Why monotonous repetition is unsatisfying
The article discusses human preference for ordered complexity over randomness in the environment, highlighting negative reactions to monotonous repetition in architecture. Solutions include introducing variety and structured variation for engaging environments.
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In the article "Why Monotonous Repetition is Unsatisfying" by Nikos Angelos Salingaros, the author discusses human preference for ordered complexity over randomness in the environment. Monotonously repeating forms are perceived as unnatural and evoke reactions from boredom to unease. Christopher Alexander's rules for generating forms adapted to natural geometries emphasize structured variation with multiple symmetries in a hierarchy of scales, making monotonous repetition impossible. The lack of rigorous theory explaining human reactions to different forms leads to conjectures on combinatorial complexity and the influence of structured variation on human perception. The article explores the negative reactions to simplistic repetition in contemporary architecture and advocates for more complex yet ordered shapes in buildings to create a better urban environment. The author suggests that introducing variety in repeating modules or grouping modules together can break translational symmetry and avoid combinatorial complexity, providing examples from traditional architecture. These solutions aim to create more interesting and engaging environments by incorporating structured variation and hierarchy in design.
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11 commentsThe best combination is to establish some patterns by repetition, then break these patterns and introduce new ones to keep the listener guessing, but the deviations should form a bigger pattern as well. It's the best when you can notice the pattern quickly, then before it gets boring it changes, and the new pattern feels like you could have predicted it - but you didn't.
The concept of tension and resolution is fundamental in music, and I think this is very closely related to expectation and surprise - and thus to repetition and pattern-breaking.
However, I can tell you why we get bored easily when seeing repetition. It's that "we've grasped the pattern, it's very simple, and now we have more important things to do with our lives." Predicting the pattern isn't interesting anymore to anyone except maybe a kid for about 10 seconds.
As humans, our curiosity drives us to seek out new things so we can explain our surroundings. Randomness drives us crazy because we can't predict what happens, and thus our ability to "prevent bad things" is hampered. Even worse than randomness is a smart opponent, e.g. in chess, who thwarts our schemes by intelligently choosing a move based on preventing the traps we could lay. We may feel powerless at that point. But even more annoying, to the point of ANGER (a reaction that we and other primates resort to), is when the opponent makes sub-obtimal moves because they can predict what we are going to do, or quickly reacts to what we are doing, and therefore don't even bother defending against things it is confident we won't do. This is worse than us being able to predict things, it's worse than randomness, it's worse than optimal strategy, it's literally them "toying with us" and "cheating by predicting our very moves"!
The reason we feel anger and tend to escalate (e.g. quit the game, flip the board) at that point, is that we sense not only how much weaker we are but that the other side is "making fun of us", toying with us, we have no hope of "winning" but also we are in a dangerous situation since the toying can turn into something more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oue3pcmh-U0
Try it with other people and you'll see exactly this ladder...
Illustrated on the left by the Parthenon, with a row of eight identical pillars. This has a golden spiral overlaid to show that it's mathsy and natural. Halfway down the article there's a section "levels of scale" which asserts that the spacing of columns on temples is somehow magical and makes them alright, while modern columns are spaced differently and are all wrong.
But no, it's just a monotonous row of pillars. If it had no ancient history it would look kind of oppressive (the same way any charming old castle was originally a military installation built to exert control and spew out steel-clad troopers).
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio#The_Parthenon for more skepticism.
Meaning matters more than neurology, usually. We like stuff we've been made to feel attached to, culturally. But the article also mentions honeycombs. If we are going to talk about neurology, honeycombs will make some people (with trypophobia) very uncomfortable indeed, and the magical minor imperfections and irregularities of nature won't counteract that at all.
* because repetition is offtopic on HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
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