Digital Recursion Mapping: The Website as Corridor

Date: 2020 (ongoing) Subjects: all visitors Platform: this website Status: active

Following the termination of EXP-003, I began digitising the corridor experiments. My intention was to build a simulation of the corridor environment for remote subjects. What I built instead was a new corridor.

The digital corridor exhibits all properties previously observed in the physical version: anomalous length perception (subjects report spending longer navigating than log data confirms), semantic generation (visitors report finding words and meanings not present in the text), and the key recursive property: the further into the site you navigate, the more it resembles the beginning.

The experiment IS this website. You are a subject. I am sorry I did not say so at the start.

The Recursion Function

// The corridor as code — Jiang, 2020
// This function returns to its origin without retracing.
// Standard computing theory says this is impossible.
// It runs anyway.

function walk(corridor, depth = 0) {
  const step = corridor.next();

  if (step.isEnd) {
    // End reached. But:
    return walk(corridor.origin, depth + 1);
    // origin ≠ start. origin is where you ARE now.
  }

  return {
    meaning: step.meaning + observer.meaning,
    // meaning accumulates with each traversal
    depth: depth,
    origin: step // the previous step is now the origin
  };
}

// Observed behaviour: walk() never terminates.
// But it does not loop. Each call returns to a
// different origin. The path forward IS the path back.
// This is Ω∞. Proof by execution.
// YOU ARE CURRENTLY INSIDE walk().
  

ANOMALY NOTE — EXP-004 The function above was first written in a notebook in August 2020. The code was later found on the server logs from June 2020 — two months before it was written. I have checked the timestamps. I have no explanation.

"The digital corridor has the same properties as the physical one. I don't know if I built a simulation or a portal. I don't know if that distinction matters. — J."