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Forms

The Forms are a series of experimental, avant-garde philosophical works of literature written by one Tikhon J. Kartashov, a somewhat well-known Russian writer and director born in St. Petersburg. The series analyzes different perspectives and iterations upon certain basic mental actions (referred to by Kartashov as ‘Fundamental Processes’), and are individually split into sections that explore approximately equal conceptual breadths and depths on a variety of scales, eventually coalescing with the book itself being subject to the fundamental process it is attempting to describe. The books are originally written in Russian and are translated to other languages by paid fans and editors prior to their official release.

The series is considered a modern cult classic and heralded as one of the most consistent and greatest experimental philosophical works of the post-Creation era. It is highly debated as to which entry in the series is the best. The series has gained a somewhat small but incredibly passionate cult following that is evenly spread throughout most of the Polyverse in its entirety. Kartashov themself estimates that the series has a following of approximately 17 million beings across the Polyverse.

In order of publication, the Forms series are as follows:

  1. A Deconstruction of Forms (published 353137.932 PCT)
  2. A Connection of Forms (published 687241.864 PCT)
  3. A Balance of Forms (published 1011355.446 PCT)
  4. A Synthesis of Forms (published 1415998.006 PCT)

A fifth entry into the Forms series has been stated by Kartashov to be in its conceptual phase, though it has yet to have a confirmation for an actual release.

Format

The Forms series of books are all written in a somewhat similar format. Each book is split into four sections, each with similar titles. The book breaks down the fundamental process first with relation to the human form and its facets; then, a breakdown with relation to the conceptual form and its myriad ways to be perceived; third, the meta-conceptual form and the constituent elements of the form itself; and finally, the book breaks itself down using the smattering of perspectives of the fundamental process discussed prior, degrading itself into a barely-comprehensible form.

This format is not deviated from in any major way throughout the series, although it is frequently argued by fans that A Balance of Forms is the least adherent to the format due to its exploration of the particularly moral and philosophical aspects of the human form of its fundamental process as opposed to the more physical aspects of the human form.

Deconstruction

A Deconstruction of Forms is the first book in Kartashov’s Forms series. It tackles the fundamental process of deconstruction, or the separation of something into multiple constituent elements.

The first quarter of the book is titled A Deconstruction of Human Forms. It deals mostly with motifs of fear and loss, and their relations to the various methods of deconstruction of the human form. The section discusses the concept and primitive fear behind body horror, the ways the human form is naturally physically deconstructed, the ways the human form is unnaturally physically deconstructed, the ways the human form is deconstructed mentally, and lastly an explanation of human philosophical and psychological vices with relation to the effects of particular kinds of deconstruction.

The second quarter of the book, titled A Deconstruction of Conceptual Forms, deals primarily with motifs of separation and impossibility, as well as how they relate to the various entities that coalesce to form concepts that can then be deconstructed into smaller constituent concepts (which Kartashov calls ‘sub-concepts’). The concepts discussed in this section revolve primarily around three examples. The first is the example of spirals and the mathematical and philosophical elements that define them, which is pointed out to be microcosmic of the tangential and coil-like nature of the discussion and process of deconstruction as a whole (the book also makes a case against the use of a mandelbrot fractal as the symbol of the analogy). The second example used in this section of the book is physics, which begins with thermodynamics and fluid dynamics and is eventually broken down beyond sub-quantum physics. The third example is concepts themselves, which are broken down into and eventually beyond the most fundamental parts of human rationale.

The third quarter, titled A Deconstruction of Meta-Conceptual Forms, deals with a motif of recursion and how it is tended towards as concepts are broken down further into the impossible sub-constituents that define other sub-constituents. The primary example of this section is the concept of deconstruction itself, which is brought into two different simultaneous deconstructions of the concept of deconstruction - one to an impossible extreme in order to demonstrate the properties of recursion, and the other to a large breadth of less impossible elements that can then be broken down into one another in a strange tangle of recursive elements - in order to illustrate the complexity of breakdown as a fundamental process.

The fourth and final quarter of the book, titled A Deconstruction of Deconstructions, is the most experimental of its sections. It deals with, as the title implies, a deconstruction and breakdown of the fundamental process of the novel. The breakdown is itself deconstructed alongside the format of the book until it eventually forms a state of mere organized rows of letters and punctuation marks, followed by several pages of sketches of highly simplistic, mysterious glyphs (which Kartashov has estimated would be the component elements of letters themselves) organized in a particular order until the organization is lost entirely and the sketches become a chaotic mess of printed lines. The book ends with several blank pages and then a final sketch of a mess of glyphs that are set up in the structure of an ‘about the author’ segment, where the glyphs structurally shift into the walls of a drawing of a structurally impossible library.

Connection

A Connection of Forms is the second entry in the titular Forms series. This book tackles the fundamental process of connection, or the association of multiple somethings together.

The first quarter of the book is titled A Connection of Human Forms. It deals primarily with motifs of reality, transhumanism, and pain. It posits that every person on the planet is irrevocably connected, and that the severing of connections with others is what can cause some of the greatest pains humans can experience. It goes on to state that the whole of humanity could already be trans-humanistically considered as neurons in a worldwide brain, with the bulk of output of it all now being primarily on the internet (although given the fictional universe the book is written in, this is actually about the Aethernet). The book points out that if connections are fully severed and memories are cut out, one essentially ceases to exist - one instead exists only internally, solipsistically, within a vacuum and with no one else having the knowledge that they may perhaps exist anywhere else. Lastly, it notes that memories are the primary ways humans experience reality, and it is through memories and thoughts exclusively that humans are able to maintain connections in the ways they do.

The second quarter of the book, A Connection of Conceptual Forms, works with motifs of wholeness and comprehension. The section explains that connection and its various elements, such as congruence, are what create the basis for many other fundamental processes. It deals with the examples of technology and consciousness, and how the two can be connected in many ways, making reference to popular pre-Creation cyberpunk novels from the Cosmos Sector (a personal favorite of Kartashov) as well as the contexts in which those novels were published.

The third quarter of the book, A Connection of Meta-Conceptual Forms, attempts to connect the fundamental process of connection in and of itself to other fundamental processes and innate philosophical arguments that humans create. The book takes careful precaution not to break down those fundamental logics, and instead merely observes and connects them between each other, attempting to display how they work together to create a perception of the world. The book points out that through many of these arguments, connections can be made to things that they do not appear to possibly be connected to at first glance.

The fourth and final quarter of the book, A Connection of Connections, is the quarter that sees the book itself being connected more and more abstractly to other things. The final quarter begins as a massive index of inspiration that can be traced back and forth between the works cited and the work at hand. As the index continues, it becomes more and more abstract in the means by which it is inspired and cited, with the format becoming inconsistent and more and more based on what connects each source to one another more than the book itself. The book then suddenly switches its tactic to the polar opposite of this, with the sources instead being focused on connecting to the book and not connecting to one another. This methodology evidently fails and the book de-rails into an index of its sources’ indexes overlayed on top of one another, coalescing in the pages becoming so dense with text that they blend together into pages of nothing but pure black ink. The ink gradually fades away from subsequent pages in seemingly random patterns until they consist of string-like formations of ink, ending in somewhat of a web formation over what seems to be a sketch of a small hole.

Balance

A Balance of Forms is the third book in Kartashov’s series of experimental, avant-garde books, Forms. The book deals with the fundamental process of balance, or the tendency or pull to make two things equal in measure.

The first quarter of the book is A Balance of Human Forms. It focuses mostly on the balance people tend to associate with physical existence versus mental existence. It delves into this comparison in a variety of ways, particularly dealing with the divide between the actual physical realm and the realm humans are able to experience through their senses and the balance that can be seen in some media between the body and the mind, as well as the philosophical issues that come with associating balance between two different things. The section is relatively shallow in its exploration of the balance that can be found in the physical human form, opting instead to focus on contrasts between physicality and mentality, a fact that has disappointed some fans of the series.

The second quarter of the book, A Balance of Conceptual Forms, deals with the perceived balance versus the actual balance between two philosophical ideas. The primary examples in this section of the book are the balance between order and chaos, the balance between smaller things and larger things, and the balance between humanity and inhumanity in terms of conceptual design.

The third quarter of the book, A Balance of Meta-Conceptual Forms, has much to do with the balance that can be found between balance and imbalance. The section is considered to be particularly esoteric and pseudo-philosophical as opposed to something written on a clearly-delineated basis - the section attempts to describe how there is some sort of discrepancy between whether or not there is a balance or an imbalance between balance and imbalance as philosophical properties. The section later describes how balance is used to assist in the perception of the world philosophically, and why balance is important for humans to keep in mind when perceiving things.

The fourth quarter of the book, A Balance of Balances, attempts to apply balance to the book it has been written within. As such, the section is as long as the other three quarters combined, providing for an even, symmetrical one-half of the entire book’s page count. The section opens by attempting to locate and create the exact opposite thesis that the entire rest of the book has been attempting to make, which eventually degrades into an exact copy of the sections earlier in the book where all the text is mirrored. It degrades further into pages where half the text is mirrored, progressing with visual refraction until the pages are comprised solely of fractals of indiscernible, symmetrical glyphs in various patterns that iterates upon itself, until the latter half of that section begins to revert into fewer and fewer refractions, bringing the book back into comprehensibility. The book finishes with a few pages written in the style of a book that Kartashov sees as the polar opposite and counterbalance of the Forms series.

Synthesis

A Synthesis of Forms is the fourth entry into the Forms series. It works with the fundamental process of synthesis, or the combination of two things into one greater thing.

The first quarter of the book is A Synthesis of Human Forms. Kartashov returns to the theme of transhumanism and the creation of a greater human being, both philosophically and physically. This section of the book deals with the examples of the unification of people under the Aethernet, the creation of a greater human form physically with genetic modification, and the creation of a synthesis of human ideals in the Grand Ideal that is agreed to be followed by all members of the Polyverse. Kartashov challenges the Grand Ideal a bit as well, stating that it is an incomplete synthesis” and that it does not fully represent the entirety of ideological possibility-space that the Polyverse exhibits and allows.

The second quarter of the book, A Synthesis of Conceptual Forms, is about the synthesis of smaller ideas into larger ones. The section uses examples of complexity and simplicity. The section details how ideas start with simplicity, but with a variety of approaches, end up becoming something closer to complexity, but that the opposite can also happen as well, and these strategies can be reverse-engineered to become their opposites.

The third quarter of the book, A Synthesis of Meta-Conceptual Forms, deals with the notion of synthesis itself. The section explains that synthesis can be applied to itself in the sense that as an idea, synthesis was created from the synthesis of smaller ideas. It explains that deconstruction is just as essential as synthesis, even stating outright that the book itself would naturally cover many of the same grounds as the first book of the series, A Deconstruction of Forms, does because the two topics are so closely intertwined. Extensive reference is, naturally, also made to the third book in the series, A Balance of Forms.

The fourth and final quarter of the book, A Synthesis of Syntheses, sees the book attempting to apply synthesis to itself. It begins with an attempt to add onto the idea of synthesis to create a concept that encapsulates both synthesis and deconstruction that is not also the larger category that synthesis and deconstruction can be found within. This section is then layered on top of itself as more and more perspectives and sub-topics are applied onto the writing that it becomes incomprehensible in its direction and pacing. From there, the novel grows denser in its glyphs, slowly turning entirely to pages of pure black ink, similar to the final section of A Balance of Forms. After this, the book attempts to use negative space, and from there other more obscure ways to continue what it is attempting to say over top of these black pages. It coalesces into a massive map that is only cognizable once the pages are aligned on a grid, with some of the text on each page being decoded into its position on the grid. The map displays what seems to be the entirety of concept-space, starting from the bottom with a section of fundamental processes and moving upwards to more and more complex concepts until the highest layer, wherein Kartashov has allegedly written about what he believes to be the ‘greatest concepts’ and what constitutes them. This map, however, has yet to be entirely deciphered by any of the fans of Kartashov’s writing, as fans have declared it to be too dense in its layering and symbolism to be fully understood. This map is known by many fans as the most esoteric of Kartashov’s work, as well as some of the most awe-inspiring in its grandeur.

Forms

The Forms are a series of experimental, avant-garde works of literature by Tikhon J. Kartashov about hypothetical formations of rocks stacked near a fictional coastline. The Forms are a series of experimental, avant-garde works of literature about a cabal of elite business professionals who plot to control the global economy exclusively through the manipulation of napkins as a good. The Forms are a series of experimental, avant-garde films detailing the mundane everyday life of post-Creation civilians, filmed entirely without the consent of anyone involved. The Forms are a series of audio recordings found on a flash drive placed atop a statue in St. Petersburg. The Forms is a short story about a fictional series of ideas created primarily using retrofitted, unused worldbuilding notes. The Forms are a selection of trees discovered in a rural neighborhood in the Novosibirsk Oblast. The Forms is a digital collage of photos taken of stray cats stretching across urban architecture. The Forms are a list of 27,103 variations in the ways to communicate a single idea. The Forms is a forum thread detailing a community-made collection of fanworks for an imaginary 1996 anime series of the same name. The Forms are a series of sculptures by Russian industrial designer Tikhon J. Kartashov which attempts to embody harsh, unidentifiable abstract shapes. The Forms are a list of rules for how not to enter a forest. The Forms are a suite of compositions featuring only a single spoken word speaker to be played in an auditorium. The Forms is a piece of street art in Moscow consisting of a four-story office building wall covered entirely in sticky notes with permutations of what the piece of art could have been written on each one. The Forms are only described and never actually encountered.

The Forms series of books are all written in a somewhat similar format. Each book is split into four sections, each of which detailing a different location the author has alleged to have traveled in his past and future lives. Each book is split into four sections, each detailing the effects of each of the four two-dimensional quadrants on the shapes and thoughts of the figures presented therein. Each book is split into three sections representing the past, present, and future of the form in question, respectively. Each book is split into two sections representing the front and back of each angle, perspective, shape, shade, contour, idea, page, paragraph, word, letter, and negative space of the form in question, in no particular order. Each book is split into five sections for a family consisting of a mother, father, brother, sister, and pet to eat. Each book remains wholly intact from the moment it is born to the instant it is pronounced dead. Each book is split into dozens, if not hundreds, of directions, representative and reminiscent of the petals of a grand, beautiful flower or bundle thereof. Each book is split into thick, pulpy chunks to be more easily prepared for the refinement process further down the assembly line. Each book is split into four paragraphs detailing the events of each approximate quarter of the fictional book in question. Each book contains a wealth of dead-end citations and faulty statistics. Each book is found tucked away in some desk drawer or filing cabinet to be rediscovered by the next accountant or secretary or archivist down the line, and then promptly forgotten about again. Each book changes its shape and content slightly each time you observe it or read it through from start to finish.

The human body is endlessly flexible in its forms. Humans are typically composed of organs, which are themselves made up of cells derived from a singular sort of stem cell. Viewed with origin in mind, the human body is not so easily divided up into separate parts; it is instead made up of dozens of anatomical concepts which have mapped themselves to regions and sections of the physical makeup of a human. Any entity, human or not, may contain a stomach, or an appendix, or a mouth, or an esophagus, or skin, or bones, or a spine, or a mind, or a soul. Naturally, the form of the conceptual human body breaks down ontologically very easily. Is a human an entity which contains every item humans are known to contain? What of humans with physical disabilities or who have lost parts of their body to injury or decay? Can a human be anything with a heart, mind, and soul? Can a human be incorporeal or not alive, and if so, under what circumstances would it be considered human? Can a house with more human-like qualities to it end up more human than someone born a human who has strayed from the path of humanity? Fundamentally, humanity is an excellent example of a form which finds purity in abundance. As such, we have already illustrated with great clarity an important facet of Form as a fundamental concept - its infinite plasticity. Anything can be human so long as it is recognized as such. The human form, and indeed form in general, has no limits and no barriers beyond blunt denial and any rationalization that can be derived therefrom.

As a result of the inherent tenuousness that the form of anything exhibits, forms possess a large degree of control over the distance of concepts from one another. Before the advent of forms, before the advent of concepts and extant things being particular ways and having definitional qualities that could vary based on definition or perception, all thoughts and ideas and realities found themselves in much closer proximity to each other. Rocks and water were more similar because the two had no reason or framework for being distinguished as rock-like or water-like. They had no qualities that made them the ways they are; they were only merely the ways which they were perceived to be, with no extraneous processes muddying the rock-like waters and distancing them from each other. We do not live in the distant past, however, and thus we peoples of the present must reckon with the vastness found between all formful things. Let us look at the process of iteration as an example. When a creator creates an iterative work, they are perceived to be updating a work to bring it closer to some vision or differentiate it from some past version with each subsequent iteration. It is, however, just as easy to look at this process entirely differently, and with that, change its form. What may instead be happening when a new iteration is made is that entirely new work is made with the aim of living up to the grandeur of the previous iteration, and perhaps even using part of that previous work as the basis from which this new work is derived. With this definition, it is only the changes made between iterations that are of value and not the iterative work as a whole; each iteration, in series, is now its own work, entirely separate from the works that came before and after it. This is the distancing power of the fundamental process of Form in action. And, since perception of form is transitive in any direction, when pictured in reverse one can observe just as easily the distance-closing power of Form in action as well.

So where does Form lie, and where do its constituents and related processes begin? Is distance a function of Form, or is Form a process which holds great power over the related, perhaps even derivative, distance? It is tremendously easy to get lost in this mire of connection in attempting to ascertain an unconnected Form. Some particular properties of Form, however, can be gleaned with ease. When one attempts to apply recursion to Form and determine its own form, one ends up with another permutation of Form as an expression of definition. Is permutation then an inextricable result of Form, or is it inherent to the nature of Form itself? I would argue the latter, but someone who is not me could just as easily argue the former. As a result of its plasticine nature, we have arrived at two simultaneous correct interpretations, or indeed permutations, of what constitutes Form. Perhaps, then, we have arrived at the most fundamental fundamental process of them all? Unfortunately not. Form can be broken down easily but not defined so clearly. In fact, every other fundamental process feeds into the existence of Form itself - synthesis and deconstruction are means by which Form can be separated and approximated between things. Connection, too, is part of what creates a distance between things of differing forms. Form is, ultimately, not the nature of a thing to be a particular way, but the perception of the nature of a thing to be any way. And, naturally, this definition and definitional existence applies to Form itself.

Forms are the way things are seen to be. Forms are the way things are, as I see them to be. Forms are the way things aren’t. Forms are the way things are and aren’t. Forms are the way things may be. Forms are the way things are impossible to be. Forms are the things things aren’t. Forms are the things things could be, if an effort was made to make them that way. Forms are the way things are made to be the way they are. Forms are forms. Forms are formless. Forms are permutations upon iterations upon differences upon distances upon creation upon result upon extant nothing and everything. Forms are talking oneself into circles. Forms are making small things large and large things small. Forms are the human body folding in on itself in both mind and matter. Forms are humanity itself. Forms are itself itself. Forms are itself. Forms are blunt, frank imitations of the way things are, or the way things ought to be, or the way things could never be, or the way things are things. Forms are words and sentences and paragraphs and ideas and concepts and processes and language and communication and entropy and existence and manifestation and delusion and reality and fiction. Forms are full of nothing and empty themselves of everything at an incidental glance. Forms are ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ. Forms are QWERTYUIOPASDFGHJKLZXCVBNM. Forms are 0123456789 and they are 1234567890 and they are 000,000 and they are 999,999 and they are 245,613 and they are 0 and 1 and 137 and everything in between and everything else as well. Forms are afkjdg uios ghvc oofj glsdkkd ter gjk kfllvb hfjafb fjalajkh gkam, fkjg fgl oowi gjb xmm cn vkf fllf powo gfkj. Forms fj rh rg oa ir bj en wm os th gu ql cj eo mv fn iu hg. F o b j e n a l f e r u b o x p z n e m. (). []. -_. +-. =/. <>. ,. !. ?. &. ;. :. ‘. “. |. /.