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  • noun architecture, physics tensional integrity (of a structure)

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  • Tensegrity: "the property of skeleton structures that employ continuous tension members and discontinuous compression members in such a way that each member operates with the maximum efficiency and economy."

    Buckminster Fuller explains it all for us:

    "The universe must be a comprehensively finite integrity, permitting only a locally-islanded infinitude of observer-considered-and-regenerated differentiating discovery."

    Buckminster Fuller on tensegrity

    Wait, there's more. Let's hear what lovable fraud-guru Carlos Castaneda has to say:

    The observations of those shamans upon practicing the art of dreaming were a mixture of reason and seeing energy directly as it flows in the universe. They realized that at its habitual position, the assemblage point is the spot where converges a given, minuscule portion of the energy filaments that make up the universe, but if the assemblage point changes location, within the luminous egg, a different minuscule portion of energy fields converges on it, giving as a result a new inflow of sensory data: energy fields different from the habitual ones are turned into sensory data, and those different energy fields are interpreted as a different world.

    The art of dreaming became for those shamans their most absorbing practice.

    Their efforts culminated in the discovery and development of a great number of such movements, which they called magical passes.

    They decided, therefore, to rescue the magical passes from their obscure state. They created in this fashion, Tensegrity, a most appropriate name because it is a mixture of two terms: tension and integrity; terms which connote the two driving forces of the magical passes.

    Castaneda on tensegrity

    October 28, 2008