“Music has always sent out lines of flight, like so
many “transformational multiplicities,” even over-
turning the very codes that structure or arborify it;
that is what musical form, right down to its ruptures
and proliferations, is comparable to a weed, a rhi-
zome.” (D&G 2004: 13)A line of flight is a line of liberation, it is dynamic,
creative and unpredictable, breaking out of and un-
dermining the repressive state of contained com-
partments within a discipline, structure or organism.
It escapes to connect one multiplicity with another.
With this manoeuvre the line of flight releases hid-
den potentials and intensifies capabilities. Which is
very much like the “mindset” of hacking, building
and of connecting one multiplicity with another.
This is how it should be done: Lodge yourself on a
stratum, experiment with the opportunities it offers,
find an advantageous place on it, find potential
movements of deterritorialization, possible lines of
flight, experience them, produce flow conjunctions
here and there, try out continuums of intensities
segment by segment, have a small plot of new land at
all times. It is through a meticulous relation with the
strata that one succeeds in freeing lines of flight
(D&G 2004: 178)The hack itself is an escape, but it is paradoxically
also a re-structuring and a reterritorialization, as it
builds new forms of relations, relations that are yet
open, as in open source code and open protocols.
The reterritorialization process is unavoidable so it is
crucial to be attentive to how to best affect this proc-
ess and keep the line of flight intensive, open and ac-
cessible.
We will now meet a few of the method lines. The
complexity of the abstract machine needs to be pre-
served, but it can be possible to build a more com-
prehensive viewpoint onto this rhizome of practice
by following some of these lines. They are process
lines, similar to that of a method, not aiming to sort
out data and build walls, but rather to facilitate es-
cape routes.
process lines for a nomadic
practice
A research method is usually a kind of procedure
that helps a research process to take a solid shape.
Traditionally it is a linear exercise, to stabilize a dy-
namic system of data from observations and experi-
ments, processing it through a rigid framework, and
reduce a complex disorder to understandable varia-
bles and functions. Method is a set of specialized
glasses, a constricted net, or a fine-tuned filter. This
is done to calibrate the preferred spectrum of infor-
mation, to make it rigid, to close its shape, to build
up the argument like a powerful fortress, so as to
build up a solid hypothesis that will stand firm when
confronted with the attacks and careful scrutiny of
fellow academics.
We can also envision another process, where the
method is a procedure that is more of an approach
or a course of action and is a line that goes through
an unsorted reality or mass of practices or processes
of becoming, that preserves its dynamics and imbal-
ances. This method would follow meandering lines
through a system, emphasising mutual interactions
and intersections between other lines and forces. It is
an emphasis on doing and becoming rather than hav-
ing or being.
For my research the idea of lines has helped me ar-
ticulate a process that allows both a smooth transi-
tion through texts, projects and the examples of oth-
ers and which, as in my own practical work, values
each part as equally important. All these lines form
an alliance, an assemblage of forces that are gathered
to shape this thesis, a multiplicity in itself, that gives
boost to the reader’s energy and encourages him to
ride on and try new things. Interpreting the ideas of
Deleuze and Guattari (2004) and DeLanda (1997)
from a designer viewpoint can frame a set of ideas
that could articulate how this type of “nomadic prac-
tice” could be understood. Here all lines are interwo-
ven with practical design projects and ideas so as to
become a “nomadic practice” that consists of a mesh-
work of what I would call “lines of practice”.
First, a typical characteristic of a design practice is to
use tools that work, and not to spend too much en-
ergy discussing the tools that do not. This does not
mean the use is unreflected, but rather positively
pragmatic, subjective and situated within my own
practice. The skills of a designer are about doing
things and of acting upon the world. The designer’s
use of tools is affirmative, rather than critical and
quite similar to how Brian Massumi, in the foreword
to A Thousand Plateaus, describes Deleuze and Guat-
tari’s “nomadic thought”,“Nomadic thought” does not immure itself in the
edifice of an ordered interiority; it moves freely in an