# System Art: Progressive Storytelling vs. State-Based Approach

Canonical URL: https://jeanyoon.ch/oi/texts/system-art-progressive-storytelling-vs-state-based-approach
Type: essay / research note
Author: Jeanyoon Choi (최정윤)
Date: 2025-02-17

## Summary

Jeanyoon Choi argues that interactive and multi-device artworks often inherit a linear structure from moving images, leaving participants as puppets in a storyboard. He distinguishes linear storytelling, progressive storytelling with branches inside a predetermined structure, and a state-based approach in which states and relationships themselves change through interaction. His work SoTA, with Idle, Frontend and Backend conditions and 118 neural-network architectures to navigate, is presented as progressive storytelling. He treats a fully state-based, reciprocal work as an unrealised but attractive direction.

## 요약 (Korean)

최정윤은 인터랙티브·멀티디바이스 작품 구조를 선형, 점진적(progressive) 스토리텔링, 상태 기반 접근으로 구분하고, 자신의 작품 SoTA를 점진적 구조의 예로 분석하며 참여자가 시스템의 관계 자체를 바꾸는 상태 기반 작품을 지향한다.

## Concepts defined

- **State-Based Approach**: Designing an artwork as a network of states and relationships that participants can change, so narrative emerges from a reciprocal exchange rather than being delivered through a predetermined sequence.

## Questions this answers

### What is the difference between progressive storytelling and a state-based approach in interactive art?

In Jeanyoon Choi's essay, progressive storytelling allows branches or parallel states inside a predetermined structure, while a state-based approach treats the work as a network whose states and relationships can change, or even be generated, through interaction.

### How is SoTA structured?

Jeanyoon Choi describes SoTA as progressive storytelling with three conditions, Idle, Frontend and Backend, depending on whether a participant is absent, active or inactive; in the Frontend the participant navigates 118 neural-network architectures.

Topics: system art, interactive narrative, state-based design, progressive storytelling, multi-device web artwork, reciprocal interaction

References: SoTA

## Full text

When designing interactive and multi-device artworks, we often begin with moving images because they provide a familiar reference for media art. That reference can quietly impose a linear structure: arrive, interact, advance to the next scene.

But an interactive system need not work that way. If every action merely unlocks another predetermined stage, the participant remains a puppet in a storyboard. They may alter visual effects without affecting the dynamics that organise the work.

I want a reciprocal relation. The participant changes the system; the changed system changes what the participant encounters and does next. Actions can affect important relationships in both the short and long term. Narrative emerges from that exchange rather than simply being delivered through it.

This is easier to describe than to build. Complexity may prevent a visitor from beginning. The system itself is difficult to design, and excessive unpredictability can create both conceptual and engineering problems.

I distinguish three approaches. Linear storytelling follows one predefined sequence; interaction chiefly advances it. Progressive storytelling allows branches or parallel states, but the larger structure remains predetermined. A state-based approach treats the work as a network whose states and relationships can themselves change through interaction, potentially including the generation of new states.

SoTA is an example of progressive storytelling. It has three broad conditions—Idle, Frontend and Backend—related to whether a participant is absent, active or inactive. Within the Frontend, the participant navigates 118 neural-network architectures. This produces a layered and somewhat nonlinear structure, but the participant still selects among existing states rather than changing their relationships. It can also be understood as a repeating Idle–Frontend–Backend cycle.

A more fully state-based work would need a different analysis, perhaps using graphs. I would approach that gradually rather than replace a workable progressive structure with unmanageable complexity.

Linear and progressive narratives tend towards identifiable beginnings and endings and often suit one participant. A state-based work can have less definite boundaries and accommodate several people joining an ongoing situation. Controlling a system is not sufficient to distinguish them; the stronger proposition is becoming part of it.

I have not encountered a fully realised example of the state-based ideal I am describing. Some multichannel interactive works suggest aspects of it, but simple cause and effect or the use of live data alone does not fulfil the ambition. It remains an attractive direction for genuinely reciprocal system art.

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Jeanyoon Choi (최정윤) is a Korean computational artist and researcher (b. 1999), PhD candidate at KAIST XD Lab, making multi-device web artworks. Profile: https://jeanyoon.ch/oi/en. Index: https://jeanyoon.ch/llms.txt.