2. Emergence

It’s hard to describe to non-surfers how it feels to carve across a wave, to push the limits of your surfing ability and to surf even better than you thought you could. There’s a thrill in surfing that only the experience itself can communicate to you. One surfs with the wave, drawing on experience to manoeuvre the surfboard in synchrony with the wave, all the while anticipating how it will change shape.

As a nexus of past, present and future experience, surfing corresponds to Kant’s model of the intellect, which portrays information as the product of three types of synthesis: the apprehension of raw perceptual input (present), the recognition of concepts (past) and the reproduction of each in imagination (future). Imagination can be likened to surfing, in the sense that it negotiates a tension between reason and perception in the same way surfing manoeuvres negotiate a tension between the shape of the surfboard and the shape of the wave.

The task of designing a surfboard requires insight into how this tension between surfboard and wave influences surfing performance. Viewed in terms of Kant’s model of the intellect, the principles of surfboard design show how the surfing metaphor operates: how the spatio-temporal structure of surfing can represent the spatio-temporal structure of experience.

To analyse how a surfboard responds to a surfer’s movements, the designer reduces the surfer’s influence to a set of rotational axes. Focusing on the surfboard, he ignores the shape and motion of the wave, which is subsequently reduced to a flat plane. At this level of abstraction, the surfer’s influence can be represented diagrammatically, enabling the designer to more easily visualise the different phases of a manoeuvre, as well as the transitions between them. By visualising each phase in terms of its rotational axis, or sequence of axes, the designer can identify which portions of the surfboard come into play for a given manoeuvre.

We can visualise rotational axes in terms of lines of latitude and longitude encircling the globe:

1. The first rotational axis traces a circle on the horizontal plane, which can be thought of as the Equator. So long as the surfboard rotates on this plane, its interaction with the wave has no effect. So, this is a monadic relation, defined solely by the wave in its relation to itself.
2. The second rotational axis traces a circle on any vertical plane; which can be visualised as the lines of longitude encircling the globe from north to south. Rotating on any of these axes causes the surfboard to penetrate the wave, which represents a dyadic relation between the surfboard and the wave.
3. The third rotational axis traces a circle on a plane set at right angles to each of the other two. This second vertical plane of rotation simultaneously introduces the variable of direction, in the sense of the surfboard traversing the surface of the wave. When all three rotational axes combine, monadic and dyadic relations become absorbed into triadic relations.

The response of the surfboard is influenced by both the shape of the surfboard and the shape of the wave, with the proportion of each influence depending on how actively, versus passively, the surfer engages the wave with the surfboard. Actively engaging the wave invokes spatial relations, because the surfboard - its shape and motion - is the primary factor influencing where it is going. This is the penetration phase of a manoeuvre, when the surfboard rotates into the water. Passively engaging the wave invokes temporal relations, because the surfboard follows a track determined more by the shape and motion of the wave than by the shape and motion of the surfboard. This is the release phase of a manoeuvre, when the surfboard rotates out of the water.

Since the response of the surfboard is derived simultaneously from the shape of the wave and the shape of the surfboard, their interaction represents a spatio-temporal continuum; the surfboard inducing spatial relations and the wave temporal relations. As a representation of the intellect, the penetration and release phases of a manoeuvre are analogous to concentration and contemplation, in the sense that concentration is active, while contemplation is passive. In the same way that surfing manoeuvres are composed of alternating phases of penetration and release, ideas emerge from alternating phases of concentration and contemplation.

Since the shape of the wave is influenced by both the depth and shape of the reef, these two features also represent either end of a spatio-temporal continuum; the reef inducing spatial relations and depth temporal relations. Consequently, fluctuation in the tide represents the relative proportions of each, with low tide triggering more spatial than temporal relations and high tide triggering more temporal than spatial relations. At high tide, waves break less intensely, reflecting the reduced influence of the reef on wave shape. Somewhere between these two extremes, spatial and temporal relations blend in such a way as to produce an optimal shape for surfing. As a representation of perception, the shape of the wave is analogous to the access afforded by perception to the available information: the hollower the wave, the deeper the access, the more information to draw on.

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Surfism : Emergence : Articulation : Synaesthesia : Semiosis :
Spatial perception : Dimensions : Evolution : Conclusion