PlasticScale is not a tool of evaluation but a structural ontology. It proposes that cultural authority emerges through subtraction rather than accumulation, displacing visibility, scale, and institutional endorsement as primary markers of value. Within the Socioplastics framework, a work’s systemic force is governed by an inverse proportionality: the lower its institutional inertia, the higher its jurisprudential capacity. Authority is not secured through permanence or prestige, but through metabolic efficiency. The formula IE = (C × T) / W formalises this inversion. Circulatory Reach and Temporal Durability amplify one another multiplicatively, while Weight—defined as institutional and material drag—attenuates both.
This reframing directly challenges architectural and artistic conventions. Monumentality traditionally implies power; permanence implies relevance. Yet a building, regardless of refinement, carries infrastructural dependency: maintenance, permits, climate control, territorial fixation. Its Weight is structurally embedded. By contrast, a minimal intervention—portable, replicable, context-adaptive—may approach near-zero inertia. Its authority derives not from scale but from transversal scalability and reiterative activation. Circulation across disciplines and geographies without semantic dilution increases Reach; repetition that generates renewed legitimacy increases Durability. Together, these indices reward works capable of autonomous persistence beyond institutional scaffolding. PlasticScale therefore introduces a jurisprudential hierarchy grounded in metabolic logic rather than prestige economies. It distinguishes endogenous capacity from exogenous validation: media attention or institutional hosting may evidence circulation, but they do not constitute it. The system remains autonomous because it measures structural performance, not reputation. As predictive instrument, PlasticScale enables strategic design. Works can be conceived to minimise drag, maximise transversal mobility, and convert recurrence into structural legitimacy. In unstable digital conditions, sovereignty no longer belongs to the monumental but to the metabolically efficient. Cultural power resides where circulation outpaces inertia and repetition compounds authority
Lloveras, A. (2026) 'PlasticScale Ascendant: Inverse Ontology and the Economy of Cultural Weight', SOCIOPLASTICS: Sovereign systems for unstable times [Blog]. Available at: https://antolloveras.blogspot.com/ (Accessed: 24 February 2026).
