At Vida 10 - an international competition focusing on Alife - Julius Popp explained the theory behind BIT.FLOW. He refers to the machine using the textile metaphor of Ariadne's thread. (via vida10)

BIT.FLOW was designed as a cybernetic Liquid Textile Display. A camera provides feedback, so the BIT.FLOW machine might learn how to create visual patterns and possibly even communicate with other BIT.FLOW machines using those patterns. Of course each bitflow will result in different 2d-projections when seen from different angles. So the interaction between two BIT.FLOW machines may best be described as structural coupling (a term coined by Maturana)