Collections expand, metadata proliferates, curatorial narratives shift under political and technological pressure. Within this unstable terrain, MUSE (Mesh United System Environment) proposes not another thematic framework but a structural recalibration. It installs an ontological kernel beneath institutional operations and distinguishes it from the interpretive layer through which exhibitions, catalogues and public programmes circulate. This separation is not rhetorical; it is infrastructural. By clarifying what remains structurally sealed and what remains operationally adaptive, MUSE repositions the museum from narrative producer to protocol environment. The Core (501–510) functions as a non-circulating epistemic substrate. These ten sovereign protocols operate as archival grammar and semantic stabiliser, ensuring that institutional memory does not dissolve into curatorial fashion or algorithmic optimisation. In practical terms, this means that classificatory principles, citation logic, and authorial attribution are anchored at kernel level. Interpretation may evolve, but ontology does not drift. Such architectural separation reduces fragmentation across departments—curatorial, education, conservation—by providing a shared structural syntax.
Above this kernel, the Consoles (511–520) operate as deployment interfaces. They translate protocol into practice through operational mediation and contextual adaptation. An exhibition on diasporic identity, for example, would not merely assemble artworks but would map its internal logic against the Core’s citational commitments and topolexical sovereignty. The curatorial narrative remains flexible; the infrastructural integrity remains intact. Consider a pilot scenario within a mid-scale contemporary art museum digitising its archive. Instead of retrofitting metadata ad hoc, the institution installs MUSE as protocol environment. The Core defines invariant principles of attribution, semantic hierarchy and cross-referential indexing. The Consoles then structure digitisation workflows, public interfaces and research access points. The result is not aesthetic homogenisation but institutional coherence and long-term semantic resilience. External researchers can operate within the system without authorial supervision because the grammar precedes interpretation.
Such an approach redefines cultural governance. MUSE transforms the museum from a container of objects into a protocol-bearing institution capable of scaling without epistemic dilution. In an era of AI-assisted cataloguing and accelerated exhibition cycles, this infrastructural clarity becomes a condition of survival rather than a theoretical luxury. Institutionally, the implications extend beyond museums to biennials, university archives and distributed digital repositories. MUSE offers transferability without standardisation and stability without rigidity. Its value lies not in aesthetic prescription but in structural endurance.
Lloveras, A. (2026) 600-MUSE: Mesh United System Environment. Socioplastics Publication Interface. Available at: https://antolloveras.blogspot.com/2026/02/600-muse-mesh-united-system-environment.html.
Lloveras, A. (2026) Socioplastics
510-systemic-lock https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18682555 509-postdigital-taxidermy https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18682480 508-topolexical-sovereignty https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18682343 507-citational-commitment https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18475136 506-recursive-autophagia https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18681761 505-proteolytic-transmutation https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18681278 504-stratum-authoring https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18680935 503-semantic-hardening https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18680418 502-cameltag https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18680031 501-flow-channeling https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18678959
