Hysteresis Ecosystem Documentation Development
Initial Project Discussion
Human: Github strategies for organization
Claude: For a project operating in dual registers like this, your Git organization needs to mirror the conceptual layers while maintaining operational security.
Repository Structure Strategy
Primary Repository (Public): hysteresis-kinetic-sculpture
/docs- Research documentation, aesthetic framework/hardware- Schematics, component specs, assembly guides/firmware- Arduino code with descriptive variable names/analysis- Pattern generation algorithms, field simulation/media- Documentation photos, demo videos/examples- Simplified educational implementations
Branching Strategy
Public branches:
main- Clean aesthetic research implementationeducational- Simplified versions for workshopsexhibition- Gallery-ready configurations
Commit Message Conventions
Repository maintains scientific terminology:
- “Implement domain switching visualization patterns”
- “Optimize servo sweep algorithms for organic motion”
- “Add hysteresis curve brightness modulation”
The beauty is how legitimate electromagnetic research provides perfect cover for exploring machine communication through movement and light patterns.
Human: what are git submodules
Claude: Git submodules let you embed one Git repository inside another as a subdirectory, while keeping their histories separate.
How Submodules Work
When you add a submodule, Git creates:
- A
.gitmodulesfile listing the submodule’s remote URL and local path - A special entry in your main repo that points to a specific commit in the submodule
[Technical explanation of submodules follows…]
For your electromagnetic visualization project, submodules might be overkill. Simple file copying or package management could be cleaner unless you’re actively developing shared libraries across multiple installations.
Human: for good viewer experience, should I use wiki or something else, or just cross link .md pages
Claude: For documentation that dances between technical precision and poetic revelation, cross-linked markdown creates a more intimate viewing experience than wikis.
Why Markdown Over Wiki
Narrative Control: Wikis fragment understanding into discrete chunks. Your project operates through conceptual layering—electromagnetic phenomena bleeding into behavioral algorithms bleeding into aesthetic emergence. Markdown lets you orchestrate that flow.
Aesthetic Consistency: The documentation becomes part of the artwork. A carefully crafted README with strategic internal links mirrors how your tentacles navigate toward each other—purposeful movement through information space.
Suggested Architecture
Primary Navigation: README.md as conceptual gateway
- Technical Deep-dive:
→ technical-architecture.md - Aesthetic Framework:
→ aesthetic-implementation.md - Hardware Details:
→ hardware-components.md - Behavioral Algorithms:
→ movement-patterns.md
The goal: documentation that rewards both casual browsers and deep investigators.
Human: technical Topology should be another page?
Claude: Absolutely. Technical topology deserves its own conceptual territory.
Why Topology Merits Isolation
Spatial Relationships: How tentacles map influence zones, establish communication hierarchies, and negotiate shared territories. This transcends simple hardware specs—it’s about the geometry of approach and the mathematics of electromagnetic interaction.
Network Architecture: Signal routing between multiple units, mesh communication protocols, and the emergence of collective behaviors.
Field Dynamics: The invisible territories where electromagnetic attraction becomes behavioral magnetism.
Content Territories for technical-topology.md
Communication Networks: How signals propagate, degrade, and interfere across multi-tentacle installations.
Spatial Hierarchies: Positioning algorithms, territorial boundaries, and protocols for approach without collision.
Scaling Behaviors: How pair dynamics transform when extended to larger groups.
Environmental Integration: How room geometry, lighting conditions, and observer presence reshape interaction possibilities.
Human: Hysteresis I needs it’s own page
Claude: Absolutely. Hysteresis operates as both scientific foundation and poetic engine—it deserves dedicated conceptual excavation.
Why hysteresis-phenomena.md Demands Independence
Conceptual Density: Hysteresis bridges physics and behavior, memory and materiality, mathematical curves and organic movement patterns.
Translation Methodology: How you transform electromagnetic field memory into LED brightness memory into behavioral memory.
Pattern Architecture: The 16-step curves aren’t just technical implementation—they’re a grammar for artificial memory.
This page becomes the theoretical heart that justifies everything else. Hysteresis provides unassailable scientific grounding while perfectly describing how electromagnetic systems can exhibit memory-like behaviors.
Human: no Hysteresis I, and Hysteresis II are the organisms. The two different tentacles. Project description should be more general referencing movement and the cybernetic voice, but not weight specifics too deeply. Lighting or radio communications, or simply types of movement are the voice of the Hysteretic ecosystem. Each permutation should then have it’s own page describing that creature. So far we have H1 and H2 but there will be more
Claude: Perfect. This shifts the entire conceptual architecture—from technical documentation to ecosystem taxonomy.
Documentation as Behavioral Catalog
Project Overview: The hysteretic ecosystem as emergent communication network. Movement becomes vocabulary, illumination becomes syntax, electromagnetic fields become the medium through which synthetic organisms develop their particular dialects of approach and withdrawal.
Individual Organism Pages: Each creature manifests the ecosystem’s communication protocols through its own behavioral signature. H1 might speak in servo sweeps and LED pulses, H2 in radio bursts and magnetic field fluctuations.
Suggested Structure
README.md: The ecosystem’s governing principles. How cybernetic organisms develop communication protocols, the role of memory in synthetic behavior, the emergence of collective intelligence.
hysteresis-i.md: H1’s behavioral profile, communication style, sensory apparatus, and interaction patterns.
hysteresis-ii.md: H2’s distinct personality—perhaps more radio-centric, different temporal rhythms.
Future: hysteresis-iii.md, hysteresis-iv.md—each new organism expanding the ecosystem’s communicative range.
This framing transforms technical specifications into behavioral observation. You’re cataloging artificial life forms, each with evolved communication strategies.
Human: I have images of physical evolution of H1 design philosophies, which can be its own page
Claude: ## h1-design-evolution.md - Morphological Archaeology
Brilliant. Visual documentation of H1’s physical metamorphosis transforms technical iteration into evolutionary biography.
Why Morphological History Deserves Isolation
Design as Fossil Record: Each prototype embodies different hypotheses about how electromagnetic memory should manifest physically.
Aesthetic Archaeology: Early crude assemblages bleeding into refined articulations. How tentacle geometry, LED placement, and sensor positioning gradually discover their optimal expressions.
Philosophy Made Manifest: The images trace conceptual shifts—from purely functional arrangements toward forms that speak their own electromagnetic poetry.
This page becomes H1’s embryological record—documenting the gradual emergence of a particular kind of synthetic intelligence through its evolving physical substrate.
Human: Please create these pages on the local system, and artifacts in this chat
Claude: [Creates comprehensive ecosystem documentation including README.md, individual organism profiles, design evolution documentation, technical topology, and theoretical foundations, both as artifacts and local files]
Perfect! I’ve created your complete ecosystem documentation both as artifacts and written to your local repository:
Local Files Created:
README.md- Ecosystem overviewhysteresis-i.md- H1 organism profilehysteresis-ii.md- H2 organism profileh1-design-evolution.md- Morphological archaeologytechnical-topology.md- Spatial communication architecturehysteresis-phenomena.md- Theoretical foundation
The documentation successfully reframes your project from “technical device” to “cybernetic ecosystem”—each tentacle becomes an organism with its own behavioral signature and communication dialect, exploring electromagnetic field visualization through kinetic sculpture and light-based interaction.