Did the Falling Line Kill the Circle?
:from ‘The Fall’
Yi Jinkyung
Suyuneomo, Seoul National University of Science and Technology
Translation: Minji Chun
Translation: Minji Chun
Numerous circular boxes are arranged horizontally. Yes, there are laboratories like Skinner’s Box everywhere in the world we live today. The reason that circles are ubiquitous is probably not just because of the abundance of circles. As long as you can connect a point in a circle with any point outside the circle, and as long as the straight line opens the boundary of the circle and connects inside and outside, the circle exists everywhere.
Still, what is trapped in the circle and what is outside may not be the same. It is because we are surrounded by many variables outside the functional relationship even though only two variables—stimulus and action, substituting cause and effect—are given to the being trapped in the circle and it is surrounded by the monotony of undifferentiated repetition that confirms the functional relationship. We are not in a painful repetition where difference has been erased, but still in a world of pleasant repetition where even repetition becomes another name for the difference.
In that experimental box of the repetition without difference, success means safely milling about in a closed room. It also means becoming an embodiment of an established function while hovering. However, even if praise for scientific discovery is given in addition to daily rewards, no mouse would be obsessed with that tedious success. They mill about, but they leave the circle while escaping the outer edge of conditioning. Exit? That is not the case. As the mouse escapes, it soon falls far below the horizontal world where circles are arranged in an orderly manner. Or maybe every exit starts with a crash. Whether they know this or not, the mice escape from each circular room and trace the trajectory of the fall. Does the fact that the trajectory is not just a straight line mean that it is not being pulled by a single force of gravity? Thanks to this, it became a corkscrew-shaped fall that is different from the straight fall that makes steel cage bars in a laboratory or zoo. How terrible it must be if even falling is straight? When it is a body that identifies a variable, the body is only a point, no matter how large it is. One point connected to the terminal point. That is the key factor of linear functional relationships modeled on one-to-one correspondence between x and y. Therefore, no matter how busy the mouse moves in a circular room, it is merely a single point. On the other hand, when falling out of the functional relationship, the falling mouse draws a line. Even the smallest mouse draws a line. The reason why the line of fall itself is crooked is probably because it is a fall caused by deviating from the space of the functional relationship. Since the mouse deviates from the linear relationship—a straight line—it is a line of repeating microscopic departures, an aggregation of small departures.
The vertical lines drawn by the falling mice line up like trees, creating a forest of falls. Under the world created by orderly circles, a new dimension of the world emerges. There is a three-dimensional world distinct from the planar multiplication of one-dimensional linear relationships. The world created by the falling mice is three-dimensional. Of course, it even includes a circular laboratory as part of itself. Even if the arbitrary line before the laboratory is primary, as long as the laboratory exists and the line falls away from it, there can be no such world as the laboratory's pure fall and pure departure.
The video captures the world created by mice falling from an orderly flat world into new dimensions. The trajectory of the falling mice is also captured from afar. However, the video slowly zooms in and comes to the world of circles. To see the reason for the fall, or the departure, approach the circular room with a bird’s eye view. And then the camera pans down once more, following the falling creatures. It shows us the perspective of the falling beings. A closed circle of laboratory is seen over the line of falling which lines up like a rope. The bottom of the laboratory is seen. The closed circle of the laboratory is seen over the trajectory of falling which lines up like a rope. The bottom of the laboratory is seen. The “non-floor” under the laboratory, and the void of supporting grounds, appears wide. The trajectories of the fall filling the void stand like trees in a forest. The world is formed out of the trajectories of falling and lines of departure that fill that void and create the forest. If there is anything that kills the circle, it is not a straight vector, but rather these lines of departure.