Poetics of Variation

A poetics of variation names variation as a principle of both inquiry and composition. Poetics brings the procedures of making and the organization of the resulting work into the same frame.

Variation then operates in two connected ways:

• In the method: reading, describing, modeling, programming, and staging become ways of approaching the source material differently. Each operation changes what can be encountered and what questions become possible.
• In the work: those differences acquire form: as divergent descriptions, beings, relations, mechanics, or worlds. The work can sustain several possibilities and let their differences matter.

The crucial point is that variation produces knowledge through the differences it makes.

Variation proposes a particular continuation of what has been received. The resulting work gives that continuation a form that can itself be encountered, questioned, and varied.