catastrophe

My reaction to Rene Thom's article can be summed up with an equation. If you take the degree of complexity of his argument, d, and multiply it by the combination of my understanding of the principles, U, and the new model of meaning he is establishing (M), you can find the state of my brain after reading the article, or b. Thus, when completed, i felt d(U+M)=b.

Ok, I got that out of the way. In all seriousness, Thom had devised a new way of talking about continuity and space in a qualitative, rather than quantitative sense, something quite foreign to mathematics. It was difficult to really decipher what it is he was saying between all of the equations, but the other writing (The Elementary Catastrophes, author unknown?) cleared a few things up, defining catastrophe theory in terms of physics, or at least setting up a physical analog (the metal clicker) to better explain the principles. However, the graphing of the more complicated behaviors started to melt my brain a bit.

Eisenman sees the potential in this catastrophe viewpoint as a way to redifine the purpose of architecture, a response to media saturation and the shortening of our collective attention spans, arguing that architecture is less about space now and more about event. I'm not sure I wholly agree with him on this, but I can see how he might get excited about the potential within the theory.