Generative Topological Ontology Based on Mitate, Shitate, and Make-Believe
This paper reconstructs the early concept of make-believe in the thought of bigakusha-haha and develops it into an ontological model of generation.
Rather than treating make-believe as imitation, fiction, or play in the ordinary sense, the paper defines it as an ontological procedure through which unrealized connectabilities become actualized.
At the foundation of this process lies playfulness. Playfulness is not entertainment but a sensitivity toward yet-unrealized possibilities of connection.
This sensitivity manifests as Mitate (analogical phase-selection), Shitate (environmental phase-design), and Make-Believe (participatory realization of potential relations).
The paper proposes the following generative sequence:
Playfulness → Mitate → Shitate → Make-Believe → Recognition → Forgetting → Reality.
From this perspective, reality itself is interpreted as recognized and forgotten make-believe.
This framework integrates bigakusha-haha’s Web Installation, Interface Art, Inverse-Problem Art, Insensitivity to Existence, and ART1.0–5.0 into a unified generative ontology.
Modern thought has generally assumed distinctions between reality and fiction, seriousness and play, authenticity and make-believe.
This paper questions the origin of these distinctions.
Why is a nation considered real while playing nation is considered play?
Why is money real while a toy store game is not?
Why is an artist real while playing artist is considered imitation?
The paper argues that these distinctions emerge not from objects themselves but from processes of recognition and forgetting.
Playfulness is not amusement.
It is a primordial sensitivity to unrealized connectabilities.
A stone may appear as a mountain.
A cardboard box may appear as a spaceship.
A screen may appear as another world.
A URL may appear as an artwork.
Such experiences precede logical judgment.
Playfulness is therefore defined as:
Sensitivity toward unrealized connectability.
When playfulness acts upon an object, Mitate emerges.
Mitate is the selection of an alternative phase through which an object becomes meaningful.
Yet it becomes a mountain, an island, or an ocean.
The object does not change.
The phase of connection changes.
Mitate is therefore a technique of phase-selection.
Shitate constructs the conditions that allow Mitate to occur.
Zen gardens, bonsai, tea rooms, and artistic environments are not object-productions.
They are conditions for phase-generation.
In this sense, Shitate corresponds structurally to Inverse-Problem Art.
When subjects enter a phase opened through Mitate and Shitate, Make-Believe emerges.
Make-believe does not imitate objects.
Thus make-believe is the experimental actualization of unrealized relational possibilities.
6. Recognition and Reality
When make-believe becomes socially shared, recognition emerges.
Repeated recognition forms institutions.
Repeated institutions generate forgetting.
At this point, make-believe becomes reality.
Reality is therefore recognized and forgotten make-believe.
Shallowness is play that has not yet been forgotten.
The difference between depth and shallowness is not essential but temporal.
8. Insensitivity to Existence
When forgetting becomes complete, the generative origin of reality disappears from awareness.
Bigakusha-haha calls this condition Insensitivity to Existence.
Art functions as a practice that reactivates awareness of forgotten playfulness.
The paper proposes a unified generative model:
Playfulness → Mitate → Shitate → Make-Believe → Recognition → Forgetting → Reality.
In this model, playfulness is the origin of ontological generation.
Reality is not opposed to play.
Reality is stabilized play.
Art reveals the forgotten playfulness that continues to sustain reality itself.
janainaart
theartofmadeline
baratheonpilled
ellievsbear
2087
