Hypersection

Hypersection

Collaboration with Niccolo Casas. Team: Ozzy Veliz, Nick Houser, Garrett Farmer, Cody Sonnier, Hanhur James Kim, Cesar Martinez, Alyssa Thomas, Lauren Lycan, Mindy Hogan, Ian Saenz

Premise

I coined the term “hypersection” at the beginning of summer 2018; however, the basic concept behind the word started taking place approximately one year beforehand. At that time, I was reading the revolutionary work of philosopher Graham Harman, contained in his book “Tool-Being: Heidegger and the Metaphysics of Objects”, and partaking in an extensive exchange of correspondences, on communication principles, with writer and narrative modeler Dr Beth Cardier. The concurrence of philosophical readings and multidisciplinary dialogues, together with a series of design experimentations on crossing patterns in which I was interested at the time, brought about the precondition for the framing of the hypersection idea.

Prior to that, my professional and academic research seemed to have followed parallel paths: on one side, my professional work, characterized by a multidisciplinary approach, had spanned from architecture to haute couture, from fashion-tech to data visualization; on the other, my academic research had focused on different transition processes, in physics (thermodynamics), in poetry (decadence), and in design (natural patterns). It took some time for me to see how these apparently distant routes were instead closely related, and an even more difficult task was to find a term capable of synthesizing a series of concepts, speculations and design experimentations that I have been investigating since 2013.

In this respect, the first step in that direction was represented by NAKFI (the National Academies Keck Futures Initiative). From 2015 to 2018, I was, in fact, involved in two projects funded by NAKFI and the National Academy of Sciences. While it is not important to describe here what these two projects were concerned with, it is crucial to explain the ambition and the tenet of NAKFI as a research institution. The main incentive of this organisation is to invest in interdisciplinary and collaborative projects at the frontiers of art, engineering and medicine in order to promote discovery and innovation. NAKFI believes that advances in science require the imperative collaboration of various fields, a shift driven by the need to address complex problems that cut across traditional disciplines. And so—for years—I have found myself exchanging ideas with scientists and experts of different scientific and technological sectors and backgrounds.

What started as an exchange of views on interdisciplinary communication and transition processes ended up as speculations on “non-mediated transitions”, in information, design and natural processes. It is true that the most common way in which systems interact dictates that the different sides alter themselves, bending toward the others—mediating—, in order to form a shared pattern. But this is not always the case, and so Cardier and I began hypothesising about a situation in which this adaptation might not be necessary. This change of perspective was the pivotal moment that created the first formulation of the hypersection concept:

Hypersection—unique among other transition processes—operates in such a way that its components do not alter; it is a form of “absolute transition/interaction” in which there is no mediation (or at least it is minimised) and integrities are conserved.

The term ‘hypersection’ clearly derives from the Latin word intersecare, composed of inter—between—and secare—to cut—. The verb shows in its original connotation a double significance: that of joining and separating at the same time. This duality of oppositional meanings has been maintained in both American and British English, as evidenced by both the Merriam-Webster Dictionary definition—“to pierce or divide by passing through or across” but also “to meet and cross at a point” or “to share a common area”—and the Cambridge Dictionary definition—“to cross one another” but also “to meet and go through or across” or “coming together and having an effect on each other”.

This dual implication, of combining and keeping separate, is what I was interested in expressing in a new term: a connection between distinct identities. But while conveying this antithetic connotation, the term‘intersection’ was not enough to synthesize the other aspects of the concept that I was trying to frame, and in particular the generative aspect of it.

While intersection implies that the connected systems remain themselves and that they share a common section, hypersection introduces a state-changing characterization: the shared section breaks from the intersected systems and acquires autonomy and identity. The Greek prefix hyper—above, over—was added specifically to express this generative quality; the ultimate aim of hypersection is, in fact, to create novel items (physical or conceptual) that are original and independent.

From a design point of view the term ‘hypersection’ refers to that of intersection in Euclidean geometry: a “point, line, or curve common to two or more objects”. In the case of two different oriented lines, the intersection is their common point, a joint that at the same time keeps them together and distinct. The distinctiveness of intersection is that it is a form of non direct interaction, in the sense that the two objects (in this case two lines) somehow share something without any required change to their form. A hypersection, therefore, can be seen as precisely that shared point—the point at which it breaks out of the hierarchy of the lines and gains autonomy and identity.

As mentioned above, throughout my PhD research, I investigated different kinds of transition processes in an attempt to highlight the links between recurring structures in physics, poetry and design. The integration of different—if not oppositional frameworks and patterns—and the implication of it in design and architecture is the crucial aspect of my research. As luck would have it, I found myself speculating on non-mediated and indirect design transitions, and working on a series of design experimentations on the crossing of linear patterns, exactly at the time that my interdisciplinary collaborations intensified. The process by which  experts of different disciplines mediate showed strong similarities with that of pattern and systems integration in design and architecture. This was the starting point of the extensive mail correspondence I had with Dr Cardier at the beginning of 2017.

Our collaboration was important not only because it allowed for the first formulation and construct of hypersection, but also because it was essential in proving the efficacy of it in different domains. Cardier and I began hypothesising on non-mediated transition—the hypersection—as a method to produce innovation in collaborative communication, and as a possible alternative approach to the common intercommunication procedures. As a matter of fact, in the case of interdisciplinary collaborations the bending/adaptation of one involved expertise toward another, or both towards each other, may cause the results to fall on their former field. When it comes to newness, it seems that compromise may not always be the best option. Together we made visible, in a series of articles and projects, a diverse approach, one in which different perspectives co-locate without compromise and enable a result that exceeds both views.

The adaptation of hypersection as a communication strategy, founded on design principles, was the outcome of a fruitful comparison with other disciplines. Indeed, in order to frame and structure the concept of hypersection in its early stages, the correlation with philosophy was fundamental. From this perspective, the ideas of Graham Harman have largely influenced the formulation and implementation of my argument; even if this has only emerged in very recent times, the framework for an analogic transmission already existed—under the surface—in my early research. In truth, I knew about the work of Graham Harman even before 2017, but it was only after reading his article “Object-Oriented Ontology and Architecture” in the 2017 September Trebuchet issue that I started to perceive a clear link between his philosophy and my own research.

The central focus of Harman’s philosophy is that reality must exist beyond and regardless of correlations; in other words, an “object” can not be reduced to its inner or outer relations. This assertion implies that the essence of things do not relate to one another directly, and instead they are drawn from direct experience.

According to Graham, “two real objects make contacts not through direct impact but only by way of the fictional images they present to each other”. Similarly, by means of hypersection, I propose an alternative form of interaction, one that excludes mediation. A main precept is therefore commonly shared—the independence of reality/identity from direct interaction and correlation; Graham Harman’s non-relational becomes, in my interpretation, non-meditational.

Nevertheless, it is important to note, that hypersection remains, to me, a form of interaction, albeit a specific one. The hypersected subjects rotate and twist until they find a shared section—an intersection point; it is from this common area that a new item—an object—emerges by breaking all implicit functions, and thus acquiring identity and independence.

From this perspective, hypersection is close in meaning to what Graham Harman calls metaphor. He explains that when two objects—not literally resemblant—are associated, they initially repel one another until they break what they are as practical images. This collapse allows for the release of what Harman calls “a soft plasm ready to receive new form and structure”, a new entity, that somehow combines the two objects. A metaphor, he writes, is an inessential likeness that serves to fuse two vastly dissimilar entities into an impossible new one. A hypersection works in the same way, by making novelty emerge from the interaction of distinct unities. Both metaphoric figures and hypersection seem to work better when the correlated subjects are largely divergent.

These two forms of comparison do not share only the nature of connecting in a non explicit way, but also the prerequisite for this to happen: they both need similarities to hold together the combined items. In order for a hypersection or a metaphor to work, a coincidence must also exist, such as the point between the lines in the Euclidean intersection. At the same time, this coincidence must not be too evident otherwise the two entities will be partly similar, a condition that contradicts the prerequisite of dissimilarity and distinctness in hypersection.

The unity and identity of the subjects must be preserved in  hypersection the way in which it does in a metaphor. These small similarities, allowing for unmediated transitions, are what I define as “shared sections” and what Graham beautifully describes as “coincidences more profound of any resemblance and yet inessential”.

So, in conclusion, hypersection is a term that expresses the idea of a possible specific procedure to combine distant items—ideas, objects, patterns or systems—that I elaborated and formulated between 2017 and 2018, thanks to a fortunate coincidence of interdisciplinary work experiences, design speculations, philosophic suggestions and cultural encounters. This idea has allowed me to bring forth links between my academic research and work experience that were somehow hidden before that time, and this has rewarded the development with a precise new approach capable of unifying them: a design strategy. 

Hypersection makes non-mediated transitions between dissimilar items possible when they present shared sections; it enables their combination by breaking their pre-established connections and finally it promotes the generation of new original items. The concept expressed by the term ‘hypersection’ summarizes a specific transition and production process that happens only in a specific context and when following given rules. It is a design concept that has its roots in interdisciplinary contacts and transpositions. I therefore passionately believe that hypersection can be profitably applied as a communication and design strategy in both interdisciplinary and purely architectural projects. 

NICCOLO  CASAS