Waves Into Patterns is a book on changing scale, multiple perspectives, diversity, and ecological variability. It was published by Circadian Press and was first presented at the Miss Read book fair in Berlin, in October 2024.

Waves Into Patterns with the adjacent card deck is a device that can be used to induce ecological variability in everyday life and perception. It takes the reader on a journey through various types of variability encountered in complex living systems and nature, offering multiple perspectives and ways to engage with it. Starting from the simple schematic images of waves, zooming out into the processes of growth, saturation, release, and transformation, invoking analogies from social networks and population dynamics, music and movement, drawing parallels with I Ching and various other frameworks for modulating variability in perception.

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What is This Book About?

The basic premise of the book is that everything is a wave. And when waves come together, they form patterns. These patterns can be very different, depending on the combinations of waves. The objective of the book is to take the reader on a journey through all these different combinations and to attune their perception to the different types of variability that are found in nature.

Why nature? First, natural variability is aesthetically pleasing. It is pulsating with a steady rhythm (solar, circadian), but it is also variable and fractal in nature. It is also ecological in the sense that it has to take care both of the individual elements and of the environment where they coexist. So a natural system is a complex entity that’s highly adaptive and resilient; it has to know how to grow and decline, assemble and disperse. There’s something very beautiful about that.

In fact, every page in the book is a reflection on a specific aspect of those variable states. It uses science but also art and poetry to approach each of them from a different perspective. The intention is to communicate even the most complex concepts in the simplest, most intuitive way possible so that they can be easily understood and experienced. That’s why it is a “picture book for adults and children,” and it comes with an adjacent card deck that can be used to activate the narrative of the book in a non-linear way.

The objective of the book (and its practical side, which is an important part of every Circadian publication) is to present all those different modes of variability to the reader so that they can attune to each of them from multiple perspectives: visual, conceptual, sonic, and physical. The reader might realize that a certain type of variability is lacking or that there is too much of something in their life. One could also find oneself in a perfect non-equilibrium balance. In that case, the process of observation and perception-shifting becomes more of an aesthetic rather than a practical experience, which is also a journey of its own.

I believe that this ability to tune in with the natural rhythms, which have diversity and adaptability as their core organizing factors, can have an impact that goes beyond its practical and aesthetic implications and enters the realm of the political. In a time where totalitarian tendencies and unsustainable growth put the world at the brink of collapse, we can benefit from cultivating a kind of perception that is ecological at its core, that embraces polysingularity and gives value to multiple modes of change: celebrating growth but also accepting the necessity of decline, respecting the consistency of a rhythm but also embracing disruptions as the necessary stages for new beginnings.

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Why Did I Write This Book?

I started writing this book because I’ve always been fascinated by the dynamics found in nature. Natural processes can be irregular, variable, and diverse, but they can also be cyclical and maintain a steady rhythm. They can have slight deviations around the center, or they can be completely disruptive and even destructive. There’s usually an underlying principle that can be seen both in every little part or moment as well as the whole structure or process at once. We can observe it everywhere. Repetitive, concentric rings of cut trees, but also their fractal, irregular branches. Fractal coastlines and patterns of stones (Caillois wrote a whole book showing how the passage of time reflects in them), traces of waves in sand in a desert, patterns in seashells, whirlpools, the sound of the rain, cloud formations, and even the way matter is organized in the universe. Similar structures can be found in human bodies and even in our natural rhythms: from the heartbeat and breathing to our sleep and mood patterns. The big is reflected in the small, and the small is reflected in the big. There are multiple rhythms that are formed by waves of various frequencies and amplitudes that come together to form those rhythmical, irregular patterns. Even the matter in the universe seems to be organized in waves. Events happen in bursts (or waves). Why is it like that?

One of the main reasons is evolution. Natural systems had to survive and adapt, maintain resilience, and also have the ability to grow. In order to do that, they have to be sensitive both to the smallest perturbations and to the biggest impacts. A continuous pulse is a sign of life. Irregularity within this pulse is an indicator of the ability to adapt and evolve. An ecological system will have the capacity to exhibit multiple types of dynamics because it has to negotiate growth and decline, emergence of the new centers and gradual dissolution of the old ones, periods of relative stability and sudden disruption. That’s one of the main reasons why natural dynamics has such a high degree of variability, and I’m fascinated both by its practical reasons to exist as well as by its aesthetics.

When I thought about the best way to express this interest, I turned my attention to the scientific books from the 80s. It was a time when chaos theory and nonlinear dynamics were very popular. The images were created by hand, so there was something extremely organic about them: expressing a natural process that already carries a certain aesthetic but doing it in a completely analogue way, which only emphasized their irregular beauty. I got inspired by these technical images from the old books and by their attempt to explain complex things using simple 2-dimensional schemas. I also got fascinated by the human propensity to multiply things in categories in order to simplify them and create ontologies, which seemed akin to the process of cell division to me. That’s why I chose drawing as the main medium to express these ideas, and my intent was to use as little text as possible and to rely on those physical shapes, which would also be designed to make imagination and body move and to assume all those shapes, as if bringing them to life from their 2-dimensional plane into something where time and volume exist again.