Definition
The owner: “If it helps, we can even model this random behavior directly and treat stochastic fluctuation as a property of the canvas itself rather than as a property of the population of the ensemble acting on it to make the necessity for maintenance explicit.”
Split each placement into one that serves some coalition’s plan and one that serves none. The second kind is modelled as a field: T(x, t) is the rate at which placements following no plan land at site x at time t. A pattern nobody maintains is then corrupted at rate T. Holding it takes a flow of repair that matches that rate, plus whatever rivals add. In this form the canvas has a thermal decay, and maintenance is visibly necessary (CLAIM-273, version 2).
T varies in time. It is high early and falls as uninvested participants leave (CLAIM-274). That is a cooling schedule. It also varies in space, since unaffiliated placers are drawn to visible regions, so T is not uniform.
What it is not
- Not plan-free. Whether a placement follows no plan is relative to the plans in play. CLAIM-279 holds that stabilizing and destabilizing are relative to a policy. Falmagne et al. could not tell an attack from an “innovation that will eventually be adopted into the image” (THEORY-214). So T is defined against a stated set of plans. The Void is noise to every artwork and a plan to itself.
- Not thermodynamic temperature. It is a rate of corruption. No entropy or energy is defined, as CLAIM-273 says.