WHY A TETRAHEDRON?

1.Minimum system: the tetrahedron is the first case of insideness and outsideness.

2.The regular tetrahedron fits inside the cube, with its edges providing the diagonals across the cube's six faces, and thereby supplying the six supporting struts needed to stabilize the otherwise unstable cube. Furthermore, two intersecting regular tetrahedra outline all eight vertices of the cube.

3.The tetrahedron is unique in being its own dual.

4.The six edges of the regular tetrahedron are parallel to the six intersecting vectors that define the vector equilibrium.

5.Similarly, the four faces of the regular tetrahedron are the same four planes of symmetry inherent in the vector equilibrium and in cubic closepacking of spheres. The tetrahedron is thus at the root of an omnisymmetrical space-filling vector matrix, or isotropic vector matrix.

6.When the volume of a tetrahedron is specified as one unit, other ordered polyhedra are found to have precise whole-number volume ratios, as opposed to the cumbersome and often irrational quantities generated by employing the cube as the unit of volume. Furthermore, the tetrahedron has the most surface area per unit of volume.

7.Of all polyhedra, the tetrahedron has the greatest resistance to an applied load. It is the only system that cannot "dimple"; reacting to an external force, a tetrahedron must either remain unchanged or turn completely "inside out."

8.The surface angles of the tetrahedron add up to 720 degrees, which is the "angular takeout" inherent in all closed systems.

9.The tetrahedron is the starting point, or "whole system," in Fuller's "Cosmic Hierarchy," and as such contains the axes of symmetry that characterize all the polyhedra of the isotropic vector matrix, or face-centered cubic symmetry in crystallography.

10.Packing spheres together requires a minimum of four balls, to produce a stable arrangment, automatically forrning a regular tetrahedron. The centers of the four spheres define the tetrahedral vertices. In Fuller's words, "four balls lock."

11.It has been demonstrated that many unstable polyhedra can be folded into tetrahedra, as in the jitterbug transformation.

12.Fuller refers to the six edges of a tetrahedron as one "quantum" of structure, because the number of edges in regular, semiregular, and high-frequency geodesic polyhedra is always a multiple of six.

INTERVALS

A n 0 time tetrahedron is built from six intervals, each with a corresponding color, sound and basic meaning:

1. red: family
2. orange: finances
3. yellow: creativity
4. green: love
5. blue: communication
6. purple: spirituality

The length is determined by the importance one places on a particular interval. The varying lengths of intervals affect the initial shape and how it evolves as it starts replicating. The combination of these intervals results in four intersections (or the nexus), where memes reside. These initial four memes are analogous to the four letters of the genetic alphabet. A,T,C,G: Asynchronous, Time, Communication, Generation.

MEMES & INTERVALS

The evolution of the n 0 time body is dependent on the interaction of the physical and virtual spaces. In the physical installation, people who spend the time navigating the shapes generate replication of intervals. This can be done by anyone and it is preferable to have people interact with the body in order to create space for addition of memes. Memes are added here, and only by those who are invited by the owners. Invitations are made via e-mail or by handing out n 0 time meme donor cards. Once the body has grown to 150 intervals, it implodes and returns to its original state. The implosion is a public event that is broadcast to the entire n 0 time community. Everyone has 48 hours to see the body overflowing with links and memes and are able to experience the implosion at a set time. The owner has an option of changing the initial intervals and memes and the process begins. The overflowing body is archived and only accessible to the owner.

MEMES

meme: (pron. 'meem') A contagious idea that replicates like a virus, passed on from mind to mind. Memes function the same way genes and viruses do, propagating through communication networks and face-to-face contact between people. The root of the word "memetics," a field of study which postulates that the meme is the basic unit of cultural evolution. Examples of memes include melodies, icons, fashion statements and phrases.

A meme is a cognitive or behavioral pattern that can be transmitted from one individual to another one. Since the individual who transmitted the meme will continue to carry it, the transmission can be interpreted as a replication: a copy of the meme is made in the memory of another individual, making him or her into a carrier of the meme. This process of self-reproduction, leading to spreading over a growing group of individuals, defines the meme as a replicator, similar in that respect to the gene. Dawkins, 1976; Moritz, 1991

The most important medium at present is the emerging global computer network, which can transmit any type of information to practically any place on the planet, in a negligible time.

"I think that a new kind of replicator has recently emerged on this very planet. It is staring us in the face. It is in its infancy, still drifting clumsily about in its primeval soup, but already it is achieving evolutionary change at a rate that leaves the old gene panting far behind. The new soup is the soup of human culture. We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. 'Mimeme' comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like 'gene'. I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to meme. If it is any consolation, it could alternatively be thought of as being related to 'memory', or to the French word même. It should be pronounced to rhyme with 'cream.' Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms and eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation. If a scientist hears, or reads about, a good idea, he passes it on to his colleagues and students. He mentions it in his articles and his lectures. If the idea catches on, it can be said to propagate itself, spreading from brain to brain."
               Dawkins, 1976

Dawkins listed the following three characteristics for any successful replicator:

copying-fidelity: the more faithful the copy, the more will remain of the initial pattern after several rounds of copying. If a painting is reproduced by making photocopies from photocopies, the underlying pattern will quickly become unrecognizable.
fecundity: the faster the rate of copying, the more the replicator will spread. An industrial printing press can churn out many more copies of a text than an office copying machine.
longevity: the longer any instance of the replicating pattern survives, the more copies can be made of it. A drawing made by etching lines in the sand is likely to be erased before anybody could have photographed or otherwise reproduced it.

In these general characteristics, memes are similar to genes and to other replicators, such as computer viruses or crystals. The genetic metaphor for cultural transmission is limited since genes can only be transmitted from parent to child ("vertical transmission"). Memes can be transmitted between any two individuals ("horizontal transmission" or "multiple parenting"). In that sense they are more similar to parasites or infections (cf. Cullen, 1998).

Memes only take minutes to replicate, and thus have potentially much higher fecundity. On the other hand, the copying-fidelity of memes is in general much lower. If a story is spread by being told from person to person, the final version will be very different from the original one. It is this variability or fuzziness that perhaps distinguishes cultural patterns most strikingly from DNA structures: every individual's version of an idea or belief will be in some respect different from the others'.

Examples of memes in the animal world are most bird songs, and certain techniques for hunting or using tools that are passed from parents or the social group to the youngsters (Bonner, 1980). In human society, almost any cultural entity can be seen as a meme: religions, language, fashions, songs, techniques, scientific theories and concepts, conventions, traditions, etc. The defining characteristic of memes as informational patterns, is that they can be replicated in unlimited amounts by communication between individuals, independently of any replication at the level of the genes.

Variation, replication and selection on the basis of meme fitness determine a complex dynamics. The medium through which memes is communicated, and the copying-fidelity will influence this dynamics, fecundity and longevity it allows. Perhaps the most powerful medium for meme transmission is the computer network, and this implies some specific characteristics for memes on the net.

The most important medium at present is the emerging global computer network, which can transmit any type of information to practically any place on the planet, in a negligible time.

This highly increased efficiency of transmission directly affects the dynamics of replication. Meme transmission over the network has a much higher copying-fidelity than communication through image, sound or word. Digitalization allows the transfer of information without loss, unlike the analog mechanisms of photocopying, filming or tape recording. Fecundity too is greatly increased, since computers can produce thousands of copies of a message in very little time. Longevity, finally, becomes potentially larger, since information can be stored indefinitely on disks or in archives. Together, these three properties ensure that memes can replicate much more efficiently via the networks. This makes the corresponding memo-types and socio-types potentially less fuzzy.

In addition, the network transcends geographical and cultural boundaries. This means that a new development does not need to diffuse gradually from a center outward, as, e.g., fashions or rumors do. Such diffusion can easily be stopped by different kinds of physical or linguistic barriers. On the net, an idea can appear virtually simultaneously in different parts of the world, and spread independently of the distance or proximity between senders and receivers.

Source: Pricipia Cybernetica

n 0 time SOCIETY

The evolution of the n 0 time body is dependent on the interaction of the physical and virtual spaces. In the physical installation, people who spend the time navigating the shapes generate replication of intervals. This can be done by anyone and it is preferable to have people interact with the body in order to create space for addition of memes. Memes are added here, and only by those who are invited by the owners. Invitations are made via e-mail or by handing out n 0 time meme donor cards. [link]

Once the body has grown to 1000 intervals, it implodes and returns to its original state. The implosion is a public event that is broadcast to the entire n 0 time community. Everyone has a moment to see the body overflowing with links and memes and are able to experience the implosion at a set time. The owner has an option of changing the initial intervals and memes and the process begins. The overflowing body is archived and only accessible to the owner.