The Forward and Backward-Growing Root

It seems that the rhizome is multiplicitous in its basic nature, representing and reflecting the ideas presented in each of our readings this week. In Deleuze and Guattari, it is apparent that a rhizome is composed of linearity, but allows for bizarre connections between these "lines of segmentarity and straficiation... and the line of flight or deterritorialization." This idea reminds me of servers and the way that they allow users to jump from connection to connection (as "it has neither beginning nor end, but always a middle") on the Internet, as Erika pointed out, but how the loss of a server can cause the inability to complete those connections to information that is now inaccessible. It also reminds me of a network like Wikipedia, where articles are built both upwards and downwards and grow in a non-linear fashion. However, if any of the information in the original article is wrong or misinformed, and has been expanded with the develompent of other people's ideas, then all of that information is unusable.

I also saw the idea of the rhizome repeated in Ascott's article, where a work of art can breed a multitude of reflections or reactions and spur different behaviors, all of which, however, are interconnected, as that of the artist and the spectator. Additionally, the work of art is seen as "the substance between" in the same way that the rhizome is a continuous, growing middle. Art, as both a reflection on society and a forward-moving force of it, occupies a rhizomatic existence in its horizontal growth that seems to grow both forwards and backwards.

Ultimately, it is inevitable to see this multiplicity in Borges' work as well, with the maze-like growth of the labyrinth and the duality of the maze and the novel left by Ts'ui Pen.

Time - I think a fitting symbol or icon for this idea would be the telecope or perhaps a magnifying glass. As we discussed and saw in Waking Life, time can exist in many ways, but its telescoping nature is something that we all acknowledged and yet struggled to define and comprehend. A magnifying glass also seems to fit, as it exhibits the same properties of the telescope, and also hints that time passes as it is being perceived, almost in the way that people think of glasses as doing the same (which reminds me of the idea of perception as glasses - for example, when people say "rose-colored glasses" when talking about a positive outlook).

History - I like Erika's idea of using eyes, as our discovery of history characterized it as personal and relative. However, I might take it a step further and use eyeglasses, as also mentioned above, as the icon for history since it is the individual's perception of an event that creates a historical basis or background, and glasses also embody the idea of a personalized history.