The Passenger Without a Vehicle — Relational Content and Multiple Execution

An idea does not travel between modes: it is executed several times over, to the exact extent that it is made of differentials rather than qualities.

Arnaud Quercy · Multimodal Institute (research project)

I. Quaestio

Is what recurs from one mode to another the idea itself, persisting beneath the change of vehicle — or a structure of relations, re-instituted by rule in a mode that does not carry it by nature? And if something persists: where does it reside — in the signal, in the terms, or in the frame that reads them?

II. Current Statement

Proposition 2 — Transliteration. Any idea can be transported from one modality to another without losing its ideational identity. The vector changes. The passenger persists.

III. What My Practice Says

In my codex, I seek to create the conditions for carrying an idea from one mode to another — through rules that I stipulate, certainly, but keeping in mind that mode A and mode B speak two different languages. C and G form a perfect fifth: an association of low tonal variation, which stacks and reinforces itself without really changing the harmonic sense — a power chord, accumulation without competition. C♯ and C are two notes of strong dissonance: juxtaposing them creates an idea of great distance. In colour, I found a codex that respects this spirit: C is red, G red-orange; C♯ leans toward green-blue; the tritone of C is green — opposed, distant, and, laid one over the other or side by side, they form in colour a strong harmonic dissonance. That is what I am after: recovering the concept inherent in mode A within a language B that does not carry it by nature.

But I must be precise, for this is the point my first examination missed: the idea is not that of the fifth, the tritone or the b9. It is that of dissonance, of power, of distance. It is an idea — not a mere interval that the codex would simply translate. The idea is there at the base. The fifth is already an execution; red and red-orange are another.

My practice gives me several proofs of it, under different regimes. My Feigned Tongue is a system of composition, not of translation: the living word is regressed to its root and rebuilt with a chosen ending; the neologism carries no new meaning, it carries a texture; the loss is the product, not the defect. And it shows me something else, which I never intended to restrict: the multimodal does not play out only between different senses — it also plays out within a single sense. Living French and the Feigned Tongue are two modes within one language.

The Big Five: five micro-codices for a literature-to-music work — one per movement, each consumed by the work. The Rhinoceros I drew on the staves before placing the notes; the Buffalo's cycle of root movements carrying Francis's metamorphosis; and the Elephant, where the unborn child is not described musically: its presence is implicit, and it is what drives the couple apart — the absent in the position of cause.

Transcendental Aestheticism (AQC0211): a cinematic piece I created across several dimensions — text, image, music — yet the most interesting part lies in the image itself, an artifice. I wanted to work on one idea: contrast. Hence lights and plays of shadow. But I wanted to play with physics by changing one property: what if light could carry its own shadow? That is what you see — each bulb casts its own shadow onto the walls. Impossible in physics; realized here. I can execute the concept of contrast by changing the very property of light.

At the piano, the most economical case. The tritone C–G♭ sounds dissonant played alone. Yet it is the interval between the major third and the b7 — the signature of a dominant chord. I need only add a root, A♭, for C–G♭ to become A♭7: the dissonance disappears into the function. The fifth plays no discriminating role — present or absent, nothing changes. The tritone is still there, my playing is just as intentional; it is by adding that root that my intention changes the relation within the tritone. And I can push further: play an entire blues with nothing but tritones. It will sound like a blues, because the harmonic sequence unfolds to reveal the familiar models — I7, IV7, VI7, V7. It is the succession of tritones that forms the blues curve; the dissonances vanish into a rootless representation. The tritone, moreover, is a simple form of the multimodal all by itself: C–G♭ is at once A♭7 and D7.

Finally, I distrust the senses. They are biological, yet subject to interpretation — and interpretation is itself necessary to decode the limits of the signal. I am the proof of it, with my colour-blindness. My chromatic codex was born from that break: when the qualitative channel fails, what remains transmissible is the organization — and I routed it through harmonic structure.

IV. Videtur Quod — the Thesis, Sourced

Four grounds support my proposition.

The doctrine of structure. Russell ^[1]: the structure of a relation is what can be said of it without mentioning its terms; the field may change without the structure changing; the gramophone record and the music it plays are logically indiscernible although their empirical material differs entirely. Shapiro ^[2] establishes the formal respectability of isomorphism as "same structure". Berlyne ^[3] applies it to the arts: isomorphism between artwork and emotional state (Gestalt, Langer), and isomorphism without iconicity — the visual diagram of a musical work.

The relational identity of ideas. The commentary on Locke ^[4]: the identity of a simple idea is relational and functional, determined from without; two psychologically different contents are the same idea if their discriminative function coincides — one person's blue and another's yellow are equivalent if their co-occurrences are. Saussure ^[5]: value is purely differential; the knight is nothing outside the game, its material is indifferent. Hofstadter ^[6]: to perceive an isomorphism is to create meaning.

The amodal layer. Aristotle's common sensibles ^[7]: motion, rest, number, figure, magnitude — perceived by several senses. Dewey himself ^[8]: it is no metaphor when tones are called high and low — sounds, like colours, rise, fall, expand. Hanslick ^[9] concedes one element common to music and inner life: motion.

The non-real upstream. Ingarden ^[10]: the structural properties of the idea are univocally determined by its Content — an assortment of constants and a stock of variables, in which nothing depends on our caprice. Husserl via Chojna ^[11]: cultural objectivities are ideal in the same sense as language — repeatable as the same. Collingwood ^[12]: the work of art proper is not something seen or heard, but something imagined. Jauss ^[13], via Mukařovský: the structure can be described only through the succession of its concretizations. Survage via Mitry ^[14], a shared witness: rhythm fulfils the same function in both art forms.

V. Sed Contra — the Antithesis, Sourced

Three circles of witnesses against my proposition.

The original witnesses, redistributed. Dewey ^[8]: there are not two operations, one upon the outer material and one upon the inner stuff — the idea takes perceptible form only in the medium; each art speaks an untranslatable idiom. Carroll ^[15]: form is the relation among the parts of this particular work. Jakobson and Greimas via Nöth ^[16]: intersemiotic transposition is correlation between systems, not transport. Survage via Mitry ^[14], for his other face: coloured rhythm is not an interpretation of music.

The witnesses delivered by my own thesis block. Nozick ^[17]: isomorphism does not preserve organic unity; the corresponding relations are not salient in the domain of arrival — other relations perform the important unifications there. Stjernfelt ^[18]: ideal identity across a transformation is relative to the transformation chosen. Granger ^[19]: isomorphism is insufficient even for the equivalence of two handwritten letters. Hanslick and Weitz ^[20]: fixed correspondences between elements and affects are transparent, culturally relative symbols — dissonance as a sign of instability could be heard otherwise.

The witnesses internal to my practice. My Feigned Tongue itself: not a decoder — the neologism cannot be translated back; the loss is the product. My preface to The Big Five: "directly translated by a graphical view" — a dated state of my proto-vocabulary, whose gap with what the five movements actually do (five heterogeneous species of rule) is precisely the object of this note.

Part of this antithesis — Dewey, the common sensibles taken as perceptual facts, cultural relativity — rests on a realist plane: it constrains channels and receptions. I do not disqualify it on that account: I reassign it. It says nothing about the space of ideas; it says everything about executions, which remain its legitimate domain. Stjernfelt and Granger, for their part, survive any displacement: the question of identity across transformation arises in any space whatsoever, and I must answer it.

VI. Respondeo

The displacement that resolves the opposition came from my practice: the interval is not the idea. The fifth is not what must pass — it is already an execution, in the harmonic material, of an idea that precedes it: low tension, reinforcement, accumulation without competition. Red and red-orange are not its translation: they are a second execution of it, in the chromatic material. The schema is not a lateral arrow between two modes, but two vertical descents from a single upstream. From that point on, Nozick changes sides: his own model — abstract structures of which things are realizations — is exactly this schema; his objection (isomorphism between two realizations preserves nothing) misses the mark, for my two executions do not look at each other: they look upstream. Executions are sisters, not mirrors.

In one sense, no: nothing is transported. The same physical interval — six semitones — carries two different relations depending on whether it sounds bare or within A♭7; the signal underdetermines the relation. No content, no salience travels; the word "transliteration" is false; there is no transport.

In another sense, yes: the idea persists — because it was never on board. What is executed several times over is the relational content of the idea, and it alone. Five determinations define it.

First, the relational is not the terms: structure is what can be said of a relation without mentioning its terms; the field changes, the map remains.

Second, relational means constitutive. For ideas of this class, identity is not described by relations: it is made of them. Tension exists only between a state and its expected resolution; to ask it to exist "in itself" is empty. My colour-blindness proves it by subtraction: when the qualitative channel breaks, the discriminative function remains — and my codex was born from that remainder.

Third, the relational stands opposed to the qualitative — and it is a gradient; the distinction between the two is classical (Goodman ^[21], Langer ^[22]), the gradient is not. Qualitative content (this particular red, this particular timbre) is indexed to the occurrence of a channel; it is untransmissible even between receivers of the same mode. Relational content is defined by differentials and includes no channel in its definition. Most ideas are mixed: multiple execution carries the relational core and abandons the qualitative halo. Generative loss thereby acquires an address: what is lost in the descent is systematically the qualitative.

Fourth, the relational is not arbitrary. The Content of the idea comprises constants and variables. Contrast has as its constants two poles, opposition, co-presence; as its variables the material, the scale, even the arity. My bulb casting its own shadow varies a variable — two terms folded into one — while holding the constants: that is why it is recognized as an execution of contrast. The transformation is not freely chosen: it is constrained by the constants. What I stipulate is the filling of the variables — the anchoring of the terms (that C should be red), the material, and, in simulated modes, even the laws of the material.

Fifth, the relational demands the rule. Relations exist in overabundance in any material; none is salient by nature. The function of my codex is to elect, among the relations the material admits, those that will carry the constants of the idea, and to confer salience upon them through the constancy of execution — one note suffices (the root that requalifies the tritone), or a series (four hundred canvases, the golden rule line by line). What the codex does between modes, the tonic does within the mode.

Two consequences complete my resolution. First, a decision of vocabulary, which I assume as a decision: a mode is a ruled space — a material plus the system of constraints that governs it — individuated by its rules, not by the sensory channel. Living French and my Feigned Tongue are two modes within a single sense; a mode can be instituted, laws included. A frame, by contrast, is a selection within a mode, operated with the mode's own resources: the root, the curve, the position in the line. The frame elects a reading; changing modes requires a codex. Second, the frame can vanish: in my rootless blues, no root ever sounds — the roots are places of indeterminacy that listening concretizes, and the execution is completed in the calibrated receiver. At the limit of the vanished frame, what appears is not chaos: it is reception. And indeterminacy itself has two figures: the empty place, to be concretized (the absent root), and the double place, to be adjudicated (the tritone, its own inversion, at once A♭7 and D7 — plurivocity by symmetry, not by lack).

My synthesis produces what neither thesis nor antithesis contained: the relational/qualitative gradient as the condition of multiple execution; paradoxical execution — the ruled violation of a mode's laws as proof of an upstream; and the two figures of indeterminacy.

VII. Verdict

The letter is corrected without withdrawal: transported and any leave my statement; the passenger remains, requalified — it persists because it was never aboard any vehicle.

VIII. Restatement

An idea is executed several times over to the exact extent that it is made of differentials — tension, distance, opposition, absence, reinforcement — and not of qualities indexed to a channel. What is executed is neither the term nor the sensation: it is the play of differentials that constitutes the idea, with its constants that no execution may betray and its variables that each execution fills in its own material, even rewriting that material's laws if the idea demands it. Nothing travels: the same interval, intact, changes nature according to the frame that reads it, and a single note suffices to institute the frame. My codex elects, in each material, the differentials that will carry the play, and the constancy of execution gives them the salience the material did not give them. I can hollow the chord down to its shell: as long as the curve holds, the idea sounds — and the places left empty are not missing, they are the exact aperture that reception fills. I decide — and it is a decision, not a thesis — that a mode is defined by its rules and not by its channel: it is this decision, declared here, that authorizes me to say that my Feigned Tongue and living French are two modes within a single sense, and it remains open to anyone who would stipulate another. The passenger persists because it is made of nothing but differentials, and differentials never needed a vehicle.

IX. Debt Note

The relational and functional identity of ideas is established by Locke (Essay, II.xxxii) and generalized by Saussure; the notion of structure independent of its terms by Russell; the distinction between the constants and variables of Content, the places of indeterminacy and concretization by Ingarden (1931); the tripartition of transpositions — intralingual, interlingual, intersemiotic — by Jakobson (1959); and the partition between the transmissible and the untransmissible operated by a ruled system is established by Goodman ^[21] — the constitutive properties the notation prescribes against the contingent ones it leaves free — and by Langer ^[22] — the pattern that carries over against the presented quality that does not. My proposition owes them its foundation. I claim as my own not the distinction, which is classical, but the gradient: that every idea is a relational/qualitative mixture, that its multiple executability is proportional to its relational share, and that every execution performs the same sorting — it carries the core, it abandons the halo; where Goodman has the constitutive/contingent line drawn by antecedent practice, I place it in the composition of the content itself, practice not drawing the line but building the salience. I likewise claim paradoxical execution and the figure of the double place.

X. Falsification Condition

My proposition falls if either of two cases occurs: an idea of purely relational content proves inexecutable in a second material despite a rule instituted and executed to the end; or a qualitative content is established as transmissible as such between receivers. A practicable test: execution by virtual frame (rootless) is verifiable receiver by receiver — it succeeds in the calibrated listener, fails in the uncalibrated one, and the gap is observable. The definition of the mode as a ruled space and the ontology of the upstream are, for their part, decisions: neither true nor false, and I declare them as such.

XI. Remaining Objections

Dewey keeps a hold on me: the idea of The Big Five was already formed in a medium — the language of my prefaces. The pure upstream, prior to any material, remains undemonstrated; this note establishes multiple executability, not the immateriality of the idea.

Technical virtuality (the simulated material with parameterizable laws) and ontological virtuality (the mode of being of ideas) are distinct; the former does not prove the latter, and I must not let one slide into the other.

The chromatic equivalent of the operator remains open: if my codex executes the tritone in colours, does it also execute the root that requalifies it? A fertile question for the codex itself.

The double place (plurivocity by symmetry): I claim it subject to examination — a dedicated inquiry must verify that it is not anticipated (Ingarden, Eco, theories of ambiguity). The gradient claim, for its part, has been examined adversarially within the present note: the distinction is anticipated (Goodman, Langer), the gradient stands.

Threads passed on to the following notes: P9 (the perceptual antithesis to be re-examined under my definition of the mode); P13 (the address of loss); P8 (seriality as the construction of salience — which Goodman feeds: notation follows lines antecedently drawn by practice); P16/P17 (the rootless as the threshold of reception); P18a (the revealed tritone — "it was A♭7" — as a case of ricochet).

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