[ trigger ] [ flow ]

TRIGGER

- anything, as an act or event, that serves as a stimulus and initiates or precipitates a reaction or series of reactions
- to initiate or precipitate (a chain of events, scientific reaction, psychological process, etc.
- to fire or explode (a gun, missile, etc.) by pulling a trigger or releasing a triggering device

FLOW

- move along or out steadily and continuously in a current or stream
- circulate continuously within a particular system
- (of people or things) Go from one place to another in a steady stream, typically in large numbers
- result from; be caused by

+ "Flow refers to a multivalent series of notion and direction. This multivalent possibility of recipient information is coded and in certain cases subliminal - found in the city environment - and is our clue to the flow as a system of subjective criteria presented logically. The eidetic condition is revealed as object, a para-construct of the philosophical, political and cultural value of the taxonomy, where the arrangement is both one substance and time." (Yeoman, Andrew, "Movement, velocity, networks: backup infrastructures")

+ "As in Piranesi's engravings, the contemporary environment may be understood as an infinite interior of imprecise boundaries, where inhabitants are located in the form of a flow, converted into circulation. In this context, road infrastructure plays an important role in establishing an order that is not based upon formal criteria but upon abstract bits of information (on a motorway we can arrive at our destination without using geographical parameters, following only a discontinual set of messages) and immaterial properties such as the increase in the degree of connectivity within the territory that patches (or traces) of meaning provide, without which the order becomes more diffuse." (Valor, Jaume, "Interior Global")

+ "A trigger of one energy form sets off a flow in another which, in turn, triggers a release of a flow in the first; the insertion of more parties creates a chain of trigger-flow interactions that may go in series, in parallel or both...The trigger-flow interactions specifically create an interdependent reproduction among the participating dissipative structures." (De Landa)

reading: "A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History", De Landa

[ interactivity ]

INTERACTIVITY

- capable of acting on or influencing each other
- synergistic: used especially of drugs or muscles that work together so the total effect is greater than the sum of the two (or more)
- providing output based on input from the user. This output feeds back into the user's decision process for subsequent interaction. Interactive websites, for instance, allow for more dynamic information browsing and applications such as shopping, banking, etc.

+"If objects think, react and take action beyond their material qualities, spaces and places have to react with them. Objects think because someone has thought about them. Someone has programmed and give them qualities so that they can be integrated into a new logic of the world in which everything is connected to everything." (Vincente Guallart, the metapolis dictionary of advanced architecture)

reading: "INTRODUCTION" in Organization Space: landscapes, highways, and houses in America

[ indirectness ] [ urbanist ]

INDIRECTNESS

- lacking a true course toward a goal
- not resulting directly from a single action or cause
- involving intermediate or intervening parts or pathways. e.g. stimulation of one eye elicits narrowing of the pupil of the other eye by an indirect reaction

+ "...the secret to achieving a robust, adaptive, flexible, and evolving design."
+ out of control

+ the fear of architects, and the ineffective postulations between their design and proposed outcome.

URBANIST

- maximizing the effectiveness of a community's land use and infrastructure
- focus on cities and urban areas, their geography, economies, politics, social characteristics, as well as the effects on, and caused by, the built environment

+ "...find ways to approximate these ecological forces and structures, aspects of wild nature, to invent artificial means of creating living artificial environments."

+ a person in attempt to simulate evolutionary processes through artificial means in the urban context.

reading: "WILDNESS (Prolegomena to a New Urbanism)"