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Discontinuity, Nonlinearity, and Complexity 3(2) (2014) 147--159 | DOI:10.5890/DNC.2014.06.004

D. Volchenkov$^{1}$; E. Banaszak$^{2}$; K.Kocjan$^{2}$; T.Krüger$^{3}$

$^{1}$ Department of Physics, Bielefeld University, Germany

$^{2}$ Department of Computer Science, Cybernetics and Robotics, Technical University Wrocław, Poland

$^{3}$ The Institute of Sociology, Wrocław University, Poland

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Abstract

By a successive reduction of complexity in the appearance data collected in situ, we have shown that the way people maintain their appearance constitutes a multi-level dynamical process evolving in several incomparable time scales. The slowest component of this process represents a gradual diffusion of features (with a measurable pace of growing variance) from a proto-costume, which is likely has the 19th century military uniform as a prototype for men, and a robe de soirée - for women. The rapidly varying component of the process is statistically reminiscent of adiabatic processes in thermodynamics which evolve rapidly, without exchange of heat of a system with its environment. The appearance of other people can be considered as being in a state of "thermal equilibrium" between the almost imperceptible, subtle modifications of a traditional costume and the one day gusts of unpredictable fashion.

Acknowledgments

D.V. gratefully acknowledges the financial support by the project MatheMACS (“Mathematics of Multilevel Anticipatory Complex Systems”), the grant agreement no. 318723, funded by the EC Seventh Framework Programme FP7-ICT-2011-8.

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