"[...]from the offset, given the creation of autonomous economic agents — the creation of any form of structural abstraction that deals with the flows of capital — the rise of a machine-to-machine economy is inevitable" / terra0
"The market process with its cumbersome tatonnements appears old-fashioned. Indeed, it may be considered as a computing device of the pre-electronic age." / Oskar Lange
sprawl.systems is a gamified exercise in the machinations of non-human capital. It is based upon John Horton Conway's Game of Life (1970), a zero-player game determined by its initial state. This cellular automaton, requiring no human interaction, serves as a universal Turing machine which determines its own proof-oriented state. The emergent and generative behaviour of a particular Game cannot be predetermined without simulating the exact starting conditions of the game itself. sprawl.systems utilizes a Game Of Life style interface, presenting to the viewer artefacts of generative market development whilst simultaneously expanding upon Charles Stross' thesis of corporations as Slow AI. Whilst structures and patterns emerge that are recognisable as such to the viewer, the debris corporate entities leave behind is thoroughly asemic in nature. Although pareidolia grants an advantage in the natural world, in the market environment it merely leads to more confusion as humans fall behind the threshold of being able to compute the market’s next state before it has already arrived.
The emerging non-linear economy, although still bound to human consumption, appears as a “world-without-us”.