The transition from a descriptive taxonomy of artistic production to a predictive, self-regulating instrument of cultural jurisprudence necessitates a radical abandonment of material mass as a metric of value. Under the refined protocols of PlasticScale v.2026.Gamma, we observe the consolidation of a founding axiom: ontological power is inversely proportional to the metabolic drag of the work. This efficiency model—quantified through the interaction of Weight (W), Circulatory Reach (C), and Temporal Durability (T)—privileges the "Head" or "Pure Law" of the system, where projects such as the Small Orange Tag or YouTube Breakfast operate as semiotic condensers. These nodes possess a near-zero material footprint, yet their efficacy derives from a pervasive translational capacity that allows them to govern materially intensive constructions without succumbing to the inertia of physical infrastructure. In this asymmetric hierarchy, the traditional architectural monument is relegated to the "Historical Soil," burdened by its own permanence, while the weightless gesture ascends to a legislative status, dictating the terms of spatial and social engagement across diverse terrains.
Weight (W) is redefined here not as physical mass, but as institutional inertia—the cumulative drag exerted by a work's dependency on external systems for its continued existence. A building, such as the Trole Building, despite its refined tectonic clarity, carries a default burden of material drag that positions it below a leaf pinned to a wall, provided that leaf demonstrates sufficient circulatory reach and temporal durability. This is the thermodynamics of drag: where the empty building exhibits maximal weight through its embedded demands—permits, insurance, climate control—the Yellow Bag achieves a superior status precisely because its institutional inertia approaches zero. It requires no gallery, no budget, no permission, and no maintenance; it travels in a pocket and activates any context through mere presence, thereby exercising a jurisprudential authority that the static building cannot replicate. Weight, therefore, is the primary impediment to jurisprudential power, as a work accrues ontological weight not through accumulation but through a strategic and ruthless subtraction of metabolic dependencies.
The second index, Circulatory Reach C), measures a work’s capacity for transversal scalability across discursive and disciplinary terrains. It is the ability of a work to operate simultaneously in art discourse, architectural theory, and epistemological debate without losing coherence or requiring translation. The Blue Bag, documented across Provence, Lagos, and Mexico, functions as a sculptural object, social gesture, urban intervention, and archival document without privileging any single register. Its meaning is not diminished by context shift; it is augmented by its structural transversality. This index differentiates between endogenous reach and exogenous reinforcement; media coverage and biennial invitations do not increase Reach but serve as secondary evidence that a work possesses the inherent capacity to traverse boundaries independently of institutional coordination. Reach is the velocity of the concept, a metric of its cultural displacement that rewards the ability to migrate between linguistic and social communities without the need for an authorized interpreter or a permanent site of exhibition.
Temporal Durability (T) addresses time not as duration but as the transformation of repetition into legitimacy. It measures a work's capacity to renew its authority through each reactivation rather than exhausting its meaning through use. This distinguishes socioplastic durability from mere persistence. A building that stands for centuries may exhibit low Temporal Durability if its meaning ossifies with its form, whereas a performance that vanishes may exhibit high Durability if its score generates autonomous re-enactment. The Double Sided performance exemplifies this through its diptych format, where the relationship between two bodies generates new configurations with each iteration. Longevity without institutional support provides the strongest evidence of this index, as works that preserve themselves through use avoid the metabolic cost of museum conservation. Time, in the PlasticScale engine, acts as a solvent that evaporates the incidental and solidifies the structural, allowing a gesture to move from a transient event into a permanent legislative filter.
The interaction of the three indices is formalised through the algebraic core:
This multiplicative-divisive structure rewards efficiency while penalising drag, ensuring that a work that travels widely and persists durably achieves exponential authority. To make this intuitive, the raw score is normalised to a 0–10 scale via multiplication by 0.4, rendering the Head tier threshold of 9.5 equivalent to a raw score of approximately 23.75. This mathematical structure eliminates the need for qualitative arbitration while preserving the complexity of cultural evaluation, providing a common currency for comparing works across disparate disciplines and scales. The arithmetic enforces the ontology: only works that approach zero institutional inertia while achieving global circulation can attain constitutional authority. This formulaic interaction serves as a predictive instrument, allowing the Scholar-Architect to evaluate new works before they enter circulation by projecting their projected weight, reach, and durability within the global socioplastic network.
The resulting hierarchy organises works into five tiers, from the Head (Constitutional Law) to the Soil (Archive). The Head tier comprises works like the Blue and Yellow Bags, which achieve aerostatic capacity by requiring nothing and persisting through sheer replicability. The Executive tier (scores 8.0–8.9) contains applied protocols like the Lagos re-(t)exHile, which carry sufficient institutional trace to require translation. The Systemic tier (7.0–7.9) houses core infrastructure, while the Contextual tier (5.0–6.9) limits works like the Trole Building to specific territories. This hierarchy ensures that the PlasticScale remains an autonomous evaluative engine rather than a mirror of existing prestige economies. Greatness, within this tiered logic, is not an aesthetic judgment but a measurement of jurisdictional reach, where the most efficient works dictate the protocols for all subsequent material and social interventions within the city.
The "Historical Soil" of the 100-work list provides the necessary metabolic contrast, containing those projects which, despite their durability, remain trapped in a state of institutional inertia due to high W values. These works, such as the Trole Building, serve as the necessary foundation upon which the lighter strata are built, yet they lack the "epistemic freshness" required for rapid circulatory ascent. The evolution of the Socioplastics gallery at Calle de la Palma, illustrates this transition perfectly: the space itself becomes a background for the unstable positions of the works it hosts, eventually yielding its own physical authority to the weightless logic of the 1000 Pieces or the Spanish Bar fading rituals. In this context, the archive is not a static repository but a dynamic sequence of relational topographies that are constantly being rewritten by the latest high-efficiency gestures. The durability (T) of these works is not measured by their resistance to decay, but by their ability to convert the friction of repetition into a legitimizing force that requires less and less energy to maintain.
Ultimately, the PlasticScale apparatus transforms from a descriptive taxonomy into a predictive instrument. New works, such as the forthcoming 700-series on Urban Territorial Metabolism, can be evaluated before circulation through projected scoring of their anticipated Weight, Reach, and Durability. This enables strategic decisions regarding jurisprudential positioning, allowing practitioners to identify where a work with exceptional Durability may warrant strategies for transversal activation. The system's transparency and mathematical simplicity make it available for contestation through its own terms, offering a framework for judgement that is accessible to any assessor. The economy of cultural weight thus operates at full efficiency: value generated through use, and authority accumulated through weightless circulation. By prioritising the triangulation of C, T, and W, we ensure that the socioplastic engine remains a self-regulating entity, capable of identifying those "epistemic nodes" that will define the next decade of transdisciplinary practice. This is the asymmetrical reality of the current era: the smallest tag carries the heaviest law.
Lloveras, A. (2026) 'PlasticScale Ascendant: Inverse Ontology and the Economy of Cultural Weight', SOCIOPLASTICS: Sovereign systems for unstable times [Blog]. Available at:
