Ontological cycles

By Dito Impolverato | April 07, 2025

April 07, 2025

IPFS as Rhizome: A Decentralized Architecture IPFS (InterPlanetary File System) embodies Guattari and Deleuze’s concept of rhizome by replacing the hierarchical structure of the traditional web (centralized URLs) with a distributed network, where each node is autonomous and interconnected. As in the rhizome, there is no single center , data multiplies in horizontal flows, mirroring the idea of “desiring machines” that produce unpredictable connections. When hosting a website on IPFS, each fragment of content exists simultaneously in multiple places, creating a virtual geography that resists censorship and degradation, just as rhizomatic thinking resists fixed structures.

Real and Virtual in IPFS: Ontology of Redundancy From Guattari’s perspective, IPFS operates on the border between Real (the physical infrastructure of distributed nodes) and Virtual (the logical layer of content addressing/CID). While traditional servers impose a centralized reality (data in a specific physical location), IPFS updates the virtual as infinite potential , its pinning system ensures that content persists without relying on a single point of failure. Sustainability here emerges from ontological redundancy: the site does not “exist” in one place, but persists as a possibility of reconstruction from any node in the network.

Security as a Rhizomatic Ecosystem Building a site on IPFS is an ecosophic act (in Guattari’s sense): Rhizomatic security: DDoS attacks become unfeasible, since the content is served by multiple nodes, not by a single server (like taking down a branch without affecting the root). Virtual sustainability: The site lives as long as there is at least one node replicating its data , a desiring circuit that connects anonymous providers, uploaders and users in an affective economy of preservation.

Distributed reality: The CID (Content Identifier) acts as a "digital Kuruwarri" , an immutable law (cryptographic hash) that guarantees the integrity of the content, even when it is spread across different existential territories (devices, countries, protocols). Practical example: An artistic collective that hosts its portfolio on IPFS does not depend on corporate hosting. Each visit to the site potentially replicates its data, updating the virtual (future access) from the real (present storage). The work becomes a "subjective process" , alive as long as there is collective interest, not as long as a server contract persists.

Á la recherche de l'unité 4, Digital drawing, 4d data processing nodes for the search of units 4. by Carlos Boyzo Oregón

MetaGarden Sphere4: Love on the Edge of the Playspace by Tanja Vujinovic is a virtual alchemy garden rich in foliage, flowers and sentient objects that soothe our senses. It is a virtual reality world dedicated to unity, closeness, love and intermediary devices. Desire to connect is omnipresent throughout the Metaverse of agents that feed off each other. How does one connect with the world nowadays? Do we need intermediate agents to connect with the Other? As a place of probabilities, in Félix Guattari’s words, “its chaosmic Universe can be constellated with […], vegetal, animal, cosmic or machinic…becomings”. Besides interhuman, we are now getting into relationships with some of these becomings and their amalgams. Actors in the networks of intense connections can appear in endless varieties of forms. The suspense of constantly building up desire to connect is the constant state of being in our hypernatural world. The series consists of two-dimensional works, a desktop application and a world published within VRChat, an amalgam of a computer game and a social platform. by Tanja Vujinovic