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 with the observation that emotional experiences are uneven, a small number of intense moments shape our behavior, memory, and wellbeing far more than everyday states. These patterns, organized by what I am coining The Pareto Affect Theory in a Periodic Table of Affect (PTA), which then groups emotional states by hedonic number and how they behave, change, and stabilize over time. AO treats these states as part of a dynamic field that moves through the body and between people. Using affective mathematics, these emotional dynamics can be described as waves rising, falling, and interacting similar to sound or energy. When translated into rhythm, tone, and musical scale, these waves become perceptible and adjustable, creating feedback loops that support self-regulation, coherence, and healing by helping people sense, understand, 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 with mental health,  it uses rhythm, sound, and responsive systems to confront intensity instead of smoothing it out. Each performance is unscripted -affect becomes tempo, disruption becomes variation, and regulation emerges through play rather than control. The work rejects performance as representation and instead uses it as a site of negotiation between body and system, chaos and coherence, collapse and recomposition. Recursive Waves asserts that improvisation is not randomness but intelligence in motion, and that live performance can function as a powerful technology for transformation, resilience, and new ways of being in relation.