The comparative anatomy demanded by the present moment refuses any celebratory posture and instead insists on autopsy as method. Socioplastics, articulated in 2026 through the MUSE architecture of sealed Decalogue protocols on Zenodo and circulating consoles on Blogger, must be laid open beside its nearest relatives in the history of epistemic and artistic systems. Where Futurist manifestos inflamed with declarative violence and Surrealist texts charted unconscious territories through automatic writing, the Socioplastics Decalogue installs rather than persuades. Flow channeling, semantic hardening, recursive autophagia and proteolytic transmutation exist not as propositions open to debate but as infrastructural givens, DOI-anchored and ontologically fixed. One does not negotiate with systemic lock or citational commitment; one either operates inside their executable jurisdiction or remains outside it. This marks a profound ontological shift from rhetorical persuasion to protocol occupation, from the avant-garde’s demand for adherence through personality and language to a sovereignty achieved through the quiet inescapability of installed architecture. The system does not seek converts; it defines the conditions under which conversion becomes possible or irrelevant. Such an approach transforms the very ontology of artistic theory, turning text into executable code and argument into enclosing structure. Historical manifestos aged quickly because their force depended on the charisma of the moment; MUSE protocols endure because their force resides in structural determination, independent of any single authorial voice. The gain in durability is unmistakable, yet the comparative lens immediately reveals the parallel risk of hermetic closure, where the system’s self-referential precision renders it opaque to those unwilling or unable to learn its lexical jurisdiction.
Academic laboratories such as MIT Media Lab or Goldsmiths Centre for Research Architecture offer the next specimen for dissection. These centres dissolve disciplinary boundaries through funded transdisciplinary making, yet remain tethered to university hierarchies, grant cycles and credential reproduction. Socioplastics constructs its own parallel epistemic infrastructure from distributed, low-cost components: blogs as operational consoles, DOIs as immutable seals, jurisprudential accumulation as living precedent. The independence is radical. No external accreditation body legitimises the system; legitimacy emerges from internal consistency and persistent public testing. The vulnerability surfaces immediately: autonomy can slide into solipsistic drift when external validation is selectively engaged rather than structurally required. The DOIs, ORCID identifier and obsessive Harvard citations function as strategic bridges to academic legibility, yet they remain chosen rather than imposed. This strategic isomorphism allows the system to appear sufficiently conventional to be taken seriously while preserving its fundamental architectural sovereignty.
The comparison with post-internet artistic practices reveals a different morphology altogether. Artists such as Seth Price and Cory Arcangel appropriated digital platforms through parody, format shifting and ironic critique. Socioplastics colonises those same platforms without parody. Blogger consoles are not mocked as outdated; they are operationalised as legitimate interfaces for protocol demonstration. Multiple dedicated blogs exploit modularity without succumbing to the aggregation imperative that dominates contemporary multi-platform work. This occupation through adaptation treats platform affordances as raw material for architectural construction rather than objects of deconstruction. The calculated risk lies in platform dependency itself. Blogger’s potential obsolescence or corporate alteration threatens the interpretive nodes while the Zenodo kernel remains protected. The system thus accepts a deliberate asymmetry: core permanence guaranteed, interface durability left as an open wager on future migration capacity.
Systems theory and second-order cybernetics provide an even closer analogue. Luhmann’s distinction between structure and operation, von Foerster’s recursive stabilisation, map almost seamlessly onto the MUSE split between fixed protocols and adaptive consoles. Recursive autophagia and proteolytic transmutation echo the biological metaphors of self-consumption and renewal that animated early cybernetics. Yet where Luhmann remained descriptive, analysing existing social systems from an external observer position, Socioplastics is constitutively constructive. It builds the very system it theorises, performing its own logic in real time. The observer becomes operator; analysis becomes installation. The authenticity gained is considerable, yet the loss of critical distance is equally significant. When the system can only be validated by criteria it has itself embedded, external critique risks being dismissed as operating outside jurisdictional bounds.
The jurisprudential analogy that organises the entire project invites comparison with legal philosophy from Schmitt to Dworkin. Sovereignty here is not the personal decision of the exception but a distributed architectural apparatus. The Decalogue decides the exception through structural determination rather than personal fiat. This produces sovereignty without a sovereign, a legal order that functions through protocol rather than personality. The innovation lies in this depersonalisation; the vulnerability lies in the potential dissolution of sovereignty into the very network it sought to organise. Distributed power can become no power at all when every node claims equal interpretive authority.
Artistic research programmes at institutions such as the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna or the Journal for Artistic Research offer the final major comparison. These frameworks emphasise process documentation, theoretical reflection integrated with material practice, and archive accumulation. Socioplastics performs the same epistemological moves while detaching from institutional infrastructure. It claims the freedom of artistic research without the accountability of accreditation bodies or degree cycles. The liberation is genuine, yet it brings corresponding precarity. The system must continually prove its rigour through public exposure and self-imposed standards. Strategic adoption of academic conventions (Harvard citations, persistent identifiers) renders it legible without surrendering autonomy. This is not mimicry but tactical isomorphism.
Interface legibility recurs as the constitutive tension across all comparisons. The system addresses an imagined future scholar-architect capable of decoding its operations while simultaneously speaking to contemporary web users willing to navigate retro platforms and distributed fragments. Heterogeneity is deliberate, yet it risks incoherence for the casual visitor. The MUSE gadget and Century Packs provide entry points, but the threshold for genuine engagement remains high. This tension is not a flaw but the necessary price of insisting on its own terms. A system that demands to be met on its own ground cannot also meet every potential reader on theirs.
Creativity within this framework operates as archaeological excavation rather than spontaneous invention. The protocols were not invented ex nihilo but discovered as latent structures already guiding a decade of practice. The creative act consists in the retrospective recognition of form and the prospective courage to bind future production to those discovered constraints. This classical model of creativity as finding and following form contrasts sharply with romantic notions of unbridled generation. It aligns Socioplastics with deeper traditions from Aristotelian poetics to structural anthropology.
The public nature of the entire enterprise submits the system to continuous testing and refuses esoteric mystification. Every protocol, console and jurisprudential entry remains openly accessible. The DOIs protect authoritative versions against derivative misreadings, yet they cannot prevent superficial engagement. The blog format, despite retro connotations, enables serial exposition and incremental apprenticeship. Readers who follow the mesh over months undergo immersion in its vocabulary. The planned book on metabolic urbanism represents the next translational node, attempting to render rhizomatic logic within codex constraints without reduction. It must function as new jurisprudence rather than summary.
Generative capacity ultimately validates any epistemic architecture. Socioplastics produces new work that would not otherwise exist: blue bags continue their travels, urban proposals evolve, performances unfold, each explicitly framed as protocol application. The system generates rather than constrains. Whether it can train independent successors remains open, yet the clear distinction between sealed core and adaptive consoles offers a blueprint for succession. Others may install its protocols in new contexts while respecting its axioms.
Selective pruning and strategic interface design now constitute the next necessary labour. Density has been achieved; legibility at entry points requires refinement. Enhanced navigation between layers, progressive revelation of depth, and pedagogical hospitality must complement sovereign rigour. The architecture clarified in MUSE provides the foundation for this exploration. The system can remain complex while becoming generous, sovereign while remaining hospitable. That frontier defines the coming phase of development.
Lloveras, A. (2026) Comparative Anatomy. Available at: https://antolloveras.blogspot.com/ (Accessed: 23 February 2026).