Non-Binary Cellular Automatons

Based on my research about random music generation I stumbled upon Stefen Wolframs “A new kind of science”, a book about cellular automatons.
After some reading I felt itchy in my fingers and I kicked my laptop to boot up some tabular sheets and started experimenting.
Finally, I went with basically a 4 dimensional cellular automaton that can be either black, grey, white or absent (also displayed as white).
Data was represented as – very thought through – 1, 2 and 3 in my Spreadsheet. Abence was just an empty string.

The function that I used to determine the inheritance was:

=IF(AND(A1=3;B1=3;C1=3);3;
IF(AND(A1=3;B1=3;C1=1);2;
IF(AND(A1=3;B1=3;C1=2);1;
IF(AND(A1=3;B1=1;C1=3);2;
IF(AND(A1=3;B1=2;C1=3);1;
IF(AND(A1=1;B1=3;C1=3);2;
IF(AND(A1=2;B1=3;C1=3);1;
IF(AND(A1=3;B1=1;C1=1);3;
IF(AND(A1=3;B1=1;C1=2);3;
IF(AND(A1=3;B1=2;C1=1);3;
IF(AND(A1=3;B1=2;C1=2);3;
IF(AND(A1=1;B1=1;C1=3);3;
IF(AND(A1=2;B1=1;C1=3);3;
IF(AND(A1=1;B1=2;C1=3);3;
IF(AND(A1=2;B1=2;C1=3);3;
IF(AND(A1=1;B1=1;C1=2);1;
IF(AND(A1=1;B1=2;C1=1);1;
IF(AND(A1=2;B1=1;C1=1);1;
IF(AND(A1=1;B1=2;C1=2);2;
IF(AND(A1=2;B1=2;C1=1);2;
IF(AND(A1=2;B1=2;C1=2);2;
IF(AND(A1=1;B1=1;C1=1);1;
IF(AND(A1=1;B1=2;C1=1);1;
IF(AND(A1=2;B1=1;C1=2);2;
IF(AND(A1=2;B1=3;C1=2);3;
IF(AND(A1=1;B1=3;C1=2);3;
IF(AND(A1=2;B1=3;C1=1);3;
IF(AND(A1=1;B1=3;C1=1);3;
IF(AND(A1="";B1=1;C1=1);"";
IF(AND(A1="";B1=1;C1=2);1;
IF(AND(A1="";B1=1;C1=3);2;
IF(AND(A1="";B1=2;C1=1);3;
IF(AND(A1="";B1=2;C1=2);1;
IF(AND(A1="";B1=2;C1=3);2;
IF(AND(A1="";B1=3;C1=1);3;
IF(AND(A1="";B1=3;C1=2);1;
IF(AND(A1="";B1=3;C1=3);2;
IF(AND(A1=1;B1="";C1=1);"";
IF(AND(A1=1;B1="";C1=2);1;
IF(AND(A1=1;B1="";C1=3);2;
IF(AND(A1=2;B1="";C1=1);3;
IF(AND(A1=2;B1="";C1=2);1;
IF(AND(A1=2;B1="";C1=3);2;
IF(AND(A1=3;B1="";C1=1);3;
IF(AND(A1=3;B1="";C1=2);1;
IF(AND(A1=3;B1="";C1=3);2;
IF(AND(A1=1;B1=1;C1="");"";
IF(AND(A1=2;B1=1;C1="");1;
IF(AND(A1=3;B1=1;C1="");2;
IF(AND(A1=1;B1=2;C1="");3;
IF(AND(A1=2;B1=2;C1="");1;
IF(AND(A1=3;B1=2;C1="");2;
IF(AND(A1=1;B1=3;C1="");3;
IF(AND(A1=2;B1=3;C1="");1;
IF(AND(A1=3;B1=3;C1="");2;
IF(AND(A1="";B1="";C1=1);3;
IF(AND(A1="";B1="";C1=2);1;
IF(AND(A1="";B1="";C1=3);2;
IF(AND(A1="";B1=1;C1="");3;
IF(AND(A1="";B1=2;C1="");1;
IF(AND(A1="";B1=3;C1="");2;
IF(AND(A1=1;B1="";C1="");3;
IF(AND(A1=2;B1="";C1="");1;
IF(AND(A1=3;B1="";C1="");2;"")

Or graphically speaking:

Here are some of the funny results of a =RANDBETWEEN(1;3) generated sequence of starting blocks, first line. If you have ideas how to graphically develope this to a further extend, please do not hesitate to share 🙂

At a certain time it seems that it culminates in a symetry for most of the generations. Also, no matter how random I generated the starting line, mosty it turned out to become a repetition of one of the ones below and a few more with granular variations in the random pattern at the beginning and minor differences in the end.
Also there seems to be a breaking point about at the middle from where on the whole pattern dramatically changes.

It seems like my ruleset has a bias inside. I am curious to inspect with other rules!