Movement:

The term ‘movement’ in itself is inherently general. Contained within its scope of reference, are a varied collection of sub-species. I would like to map out some of these sub-species, so that we may offer up a glossary of sorts when addressing urban experience – exactly what type of movements do we seek when addressing the problematics of indifferent citizenship within the urban setting as a result of the loss of haptic sensibilities.

Ethics of Circulation

In his book Flesh and Stone, Sennett refers to the co-incidence of new medical understandings (cardio-vascular systems, arteries, veins) of the body and the subsequent development of cities dominated by the value of circulation. The new physiological understandings brought on by De motu cordis, 1628 and developed in urban planning models of the 18th Century Enlightenment – where planners “sought to make the city a place in which people could move and breathe freely, a city of flowing arteries and veins…”, meant a heightened role of individual responsibility for health, rather than the fate of God.” Sennett . p256

The ‘circulatory’ approach to planning and economic design and subsequent secularization of the urban dweller is problematic insofar as it modeled itself on a snapshot view of physiological circulation – negating the dynamism of process. By this I am referring the implementation of circulation as regulated flow mechanism – circulation at a repeating interval, as a constant rhythm. By nature a physiological circulation system varies its internal rhythms; it is an adaptive system responding to varying conditions of arousal from the outside with a reciprocal rhythmic response. Without rewriting the ‘ethics of circulation’ in urban design, a perhaps more humble approach, rather would be to include the dynamics of such circulatory processes within the planning schematic itself.

The polyrhythmic quality, taken from the dynamic view of physiological circulation, forces us to negotiate a layered temporality of variable and varying tempos pulsing through a space at any given moment. The varying circulatory rhythms create a composite, a mutually co-determined temporality, allowing spaces to be rhythmically re-inscribed by a set of fluctuating bodies in movement with one another. The rhythms imply the repetitions characteristic of a circulatory system yet are expanded polyphonously to include “movements and differences in repetition”. Lefebvre. Polyrhythmic circulation gives space for non-circular [non-tautological] circulation in that it is perpetually modulating; a deviating feedback system affecting and affected by its constituent, vagabond actors.

Modulation

Our modulating temporal composites, which are continually informing, deforming and reforming – indeed far from equilibrium, dissipative structures -(Jeffrey bloom) http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jwb2/research/PTC/ptcpaper.html are in perpetual states of rhythmic transformation. The transitory tempos are determined by the relational movements amongst its’ participants. The conception of modulating city rhythms is much like the work of the DJ in club culture. The DJ possesses a variety of rhythms and tools at his/her disposal to respond to the group of participating dancers. The attentive DJ responds rhythmically to the perceived ambiance of the group, modulating tempos and pacing in order to maintain a level of stimulation. The dancers and the DJ respond in a reciprocal loop of perpetually undulating tempos.

Safran has described such a planning conception as ‘Dance Cities’ – namely as “space with a continuously heterogeneous mix of different densities and uses”. The configurations modulate in intensity with one another in a “state of perpetual motion as its informational content”. The ‘dissolving and concentrating’ configurations are in a perpetual state of rhythmic transition oscillating between divergent tempos pulsing through a space.

In his study on outdoor movement, Jan Gehl defined three types activities pursued by individuals occupying public space. These three, although highly generalized, can serve as a point of departure to imagine how the varying temporal qualities of such movements can intermingle and form a layered spacio-temporal picture. Gehl cited Necessary Activities – those compulsory activities such as going to work or school, which I will attribute to a linear, fast paced rhythm of movement. Secondly; Optional Activities including “such activities as taking a walk to get a breath of fresh air, standing around enjoying life, or sitting and sunbathing.“ Gehl, http://www.rudi.net/bookshelf/classics/lifebetweenbuildings/pages/chapter1/a.shtml

To the second group I will attribute a slower paced, wandering, rhythm – reflecting the pace of a flaneur out strolling with free time on their hands, with indeterminate resting points and directions. The third group identified as Social Activities are dependent on the presence of others in public space and “occur spontaneously, as a direct consequence of people moving about and being in the same spaces”, including greetings and conversations, but most often passive contacts – simply seeing and hearing other people. To this group I would like to attribute a stochastic rhythm, to reflect the variable, accidental movements under which such ‘contacts’ occur.

Xenakis? Vibrato?

The rhythmic interlacing of diverse tempos; linear, wandering, and accidental create a mental symphony of a constant, repetitive tempo, combined with a fluid, undulating, panning sound (of our flaneurs), punctuated by irregular staccato pulses (of our accidentals). The composite score can never be written, can never be preserved, for the score is constantly re-writing itself from the within. Instead of a striving for a rhythmic score to reflect urban movement, we should rather approach it as a scoring of space, a processual, verb form responding to the qualities of the actors traversing it. Perhaps our geometric mensuration of such kineasthetic urban space no longer be measured in meters, but rather in knots. Knots in the double sense, both one of distance in a fluid source, and the link between two or more bodies. Scoring a knotting space.

Transitions

The dynamic nature of spatio-temporal scoring signifies a linguistic re-structuring as well – from the static noun to the active verb. The linguistic shift extends the scope our vernacular towards describing processes, rather than illusions of static forms. The Rheomode, as coined by Bohm, is a “process-like” mode of language, wherein phenomena become verb forms in order to adequately acknowledge the fluctuating processes that are inherent in the composition of any object. Rheomode objects are re-understood as being comprised of continually oscillating state changes; as such nouns conventionally used to describe such objects are in reality ‘slow verbs’. A rheomodic approach towards describing the qualities we hope to embody in spatial transformations, moves from the notion of traversed space as a fixed entity, towards a milieu of continual transitions.

Rheomodic spaces recognize the instability, or unfixed nature of movement through public space. Movements, are characterized by relational oscillations amongst one another in a dynamic state of perpetual scoring, rather than a movement that requires a score. The transmutations inherent in the shifting from one rhythmic movement to the next occupy the uncertain territory of the in-between; a transi-territory.
Transi-territories can be understood as spaces of transitional transit, spaces that accommodate the plurarhythmality of the bodies progressing through its manifold. The Transi-territories, by nature are time sensitive; the composite noise of irregular, rhythmic patterns are infused within the space and subsequently produce the space throughout which they maneuver. A non-linear, developmental system “able to produce novel motion and pattern-breaking and to update itself from within its trajectory – it remains, in fact, perpetually sensitive to its surrounding milieu.” Kwinter 23

The nature of oscillatory conditions of collective movement, (although indeterminate), are not fully inscribable into the classification of pure randomness. Continual chance, or unpredictability denote situations of isolated ‘surprise’ events, yet throughout of milieu of ceaseless surprise, there is in fact no surprise, and we remain in the same quandary of the present – how to haptically invigorate the collective bodies in movement amongst one another? Rather it seems more appropriate to create a medium whereby these punctuated events are able to percolate through the spatio-temporal field; in a condition of differentiation - a condition of partial unpredictability.

In inducing engagement, simultaneous stable and unstable situations must be generated. This entails the constant generation of novelty, which is defined as “partial unpredictability”. The generation of novelty is understood, in this model, is an emergent property of an ongoing set of interactions within joint attention. The emergent nature of this ‘novel’ approach requires, as it’s catalyst, a set of ongoing relationships / interactions / exchange mechanisms between (ikegami reference here), suggesting a space where conflicting ideologies may find room to negotiate a dance.

Fluctuation between stable and unstable states, or rather inhabiting the oscillatory implies that we have no initial conception of a fixed milieu throughout which to traverse. We start our project with no condition of a foundation – with no bi-polar desire to envision movement space as a completely determined or completely anarchic entity. Rather, our envisioning takes the form of pluri-polarity, where “multiple manners of being… are woven together; and in such manners there always lies the possibility of light movement in formless space, prior to both the material assignation of place and time and the immaterial mastery of space and form.” Rajchman, constructions 42.

In this conception of foundation-less spatiality the immaterial realm, which speaks of qualities, can be intermingled with the quantitative (geometric, measured), producing affected geometries that seek “…to release figures or movements from any such organization, allowing them to go off in unexpected paths or relate to one another in undetermined ways”. Rajchman 92

The foundation-less point of conceptual departure helps in negotiating the problems of nihilism, apathy and indifference in our current experience of the urban. In the dogma of foundations we end up in the plight of ‘Cartesian Anxiety’; “the anxiety is best put as a dilemma: either we have a fixed and stable foundation for knowledge, a point where knowledge starts, is grounded, and rests, or we cannot escape some sort of darkness, chaos, and confusion. Either there is an absolute ground or foundation, or everything falls apart.” Varela –140. The question begets, how are we to re-learn movement amongst one another in conditions of shifting foundations?