I've been thinking about the cuff in a bunch of registers, ones that came up in our conversations in the sessions. So here are just a bunch of thoughts woven together via these registers.
What keeps me wondering about the cuff is its direction and whether the cuff is open or closed. In a way, I guess the two are directly related, and so far I can't stop thinking about it in terms of 'emphasis' or 'accent' in the way that it depends on what state the cuff is in.
A thing I came across was what is in mathematics called the catastrophe theory, which exemplifies one way the fold and the cuff can relate to each other. In this theory it is all about what they call a 'critical point,' or the 'catastrophe' that emerges by a change in behaviour leading to a change in direction. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catastrophe_theory for a more elaborate explanation.) Now there is a lot more to say about this, but what I found interesting is what the first two models of the theory are, namely the 'fold catastrophe' and the 'cusp catastrophe.'
The fold catastrophe works exactly like expected, and has a movement towards the bend, towards the fold. It is there that it finds its critical point, or its 'tipping point' (and that point is also the differential that came up today.)
The cusp catastrophe, the second model of this theory, which I see as a form of a cuff of course, seems to find its emphasis somewhere else. Technically there is another variable added to the equation and the result is that there emerges a double movement. So here you see that the cuff can close in on itself and create a pocket. In terms of direction the cuff seems to be the double fold, or a double movement (like how Erin remarked how the SenseLab is a sort of cuff in that people go in and out at the same time.)
This allows one to think about the intersection of the line with itself, i.e. the cusp. In architecture there is a lot of that to be found, like these:
or a bit closer to home
Another interesting thing is that through the above model one can think about the cuff, in nearing the cusp, as a sort of envelopment (it is about to form a pocket.) Maybe here lies the double nature of the cuff in regards to its double movement, for maybe when it takes on the right consistency it does not have to close in on itself and it can maintain the cusp? In that sense, I feel like it can be both states at once, like an embrace is both open and closed at the same time; or like touching and not touching at the same time (a corollary?) - something I know the movement group is experimenting with. Is this then the non-relation Foucault and Deleuze speak of?
oy. i don't think I can comment with images sadly, so I may have to make a separate post.... but ///yes the double movement, or a doubling, or that there is not essential cuffness, but the relational movements that makes felt a cuffing --- a relation that is not one thing or formation or type of wave or a simple turn-around as 'change in direction', but a relational both/and inflecting across and with an 'outside', when a movement meets another movement potential cuffings or foldings or pocketings (maybe even pleatings!) about. Sorry, traditional sentence structure is not my strong suit.
ReplyDeleteWhen in class today I was doing some side research and found that in addition to water eddies, there are electro-magnetic 'eddies' or eddy currents, imperceptible to the eye --- but like all good scientists, they have made many diagrams to illustrate them.
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=electromagnetic+eddies&client=safari&rls=en&biw=1199&bih=911&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj40c30uKTPAhXhDMAKHXx6DHcQ_AUIBigB#tbm=isch&q=eddy+current
what i like is the LACK in what they are actually able to diagram. they can show the lines of one current running into and creating a perpendicular current. but the relational and/or differential shift is not drawn out --- the 'eddy-ing' isn't represented….. because it is hard to extract from its movement-percept -- ….. and then i was thinking a bit about how it feeds the persistent way I like to think cuffs as perceptible not so much through an essential 'cuffness', but through the lint or eddies they create, or leave behind in micro durations or literally 'lint'. Lint can be found in pockets too-- so it's not that lint is 'essential' to cuffs either. But its another way of thinking through how affect (though virtual) is felt through differentiating qualities of experience (through rhythm and inflexions --- see Relationscapes by manning, bc I'm blazing through concepts with little precision) --- but yes. thinking maybe how cuffs perhaps make felt a stronger quality difference -- but not flat 'different' but differentiating movements of experience, that leave a stronger consistency or pool of sometimes dissonant differentiating movements that 'eddy' around and with the cuffing.
looking at the limitations of the scientific diagrams, there is one current meeting another, a movement encounters another, but already it doesn't fall into the neat spray of magnetic fillings that arrange themselves around a north and south pole of a long-bar magnet.
somehow eddies seem more specific to cuff-like capacities (or capacitating movements) --- through through the lack of more easy settling that a pocket might provoke, or the maybe more minor differentiating experiences of folds (though no less prevalent and capicitating).
I'm just running bc this is a comment and few will see it, but at least in today's discussion ---- the 'eddy' or the 'lint' is not a metaphor or stand-in for the cuff. it is maybe the percept of a cuff ---- or one kind of percept for the the relational movements of cuffings ----whose (maybe) double movements aren't necessarily always 'perceptible' by traditional standards, but are felt through the reverb/recursive persistence of a unsettles and moving outwards or persistently hitting up against or folding against an outside. or i don't know.
I think some more thinking needs to happen (for me) in thinking with 'the outside' as explored in todays reading ---"local but not localized" is deeply satisfied and satisfying in my brain, but the 'outside(s)' may be another way of thinking what cuffs are particularly good at foregrounding in the experience,, outsides that are always there but that folds don't inflect as sharply with or pockets let settle a bit too easily into regulated rhythms --- but i don't know. thoughts are running me, rather then me, the thoughts.
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ReplyDeleteI am not feeling the words to respond here, but yes to the 'eddy' and 'cusp'. I too had already been thinking along the lines which Halbe has brought to focus here, but the concept of the 'eddy' in relation here is beautiful. I look forward to letting that one lure my thinking further...
ReplyDeleteWow, yes, this: "it is maybe the percept of a cuff ---- or one kind of percept for the the relational movements of cuffings ----whose (maybe) double movements aren't necessarily always 'perceptible' by traditional standards, but are felt through the reverb/recursive persistence of a unsettles and moving outwards or persistently hitting up against or folding against an outside." I love that.
ReplyDeleteAnd now thinking through the eddy or the lint, I am also thinking again about Simondon's elaboration of amplification, transduction and individuation: "Transductive amplification could be exemplified by the process of crystallisation, in which the propagation of information is ‘transductive’, meaning that it is robust and multiple, involving a transfer of information from one phase-state to another." I think we should definitely pursue this line of thought!
As for the Outside, I keep thinking of it as that which is the outside of the possible, or Thought. In that sense the diagram is the exposition of new possibilities of thought. Here I like the cuff and its 'cuffness' (love that) very much, how it in its double movement can suspend the cusp and allow for a new thought to crystallise, somewhere in its series.