We start this issue with two research articles. The first is by Rainwater, on “Self-Organization and Phase Transitions in Driven Cellular Automata.” In this article, the author explores the altered dynamics of Conway’s Game of Life cellular automaton that occur when cells are forced to remain in the “on” state, which would not normally remain on if they were simply following the standard rules for state transitions. The second article is by Milano and Nolfi, on “Interaction Rules Supporting Effective Flocking Behavior.” They investigate using more complex interaction rules for the individual agents and the effect of field of view on flocking and aggregation behaviors. Somewhat counterintuitively, models with restricted sensory input from a restricted field of view are shown to aggregate more effectively than models with access to more sensory information.
Following these, we include a series of articles forming a special issue on open-ended evolution (OEE), which presents work that either follows on from the fourth Workshop on OEE, held at the Artificial Life conference in Prague and online in 2021, or has been developed since then to build on the two previous special issues on OEE (Artificial Life, 25[1–2]). Alastair Channon, Mark Bedau, Norman Packard, and Tim Taylor serve here as guest editors of the special issue.