[...] privileged way of connecting the past to the present. One of many crucial and important ways that past comes to effect the present is made over form. Form, with its strange logic and efficiency, has the capacity to freeze time. Life as we know it lies in the results of the processes that future forms come to effect the present. Any being's very survival depends on its ability to access the zones of continuity and possibility in these processes. How we can articulate these forms? What are the operations that connect the form-embedded self to the others?

4 billion years ago, the gravitational force of a mass of hydrogen atoms accumulated into a dense point of critical state. As a result of this formation new fusions released many sip-offs of different energies and materials which we perceive today in our bodies and in the light that reaches our eyeballs from the time immemorial of that hydrogen cloud. This fossil of materiality implies the existence of traces of an ancient reality before the existence of the familiar--the terrestrial life. While these traces are gauged in theoretical experiments in which radioactive ratios of nuclides inform us of such ancestral events, in Amerindian cosmogonies not so differently steered hypothesis are explored. Yawanawa, the origin myth of the people of Pano from the western Amazon, imagines the anterior of the world where nothing existed, yet there only people existed--everything was made of people. Before the diversification and classification of kinds there was a primordial human, as the only substance of which everything eventually fabricated.

Like Yawanawa, Hayula (Persian: هیولا) literally in today's usage with the meaning of unformed monster, is a technical term in Iranian-Islamic cosmology indicating the first principle of everything material of which all other constitutive layers of beings are molded--minerals, plants, animals, etc. Hayula in one hand locates the lowest of the lowest, the bottom of the scalar existence where God resides at the very top, and on the other hand possesses a great anatomical plasticity, a persistent pre-cosmological being that undermines the second law of thermodynamic. First were the object then came the subject--to give away to the results of the stabilization of the infinite potential for transformation contained in Hayula, as universal substance, a matter out of which the world could have come to be formed.

The narratives of the time before form, an era of pre-cosmological beings, primordial people with unlimited and unbound corporeality, is the story of the originality of Hayula's virtual potential for being. Hayula, not fully human, tasting beyond morality (destruction, anthropophagy, etc.), becomes the subjects of other interventions and morphs into spheres and features of the world--of biological aspects, celestial bodies, humanoid zones, etc.

The realm of Hayula comes to interpret, and thus permit and strain, who and how an I can be, at the same time that it provides the vessel for the continuity, the survival, of that I. Here the I is the continuity of an inhabitation of a point of view. It marks a relative position within a hierarchical logic that spans the cosmos, a hierarchy that ranges from the nonhuman to the human realm and from the demons to the realm of the formless. Following the classic joke, that one goes to a place in order to discover the directions of how to keep out of that place, this project proposal suggests to explore the Hayula's experience of self and how it incorporates destabilizing its, which might permit or prohibit seeing beyond its conditions.

In another level of description we will look at the concept of Hayula as a device in cross-catalytic relations in matter-energy flows, looking at it as a semi metaphorical and physical nonlinear model for structure-generating processes that populate our world. How attractors and transistors consolidated different energy flows of certain intensities to gain access to self-organization? The energy trapped in winds and currents, atmosphere and hydrosphere, solar energy that plants capture through photosynthesis, has clocked societies for centuries and gave them rhythm. A small fraction of a plant life that has powered most of civilization's past intensifications. Enormous reservoir of oceanic and atmospheric energy fuels a great variety of self-organized structures: tornadoes, cyclones, pressure blocks, and, more importantly for human history, wind circuits. These forms of spontaneous structural generation suggest that inorganic matter is much more variable and creative than we ever imagined.



[...]

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(Wietske Maas)

materiality that is specific to the eye

similar to a plant, the eye is not a simple aperture to absorb light, but a filter to mitigate external stimuli.

unveil vision as a process of chemical contamination and digestion stemming from plants. vision is rooted in the materiality of digestion.

the human eye is an organ complicit with plant photosynthesis.

in fact, seeing is a process of photosynthesis. as much as plant photosynthesis absorbs excessive light and turns it into the carbon structures of sugar molecules, the human eye has to mitigate light and turn it into the neural structure of vision, cognition, and memory. in this process the eye protects itself from the corruptive metabolism of light, tapping into some ancestral mechanism shared with plants.

if human eye protects itself like a plant, we can think of photosynthesis itself as a sort of primeval organ of vision spread out across the skin of the vegetable kingdom.

material commonality (worth exploring)

incarnate an external organ of vision

our tie with the general metabolism of light

correlations between human vision and the organic world

using a technique to record the surface of reality or using to reveal the internal chemical composition of matter

in the chromatogram, a light reaction reveals the inner chemistry and transforms matter composition into visual patterns

different regime of visibility
light is not just a stream of waves to be passively refracted and recorded but an active and autonomous medium of image-making

mineral kingdom -- forces that drive the becoming of both organic and inorganic matter

drive to formation (Bildungstrieb)

“Runge's willingness to attribute a life force to chemicals is a continuation of Romantic natural philosophy but meshed with Geothean morphology and experiment.” (Leslie)

chromatogram is an image, which discloses it's own bodily formation

here our focus should shift from the eye as a globular organ in the head of a vertebrate animal to the eye as an epidermic lens, a light-mitigating organ that attenuates the visceral contamination of radiation.

our inseparable alliance with plants

our eyes are immersed within a vegetative metabolism of a kind. we look at plants, but plants have already cannibalized our gaze as they become part of us looking back at them.


complex architecture of light:
plant photosynthesis is probably the most abused metaphor and analogy of life, widely quoted across a diverse spectrum of schools of thought to justify naturalist ideologies. it is believed that photosynthesis is behind a process of energy accumulation central to natural equilibrium and the food chain. however, there are various ways the process of light metabolism could be understood. it could also be understood as a process towards cosmic corruption and fermentation, or as a process towards more “complex architecture of light”.

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[...]



(Ilana Halperin)

corporeal mineralogy

we are autobiographical trace fossils

what constitutes life in the world of geology?

microbes feasting on the mineral bodies of stones

more animal than mineral

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big bang, first second of existence, second second, what is going on with the materiality

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the dark matter, in Caecilian Kircher, we don't know what it is

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[...]


[Gholam Hossein Rahimi + Abd Al-Rasul Emadi, 79113902605.pdf]

it is “proven” that location is not hayula (nor apparition)
hayula is anything that can have many faces [this is greek]

according to Aristotle: matter cannot separate itself from hayula (bzw. its apparition) but it can from its location.

in another sense, location is sometimes close to the notion of ‘face’ (surat صورت) of the matter, because it constitutes where the matter ends and where does it begins.

Avicenna: location is separate from located
‘location is the limitation of matter’
location and causality? ‘there’ (hamanja همانجا) is not ‘the reason’ (elat علت)
for him: ‘makan chizi joz nahayat-e jesm-e havi nist’ (مکان چیزی جز نهایت جسم حاوی نیست)
(location/place is nothing but the limits/ends/finalities of the holder or the comprising thing)

two locations meeting each other

Avicenna disagrees that hayula could be location, because he argues that hayula only accepts the significant apparition and not any.
some has believed that the location is the face of matter, because the matter is at its face/apparition the same way it is at its place/location.
the matter/jesm/ جسم doesn't move out of its face rather it moves within its face.
water -to-> air [this is apparition]
location -to-> located [this cannot be!]

هیولای ثانی hayulaye sani (secondary hayula) : it has act/ also is able to its “next level”

[they haven't thought about the notion of gravity.]

جسم jesm: body, object, substance, matter, corpus, flesh

when the matter/jesm/جسم leaves the space it takes orientations/coordinations/ab'ad/ ابعاد with itself away from that locality/place/makan/مکان

location/makan/ مکان : when matter is in location, the location is.
void/khala’/ خلاء: when location is emptied of matter, it is void.

for Avicenna, matter/jesm/جسم (can) have mental (zehni ذهنی) and hallucinative (vahmi وهمی) derivatives that are accessible in all its axis/directions (ab'ad ابعاد).
[we have to consider that here hallucination/vahm/وهم is a strong category of thought, it opposes reason/aghl/عقل, it is a device that Avicenna regularly uses in his research.]

for Pythagoras, void/khala’/خلاء is hole through which the universe breathes.
for them void was that which is between the natural numbers; 1, 2, 3, etc.
(they didn't distinguish between numbers and matters)

گسست/Gosast/rupture can only happen in corporal matter

[porosity, has social and material meanings: a measure of the void, the “accessible void”. and a sorting algorithm, ability to absorb fluids, and volume of bodies] [relates to Aristotle's notion of matter that which resists---the resistance of matters]
for Avicenna, the extension of admixtures is as follows:
•two matter from two different corporalities mix
•two dimensions mix
•one dimension and one matter mix

ذات zat: being, essence, substance, nature, the very core self of, same, identity of, spontaneousness, material object,
-the Zat/essence...

what is when apparition enters void?\

زمان سمتی zaman-e samti : directional time (?) [#archive]

for Avicenna location and located are inseparable, location is holder or an exterior or outer surface of the located.
for him, void has two problems: (1) the void's dimensions will mix with the matter's dimension. (2) void is infinite, therefore movement is impossible, since there is part of the universe that is not void therefore there can't be void in the universe since it has to be infinite.



Hayula has no resistance to different apparitions/surat/صورت

surathaye jesmani صورتهای جسمانی

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[...]



pandora’s complexity

purely (?) material objective agent (evolving?)

Hayula--the first principle of everything material

bi-surat بی صورت

اشکال تن ashkal-e tan***
virtual proto-humanity (to different corporalities) --> pre-organic / anthropo*morphic* --> inter-corporal predation --> (sets post-mythic relations between species) --> trans-ontological intentionalities

hayula is a state of latency or potentiality --> possibility of metamorphosis in interpersonal relations...

every apparition demands a recipient

(مولوی‌) Rumi wants to be able to read the return-state to the hayula:
تبدیل شدن به tabdil shodan:
...be arkan (ارکان instrument)
...be heyvan (حیوان animal)
...be jan (جان aliveness? liveliness of artifacts? --?--> agency)
...be hilat (حيله, tech---means and'>& ways) [tech? #ruse]

(in Rumi:) ruse ==> قید صید gheid-e seyd
Hafez is all about farib (فریب ruse)

material agents: {//complex forms of movement //affiliation into space}

stones, a substance indigenous to every place. (those who give up or try to stop or turn back become stones.)



the meta-fall of the material (in hayula هیولا)


apparition/surat/صورت (essence/mahiyat/ماهیت)?
matter/madeh/ماده (hast/هست/being/is-there)?

 --(surat)-->--(surat)-->
animal---flora---inanimate---hayula
 <--(madeh)--<--(madeh)--

in Sohrevardi, he removes the light as projection and ray-tracing, and proposes a theory of light (of theory of being) as “Filter” (veril?, hejab حجاب). (there is no filter between the sphere of the eye and the sphere of the planet Mars.)

apparition is essential or part of the essence or itself the essence

Hayula: mojude mobham o bi-ta'ayon, joz ghove-e mahz va este'dad-e serf nist. (jesme basit)
هیولا: موجود مبهم و بی تعین, جز قوه محض و استعداد صرف نیست
(جسم بسط)



[...]

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(Delanda)

we are taking “real history” as starting-point

-to capture the dynamics of human historical processes, we must allow the nonhuman physics to infiltrate the human society---complex materials that form human culture. --> (for example) water in its several distinct states (solid, liquid, gas) in phase transition (intensity of temperature)---that which human society “see” as material-change

example of spontaneous structural generations are coherent waves:
*solitons* - forming in many different types of materials, from tsunamis (ocean waves) to lasers. --> *attractors* {stable states, which can sustain coherent cycles activity {periodic / chaotic}}
*monsoon* - a wind circuit that has powered all sail ships in Asian waters for centuries---in those urban centers in contact with monsoon, knowledge of its dynamical behavior and skills in tapping its energy accumulated.


“materials” are {-energetic -genetic -linguistic} --> the flow of human and the animal gene we have domesticated

the specific dynamic pattern of turbulent urban evolution in (European) towns should not be view as the result of “progress” but as the result of certain dynamics that intensify the accumulation of knowledge and technologies, and of certain institutional norms and organization. for instance, the 11th century industrial revolution can be viewed in terms of reciprocal stimulation between technologies and institutions, fueled by: -solar energy (agricultural) -gravitational energy (water) --> to power grain wills --> intensified by the flow of money.

*story of the bone*
(organism never forgot its mineral origins)
in organic world, soft tissue (gels and aerosols, muscle and nerve) reigned supreme until 500 million years ago. at that point, some of the conglomerations of fleshy matter-energy that made up life underwent a sudden mineralization, a new material for constructing living creatures emerged: bone. it is almost as if the mineral world that had served as a substratum for the emergence of biological creatures was reasserting itself...



genes as sorting algorithms, are themselves sorted out by selection pressures such as: -climates -predators -parasites


structure-generating processes sort things (1) take heterogeneity [collection of materials---pebbles, genes, roles, etc.] (2) homogenize them [through sorting operations] (2) consolidate them (into more permanent state)

catalyst: a chemical substance capable of “recognizing” specific material and altering that material's molecular state --> now it reacts with certain substances with which it would not normally react.

catalyst provokes a meeting of two substances

autocatalytic loops

superposition (interconnection of diverse overlapping elements),
catalysts,
stable patterns,
spatial intervals,
sedimentation,
cooling magma,
threshold of crystallization,
vicious fluid,
molten materials,
bifurcation,
densification,
intensification,
reinforcements,
injection,
nucleation events,
dislocations,
endogenous,
endogenous stable states,
chemical clocks,
aggregate,
consistency,
elementary atoms,
stratified structures,
interlocking (matching temporally),


species --> (gene pool of a ...) = an organic stratified structure

stratifies structures involve simple form of causal relations---one arrow from cause to effect [we can see this modality in the creation of institutions]


coal is the product of one of several types of mineralization that organic matter can undergo, and submitted by “civilizations” to deposit intensive exploitation --> flow of nonhuman energy ==> fuel its industrial revolution

industrial age = the crossing of a bifurcation where previous autocatalytic dynamics come to form a self-sustaining autocatalytic loop.

(both) industrial revolution and biological evolution, they lack [rpgressive direction nor consistent drive toward complexification---some species complexity while others simplify


cities as real transformers of matter and energy
cities are open or dissipative (esraf اسراف) systems, with matter-energy flowing in and out continuously



(in autocatalytic loops) the trigger-flow interactions: interlocks a series of separately reproductive systems into a single interactive reproductive system

antimarket ---money--> mining regions ==> intensified coa extraction ==> iron production ---> [steam] mechanical energy ---> cotton textiles ---> flow of profits ===money==> experimentation with coal, iron, steam

skill / know-how = catalytic info
(info capable of bringing together and amplifying flow of energy and materials)

economies of agglomeration (anbashtegi انباشتگی)

the law of diminishing returns (bazdeh nozuli بازده نزولی)
a point at which the level of profits or benefits gained is less than the amount of money or energy invested. (image)


illumination --> coal gas
motorization --> steam


knowledge is an input of production which exacts high transaction costs. only where patents are perfectly enforceable will information be allowed to flow through markets, else antimarkets will prefer to internalize it into their hierarchies. one way a corporate hierarchy may internalize knowledge is by funding a research laboratory.


at some point urban societies would have reached a point of saturation, and the intensification would have ceased. but electricity simultaneously increased the flow of energy and the potential uses of that energy.


automated formal systems ==> victory of analytical over embodied knowledge (the self-taught inventor of the 19th century)
--> unbalance of power between informal and formal knowledge


(factory = planned autocatalytic loop)


the science of centralization
-powerful computers allow the centralized control of geographically dispersed activities---coordinate and monitor compliance with central plans ==> internalization of antimarket institutions


the fully coexistence of the autocatalytic loops:
the digital / the energetic / the material
==> accumulation of hierarchical structures


are computers evolving in the direction of routinization?
-eroding the combinatorial richness of knowledge and making flows of information ever more sterile?


future turns out to belong to hierarchies?
-human history is a narrative of contingencies, not necessities, of missed opportunities to follow different routes of development, not of a nonlinear succession of ways to convert energy, matter, and information into cultural products.



[...]

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the gene tells the flesh: “you are a human” or “you are a...”
**the flesh does not know any organs, continues pulsing to its own rhythms

(how to understand) activities of processes in other spheres of reality

living creatures and their inorganic counterparts


(G. Simmons:) “the flow of energy and mineral nutrients through an ecosystem manifest themselves as actual animals and plants of a particular species.”


biomass = circulation of flesh

plants biting into the system of solar radiation---capturing its sugars

in a sense “higher” animals are just fancy decorations in an ecosystem
(decorative large predators)

ecosystem = succession of plant assemblages ==> stable states ==> climax

ecosystem = a blind groping from stable state to stable state in which each plant assemblage creates the conditions that stabilize the next one.


continental forest <--- stability {the capacity to maintain a state with relatively minor internal fluctuations}
islands <--- resilience {the capacity to absorb major external and internal fluctuations by switching between several alternative stable states}


cities interaction with microorganisms

medieval cities ---islands--> {-concentration of energies -low degree of species heterogeneity (mainly humans)}

medieval European towns ----> isolated islands {/heat /food-web /cultural}

cattle as storage devices
process of shortening and redirecting food chains


biomass ["natural” state] ---> cooked biomass ---> processed through the “civilizing” power of fire*
{raw =/= cooked} ==> legend/myth
--> the cultural materials that accumulated unconsciously, sorted out by the pressure of the parasites themselves---germs and humans formed a meshwork

food ~ flow of flesh

culture is not a completely separate sphere of reality, but instead mixes and blends with flows of organic (and even mineral) materials.

flow of genetic materials

gene / ecosystem
|              \
homogeneous =/= heterogeneous

*genes tease out a form out of an active flesh

(genes ~) replicators began not only merely to exist, but to construct for themselves containers, vehicles for their continues existence.
-how these “replicators” created constructs out of flesh and bone ---> then how did ‘self’ emerged in this?


                (layers)
genotype  .../.../.../.../...  phenotype
   |             |                 |
info coded | self organizing   |  adaptive traits
into genes | processes (stable) |  of a plant / animal


human gene is variable du to: {1-ecosystem 2-taboos}


(ancient) migrations : vehicle for the mechanism of evolution that today is producing the greatest evolutionary effect, allowing the incorporation of new genes into established gene pools, enhancing intrapopulation and reducing interpopulation variability.



[leas normative and binding] to other cultures <-- culture --> to the same culture [central to society]


strata = reproductive niche
(niche : adjusted timing and quality)

hierarchy building = {-homogenization (by a sorting process) -consolidation (through coding into legal, religious, and other formal regulations)}


limits of bounded rationality (عقل معاش aghle ma'ash?)
(Bounded rationality is the idea that in decision-making, rationality of individuals is limited by the information they have, the cognitive limitations of their minds, and the finite amount of time they have to make a decision.)
--> for example soil loss, due to careless exploitation of the forests’ resources has been a constant threat to urban centers throughout history. most urban civilization were able to pass their genes for only seventy generations before they ran out of soil ---> although some material and energy flows can be “socialized” (submitted to cultural control), in practice many are not.



(my interest and work on hayula is about:) the creative morphologies that have always r[...]