Competition and collaboration in memetic exchange

Improvisation in Multivocal Poetic Discourse (Part #8)

---

[Parts: First | Prev | Next | Last | All] [Links: To-K | From-K | From-Kx | Refs ]

---

The question is how the contrasting connotations of "balls" and "points" relate to the exchange of memes in poetized discourse. One possibility is to understand the ball so exchanged as undifferentiated and inherently precious.

Another is to imagine it as multifacetted, or composed of a multiplicity of balls held together by a web of integrative associations. This could be recognized as a memetic complex (by analogy with a complex of genes) -- perhaps to be understood as a gestalt in either case. Focus on any part of the complex then triggers resonant effects on the others -- as suggested in the case of a bell. The planet Earth has such characteristics.

Experimental articulation of the international declarations of human rights in 3D and 4D (Universal, Arab and European)
Selection of images from Dynamic Exploration of Value Configurations: polyhedral animation of conventional value frameworks (2008) prepared with features of the Stella Polyhedron Navigator software package

Given the example of juggling, of particular interest is how a multiplicity of points are juggled together in a dynamic process, rather than vainly striving to hold them in a static configuration. This has been extensively studied as "problem jostling" by management cybernetician Stafford Beer, who mapped distinct problems onto an icosahedron (Beyond Dispute: the invention of team syntegrity, 1994). Beer related the pattern of tension and compression to that of a tensegrity structure, as shown below. The ball is then to be understood as a dynamic complex reminiscent of the many atoms distinguished by the relative complexity of their orbiting electrons. A tensegrity offers a way of thinking about a cognitive complex of resonant associations. The dynamics are reminiscent of the spherical representation by Vinko Globokar (Individuum-Collectivum, 1986, p. 9c), adapted below as an indicative animation.

Indicative animations
Tensegrity	Globokar's improvisation sound spectrum

There is a curious contrast between any such complexity, eluding simplistic comprehension, and the ball which figures so unambiguously in ball games. Part of the irony (as noted in the Wikipedia entry) lies in the fact that the stitching pattern on the soccer football has long been that of the truncated icosahedron -- one of the 13 Archimedean semi-regular polyhedra. That so much attention should be focused worldwide on the movement of such a form amongst groups of people may well invite particular commentary in the future. As a close approximation to a sphere, the interweaving of its 12 pentagonal faces and 20 hexagonal faces merits particular attention as an integrative pattern of a multiplicity of perspectives, as may be variously discussed (***).

What is it that people are so fascinated to throw around -- and why? How is movement of the ball effectively mirroring movement along neural pathways of the individual and collective unconscious. Is the explicit nature of a ball game a surrogate for the poetry made without being aware of it -- adapting the insight of Moliere's Bourgeois gentilhomme?

---

[Parts: First | Prev | Next | Last | All] [Links: To-K | From-K | From-Kx | Refs ]