I explained the ontology of the fold that I’m trying to develop to my barber today. It went something like this:
Barber: So what’s your talk about in Milwaukee.
Me: Folds.
B: Really? What’s that all about?
Me: I’m not really sure. I don’t know if I can pull it off or what I’m trying to say yet.
B: That’s cool, man.
Me: Well take a brick.
B: What’s that? A brick?
Me: Yeah, like on a house.
B: Oh, I got ya, man.
Me: A brick is a form of origami, like a crumpled piece of paper.
B: Say what?
Me: It folds the forces of the cosmos into it, invaginates them. It folds the pressure of the other bricks about it into it, if it has lots of iron it folds the oxygen into it giving it that red color, it folds gravity and temperature in it, becoming brittle when it’s cold and molten when very hot. Sound, light, pressures, air, all of these things are folded into it and it unfolds these things in the unique event that it is according to the structure that it has. This conversation that we’re having, see those bricks over there on the wall? The timber of the sound of our voices, the acoustics of this room, is an origami of our voices and those bricks. Our voices have folded the bricks into themselves and unfolded it in a new vibration of sound. Everything is a fold or folding, both individual and continuous with what it folds.
It might be better– I haven’t decided yet –to say that everything is a wave. A wave is continuous with the water in which it occurs, yet distinct. It both folds the currents of wind and water into itself and unfolds them in a rolling pattern across a plane. It both arises from that plane but is distinct from it and changes it. The dreams you told me about earlier are now a wave in me, folded into me, becoming something other yet remaining those dreams.
B: [The scissors pause, stunned silence] That’s so cool, man! [He looks at his scissors and about the room] It’s like everything is digesting everything else. These walls have the past, music history [they’re covered with music posters], all these conversations and happenings folded into them. That’s so cool, man. Wow.
We had talked earlier about psychoanalysis and dream interpretation. Apparently he had heard my unconscious, for I’m always thinking about food. Everything is a wave and within those waves there are but more waves. Not a bad start, I hope.
Larval Subjects . 
February 12, 2016 at 6:52 am
I want to ask, and not to be unpleasantly argumentative ‘what advantage does a fold or wave ontology give us?’ Certainly it gives us a metaphor of becoming, as such it straddles the undermining/overmining border. I’m not convinced on the ooo front enough that I think that’s a particular problem, but I want to know what the insight is in this ontological disclosure?
February 12, 2016 at 7:25 am
Honestly I”m still working out advantages and implications. Actually this is implicitly a critique of OOO and directly opposed to it, so it wouldn’t be accurate to group it with OOO. Overmining and Undermining are Harman’s issues, not my own and belong to OOP, not OOO. I coined the term OOO to distinguish ontologies committed to the thesis that being is composed of substances but distinct from Harman’s OOP, but everyone tends to conflate Harman and OOO, so I’ve shied away from the term. There are a couple of things I think the concept of the fold might do. First, it presents and ecological/relational model of being. Second, it unifies discreteness (objects/things) with continuity (the broader field out of which they’re folded). That allows me to get around any thesis like that of vicarious causation and to do so without “undermining” things.
February 25, 2016 at 2:41 pm
I wonder if you could elaborate on how this approach is implicitly a critique of OOO, and what the implications of that might be. In this initial sketch I find that I’m having trouble picking out the particular inconsonances.
Also, I would be interested to hear about how this wave ontology relates to or negotiates Graham Harman’s description of the way that objects ‘withdraw,’ or perhaps in your terms, how ‘digestible’ substance is.
February 25, 2016 at 4:11 pm
The keynote address posted on this blog outlines this critique. It’s important to note that OOO is not a synonym for Harman’s ontology.