Polysingularity is a condition where multiple solutions are possible and yet only some are actualized at any moment of time. It’s a study of how affordances (or environmental opportunities) come into contact with the human capacity to believe and make choices. Polysingularity is best described through the framework of networks where the node’s current state and future condition is dynamically determined by its specificity as well as the multiplicities it belongs to.
We visualized Hamlet’s “to be or not to be” as a text network and then read it again using Alexis Jacomy’s GexfWalker. Whether it is a new reading of Shakespeare’s classic or a bunch of unrelated words is for you to decide, but at least it allows for polysingularity of text to be expressed more fully through following the word relations while staying loyal to the text’s original structure.
Italo Calvino once said that “writing is essentially a combinatorial exercise” and that “reading is a way of exercising the potentialities contained in the system of signs”. We propose a new way of reading using text network visuaization. It goes beyond the normal sequential organization of textual material and instead offers the reader to navigate through polysingularity of meanings present within the text. Created using Alexis Jacomy’s GexfWalker and Gephi software.
Interfaces are all-pervading and their ability to enhance our communication and lives creates an almost religious devotion to technology. The ability to grant an instant gratification and expand our mind puts technology on the same level as drugs: highly addictive, could be dangerous in high dosage, very helpful and sometimes mind-blowing when consumed moderately. My proposition, drawing upon the ideas of Agamben, Foucault, and Kurzwell, is to de-sacralise what we’ve learned so far from the interfaces and to make it profane. Let’s embody the interfaces and bring the magic into the everyday life to allow the free reign of polysingularity.