-
from Huracan's Harp
66
the cognitive flow field (around one known shape)
might be mapped
(onto the flow field) around one of the seven (hw/wh's)
|
conformality (e.g. why and the chalice)
conformal mapping notably makes use of complex variables (applet)
|
preserving the angles cascades of how
vigilance required for higher twistedness (skateboarding)
ζ
"when answered: 'Because messenger-RNA duplicates information from the
DNA spiral and turns to ribosomes, where proteins are synthesized
. . . ,' he prompted asked: 'When? How does it know when? How does it
switch from one state to another? Following what roads? Where is the map?'"
|
some are extra ? dimensions
RS-2 RS-1 NBA "games people play" meditation psychosis
"winning ways" sex and chemo-direct mushroom grape cactus (chocolate)
|
mathematical germs (critical points) of the catastrophe geometries
catastrophe geometries frame change with stability love
stability equivalence typicality isotropy (more)
ζ
for any system up to 4
control factors and up to 2
behavior axes there are only 7 elementary catastrophes
where the sum of control (slow) and state (fast) dimensions equals 11
there are 11
families of catastrophe "possible to classify" "to some degree"
for dimensions greater than 5
in the control space and 2
in the state (active, behavior) space the number of catastrophes is infinite
|
abrupt change in events [End Page 236]
| 1 control 1 state | fold | (more | applet) |
| origami: mountain/valley | ||
| 2 control 1 state | cusp | (more | applet) |
| origami: reverse | ||
| 3 control 1 state | swallowtail | (more | applet) |
| origami: double reverse | ||
| 4 control 1 state | butterfly | |
| containing a "pocket" | ||
| of compromise | ||
| with a surface in 4D | (more | applet) | |
| origami: triangular sink fold | ||
| 3 control 2 state | hyperbolic | (more | applet) |
| or | ||
| 3 control 2 state | elliptic umbilic | (more | applet) |
triangle immersed in a saddle-shaped plane
playing insies and outsies—off we go to
Ithaca petition Daina Taimina to crochet it
or to Hawai'i surfers who inhabit wavebreak
to glimpse in slice or projection at a calligraphic
stroke a cup swirling its wine
a funneling
goblet
a
chalice
enclosing and probably
sucking on a mineral mushroom [End Page 237]
87
"from Huracan's Harp 66" and "87" both address a world of computational technology. Computational, rather than compositional, strategies prevail in the twenty-first century. My mother's recipe cards were divided into two columns: ingredients to the left, instructions to the right. In "87," the humble example of recipe as procedure (algorithm) is transformed by recursion. Here the ingredients are themselves instructions, and the process enters into a recursive spiral. In "66," the seven wh/hw questions that have structured human thought (who, what, when, where, why, what, and how) are now mapped onto the seven catastrophes of René Thom's catastrophe geometry, a way of mathematically modeling situations of dynamic complexity and abrupt change. The homespun model for such thinking is not the recipe, but the three-dimensional topologic practices of skateboarding, surfing, and origami folding—forms impossible to explore fully on the stilled page. [End Page 238]
Stephanie Strickland's poetry books include Zone : Zero (Ahsahta, 2008), V: WaveSon.nets/Losing L'una, True North, and The Red Virgin. She also makes collaborative hypermedia work. Her essays about electronic literature appear in Leonardo Electronic Almanac, in electronic book review, on the Poetry Foundation website, and in volumes from MIT Press and Intellect Press (U.K.). She coedited volume 1 of the Electronic Literature Collection and a recent issue of the Iowa Review Web.
