The work is inspired by the novel Permutation City by Greg Egan, the author of the hard science fiction.

It raises the issue of whether we can in principle understand that we exist in reality or in a simulation.

According to the Theory of Dust (which is described in the novel), the universe is simulatable and all other possible universes are equally as real as ours, emerging spontaneously from their own mathematical self-consistency. Human consciousness is Turing-computable, which means that consciousness can be also produced by a computer program.

The Autoverse is an artificial life simulator, a massive complex cellular automaton universe, producing cities and the consciousness of human copies.

Gradually, due to failures and a lack of computing power, the idea of the reliability of such universes is destroyed.

Spaces crumble, cities become fluid and drain down, turning into dust and digital glitch.

Thanks to Yulikolay for helping with code, using p5.Riso.js library for generating files suitable for risograph printing.
Source images for permutation cities are made with a help of DALL·E mini neural network.