Rhizomatic Matrix

Definition

A research and organisational method introduced to this wiki by Taylor & Preston's Intimus: a matrix or diagram used as "a working method for searching and organising texts, and for mapping their locations as a relational matrix" (p. 8). Described in other theoretical discourse as "rhizomatic, networked or diagrammatic" (the lineage runs through Deleuze & Guattari's rhizome), the method "foster[s] the formation of connections among notions as opposed to defining or creating singular isolated entities" (p. 8). The matrix mediates between the virtual potentials of a data-set (a field of essays/excerpts) and the actual artefact (the book); it is "graphic shorthand used to declare latent structures of organisation" and it is generative — "can be used to order possible readings" (p. 9).

Procedure

Search laterally: gather material through "an interdisciplinary database search" across "seemingly unrelated research and practice, moving laterally between existing systems and categories, not in a haphazard manner but through productive leaps generated by rules that had consequential and significant outcomes" (p. 8).
Position each text twice: "the matrix positions each text relative to a disciplinary body of knowledge (social, political, philosophical, technological, gender and psychological) and then relative to prominent interior design practice issues (material, colour, light, space, decoration and furnishing)" (p. 8). Each text admits multiple locations — the interpretive role of the organiser is acknowledged, not hidden.
Use as surveying instrument: "the matrix is intended to be used as a surveying instrument and ordering device with the purpose to catalyse cross- and inter-disciplinary insights" (p. 9).
Refuse canonical order: the collected texts are "presented via an organisational strategy that refuses both chronologic and thematic structure" (p. 13) — connectivity is "at once distant, by discipline, and intimate, by content."

Key Thinkers

Mark Taylor & Julieanna Preston — the method's articulators: order made "not towards the specificity or hegemony of a discipline, but rather to turn outwards and mobilise forces of action and imagination between matter and information" (p. 8).
Gilles Deleuze — the theoretical source of the "rhizomatic, networked or diagrammatic" framing (p. 8); see also assemblage and deterritorialisation.

Interdisciplinarity — the epistemic stance the matrix operationalises.
Assemblage — the Deleuzian ontology of connection-without-hierarchy that the matrix embodies.
Empirical Methods — a contrasting methodological corrective (evidence-led rather than connection-led).

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

Proximities (Taylor & Preston 2006) — the matrix as working method, surveying instrument and ordering device (pp. 8–9, 13).
Becoming Places (Dovey 2010) — the rhizome/tree pair as urban-design method and its mapping corollary: "Tree-like thinking organizes our world hierarchically under the branches of a transcendent idea (state, corporation, family, church). Rhizomatic thought is identified by lateral movement of network connectivity" (p. 20); the urban-design lineage (Jacobs's diversity, Alexander's "A City is Not a Tree") that "have long congealed into design formulae"; and Corner's rhizomatic mapping — "Mapping as an extensive and rhizomatic set of field operations precipitates, unfolds and supports hidden conditions, desires and possibilities nested within a milieu" (quoted p. 29) — with Dovey's correction that mapping cannot be counterposed to planning and design ("it makes no sense to draw a sharp division between a design and a plan"). See assemblage, spatial-segmentarity.

Open Questions

Is the matrix genuinely generative — do its "productive leaps" produce insights a thematic or chronological organisation could not — or does its admitted multiplicity of placements ("the multiple locations in which each text could be placed," p. 8) make it unfalsifiable?
Can the method be transposed to this wiki (a vault organised as "a relational matrix" of concepts and sources) as an explicit research protocol?
What distinguishes a matrix from a mere taxonomy — is it the refusal of hierarchy, the double positioning of each item, or the insistence that connections outrank definitions?