The exhibition begins with the smallest possible unit: the cell. From the simplest computational rules arise autonomous structures whose local interactions provide the foundation for every higher form of organisation. Conway's Game of Life revealed that a handful of elementary rules could produce behaviours far richer than the rules themselves.

The artists gathered in this chapter return to that proposition from different perspectives. Rather than representing life, they investigate the conditions from which complexity first arises. The cell becomes both a computational structure and a philosophical model: the point at which order appears without central control.