Recursive Waves: Mapping an ontology of affect

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Affective Ontology (AO) is a framework for understanding emotion as a measurable system rather than a vague feeling. It begins from a simple observation: emotional life is uneven. A small number of intense moments shape behavior, memory, and wellbeing far more than ordinary states. AO organizes this unevenness through the Periodic Table of Affect (PTA), informed by Pareto Affect Theory, which groups emotional states by hedonic tone and by how they behave, shift, and stabilize over time. In this model, affect is not treated as static or purely private, but as part of a dynamic field moving through the body and between people. Through affective mathematics, these dynamics can be described as waves that rise, fall, and interact, much like sound or energy. When translated into rhythm, tone, and musical scale, those patterns become more perceptible and responsive, creating feedback loops that can support self-regulation, coherence, and healing by helping people sense, interpret, and respond to their internal states.

Recursive Waves is an improvisational performance practice that treats emotion as a live force rather than a private experience. Born from a journey through mental health, it uses rhythm, sound, and responsive systems to stay with intensity rather than smoothing it away. Each performance is unscripted: affect becomes tempo, disruption becomes variation, and regulation emerges through play rather than control. Performance is not treated as representation, but as a site of negotiation—between body and system, chaos and coherence, collapse and recomposition. Recursive Waves holds that improvisation is not randomness but intelligence in motion, and that live performance can become a technology for transformation, resilience, and new ways of being in relation.