Scale exhibits regularities that transcend domain. Geoffrey West's scaling laws demonstrate that cities and organisms share metabolic exponents despite radical differences in composition—energy use scales with mass to the three-quarter power whether the system is a mouse or a metropolis. Albert-László Barabási's network science reveals the universal topologies underlying social, technological and biological systems: power-law degree distributions, small-world properties, preferential attachment. The Proportional Scale Index (PSI) emerges from this tradition as a metric designed to measure relational invariance across heterogeneous aesthetic phenomena—not to reduce complexity but to reveal the structural constraints within which variation occurs. Infrastructure Studies supplies the material systems to which PSI applies, from urban networks to archival distributions. Science and Technology Studies ensures attention to the situated practices that generate scalable patterns, preventing metric from becoming dogma.
Media Archaeology adds temporal depth to network analysis, revealing how historical protocols condition contemporary topologies. Political Ecology frames scaling within metabolic constraints, showing how resource flows impose limits on growth and connectivity. Decolonial Theory insists that universality must be provincialised, not assumed—scaling laws may hold, but their interpretation remains situated. Feminism reveals the gendered labour hidden in network metrics, the reproduction that sustains connectivity. Disability Studies tests PSI against non-normative bodies and environments, asking whether accessible design scales differently. Sound Studies applies scaling logic to acoustic spaces, revealing how vibration propagates across distances. Philosophical Botany asks whether vegetal time scales by the same laws as animal metabolism, proposing alternative exponents for systems organised around latency and germination. What emerges from this convergence is not a new mathematical formalism but a recognition that certain aesthetic operations—like those measured by PSI—function as scaling detectors, revealing structural invariants across disparate domains. This capacity to formalise relation without sacrificing situatedness, which might be termed socioplastics, names the infrastructural work of aesthetic forms that operate as instruments of proportional intelligence.
Lloveras, A. (2026) Socioplastics. https://antolloveras.blogspot.com
510-systemic-lock https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18682555 509-postdigital-taxidermy https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18682480 508-topolexical-sovereignty https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18682343 507-citational-commitment https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18475136 506-recursive-autophagia https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18681761 505-proteolytic-transmutation https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18681278 504-stratum-authoring https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18680935 503-semantic-hardening https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18680418 502-cameltag https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18680031 501-flow-channeling https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18678959
FAMILY
Infrastructure Studies, Ontology, Cybernetics, Systems Theory, Science and Technology Studies, Critical Urban Studies, Posthumanism, Sovereignty Studies, Semiotics, Media Archaeology, Complexity Theory, Spatial Justice, Political Ecology, Feminism and Gender Theory, Decolonial Theory, Anthropocene Studies, Relational Aesthetics, Commons Theory, Mobility Studies, Technological Critique, Software Studies, Platform Studies, Environmental Psychology, Phenomenology, Place Theory, Landscape Theory, Urban Ecology, Multispecies Studies, New Materialism, Speculative Realism, Actor-Network Theory, Biopolitics, Postcolonial Theory, Critical Aesthetics, Contemporary Art Theory, Social Practice Art, Spatial Politics, Urban Anthropology, Informality Studies, Urban Marginality, Digital Capitalism, Surveillance Studies, Smart City Theory, Sound Studies, Visual Anthropology, Cultural Anthropology, Humanistic Geography, Hybrid Geographies, Philosophical Botany, Neuroaesthetics, Perception Theory, Disability Studies, Intersectionality Theory, Utopian Theory, Postmodern Theory, Radical Pedagogy, Globalization Theory, Geopolitics, Marxist Theory, Post-Marxism, Value Theory, Evolutionary Economics, Game Theory, Network Science, Scaling Theory, Complex Systems, Historical Epistemology, Philosophy of Science, Interaction Design, Information Architecture, Interface Theory, Protocol Theory, Maintenance Studies, Critical Infrastructure Theory, Southern Epistemologies, Indigenous Theory, Territorial Feminism, Latin American Political Ecology, Subaltern Studies, Accelerationism, Materialist Philosophy, Post-Operaismo, Immaterialism, Object-Oriented Ontology, Digital Political Economy, Law and Technology, Algorithmic Culture, Urban Media Studies, Spatial Art Theory, Architectural Criticism, Urban Planning Theory, Sustainable Urbanism, Right to the City Theory, Environmental Humanities, Political Theology, Governmentality Studies, Logistics Studies, Data Studies, Institutional Theory.
