A Functional In The Way 
Ry Beloin


I know nothing about math, so I feel like it’s a great place to start. Here, I’m free to post-modern-ist-ic-ally (as, apparently, mathy types say with distaste) speculate using some math basics which I may not actually understand correctly. Maybe something interesting can happen.[1]


A Function vs A Functional (math-wise):


A ‘Point Function’ is a property of a system.[2] It measures in a specific single value, how something is (like, density). All the measurable properties of a system are a Point Function. Interestingly, the way that things happen in a system doesn't matter for a Point Function–it is essentially nondynamic and timeless. 


A Functional (noun) is a ‘mapping of a given space into the field of real numbers,’ or to stretch it a bit, it’s a Function plus dynamic integration into actual context. It’s a whole bunch of Function values that go through changes depending on other stuff changing.


I wonder if the shape described by this Functional-ity is the thing that makes a sculpture, well, sculpture. If we say that the “system” is a “Thing” that is mapped into the real context of us, of all of this, of the physical world–in space, it could be, in a way, like a Functional. The Thing retains a map of its relationship to physical existence with us and everything, and that map is specific.


In the case of sculpture, a Functional could be a metaphor for the quality of an artwork that addresses itself throughout the timeframe of its own past and particulars of its making. Although much of sculptural history strived for artwork that exited reality in favor of a non-dynamic Function: a static and unchangeable mode, irrelevant to (or even actively involved in erasure of) its own process of coming into existence, they failed, which is kind of the only reason those objects became all that interesting. The more staunchly an art object insisted on a non-dynamic, timeless Point Function-like position, the more solidly trackable it became in terms of a Functional-like ongoing relationship to us.[3] The context of reality is inescapable.


Is it fair to say this Functional-ness, as an aspect that necessarily comes with real existence, invisibly and inextricably clings to sculpture? If we say some objects mapped into the real context of the physical world, and the context of us, are sculpture, then, probably. There are still two big problems though: space, and Everything Else.


So we have a thing existing physically, Functional-ly. So what is physical space? 


People who are nerds about this question have found that space and time are the same thing, I guess. Two points of something have to ‘speak,’ interact, push, define themselves against one another in a Functional-like way for Spacetime to even exist, and conversely, without spacetime nothing can exist to push against each other. Apparently, neither can happen first and neither actually causes the other. The Functional-ity of stuff is, itself, what Spacetime is. Dynamic, contextual Functional-ness between things and Spacetime require each other. So, again to stretch it, there is no such thing as actually ‘empty’ space, sculpture's (and everything's) physicality is inextricable from Spacetime.[4]


“But wait!” someone (not you, but maybe someone who talks like this) might say, “Desk lamps also exist and can have a relationship to other things that changes when other stuff changes!” And they do, so that’s a problem for my cool math idea neatly explaining sculpture. A lamp physically exists in a way. And there’s the looming threat that it or anything could someday become sculpture. So what makes sculpture not Everything Else?


My best guess is that sculpture requires at least one more quality: it has to be in The Way. ‘The Way,’ like a specific route that intersects with something definite. A Way or position located in relationship to us and Everything Else, that is unique to sculpture. As a requisite for the continuous Functional-ness of sculpture, its mapped values must describe at some time a relationship that goes a different Way than, say, most ikea home goods. 


I think maybe, that specific, requisite Way, is one that ‘sees’ or ‘knows about’ mapped Functional relationships with Everything Else. 


The Way seems to have something to do with an intersection of the Functional-map looking at, speaking to, other Functionals. Or, to get wild here, it’s a meta-Functional: a Functional that uses its Functional-map to come into a Functional relationship with other Functionals. 


When someone sees a lamp as sculpture, they’ve reoriented themselves as an element, and overlaid the Functional maps of lampness, with the Functional-like Way of sculpture which looks at itself. The Thing is in spacetime still retaining its Functional but now, it’s placed in the Way of other Functionals and while the raw data of its parameters may have not changed, the way we map them has–it’s now mapped in the Way of other things’ Functionals which inevitably will reveal new information, like any relationship does. Its Functional-ity begins to be mapped, not just in Spacetime related to reality, but also against other Functionals describing existence. 


As a side note, paintings at first seem similar. But by definition, a painting is only Functional-like exactly to the extent of its objectness, it describes a dynamic physical existence to reality only much as it exists as a physical object, but not more, and there’s a lot more in a painting than the object. Whether it can achieve an analogous ‘meta-Functionality’ by some other route is another entire paper. Whether a painting builds relationships to reality or other virtual spaces on the inside of the image-space is a separate concern from what it does in Spacetime, and if its Functions map into imaginary or virtual space it is not (mathematically) Functional.[5] In other words, only the object of a painting exists with us. For the rest of it, we have to travel out of the real, to be within it, so image cannot be navigating a Functional-like relationship to physical reality. The painting part of the painting, the portal, the image-space, doesn’t exist in spacetime, only the paint and support do. The content of a painting image is not subject to the physical world.[6] 


So what now? We have a meta-Functional Thing in the Way. And as sculptors, we cultivate these Meta-Functionals to find, and map, relationships. These are sculpture. Maybe.








  







  























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[1] Sometimes near-impossible translation creates a kind of space for a tenuous metaphor to live long enough to describe an idea that intrinsically defies being clearly described. Or maybe this is unhinged; let’s find out.


[2] These terms are for values in the context of thermodynamic processes, normally. I don’t know what that means so let’s discard that detail for the sake of the mental exercise.


[3] Looking at you, High Modernists
[4] If I get the idea, the more stuff physically exists the more dense spacetime is, too, which is a bit weird to think about as a maker of stuff. Oops, we bent Spacetime.


[5] Because Functionals are defined as Functions mapped into the field of real numbers, specifically not imaginary numbers
[6] Which is kind of the thing that’s cool about it, but I’m writing about sculpture right now, sorry