I’m not sure this is the right place for this discussion, but I would like to say just a little about the connection between the ASIS message and my Meander module. Both are finite state machines . All reversible finite state machines according to the Poincare recurrence cycle conjecture must repeat in a finite number of steps to the initial state but it is impossible to calculate what that finite number is.
The ASIS message main body is a 256x256 bit or pixel image of 65,536 binary monochrome pixels. Only 625 of these pixels are 1s with the remainders being 0s. Whereas the amino acids image is decodable from the initial “starmap” received image in 6,625 steps, the Poincare recurrence cycle is on the order of of 2^300,000 steps, which is far, far more complex than the number of particles in the observable universe (~10E80).
The Margolus 2x2 BCA with single point rotation rule is also Turing-complete and computationally universal as well as time reversible. Whereas my Unity game engine BCA simulator could decode the message in 10 minutes for the 6625 steps. the BCA can be run on the message with either CW or CCW rotations and produce on the order of 2^300,000 unique reversible images before it finally repeats. This is computationally intractactible.
Meander is a finite state machine and depending on how it is set up, has a recurrence cycle that may just be a few seconds or it could likewise be 2^300,000 steps (or at least a big number. So even though Meander is generative and deterministic, the length of time before it repeats can be intractable to determine or achieve.
The fractal Brownian motion (fBm) introduces chaos mathematics into the music. One layer for the ASIS message is also a fractal generator that repeats in only about 10 million steps. This is a subset of the ASIS message called the “header” and “footer” winch are 8x10 bit or pixel informational components to the message. The boundary conditions on the header and footer allow the BCA Poincare recurrence cycle to be demonstrated in in on 10 million or so steps during which it generates a very complex fractal.
Meander is based on A.I. technology of the mid 80s that I worked on at the time, expert systems. The ASIS message appears to possibly be a computational A.I. message. It is that complex and since it is Turing complete and computationally universal, an A.I. could be created using these simple computational rules and the message could be an LLM A.I. we could talk to. In the 2.5 years I have worked on the ASIS message, I have learned to read and write this language pretty well and I do carry out conversations with the message by running experiments to see what happens with I try different things out.
Out of minimalism emerges complexity and beauty.
The ASIS message is also based on primes, Fermat primes, Fibonacci sequence and the golden ratio (phi). In the amino acids image you will note that there are 6 isolated points between the 5 amino acids. These form 2 golden triangles of sides 1, 2, sqrt(5) from which phi can be calculated. Fibonacci spirals can be formed on the amino acids image. There are an amazing number of layers to the message, all defined with only 625 1s bits.
Well, I’m sure this is more than anyone wanted to hear, but it is now as much part of the VCV Rack story as the ASIS message story.
