  Coupled relaxation oscillators, realized via chemical or other means, can
exhibit a multiplicity of steady states, characterized by spatial patterns
resulting from lateral inhibition. We show that perturbation-initiated
transformations between these configurations, mapped to binary strings via
coarse-graining, provide a basis for computation. The rules governing these
transitions emerge from an underlying effective energy landscape shaped by the
global and local stabilities of these states. Our results suggest a framework
by which far-from-equilibrium systems may encode a computational logic.
