What is the relationship between cellular automata and online social movement? The questions make the project directly to a different way, which is it may not be necessary to apply cellular automata.`33:Tfeb,md`## Nov. 27, 2021 -- Research: Social Network and Information Spreading #### 1. [*Probing models of information spreading in social networks*](https://iopscience-iop-org.ezproxy.cityu.edu.hk/article/10.1088/1751-8113/47/43/435102) by J. Zoller and S. Montangero, 2014 **SIS Model** The model shows the information spreading in a scale-free network. Complexity -- Scale-free Network: A network consists of nodes and connections. The degree of a node is its connections to other nodes. In a scale-free work, its degree distribution is different from the degree distribution of a random network. Some nodes have much higher degrees than others. The highest-degree nodes are called "hubs". The characteristics of the scale-free network exist on the Internet. In the SIS model, the nodes have two states: infected and susceptible to infection. The initial state of the node is susceptible. At every time step, the node that has an infected neighbor has a probability of becoming infected. After a typical time, the node recovers and becomes susceptible again. The probability of infecting relates to the number of connections a node has. The probability of infecting is described as v = z/zmax (z is the number of connections, zmax is the highest number of connections in the network). The highly connected nodes are the influential spreaders.

Figure 1. A snapshot of the status of a scale-free network at a given time during the infection: infected (red) and susceptible (green) nodes. #### 2. [*An information spreading model based on online social networks*](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378437117307987#:~:text=IRCSS%20information%20spreading%20model&text=The%20users%20giving%20information%20thumbs,to%20information%20are%20called%20stiflers.) by T. Wang et al., 2018 **IRCSS Model** IRCSS model is used to describe the information spreading model on the online social network. On the online social platform, the users' reaction to receiving the information could be categorized into 5 types: give likes, make comments, save the information, share the information, and no response. According to these 5 types of behaviors, users could be divided into 5 groups that construct the IRCSS model: * Ignorants (the initial state) * Reviewers (give likes or make comments) * Collectors (save the information) * Sharers (share the information) * Stiflers (no response)

Fig. 1 shows the structure of the IRCSS model, the process of how the users' identity changes when they encounter a sharer, and the change rate represented by Greek alphabets. When an ignorant encounters a piece of information, there are four possible outcomes, reviewers, sharers, collectors, and stiflers. A reviewer and a collector could both be triggered to become a sharer. A sharer may think the information has been propagated generally, thus may become a stifler. "The IRCSS model is applied to a generated network which is a closed and homogeneous population consisting of N individuals. Denote by I(t), R(t), S1(t), C(t), S2(t) the densities of ignorants, reviewers, sharers, collectors, and stiflers at time t respectively. In addition, we have the normalization condition, I(t) + R(t) + S1(t) + C(t) + S2(t) = 1."

Suppose α +β + γ +θ = 1 and η = µ, Fig. 2 shows the density of ignorants, reviewers, shares, collectors, and stiflers over time with α = 0.3, β = 0.4, γ = 0.1, θ = 0.2, δ = 0.3, η = µ = 0.2. The line chart shows the density of sharers increases gradually when starting to spread the information. When the value reaches the peak, it starts to decline until zero. The reviewers and collectors follow similar trends. The stiflers gradually increase and the increasing rate becomes slower over time. `34:T588,md`## Nov. 29, 2021 -- Online Activism * Online activism, also known as internet activism, utilizes the internet to conduct citizen movements, which is one of the main ways to conduct movements in the digital era. The project focuses on online activism on social media. As social media enables a faster and more effective way to spread information, many online movements occurred on Twitter or Instagram, such as Me Too, Occupy Wall Street, and Black Lives Matter.

Image Courtesy of i-D Magazine * **Critiques towards online activism:** * **Genuine engagement becomes Toxic mandatory public caring:** Don’t post anything about the movement on social media = being ignorant, indifferent, or don't support the moment. Therefore, sometimes people post or share the message on social media because of social pressure, but obviously not everybody can speak out on social media due to different reasons. People got forced to become sharers. * **The questionable effectiveness:** Many people question the effectiveness of online movements. It just bounces from one to the next without creating any meaningful change. The movement has just become a trendy topic on social media. * **No one really talks about the movement anymore after for a while:** most of the people become stiflers by the end. `35:Tefa,md`## Nov. 30, 2021 -- Proposal and the Project Concept 1. [**Proposal**](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1GR5_Jl8T3dD76CRMiiLpJmtVqVUuTegw/view?usp=sharing) 2. **Idea:** The project adopts the concept of cellular automata to discuss online activism on social media. 4. **The New Model for Online Activism:** * **New Model** (Combined by SIS and IRCSS)

* When people get to know about the movement and start to think about it, they are called "inflected", otherwise, they are susceptible. -**Ignorants:** susceptible. There are two possible situations: one is when people haven't received any information about the movement (the initial state), the other is after knowing the movement, people are still unresponsive and indifferent to the movement. When ignorants encounter the online movement on social media, they could become thinkers, sharers, or remain the same. -**Thinkers:** infected. People get to know about the movement and start to think about it but they do not share or post anything on social media, including giving likes and comments or just thinking in mind. Thinkers could be triggered to be sharers. -**Sharers:** infected. People get to know about the movement and actively share or post it on social media. They can influence others. Someone has more power to influence others on social media, such as influencers and news media, who are influential spreaders. Sharers could change back to ignorants if they feel the movement got over-talked. 5. **Algorithm and Metaphoric Narrative:** * 2D cellular automata-based and 3x3 Moore neighborhood rule-based * Each cell is the individual on social media. The algorithm is to simulate people's behavior about online activism on social media. * State: ignorant = 0, thinker = 0.01, sharer = 1, influencial spreader = 2. Influencial spreader is a sub-type of sharer. N is the sum of the neighbors' states * The ignorant can't influence others. The power for thinkers to influence others is very limited. Shares can influencers others and the influential spreaders have more power to influence others. In the real-life social media context, the sharer can influence others by sharing information about the online movement, while in cellular automata, this process is reflected that the state of a cell can be changed by its neighbors. There are several situations about influencing others * **Ignorance**: sharers are not enough to affect an ignorant (N<2, the ignorant remains unchanged). This reflects how many sharers can make others aware of the movement in the real life. * **Genuine engagement**: ignorant gets affected (2<= N<=5, the ignorant changes to thinker or sharer). This is the original ideology of the online activism * **Toxic mandatory engagement**: ignorant feels so stressed that it has to share (N>5, ignorant changes to sharer). Or, thinker feels stressed that it has to share (N > = 4, thinker change to sharer). This problematizes the social pressure on social media and the current situation of online activism about stressing people to share the information. * **Influencers**: sharer receives many likes and comments from thinkers (More than 4 thinkers in the neighborhood, sharer changes to influential spreader). This is about how people become social media influencers and then influence others. * **Over propagation**: sharer encounters too many sharers, which made it think the topic got over talked. It becomes unresponsive to the information about the movement and then becomes ignorant (N > 2, sharer or influential spreader changes to ignorant). This means most cells will become ignorants by the end, which reflects the questionable and ineffective result of online movement. `36:T899,md`## Dec. 11, 2021 -- Research #### [*The Spreading of Information in Online Social Networks through Cellular Automata*](https://www.proquest.com/docview/2131991964?accountid=10134&parentSessionId=AwInml87m%2BTC6EVg9U9eiMQo1oB9AmAxQDwqMqgPpKQ%3D&pq-origsite=primo) by Wang & Li, 2018 This research article mentions the online social network information spreading model (OSIS) and how to use cellular automata to study the model (left pic.). First, the state of the cell includes unaware, concerned, interested, and abandoned. The state transfer rule depends on the propagation factor, memory superposition factor, and information attenuation factor mentioned in the article. The cellular neighborhood applies the one that the nodes associated with edges (right pic.) instead of traditional Von Neumann or Moore structure since the traditional neighborhood structure can only allow cells to interact with their neighbors locally but not have the global communication. The new structure is more resembles the OSIS. Moreover, another noticeable thing is the model also considers the types of information as a factor, such as rumors. My current work only involves the factors of behaviors, but it's also important to think about opinions and what kinds of information is spreading to make the simulation closer to the real-world situation.

**Reflection:** From the research so far, many models about the online information spreading process have been proposed. No matter it's social dynamic automata or the research today, they mostly focus on applying the cellular automata as a tool to study the topics under social context instead of looking at what cellular automata can provide and add more for the social topics. Back to my project, as a generative art project, I should focus on what we can get from the cellular automata. Also from an artistic perspective, what artistic meaning, organic and aesthetic artwork can cellular automata bring out? `37:T59b,md`## Dec. 17, 2021 -- Second Iteration The ignorants are yellow rectangles, which also work as background. The green triangles are thinkers. The purple quads are sharers, and the red ones are influencers. The mouse can "plant seeds on the screen"; if you put the mouse on the screen, the 9 cells around the mouse will be reassigned the states, which represents setting out a smaller and partial "movement". **Reflection:** 1. Once the "movement" starts, the cells will start to change by the rules. Most of the cells become ignorants and only a part of the cells are still changing, which kinda means the movements happen on a larger scale from the beginning and gradually change to only happen on a small scale. 2. The changing cells are scattered and segregated into groups. 3. By the function of the mouse, if you put the mouse into those groups of changing cells, the intervention of the mouse will make the cells stop changing, by the end only the cells around the mouse will still change. 4. Without the mouse, in a longer time, the changing cells are gradually decreasing. However, the change of the patterns in a longer duration is not obvious. 5. Using shapes to represent different states makes it difficult to see the change of the patterns of the CA and also makes it not artistic and organic enough. `38:T52a,md`## Dec. 18, 2021 -- Floating Numbers and Sequential Updating Based on the revision of the second iteration, I involved the floating numbers to the states, which makes the pattern work as the original purpose. It's able to see that most of the cells are gradually becoming ignorants (white) and the CA is decaying, ie. the "movement" is getting more and more inactive. The "active" cells such as thinkers, sharers, and influencers are getting less and segregated into smaller groups. I also tried to use sequential updating to create more regular patterns, but it didn't work out. Sequential updating is mentioned in the research article about social dynamics automata, which refers to the state of a cell that depends on averaging the sum of the states of its neighbors and applying the step functions to return the new state to the cell. I think there are some reasons that the sequential updating doesn't work out to create the regular patterns. First, the patterns created by CA are decided by the rules, so the rules applied in this project cannot create more regular patterns. Second, the original rules use the sum of the neighbors' states, which is as same as using the average of the states. `39:[{"id":"016613f6e09cbc6c35f6546e9ffa7206f04a4d88cf631f1c77ea2e3a137b5f111666946ef92ca0ca7eed4a5ff11024986379d6d842a7af1efc219ec1c7a9126f","href":"https://static.observableusercontent.com/files/016613f6e09cbc6c35f6546e9ffa7206f04a4d88cf631f1c77ea2e3a137b5f111666946ef92ca0ca7eed4a5ff11024986379d6d842a7af1efc219ec1c7a9126f","name":"Screen Shot 2021-11-28 at 6@1.00.10 PM.png","type":"image/png","lastModified":1638094761042.789,"size":100622},{"id":"b9d65b6bad3e19a8d42b302beed047919997a335bc99da924a4bf83eb26d7fa16b3a2d8c6a945a96adb5455b17385cf3997be5a241f544a75fbf5d53e43e8358","href":"https://static.observableusercontent.com/files/b9d65b6bad3e19a8d42b302beed047919997a335bc99da924a4bf83eb26d7fa16b3a2d8c6a945a96adb5455b17385cf3997be5a241f544a75fbf5d53e43e8358","name":"Screen Shot 2021-11-28 at 6.58.21 PM.png","type":"image/png","lastModified":1638097194244.678,"size":136704},{"id":"ecb1e62a711ba62281b0f58282fab04dee572e78b71b318676da533cabc8610b47c488dbcf7abe16ac09f6a44b63a65fcd7528cd7433fb3d35e204125dcdb907","href":"https://static.observableusercontent.com/files/ecb1e62a711ba62281b0f58282fab04dee572e78b71b318676da533cabc8610b47c488dbcf7abe16ac09f6a44b63a65fcd7528cd7433fb3d35e204125dcdb907","name":"Screen Shot 2021-11-28 at 10.04.20 PM.png","type":"image/png","lastModified":1638108330080.6,"size":527806},{"id":"aca2619e05b00aa5beeb81de3c286edf10369a8e69f1433165c551794ffad20951e25bd68b19b5945aac066f838af638a304e8c39b27bbfe40605fb53071ba9b","href":"https://static.observableusercontent.com/files/aca2619e05b00aa5beeb81de3c286edf10369a8e69f1433165c551794ffad20951e25bd68b19b5945aac066f838af638a304e8c39b27bbfe40605fb53071ba9b","name":"Screen Shot 2021-11-29 at 12.14.00 AM.png","type":"image/png","lastModified":1638116090879.299,"size":1372809},{"id":"f2b3bcbe2034237731360fea7b15d73167ef17d19da70385a5bcffbf605868bf4e34b98e69289e21c0661bb802a6c49277cdf53dc6bafc06a26f7f536c080694","href":"https://static.observableusercontent.com/files/f2b3bcbe2034237731360fea7b15d73167ef17d19da70385a5bcffbf605868bf4e34b98e69289e21c0661bb802a6c49277cdf53dc6bafc06a26f7f536c080694","name":"Screen Shot 2021-12-11 at 10.14.47 PM.png","type":"image/png","lastModified":1639232132452.061,"size":1028717},{"id":"bd4dac0b374dd294b329ac89d87e89a775978bdc380efc0fd91bd1c6e567bed03648847dffcff2b8e01eb669c960a056c2d567916d6c55f9008eaf53674be6b2","href":"https://static.observableusercontent.com/files/bd4dac0b374dd294b329ac89d87e89a775978bdc380efc0fd91bd1c6e567bed03648847dffcff2b8e01eb669c960a056c2d567916d6c55f9008eaf53674be6b2","name":"Screen Shot 2021-12-11 at 10@1.44.21 PM.png","type":"image/png","lastModified":1639233965524.419,"size":308739},{"id":"ad64781467307d2a38f3b59ef6881ee332cab7a4e83709bf7756b86381280cd6c5a60b42f8899487fb70cbf3bdf989b747d92c06e7c8314217741f0af7ff717f","href":"https://static.observableusercontent.com/files/ad64781467307d2a38f3b59ef6881ee332cab7a4e83709bf7756b86381280cd6c5a60b42f8899487fb70cbf3bdf989b747d92c06e7c8314217741f0af7ff717f","name":"Screen Shot 2021-12-15 at 11.21.51 PM.png","type":"image/png","lastModified":1639583659674.394,"size":177466},{"id":"89927b657f2b93e2a818316533760d6f75832c195fc381b123772e1b7e3a01b611f7d27e9a510a025afaf02b3eec692c3745060d496ebff324b5dbafe73eea7f","href":"https://static.observableusercontent.com/files/89927b657f2b93e2a818316533760d6f75832c195fc381b123772e1b7e3a01b611f7d27e9a510a025afaf02b3eec692c3745060d496ebff324b5dbafe73eea7f","name":"Screen Shot 2021-12-15 at 11.21.30 PM.png","type":"image/png","lastModified":1639583626802.874,"size":413727}] 30:{"id":"fd8091c956b017d9","slug":"generative-art-project","title":"#CellularAutomataMovement","thumbnail":"c8b9b32ed1b5818be0eaa2227a354ec257989c330329b217cede9d7283bb664e","access_level":"public","create_time":"$D2021-11-27T09:22:12.617Z","update_time":"$D2021-12-20T18:03:17.022Z","view_time":null,"first_public_time":"$D2021-11-27T13:36:47.900Z","has_unpublished_edits":null,"fork":false,"stars":0,"starred":false,"owner":{"type":"team","id":"97db974a0b88bc30","login":"stevenzhou01","name":"","avatar_url":"https://avatars-next.observableusercontent.com/1e2dd4f7120a4e62cca461b2d703afd96e08ebd45e344b3a342ca62b0cfd87e2","tier":"starter_2024"},"version":298,"publish_version":298,"role":null,"authored":false,"authors":[{"type":"individual","id":"f37ed0ff88be839d","login":"stevenzhou01","name":"","avatar_url":"https://avatars-next.observableusercontent.com/1e2dd4f7120a4e62cca461b2d703afd96e08ebd45e344b3a342ca62b0cfd87e2","tier":null}],"members":[{"type":"individual","id":"f37ed0ff88be839d","login":"stevenzhou01","name":"","avatar_url":"https://avatars-next.observableusercontent.com/1e2dd4f7120a4e62cca461b2d703afd96e08ebd45e344b3a342ca62b0cfd87e2","tier":null,"role":"editor"}],"comments":[],"custom_thumbnail":true,"trashed":false,"lapsed":null,"subscribed":null,"forks":0,"collection":{"id":"82f1b8d83b3d1fe4","slug":"generative-art","title":"Generative art","owner":{"id":"97db974a0b88bc30","login":"stevenzhou01","name":""}},"type":"notebook","body":{"titling":"auto","title":"#CellularAutomataMovement","cells":[{"id":0,"value":"# #CellularAutomataMovement","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"md","author":"$undefined","summary":"$undefined","providerMetadata":"$undefined","attachments":"$undefined","output":"","database":"$undefined"},{"id":142,"value":"md`### Sociopolitical-oriented Generative Art Project`","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"ojs","author":"$undefined","summary":"$undefined","providerMetadata":"$undefined","attachments":"$undefined","output":"$undefined","database":"$undefined"},{"id":148,"value":"md`## Keywords:\nSociopolitical, cellular automata, information spreading model, social media, online activism`","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"ojs","author":"$undefined","summary":"$undefined","providerMetadata":"$undefined","attachments":"$undefined","output":"$undefined","database":"$undefined"},{"id":7,"value":"md`## Nov. 10, 2021 -- Rough Idea\n\nThe idea is inspired by social and political-oriented non-traditional generative art. The project is to apply the cellular automata to online social activism, including selecting one of the recent online movements and using the concept of “state” in cellular automata to represent people’s opinions on the Internet towards the movement. Discrete and continuous states could represent the various opinions. The “rules” of the cellular automata could represent the information spreading model. Via this, the project can visualize the opinion map of the online movement and generate the future opinion map as the prediction of the online movement.`","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"ojs","author":"$undefined","summary":"$undefined","providerMetadata":"$undefined","attachments":"$undefined","output":"$undefined","database":"$undefined"},{"id":37,"value":"$32","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"ojs","author":"$undefined","summary":"$undefined","providerMetadata":"$undefined","attachments":"$undefined","output":"$undefined","database":"$undefined"},{"id":104,"value":"md`## Nov. 24, 2021 -- Research: Social Dynamics Automata\n\n#### [*Understanding Complex Social Dynamics: A Plea For Cellular Automata Based Modelling*](https://www.jasss.org/1/3/1.html) by R. Hegselmann & A. Flache, 1998\n\nThe article talks about the history of applying cellular automata to social science and applying the cellular automata-based model to be the approach to understand the social dynamic process. It presents an opinion dynamics model in a finite, rectangular, 2-dimensional grid and von Neumann neighborhoods. All the cells are an individual holding the opinions that are the state of the cells. Individual updates their opinions according to their neighborhoods. With different discrete sets of opinions, it can generate different outcomes as the picture shows.\n\n

\n`","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"ojs","author":"$undefined","summary":"$undefined","providerMetadata":"$undefined","attachments":"$undefined","output":"$undefined","database":"$undefined"},{"id":53,"value":"$33","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"ojs","author":"$undefined","summary":"$undefined","providerMetadata":"$undefined","attachments":"$undefined","output":"$undefined","database":"$undefined"},{"id":192,"value":"$34","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"ojs","author":"$undefined","summary":"$undefined","providerMetadata":"$undefined","attachments":"$undefined","output":"$undefined","database":"$undefined"},{"id":128,"value":"$35","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"ojs","author":"$undefined","summary":"$undefined","providerMetadata":"$undefined","attachments":"$undefined","output":"$undefined","database":"$undefined"},{"id":210,"value":"md` ## Dec. 3, 2021 -- First Iteration \nA \"new movement\" will start by clicking. After the click, cells start to change, which represents people start to react to the movement and conduct different behaviors, including ignorants, thinkers, and sharers. The circles represent ignorants. The triangles represent thinkers. The quads represent sharers and the red quads are influential spreaders. When it stops to change, it means the end of the \"movement\".\n\n\n\nReflection: \n1. The change is too fast to clearly see the process. (Now the frame rate is only 8)\n2. The visual representation is quite boring and can't see the relationship with the original idea.\n3. Opinion is also one of the factors to consider, but this work only models the bahaviors so it's important to clarify that opinion doesn't get invovled in this work.\n`","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"ojs","author":"$undefined","summary":"$undefined","providerMetadata":"$undefined","attachments":"$undefined","output":"$undefined","database":"$undefined"},{"id":234,"value":"$36","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"ojs","author":"$undefined","summary":"$undefined","providerMetadata":"$undefined","attachments":"$undefined","output":"$undefined","database":"$undefined"},{"id":247,"value":"md`## Dec. 14, 2021 -- Related Artwork\nAfter the theory research, I started to work on finding more related artwork for inspirations. I mainly work on how to design the algorithm and what the algorithm can bring to the audidence, i.e. what visual representation is better to raise the thinking of the audience.\n\n`","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"ojs","author":"$undefined","summary":"$undefined","providerMetadata":"$undefined","attachments":"$undefined","output":"$undefined","database":"$undefined"},{"id":262,"value":"$37","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"ojs","author":"$undefined","summary":"$undefined","providerMetadata":"$undefined","attachments":"$undefined","output":"$undefined","database":"$undefined"},{"id":285,"value":"$38","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"ojs","author":"$undefined","summary":"$undefined","providerMetadata":"$undefined","attachments":"$undefined","output":"$undefined","database":"$undefined"},{"id":291,"value":"md`## Dec. 20, 2021 -- Sequential Updating\n\nFinally made it out by sequential updating. \n`","pinned":false,"hidden":false,"mode":"ojs","author":"$undefined","summary":"$undefined","providerMetadata":"$undefined","attachments":"$undefined","output":"$undefined","database":"$undefined"}],"files":"$W39","stdlib":"1"}} 31:"$30:body"