Attractors of Value in Collective Fields

1 The Idea of the Attractor

Why do some musical patterns draw us in — not just as individuals, but as groups? Why do certain rhythms, riffs, or sonic gestures recur across disparate contexts, binding people into shared experience? And why do others flare briefly and vanish, leaving only the faint trace of their momentary force?

This series explores music as a field of value-laden resonance, shaped not by semantic content but by attractors — dynamic centres of gravity in collective experience. These are not symbols or messages. They do not denote meaning in the way language does. Rather, they function as organising forces in embodied, social systems — drawing listeners into coalesced states of feeling, orientation, and affiliation.

Music as a Field of Emergence

We begin with a shift in perspective. Instead of viewing music as an object, or a signal passed from maker to receiver, we treat it as a field: an emergent space of patterned relations, unfolding in time, across bodies and environments. Within this field, coherence is not imposed from above, but emerges from below — from repeated actions, shared histories, and the resonant interplay of material and social forces.

Attractors are what give this field structure. They are not fixed points, but regions of relative stability in the flow of dynamic activity. In mathematical terms, attractors describe tendencies for a system to settle into particular patterns of behaviour — not rigid endpoints, but configurations toward which activity converges. In our case, what converges is not only sonic patterning, but patterns of embodied value.

From Neural Selectivity to Collective Orientation

The concept of the attractor has its roots in neurodynamics. In Edelman’s theory of neuronal group selection, value is not applied after perception — it is intrinsic to it. Perceptual activity is shaped by value-driven selection in a field of neuronal variation. Certain configurations of neural firing are selected and stabilised by the co-activation of value systems — what Edelman terms value-categories.

Importantly, this process does not end at the boundary of the skull. Because we are social beings, attuned to others and to cultural environments, attractors of value do not operate only at the level of individual perception. Musical experience often occurs in shared fields of embodied orientation: in concerts, ceremonies, dance floors, and digital collectives. In these settings, the attractor becomes not only a perceptual regularity but a social magnet, drawing participants into synchronised affective and bodily states.

Not Meaning, but Meaningfulness

In previous series, we established that music is not a semiotic system. It does not signify in the way language does; it has no lexicon, no grammar, no denotation. And yet, music is deeply meaningful. This paradox dissolves when we shift from thinking in terms of symbolic representation to thinking in terms of value-based resonance.

An attractor in a collective musical field is a coalescence of embodied meaningfulness. It does not stand for something; it draws together strands of affective, temporal, and social experience. It is a centre of attraction not for conceptual meaning, but for felt coherence — a convergence of orientations in the flow of time.

What Follows

In the posts to come, we will explore how such attractors emerge, take hold, circulate, fragment, and recombine. We will trace their role in forming social identities and group affiliations, and in mediating between the local and the global. And we will show how a relational ontology — one that begins not with things, but with patterned relations — allows us to model music as a force field of value in motion.

Next: Resonance and Value-Coalescence — how patterns of sound become patterns of felt orientation in collective life.

2 Resonance and Value-Coalescence

At the heart of musical experience lies a felt sense of resonance. This resonance is not merely acoustic or metaphorical; it names a process in which the patterned unfolding of sound aligns with patterned dispositions in bodies and groups. When such alignment occurs, something stabilises — not into stasis, but into a temporary coherence of value. This is what we call value-coalescence.

In this post, we examine how sonic patterns resonate with embodied predispositions to form attractors of shared orientation — attractors that function not as signs, but as fields of convergence in the social production of value.

From Embodiment to Coalescence

Resonance, in its simplest sense, involves the mutual activation of patterned tendencies. A guitar string resonates because its natural frequency is excited by another vibration. In the same way, an embodied listener resonates with a musical event when their value-laden perceptual systems are activated by the patterned movement of sound in time.

This is not passive reception. As shown in earlier series, perception is an active process of differentiation and selection, deeply shaped by histories of embodiment and participation. Each listener brings with them a configuration of value-categories, honed by culture, by repetition, by affective investment. When sound engages these configurations — when it aligns with their orientational readiness — resonance occurs.

But when this resonance is shared, something more emerges: a coalescence of value across bodies. The attractor is not located in the sound alone, nor in any single body, but in the dynamic relational field that emerges when multiple bodies orient together around the same felt coherence.

The Temporality of Coalescence

Value-coalescence is always temporal. It does not precede the event, nor persist as a substance. It emerges in the moment of convergence, as perceptual systems entrain with the unfolding pattern of sound. It is a fleeting, processual phenomenon — yet one with remarkable staying power.

Why does a groove “lock in”? Why do chants, anthems, or motifs persist across time and cultures? Because they function as attractors — forms whose recurrence helps stabilise patterns of collective orientation. These attractors do not represent identities or emotions; they entrain and activate them.

Here, we glimpse the deep link between resonance and social time. Musical attractors do not simply unfold in time; they shape time — not as an abstract metric, but as lived, coordinated orientation. Through resonance, groups enter a shared temporality in which value becomes a distributed phenomenon.

Beyond Representation

Crucially, this process does not rely on representation. There is no need for music to mean something in order for it to gather and stabilise value. The attractor is not a code; it is a site of alignment. Its meaningfulness lies not in what it signifies, but in what it organises — the emergent coherence of affect, embodiment, and group orientation.

This shift — from meaning to meaningfulness, from representation to resonance — is central to our relational model. Value is not assigned to music from outside, nor discovered within it as a hidden message. It is actualised in the encounter, in the temporal convergence of sound and socially attuned perception.

What Follows

The attractor, then, is a stabilising force in a dynamic field. But this stability is never permanent. In the next post, we consider how patterns recur — how attractors are re-instantiated through repetition, ritual, and media circulation — and how these processes extend value-coalescence beyond the moment of performance.

Next: Repetition, Ritual, and Re-instantiation — how attractors persist across time and social scale.

3 Repetition, Ritual, and Re-instantiation

In the previous post, we explored how sonic resonance gives rise to value-coalescence: the temporary stabilisation of shared orientation through the alignment of patterned sound and embodied perception. But what allows such coalescences to persist, to recur, to function beyond the moment of enactment? In this post, we examine the role of repetition, ritual, and re-instantiation in sustaining attractors of value across time and social scale.

Repetition as Social Technology

Repetition is more than reiteration. It is a social technology: a way of drawing perceptual systems back into alignment, reinforcing previously coalesced configurations of value. Through repetition, patterns become familiar — not in the sense of passive recognition, but in the sense of embodied readiness. To encounter a recurring motif, rhythm, or form is to be returned to a known site of resonance.

This is particularly evident in musical forms whose power lies not in surprise but in recurrence: the loop, the refrain, the theme. These are not merely compositional techniques; they are techniques of social re-entry, allowing bodies to re-enter shared fields of orientation.

Repetition also builds probabilistic weight into the relational field. With each recurrence, a pattern becomes more likely to activate value-laden categories — both in individual perception and in collective orientation. This is what makes certain musical motifs so reliably affective, and why others fade into noise.

Ritual and the Binding of Time

Whereas repetition operates at the level of patterned form, ritual functions at the level of social process. It organises time and attention around the recurrence of value-laden forms. In doing so, ritual reinforces not just the attractor, but the collective field in which the attractor is instantiated.

A chant, a hymn, a ceremonial rhythm — each can become an anchor for collective identity, precisely because it binds value to a temporally structured event. Ritual not only marks time but creates social time: a temporality in which the present resonates with the remembered and the anticipated. Attractors are sustained here not only by recurrence, but by institutionalised repetition — socially scaffolded enactments that return bodies to shared orientation.

This binding of time is especially evident in rites of passage, seasonal festivals, or recurring protest songs. These are not mere repetitions of content but re-instantiations of value: material events through which fields of social orientation are periodically reset.

Re-instantiation and Social Memory

Repetition and ritual are effective because they draw on a broader process of re-instantiation. Each occurrence of a musical pattern does more than recall its past: it extends the attractor’s trajectory, modifying its future potential for resonance.

This means that attractors are not static. They develop histories. A national anthem does not mean the same after a revolution; a protest song gathers new salience in times of upheaval. With each re-instantiation, the attractor shifts — not away from coherence, but through it. These shifts are governed by changes in the relational field: the evolving configurations of value, attention, embodiment, and power that constitute the social.

Thus, the attractor is not a fixed form, but a temporally evolving site of value potential. It functions in a kind of distributed social memory, wherein value is not stored in individuals or artefacts but maintained through enactment.

Looking Ahead

We now begin to see how music does not merely reflect social values, but materially shapes the conditions for their emergence, recurrence, and transformation. In the next post, we focus on how attractors orient bodies — not just into collective synchrony, but into differentiated social roles and relations.

Next: Fields of Orientation and Social Differentiation — how attractors help produce shared identity and distinction.

4 Fields of Orientation and Social Differentiation

In the previous post, we examined how repetition, ritual, and re-instantiation sustain attractors of value across time, binding bodies into recurring formations of collective resonance. In this post, we turn to the structure of the field itself: how shared patterns of value not only align participants but also differentiate roles, positions, and trajectories within the field. Music, as a system of material affordance and embodied engagement, plays a crucial role in this differentiation.

Orientation Is Not Uniform

To enter a collective field of value is not simply to align with others, but to be positioned in relation to them. Even within a single moment of musical resonance — say, a live performance — participants are not identically situated. The singer and the audience, the conductor and the ensemble, the dancer and the drummer: each occupies a distinct vantage point within the field, with its own orientation to the sonic attractor.

These distinctions are not merely spatial or functional; they are semiotic and affective. Each position carries different potentials for agency, response, and recognition. In this way, the attractor acts as a differentiator of social function. It enables orientation but does not enforce uniformity.

Differentiation through Participation

Roles emerge through patterns of participation. The repetition of situated actions — drumming, listening, leading, echoing — consolidates differentiated functions. These functions become expectable within the field, and over time may be institutionalised into roles: performer/audience, soloist/accompanist, leader/supporter.

These roles are not rigid categories but zones of potential: attractors within the attractor. For example, the role of soloist may invite behaviours associated with expressive individuation, while the accompanist role may orient bodies toward collective support and timing. The same individual may shift between roles across events or within a single musical process — each shift producing a reconfiguration of embodied relation to value.

In this sense, musical attractors do not impose roles but afford them. They shape the field of what is meaningful and possible in collective orientation.

Differentiation and Identity

This process of differentiation also contributes to the formation of social identity. A participant’s repeated orientation to a specific attractor from a specific position may sediment into a self-understanding — a sense of who one is within the field. This identity is not internal and fixed, but relational and enacted. It is realised through recurrent patterns of orientation and participation.

Moreover, identity is often co-articulated with recognition: being positioned by others in relation to an attractor. For example, a particular vocal style or bodily comportment may signal alignment with a specific genre or community, and thus orient others to the participant’s social role or cultural affiliation. In this way, musical differentiation contributes to social categorisation, not through explicit labelling, but through embodied fields of practice.

Differentiation and Power

Finally, not all roles are equally empowered. Fields of orientation are also fields of differential access and influence. Who controls the attractor? Who decides when it recurs, or how it evolves? Who is granted the authority to lead, and whose participation is marginalised or excluded?

These questions reveal the political dimension of value attractors. While music may create spaces for collective resonance, it also participates in the reproduction — or transformation — of social hierarchies. The differentiation it enables is never neutral.

Attractors of value are therefore not only aesthetic or affective; they are also structuring forces within collective life. They shape the field by drawing bodies into differential positions of agency, identity, and power.

Looking Ahead

In the next post, we turn to the temporal dynamics of change within collective fields. If attractors evolve through re-instantiation, how do they respond to shifting social conditions, emergent value formations, and competing orientations?

Next: Transformations in the Field: Conflict, Emergence, and Renewal — how fields of value shift, fracture, or realign in response to pressure, invention, or historical rupture.

5 Transformations in the Field: Conflict, Emergence, and Renewal

In previous posts, we explored how attractors of value emerge, persist, and differentiate participants within collective fields. But fields are not static. They are shaped by tensions, ruptures, and innovations — processes that unsettle existing attractors and create the conditions for new formations. This post examines how attractors evolve or dissolve through conflict, emergence, and renewal.

Fields Under Pressure

Collective fields are always susceptible to internal contradiction and external disruption. Competing orientations may arise within the same field, each pulling bodies toward different attractors. These tensions can produce conflictual resonances, in which participants are differently attuned, misaligned, or actively opposed.

Such divergence is not inherently destructive. Indeed, it often plays a generative role. Tension introduces instability, creating openings for reconfiguration. When the existing attractor no longer satisfies the embodied orientations of participants — when it no longer "holds" the field — the system enters a state of dynamic disequilibrium.

These moments of breakdown are not rare exceptions but constitutive features of cultural practice. They offer insight into the temporality of collective life: how value fields evolve not only through accumulation but also through discontinuity.

Emergence and Revaluation

From disequilibrium, new attractors may emerge. These are not imposed from outside but arise within the dynamics of the field, often at its margins. Participants may begin to align with new patterns — sonic, affective, postural — that offer alternative modes of resonance. If these patterns sustain attention and repetition, they begin to stabilise, gradually sedimenting into new attractors of value.

This is the process of revaluation: the shifting of embodied investment from one attractor to another. Such shifts are rarely neutral. They often reflect deeper transformations in social identification, collective memory, or ethical stance. For instance, new musical styles may carry altered relationships to gender, race, or class, producing not just sonic novelty but reoriented social meaning.

Importantly, the emergence of a new attractor does not necessarily entail the destruction of the old. Multiple attractors can coexist in heterogeneous tension, drawing participants into overlapping or contested orientations. Fields are often plural, their histories braided.

Renewal through Re-entrainment

At times, existing attractors do not dissolve but are revitalised. Rituals may be re-inflected, genres reinterpreted, and practices re-contextualised in ways that renew their grip on bodies. This renewal is not mere repetition; it is a re-entrainment of affect and attention under changed conditions.

Such renewal often involves subtle shifts in temporal or material affordances — a new instrumentation, a revised pacing, a different staging — that restore or amplify the field's resonance. In this way, value attractors may persist not through rigid preservation but through adaptive transformation.

Renewal may also entail political reclamation. Dispossessed or marginalised groups may reinvest familiar forms with new meanings, enacting continuity as a mode of resistance. Here, the past becomes a resource for reorienting the present.

Music as Field Catalyst

Throughout these transformations, music plays a catalytic role. As a medium of embodied alignment, it can both reinforce and unsettle attractors. A single musical event — a performance, a remix, a protest chant — may activate latent tensions, precipitate new alignments, or articulate emerging values.

Music thus functions not merely within the field, but on the field. It is both participant and process, both artefact and attractor. Its temporal unfolding makes it uniquely suited to track — and sometimes accelerate — the reorganisation of collective value.

Looking Ahead

In the final post of this series, we turn toward a more synthetic view: what does it mean to understand musical practice as a process of navigating attractors in dynamic social fields? And how might such a view contribute to broader conversations in cultural theory, social ontology, and the study of value?

Coda: Music, Fields, and the Dynamics of Value

Across this series, we have traced how musical practices participate in the constitution of value within collective fields. We began by describing attractors of value as material patterns — sonic, gestural, spatial — that draw bodies into alignment and generate shared orientations. These attractors do not simply exist; they emerge, stabilise, differentiate, conflict, and transform over time. And music, in all its situated materiality, plays a central role in this unfolding.

From a relational ontology, this process is not reducible to individual psychology or social structure. It is the co-arising of participants and potentials — a field dynamic where meaning is not predefined, but enacted in the resonance between bodies, sounds, and histories. Attractors form where material processes coincide with affective investment. They sustain value through repetition, but they also invite variation, critique, and revaluation.

Crucially, musical engagement is not only responsive but generative. Listeners and makers alike actualise value through their embodied interactions with unfolding sound. These interactions reverberate outward, shaping how groups perceive, feel, and orient themselves — not just to the music, but to each other and the world.

This perspective enables a more dynamic view of culture. Instead of thinking of music as a reflection of social identity, we see it as a practice through which identities are coalesced and contested. Instead of treating values as pre-given norms, we view them as emergent tendencies within relational systems — fragile, contingent, and yet deeply binding.

Understanding music as a site of value attraction also allows us to attend more closely to its political and ethical dimensions. What kinds of attention does a musical field entrain? What bodies are centred or marginalised by its attractors? What is rendered audible, and what is silenced? These are not peripheral concerns. They are intrinsic to the dynamics of the field.

As we close this series, we return to a simple proposition: music matters because it moves us — not just emotionally, but bodily, socially, and ontologically. It draws us into fields of shared significance. It makes values felt, not as abstractions, but as gravitational pulls on our time, our actions, and our being-with-others.

In that sense, music is not outside the world of value — it is one of the ways the world becomes valuable.