The Wolfram Atlas of Simple Programs charts the computational world introduced in Stephen Wolfram's A New Kind of Science. Much like the atlases of another age of exploration, the Atlas both documents what has been uncovered, and defines entryways into the unknown

Young stars dominate the technology headlines. But outside the Internet, research shows, innovators are actually getting older as complexity rises.

The Center for the Study of Complex Systems (CSCS) is a broadly interdisciplinary program in the College of Literature, Science and the Arts (LSA) at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Our mission is to encourage and facilitate research and education in the general area of nonlinear, dynamical and adaptive systems.

In recent years, much of the discussion in the field of generative art has focused on complex systems and agent-based algorithms. While these can produce intriguing results, our aim lies in developing simple, deterministic and traceable generative processes. These simple processes have the advantage of more control: as they are highly determinable, their output is predictable and can therefore be easily refined through subsequent adjustments. We aim to show that a single deterministic process can generate a heterogeneous set of forms with an astounding degree of complexity.