Waves into Patterns: Ecology and Resilience
Waves into Patterns is a book and a card-based activation device that proposes a practice of ecological variability. Its objective is to induce nonlinearity in perception and action, promoting what we refer to as “natural” dynamics in everyday life. This approach promotes the full spectrum of resilience: not only the adaptive and assimilative qualities but also the ability to persist, push through, and transform.
Inspired by ecology, dynamical systems theory, physical practice research, and scientific language, it tells a visual story of waves, 4 different cycles of change, and the patterns they form in space and time. An accompanying card game can be used as a reading device that helps the reader to explore the narrative of the book in a nonlinear way.
The Book and the Card Game
The book begins with outlining the basic building blocks of reality: waves and the different types of dynamics they represent. For instance, escalation and de-escalation, exponential growth and logarithmic saturation. We connect the notions and images of waves to related mathematical functions in order to have a precise and objective way of describing the basic states that they represent.
As the waves propagate through time and space, they form patterns. Some of those patterns may be expressed through cycles, such as seasonal changes, economic cycles, or regular breath. These are responsible for regeneration and stability.
Some of those patterns are more complex in nature and enable a high level of adaptivity and resilience in natural systems. This is achieved through so-called non-equilibrium stability, where long-term existence is defined not by a static state, but, rather, a shifting metastable process.
For instance, the image at the top represents a snapshot of such dynamics in population growth. Each dot represents a center of population, and the area around it is its size. A temporary non-equilibrium balance is achieved through each center taking the space that it needs without overtaking the other. A truly non-totalitarian approach where everything has its space and time.
The idea of the practice is to induce this way of existence in perception and movement. Embracing the 4 different states of change and regularly oscillating between them, following an 8-like pattern. Shifting between zooming in / zooming out and focusing / exploring.
Practical Applications: Thinking and Reading
In practical terms, this can be applied in learning and reading. Perceiving the text in a focused way and then shifting to a more exploratory type of reading where we attempt to zoom out and find how this particular text connects to other discourses or exploring the gaps and the blind spots within. The same approach can be applied to thinking. If ideas are too interconnected, trying to make them disconnect. If the ideas are too dispersed, trying to better connect them. The intention is to give every possible structure a time and space to emerge, to explore a different modality of perception, different types of attention, in order to not focus on only one way of seeing reality but rather explore several of them at the same time (polysingularity).
Practical Applications: Physical Movement
A similar approach can also be attempted in our physical interactions with ourselves and with the environment. We can induce each of those 4 different types of change through breathing. A repetitive regenerative one, a normal breathing at a habitual rate (8-12 breath cycles a minute), a highly adaptive transiet fractal breath (irregular patterns that change every 4 counts), pattern-shifting complex breath (e.g. breath hold or sustained, unnaturally long cycles). Each of those states has an advantage and having an ability to embody every one of them increases one’s adaptivity, regenerative capacity, and resilience to stress as well as heightened sensitivity to external stimuli.