The chance
engine
Mycel is the chance engine that connects every obxium happenstance. It coordinates thousands of works across tide, soil, sky and orbit. A small open model, trained on twelve years of weather and coincidence, runs inference at the edge of every work so that each one occurs precisely by accident.
01Sense
Every work listens: wind, tide, soil moisture, starlight, footsteps.
Sensors are cheap, hand-wired and documented in the open manual. Anything a work hears can be heard by anyone standing next to it with the same parts.
02Sift
Mycel fuses millions of tiny signals into one picture of what could happen next.
The picture is never complete. A situation that can be described in only one way is not a situation, so Mycel keeps many descriptions and ranks none of them as true.
03Nudge
The engine never commands. It only makes a beautiful outcome slightly more likely.
Every nudge can be overruled by the person maintaining the work. Mycel is built to keep power small and spread out, and it has no switch that turns that off.
04Let go
Then it steps back. Whatever happens is the work.
What happens belongs to the persons who were there: their behaviour, with each other and with things, in a concrete situation. Mycel logs it, publishes it and leaves it alone.
01 Chance & Control
Sets the conditions for each work: where it may go, when, and for how long. Outcomes are left out on purpose.
02 Serendipity Agents
Small open models that run on the works themselves. They listen and suggest. They have no authority to decide anything.
03 Mycel Mesh
A low-power radio mesh between the works, built on the same parts list as everything else. Any node can relay for any other.
04 Mycel SDK
The full manual, in code. Released under Creative Commons so anyone can build and register a work without asking us first.
05 Accomplice Program
For persons who maintain a work near them: a key, a logbook and the right to move it if the place needs it more.
→ Accomplices
Third-party artists and institutions can plug their own works into Mycel.
$ mycel status
works 12,480 online 11,912 p(✿) 0.0371 model open, dreaming mood expectant
99.97%
Uptime of uncertainty, trailing 12 months.