Le Grand O (The Great C)
Interactive installation
2021
16 halogen light bulbs, controlers, electronics, program

Le Grand O (The Great C) is an alignment of 16 halogen light bulbs standing on the floor on a length of 6 meters. These lights blink, pulsate, with a great symmetry and an organization which seems mathematical. The lamps emit a sizzling sound link to their luminosity. The approach of spectators disturbs this perfect symmetry, chaos appears in the blinkings, until after a few moments, a new order appears.

Le Grand O, like the calculator of Leibniz able of all thoughts, perseveres in its computational nature, in an impossible but always renewed quest to compute the surrounding world.

Le Grand O is a cellular automaton implementing Rule 110, which is a Turing-complete rule, meaning that “any calculation or computer program can be simulated using this automaton”. The lights visualize the state of the automaton, which evolve over time as the Rule 110 is applied, until it reaches a stable position. The detection of a presence injects randomness in the automaton, thus restarting the calculation, until stability.

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