In physical terms, we can say that intensity has two complementary qualities: as a force, it can be measured; as a quantity, it runs through its conductive element. Electricity and magnetism, when subjected to high degrees of intensity, modify their environment to the point of saturation. The plug-in connectors that Tatiana Trouvé assembles in loops, with this short circuit freezing them into undulating movements, seem to be undergoing the kind of transformative phenomena usually observed in the realm of sound. As if they were subject to the laws of speed and amplification, in a tension raised to maximum pitch, at the limit where their milieu would become deformed and enter a new dimension, under the effect of excessive power. The electrical short-circuitings may be seen to give measure to this incommensurability by tracing its lines in space.
Another familiar manifestation that partakes of this definitive stoppage of movement is petrifaction. Being lightning-struck, too, has something of this freezing by an intensity as extreme as it is sudden. It records its last moment. But if they had to produce such manifestations, these plugs would do so on their own. They are bachelor machines, simplified to an extreme degree. The aura of fiction surrounding them, which can in fact be compared to the one surrounding the Tempi Doppi, is part of this way of working, in which the closed circuit and self-powering attest a desire for autonomy. But they can also be linked in that being lightning-struck and petrified can owe something to desire itself, when it is raised to its highest degrees of intensity.