MAKOTO SEI WATANABE
The Self- and Other-Determining City
(QT Movie, 640KB, 15sec.)

The self is depicted in the upper row; the other in the lower row of diagrams. The evolution prompted by the impact of the other is shown moving from left to right. Is this "what I am, you determine" situation, the kind of relations the world is made up of?


The Self- and Other-Determining City

The nature of architecture in a city is usually not determined only by themselves alone. If there is a housing complex in an adjacent site, there are often certain building restrictions that apply and if a factory moves next door, the owner may be worried that his tenants will leave. It is world in which the self is greatly defined by the "other." This program simulates the structure of this world.
Here the subject is depicted in simple, geometrical shapes,which each successive transformation determined in relation to the other. This process is repeated several hundred times. Several patterns result, in some cases shrinking into dead-ends,in others changing dynamically in cycles.
This program simulates the way the self is shaped in the context of others by defining the character of the self and differences from others. You might call it a process of simulated evolution.

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