Journal articles on the topic 'Condensation symbol'

The attractiveness of cultural & creative products on spreading and “recurring” regional culture is the key to the shaping of urban culture. In this paper, starting from the differences of regional cultural contexts, we discussed the explicit culture and implied culture in cultural symbols and put forward new ideas on regional cultural context reconstruction and symbol condensation and conversion. The symbolic design of cultural & creative products in the cultural context of Spring Festival education in Xi’an was taken as an example here, and the method proposed herein was further clarified through cultural context reconstruction of “Yanta Praying” activity and symbolic design of educational & cultural products.

A non-uniform constellation (NUC) can effectively reduce the gap between bit-interleaved coded modulation (BICM) capacity and Shannon capacity, which has been utilized in recent wireless broadcasting systems. However, the soft demapping algorithm needs a lot of Euclidean distance (ED) calculations and comparisons, which brings great demapping complexity to NUC. A universal low-complexity NUC demapping algorithm is proposed in this paper, which creates subsets based on the quadrant of the two-dimensional NUC (2D-NUC) received symbol or the sign of the in-phase (I)/quadrature (Q) component of the one-dimensional NUC (1D-NUC) received symbol. ED calculations and comparisons are only carried out on the constellation points contained in subsets. To further reduce the number of constellation points contained in subsets, the proposed algorithm takes advantage of the condensation property of NUC and regards a constellation cluster containing several constellation points as a virtual point. Analysis and simulation results show that, compared with the Max-Log-MAP algorithm, the proposed algorithm can greatly reduce the demapping complexity of NUC with negligible performance loss.

Buildings are the condensation of the national, ethnic, or cultural identity. They are also the specific materialized form of the national social systems, folk customs, and ideologies. Architectural design and philosophy constitute an isomorphic relationship with each other. This study focuses on the Chinese traditional philosophy. Using Kuanzhai Alley in Chengdu as an example, philosophical expressions, such as “holistic thinking,” “group form layout,” “heaven and man,” “yin–yang and the five elements,” “ancient architecture design,” “good” aesthetic concepts, and “conformal”rationalism, are discussed from the aspects of the selection of the environment, spatial layout, architectural symbol, planning, and design significance. The traditional architectural forms and types are analyzed and interpreted based on the Chinese traditional philosophy. The role of the ancient Chinese philosophy in the Designs of Chinese Buildings is summarized. Traditional ideas on Chinese architecture should be recognized from the aspect of philosophy to propose a new design direction for developing modern Chinese architectural designs.

Chemistry learning based on the intertextuality of chemistry demands relationship among chemistry representsation on three levels, which are macrocospic, microscopic, and symbol level with the daily experience of students and the social interaction developed by teachers. Through the research entitled “Pengembangan CD Pembelajaran Interaktif Kimia SMA Berbasis Intertekstualitas sebagai Alternatif Model Pembelajaran”, we will have a learning CD for teachers using competency standard and basic competency; concepts and indicators; the representation of chemistry materials on three levels macroscopic, microscopic, and symbol; learning description; and student work sheet. Before making the learning model, we will execute a standard analysis on the content of KTSP 2006, so we will get the concepts and indicators; potray the learning process of teachers in class and analyse the reference books both text books and hig school books. The data source for this research is the table of according to concept and indicators with competency standard and basic competency; the observation of learning process in class; the analysis table of three levels; hydrolysis materials from text books in high school and university; and the descriptive table of hydrolysis concept learning. The supporting instruments used are quistionaires to know the students expereince and essay texts to know the concept understanding the students have after the learning process. From the standard analysis of the content of KTSP 2006, we have three concepts and eight indicators. The first concept is classifying salt according to the forming compounds with the indicators (1) explain salt coming from strong acid and strong base; (2) explain salt coming from strong acid and weak base; (3) explain salt coming from weak acid and strong base; (4) explaining salt coming from weak acid and weak base. The second concept: hydrolysis is the ions reaction with water molecul producing ion H+ and or OH- with indicators (1) describe salt hydrolysis and (2) explain various kinds of salt hydrolysis. The third concept is salt undergoing hydrolysis can be acid base, or neutral with indicators (1) measure qualitatively the characteristic of acid, base, and neutral of salt by using some indicators and (2) count the ph of hydrolysied salt condensation. The observation result will be recorded on video then transcribed into text and smoothed to be a basic text. After that, we will do propotition degradation to gain global structure. Then, this data will be classified based on the intertextuality of chemistry. From the result of the data analysis we can conclude that the model teacher has not used the learning based on the intertextuality chemistry yet. The learning process of the model teacher is dominated by the symbol level and the social interaction developed by the teacher is not optimal; besides, there is no aspect of daily experience discussed in the learning process. The development of learning model based on intertextuality begins by making hydrolysis material representation in three levels. The compilation of hydrolysis material representation is executed in three steps: analysing high school books and university; making representation device; conducting validation to experts and practitioners; and final revision. In macroscopic level we do demonstration of the condensation and litmus test on soaps, alum, and salt and also the determination pH of the salt by using pH meter. In microscopic level we demonstrate pictures of species salt solutionbefore and after hydrolysis process. Then in symbolic level we demonstrate the formula of salt molecul, ionisation reaction equation and hydrolysis on salt, and mathematic formula in determining the concentration H+ and OH- to count pH and pOH. Later on, we make a description of the learning process equiped with learning media; clarify the demonstrations; present the model in front of experts and practitioners; record it in a learning CD. Meanwhile, the application of the learning CD in class will be conducted in the next research in the second year.Key words: interactive teaching media, intertextuality, teaching model.

Nature and Literature have a related meaning relationship. Ecological aspects paradigmatically can have a role in telling the story of literary works. This study aims to determine the narrative functions of ecology in the novel Aroma Karsa. The method of this study is a narrative analysis with a literary ecology approach in the ontological, epistemological and axiological scope focusing on the characters’ narrative functions. The data are obtained through the documentation process, which is in-depth reading; with the aim of identifying, classifying and categorizing the story based on the concept of the narrative function by Vladimir Propp. The results of the study identify four characters who ontologically have a strong relation to the ecological aspects of the story, namely; Sangyang Batari Karsa/Puspa Karsa, Jati Wesi/Randu, Tanaya Suma/Malini, and Raras Prayugung. Epistemologically, it is known that Aroma Karsa (1) builds perception of the cultural environment and ideal environmental criteria, and (2) enriches the ecological knowledge of the readers. Axiologically, Aroma Karsa mutually reveals the symbolic relationship of nature with the readers’ cultural receptions related to myths, medications, fragrances, gender and cleanliness. There are 5 spheres of action (villain, hero, helper, false hero, princess) out of 7 with 24 supporting functions on 4 identified characters. The mechanism of narrative function uses special personage in the form of character condensation to convey the premise of the story. The mechanism of the narrative function is centered on Puspa Karsa who becomes the symbol of ecocentric narrative in the novel Aroma Karsa.

Nature and Literature have a related meaning relationship. Ecological aspects paradigmatically can have a role in telling the story of literary works. This study aims to determine the narrative functions of ecology in the novel Aroma Karsa. The method of this study is a narrative analysis with a literary ecology approach in the ontological, epistemological and axiological scope focusing on the characters’ narrative functions. The data are obtained through the documentation process, which is in-depth reading; with the aim of identifying, classifying and categorizing the story based on the concept of the narrative function by Vladimir Propp. The results of the study identify four characters who ontologically have a strong relation to the ecological aspects of the story, namely; Sangyang Batari Karsa/Puspa Karsa, Jati Wesi/Randu, Tanaya Suma/Malini, and Raras Prayugung. Epistemologically, it is known that Aroma Karsa (1) builds perception of the cultural environment and ideal environmental criteria, and (2) enriches the ecological knowledge of the readers. Axiologically, Aroma Karsa mutually reveals the symbolic relationship of nature with the readers’ cultural receptions related to myths, medications, fragrances, gender and cleanliness. There are 5 spheres of action (villain, hero, helper, false hero, princess) out of 7 with 24 supporting functions on 4 identified characters. The mechanism of narrative function uses special personage in the form of character condensation to convey the premise of the story. The mechanism of the narrative function is centered on Puspa Karsa who becomes the symbol of ecocentric narrative in the novel Aroma Karsa.

The objective of this research was to evaluate, in vitro, the importance of the correct manipulation of endodontic sealers, correlating it with flow rate and with the consequent obturation of root canals. Twenty-four human canines were prepared, 1 mm from the apex, with K-files up to size 50, by means of the step-back technique. Six lateral canals were then drilled in each tooth, with size 10 file fixed to a low-speed handpiece. The teeth were randomly divided into 4 groups, and root canals were obturated either with the Endométhasone<FONT FACE=Symbol>Ò</FONT> sealer or Grossman sealer, prepared at ideal or incorrect clinical consistency. After obturation by means of the lateral condensation technique, the teeth were radiographed and evaluated as to the number of sealed lateral canals. Statistical analysis revealed significant differences (p < 0.001) between the tested sealers, and indicated the higher capacity of the well-manipulated Grossman sealer to fill lateral canals. It can be concluded that the flow rate of a sealer and its correct manipulation are very important for the satisfactory obturation of lateral canals.

Tourist cultural and creative brands are the condensation of culture, history, design and commerce. In the collision and blending of culture and commerce, it forms unique competition advantage. The developers of tourist cultural and creative products, based on the cultural core, explore and construct the symbolic meaning, and help tourists to complete the aesthetic journey from viewing to purchasing and then to cultural experience. In the brand strategy, developers should base on the cultural foundation, construct symbolic meaning and cultural image, and implant cultural association into products through traditional cultural inheritance and innovation, so as to arouse consumers’ cultural identity and strengthen the brand value.

This article proposes approximations between Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology and Serge Moscovici’s social representation theory. Both authors are interested in the relationship between agents/groups, social context, and culture, and both value the symbolic dimension in the construction of social reality. Bourdieu highlights the social world of struggles between the socialized agent and culture, while Moscovici privileges interactions involving the collective subject which, whether in conflict or consensus, produces a theory of social knowledge that is revealing of culture. In this broader context, the article highlights relations between “social positions” and “groups” which are present in both Bourdieu and Willem Doise, an important collaborator of Moscovici in the area of social representation theory. Such relations are founded on the principle of structural homology, a principle based on the correspondence between social structure and symbolic systems. This discussion leads to another: the need to understand “consensus” and “conflict” in groups, in both Moscovici and Doise, relating them to the action of forces in Bourdieu’s social field of struggles. The notion of “group,” which is valued in our text, is little discussed by these authors. We emphasize the necessity to go deeper into group interactions in articulation with positions in the social field, and to value group representations and practices in meaning negotiation processes, as well to discuss the question of social change. We propose studying social representations—in groups with homogeneous practices—as a symbolic form of condensation and measurement of symbolic capital, adding to this approach the notion of social position and semiotic mediation.

AbstractThis paper proposes an aesthetic-driven evolutionary algorithm for user-centered design. The evolutionary algorithm is based on a genetic algorithm (GA). It is developed to work as an art form generator that enhances user's productivity and creativity through reproduction, evaluation, and selection. Users can input their preferences and guide the generating direction to the system. A two-step fitness function is developed to evaluate morphology and aesthetics of the generated art forms. Fractals created by an iterated function system are used for representing art forms in our process. Algorithmic aesthetics are developed based on the aesthetic measure theory, surveys of human preferences, and popular long-lasting symbols. The algorithmic aesthetics is used for evaluating aesthetics of art forms together with subjective nonquantifiable aspects, and placed in the fitness function. The GA basically creates two-dimensional art forms. However, any two-dimensional image can be included through the property of a condensation set of fractals. The proposed GA can increase design productivity by about 80%. Examples of jewelry designs and physical prototypes created by the proposed system are included.

AbstractIn semiotics and the study of pictorial communication, the conceptualization of visual rhetoric and argumentation has been dominated by two connected approaches: firstly, by providing an understanding of visual rhetoric through tropes and figures; and secondly, by interpreting pictures as texts that are read and decoded in the same way as words. Because these approaches provide an opportunity to understand pictures as a form of language, they contribute in explaining how pictures can be used to argue. At the same time, however, these approaches seem to under-communicate two central aspects of pictorial argumentation: its embedment in specific situations and the distinguishing phenomenological aesthetics of pictures. This paper argues that the study of visual argumentation must understand pictures both as languageandas a material aesthetic event. The possibility and actuality of visual argumentation is partly explained by understanding argumentation as a cognitive and situational phenomenon, and partly by introducing the notion of symbolic condensation. It is suggested that reconstruction of visual argumentation should be supported by reception analysis.

AbstractVariable-coefficient nonlinear Schrödinger (NLS)-type models are used to describe certain phenomena in plasma physics, nonlinear optics, arterial mechanics, and Bose–Einstein condensation. In this article, the coupled variable-coefficient cubic-quintic NLS equations with external potentials in the non-Kerr fibre are investigated. Via symbolic computation, similarity transformations and relevant constraints on the coefficient functions are obtained. Based on those transformations, such equations are transformed into the coupled cubic-quintic NLS equations with constant coefficients. Nonautonomous soliton solutions are derived, and propagation and interaction of the nonautonomous solitons in the non-Kerr fibre are investigated analytically and graphically. Those soliton solutions are related to the group velocity dispersion r(x) and external potentials h1(x) and h2(x, t). With the different choices of r(x), parabolic, cubic, and periodically oscillating solitons are obtained; with the different choices of h2(x, t), we can see the dromion-like structures and nonautonomous solitons with smooth step-like oscillator frequency profiles, to name a few.

Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian deskriptif kualitatif dengan tujuan untuk mendeskripsikan representasi matematis siswa SMA dalam menyelesaiakan masalah matematika ditinjau dari gaya kognitif sistematis dan intuitif. Subjek dalam penelitian ini, yaitu dua siswa kelas XI yang terdiri dari satu siswa bergaya kognitif sistematis dan satu siswa bergaya kognitif intuitif. Instrumen penelitian yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini, yaitu tes gaya kognitif dan tes representasi matematis. Penelitian diawali dengan pemilihan subjek melalui tes gaya kognitif, kemudian subjek yang telah terpilih diberikan tes representasi matematis dan dilakukan wawancara tertulis. Data yang telah diperoleh dianalisis dengan teknik analisis data yang melalui tahapan, yaitu kondensasi data, penyajian data, serta penarikan kesimpulan dan verifikasi. Hasil penelitian yang diperoleh menunjukkan representasi matematis siswa bergaya kognitif sistematis dalam menyelesaikan masalah matematika, yaitu pada tahap memahami masalah menggunakan representasi verbal, pada tahap menyusun rencana penyelesaian menggunakan kombinasi antara representasi simbolik dan representasi verbal, pada tahap melaksanakan rencana penyelesaian menggunakan representasi simbolik dan representasi verbal, dan pada tahap memeriksa kembali penyelesaian menggunakan representasi verbal. Sedangkan representasi matematis siswa bergaya kognitif intuitif dalam menyelesaikan masalah matematika, yaitu pada tahap memahami masalah menggunakan representasi visual, pada tahap menyusun rencana penyelesaian menggunakan representasi simbolik, pada tahap melaksanakan rencana penyelesaian menggunakan representasi simbolik, dan tidak menunjukkan representasi matematis pada tahap memeriksa kembali penyelesaian. This research is descriptive-qualitative research that aimed to describe the mathematical representation of high school students in solving mathematical problems in terms of systematic and intuitive cognitive style. The subject of this research is two eleventh grade students, consists of one student with systematic cognitive style and one student with intuitive cognitive style. The research instruments used in this research are cognitive style test and mathematical representation test. Research starts by choosing the subject by cognitive style test, and then the subjects that have been chosen were given mathematical representation test and did written interview. The data obtained were analyzed with data analysis techniques, namely data condensation, data display, and drawing and verifying conclusions. Results of this research show the mathematical representation of student with systematic cognitive style on solving problems are verbal representation when understanding the problem, combination of symbolic and verbal representation when devising a plan, symbolic representation and verbal representation when carrying out the plan, and verbal representation when looking back. While the mathematical representation of student with intuitive cognitive style on solving problem are visual representation when understanding the problem, symbolic representation when devising a plan, symbolic representation when carrying out the plan, and not show mathematical representation when looking back.

Madiun is a regency in East Java which is known as Kampung Pesilat. Persaudaraan Setia Hati is an organization was made by Ki Ngabehi Surodiwirdjo, Persaudaraan Setia Hati is a way of living and a life’s path. That is not a fighting sport but a fighting art. A fighting sport is a struggle with another and a fighting art is a struggle with oneself. Persaudaraan Setia Hati is a combination of the two brotherhood and founded on five basic principles, brotherhood/ friendship, sport, self-defense, art and culture, and spiritual development which represent in the symbols of the Persaudaraan Setia Hati emblem. Thus, the researcher uses socio-cultural theory which appear register forms. The objectives of this study are to describe the register, context, social meaning of register used by Persaudaraan Setia Hati. The approach of this study is qualitative research and the type of the research is case study because the researcher can identify the register forms that used Persaudaraan Setia Hati and social meaning in society. The researcher shows the data on screenshot of the original conversation each member which is taken from Facebook group Persaudaraan Setia Hati. Analysis technique flow model of this study are data condensation, displaying data, and concluding. The result of this study are (1) there are some register words found in the data that categories the context as follows: the participants are about the relationship between each member, the setting describes from the place where the conversation happened, the topic are about daily life experiences, the function as the motivation and self reminder for each member (2) social meaning are about brotherhood/friendship, sport, self-defense, art and culture, spiritual development.

AbstractThe discontinuous Petrov–Galerkin (DPG) methodology of Demkowicz and Gopalakrishnan guarantees the optimality of the finite element solution in a user-controllable energy norm, and provides several features supporting adaptive schemes. The approach provides stability automatically; there is no need for carefully derived numerical fluxes (as in DG schemes) or for mesh-dependent stabilization terms (as in stabilized methods). In this paper, we focus on features of Camellia that facilitate implementation of new DPG formulations; chief among these is a rich set of features in support of symbolic manipulation, which allow, e.g., bilinear formulations in the code to appear much as they would on paper. Many of these features are general in the sense that they can also be used in the implementation of other finite element formulations. In fact, because DPG’s requirements are essentially a superset of those of other finite element methods, Camellia provides built-in support for most common methods. We believe, however, that the combination of an essentially “hands-free” finite element methodology as found in DPG with the rapid development features of Camellia are particularly winsome, so we focus on use cases in this class. In addition to the symbolic manipulation features mentioned above, Camellia offers support for one-irregular adaptive meshes in 1D, 2D, 3D, and space-time. It provides a geometric multigrid preconditioner particularly suited for DPG problems, and supports distributed parallel execution using MPI. For its load balancing and distributed data structures, Camellia relies on packages from the Trilinos project, which simplifies interfacing with other computational science packages. Camellia also allows loading of standard mesh formats through an interface with the MOAB package. Camellia includes support for static condensation to eliminate element-interior degrees of freedom locally, usually resulting in substantial reduction of the cost of the global problem. We include a discussion of the variational formulations built into Camellia, with references to those formulations in the literature, as well as an MPI performance study.

Penjor merupakan symbol dari perayaan keagamaan pada masyarakat Hindu di Bali yaitu perayaan Hari Raya Galungan, dimana penjor akan ditancapkan dilebuh (didepan pintu rumah) umat Hindu di Bali. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk membantu pengerajin hiasan janur di Bali khususnya di kabupaten Badung dalam memperhitungkan biaya yang dianggap dapat menimbulkan pemborosan melalui cost reduction. Cost reduction merupakan metode termudah dan paling pasti untuk meningkatkan keuntungan dalam jangka pendek (Bragg, 2010). Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian deskriptif kualitatif dengan proses pengumpulan data melalui observasi, wawancara dengan pengerajin, dan dokumentasi. Analisis data menggunakan analisis data model interaktif dengan tiga alur analisis, yaitu kondensasi data (data condensation), penyajian data (display data), serta pengambilan kesimpulan atau verifikasi (conclusion drawing/verification). Hasil dari penelitian ini adalah (1) harga jual hiasan janur oleh para pengerajin bisa berbeda-beda tergantung dari hasil atau model masing-masing hiasan janur, dimana harga jual hiasan janur bisa bervariasi dari Rp250.000,- hingga Rp350.000,-, (2) pengerajin hiasan janur dapat melakukan strategi cost reduction dengan cara meminimalisasi harga biaya bahan baku, yang dalam hal ini dengan membuat sendiri hiasan bunga ratna dari benang wol, (3) untuk mempertahankan eksistensinya para pengerajin hiasan janur diharapkan mampu melakukan inovasi baik dari sisi hasil kerajinan maupun mampu mengembangkan bidang usahanya.

The phenomenon of violence in the school environment is still happening. Such violence may be physical violence, verbal violence, psychic violence, and symbolic violence. Various forms of violence have been understood as a school effort to discipline students. However, that violence may potentially impact the educational environment to be non-conducive. This study aims to explore more deeply about the ecosystem in Madrasah Aliyah Negeri Kota Batu. To achieve that goal, this research is done by using a qualitative research approach. Subjects of this study were teachers and students who were in the arena of symbolic violence, namely in the school environment. Data collection uses observation, interview, and documentation. The data obtained were analyzed using technical analysis from Miles and Huberman with data condensation, data display, and conclusion. Test data validity uses data triangulation and method triangulation. This study was analyzed using the perspective of symbolic violence of Pierre Bourdieu. The results of this study indicate that there is no intention from the school to commit violence on the basis of their power. The assertive action was taken solely as a disciplining process to learners. The action is aimed at students to have a ‘moral honor’ that is useful to them and create a conducive educational ecosystem. Although sometimes get a reaction from learners but this action they can understand as an action that is naturally done by the school in the face of irregularities committed by some learners.

The Virtual and the Physical A wide range of ritual practices have accompanied the ‘rise of the network society’. This is witnessed in the secular and non-secular magic and mysticism that is endemic in contemporary science fiction, in war-chalking, in new forms of compulsion, neurosis and addiction, or just in the everyday use of networked technologies. Such ritual practices are often only seen as interesting diversions or attachments to the main social issues involved in networking. Indeed, some might see these diversions precisely as attempts to cope with the network society, or even to flee from its apparent technicity and reassert identity against the network (Castells). Yet many of these ritual activities suggest complex ritual engagements with the network. What happens when we consider these ‘diversions’ as central to the ongoing dynamic of networks – technical and social?I shall not be providing an anthropology of these ritual activities. Neither shall I be documenting case studies of the shamanistic, the mystical, neuroses, and so on, as all these find their accommodations with the network society. I shall only, via the work of philosopher of anthropology José Gil, give reasons for the importance of the understanding of ritual to a more general understanding of networks. For networks bring together not just copper wires, Ethernet, optic fibre and electromagnetic radiation, but also other fibres (such sinew and neurons), and other radiations (such as affects, the chemicals and hormones of the nervous system). Ritual is at the heart of this ‘bringing together’. Following Gil, I will suggest that rituals do not just facilitate network operations, they also translate and transform networks in the process. For Gil, ritual space 'has a symbolically overloaded, polysemic topography' (80) in which every site (paralleling neurons in the brain or points in the P2P network) is 'overdetermined'. This allows an over-riding of linear 'technical causality' with ritual ‘magic’, something akin to the over-riding of logical theories of cognition with theories of emergence and the superpositionality of potentials throughout the circuits of the brain or network. Within this superpositionality, symbolism is not so much a series of meanings as a series of actions. Symbols, as enacted in rituals (or in the firing of the patterns of the brain, the movement of packets through Internet), 'designate realities, they set forces into motion, they are "in the present"' (81). Gil also points out that these ritual acts are accompanied by 'particularly intense affective experience' (81). When signs are not focussed directly upon the production of meaning, but are over-determined in ritual, this is 'in order that powerful energies are released that will become the main power source for the cure'. Indeed, in ritual there is a 'regime of energies' along with the 'regimes of signs'. Moreover, the meshing of the two suggests that either term is probably inadequate to explain what is occurring. Signs form constellations of forces that partner other constellations of forces (including other signs), 'separating' or 'condensing' energy fluxes' (82), or enabling 'translation' between them (and between signs as forces). Both the flow of these forces and their translations are, of course, seldom ‘smooth’. There is rather a constant re-writing – or in the context of networks, better, re-wiring – of shifting, contingent and contesting networks of forces. The constant heterogeneous flow of forces only adds to both the intensity of networks and the drive towards more forms of active ‘translation’ found in the proliferation of rituals within networks. It is in this dialogics of intensity and translation that we find the politics of networks. This is a politics that is far from being a politics of pure information. Returning to Gil, it is not only that signs translate forces on behalf of the body. I would add that it is not only the technical nodes in general (and signs are precisely technical nodes) that translate these forces on behalf of the body. The body is itself the crucial 'operator translating signs [and forces] in the ritual'. With this devaluing of symbolic processing qua symbols (so long crucial to so many of the myths and sciences of cognition and information), the brain becomes participant in (though not director of) this bodily translation of signs - and the forces assembled and disassembled. Through, and as, networks of assembled and disassembled forces, brain/body relations and distributions are assembled and disassembled within the concatenation of brain, body and world that is technics. This occurs over the time of evolution but equally over the time of the formations of habits, in the body in general, or as weights of connection between neurons or nodes in the network. It is partnered in the formation of socio-technical evolutions, specific socio-technical assemblages and the weights according to connections between these assemblages. Of course, the more networked things are, the faster the weights of connection change. The network takes the ritual place of the gods. As Gil writes, 'the gods can do what people can't do. They can make energy circulate freely, since they embody both loose and overcoded energy, the loosest and most overcoded of all' (84). This is why we still find magic - or at least something that is effectively like magic - at the heart of any exercise of power. Indeed, the ambiguity of the relations between ‘secular’ and variations of ‘spiritualist’ magic have long been an under-recognised part of media/technological development (as recently documented with regard to the nineteenth century development of the cinema and the entertainment industries in general by Simon During, or in Chris Chesher’s notion of computers as ‘invocational media’). This is not so much a question of metaphysics versus a more directly materialist approach to technical power as a question of directing forces by the necessary means. In order for 'action to have effects…words must release forces in the body; these forces must react directly on the organs' (143). Indeed, Gil claims that it is only with the notion of 'magical-symbolic thought' that we can resolve some of the ambiguities surrounding the material operation of forces and signs, where cultural analysis quite contradictorily seems at one time to assume the priority of one, and at another time the other. Gil points out that ritual magic is precisely that which works at the border between power and discourse, force and sign. This is not an unintelligible border. Even at its apparently most disorganized in terms of its philosophical or scientific coherence (in ritual ecstasy for example), ritual magic is in reality extremely organised (although an organisation of forces and translations rather than one of stable states). As Gil writes, even the 'gestures, words, or cries of the possessed are coded' (137). Indeed, the codes involved are precisely those of possession, but of a possession by networks rather than of them (thus the legal and commercial confusion surrounding file-sharing and so on, in that networks may be undone, but they cannot be possessed). Yet if those subject to ritual – or to networks – are coded, this is not initially within a semiotic structure but within a structure of active transformations. Therefore, 'magical words are action' (84) and ritual (the rituals of science and materialist metaphysics as much as 'primitive' ritual) is an 'actual activity' (137). In ritual there is 'more than a text, more than a semiotic structure [and more than information or communication]…one had to keep in mind the link that unites forces to signs, and the investment of energy that the body imposes on symbols'. Gil's conceptual envelope for this 'more than text' is 'infralanguage'. The 'infralanguage is the [real but] abstract body' (136). I would suggest that this ‘infralanguage’ is also, at least in part, the body registering its immersion in technics – a registration that occurs before cognition, before communication. Or, it is the body – considered in the posthuman sense as any dynamic assemblage. Infralanguage is the assumed of networked engagement, perhaps the libidinal condition of the network (science fiction is clear on this – why else the fascination with plugging leads into our heads and closing our eyes to enter a different world – a different libidinal economy). Like a posture or a series of movements in rituals, infralangage is 'both learned and given' as it translates 'codes and contexts'. Moreover, as here we are talking about a networked learning (and perhaps a dynamic archive as ‘given’), we are not just talking about human learning, or the distribution of weights within the network of the brain, but also about the way that there is a distribution of weights across nodes between brain, body and world – across networks. Particularly important here are 'abstract rhythms' (Felix Guattari has labelled these 'refrains') as these are basic elements of processual structure that can cross codes and contexts, bring them together, translate them in, we could say, polyrhythms, syncopation or simple rhythmic transformation and variation. It is perhaps no wonder that computer games and music have been so central to the expansion of networks – both deal intensely with these rhythmic transformations of codes and posture at the interface of the networks of technics, brain and body. Infralanguage works with codes, bodies, the organs of the body and with a 'complicity' between 'bodily forms and the form of things'. Fibre meets fibre. The shifting investments and assemblages of the body meet a network cast precisely as the enhanced ability of technics (including technics as the human) to shift and reassemble its own investments. Again it is important to note that these investments never come together smoothly – not even, perhaps, into Baudrillard’s smooth if vapid ‘ecstasy of communication’. Rather the constant reconstitution and reassemblage of investments only adds to the intensification of the drive towards connection – and further reassemblage, translation of heterogeneous and contesting aspects of these investments. Thus reassemblage – in a parallel to ‘real-time’ media’s ongoing reformulation of time – is ongoing within networks, as the intensification of connection brought about by enhanced networking constantly reconfigures networks themselves. Infralanguage only gains more importance. It performs the necessary work with the 'condensation of energy on an exfoliated surface' (exfoliation is the opening of the body into spaces as it structurally and dynamically couples with them). Within networks surfaces are exfoliating in more and more complexity. In this ongoing reorganization there is a surprising immanence to networked cognition, situated perhaps in what Pierre Lévy has called ‘collective intelligence’. This is a technically enabled - but not technically delimited - reorganisation of cognitive forces within a heterogeneous collectivity. Lévy’s work possesses the advantage of demonstrating that, although the flow of networks is always in flux, always ‘political’, this in itself contains the positive political potential of intensity and heterogeneity. In these multi-directional flows, the collective intelligence that could emerge (but it would always be a struggle) would be a ‘fractal’ collectivity of: ‘macrosocieties, transindividual psyches of small groups, individuals, intra-individual modules (zones of the brain, unconscious ‘complexes’), agencies which traverse intra-individual modules that move between different people (sexual relations, complementary neuroses)’ (107-108). For Lévy, ‘the collective hypercortex contains … a living psychism, a sort of dynamic hypertext traversing the tensions and energies of affective qualities, conflicts, etc’. In this networked cognition, that beyond the brain seems to take up many of the functions often ascribed to the brain. And the thought that eludes the individual - the thought that for the individual is famously withdrawing in time and space even as it appears - does not elude the network or the activity of ritual magic as a working with these networks. Gil notes that in ritual, …thought coincides with being… time and space do not impede the grasping of the thing in itself - because, on the contrary, they [time and space] are organized in such as manner that they can be transformed by appropriate techniques and at the same time remain linked to their normal perception—in order to create from it the conditions of possibility and the formal framework for knowledge of the absolute. (84) What is this knowledge of the absolute through 'magic words' and rituals? It relates to 'the possibility of capturing the free forces that traverse bodies' (85). In other words, the absolute is reworked immanence rather than a totality that is given once and for all. Throughout his book Cyberculture, Lévy calls this the ethic of ‘universality without totalization’ – global coverage that is receptive to every local difference. Feedback and autopoiesis - crucial terms within many investigations of the cognitive and informational - become the very affective substance of ritual techno-magic. For Gil, ritual autopoiesis addresses the famous 'failure to understand how to know the "thing in itself"' as per Kant. For Gil, this failure is in fact a 'negative proof' of 'the success of magical-symbolic thought in capturing fleeting time in the links of its spatial representations, making it a recurrent or a cyclic system'. Perhaps it is a matter of loving the network through ritual at the junction of perceptual and world, spaces and affective or cognitive fields. I mean ‘loving’ in the sense taken up by John Scannell in M/C when he remarks that ‘graffiti writers love the city more than you ever will’. All acts of love are drenched in ritual (such as graffiti writing) because all acts of love are intense translations of forces. Perhaps those who embrace the network through ritual show others the way. Hackers, war-chalkers, technopagans utopians, perceptual experimentalists, the new techno-neurotics – all these are willing to explore the affective, intensity of the new rituals. All ‘love’ the network with all the difficulties and complexity that love implies. For them, the network is not just an information or communications conduit, but a partner in ritual becoming. Works Cited Baudrillard, Jean (1988) “L’Extase de la Communication” trans. Bernard Schutze and Caroline Schutze, in Mediamatic 3, 2:81-5. Castells, Manuel (2000) The Rise of the Network Society 2nd Edition, Oxford:Blackwell. Chesher, Chris (1996) ‘CD-ROM Multimedia's Identity Crisis’ in Media International Australia 81, August. During, Simon (2002) Modern Enchantments: The Cultural Power of Secular Magic, Cambridge MA:Harvard University Press. Gil, José (1998) Metamorphoses of the Body, trans. Stephen Muecke Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press. Lévy, Pierre (1995) Qu’est-ce que le virtuel? La Decouverte:Paris. Lévy, Pierre (2001) Cyberculture, trans. Robert Bononno Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press. Scannell, John (2002) 'Becoming-City: Why Graffiti Writers Love the City More than You Ever Will' in M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, 2 < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0205/becoming.php> (accessed June 12th, 2002). Links http://www.media-culture.org.au/0205/becoming.html Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Murphie, Andrew. "When Fibre Meets Fibre " M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0308/04-fibremeetsfibre.php>. APA Style Murphie, A. (2003, Aug 26). When Fibre Meets Fibre . M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0308/04-fibremeetsfibre.php>

Usually, a literature search is a benign phase of the research regime. It was, however, during this phase on my current project where a semi-conscious pique I’d been feeling developed into an obvious rancour. Because I’ve been involved in both electronic production and consumption, and the pedagogy surrounding it, I was interested in how the literate domain was coping with the transformations coming out of the new media communications r/evolution. This concern became clearer with the reading and re-reading of Kathleen Tyner’s book, Literacy in a Digital World: Teaching and Learning in the Age of Information. Sometimes, irritation is a camouflage for an emerging and hybridised form of knowledge, so it was necessary to unearth this masquerade of discord that welled-up in the most unexpected of places. Literacy in a Digital World makes all the right noises: it discusses technology; Walter Ong; media literacy; primary, secondary, and tertiary schooling; Plato’s Phaedrus; psychoanalysis; storytelling; networks; aesthetics; even numeracy and multiliteracies, along with a host of other highly appropriate subject matter vis-à-vis its object of analysis. On one reading, it’s a highly illuminating overview. There is, however, a differing interpretation of Literacy in a Digital World, and it’s of a more sombre hue. This other more doleful reading makes Literacy in a Digital World a superior representative of a sometimes largely under-theorised control-complex, and an un.conscious authoritarianism, implicit in the production of any type of knowledge. Of course, in this instance the type of production referenced is literate in orientation. The literate domain, then, is not merely an angel of enlightened debate; under the influence and direction of particular human configurations, literacy has its power struggles with other forms of representation. If the PR machine encourages a more seraphical view of the culture industry, it comes at the expense of the latter’s sometimes-tyrannical underbelly. It is vital, then, to question and investigate these un.conscious forces, specifically in relation to the production of literate forms of culture and the ‘discourse’ it carries on regarding electronic forms of knowledge, a paradigm for which is slowly emerging electracy and a subject I will return to. This assertion is no overstatement. Literacy in a Digital World has concealed within its discourse the assumption that the dominant modes of teaching and learning are literate and will continue to be so. That is, all knowledge is mediated via either typographic or chirographic words on a page, or even on a screen. This is strange given that Tyner admits in the Introduction that “I am an itinerant teacher, reluctant writer, and sometimes media producer” (1, my emphasis). The orientation in Literacy in a Digital World, it seems to me, is a mask for the authoritarianism at the heart of the literate establishment trying to contain and corral the intensifying global flows of electronic information. Ironically, it also seems to be a peculiarly electronic way to present information: that is, the sifting, analysis, and categorisation, along with the representation of phenomena, through the force of one’s un.conscious biases, with the latter making all knowledge production laden with emotional causation. This awkwardness in using the term “literacy” in relation to electronic forms of knowledge surfaces once more in Paul Messaris’s Visual “Literacy”. Again, this is peculiar given that this highly developed and informative text might be a fine introduction to electracy as a possible alternative paradigm to literacy, if only, for instance, it made some mention of sound as a counterpoint to textual and visual symbolisation. The point where Messaris passes over this former contradiction is worth quoting: Strictly speaking, of course, the term “literacy” should be applied only to reading and writing. But it would probably be too pedantic and, in any case, it would surely be futile to resist the increasingly common tendency to apply this term to other kinds of communication skills (mathematical “literacy,” computer “literacy”) as well as to the substantive knowledge that communication rests on (historical, geographic, cultural “literacy”). (2-3) While Messaris might use the term “visual literacy” reluctantly, the assumption that literacy will take over the conceptual reins of electronic communication and remain the pre-eminent form of knowledge production is widespread. This assumption might be happening in the literature on the subject but in the wider population there is a rising electrate sensibility. It is in the work of Gregory Ulmer that electracy is most extensively articulated, and the following brief outline has been heavily influenced by his speculation on the subject. Electracy is a paradigm that requires, in the production and consumption of electronic material, highly developed competencies in both oracy and literacy, and if necessary comes on top of any knowledge of the subject or content of any given work, program, or project. The conceptual frame of electracy is herein tentatively defined as both a well-developed range and depth of communicative competency in oral, literate, and electronic forms, biased from the latter’s point of view. A crucial addition, one sometimes overlooked in earlier communicative forms, is that of the technate, or technacy, a working knowledge of the technological infrastructure underpinning all communication and its in-built ideological assumptions. It is in this context of the various communicative competencies required for electronic production and consumption that the term ‘literacy’ (or for that matter ‘oracy’) is questionable. Furthermore, electracy can spread out to mean the following: it is that domain of knowledge formation whose arrangement, transference, and interpretation rely primarily on electronic networks, systems, codes and apparatuses, for either its production, circulation, or consumption. It could be analogue, in the sense of videotape; digital, in the case of the computer; aurally centred, as in the examples of music, radio or sound-scapes; mathematically configured, in relation to programming code for instance; visually fixated, as in broadcast television; ‘amateur’, as in the home-video or home-studio realm; politically sensitive, in the case of surveillance footage; medically fixated, as in the orbit of tomography; ambiguous, as in the instance of The Sydney Morning Herald made available on the WWW, or of Hollywood blockbusters broadcast on television, or hired/bought in a DVD/video format; this is not to mention Brad Pitt reading a classic novel on audio-tape. Electracy is a strikingly simple, yet highly complex and heterogeneous communicative paradigm. Electracy is also a generic term, one whose very comprehensiveness and dynamic mutability is its defining hallmark, and one in which a whole host of communicative codes and symbolic systems reside. Moreover, almost anyone can comprehend meaning in electronic media because “electric epistemology cannot remain confined to small groups of users, as oral epistemologies have, and cannot remain the property of an educated elite, as literate epistemologies have” (Gozzi and Haynes 224). Furthermore, as Ulmer writes: “To speak of computer literacy or media literacy may be an attempt to remain within the apparatus of alphabetic writing that has organized the Western tradition for nearly the past three millennia” (“Foreword” xii). The catch is that the knowledge forms thus produced through electracy are the abstract epistemological vectors on which the diverse markets of global capitalism thrive. The dynamic nature of these “multimodal” forms of electronic knowledge (Kress, “Visual” 73), then, is increasingly applicable to all of us in the local/global, human/world conglomerate in which any polity is now framed. To continue to emphasise literacy and alphabetic consciousness might then be blinding us to this emerging relationship between electracy and globalisation, possibly even to localisation and regionalisation. It may be possible to trace the dichotomy outlined above between literate and electrate forms of knowledge to larger political/economic and cultural forces. As Saskia Sassen illustrates, sovereignty and territoriality are central aspects in the operation of the still important nation-state, especially in an era of encroaching globalisation. In the past, sovereignty referred to the absolute power of monarchs to control their dominions and is an idea that has been transferred to the nation-state in the long transition to representative democracy. Territoriality refers to the specific physical space that sovereignty is seen as guaranteeing. As Sassen writes, “In the main … rule in the modern world flows from the absolute sovereignty of the state over its national territory” (3). Quite clearly, in the shifting regimes of geo-political power that characterise the global era, sovereign control over territory, and, equally, control over the ideas that might reconfigure our interpretation of concepts such as sovereignty and territoriality, nationalism and literacy, are all in a state of change. Today’s climate of geo-political uncertainty has undoubtedly produced a control complex in relation to these shifting power bases, a condition that arises when psychic, epistemological and political certainties move to a state of unpredictable flux. In Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities another important examination of nationalism there is an emphasis on how literacy was an essential ingredient in its development as a political structure. Operational levels of literacy also came to be a key component in the development of the idea of the autonomous self that arose with democracy and its use as an organising principle in citizenship rituals like voting in some nation-states. Eric Leed puts it this way: “By the sixteenth century, literacy had become one of the definitive signs — along with the possession of property and a permanent residence — of an independent social status” (53). Clearly, any conception of sovereignty and territoriality has to be read, after being written constitutionally, by those people who form the basis of a national polity and over whom these two categories operate. The “fundamental anxiety” over literacy that Kress speaks of (Before Writing 1) is a sub-component of this larger control complex in that a quantum increase in the volume and diversity of electronic communication is contributing to declining levels of literacy in the body politic. In the current moment there is a control complex of almost plague proportions in our selves, our systems of knowledge, and our institutions and polities, because it is undoubtedly a key factor at the epicentre of any turf war. Even my own strident anxieties over the dominance of literacy in debates over electronic communication deserve to be laid out on the analyst’s couch, in part because any manifestation of the control complex in a turf war is aimed squarely at the repression of alternative ways of being and becoming. The endgame: it might be wiser to more closely examine this literacy control complex, possible alternative paradigms of knowledge production and consumption such as electracy, and their broader relationship to patterns of political/economic/cultural organisation and control. Acknowledgements I am indebted to Patrice Braun and Ros Mills, respectively, for editorial advice and technical assistance in the preparation of this essay. Note on reading “The Literacy Control Complex” The dot configuration in ‘un.conscious’ is used deliberately as an electronic marker to implicitly indicate the omni-directional nature of the power surges that dif.fuse the conscious and the unconscious in the field of political action where any turf war is conducted. While this justification is not obvious, I do want to create a sense of intrigue in the reader as to why this dot configuration might be used. One of the many things that fascinates me about electronic communication is its considerable ability for condensation; the sound-bite is one epistemological example of this idea, the dot, as an electronic form of conceptual elision, is another. If you are interested in this field, I highly recommend perusal of the MEZ posts that crop up periodically on a number of media related lists. MEZ’s posts have made me more cognisant of electronic forms of written expression. These experiments in electronic writing deserve to be tested. Works Cited Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. rev. ed. London and New York: Verso, 1991. Gozzi Jr., Raymond, and W. Lance Haynes. “Electric Media and Electric Epistemology: Empathy at a Distance.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 9.3 (1992): 217-28. Messaris, Paul. Visual “Literacy”: Image, Mind, and Reality. Boulder: Westview Press, 1994. Kress, Gunther. “Visual and Verbal Modes of Representation in Electronically Mediated Communication: The Potentials of New Forms of Text.” Page to Screen: Taking Literacy into the Electronic Era. Ed. Ilana Snyder. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1997. 53-79. ---. Before Writing: Rethinking the Paths to Literacy. London: Routledge, 1997. Leed, Eric. “‘Voice’ and ‘Print’: Master Symbols in the History of Communication.” The Myths of Information: Technology and Postindustrial Culture. Ed. Kathleen Woodward. Madison, Wisconsin: Coda Press, 1980. 41-61. Sassen, Saskia. Losing Control? Sovereignty in an Age of Globalization. New York: Columbia UP, 1996. Tyner, Kathleen. Literacy in a Digital World: Teaching and Learning in the Age of Information. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1998. Ulmer, Gregory. Teletheory: Grammatology in the Age of Video. New York: Routledge, 1989. ---. Heuretics: The Logic of Invention. New York: Johns Hopkins U P, 1994. ---. “Foreword/Forward (Into Electracy).” Literacy Theory in the Age of the Internet. Ed. Todd Taylor and Irene Ward. New York: Columbia U P, 1998. ix-xiii. ---. Internet Invention: Literacy into Electracy. Boston: Longman, 2003. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Maybury, Terrence. "The Literacy Control Complex" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture <http://www.media-culture.org.au/0403/05-literacy.php>. APA Style Maybury, T. (2004, Mar17). The Literacy Control Complex. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 7, <http://www.media-culture.org.au/0403/05-literacy.php>

We do not bear a straightforwardly passive relationship with the ubiquitous regime of the logo-sign. As dwellers of the eternity of the consumer present, the luxury of our boredom allows us to pick and choose. The overwhelming celerity with which the everyday perpetually transforms its packaging, the excessively rapid turnover of signs has condensed our historical perspective. Tomorrow I will buy that new pair of shoes. As congenital sufferers of a logorrhea of the logo, our chatter is articulated by product placement. We become active in distinguishing ourselves with these loaded and at once empty signifiers. Whether linguistically or graphically organized the condensation of ideas, facilitated by the economy of the logo is allowed through the operation of the sign. It is beneath the dazzling lights of signification that we can find the logo, a tool bandied about by ‘ideas men.’ Signification is that logic upon which the logo depends. Though the mechanism that silently determines our findings remains obscure, as good little consumers we have nonetheless done our research. Our choice, seemingly personal, but actually orchestrated by the dissimulated forces of the social, perpetuates a cycle of exchange, the endless circulation of logo-signs. In compliance with our socio-economic status, one logo demarcated product has more symbolic purchase than another. Our habitual belief that we have a choice, and that this choice is well informed, allows the naturalisation of logo-signs in such a way that subtle, often unspoken thresholds between taste communities become reified. There persists, all the same, a traffic across such thresholds, and although it would appear that there is little room to move, our product choices are not necessarily all determined in advance. Though our habitation is one composed of multitudinous worldly signs, this does not mean that it is impossible to discover some way out, or perhaps some other mode of operation for the logo-sign. Our taste for the logo-sign is augmented by what might be considered an apprenticeship in signs, one that commences with early childhood. As the philosopher Gilles Deleuze suggests, “to learn is first of all to consider a substance, an object, a being as if it emitted signs to be deciphered, interpreted” (Deleuze, 2000: 4). As it relates to the logo this apprenticeship and the desire it produces operates almost exclusively with what Deleuze has called the worldly sign. As for the world, “there is no milieu that emits and concentrates so many signs, in such reduced space, at so great a rate” (5). And there is no world that is more banal than that of the logo. And yet, at once, it is by way of our reading of the logo that we imagine another world, better, brighter and more beautiful. This is the transcendent logic of the logo. The banalisation of this world, the one I must face everyday, is effectuated in the desire for this imaginary other place that the logo invites me to enter. If I buy that pair of shoes I will find a suitable lover (presumably also a shoe fetishist) who will steal me away from the present drudgery of my life. We use logos to cover over the damp spots on our threadbare walls, to sugar coat the unpalatable real. Could it be, nonetheless, that the insistence of the logo can teach us something about how to manage our signs, or even create new ones? By what practice can we make the logo immanent, or reverse the emptying out of the quotidian that its logic demands? How might we secure “relations with others based not in identification or recognition, but encounter and new compositions” (Deleuze, 2001: 15)? The efficacy of the logo-sign is related to our capacity for recognition and our desire to secure identity. In response to our propensity toward consumer boredom, there unfolds increasingly sophisticated morphological permutations of logos and the products, both material and immaterial, they designate. The fact that we are apt to the immediate, frequently unconscious recognition of the logo-sign allows it an elasticity of expression. All the same, there is an insistent emptiness in worldly signs, as witnessed in the logo, “one does not think and one does not act, but one makes signs,” (Deleuze, 2000: 6) the more the better. I am not laughing, I am merely making the gestures that suggest the idea of laughter. I am not a sportsperson, but I am wearing garb that would suggest a healthy and active life. We are even more sophisticated than this, for we can appreciate the multiple levels of significance that the running shoe seemingly offers its wearer. The worldly sign, and I would like to suggest that the logo-sign is an exemplary instance of this, “anticipates action as it does thought, annuls thought as it does action, and declares itself adequate: whence its stereotyped aspect and its vacuity” (6-7). It could be that Deleuze is too harsh here. The consumer can be a sophisticated actor, even if they do frequently become indiscernible from the logo of their choice. Deleuze and Guattari deplore the ‘ideas men,’ who have wrought such havoc, who have made of our desire something empty and unproductive. They accuse these “shameless and inane” advertising executives of having requisitioned the philosophical concept for their add campaigns, making of it a commercial product (Deleuze and Guattari, 1994: 10). Logos, the word of the god of consumerism. The ideas men know that the strength of the logo-sign resides in the fact that, “it doesn’t matter what it means, it’s still signifying” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 112). The logo-sign holds us firmly under its seductive sway. It permeates our affective landscape, impressing itself upon us so thoroughly that our very corporeal existence becomes host to a swarm of signs. We ourselves circulate as so many signs, carrying on our bodies innumerable minor signs and insignias. We inhabit a “network without beginning or end…an amorphous atmospheric continuum” (112), from which it is frequently difficult to distinguish ourselves. Instead, we become mere ciphers of our consumer behaviour, which will be noted and collated with each electro-plastic transaction. This is what Deleuze and Guattari have called the shadow world of signs, where signs refer to other signs ad infinitum, and where “the statement survives its object, the name survives its owner” (113). Here, although it offers little nourishment, “the simulation of a pack of noodles has become the true concept” (Deleuze and Guattari, 1994: 10). The logo-sign operates by way of its relationship with an idea, or that concept stolen by ideas men. It is a vague idea, perhaps little more than a feeling that arouses an ill-defined desire that we believe will be consummated in the acquisition of some object or other. The work of the logo-sign is to designate a product-object, but this is a relation we tend to reverse, “we think that the ‘object’ itself has the secret of the sign it emits.” (Deleuze, 2000: 27) Ironically, the habitual assumption by which we think we can count on the “possession of things or on the consumption of objects,” an assumption augmented by the logo-sign, generally leaves us dissatisfied. Why, finally, despite our conquest of the object, do we so often feel that something is missing? Because the logo-sign that attaches itself to the object induces in us, the consumer, a sensibility toward the complex of logo and product. We become convinced that the object accommodates a fixed content that exists as a doppelganger for the obscure idea that has begun to plague our fantasies. It is important that the idea the logo communicates is vague and inexact, for we should not be given the opportunity to compare the registers of product and logo too closely. We achieve the object, we take it into our possession and all the gradually accumulated consumer pleasure begins to dissipate. The idea that aroused our desire has silently and surreptitiously slipped away. With what remarkable ease we become hooked. Then, the perpetuity of the consumer present demands that we promptly go in search of our next conquest, as little by little the world gets used up. Such are the highs and lows of logo induced consumer activity. That fiery and brief flush we suffer when we finally act on our desire to purchase, to own, to sport that particular product (my pair of shoes), makes the heart race. Quite literally, the blood is caused to rise. But this consumer glow tends to be followed by a vague, queasy sense of consumer guilt, which is succeeded in turn by consumer amnesia. The forgetfulness that assuages our consumer dissatisfaction keeps the logo-world turning. If we assume that we cannot escape the reign of the logo-sign and its logic, what can we instead choose to do with it? How do we return from our transcendent distractions to a field of immanence? How do we address the ever unfolding problems of this difficult world, day in, day out? This difficult world, a temporal maelstrom of immanence is only thinly disguised by our habits. Though it gives us little purchase, its unending upsurge of novelty surely offers some clues. As has been suggested above, the logo-sign depends on our well-tuned faculty for recognition. I see the same again, or the same with minor variations. Where is the novelty here? I circle around the constant of an obscure idea that draws me in and then, at the last moment, mysteriously escapes. How does the logo-sign instead become the sign of an unexpected encounter that encourages creative endeavours, especially when it always seems that the ideas men are one step ahead? Ideas men know full well the attraction of the new and are well practiced in dressing old concepts in the garb of the novel. They know how to deploy the logo, often setting it loose on the field of immanence where it will catch us unawares only to draw us away from real problems and productive engagements. Deleuze tells us that it is the plane of immanence that leads us into and not away from a life. This is the milieu in which we actualise possibilities at once as continuing to address the problems of the here and now as it slips away (Deleuze, 2001: 31). In part it is a matter of disentangling ourselves from the stultification of brand oriented identity formation, manifested in our intricate taxonomies of consumer-subjects and product-objects. Deleuze incites us to consider instead a participation in the impersonal process of singularisation. This has nothing to do with the spectacularly particular individual, her ownership of a value laden object, and her belief that such acquisitiveness will lead her to a higher actuality. The work required demands our extrication from the careful consumer training we have received, wherein we have determined that we are subjects of a certain genre of product in need of appropriate object accessories. It may simply be a matter of practicing a logo-awareness, of readjusting our consumer mores so that they align with the presentiment of other, less exploitative possibilities. We might consider all the minor relations, silent, invisible and absolutely crucial that interact to deliver the items that populate our consumer world. By these endlessly reconfigured relations, we are inextricably gathered into other lives, into the ebb and flow of uncountable singularities. Works Cited Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. Capitalism and Schizophrenia: A Thousand Plateaus, trans. Brian Massumi, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. What is Philosophy? Trans. Graham Burchell and Hugh Tomlinson, London and New York: Verso, 1994. Deleuze, Gilles. Proust and Signs, trans. Richard Howard, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. Deleuze, Gilles. Pure Immanence: Essays on a Life, trans. Anne Boyman, New York: Zone Books, 2001. Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Frichot, Hélène. "On the relentless logic of the logo-sign" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0306/10-sign.php>. APA Style Frichot, H. (2003, Jun 19). On the relentless logic of the logo-sign. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0306/10-sign.php>