Milan Koerner-Safrata


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   Infinite State Machine
 @    milanimalism
   milan@scrnprnt.ca


  • b. 1993, Vancouver, Canada
  • Multimedia artist and designer
    of playful cybernetics




Stellations

2024, Interactive art


    Cybernetics, Mental maps
    
   Stellations explores thought loops through the lens of cybernetics.  Each circuit is a mental map that when played creates vicious circles, a feedback system embedded in the game loop. The experience is one of racing against the limits of muscle memory, reflex, cognition.

    This project started when I first learned about Finite State Machines. The FSM is a model that is widely applied in game design, and computation more generally. It is a form of graph that models systems as a series of nodes (states) with rules governing how states are connected. Simplistic agents use it to govern their behaviour, animators use them to transition between animations, and at a high level designers use them to model game states. 

   In Winning Ways for your Mathematical Plays, I was introduced to this idea in its simplest form. One of the games in this book is the pencil and paper game Brussel Sprouts. Each match results in captivating concentric loops as players connect nodes, competing to bisect space until the last player can no longer create an edge. The project is both an exploration of combinatorial games and process based art. The game designers sets the initial conditions and then lets the players draw until the possibility space is exhausted. To explore the permutations of Brussel Sprouts the authors created a graph of game states, charting the possible endings from a base case of two crosses. 

    Ideally we could imagine the world as an FSM too complex to be computed. Whether or not it can be graphed, it is currently fashionable to think of our minds as being computable. How can we conceive of ourselves as agents in such a world? Is the mind curtailed to a finite series of states? Is consciousness a mere running along tracks, a series of deepening grooves in electrical circuitry? Could we design a game version to help us navigate this web? Playing through streams of consciousness, navigating mental maps, racing against the inertia of thought, breaking out into the space beyond the circuit. Stellations  came out of both an awe and a terror, that such a system once programmed could never be deprogrammed, never escaped.