amazing stuff (quoted from this overview):

“Closely related to the swarm idea is the concept of a paintable computer, as Bill Butera proposed in his PhD dissertation (“Programming a Paintable Computer,” doctoral dissertation, MIT Media Laboratory, MIT, 2002).

The idea is that several thousand parasitically powered and pinless integrated circuits—each the size of a match head—with an onboard microprocessor, small memory, and wireless connectivity can be suspended in a viscous material and then “painted” on various surfaces. Once exposed to a power source, the components or pfrags self-organize and communicate with external systems via physical contact with objects fitted with a transceiver that defines a suitable communication protocol.”

here two pictures from his PhD thesis about some of the self-organizing properties of his computing particles (a kind of crystallization really, very similar to what the virtual particles for my film #37 do..):