<nettime> couplings and linkages, last of 2 parts

[Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>]

ii (Linkages and Couplings)


It seems to me that, technically, couplings may be considered a form of
proximity-relation, with the proximity falling off with distance (which
need not be measured exactly - which need not even imply a metric); I
believe this is a form of relation called a halfgroupoid. Think of a set
of elements with a relation defined among some of them. Linkages are a
form of connectivity (think of electric); relation is defined across them,
nothing falling off. Linkages may be subgroupoids within a halfgroupoid,
and may therefore be substructures of a coupling structure. One can think
of a _rattling_ or _jostling_ domain consisting of a mixture; the overall
formation is a coupling. Since a coupling may have elements with no re-
lation with each other, but with relations with other elements that have
relations with each other, etc., we can see it as a very weak linkage; in
a linkage, all elements are related such that the breaking of a link re-
sults in a deep de-linking. A breaking can result in a decoupling as well,
the elements torn asunder, into part-objects with full or weakened links.

Negation provides a way in. One might define negation within a linkage as
the breaking of a link (think of electric); the thing breaks into two
linkages, falls apart, most likely into a coupling. A break anywhere with-
in a linkage negates the linkage. With a coupling, negating an element
says nothing about the rest; the element is removed, no longer proximal.
If the coupling is of the form abc, removal of b may weaken the coupling
in its entirety. The negation of a negation of a linkage may result in a
linkage - in other words, given a coupling of two linkages, created by
negation of a link within a single linkage, the negation of the negation
might relink them. But within the coupling, there might also be a second
negation, removing one of the two linkages, resulting in a single linkage,
the coupling transformed. While negation within a coupling implies the
coupling as clutter, a-historical, negation within linkages implies that
linkages carry history. 

Negation appears overly complex here; perhaps a negation of a coupling may
be considered a contribution to falling-apart, and a negation within a
linkage may be irreversible, a 'hard' negation. This in fact is the case
within the implicate order, for example, which is linked; a cut into a
folded fluid would, I assume, reduce the rest to chaos. But then chaos of
this sort is not a coupling, just another form of linkage; all chaos is
linked. 

Consider an addition; then if a coupling is abc, abcd or abdc, etc. can
also be considered a coupling. A coupling might now be defined as a frame
or framework, nothing more; there may or may not be other relations among
the elements. An addition to a linkage results in a linkage, although
there can also be an addition such that the linkage is embedded within a
coupling; place a cup and saucer next to a radio.

An addition may be an addendum, a diacritical mark, a surplus, an inser-
tion, an adjacency. A linkage carries its trace, embedding additions; a
coupling loses its trace, blind emissions. 

This isn't mathematics, but the phenomenology of the entities and debris
of the world. Once that is understood, it's also understood that contra-
dictions are acceptable; deal with the individual frames.

One might think of coupling as literally circumscribed by an economy of
attention, and linkage circumscribed by internal articulation. Thus within
the world-picture there is a movement from organism to loosely-coupled
("de-coupled") assemblages - transcendent causality transformed partly
into happenstance, societies of objects re-presented as accumulations of
clutter.



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