The theory wing is a critical exhibition catalogue — object-essays read aloud. A catalogue should name its shelf. These are the books it stands on.
The survey shelf — Ceruzzi, Isaacson, Campbell-Kelly & Aspray — is where the dates came from. We take facts off it and nothing of its form.
PLAYGROUND is the theory wing's one interactive companion — four things to do, in one room, each tied to a canon you can hear read aloud.
Generate runs four engines that make form from a rule, not a drawing: Turing's reaction-diffusion (1952), Lindenmayer's L-systems (1968), Conway's Game of Life (1970), Reynolds' flock (1987). Breed is aesthetic selection — branching biomorphs you breed by eye (Dawkins, 1986; Sims, 1991). Ladder is the abstraction ladder — one task said at every rung from plugboard to plain words, with a specify/supply meter. Reading is the wing's shelf, the books it converses with.
None of the generated things is the world; all are synthesis — rules that make something which merely looks grown. Of course it's fake. That was never the problem.
Drafted by Claude with Phil Renato, 2026. Consolidated from four separate carts into one. Name is a working title. Mouse or finger only; reduce motion freezes the fields to a still bloom. CART 019 · CLASSICERY · the theory wing's companion.