Surfacing is a state of becoming.  A continuum.

In this scenario, the theremin can be considered a “surfacing tool”.  It is an electronic musical instrument controlled without contact from the player, usually consisting of two metal antennas which sense the position of the player’s hands and control oscillators for frequency with one hand, and amplitude with the other.

Instead of manipulating strings or keys, the theremin creates a surface field in the space surrounding it, which is tuned and manipulated through interaction the the player’s hands.  In other words, the music is not composed, but rather surfaces from a continuum of electronic signals.

By analogy, emrgence is as an organization that surfaces from a continuum of randomly assembled components or signals. Electronic Social Media is an example of a surfacing continuum. Its emergent organization is the antithesis to master-planning.

The primary activity of an emergent organization is a frantic,  random sampling of possible affiliations, resulting in infinitely variable, overlapping zones of fabrication that are defined and immediately re-defined.  In such a system boundaries are fragmented, permeable and elastic.

SURFACE from milo on Vimeo.

(to be continued…)

Terra Incognita

Fictitious animals roam freely in zones of polysemy. Packs, herds, schools and other temporary networks emerge and submerge within the folds of terra incognita. Plasticine and quicksand characterize this zone. It is the storyteller’s zone. An un- interrupted, indivisible surface of variable currents, tensions, densities and swells.

To surf this zone equipped solely with cartesian cartography is to risk drowning in an oceanic multiplicity of meaning. This zone demands an agile willingness to bend with the momentum of its variability. The potential to attain balance as fixity is nonexistent.

Instead, balance itself is a dynamic, provisional resolution of temporal chance. Formulas of meaning emerge even as the challenges of cohesion present themselves. Instantaneity and presence are the critical survival strategies in this plastic wilderness.

Plastic Wilderness

]]> http://www.theoryzoo.com/2009/07/terra-incognita-polysemes-unicorns/feed/ 0 http://www.theoryzoo.com/2009/07/dictionary-taxonomy-of-other-t-words/ http://www.theoryzoo.com/2009/07/dictionary-taxonomy-of-other-t-words/#comments Wed, 08 Jul 2009 23:08:12 +0000 Zookeeper http://www.theoryzoo.com/?p=44

Note: please start the film on the right, and read as it plays.

Viscosity

Definition may be categorized as a viscous instance excised from a fluid network taxonomy. Viscosity, as a concept, operates on chaotic momentum by congealing outlines of emergence and inviting critical scrutiny of afterimage. We speculate that encoded within the viscous “tableau-vivant” instance are traces of trajectory, timing, tags, tally, typology, and even television.

Definition

zone 4 – Definition: The act of defining or making definite, distinct or clear. Sharpness of an image formed by an optical system. The accuracy of sound or picture reproduction.

Tableau Vivant

zone 5 – Tableau Vivant: …”living picture.” The term describes a striking group of suitably costumed actors or artist’s models, carefully posed and often theatrically lit. Throughout the duration of the display, the people shown do not speak or move.

Traces

zone 6 – Traces: A just detectable amount; creates a drawing by superimposing a semitransparent sheet of paper on the original image and copying on it the lines of the original image.

Trajectory

zone 7 – Trajectory: A curve in space tracing the points successively occupied by a particle in motion; at any given instant the velocity vector of the particle is tangent to the trajectory.

zone 8 – Timing: An occurrence or event; the regulation of the pace of a race, the speed of an engine, the delivery of a joke.

Tag

zone 9 – Tag: a keyword or term associated with or assigned to a piece of information; A form of signature used by graffiti artists; a game in which one player chases the others, and the one who is caught becomes the next chaser.

zone 10 – Tally: In computational complexity theory, a unary language or tally language is a formal language (a set of strings) where all strings have the form 1k, where “1″ can be any fixed symbol.

zone 11 – Typology: (in urban planning and architecture) is the taxonomic classification of (usually physical) characteristics commonly found in buildings and urban places, according to their association with different categories; classification according to general type.

zone 12 – Television: a telecommunication system that transmits images of objects (stationary or moving) between distant points.
(to be continued…)

“…what they want to do is naturalize artifice; take that which is culturally prescriptive and turn it into a kind of second nature.” - r.e.Somol (What Matters Conference)

zone 1 – define Re: recursively enumerable

Within emergent collectives, accidental matters accelerate, multiply, collide, conspire, disrupt, vibrate, warp, pulverize, and otherwise materialize a second nature, manifesting a shifting field of interactive forces that operate as dynamic/fluid space/time.

zone 2 – define Metazoa: a taxonomic member of the Kingdom Animalia. “Their body plan  eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later on in their life” -Wikipedia

This dynamic matrix of forces on occasion freeze-frames into perceivable form, but primarily functions as container (and contained) to the oceanic possibilities of Accident.  In all matters metazoa, accidental matters.

Naming and differentiating networks, hierarchies and boundaries between species (taxonomy) is an exacting science of fictions, a mad collective of operations  inventing the map of a realm that is yet to become, through systems of index and intensity.

zone 3 – define Plasmodial Slime Molds: enormous single cells with thousands of nuclei.

Widely consumed as recreational activity, we posit that the theoretical fabric of collective networks is continuously breeding machines of re-creation and possibility: performative simulacrums for which “origin” never existed, but which nevertheless originate at specific nodes in time.

define Zoo-o-Logic: terra incognita

Cabinets of Curiosities, the 19th century encyclopaedic collections of frequently “faked” natural wonders, were categorized along eccentric lineages that were the direct product of an elite, well-traveled and well-educated class of nouveau-experts. The age of mechanical reproduction, as defined by Walter Benjamin, saw a highly accelerated proliferation of new expertise… (to be continued)

Taxonomy is the practice and science of classification.

Originally the term taxonomy referred only to the classifying of organisms (now sometimes known as alpha taxonomy) or a particular classification of organisms. However, it has become fashionable in certain circles to apply the term in a wider, more general sense, where it may refer to a classification of things or concepts, as well as to the principles underlying such a classification.

Almost anything — animate objects, inanimate objects, places, concepts, events, properties, and relationships — may then be classified according to some taxonomic scheme. Wikipedia categories illustrate a taxonomy schema.^[1]

In an even wider sense, the term taxonomy could also be applied to relationship schemes other than parent-child hierarchies, such as network structures with other types of relationships. Taxonomies may then include single children with multi-parents, for example, “Car” might appear with both parents “Vehicle” and “Steel Mechanisms”; to some however, this merely means that ‘car’ is a part of several different taxonomies.^[2] A taxonomy might also be a simple organization of kinds of things into groups, or even an alphabetical list. However, the term vocabulary is more appropriate for such a list. In current usage within “Knowledge Management“, taxonomies are considered narrower than ontologies since ontologies apply a larger variety of relation types.^[3]

Mathematically, a hierarchical taxonomy is a tree structure of classifications for a given set of objects. It is also named Containment hierarchy. At the top of this structure is a single classification, the root node, that applies to all objects. Nodes below this root are more specific classifications that apply to subsets of the total set of classified objects. The progress of reasoning proceeds from the general to the more specific. In scientific taxonomies, a conflative term is always a polyseme.^[4]

In contrast, in a context of legal terminology, an open-ended contextual taxonomy—a taxonomy holding only with respect to a specific context. In scenarios taken from the legal domain, a formal account of the open-texture of legal terms is modeled, which suggests varying notions of the “core” and “penumbra” of the meanings of a concept. The progress of reasoning proceeds from the specific to the more general.^[5]

side-note on metazoa: “if you separate out the things that only animals possess, what are you left with? …Extra-Cellular Matrix (ECM)

We love animals, especially the type that share mental intimacy and social community. The Zoo is now open to all designers and animals of design We encourage you to interact with all of our exhibits, and PLEASE, help us feed the animals–to all social networks, of course. Using the analogy of a zoo, our focus is to properly care for and catalog “the animals” (existing and contemporary design theories). Welcome to Theory Zoo!