Value Circle #3: TALE as A Thematic Transformation Hub

Taking Thematic Attachances and Making Knowledge Elements

Last month I updated the theme of “Value Circle” and reused it to refer to a project about the dynamics of networked knowledge centers.

The theme of “Knowledge Center” was initiated by CALL in Feb 2022. Later, Curativity Center followed it in 2022. TALE joined the micro movement in Jan 2023.

In the past 14 months, I built a network of seven knowledge centers:

• Curativity Center
• CALL (Creative Action Learning Lab)
• Activity Analysis Center
• Platform Ecology Center
• Life Strategy Center
• ARCH Center
• TALE (Thematic Analysis Learning Lab)

Each knowledge center has its uniqueness. A knowledge center is a collective project that aims to develop certain unique knowledge. A “center” should have its own uniqueness in order to establish its identity and theme. Otherwise, there is no need to build a “center”.

In 2023, the issue is about the complexity of a network of knowledge centers.

How can we keep the uniqueness of individual knowledge centers while we can build the synergy effects of a network?

Inspired by the Project Engagement approach (v2.1)’s six units of analysis, I realized that I could use “Units of Analysis” to connect the following seven knowledge centers together.

1. CALL(Creative Action Learning Lab) Center
The “Human — Material” Interaction

2. ARCH Center
The Interpersonal Interaction

3. Activity Analysis Center
Human Activity/Social Practice

4. Platform Ecology Center
Platform, Network, and Ecosystem

5. Life Strategy Center
Lifelong Development

6. TALE (Thematic Analysis Learning Engagement) Center
Themes behind Social Practices

7. Curativity Center:
The All-in-one Wholeness

What does it mean?

Originally, I used books/theoretical approaches to frame uniqueness. Now I separate theoretical approaches from the wholeness level.

At the wholeness level, the difference between individual knowledge centers is their units of analysis. In this way, I can build a meaningful whole for a network of knowledge centers.

At the uniqueness level, each knowledge center can focus on its own aspects, perspectives, frameworks, tools, etc.

Some theoretical approaches can be applied to one or more knowledge centers. For example, the Ecological Practice Approach.

Meta-center and Thematic Transformation Hub

Curativity Center was defined as a meta-center for building a network of knowledge centers on its launch day.

On September 5, 2022, I developed a method called Mapping Thematic Landscape for understanding the complexity of a network of Knowledge Centers. See the diagram below.

You can find more details in Slow Cognition: Mapping Thematic Landscape (Curativity, 2019–2022).

In the past several months, I have discovered the significant value of TALE for building a network of knowledge centers.

While TALE is a knowledge center for hosting the Thematic Engagement project, it is also a Thematic Transformation Hub for the whole network of knowledge centers.

I use the term Thematic Transformation Hub to highlight TALE’s unique function of transforming experiences into themes as knowledge elements.

The rest of the article will use examples to explain this idea.

How does a Thematic Transformation Hub work?

TALE stands for Thematic Analysis Learning Engagement. Themes are the primary object of TALE.

As a Thematic Transformation Hub, TALE used the Strategic Thematic Exploration framework and related methods to take the following actions:

1. transform experiences into situational themes,
2. connect situational themes with creative themes,
3. transform creative themes into knowledge elements, and
4. curate knowledge elements into knowledge frameworks.

The process also uses some tools such as possible themes, thematic cards, thematic network diagrams, and more tools from the thematic engagement toolkit.

The idea of “Thematic Transformation Hub” was born from a series of mental moves between TALE and other knowledge centers. Originally, I used “Collaborations” to describe this type of creative action.

You can find the path in the following links.

• March 11 — “TalkThree” — CALL > Curativity Center > TALE
• March 22 — “Knowledge Center” — CALL > Curativity Center > TALE
• March 24 — “Mental Moves” — CALL > Activity Analysis Center > TALE
• March 29 — “Expansive Activity Analysis” — Activity Analysis Center > TALE

In Mental Moves #8: The Hierarchy of Knowledge Centers, I reflected on this journey with several diagrams.

The first example is a mental move between TALE and CALL. See the diagram below.

• CALL: “Life Coordinate” is a concept of the Lifesystem Framework (v1.0)
• CALL > TALE: “Life Coordinate” is detached from the Lifesystem framework (v1.0) and attached to TALE as an independent theme.
• TALE: “Life Coordinate” is an independent theme and it is developed to v2.0
• TALE > CALL: “Life Coordinate” is detached from TALE and attached to CALL as a concept of the Lifesystem Framework (v2.0)

The primary goal of the post was to turn “Life Coordinate” from a concept into a theme. In this way, the audiences of TALE can use the theme “Life Coordinate” without considering the Lifesystem Framework.

The secondary goal of the post was to build an example of collaborative projects between TALE and other knowledge centers.

The second example is mental moves between Curativity Center, Life Strategy Center, and TALE. See the diagram below.

• Curativity Center > TALE: The original model is detached from Curativity Center and attached to TALE with a new name: “Thematic Curation”.
• TALE: The model is detached from “Thematic Curation” and attached to a domain called “Strategic Exploration”, the outcome is a new domain-specific model “Strategic Thematic Exploration”.
• TALE > Life Strategy Center: The “Strategic Thematic Exploration” is detached from TALE and attached to Life Strategic Center.

The third example is about mental moves between the different hierarchical levels of knowledge centers.

In this case, I also used an advanced version of diagrams for the above two examples. I use both Knowledge Centers and Knowledge Projects as Containers. However, Knowledge Projects are primary containers while Knowledge Centers are secondary containers.

• “Anticipatory Activity System” > “Strategic Thematic Exploration”: The knowledge element “Persona Dynamics” was detached from the “Anticipatory Activity System” project and attached to the “Strategic Thematic Exploration” project.
• “Themes in the Field” (“Persona Dynamics”): The knowledge element “Persona Dynamics” is used as an example of the notion of “Themes in the Field” which is part of the “Strategic Thematic Exploration” project.
• “Themes in the Field” || “Theoretical Resouces”: The diagram “Theoretical Resouces” was born from the reflection on the “Themes in the Field” discussion.
• “Strategic Thematic Exploration” > “Knowledge Engagement”: The knowledge element “Theoretical Resouces” was detached from the “Strategic Thematic Exploration” project and attached to the “Knowledge Engagement” project.

Some knowledge projects are collaborative projects between two or more knowledge centers. For example, the “Creative Life Curation” project is a collaborative project between Curativity Center and CALL (Creative Action Learning Lab).

You can find more details in Mental Moves #8: The Hierarchy of Knowledge Centers.

Case Study: A Theme Called “Ecological Strategic Cognition”

From the above three examples, we see some aspects of Thematic Transformation Hub. However, these examples are not written to explain the idea of Thematic Transformation Hub.

Let’s use a possible theme called “Ecological Strategic Cognition” as an example to achieve this goal.

If you need to know more details about the theme, you can read the original article.

The theme of “Ecological Strategic Cognition” was inspired by the Strategic Curation Model that was born from the Life Strategy project in Dec 2022. You can find more details in Life Strategy: Ecological Strategic Cognition.

I consider the Strategic Curation model as a new approach to Strategic Cognition which is about strategy-related thinking and doing. The new approach emphasizes the “thinking-doing” connection, spatial cognition, and temporal structure. Since the approach is based on the concept of “Thematic Spaces” which is a core idea of the Ecological Practice approach, I name it Ecological Strategic Cognition.

In Dec 2022, my primary focus was the possible book Advanced Life Strategy. The Strategic Curation model was developed as a map to visualize people’s thoughts about some strategy-related concepts or ideas to understand people’s predictive model.

Why did I return to the theme of “Ecological Strategic Cognition” on August 4?

On July 31, I closed the Mental Moves project with a possible book titled Mental Moves: The Attachance Approach to Ecological Creative Cognition (Introduction, Table of Contents). In general, the book is about my reflection on Creativity.

Inspired by the book, I detached the theme of “Ecological Strategic Cognition” from the Life Strategy Center and attached it to TALE (Thematic Analysis Learning Engagement). Now we can see it as an independent knowledge element.

The above diagram represents a model behind the creative process:

Project (Actions) > Experience > Inspiration > Theme > Projectivity

The “Mental Moves” Knowledge Project was started on March 24, 2023, and closed on July 31, 2023, with a possible book Mental Moves: The Attachance Approach to Ecological Creative Cognition.

On August 4, 2023, I reflected on the “Mental Moves” Knowledge Project and returned to the theme of “Ecological Strategic Cognition”.

It means my mental focus was detached from my “Creativity” thematic space and attached to my “Strategy” thematic space.

In this way, I started exploring a new Projectivity which means an opportunity to run a new knowledge project about “Ecological Strategic Cognition”.

On Jan 9, 2021, I published an article titled Activity U (X): Projecting, Projectivity, and Cultural Projection which introduces the concept of Projectivity and the notion of Cultural Projection. This article is an essential part of my 2021 book Project-oriented Activity Theory.

What’s Projectivity?

It refers to potential action opportunities of forming a project or participating in a project for people to actualize their development with others. You can find more details in Project Engagement (v2): Life, History, and Multiverse.

The new Projectivity was supported by two things:

• The theme of “Ecological Strategic Cognition”
• The Strategic Curation Model

On August 4, 2023, I wrote an article about the new Projectivity. During the process of writing the article, I developed a new framework for the theme of “Ecological Strategic Cognition” and used the framework to curate more relevant knowledge models for the project.

Situational Themes and Situational Models

In the original article A Possible Theme Called “Ecological Strategic Cognition”, I developed the following Situational Themes:

• Thematic Orientation: “6A Aspects of Ecological Strategic Cognition” + Ecological “Moves” (Thinking, Doing, and Moving) + The Ecological Practice Approach
• Strategic Situation at Micro Level
• Strategic Field at Meso Level
• Strategic Landscape at Macro Level

These situational themes form a situational model that was used to curate several knowledge models from different knowledge centers together. See the diagram below.

The above diagram also represents the relationship between TALE and the other four knowledge centers.

Since this article is about Thematic Transformation Hub, we only pay attention to TALE. From the perspective of TALE, there are two types of complexities in the above diagram.

• Internal Complexity
• External Complexity

Internal Complexity refers to the dynamics and structure of a thematic network within the TALE Center.

TALE has to deal with different types of themes because they have different functions.

• Situational Themes
• Creative Themes
• Orienting Themes
• Intermediate Themes
• Knowledge Themes

Situational Themes are used to generalize abstract meanings from concrete experience.

Creative Themes refer to creative inspirations for knowledge projects.

Orienting Themes are used as orienting strategies for curating a knowledge framework.

Intermediate Themes can be seen as immediate mediations for building a knowledge framework.

Knowledge Themes refer to established knowledge which are the outcome of knowledge projects.

This typology of themes is only useful for TALE because other knowledge centers don’t work with the Strategic Thematic Framework and related tools.

External Complexity refers to the relationship between TALE and other knowledge centers. The above case is about selecting relevant knowledge frameworks as raw materials for the Ecological Strategic Cognition project.

The Situational Models are an important entity for connecting internal complexity and external complexity. For example, TALE uses the “Situation — Field — Landscape” schema to develop a three-level model for curating various knowledge frameworks from four knowledge centers.

How to develop Situational Models?

It’s not necessary to develop a situational model for every case. The above #1 to #3 cases don’t develop situational models but use the following model for moving mental elements between different knowledge centers.

The term “mental elements” is adopted from Dean Keith Simonton’s Chance-configuration theory (Scientific Genius,1988).

As mentioned above, there is a three-level hierarchy of Knowledge Center. If we focus on the level of “Mental Elements”, then we can use the three aspects of mental elements to guide the moves.

• Name: Does it have a name?
• Form: Does it have an identifiable form?
• Content: Does it have more than one identifiable entity?

Let’s apply the “three aspects of mental elements” model to “Creative Life Curation”.

If a mental element has a name, then we can test if the name is separable or inseparable from the whole.

Let’s try to use “Thematic Curation” to rename it. See the diagram below.

The above diagram was originally named “Creative Life Curation”.

I didn’t modify the original model. It seems the new name works well because a significant step of the model is “Crystallize Thematically” which refers to a turning point.

Before the turning point, the tendency is to discover a meaningful theme for the next phase. After the turning point, the tendency is to spread the meaning of the theme by making various artifacts. These two phases can be understood as two types of thematic curation activity. One is called Subjectifcation and the other one is called Objectifaction.

The new name “Thematic Curation” is perfect for the model. Now we can detach it from Curativity Center and attach it to TALE.

You can find more details in Mental Moves #1: The Transformation of Mental Elements and TALE: The “Strategic Thematic Exploration” Framework.

If the experiences are super rich, it’s better to adopt an Existing Framework as a Situational Model for a thematic transformation project. This is an economic way of cognitive operation. We don’t have to invent tools every time.

For example, I used the ECHO Way as a situational model for reflection on a 10-day road trip from the Creative Life Curation perspective.

The above picture is the overview of the project.

Project (Actions) → Stories (Notes) → Model → Creative Work

The 10-day road trip was a project that included a series of actions. After the project was completed, it became my life Experience.

I use “life as continuous flow” as a metaphor to describe Life and Experience. This metaphor is inspired by William James’ metaphor “Stream of Thought.” You can’t use a knife to cut a stream, you only can use a container to contain it.

If I do nothing with my subjective experiences of the 10-day road trip. It is only my memory. If I want to share it with others, I have to write notes, take pictures, record the trip, etc. In this way, I made Stories of the trip for social communicative context.

Though I didn’t write notes with details, I made 21 situational themes of the trip. These themes are Personal Signs which refer to my Subjective Meanings of the trip. These themes can be seen as micro-stories.

As a “Thematic Analysis Learning Engagement” activity, it goes beyond normal storytelling and social media sharing. It moves from the Story level to the Model level. I adopted the ECHO Way model as a tool to analyze the deep structure of these themes.

In this way, I can run a “Creative Life Curation” project and turn pieces of life experiences into meaningful Creative Work. I also used The ECHO Trip to name a possible book about the project.

From the perspective of Curativity Center, the Creative Life Curation project is part of the journey of building the knowledge enterprise of Curativity Theory.

You can find more details in The ECHO Trip: A 10-day Road Trip and Creative Life Curation.

Taking Thematic Attachances

Each knowledge center has its own uniqueness.

What’s TALE’s uniqueness?

From the perspective of the Ecological Practice approach, Thematic Transformation Hub refers to a unique function of Taking Thematic Attachances.

I coined the term Attachance by combining Attach and Chance in 2018 to discuss some ideas related to Affordance, a core idea of Ecological Psychology.

Affordance means potential action opportunities offered by environments. I want to highlight the meaning and value of actual action itself, however, the term Affordance only refers to potential actions. Thus, I coined the term Attachance to emphasize the potential opportunities offered by actual actions, especially the attaching act and the detaching act.

Taking Thematic Attachances sees the process of thematic exploration and concept development as a creative action of making new themes and concepts. The diagram below uses the Universal Reference diagram and the “Attach — Container — Detach” schema as frameworks to curate several projects about it.

the above diagram represents a complicated landscape of thematic exploration and concept development.

The landscape has one process and four thematic spaces.

• The “Attach — Container — Detach” process

The activity of thematic exploration and concept development can be seen as a process of 1) attaching mental focus to a primary thematic space (Container), and 2) detaching mental focus from the primary thematic space. The primary thematic space has two tendencies that determine the events:

• Offers: The thematic space offers frames to guide the process
• Acts: The actor takes creative mental moves in order to develop unique concepts

The above diagram also identifies four secondary thematic spaces. I use a red dot and a light blue circle to represent a secondary thematic space. Each secondary thematic space has a name that represents a secondary theme.

• ED: Early Discovery
• EF: Ecological Formism
• SC: Slow Cognition
• FI: Fast Ignition

In the past several months, I worked on the Early Discovery of the journey of Knowledge Engagement. I consider Strategic Thematic Exploration and Conceptual Elaboration as two phases of EARLY DISCOVERY.

The theme of “Thematic Exploration” is located in the “Early Discovery” thematic space. On June 23, 2023, I closed the “Strategic Thematic Exploration” project with a possible book titled Thematic Exploration: The Early Discovery of Knowledge Engagement.

The “Frame for Work” theme refers to a project about using and developing knowledge frameworks for creative projects. The core idea of the theme is called “Ecological Formism”.

The “Mental Moves” theme refers to a book (draft) titled Mental Moves: The Attachances of Moving between Thematic Spaces. It is about the immediate experience of mental inspiration. So, it is located in the “Fast Ignition” thematic space.

I use the theme of “Slow Cognition” to refer to a large thematic space for my creative work study. The theme of “Creative Life Curation” and related framework are located in the “Slow Cognition” thematic space.

These projects are the Territory of the concept of “Thematic Transformation Hub”.