Journal articles on the topic 'Environmental aspects of Railroad trains'

Operation of unit trains has grown substantially over the past half century owing to their ability to provide economic and efficient transportation of bulk products. Although various aspects of train safety have been studied, there has been limited research examining the effect of train loading conditions on derailment occurrence, cause and severity. An algorithm was developed to identify derailments of loaded and empty unit trains on mainlines and sidings recorded in the Federal Railroad Administration database. A dataset of these accidents for the 15-year period of 2001–2015 was developed and analyzed. The frequency of derailments for both loaded and empty unit trains declined by more than 50%. The average number of cars derailed per accident fluctuated for both loading conditions, but showed no particular trend. Approximately five times more loaded unit train derailments were recorded in the database than empty unit trains, but in the absence of specific unit train traffic data, inferences about rates are not possible. Loaded unit trains were more than four times heavier than empty unit trains and loaded train derailments tended to involve more cars than empty trains. The distribution of derailment causes differed for loaded and empty unit trains. Loaded trains most frequently derailed because of broken rails and welds, while the leading cause of empty train derailments was obstructions, in particular severe weather. Over 90% of the derailments of loaded and empty unit trains considered in this study occurred on mainline tracks, and the distribution of causes differed between mainline and siding tracks.

With the entry of Lithuania into the European Union, proper conditions for both Lithuanian and the EU inhabitants to comfortably travel by trains should be created. Lithuania should resume the direct communication by railroads with Poland. For that the passenger train route “Vilnius‐Warsaw” should be opened; it would enable the national inhabitants to reach European countries by train and also the inhabitants of those countries to come by train to Lithuania. The article gives an analysis of perspective passenger flows on the route “Vilnius‐Warsaw”, presents results of the study on passenger transportation of competitive sphere on this route, investigates technical‐economical aspects of the train's launch, analyses the marketing strategy, gives a survey of links of this train's launch with the “Rail Baltica” project, provides with a presentation of the SWOT analysis. The author proposes to include St. Petersburg into the “Rail Baltica” route ‐ this would increase flows of both ‐ passengers and cargoes. The article covers redistribution of the international passenger transportation market among different types of transport following the introduction of the “Rail Baltica” route.

One effort to reduce noise levels is urban planning. However, in big cities this is often not achieved due to population growth and the unavailability of balanced land. So that houses and buildings must be built close together and even close to the railroad tracks. All long-distance trains to the East (West Java, Central Java, East Java and Yogyakarta Special Region), both economy class, business and executive trains departing from Jakarta Kota Station, Pasar Senen Station and Gambir Station will pass through Bekasi Station until with Cirebon Station. From the data on the number of train trips according to the 2015 Train Travel Chart (Gapeka), there are approximately 122 trips each day. Train activities with frequent travel frequencies throughout the day can cause positive and negative externalities. Positive externalities felt by people who live close to trains include savings in transportation costs and ease and speed of access. The negative externalities, namely noise pollution, safety, and the risk of crime in the form of stone throws. Noise is one parameter to measure environmental quality

This essay analyzes how a rhetorical culture emerged in which the Supreme Court of the United States assumed corporations were constitutional persons under the Fourteenth Amendment. Approaching rhetorical culture from a networked standpoint, I argue that corporate personhood emerged from Southern Pacific Railroad Co.’s networks and alliances with environmental preservationists, politicians, publics, lawyers, judges, and immigrants in the late 19th century. Contributing to literatures on rhetorical culture and agency, this study shows how Southern Pacific Railroad Co., through networks of influence and force, was a rhetorical subject that shaped a networked rhetorical culture that expanded the boundaries of the Fourteenth Amendment even though the Supreme Court of the United States had not worked out the philosophical underpinnings of corporate personhood. Corporate personhood remains theoretically restrained by legal discourses that reduce subjectivity to a singular, speaking, human subject.

In the 1970s, it was reported that there were approximately 3700 track kilometers of timber railroad bridges in the United States and Canada. For short spans, they offer an attractive alternative to other types of bridges, as they are economical, faster to construct, and easy to maintain. Current design practices do not allow an independent consideration of the effects of the dynamic loads in sizing the bridge components, because very little information is available on the subject. Dynamic tests were carried out in 1986 on timber bridge spans at two test sites using test trains consisting of a locomotive unit, two loaded hopper cars, and a caboose. This paper gives a brief description of the analytical approach employed for determining the dynamic response of timber bridge spans under railway vehicles travelling at a constant speed. The model comprises a multi-degree-of-freedom system with each vehicle having bounce, pitch, and roll movements. Two parallel chords, each having its distributed mass lumped at discrete points, were used to idealize the bridge spans. A computer program developed on this basis was used to predict the loads at the wheel–rail interfaces and the vertical displacements at the discrete points on the spans. The predicted loads at wheel–rail interfaces and the maximum vertical displacements were found to be in agreement within about 20% and 16% respectively of the measured values. The program was utilized to study the effect of speed and other factors on the dynamic response of open-deck and ballast-deck bridges. Key words: analytical approach, timber railway bridge, railway locomotive and cars, constant speed, wheel–rail interface, loads, displacements, accelerations, dynamic response.

Railroad crossing collisions are costly in both lives and property damage and are a principal limitation preventing meaningful increases in train speed. At a recent TRB workshop on means of minimizing the frequency of these events, it was agreed that a major hypothesis aimed at explaining the collisions had never been tested. That hypothesis, attributed to Leibowitz, is that the speed of larger objects, like trains, is underestimated by observers owing to a normal deficiency of visual processing. The elements of this hypothesis have begun to be tested in a laboratory setting. While there are numerous aspects to the judgment of speed of approach, studied has been one narrow aspect of the problem that relates to the rapidity with which a gradual increase in the size (starting size 3.7°, 5.3°, and 7.6° side) of a square is perceived by normal human observers. The object is a light gray rectangle set either in a dark gray surround or with no surround. The time required to react to the gradual change averages around 280 milliseconds (ms) after onset. In a significant number of tests on six individuals across conditions ranging from day to night light intensities, expansions in either width or height, and proportional increases in size or fixed increases, the time required to render the judgment increased with the starting size. The rate of increase was approximately 3 ms divided by the degrees of angle subtense (360° = full circle). Apparently, the initial approach of larger objects is seen more slowly or later than that of smaller ones. If so, this can be shown to translate to a more slowly perceived object speed. Leibowitz may have been correct.

Timber bridges are still commonly used by several North American railroads. For short spans, they offer an attractive alternative to other types of bridges, as they are economical, faster to construct, and easy to maintain. Current design practices do not allow an independent consideration of the effects of the dynamic loads in sizing the bridge components, because very little information is available on the subject. Dynamic tests were carried out at two timber railroad bridge sites under the passage of trains at speeds varying from crawl, i.e., 1.6 km/h (1 mph), to 80.5 km/h (50 mph). The loads at wheel–rail interfaces, the vertical displacements, and the accelerations were measured at several locations on the bridge spans, the bridge approaches, and the normal track sections. The maximum values of the dynamic load factors obtained were 1.50, 1.65, and 1.85 for bridge, bridge approach, and normal track, respectively; and the corresponding maximum values of the dynamic displacement factors obtained were 1.30, 1.00, and 1.20. The main objective of this paper is to describe the experimental work and the influence on the measured values of the train speed and other factors. Key words: railroad, timber, bridge, wheel–rail interfaces, load, deflection, frequency, load factor, dynamic displacement, track modulus.

In this research, we address the railway multiterritory dispatch planning (RMTDP) problem. The goal of the RMTDP problem is to find the optimal movement of trains across consecutive dispatch territories, and it is one of the major challenges that decision makers face on a daily basis. It ideally takes into account the correct placement of maintenance windows, remaining capacity of terminals, and availability of train crews, among other critical aspects such as locomotive balance, fueling locations, and inspections. Although these train movement plans are made at the corridor level, which comprises several dispatch territories, when it comes to execution, the meet–pass decisions are made at the individual dispatch territories. This notion causes disruptions and misalignment at the boundaries of dispatch territories. The approach in this paper aims at finding a holistic conflict-free master plan by optimally matching train lineups at territory boundaries and smoothly routing trains through bottlenecks. We propose an efficient solution approach that iteratively constructs a master scheduling plan while minimizing the amount of train delay within a given planning horizon. This is accomplished by designing a time–space network model to identify feasible schedules and developing a mathematical programming–based heuristic to solve the underlying model. A thorough computational study shows the effectiveness of our heuristic approach, as we report reasonable average run times of 3.0 and 6.5 minutes to solve instances of moderate to large size problems, respectively. The results obtained from the algorithm using test snapshots from a Class I railroad company have been shown to assistant chief dispatchers and have received encouraging feedback for applicability.

The number of alternatively powered vehicles in Poland and EU is growing steadily. Different type of vehicle drive trains determine variations in their performances from economical and environmental technological aspects. The aim of this paper was to investigate the cost efficiency and environmental aspects of midsize passenger cars equipped with different drive train technologies: conventional, hybrid, electric and LPG fueled engine. To this purpose, the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) method was used. Calculations were carried out by AFLEET Tool. The results show that the LPG fueled car has the lowest TCO, while the cars equipped with electric drivetrain indicate the highest TCO. However the electric car recorded the lowest cost of air pollutant emissions and externalities costs.

One example of technological developments in signaling systems in Indonesia is the use of detection facilities on rail lines. A detector is a device that functions to detect the presence or absence of train facilities on the railroad track. Detection equipment is divided into two types, namely axle counter and track circuit. Track circuit detects the presence of trains on the rails, while the axle counter functions to count train axles. This study aims to find a detection system for facilities that is suitable and in accordance with the conditions of the Surabaya-Madiun cross and find out the characteristics for the installation of detection facilities in accordance with the pathway. To find out the appropriate facility system, the two tools are analyzed in terms of system reliability, environmental influences, advantages and disadvantages, disruptions, maintenance, and operations. The results showed that an effective and efficient way of detecting traffic in Surabaya - Madiun was the detection of a double head axle counter facility. This tool is very suitable to be installed in the emplacement.

ABSTRACT ID: 2017-145. In July 2016, TRC Environmental Corporation (TRC) and Hildebrand and Noll Associates, Inc. (HNA) were requested to develop planning guidance on train derailments involving large volumes/high concentrations of denatured ethanol for the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency (MEMA). As part of this project, as well as similar projects conducted by HNA for other clients, TRC and HNA assessed current firefighting strategies for the release of ethanol and/or crude oil from High Hazard Flammable Trains (HHFT) and developed the planning assumptions necessary to prepare for these types of incidents. For these projects, studies and in-depth analyses of 27 HHFT derailments resulting in tank cars breaches that occurred in the United States and Canada involving denatured ethanol1 (ethanol) and/or crude oil2 from 2006 through 2015 were performed. The analyses were primarily based on the information from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), and/or Transport Canada (TC) databases, with supplemental information from news reports in some cases. The objective of these analyses was to identify key planning assumptions that would be used in developing appropriate firefighting strategies by focusing on the number and types of cars derailed, approximate train speeds at the time of the derailment, number of cars breached, amount of product released, and whether or not the released product caught fire. Additionally, the studies included obtaining and reviewing information on the properties and characteristics of ethanol, crude oils, and other Class 3 flammable materials, as well as information for railroad tank cars. Insights and understandings gained from these studies were used to further develop the firefighting strategies for HHFT derailment fires.

Rail transportation is pivotal for the national economy. Despite being rare, a train accident can potentially result in severe consequences, such as infrastructure damage costs, casualties, and environmental impacts. An understanding of accident frequency, severity, and risk is important for rail safety management. In the United States, extensive prior research has focused on risk analyses of train derailments and highway–rail grade crossing accidents. Relatively less work has been conducted regarding train collision risk. The US Federal Railroad Administration identifies various accident causes, among which the authors of this study have analyzed the major collision causes. For each major accident cause, the authors have analyzed its resultant collision frequency, severity (in terms of damage cost or casualties), and correspondingly the risk, which is the combination of the frequency and severity. The analysis was based on train collision data in the United States from 2001 to 2015. This analysis focuses on freight trains in the United States, due to their immense traffic exposure. On the temporal scale, collision rate (the number of collisions normalized by traffic exposure) has an approximately 5% annual reduction. In terms of collision cause, failures to obey signals, overspeeds, and violations of mainline operating rules accounted for more collisions than other causes. Two alternative risk measures, namely the expected consequence and conditional value at risk, were used to evaluate the freight train collision risk on main tracks, accounting for both the average and worst-case scenarios. This collision risk analysis methodology may provide the US Department of Transportation and railroad industry with information and decision support for identifying, evaluating, and implementing cost-effective risk mitigation strategies.

The activities undertaken in educational organizations have a certain environmental impact. Analyzing their effect on the environment makes it possible to determine and prioritize actions aimed at minimizing it. One way to quantify such effect is by means of the Ecological Footprint environmental indicator, which has a high potential when used as an awareness-raising tool. These types of organizations have a high level of paper consumption. In addition, students commute to their campuses, thus involving an intensive use of transport systems (trains, subway, buses, bicycles, and private cars). In order to calculate the Ecological Footprint indicator, a survey responded to by students of the ‘Mathematical Analysis II’ subject at the School of Economics of the Universidad de Buenos Aires was carried out, so as to determine their paper consumption and the mode of transportation used to attend their classes. Based on these data, the environmental impact of this activity was calculated. This paper describes the methodology used and presents the results obtained for these two environmental aspects: paper consumption and students’ transport.

For decades, railway issues were considered, in Europe, as being almost entirely in the responsibility of the Member States. This history is even reflected in the present eu approach on railway issues which has, as one of its political priorities, the objective to ensure the interoperability of national legal and technical standards all over the eu. The development of trans-European transport networks, the upcoming of high-speed transboundary trains and the internationalisation of railway freight transport which are of relative recent date, all contribute to the greater awareness of railway impacts on the environment. Policies can no longer promote railways with the argument that rail is the most environment-friendly means of transport, but are more and more obliged to take into consideration, during the planning and operation of railways, local, provincial and regional environmental concerns. The contribution passes in review the most relevant environmental concerns with regard to railways. After a short description of the regulatory frame, the different environmental aspects of railways – land use, nature conservation, noise, water, air pollution, and waste management – are discussed. Some concluding remarks follow.

Abstract The extraction of body waves from passive seismic recordings has great potential for monitoring and imaging applications. The low environmental impact, low cost, and high accessibility of passive techniques makes them especially attractive as replacement or complementary techniques to active-source exploration. There still, however, remain many challenges with body-wave extraction, mainly the strong dependence on local seismic sources necessary to create high-frequency body-wave energy. Here, we present the Marathon dataset collected in September 2018, which consists of 30 days of continuous recordings from a dense surface array of 1020 single vertical-component geophones deployed over a mineral exploration block. First, we use a cross-correlation beamforming technique to evaluate the wavefield each minute and discover that the local highway and railroad traffic are the primary sources of high-frequency body-wave energy. Next, we demonstrate how selective stacking of cross-correlation functions during periods where vehicles and trains are passing near the array reveals strong body-wave arrivals. Based on source station geometry and the estimated geologic structure, we interpret these arrivals as virtual refractions due to their high velocity and linear moveout. Finally, we demonstrate how the apparent velocity of these arrivals along the array contains information about the local geologic structure, mainly the major dipping layer. Although vehicle sources illuminating array in a narrow azimuth may not seem ideal for passive reflection imaging, we expect this case will be commonly encountered and should serve as a good dataset for the development of new techniques in this domain.

In view of the increasing needs for efficient usage of natural resources and environmental protection in our modern society, weight reduction in transportation such as cars, trains or aircrafts is of fundamental interest. In order to solve this major issue, improved concepts are necessary which also emphasize the usage of light weight materials in construction. Especially magnesium and its alloys as the lightest available constructional metals have a major potential in this regard. Since magnesium cast components have found their application, interest is now spreading towards wrought alloys for use as structural components. However, the use of wrought magnesium alloys in the transportation industry is still limited at present. In this paper we give an overview on the present state of the art as well as on specific requirements for the processing of wrought magnesium alloys. We will show the technical potential in terms of improved economic aspects for wrought magnesium and discuss research topics such as process-specific alloy design.

Abstract The factors that drive spatial heterogeneity and diffusion of pandemic influenza remain debated. We characterized the spatiotemporal mortality patterns of the 1918 influenza pandemic in British India and studied the role of demographic factors, environmental variables, and mobility processes on the observed patterns of spread. Fever-related and all-cause excess mortality data across 206 districts in India from January 1916 to December 1920 were analyzed while controlling for variation in seasonality particular to India. Aspects of the 1918 autumn wave in India matched signature features of influenza pandemics, with high disease burden among young adults, (moderate) spatial heterogeneity in burden, and highly synchronized outbreaks across the country deviating from annual seasonality. Importantly, we found population density and rainfall explained the spatial variation in excess mortality, and long-distance travel via railroad was predictive of the observed spatial diffusion of disease. A spatiotemporal analysis of mortality patterns during the 1918 influenza pandemic in India was integrated in this study with data on underlying factors and processes to reveal transmission mechanisms in a large, intensely connected setting with significant climatic variability. The characterization of such heterogeneity during historical pandemics is crucial to prepare for future pandemics.

This paper presents and discusses the performance, reliability of operation, socio-economic and environmental aspects and benefits of the Tenorio Project in San Luis Potosi. This is the first project in Mexico making possible the production of multi-quality recycled water for planned water reuse for different purposes, including industrial cooling in a power plant, agricultural irrigation, groundwater restoration and environmental enhancement. Long-term water quality monitoring demonstrated the reliability of operation of the selected treatment trains, which were well adapted to local conditions and the given reuse application. The major challenge was the control of the conductivity and silica content in recycled water for industrial reuse, which needed complementary investigations and the implementation of an additional treatment by ion exchange. The reliable operation of the power plant with recycled water encouraged other industries to explore water reuse as an option, as well as the possibility of improved treatment. Once the main technical and social challenges of the original project were overcome, the project acquired a new dimension with the request of the industrial client to improve water quality by means of reverse osmosis. In return, the power plant proposed giving their right for water withdrawal from the aquifer to the City of San Luis Potosi, allowing thus the availability of freshwater for augmentation of the potable water supply.

Onsite non-potable reuse (NPR) is being increasingly considered as a viable option to address water scarcity and infrastructure challenges, particularly at the building scale. However, there are a range of possible treatment technologies, source water options, and treatment system sizes, each with its unique costs and benefits. While demonstration projects are proving that these systems can be technologically feasible and protective of public health, little guidance exists for identifying systems that balance public health protection with environmental and economic performance. This study uses quantitative microbial risk assessment, life cycle assessment and life cycle cost analysis to characterize the human health, environmental and economic aspects of onsite NPR systems. Treatment trains for both mixed wastewater and source-separated graywater were modeled using a core biological process—an aerobic membrane bioreactor (AeMBR), an anaerobic membrane bioreactor (AnMBR) or recirculating vertical flow wetland (RVFW)—and additional treatment and disinfection unit processes sufficient to meet current health-based NPR guidelines. Results show that the graywater AeMBR system designed to provide 100% of onsite non-potable demand results in the lowest impacts across most environmental and human health metrics considered but costs more than the mixed-wastewater version due to the need for a separate collection system. The use of multiple metrics also allows for identification of weaknesses in systems that lead to burden shifting. For example, although the RVFW process requires less energy than the AeMBR process, the RVFW system is more environmentally impactful and costly when considering the additional unit processes required to protect human health. Similarly, we show that incorporation of thermal recovery units to reduce hot water energy consumption can offset some environmental impacts but result in increases to others, including cumulative energy demand. Results demonstrate the need for additional data on the pathogen treatment performance of NPR systems to inform NPR health guidance.

Liquefied natural gas (LNG) use as a fuel in road and maritime traffic has increased rapidly, and it is slowly entering railroad traffic as well. The trend was pushed by the state administrations of mainly EU countries and international organizations seeing LNG as a cost-effective and environmentally friendly alternative to diesel. Different infrastructural projects for the widespread use of LNG in transport have been launched around the world. The main goal of this paper was to analyze use of LNG as a fuel for heavy trucks. Different aspects of LNG chain were analyzed along with economical and ecological benefits of LNG application. Filling stations network for LNG were described for the purpose of comparative analysis of diesel and LNG heavy trucks. Conclusion has shown that using LNG as propellant fuel has numerous advantages over the use of conventional fuels. The higher initial investment of the LNG road vehicles could be amortized in their lifetime use, and in the long-term they are more affordable than the classic diesel vehicles. In addition to cost-effectiveness, LNG road vehicles reduce CO2 emissions. Therefore, the environmental goals in transport, not only of the member states but worldwide, could not be met without LNG in heavy truck traffic.

Public transport service has been promoted to reduce the problems of traffic congestion and environmental impacts due to car dependency. Several public transportation modes are available in Bangkok Metropolitan Region (BMR) such as buses, heavy rails, vans, boats, taxis, and trains while in some areas have fewer modes of public transport available. The disparity of public transport service negatively impacts social equity. This study aims to identify the gaps between public transport supply and demand and to demonstrate introduced indicators to assess the public transport performance incorporating transport capacity and equilibrium access aspects. Supply index was used to evaluate the level of service, and the demand index was applied to estimate travel needs. Furthermore, the Lorenz curves and the Gini coefficients were used to measure the equity of public transport. The results highlight that more than half of the BMR population is living in low-supply high-demand areas for public transportation. Moreover, the equitable access analysis has identified that the high-income population has better access to public transport than the low-income population. The results suggest that public transport gaps and equity indicate the inclusiveness of public transportation, as well as to the areas where to improve the public transport service. Thus, the methodology used in this study can be applied to another city or region similar to BMR.

Electric vehicles (EV) are becoming more common mobility in the transportation sector in recent times. The dependence on oil as the source of energy for passenger vehicles has economic and political implications, and the crisis will take over as the oil reserves of the world diminish. As concerns of oil depletion and security of the oil supply remain as severe as ever, and faced with the consequences of climate change due to greenhouse gas emissions from the tail pipes of vehicles, the world today is increasingly looking at alternatives to traditional road transport technologies. EVs are seen as a promising green technology which could lead to the decarbonization of the passenger vehicle fleet and to independence from oil. There are possibilities of immense environmental benefits as well, as EVs have zero tail pipe emission and therefore are capable of curbing the pollution problems created by vehicle emission in an efficient way so they can extensively reduce the greenhouse gas emissions produced by the transportation sector as pure electric vehicles are the only vehicles with zero-emission potential. However, there are some major barriers for EVs to overcome before totally replacing ICE vehicles in the transportation sector and obtain appreciable market penetration. This review evaluates the technological aspects of the different power train systems of BEV technology and highlights those technological areas where important progress is expected by focusing on reviewing all the useful information and data available on EV architecture, electrical machines, optimization techniques, and its possibilities of future developments as green mobility. The challenges of different electric drive trains’ commercialization are discussed. The major objective is to provide an overall view of the current pure electric vehicle powertrain technology and possibilities of future green vehicle development to assist in future research in this sector.

The implementation of sustainable urban drainage systems (SUDS) is increasing due to their advantages, which transcend runoff control. As a result, it is important to find the appropriate SUDS locations to maximize the benefits for the watershed. This study develops a multiscale methodology for consolidated urban areas that allows the analysis of environmental, social, and economic aspects of SUDS implementation according to multiple objectives (i.e., runoff management, water quality improvements, and amenity generation). This methodology includes three scales: (a) citywide, (b) local, and (c) microscale. The citywide scale involves the definition of objectives through workshops with the participation of the main stakeholders, and the development of spatial analyses to identify (1) priority urban drainage sub-catchments: areas that need intervention, and (2) strategic urban drainage sub-catchments: zones with the opportunity to integrate SUDS due the presence of natural elements or future urban redevelopment plans. At a local scale, prospective areas are analyzed to establish the potential of SUDS implementation. Microscale comprises the use of the results from the previous scales to identify the best SUDS placement. In the latter scale, the SUDS types and treatment trains are selected. The methodology was applied to the city of Bogotá (Colombia) with a population of nearly seven million inhabitants living in an area of approximately 400 km2. Results include: (a) The identification of priority urban drainage sub-catchments, where the implementation of SUDS could bring greater benefits; (b) the determination of strategic urban drainage sub-catchments considering Bogotá’s future urban redevelopment plans, and green and blue-green corridors; and (c) the evaluation of SUDS suitability for public and private areas. We found that the most suitable SUDS types for public areas in Bogotá are tree boxes, cisterns, bioretention zones, green swales, extended dry detention basins, and infiltration trenches, while for private residential areas they are rain barrels, tree boxes, green roofs, and green swales.

<p>This article presents a guide to designing a maintenance plan for any industrial system. As an example, it develops a maintenance plan for highly reliable equipment, such as a hydroelectric power plant, where instant availability and reliability are crucial in its operation. The development of the proposal serves as a basis for the transversal development of any industrial system that has the same operational objectives (manufacturing lines), transport (trains, aircraft) and also involves safety and environmental aspects in its proper functioning. Today’s society requires that there are more and more industrial processes in which the maximum availability of the systems must be guaranteed, and at the same time there must be a minimum number of incidents that prevent the unavailability of the process. The methodology used has consisted firstly of dividing the complex industrial system into systems to be analysed on the basis of the functions they have to perform, then on the basis of the fault history a list of potential faults to be analysed has been determined, taking into account the risk of the system itself. From here, the systems of the hydroelectric plant have been classified to determine the priorities of actions. The different maintenance techniques to be applied have been carefully considered, focusing on the need to analyse condition-based maintenance techniques, such as predictive techniques, which allow us to define the point of potential failure based on parameters, and thus be able to plan maintenance actions in a justified manner. In the specific case of a hydroelectric generation plant, the fundamental objective is based on the commitment to<br />operate in the electricity market (high reliability and immediate availability), and the performance of maintenance actions imply in most cases the shutdown of the plant and therefore the loss of income from electricity production. Finally, a design of a justified maintenance plan for a hydroelectric power plant has been proposed based on the methodology explained.</p>

Improving the operational efficiency of transport is one of the main catalysts for raising the quality of life and socio-economic development. The prevailing global trends are aimed at establishing logistic chains from producers to consumers. The cross-border movement of world production within the framework of globalization, the deepening of integration processes between countries highlight the issues of developing a methodology for planning and evaluating international transport corridors from various points of view, and economic, technical, social, environmental and other aspects. The urgent issue is the harmonization of the technical and regulatory framework for the organization of «seamless» transportation, the synchronization of the technological cycles of various modes of transport, including operation of multimodal transport hubs. A large number of studies are dedicated to the modelling and control of traffic flows, new methods of forecasting the transport situation using the results of computer dynamic transport modelling, analysis of existing infrastructure resources and elimination of bottlenecks in the existing railway system (including through the expansion of the railway network and innovative methods of traffic control).Hence the achievement of target parameters of efficiency of production activity of all participants in railway transportations is possible through qualitative changes in the system of the organization of transportation process, the objective of the research was to study technological aspects of improvement of quality of functioning of the transport system in relation to activity of the Russian railways.The research applied methods of system analysis of scientific and technical data and technical and economic indicators of complex systems.The issues of implementation of end-to-end principles of transportation process management are considered, the concept of «technological polygon of transportation process management» is expanded. The analysis and grouping of methods for improving the efficiency of railway transport was carried out with regard to improving the operation quality indicators and refined model of rolling stock management, increasing the efficiency of the use of traction equipment, profiling of railway itineraries in respect of the preferred types of traffic, establishing sections well-provided for safe passage of freight trains and synchronized with the operation ranges of locomotives, organizing freightage in wagons withincreased axle load, removing barriers and restrictions in the power supply sector, etc.The transition to the «polygon» model of the organization of the technological process, the unification and optimization of the use of available resources, and, as a result, the reduction of risks of losses from transportation, service provision and unplanned use of resources are effective tools to improve the quality of rail operations.

Noise is one of the major environmental concerns nowadays. The problem is especially significant around large urban agglomerations where high levels of noise can have a negative impact on physical or psychological well-being of citizens while a long-term exposure can be harmful to health. Residential areas are protected by the introduction of maximum allowable sound pressure levels according to appropriate norms. There are also similar regulations concerning natural areas under environmental protection. Different measures used in order to reduce levels of noise should be applied primarily to the source of the sound. This is the task mainly for the manufacturers of all kinds of machines as well as means of transport. However, noise levels can be also controlled by the introduction of appropriately designed or chosen elements or materials in civil engineering structures. The noise levels emitted by the rail traffic depend on the number, kind and speed of trains, night and day traffic organization as well as on the type of the railroad structure and its location (e.g. on an embankment, on a bridge or flyover). Railway noise mainly develops between wheels and rails and depends on the roughness of both these elements, rolling speed and dynamic characteristics of the railroad. The paper presents the mathematical formulation of a coupled acoustic-structure problem. Solving the problem with finite element method gives the possibility to predict sound pressure levels in the vicinity of a railway structure. A numerical model of a certain type of a railroad structure was built in order to simulate the acoustic wave propagation caused by a wheel-rail interaction. The harmonic analysis was carried out using the Abaqus software. The acoustic pressureobtained based on the harmonic analysis was evaluated in certain points of the acoustic medium for various excitation frequencies. The final results were presented in the form of one-third octave bands. In the article, a possible methodology for estimating noise levels from railway structures based on a numerical analysis was shown. In the future works, the numerical model will be validated by field test data and applied to evaluate different types of technological solutions (silencers) used to reduce railway noise levels. This paper is part of the project “Innovative solutions for the protection of people and building against noise from rail traffic”. The project is co-financed by the European Union from the European Regional Development Fund within the framework of the Smart Growth Operational Programme and by PKP PLK S.A. within the framework of a joint venture BRIK. Keywords: Finite Element Method; Acoustics; Railway Noise

The purpose of this community service is to provide knowledge to athletes and volleyball coaches about the psychological aspects that volleyball athletes must have and for coaches to be able to train these aspects in training. The community service method is carried out with a participatory educational approach through material presentation and discussion using a website seminar (webinar) using the zoom application. The material given is about the concept of psychological aspects that volleyball athletes must have and how the coach trains them. The indicator of achievement is an increase in the score of knowledge (cognitive) obtained by volleyball athletes. The instrument used was a test item test. The target of this service is non-productive people, namely 3 coaches and 6 athletes in Bantul Regency. The service was carried out on February 4, 2020. Descriptive data analysis, statistical test using the mean difference test. The results of the dedication showed that there was an increase in the mean mean of pre-test 72.22 to 82.22 post-test, an increase of 10%. Athletes' knowledge of this psychological aspect is very important to provide insight to the psychological aspects that they must master, and for the coach to be able to design exercises to develop psychological aspects for the athlete

The CHAMPIONS NETWork program trains Chicago high school students as health advocates while preparing them to become future health professionals. We added digital badging to the curriculum in its third year of programming (2018). This article describes methods and student feedback about digital badging, allowing others to implement similar technology-driven opportunities to engage youth and promote healthy living. Program staff created seven online experiences (XPs) on health advocacy that made up a playlist. Students adopted three adults as clients and completed four XPs themselves and three with clients. Completion of all XPs resulted in a digital badge—an electronic portfolio of health advocacy experiences to be shared with employers and colleges. Following the 2019 cohort’s completion of the digital badge, we conducted two focus groups with students about their feedback on the digital badge. Results showed that students most liked the healthy eating and cardiopulmonary resuscitation XPs. They had more positive reactions to the experience than negative, and especially appreciated aspects of active learning, as well as the badge’s long-term benefits. This technology can potentially help any student with access to an electronic device become a health advocate, and could become a new tool for career development while improving population health.

The liquefaction of natural gas is an energy intensive process and accounts for a considerable portion of the costs in the liquefied natural gas (LNG) value chain. Within this, the selection of the driver for running the gas compressor is one of the most important decisions and indeed the plant may well be designed around the driver, so one can appreciate the importance of driver selection. This paper forms part of a series of papers focusing on the research collaboration between Shell Global Solutions and Cranfield University, looking at the equipment selection of gas turbines in LNG service. The paper is a broad summary of the LNG Technoeconomic and Environmental Risk Analysis (TERA) tool created for equipment selection and looks at all the important factors affecting selection, including thermodynamic performance simulation of the gas turbines, lifing of hot gas path components, risk analysis, emissions, maintenance scheduling, and economic aspects. Moreover, the paper looks at comparisons between heavy duty industrial frame engines and two artificial design variants representing potential engine uprates. The focus is to provide a quantitative and multidisciplinary approach to equipment selection. The paper is not aimed to produce absolute accurate results (e.g., in terms of engine life prediction or emissions), but useful and realistic trends for the comparison of different driver solutions. The process technology is simulated based on the Shell DMR technology and single isolated trains are simulated with two engines in each train. The final analysis is normalized per tonne of LNG produced to better compare the technologies.

The article is devoted to the analysis and development of recommendations for improving the efficiency of the system of environmental and economic regulation of the turnover of fecal waste of railway transport in the Russian Federation. The article deals with the ecological and economic aspects of the functioning of closed sanitary systems for collecting sewage from the toilets of passenger trains, stationary points for cleaning tanks-collections of environmentally friendly toilets, as well as their processing and disposal. It is shown that the system of environmentally friendly toilet complexes requires updating and improving the mechanisms of ecological and economic regulation of the turnover of fecal waste of railway transport. The procedure for assigning waste of hazard classes I–IV to a specific hazard class is considered. The requirements for determining limits on the placement of fecal waste of railway transport are analyzed. The procedure for calculating and charging fees for the negative impact on the environment when placing fecal waste from railway transport is given. Possible regional benefits for income tax from activities related to the collection, transportation, processing, disposal, neutralization, and disposal of hazard class IV waste, including fecal waste from railway transport, are indicated. The rules for the transit of fecal waste from railway transport are given. The rules for regulating relations between consumers and performers in the field of services for organizing the collection and removal of fecal waste in terms of consumer protection are outlined. Recommendations are given for improving the system of environmental and economic regulation of the turnover of fecal waste of railway transport. An approach to the formation of methods of ecological and economic regulation of the turnover of fecal waste of railway transport, taking into account the industry risk of technological development, is proposed.

What is a machine? As part of his answer to this, historian and philosopher of technology Lewis Mumford cites a classic definition: "a machine is a combination of resistant bodies so arranged that by their means the mechanical forces of nature can be compelled to do work accompanied by certain determinant motions" (Reuleaux [1876], qtd. in Mumford, Technics and Civilisation 9). Mumford's own definition is focussed on machines as part of a technological continuum between human body and automaton: Machines have developed out of a complex of non-organic agents for converting energy, for performing work, for enlarging the mechanical or sensory capacities of the human body, or for reducing to a mensurable order and regularity the processes of life. The automaton is the last step in a process that began with the use of one part or another of the human body as a tool. (9-10) The tool and the machine can be distinguished along this technological continuum, with the tool more dependent on "the skill and motive power of the operator", subject to "manipulation", and potentially more flexible in its uses, whereas the machine lends itself more to "automatic action" of a specialised kind. However, it is difficult to ultimately separate them, since the embodied skill of the tool-user becomes more mechanical and reflexive with practice (Technics and Civilisation 10), while the machine also evolves along increasingly organic lines (367), and there are common examples of hybrid machine-tools like the lathe or drill, which combine "the accuracy of the finest machine ... with the skilled attendance of the workman" (10). A powerfully attractive feature of the computer is that it is an effective hybrid of machine and tool: like a machine it performs many specialised functions at super-human speed and accuracy on command, but like a tool it is flexible and adaptable (through add-on software and plug-in peripherals) to a seemingly endless variety of users and uses. Fascinating Assemblages The automatic machine ... involves the notion of an external source of power, a more or less complicated inter-relation of parts, and a limited kind of activity. From the beginning the machine was a sort of minor organism, designed to perform a single set of functions. (Mumford, Technics and Civilisation 11) The autonomy of the machine is perhaps its most fascinating aspect. That the machine is an assemblage of parts and restricted functions -- a "minor organism" as Mumford puts it -- suggests to us a body. There is something ineluctably erotic about scenes of lubricated pistons moving in and out of cylinders, or greased gear wheels moving around each other, and a masturbatory energy seems to be involved in the machine that repetitively and by itself performs the same limited actions over and over and over. While there are parallels between masculine masturbation and machinic repetition, there are also associations with femininity. As Andreas Huyssen pointed out, the modern machine became associated with a dangerous female sexuality and took the place of the early moderns' untamed Mother Nature as the principal representative of non-human forces with autonomy and agency that could evade human control. But arguably, expressed fears of machinic autonomy are the flip side of a wish for it, arising from masculine reproductive fantasies that have been played out in technoscience by generations of fictional and real-life Frankensteins fanatically seeking to create artificial life in the form of technoscientific brainchildren (who are nevertheless often neglected and left to run wild at birth). At a conscious level, machines express what may be interpreted as anal-sadistic desires for order, regularity and control, but unconsciously there is an element of masochistic pleasure in being passive, in yielding up control to the machine, in letting it set the scene and determine the actions and roles for the humans as well as non-humans (Sofia, "Contested Zones", and "Mythic Machine" 44-8). Machinic Zeal What is the use of conquering nature if we fall a prey to nature in the form of unbridled men? What is the use of equipping mankind with mighty powers to move and build and communicate, if the final result of this secure food supply and this excellent organisation is to enthrone the morbid impulses of a thwarted humanity? (Mumford, Technics and Civilisation 366) With his emphasis on the social context and drives towards technology, Mumford (Technics and Civilisation 364-5) suggests that while some kinds of machines have existed for thousands of years, what we have come to think of as the mechanical age only arose with the widespread adoption of the machine as a way of securing order, regularity and calculability of physical and human resources, coupled with the ideological shift which made the machine into "a goal of desire" and an object of almost obsessive veneration from the mid-18th century to the early 20th century. Now, he said (writing first in the early 1930s) faith in the machine has been somewhat shaken, and it is no longer seen as "the paragon of progress" but as "merely a series of instruments" to be used when useful; yet despite this loss of faith the machine in capitalist contexts continues to be "over-worked, over-enlarged, over-exploited because of the possibility of making money out of it" (Technics and Civilisation 367). Almost seventy years after Mumford was writing, the obsessive zeal for the machine still has not completely disappeared, but has been displaced from giant smoke-puffing steel assemblages, whirling cogs and gearwheels, or the motors driving trains, cars and planes, and onto the silicon, plastic and light of computers (whose machineries of production and assembly are largely hidden off-shore to the bulk of users, thereby producing the illusion of "post-industrial" societies). The computer is now the paragon of progress and has become the "defining technology" of our age (Bolter), its place reinforced by an actively boosterist popular press (e.g. popular computing magazines; regular computer supplements in newspapers). Sociotechnical Not Posthuman Mumford continually makes the point that questions posed by/in technology are never answerable only technologically. It always comes down to human choices, and even when the results of these "are uncontrollable they are not external" to human culture: Choice manifests itself in society in small increments and moment-to-moment decisions as well as in loud dramatic struggles; and he who does not see choice in the development of the machine merely betrays his incapacity to observe cumulative effects until they are bunched together so closely that they seem completely external and impersonal. (Mumford, Technics and Civilisation 6) In a certain way Mumford's perspective anticipates actor-network theory, which looks at artefacts -- including machines -- as parts of sociotechnical networks that involve human decisions, including about the distribution of agency to non-humans. Even in the most automated machine, Mumford argues "there must intervene somewhere, at the beginning and end of the process ... the conscious participation of a human agent" (10). Actor-network studies of the development of scientific and technological artefacts aim in part to critique the sense of the external, impersonal or inevitable in scientific and technical 'progress' by insisting that "things might have been otherwise" (Bijker & Law 3), not just at the beginning and end, but all the way through the process of an artefact's development and use. The artefact is studied as a particular outcome of a set of decisions and performances made in the midst of contingencies affecting human and non-human actors with conflicting goals and contested powers within a dynamic sociotechnical network. Although actor-network theory is very interested in non-human agents, it does not, as do some recent participants in and theorists of cyberculture, celebrate the so-called post-human. There can be no agentic machines without there having been human competencies downloaded into them; there can be no technical order that is not also social and cultural. As Latour argues, the modernist work of purification has tried vainly to impose a separation between the social and technical, denying their mutual inextricability. From this Latourian perspective, the notion of the "post-human" is not, as it appears to be, post modern, but thoroughly modern. It carries through the quintessentially modernist project of denying after the fact the human agency and capacities that have been invested in producing hybrid artefacts which are then proclaimed as extra-human; it denies the cumulative effects of sociotechnical choices and instead represents the machinic imperative as somehow impersonal and external to human affairs. The notion of the posthuman can readily reinforce the pervasive popular cultural myths of technological inevitability and dominance, conveniently for those humans and corporations who actually do profit from decisions they make about developing and marketing machines of increasing autonomy, intelligence and subtlety. Machines and Provision The role of the machine has been overemphasised in histories of technology, according to Mumford. For aside from tools and machines which perform dynamic actions, there are technologies of containment and supply, which he categorizes as utensils (like baskets or pots), apparatus (such as dye vats, brick kilns), utilities (reservoirs, aqueducts, roads, buildings) and the modern power utility (railroad tracks, electric transmission lines). Some of the most effective adaptations of the environment came, not from the invention of machines, but from the equally admirable invention of utensils, apparatus, and utilities. ... But since people's attention is directed most easily to the noisier and more active parts of the environment, the role of the utility and the apparatus has been neglected ... both [tool and utensil] have played an enormous part in the development of the modern environment and at no stage in history can the two means of adaptation be split apart. Every technological complex includes both: not least our modern one. (Technics and Civilisation, 11-2). The development of various utensils and apparatus for storage (urns, granaries) and flow (irrigation, aqueducts) was essential for the emergence of settled agricultural communities in the neolithic period (Mumford, Technics and Human Development 140-1). As I explore in a related article (Sofia, "Container"), Mumford finds a prudish sexism in the relative neglect of technologies evocative of the female organs of storage, nutrition and transformation, compared with the overemphasis on technologies that are extensions of the muscular masculine body (Technics and Human Development, 140). However, the contrast between dynamic, noisy, active and autonomous machines, and passive, quiet, backgrounded containers cannot be sustained. For one the utensil even in its most basic form, has something machinic about it: a container can perform its function autonomously, without needing manipulation like a tool. Further, it is arguable that holding or containing is not simply a property of a shaped space, but a form of action in itself. Moreover in practice there are many hybrids of machine and utensil or utility, for example in domestic technologies like the food processor, a container with a machine-driven blade, or the washing machine, featuring a tub with mechanical agitation and rotary motion. Although Mumford is primarily interested in the machine, he observes that as modern "neotechnics" proceeds to develop ever more sophisticated machinery, so does it evolve more complex technologies of containment, as described in this passage which depicts both machines and utilities as active agents: Behind the façade [of the crisp lines of steel and glass that define the modern built environment] are rows and rows of machines, weaving cotton, transporting coal ... [etc.], machines with steel fingers and lean muscular arms, with perfect reflexes, sometimes even with electric eyes. Alongside them are the new utilities -- the coke oven, the transformer, the dye vats -- chemically cooperating with these mechanical processes, assembling new qualities in chemical compounds and materials. Every effective part in this whole environment represents an effort of the collective mind to widen the province of order and control and provision. (Technics and Civilisation, 356) Another way of getting the over-emphasised machine back into proportion is to look more closely at what it is used for, what purposes it serves. Mumford writes of the machine as part of the effort to produce "order and regularity" into the processes of life (10); to "widen the province of order and control and provision" (356) or to produce a "secure food supply and ... excellent organisation" (366). In other words, the machine is serving the goals typically associated with utensils, utilities and apparatus: smoothing out fluctuations in supply and distributing resources more evenly. Likewise Mumford suggests that in the back of developments of machine and tool is the effort to adapt by extending the body's powers and/or by altering the environment, so that, for example, instead of a physiological adaptation to cold through hair growth or hibernation, "there is an environmental adaptation, such as that made possible by the use of clothes and the erection of shelters" (10). These technologies are not machines, but container technologies, in the province of what philosopher of technology Don Ihde would call "background technics". We can think of the shift in emphasis here in relation to the example of road works. The large machines for bulldozing a path and laying down layers of road surface are very impressive in their size, power and technical capacity. But the road surface could not be laid down without there being technologies (including hybrids of machine and container, like the pick-up truck) for transporting, storing and mixing the materials used. And when it is done, the big machines lumber off elsewhere, and what we have before us is a road, a utility which facilitates orderly communication, transport and the supply of people and materials. In other words, these machines have served the goal of provisioning. The machine can enthral us with its autonomy, its alterity, its thingness, but as Heidegger has claimed, even such a powerful and seemingly stand-alone machine as a plane on a runway ready for take-off is ultimately just a "completely unautonomous" element when considered as part of a global system ordered "to ensure the possibility of transportation" (17). Like other modern machines, its own objectness and machinic resistance is dissolved as it becomes part of the "standing reserve", which can be understood as a macro-technology of provisioning through a matrix of mobilisable human and non-human resources. In the broader project of which this piece is a fragment, I want to investigate more closely the role and relative importance of machines compared to other kinds of equipment, especially for containment, supply or provisioning in contemporary technoculture, on the suspicion that it is apparatus and utilities rather than machines that define our contemporary lifeworld. References Bijker, Wiebe E., and John Law. General Introduction. Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change. Eds. Bijker and Law. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT P, 1992. Bolter, Jay David. "The Computer as a Defining Technology." Computers in the Human Context: Information Technology, Production, and People. Ed. Tom Forester. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989. Heidegger, Martin. "The Question Concerning Technology." The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. Trans. William Lovitt. New York: Harper & Row, 1977. Andreas Huyssen. "The Vamp and the Machine: Technology and Sexuality in Fritz Lang's Metropolis." New German Critique 24-25 (1982), 221-37. Also in Huyssen. After the Great Divide. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1986. Ihde, Don. Technology and the Lifeworld: From Garden to Earth. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1990. Latour, Bruno. We Have Never Been Modern. Trans. Catherine Porter. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1993. Mumford, Lewis. Technics and Civilisation. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1962 [1934]. ---. Technics and Human Development. New York: Harcourt Brace & World, 1966. Sofia, Zoë. "Container Technologies." Hypatia, Spring 2000 (forthcoming). ---. "Contested Zones: Futurity and Technological Art." Leonardo: Journal of the International Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Technology 29.1 (1996): 59-66. ---. "The Mythic Machine: Gendered Irrationalities and Computer Culture." Education/Technology/Power: Educational Computing as a Social Practice. Eds. Hank Bromley and Michael W. Apple. Albany NY: SUNY, 1998. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Zoë Sofoulis. "Machinic Musings with Mumford." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.6 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9909/mumford.php>. Chicago style: Zoë Sofoulis, "Machinic Musings with Mumford," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 6 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9909/mumford.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Zoë Sofoulis. (1999) Machinic musings with Mumford. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(6). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9909/mumford.php> ([your date of access]).

The elaborate cross-media spectacle, ‘Australian Idol,’ ostensibly lays bare the process of creating a pop star. Yet with so much made visible, much is rendered opaque. Specifically, ‘Idol’ is defined by the use of carefully-tuned strategies of publicity and promotion that create, shape and reshape a series of ‘authentic celebrities’ – pop stars whose emergence is sanctified through a seemingly open process of public ratification. Yet, Idol’s main actor is the music industry itself which uses contestants as vehicles for crafting intimate, long-term relationships with consumers. Through an analysis of the process through which various contestants in ‘Australian Idol’ are promoted and sold, it becomes clear that these populist icons are emblematic of an industry reinventing itself in a media environment that presents remarkable challenges and surprising opportunities. Curiously, the debates, strategies and motivations of the public relations industry have received little sustained attention in popular music studies. While much has been written about the contradictions between the rhetoric of rebellion and the complicated realities of corporate success (Frank; Negus), less has been written about the evolution of specific kinds of publicity and the strategies that shape their use in the music industry. This is surprising given the foundational role of public relations strategies within the culture industries generally and the music industry in particular. Specifically, what Turner et. al. define as ‘the promotional culture’ is central to the production and marketing of mainstream popular music. The ‘Idol’ phenomenon offers a rich opportunity to examine how the mainstream of the popular music industry uses distinct and novel marketing strategies in the face of declining sales of compact discs, an advertising environment that is extraordinarily crowded with all manner of competing messages, a steady rate of trade in digital song files and ever more effective competition from video games and DVDs. The ‘Idol’ phenomenon has proved to be a bundle of highly successful strategies for making money from popular music. Selling CDs seems to be almost ancillary to the phenomenon, acting as only one profit centre among many. Indeed, we can track the progress and deployment of specific strategies for shaping the creation of what has become a series of musical celebrities from the start of the first series of ‘Australian Idol’ through a continuous process of strategic publicity. The Attention Economy It has been somewhat hysterically estimated that the average resident of Sydney might be presented with around 3000 commercial messages a day (Lee). It is this kind of communication environment that makes account planners go weak in the knees in both paralysing anxiety and genuine excitement. Many have taken to paying people to go to bars, cafes and clubs to talk up the relative merits of a product to complete strangers in the guise of casual conversation. Similarly, commercial buskers have recently appeared on City Trains to proclaim the virtues of the wares they’ve been contracted to hawk. One can imagine ‘Cockles and Mussels’ has been updated as ‘MP3 Players and Really Cool Footwear.’ These phenomena are variously referred to as ‘viral,’ ‘tipping point,’ ‘word of mouth’ or ‘whisper’ marketing. (Gladwell; Godin; Henry; Lee; Rosen) Regardless of what you call it, the problem inspiring these promotional chats and arias is the same: advertisers can no longer count on getting and holding our attention. As Davenport and Beck, Brody and even Nobel Prize winning economist Herbert Simon have noted, the more taxed public attention gets, the more valuable it becomes. By most industry accounts, the attention economy is an established reality. It represents a significant shift of emphasis away from traditional methods of reaching consumers, instead inspiring new thinking about how to create lasting, flexible and evolving relationships with target audiences. The attention economy is a complicated and often contradictory response to a media environment that appears less and less reliable and to consumers who behaviour is often poorly understood, even mysterious (Elliott and Jankel-Elliott). This challenging backdrop, however, is only the beginning for a seemingly beleaguered music industry. Wherever one looks, from the rise of the very real threat of global piracy to the expansion of the video game industry to mobile phones and hand held players to increasing amounts of money spent on DVDs and ring tones, selling CDs has become almost a sideline. The main event is the profitable use and reuse of the industry’s vast stores of intellectual property through all manner of media, most which didn’t exist ten years ago. Indeed, the ‘Idol’ phenomenon shows us how the music industry has been incorporating its jealously-guarded intellectual property and familiar modes of industrial self-presentation into existing media environments to build long-term relationships with consumers through television, radio, DVDs, CDs, the internet and mobile phones. Further, ‘Idol’s’ producers have supplemented more traditional models of communication by taking direct and explicit account of how and where audiences use a wide variety of media. The broad range of opportunities to participate in ‘Idol’ is central to its success. It demonstrates a willingness on the part of producers to accept the necessity of bending somewhat to the audience’s existing and evolving uses of the media. In short, they are simply not all that fussy about how participation actually happens so long as it does. Producers allow for many kinds of participation in order to constantly offer more specific and more active levels of involvement. ‘Idol’ has transformed consumer relationships within the music industry by coaxing into being ever more intimate, active and reciprocal relationships over the course of the contest by encouraging increasingly specific acts by consumers to complete a continual series of transactions. The Use and Reuse of Celebrity In many quarters, ‘Australian Idol’ has become a byword for bullshit. The competition seems rigged and the contestants are not seen as ‘real’ musicians in large part because their experience appears to be so transparent and so transparently commercial. As the mythology of the music industry has traditionally had it, deserving pop stars are established as celebrities through what is a more or less a linear progression. Early success is based on a carefully constructed sense of authentic cultural production. Credibility is established through a series of contestable affiliations to ostensibly organic music cultures, earned through artistic development and the hard slog of touring and practice (see Maxwell 118). The fraught possibilities of mainstream success continually beckon to ‘real’ musicians as they either ‘crossover’ or remain independent all the while trying to preserve some elusive measure of public honesty. As this mythology was implicitly unavailable to the producers of ‘Idol,’ a different kind of authenticity had to be constructed. Instead of a ‘battles of the bands’ (read: brands) contest, ‘Idol’ producers chose to present ‘unbranded’ aspirants (“Sydney Audition”). These hopefuls are presented as appealingly ambitious or merely optimistic individuals with varying degrees of talent. Those truly blessed, not only with talent but the drive to work it into saleable shape, would be carefully chosen from the multitude and offered an opportunity to make the most of their inherent yet unformed ability. Thus, their authenticity was assumed to be an implicit, inchoate presence, requiring the guiding hand of insiders to reach full flower. Through the facilitation of competition and direction provided in the form of knowledgeable music industry veterans who never tire of giving stern admonitions to indifferent performers who do not take full advantage of the opportunity presented to them, contestants are asked to prove themselves through an extended period of intense self-presentation and recreation. The lengthy televised, but tightly-edited auditions, complete with extensive commentary and the occasional gnashing of teeth on the part of the panel of experts and rejected contestants, demonstrate to us the earnest intent of those involved. Importantly, the authenticity of those proceeding through the contest is never firmly established, but has to be continually and strategically re-established. Each weighty choice of repertoire, wardrobe and performance style can only break them; each successful performance only raises the stakes. This tense maintenance of status as a deserving celebrity runs in tandem with the increasingly attentive and reciprocal relationship between the producers and the audience. The relationship begins with what has proved to be a compelling first act. Thousands of ‘ordinary’ Australians line up outside venues throughout the country, many sleeping in car parks and on footpaths, practising, singing and performing for the mobile camera crews. We are presented with their youthful vigour in all its varied guises. We cannot help but be convinced of the worth of those who survive such a process. The chosen few who are told with a flourish ‘You’re going to Sydney’ are then faced with what appears to be a daunting challenge, to establish themselves in short order as a performer with ‘the X factor’ (“Australian Idol” 14 July 2004). A fine voice and interesting look must be supplemented with those intangible qualities that result in wide public appeal. Yet these qualities are only made available to the public and the performer because of the contest itself. When the public is eventually asked to participate directly, it is to both produce and ratify exactly these ambiguous attributes. More than this, contestants need our help just to survive. Their celebrity is almost shockingly unstable, more fleeting than its surrounding rhetoric and context might suggest and under constant, expected threat. From round to round, favourites can easily become also rans–wild cards who limp out of one round, but storm through the next. The drama can only be heightened, securing our interest by requiring our input. As any advertiser can tell you, an effective campaign must end in action on our part. Through text message and phone voting as well as extensive ‘fan management’ through internet chat rooms and bulletin boards (see Stahl 228; http://au.messages.yahoo.com/australianidol/), our channelled ‘viral’ participation both shapes and completes the meanings of the contest. These active and often inventive relationships (http://au.australianidol.yahoo.com/fancentral/) allow the eventual ‘Idol’ to claim the credibility the means of their success otherwise renders suspect and these activities appear to consummate the relationship. However, the relationship continues well beyond the gala final. In a fascinating re-narration of the first series of ‘Australian Idol,’ Australian Idol: The Winner’s Story aired on the Friday following the final night of the contest. The story of the newly crowned Idol, Guy Sebastian, was presented in an hour long program that showed his home life, his life as a voice teacher in the Adelaide suburbs and his subsequent journey to stardom. The clips depicting his life prior to ‘Idol’ were of ambiguous vintage, cleverly silent on the exact date of production; somehow they were not quite in the past or the future, but floated in some eternal in-between. When his ‘Australian Idol’ experience was chronicled, after the second commercial break, we were allowed to see an intimate portrait of an anxious contestant transformed into ‘Your Australian Idol.’ There could be no doubt of the virtue of Sebastian’s struggles, nor of his well-earned victory. ‘New’ footage began with the sudden sensation reluctantly commenting on other contestants at the original Adelaide cattle call at the prompting of the mobile camera crew and ended with his teary-eyed mother exultant at the final decision as she stood in the front row at the Opera House. Further, not only is the entire run of the first series dramatically recounted in documentary format on the Australian Idol: Greatest Moments DVD, framed by Sebastian’s humble triumph, so are the stories of each member of the Final 12 and the paths they took through the contest. These reiterations serve to reinforce not only Sebastian’s status, but the status of the program itself. They confirm the benevolent success of the industry it so dutifully profiles. We are taken behind the curtain, allowed to see the machinery of stardom grind inevitably to a conclusion, knowing we will be allowed back again when the time is right. Whereas ‘Idol’ is routinely pilloried for its crass commercialism, it remains an unavoidable success. Viewers keep tuning in, advertisers still clamour to sponsor all aspects of the production and the CDs keep selling. Most importantly, the music industry has a showcase for its own operations. The structures of feeling it exists to produce take on a kind of subtle explicitness that ensures their perpetuation. Within an industry faced with threats perceived to be foundational, the creators of ‘Idol’ have produced an audacious and arrogant spectacle. They have made a profitable virtue out of an economic necessity. The expensive and unpredictable process of finding and nurturing new talent has not only been made more reliable, but ‘Idol’ has shown that it can actually turn a profit. The brand of celebrity produced by Idol possesses no mere sheen of populist approval, but embodies that more valuable commodity: popular attention, however reluctant or enthusiastic it may be. References “Australian Idol.” Ten Network, Sydney, 14 July 2004. “Australian Idol: The Winner’s Story.” Ten Network, Sydney, 21 November 2003. Australian Idol: Greatest Moments. Fremantle Media Operations, 2004. Brody, E.W. “The ‘Attention’ Economy.” Public Relations Quarterly 46.3 (2001): 18-21. Davenport, T., and J. Beck. “The Strategy and Structure of Firms in the Attention Economy.” Ivey Business Journal 66.4 (2002): 49–55. Elliott, R., and N. Jankel-Elliott. “Using Ethnography in Strategic Consumer Research.” Qualitative Market Research 6.4 (2003): 215-23. Frank, Thomas. The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1997. Gladwell, Malcolm. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. Boston: Back Bay Books, 2002. Godin, Seth. Unleashing the Ideavirus. New York: Hyperion, 2001. Henry, Amy. “How Buzz Marketing Works for Teens.” Advertising and Marketing to Children April-June (2003): 3-10. Lee, Julian. “Stealth Marketers Ready to Railroad the Unsuspecting.” Sydney Morning Herald 24-5 July 2004: 3. Maxwell, Ian. “True to the Music: Authenticity, Articulation and Authorship in Sydney Hip-Hop Culture.” Social Semiotics 4.1-2 (1994): 117–37. Negus, Keith. Music Genres and Corporate Cultures. London: Routledge, 1999. Negus, Keith. Producing Pop: Culture and Conflict in the Popular Music Industry. London: Edward Arnold, 1992. Rosen, Emanuel. The Anatomy of Buzz: How to Create Word of Mouth Marketing. London: Harper Collins, 2000. Stahl, Matthew. “A Moment like This: American Idol and Narratives of Meritocracy.” Bad Music: Music We Love to Hate. Eds. C. Washburne and M. Derno. New York: Routledge, 2004. 212–32. “Sydney Auditions: Conditions of Participation in the Australian Idol Audition.” Australian Idol Website 10 June 2004. http://au.australianidol.com.au>. Turner, G., F. Bonner, and P.D. Marshall. Fame Games: The Production of Celebrity in Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Fairchild, Charles. "'Australian Idol' and the Attention Economy." M/C Journal 7.5 (2004). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0411/09-fairchild.php>. APA Style Fairchild, C. (Nov. 2004) "'Australian Idol' and the Attention Economy," M/C Journal, 7(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0411/09-fairchild.php>.

The concept of the “writer flâneur”, as developed by Walter Benjamin, sought to make sense of the seemingly chaotic nineteenth century city. While the flâneur provided a way for new urban structures to be ordered, it was also a transgressive act that involved engaging with urban spaces in new ways. In the contemporary city, where spaces are now heavily controlled and ordered, some members of the city’s socio-ecological community suffer as a result of idealistic notions of who and what belongs in the city, and how we must behave as urban citizens. Many of these ideals emerge from nineteenth century conceptions of the city in contrast to the country (Williams). However, a reimagining of the flâneur can allow for new transgressions of urban space and result in new literary imaginaries that capture the complexity of urban environments, question some of the more damaging processes and systems, offer new ways of connecting with the city, and propose alternative ways of living with the non-human in such places. With reference to the work of Debra Benita Shaw, Rob Shields and Donna Haraway, I will examine how the urban walking figure might be reimagined as cyborg, complicating boundaries between the real and imagined, the organic and inorganic, and between the human and non-human (Haraway Cyborgs). I will argue that the cyborg flâneur allows for new ways of writing and reading the urban and can work to reimagine the city as posthuman multispecies community. As one example of cyborg flânerie, I look to the app Story City to show how a writer can develop new environmental imaginaries in situ as an act of resistance against the anthropocentric ordering of the city. This article intends to begin a conversation about the ethical, political and epistemological potential of cyborg flânerie and leads to several questions which will require further research.Shaping the City: Environmental ImaginariesIn a sense, the flâneur is the product of a utopian imaginary of the city. According to Shields, Walter Benjamin used the flâneur as a literary device to make sense of the changing modern city of Paris: The flâneur is a hero who excels under the stress of coming to terms with a changing ‘social spatialisation’ of everyday social and economic relations which in the nineteenth century increasingly extended the world of the average person further and further to include rival mass tourism destinations linked by railroad, news of other European powers and distant colonies. This expanding spatialization took the form of economic realities such as changing labour markets and commodity prices and social encounters with strangers and foreigners which impinged on the life world of Europeans. (Fancy Footwork 67)Through his writing, these new spaces and inhabitants were made familiar again to those that lived there. In consequence, the flâneur was seen as a heroic figure who approached the city like a wilderness to be studied and tamed:Even to early 20th-century sociologists the flâneur was a heroic everyman—masculine, controlled and as in tune with his environment as James Fenimore Cooper’s Mohican braves were in their native forests. Anticipating the hardboiled hero of the detective novel, the flâneur pursued clues to the truth of the metropolis, attempting to think through its historical specificity, to inhabit it, even as the truth of empire and commodity capitalism was hidden from him. (Shields Flanerie 210)In this way, the flâneur was a stabilising force, categorising and therefore ordering the city. However, flânerie was also a transgressive act as the walker engaged in eccentric and idle wandering against the usual purposeful walking practices of the time (Coates). Drawing on this aspect, flânerie has increasingly been employed in the humanities and social sciences as a practice of resistance as Jamie Coates has shown. This makes the flâneur, albeit in a refigured form, a useful tool for transgressing strict socio-ecological conventions that affect the contemporary city.Marginalised groups are usually the most impacted by the strict control and ordering of contemporary urban spaces in response to utopian imaginaries of who and what belong. Marginalised people are discouraged and excluded from living in particular areas of the city through urban policy and commercial practices (Shaw 7). Likewise, certain non-human others, like birds, are allowed to inhabit our cities while those that don’t fit ideal urban imaginaries, like bats or snakes, are controlled, excluded or killed (Low). Defensive architecture, CCTV, and audio deterrents are often employed in cities to control public spaces. In London, the spiked corridor of a shop entrance designed to keep homeless people from sleeping there (Andreou; Borromeo) mirrors the spiked ledges that keep pigeons from resting on buildings (observed 2012/2014). On the Gold Coast youths are deterred from loitering in public spaces with classical music (observed 2013–17), while in Brisbane predatory bird calls are played near outdoor restaurants to discourage ibis from pestering customers (Hinchliffe and Begley). In contrast, bright lights, calming music and inviting scents are used to welcome orderly consumers into shopping centres while certain kinds of plants are cultivated in urban parks and gardens to attract acceptable wildlife like butterflies and lorikeets (Wilson; Low). These ways of managing public spaces are built on utopian conceptions of the city as a “civilising” force—a place of order, consumption and safety.As environmental concerns become more urgent, it is important to re-examine these conceptions of urban environments and the assemblage of environmental imaginaries that interact and continue to shape understandings of and attitudes towards human and non-human nature. The network of goods, people and natural entities that feed into and support the city mean that imaginaries shaped in urban areas influence both urban and surrounding peoples and ecologies (Braun). Local ecologies also become threatened as urban structures and processes continue to encompass more of the world’s populations and locales, often displacing and damaging entangled natural/cultural entities in the process. Furthermore, conceptions and attitudes shaped in the city often feed into global systems and as such can have far reaching implications for the way local ecologies are governed, built, and managed. There has already been much research, including work by Lawrence Buell and Ursula Heise, on the contribution that art and literature can make to the development of environmental imaginaries, whether intentional or unintentional, and resulting in both positive and negative associations with urban inhabitants (Yusoff and Gabrys; Buell; Heise). Imaginaries might be understood as social constructs through which we make sense of the world and through which we determine cultural and personal values, attitudes and beliefs. According to Neimanis et al., environmental imaginaries help us to make sense of the way physical environments shape “one’s sense of social belonging” as well as how we “formulate—and enact—our values and attitudes towards ‘nature’” (5). These environmental imaginaries underlie urban structures and work to determine which aspects of the city are valued, who is welcomed into the city, and who is excluded from participation in urban systems and processes. The development of new narrative imaginaries can question some of the underlying assumptions about who or what belongs in the city and how we might settle conflicts in ecologically diverse communities. The reimagined flâneur then might be employed to transgress traditional notions of belonging in the city and replace this with a sense of “becoming” in relation with the myriad of others inhabiting the city (Haraway The Trouble). Like the Benjaminian flâneur, the postmodern version enacts a similar transgressive walking practice. However, the postmodern flâneur serves to resist dominant narratives, with a “greater focus on the tactile and grounded qualities of walking” than the traditional flâneur—and, as opposed to the lone detached wanderer, postmodern flâneur engage in a network of social relationships and may even wander in groups (Coates 32). By employing the notion of the postmodern flâneur, writers might find ways to address problematic urban imaginaries and question dominant narratives about who should and should not inhabit the city. Building on this and in reference to Haraway (Cyborgs), the notion of a cyborg flâneur might take this resistance one step further, not only seeking to counter the dominant social narratives that control urban spaces but also resisting anthropocentric notions of the city. Where the traditional flâneur walked a pet tortoise on a leash, the cyborg flâneur walks with a companion species (Shields Fancy Footwork; Haraway Companion Species). The distinction is subtle. The traditional flâneur walks a pet, an object of display that showcases the eccentric status of the owner. The cyborg flâneur walks in mutual enjoyment with a companion (perhaps a domestic companion, perhaps not); their path negotiated together, tracked, and mapped via GPS. The two acts may at first appear the same, but the difference is in the relationship between the human, non-human, and the multi-modal spaces they occupy. As Coates argues, not everyone who walks is a flâneur and similarly, not everyone who engages in relational walking is a cyborg flâneur. Rather a cyborg flâneur enacts a deliberate practice of walking in relation with naturecultures to transgress boundaries between human and non-human, cultural and natural, and the virtual, material and imagined spaces that make up a place.The Posthuman City: Cyborgs, Hybrids, and EntanglementsIn developing new environmental imaginaries, posthuman conceptions of the city can be drawn upon to readdress urban space as complex, questioning utopian notions of the city particularly as they relate to the exclusion of certain others, and allowing for diverse socio-ecological communities. The posthuman city might be understood in opposition to anthropocentric notions where the non-human is seen as something separate to culture and in need of management and control within the human sphere of the city. Instead, the posthuman city is a complex entanglement of hybrid non-human, cultural and technological entities (Braun; Haraway Companion Species). The flâneur who experiences the city through a posthuman lens acknowledges the human as already embodied and embedded in the non-human world. Key to re-imagining the city is recognising the myriad ways in which non-human nature also acts upon us and influences decisions on how we live in cities (Schliephake 140). This constitutes a “becoming-with each other”, in Haraway’s terms, which recognises the interdependency of urban inhabitants (The Trouble 3). In re-considering the city as a negotiated process between nature and culture rather than a colonisation of nature by culture, the agency of non-humans to contribute to the construction of cities and indeed environmental imaginaries must be acknowledged. Living in the posthuman city requires us humans to engage with the city on multiple levels as we navigate the virtual, corporeal, and imagined spaces that make up the contemporary urban experience. The virtual city is made up of narratives projected through media productions such as tourism campaigns, informational plaques, site markers, and images on Google map locations, all of which privilege certain understandings of the city. Virtual narratives serve to define the city through a network of historical and spatially determined locales. Closely bound up with the virtual is the imagined city that draws on urban ideals, potential developments, mythical or alternative versions of particular cities as well as literary interpretations of cities. These narratives are overlaid on the places that we engage with in our everyday lived experiences. Embodied encounters with the city serve to reinforce or counteract certain virtual and imagined versions while imagined and virtual narratives enhance locales by placing current experience within a temporal narrative that extends into the past as well as the future. Walking the City: The Cyber/Cyborg FlâneurThe notion of the cyber flâneur emerged in the twenty-first century from the practices of idly surfing the Internet, which in many ways has become an extension of the cityscape. In the contemporary world where we exist in both physical and digital spaces, the cyber flâneur (and indeed its cousin the virtual flâneur) have been employed to make sense of new digital sites of connection, voyeurism, and consumption. Metaphors that evoke the city have often been used to describe the experience of the digital including “chat rooms”, “cyber space”, and “home pages” while new notions of digital tourism, the rise of online shopping, and meeting apps have become substitutes for engaging with the physical sites of cities such as shopping malls, pubs, and attractions. The flâneur and cyberflâneur have helped to make sense of the complexities and chaos of urban life so that it might become more palatable to the inhabitants, reducing anxieties about safety and disorder. However, as with the concept of the flâneur, implicit in the cyberflâneur is a reinforcement of traditional urban hierarchies and social structures. This categorising has also worked to solidify notions of who belongs and who does not. Therefore, as Debra Benita Shaw argues, the cyberflâneur is not able to represent the complexities of “how we inhabit and experience the hybrid spaces of contemporary cities” (3). Here, Shaw suggests that Haraway’s cyborg might be used to interrupt settled boundaries and to reimagine the urban walking figure. In both Shaw and Shields (Flanerie), the cyborg is invoked as a solution to the problematic figure of the flâneur. While Shaw presents these figures in opposition and proposes that the flâneur be laid to rest as the cyborg takes its place, I argue that the idea of the flâneur may still have some use, particularly when applied to new multi-modal narratives. As Shields demonstrates, the cyborg operates in the virtual space of simulation rather than at the material level (217). Instead of setting up an opposition between the cyborg and flâneur, these figures might be merged to bring the cyborg into being through the material practice of flânerie, while refiguring the flâneur as posthuman. The traditional flâneur sought to define space, but the cyborg flâneur might be seen to perform space in relation to an entangled natural/cultural community. By drawing on this notion of the cyborg, it becomes possible to circumvent some of the traditional associations with the urban walking figure and imagine a new kind of flâneur, one that walks the streets as an act to complicate rather than compartmentalise urban space. As we emerge into a post-truth world where facts and fictions blur, creative practitioners can find opportunities to forge new ways of knowing, and new ways of connecting with the city through the cyborg flâneur. The development of new literary imaginaries can reconstruct natural/cultural relationships and propose alternative ways of living in a posthuman and multispecies community. The rise of smart-phone apps like Story City provides cyborg flâneurs with the ability to create digital narratives overlaid on real places and has the potential to encourage real connections with urban environments. While these apps are by no means the only activity that a cyborg flâneur might participate in, they offer the writer a platform to engage audiences in a purposeful and transgressive practice of cyborg flânerie. Such narratives produced through cyborg flânerie would conflate virtual, corporeal, and imagined experiences of the city and allow for new environmental imaginaries to be created in situ. The “readers” of these narratives can also become cyborg flâneurs as the traditional urban wanderer is combined with the virtual and imagined space of the contemporary city. As opposed to wandering the virtual city online, readers are encouraged to physically walk the city and engage with the narrative in situ. For example, in one narrative, readers are directed to walk a trail along the Brisbane river or through the CBD to chase a sea monster (Wilkins and Diskett). The reader can choose different pre-set paths which influence the outcome of each story and embed the story in a physical location. In this way, the narrative is layered onto the real streets and spaces of the cityscape. As the reader is directed to walk particular routes through the city, the narratives which unfold are also partly constructed by the natural/cultural entities which make up those locales establishing a narrative practice which engages with the urban on a posthuman level. The murky water of the Brisbane River could easily conceal monsters. Occasional sightings of crocodiles (Hall), fish that leap from the water, and shadows cast by rippling waves as the City Cat moves across the surface impact the experience of the story (observed 2016–2017). Potential exists to capitalise on this narrative form and develop new environmental imaginaries that pay attention to the city as a posthuman place. For example, a narrative might direct the reader’s attention to the networks of water that hydrate people and animals, allow transportation, and remove wastes from the city. People may also be directed to explore their senses within place, be encouraged to participate in sensory gardens, or respond to features of the city in new ways. The cyborg flâneur might be employed in much the same way as the flâneur, to help the “reader” make sense of the posthuman city, where boundaries are shifted, and increasing rates of social and ecological change are transforming contemporary urban sites and structures. Shields asks whether the cyborg might also act as “a stabilising figure amidst the collapse of dualisms, polluted categories, transgressive hybrids, and unstable fluidity” (Flanerie 211). As opposed to the traditional flâneur however, this “stabilising” figure doesn’t sort urban inhabitants into discrete categories but maps the many relations between organisms and technologies, fictions and realities, and the human and non-human. The cyborg flâneur allows for other kinds of “reading” of the city to take place—including those by women, families, and non-Western inhabitants. As opposed to the nineteenth century reader-flâneur, those who read the city through the Story City app are also participants in the making of the story, co-constructing the narrative along with the author and locale. I would argue this participation is a key feature of the cyborg flâneur narrative along with the transience of the narratives which may alter and eventually expire as urban structures and environments change. Not all those who engage with these narratives will necessarily enact a posthuman understanding and not all writers of these narratives will do so as cyborg flâneurs. Nevertheless, platforms such as Story City provide writers with an opportunity to engage participants to question dominant narratives of the city and to reimagine themselves within a multispecies community. In addition, by bringing readers into contact with the human and non-human entities that make up the city, there is potential for real relationships to be established. Through new digital platforms such as apps, writers can develop new environmental imaginaries that question urban ideals including conceptions about who belongs in the city and who does not. The notion of the cyborg is a useful concept through which to reimagine the city as a negotiated process between nature and culture, and to reimagine the flâneur as performer who becomes part of the posthuman city as they walk the streets. This article provides one example of cyborg flânerie in smart-phone apps like Story City that allow writers to construct new urban imaginaries, bring the virtual and imagined city into the physical spaces of the urban environment, and can act to re-place the reader in diverse socio-ecological communities. The reader then becomes both product and constructer of urban space, a cyborg flâneur in the cyborg city. This conversation raises further questions about the cyborg flâneur, including: how might cyborg flânerie be enacted in other spaces (rural, virtual, more-than-human)? What other platforms and narrative forms might cyborg flâneurs use to share their posthuman narratives? How might cyborg flânerie operate in other cities, other cultures and when adopted by marginalised groups? In answering these questions, the potential and limitations of the cyborg flâneur might be refined. The hope is that one day the notion of a cyborg flâneur will no longer necessary as the posthuman city becomes a space of negotiation rather than exclusion. ReferencesAndreou, Alex. “Anti-Homeless Spikes: ‘Sleeping Rough Opened My Eyes to the City’s Barbed Cruelty.’” The Guardian 19 Feb. 2015. 25 Aug. 2017 <https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/feb/18/defensive-architecture-keeps-poverty-undeen-and-makes-us-more-hostile>.Borromeo, Leah. “These Anti-Homeless Spikes Are Brutal. We Need to Get Rid of Them.” The Guardian 23 Jul. 2015. 25 Aug. 2017 <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/23/anti-homeless-spikes-inhumane-defensive-architecture>.Braun, Bruce. “Environmental Issues: Writing a More-than-Human Urban Geography.” Progress in Human Geography 29.5 (2005): 635–50. Buell, Lawrence. The Future of Environmental Criticism: Environmental Crisis and Literary Imagination. Malden: Blackwell, 2005.Coates, Jamie. “Key Figure of Mobility: The Flâneur.” Social Anthropology 25.1 (2017): 28–41.Hall, Peter. “Crocodiles Spotted in Queensland: A Brief History of Sightings and Captures in the Southeast.” The Courier Mail 4 Jan. 2017. 20 Aug. 2017 <http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/crocodiles-spotted-in-queensland-a-brief-history-of-sightings-and-captures-in-the-southeast/news-story/5fbb2d44bf3537b8a6d1f6c8613e2789>.Haraway, Donna J. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham: Duke UP, 2016.———. The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness. Vol. 1. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2003.———. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature. Oxon: Routledge, 1991.Heise, Ursula K. Sense of Place and Sense of Planet: The Environmental Imagination of the Global. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008. Hinchliffe, Jessica, and Terri Begley. “Brisbane’s Angry Birds: Recordings No Deterrent for Nosey Ibis at South Bank.” ABC News 2 Jun. 2015. 25 Aug. 2017 <http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-02-06/recorded-bird-noise-not-detering-south-banks-angry-birds/6065610>.Low, Tim. The New Nature: Winners and Losers in Wild Australia. London: Penguin, 2002.Neimanis, Astrid, Cecilia Asberg, and Suzi Hayes. “Posthumanist Imaginaries.” Research Handbook on Climate Governance. Eds. K. Bäckstrand and E. Lövbrand. Massachusetts: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2015. 480–90.Schliephake, Christopher. Urban Ecologies: City Space, Material Agency, and Environmental Politics in Contemporary Culture. Maryland: Lexington Books, 2014.Shaw, Debra Benita. “Streets for Cyborgs: The Electronic Flâneur and the Posthuman City.” Space and Culture 18.3 (2015): 230–42.Shields, Rob. “Fancy Footwork: Walter Benjamin’s Notes on Flânerie.” The Flâneur. Ed. Keith Tester. London: Routledge, 2014. 61–80.———. “Flânerie for Cyborgs.” Theory, Culture & Society 23.7-8 (2006): 209–20.Yusoff, Kathryn, and Jennifer Gabrys. “Climate Change and the Imagination.” Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 2.4 (2011): 516–34.Wilkins, Kim, and Joseph Diskett. 9 Fathom Deep. Brisbane: Story City, 2014. Williams, Raymond. The Country and the City. New York: Oxford UP, 1975.Wilson, Alexander. The Culture of Nature: North American Landscape from Disney to the Exxon Valdez. Toronto: Between the Lines, 1991.

Introduction Japan has long been cited as a major source of cute (kawaii) culture as it has spread around the world, as encapsulated in Christine R. Yano’s phrase ‘Pink Globalization’. This essay charts recent developments in Japanese society through the cute character Rilakkuma, a character produced by San-X (a competitor to Sanrio, which produces the famed Hello Kitty). His name means ‘relaxed bear’, and Rilakkuma and friends are featured in comics, games and other products, called kyarakutā shōhin (also kyarakutā guzzu, which both mean ‘character goods’). Rilakkuma is pictured relaxing, sleeping, eating sweets, and listening to music; he is not only lazy, but he is also unproductive in socio-economic terms. Yet, he is never censured for this lifestyle. He provides visual pleasure to those who buy these goods, but more importantly, Rilakkuma’s story charitably portrays a lifestyle that is fully consumptive with very little, if any, productivity. Rilakkuma’s reified consumption is certainly in line with many earlier analyses of shōjo (young girl) culture in Japan, where consumerism is considered ‘detached from the productive economy of heterosexual reproduction’ (Treat, 281) and valued as an end in itself. Young girl culture in Japan has been both critiqued and celebrated in in opposition to the economic productivity as well as the emotional emptiness and weakening social prestige of the salaried man (Roberson and Suzuki, 9-10). In recent years, ideal masculinity has been further critiqued with the rise of the sōshokukei danshi (‘grass-eating men’) image: today’s Japanese male youth appear to have no appetite for the ‘meat’ associated with heteronormative, competitively capitalistic male roles (Steger 2013). That is not to say all gender roles have vanished; instead, social and economic precarity has created a space for young people to subvert them. Whether by design or by accident, Rilakkuma has come to represent a Japanese consumer maintaining some standard of emotional equilibrium in the face of the instability that followed the Tōhoku earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in early 2011. A Relaxed Bear in a Precarious Japan Certainly much has been written about the ‘lost decade(s)’ in Japan, or the unraveling of the Japanese postwar miracle since the early 1990s in a variety of unsettling ways. The burst of the ‘bubble economy’ in 1991 led to a period of low or no economic growth, uncertain employment conditions and deflation. Because of Japan’s relative wealth and mature economic system, this was seen a gradual process that Mark Driscoll calls a shift from the ‘so-called Japan Inc. of the 1980s’ to ‘“Japan Shrink” of the 2010s and 2020s’ (165). The Japanese economy was further troubled by the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, and then the Tōhoku disasters. These events have contributed to Japan’s state of ambivalence, as viewed by both its citizens and by external observers. Despite its relative wealth, the nation continues to struggle with deflation (and its corresponding stagnation of wages), a deepening chasm between the two-tier employment system of permanent and casual work, and a deepening public mistrust of corporate and governing authorities. Some of this story is not ‘new’; dual employment practices have existed throughout Japan’s postwar history. What has changed, however, is the attitudes of casual workers; it is now thought to be much more difficult, if not impossible, to shift from low paid, insecure casual labour to permanent, secure positions. The overall unemployment rate remains low precisely because the number of temporary and part time workers has increased, as much as one third of all workers in 2012 (The Japan Times). The Japanese government now concedes that ‘the balance of working conditions between regular and non-regular workers have therefore become important issues’ (Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare); many see this is not only a distinction between ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’, but also of a generational shift of those who achieved secure positions before the ‘lost decade’, and those who came after. Economic, political, environmental and social insecurity have given rise to a certain level public malaise, not conducive to a robust consumer culture. Enter Rilakkuma: he, like many other cute characters in Japan, entices the consumer to feel good about spending – or perhaps, to feel okay about spending? – in this precarious time of underemployment and uncertainty about the future. ‘Cute’ Characters: Attracting as Well as Attractive Cute (‘kawaii’) culture in Japan is not just aesthetic; it includes ‘a turn to emotion and even sentimentality, in some of the least likely places’ (Yano, 7). Cute kyarakutā are not just sentimentally attractive; they are more precisely attracting images which are used to sell these character goods: toys, household objects, clothing and stationery. Occhi writes that many kyarakutā are the result of an ‘anthropomorphization’ of objects or creatures which ‘guide the user towards specific [consumer] behaviors’ (78). While kyarakutā would be created first to sell a product, in the end, the character’s popularity at times can eclipse the product’s value, and the character thus becomes ‘pure product’, as in the case of Hello Kitty (Yano, 10). Most characters, however, merely function as ‘specific representatives of a product or service rendered mentally “sticky” through narratives, wordplay and other specialized aspects of their design’ (Occhi, 86). Miller refers to this phenomenon as ‘Japan’s zoomorphic urge’, and argues that etiquette guides and public service posters, which frequently use cute and cuddly animals in the place of humans, is done to ‘render […] potentially dangerous or sensitive topics as safe and acceptable’ (69). Cuteness instrumentally turns away from negative aspects of society, whether it is the demonstration of etiquette rules in public, or the portrayal of an underemployed or unemployed person watching TV at home, as in Rilakkuma. Thus we see a revitalization of the cute zeitgeist in Japanese consumerism in products such as the Rilakkuma franchise, produced by San-X, a company that produces and distributes ‘stationary [sic], sundry goods, merchandises [sic], and paper products with original design.’ (San-X Net). Who Is Rilakkuma? According to the company’s ‘fan’ books, written in response to the popularity of Rilakkuma’s character goods (Nakazawa), the background story of Rilakkuma is as follows: one day, a smallish bear found its way unexplained into the apartment of a Japanese OL (office lady) named Kaoru. He spends his time ‘being of no use to Kaoru, and is actually a pest by lying around all day doing nothing… his main concerns are meals and snacks. He seems to hate the summer [heat].’ Other activities include watching television, listening to music, taking long baths, and tossing balls of paper into the rubbish bin (Nakazawa, 4). His comrades are Korilakkuma (loosely translated as ‘Little Rilakkuma’) and Kiiroitori (simply, ‘Yellow Bird’). Korilakkuma is a smaller and paler version of Rilakkuma; like her friend, she appears in Kaoru’s apartment for no reason. She is described as liking to pull pranks (itazuradaisuki) and is comparatively more energetic (genki) than Rilakkuma; her main activities are imitating Rilakkuma and looking for someone with whom to play (6). Lastly, Kiiroitori is a small yellow bird resembling a chick, and seems to be the only character of the three who has any ‘right’ to reside in Kaoru’s apartment. Kiiroitori was a pet bird residing in cage before the appearance of these two bears, but after Rilakkuma and Korilakkuma set themselves up in her small apartment, Kiiroitori was liberated from his cage and flies in the faces of lazy Rilakkuma and mischievous Korilakkuma (7). Kiiroitori likes tidiness, and is frequently cleaning up after the lazy bears, and he can be short tempered about this (ibid). Kiiroitori’s interests include the charming but rather thrifty ‘finding spare change while cleaning up’ and ‘bear climbing’, which is enjoyed primarily for its annoyance to the bears (ibid). Fig. 1: Korilakkuma, Rilakkuma and Kiiroitori, in 10-year anniversary attire (photo by author). This narrative behind these character goods is yet another aspect of their commodification (in other words, their management, distribution and copyright protection). The information presented ­– the minute details of the characters’ existence, illustrated with cute drawings and calligraphy – enriches the consumer process by deepening the consumers’ interaction with the product. How does the story become as attractive as the cute character? One of the striking characteristics of the ‘official’ Rilakkuma discourse is the sense of ‘ikinari yattekita’ (things happening ‘out of the blue’; Nakazawa 22), or ‘naru yō ni narimasu’ (‘whatever will be will be’; 23) reasoning behind the narrative. Buyers want to know how and why these cute characters come into being, but there is no answer. To some extent, this vagueness reflects the reality of authorship: the characters were first conceptualized by a designer at San-X named Kondō Aki, who left the company soon after Rilakkuma’s debut in 2003 (Akibako). But this ‘out of the blue’ quality of the characters strikes a chord in many consumers’ view of their own lives: why are we here? what are we doing, and why do we do it? The existence of these characters and the reasons for their traits and preferences are inexplicable. There is no reason why or how Rilakkuma came to be – instead, readers are told that to just relax, ‘go with the flow’, and ‘what can be done today can always be done tomorrow’. Procrastination would normally be considered meiwaku, or bothersome to others who depend on you. In Productive Japan, this behavior is not valued. In Precarious Japan, however, underemployment and nonproductivity takes the pressure away from individuals to judge this behavior as negative. Procrastination shifts from meiwaku to normality, and to be transformed into kawaii culture, accepted and even celebrated as such. Rilakkuma is not the first Japanese pop cultural character to rub up against the hyper productive, gambaru (fight!) attitude associated with previous generations, with their associated tropes of the juken jikoku (exam preparation hell) for students, or the karōshi (death from overwork) salaried worker. An early example of this would be Chibi Marukochan (‘Little Maruko’), a comic character created in 1986 but whose popularity peaked in the 1990s. Maruko is an endearing but flawed primary school student who is cute and amusing, but also annoying and short tempered (Sakura). Flawed characters were frequently featured in Japanese popular culture, but Maruko was one of the first featured as heroine, not a jester-like sidekick. As an early example of Japanese cute, subversive characters, Maruko was often annoying and lazy, but she at least aspired to traits such as doing well in school and being a good daughter in her extended family. Rilakkuma, perhaps, demonstrates the extension of this cute but subversive hero/ine: when the stakes are lower (or at their lowest), so is the need for stress and anxiety. Taking it easy is the best option. Rilakkuma’s ‘charm point’ (chāmu pointo, which describes one’s personal appeal), is his transgressive cuteness, and this has paid off for San-X over the years in successful sales of his comic books as well as a variety of products (see fig. 2). Fig. 2: An example of some of the goods for sale in early 2014: a fleecy blanket, a 3d puzzle, note pads and stickers, decorative toggles for a school bag or purse, comic and ‘fan’ books, and a toy car (photo by the author). Over the decade between 2003 and 2013, San X has produced 51 volumes of Rilakkuma comics (Tonozuka, 37 – 42) and over 20 different series of stuffed animals (43 – 45); plus cushions, tote bags, tableware, stationery, and variety goods such as toilet paper holders, umbrellas and contact lens cases (46 – 52). While visiting the Rilakkuma themed shop in Tokyo Station in October 2013, a newly featured and popular product was the Rilakkuma ‘onesie’, a unisex and multipurpose outfit for adults. These products’ diversity are created to meet the consumer desires of Rilakkuma’s significant following in Japan; in a small-scale study of Japanese university students, researchers found that Rilakkuma was the number one nominated ‘favorite character’ (Nosu and Tanaka, 535). Furthermore, students claimed that the attractiveness of favorite characters were judged not just on their appearance, but also due to specific characteristics: ‘characters that are always idle, relaxed, stress-free’ and those ‘that have unusual behavior or stray from the right path’ (ibid) were cited as especially attractive/attracting. Just like Rilakkuma, these researchers found that young Japanese people – the demographic perhaps most troubled by an insecure economic future – are attracted to ‘characters that have flaws in some ways and are not merely cute’ (536). Where to, Rilakkuma? Miller, in her discussion of Japanese animal characters in a variety of cute cultural settings writes Non-human animals emerge as useful metaphors for humans, yet […] it is this aesthetic load rather than the lesson or the ideology behind the image that often becomes the center of our attention. […] However, I think it is useful to separate our analysis of zoomorphic images as vehicles for cuteness from their other possible uses and possible utility in many areas of culture (70). Similarly, we need to look beyond cute, and see what Miller terms as ‘the lesson’ behind the ‘aesthetic load’: here, how cuteness disguises social malaise and eases the shift from ‘Japan Inc.’ to ‘Japan Shrink’. When particular goods are ‘tied’ to other products, the message behind the ‘aesthetic load’ are complicated and deepened. Rilakkuma’s recent commercial (in)activity has been characterized by a variety of ‘tai uppu’ (tie ups), or promotional links between the Rilakkuma image and other similarly aligned products. Traditionally, tie ups in Japan have been most successful when formed between products that were associated with similar audiences and similar aesthetic preferences. We have seen tie ups, for example, between Hello Kitty and McDonald’s (targeting youthful fast food customers) since 1999 (Yano, 129). In ‘Japan Shrink’s’ competitive consumer market, tie ups are becoming more strategic, and all the more interesting. One of the troubled markets in Japan, as elsewhere, is the music industry. Shrinking expendable income coupled with a variety of downloading practices means the traditional popular music industry (primarily in the form of CDs) is in decline. In 2009, Rilakkuma began a co-badged campaign with Tower Records Japan – after all, listening to music is one of Rilakkuma’s listed favourite past times. TRJ was then independent from its failed US counterpart, and a major figure in the music retail scene despite disappointing CD sales since the late 1990s (Stevens, 85). To stir up consumer interest, TRJ offered objects, such as small dolls, towels and shopping bags, festooned with Rilakkuma images and phrases such as ‘Rilakkuma loves Tower Records’ and ‘Relaxed Tour 2012’ (Tonozuka, 72 – 73). Rilakkuma, in a familiar pose lying back with his arms crossed behind his head, but surrounded by musical notes and the phrase ‘No Music, No Life’ (72), presents compact image of the consumer zeitgeist of the day: one’s ikigai (reason for living) is clearly contingent on personal enjoyment, despite Japan’s music industry woes. Rilakkuma also enjoys a close relationship with the ubiquitous convenience store Lawson, which has over 11,000 individual stores throughout Japan and hundreds more overseas (Lawson, Corporate Information). Japanese konbini (the Japanese term for convenience stores), unlike their North American or Australian counterparts, enjoy a higher consumer image in terms of the quality and variety of their products, thus symbolize a certain relaxed lifestyle, as per Merry I. White’s description of the ‘no hands housewife’ breezing through the evening meal preparations thanks to ready made dishes purchased at konbini (72). Japanese convenience stores sell a variety of products, but sweets (Rilakkuma’s favourite) take up a large proportion of shelf space in many stores. The most current ‘Rilakkuma x Lawson campaign’ was undertaken between September and November 2013. During this period, customers earned points to receive a free teacup; certainly Rilakkuma’s cuteness motivated consumers to visit the store to get the prize. All was not well with this tie up, however; complaints about cracked teacups resulted in an external investigation. Finding no causal relationship between construction and fault, Lawson still apologized and offered to exchange any of the approximately 1.73 million cups with an alternate prize for any consumers who so wished (Lawson, An Apology). The alternate prize was still cute in its pink colouring and kawaii character pattern, but it was a larger and much sturdier commuter type mug. Here we see that while Rilakkuma is relaxed, he is still aware of corporate Japan’s increasing sense of corporate accountability and public health. One last tie up demonstrates an unusual alliance between the Rilakkuma franchise and other cultural icons. 2013 marked the ten-year anniversary of Rilakkuma and friends, and this was marked by several prominent campaigns. In Kyoto, we saw Rilakkuma and friends adorning o-mamori (religious amulets) at the famed Kinkakuji (Golden Pavilion), a major temple in Kyoto (see fig. 3a). The ‘languid dream’ of the lazy bear is a double-edged symbol, contrasting with the disciplined practice of Buddhism and complying with a Zen-like dream state of the beauty of the grounds. Another ten-year anniversary campaign was the tie up between Rilakkuma and the 50 year anniversary of JR’s Yamanote Line, the ‘city loop’ in Tokyo. Fig. 3a: Kiiroitori sits atop Rilakkuma with Korilakkuma by their side at the Golden Pavillion, Kyoto. The top caption reads: ‘Relaxed bear, Languid at the Golden Pavilion; Languid Dream Travelogue’Fig. 3b: a key chain made to celebrate Rilakkuma’s appointment to the JR Line; still lazy, Rilakkuma lies on his side but wears a conductor’s cap. This tie up was certainly a coup, for the Yamanote Line is a significant part of 13 million Tokyo residents’ lives, as well as a visible fixture in the cultural landscape since the early postwar period. The Yamanote, with its distinctive light green coloring (uguisuiro, which translates literally to ‘nightingale [bird] colour’) has its own aesthetic: as one of the first modern train lines in the capital, it runs through all the major leisure districts and is featured in many popular songs and even has its own drinking game. This nostalgia for the past, coupled with the masculine, super-efficient former national railway’s system is thus juxtaposed with the lazy, feminized teddy bear (Rilakkuma is male, but his domain is feminine), linking a longing for the past with gendered images of production and consumption in the present. In figure 3b, we see Rilakkuma riding the Yamanote on his own terms (lying on his side, propped up by one elbow – a pose we would never see a JR employee take in public). This cheeky cuteness increases the iconic train’s appeal to its everyday consumers, for despite its efficiency, this line is severely overcrowded during peak hours and suffers from user malaise with respect to etiquette and safety issues. Life in contemporary Japan is no longer the bright, shiny ‘bubble’ of the 1980s. Japan is wrestling with internal and external demons: the nuclear crisis, the lagging economy, deteriorating relations with China, and a generation of young people who have never experienced the optimism of their parents’ generation. Dreamlike, Japan’s denizens move through the contours of their daily lives much as they have in the past, for major social structures remain for the most part in tact; instead, it is the vision of the future that has altered. In this environment, we can argue that kawaii aesthetics are all the more important, for if we are uncomfortable thinking about negative or depressing topics such as industries in decline, questionable consumer safety standards, and overcrowded trains, a cute bear can make it much more ‘bear’-able.ReferencesDriscoll, Mark. “Debt and Denunciation in Post-Bubble Japan: On the Two Freeters.” Cultural Critique 65 (2007): 164-187. Kondō Aki - akibako. “Profile [of Designer Aki Kondō].” 6 Feb. 2014 ‹http://www.akibako.jp/profile/›. Lawson. “Kigyō Jōhō: Kaisha Gaiyō [Corporate Information: Company Overview].” Feb. 2013. 10 Feb. 2014 ‹http://www.lawson.co.jp/company/corporate/about.html/›. Lawson. “Owabi to Oshirase: Rōson aki no rilakkuma fea keihin ‘rilakkuma tei magu’ hason no osore [An Apology and Announcement: Lawson’s Autumn Rilakkuma Fair Giveaway ‘Rilakkuma Tea Mug’ Concern for Damage.” 2 Dec. 2013. 10 Feb. 2014 ‹http://www.lawson.co.jp/emergency/detail/detail_84331.html›. Miller, Laura. “Japan’s Zoomorphic Urge.” ASIANetwork Exchange XVII.2 (2010): 69-82. Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. “Employment Security.” 10 Feb. 2014 ‹http://www.mhlw.go.jp/english/policy/employ-labour/employment-security/dl/employment_security_bureau.pdf›. Nakazawa Kumiko, ed. Rirakkuma Daradara Fuan Bukku [Relaxed Bear Leisurely Fan Book]. Tokyo: Kabushikigaisha Shufutoseikatsu. 2008. Nosu, Kiyoshi, and Mai Tanaka. “Factors That Contribute to Japanese University Students’ Evaluations of the Attractiveness of Characters.” IEEJ Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Engineering 8.5 (2013): 535–537. Occhi, Debra J. “Consuming Kyara ‘Characters’: Anthropomorphization and Marketing in Contemporary Japan.” Comparative Culture 15 (2010): 78–87. Roberson, James E., and Nobue Suzuki, “Introduction”, in J. Roberson and N. Suzuki, eds., Men and Masculinities in Contemporary Japan: Dislocating the Salaryman Doxa. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003. 1-19. Sakura, Momoko. Chibi Marukochan 1 [Little Maruko, vol. 1]. Tokyo: Shūeisha, 1987 [1990]. San-X Net. “Company Info.” 10 Feb. 2014 ‹http://www.san-x.jp/COMPANY_INFO.html›. Steger, Brigitte. “Negotiating Gendered Space on Japanese Commuter Trains.” ejcjs 13.3 (2013). 29 Apr. 2014 ‹http://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/ejcjs/vol13/iss3/steger.html› Stevens, Carolyn S. Japanese Popular Music: Culture, Authenticity and Power. London: Routledge, 2008. The Japan Times. “Nonregulars at Record 35.2% of Workforce.” 22 Feb. 2012. 6 Feb. 2014 ‹http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2012/02/22/news/nonregulars-at-record-35-2-of-workforce/#.UvMb-kKSzeM›. Tonozuka Ikuo, ed. Rirakkuma Tsuzuki Daradara Fan Book [Relaxed Bear Leisurely Fan Book, Continued]. Tokyo: Kabushikigaisha Shufutoseikatsu, 2013. Treat, John Whittier. “Yoshimoto Banana’s Kitchen, or The Cultural Logic of Japanese Consumerism.” In L. Skov and B. Moeran, eds., Women, Media and Consumption in Japan, Surrey: Curzon, 1995. 274-298. White, Merry I. “Ladies Who Lunch: Young Women and the Domestic Fallacy in Japan.” In K. Cwiertka and B. Walraven, eds., Asian Food: The Global and the Local. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001. 63-75. Yano, Christine R. Pink Globalization: Hello Kitty’s Trek across the Pacific. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2013.

Landing in the Midwest after a lifetime in Los Angeles, I was shocked to learn how “famous” that great city really is. It used to seem perfectly reasonable that the freeways on CHiPs looked just like the ones I rode to school. When I was five, I remember being secretly bummed that my mom never took us to the disco-classical mural from Xanadu, which I was convinced had to be hidden somewhere in Venice Beach. In high school, it never seemed strange that the Peach Pit on Beverly Hills 90210 was the same as the Rose City Diner. From the L.A. River to the Griffith Park Observatory, from the Hollywood Sign to Venice Beach, the places I had been in, through, and around were inscribed with meanings in ways that I could never fully grasp. Even marginalized localities like Inglewood, Compton, and East L.A., which especially during the 1980s and early 1990s were being ravaged by urban warfare, got to be the stars of movies, songs, and many music videos. And on April 29, 1992, the corner of Florence and Normandie “blew up” into a full blown riot, sparked by the acquittal of the four white officers who beat black motorist, Rodney King. I could watch the city burn on T.V. or from the hill behind my house. All my life, I lived with a foot in each L.A., the one that’s outside my living room and the one that’s inside my living room, oblivious to the fact that I lived in a famous city. It was only after I moved away from L.A. that I realized my homesickness could often be softened by a click of the remote. I could look for a familiar stretch of road, a bit of the skyline, or a clean but otherwise familiar segment of sidewalk, and it didn’t even matter who, what, where, or why was taking place in the story on screen. It was as though fragments of my life had been archived for me in media space. Some memories were real and some just recollections of other representations – like seeing the observatory in Bowfinger and wondering if I was remembering Rebel Without a Cause or a second grade field trip. But when I arrived here, the question that greeted me most often at parties was, “Why are you in Bowling Green!?!” And the second was, “Did you meet any famous people?” And so I tell them about how I went to driver’s education class with Mayim Byalik, the star of Blossom. Or that I met Annette Funicello one New Year’s Eve at my Uncle Phil’s house. Aside from the occasional queer chuckle about my brush with Blossom, this record is unimpressive. People are hoping for something a little bit more like, “I spent the night in jail with Poison,” “I was an extra on Baywatch,” or “I was at the Viper Room the night River Phoenix passed away.” In spite of my lackluster record of interactions with the rich and the famous, I would still get introduced as being “from California.” I had become the recipient of a second-rate, secondhand fame, noted for being from a place where, if I were more ambitious, I could have really rubbed shoulders with famous people. To young people, many of whom were itching to travel to a place like LA or New York, I was a special kind of failure. But if you aren’t famous, if you are a loser like me, life in L.A. isn’t about the a-list at all. It is about living in a city that captures the imagination, even as you walk down the street. So earning notoriety in a city that speaks in spectacle is an exercise in creativity. It seems like everybody, even the most down-to-earth people, are invested in developing a character, an image, a persona that can bubble up and be noticed in spite of the overwhelming glow of Hollywood. Even at my suburban high school, during the late 1980s and early 1990s, I knew upper-middleclass boys who got nose jobs and manicures. I knew girls who would go trolling for rich men to buy them pretty things that their parents couldn’t afford. There were kids whose parents helped them cheat their way into college. There were wannabe junkies who drove their moms’ minivans into the ghetto to score. I saw people panic, pout, and scream over cars and allowances and shoes. I know that consumer culture is growing stronger just about everywhere, but back home it happened a lot sooner and a lot stronger. Because of our proximity to Hollywood, the crest of the cultural tidal wave looks much higher and its force is much stronger. And I guess I was just too fat to be in California, so I left. However, every once in a while, somebody does manage to make a scene in L.A. A little loser, or whatever you want to call one of the peasants who tend to the vast fiefdoms of L.A.’s elites, rises from banality to achieve celebrity, even if it is a minor celebrity, in the City of Angels. One such figure is the notorious Daniel Ramos, who in 1991 became a central figure in the city’s struggle over its own image. Daniel Ramos was not a star, a politician, or a leader of industry – but before he even appeared in the news, he had trafficked illegally in making a name for himself. A teenager from the projects, Ramos was more widely known as “Chaka,” a graffiti writer credited with over 10,000 tags from San Diego to San Francisco. I had seen Chaka’s tags just about everywhere, and had determined that he might be superhuman. His name, taken after a hairy little missing link from the popular fantasy show, The Land of the Lost, made me smirk as it conjured up images of a sub-humanoid with broken dialect creeping out from the darkness with cans of paint, marking the walls with his sign, calling out to the rest of us half-humans stranded in the land of the lost. Meanwhile, L.A.’s rich and famous whizzed by, casting resentful glances at Chaka’s do-it-yourself media blitz. I knew that Chaka was “bad,” but my imagination loved him. And when he allegedly left his mark in the courthouse elevator on the day of his release from a five-month stretch in prison (Costello), I couldn’t help but feel glad to know that Chaka was still alive, that legends don’t die (his name even made it, through the hand of Dave Grohl, into Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit Video” in 1991). For me, and I imagine for many others, it was the beginning of a political awakening. I wondered what was so bad about graffiti, even though I had been taught all my life that it was wrong. More than ten years later, as I sit by the railroad tracks in my small, Midwestern town, eagerly waiting for messages from California painted on the sides of boxcars, I find myself asking a related question – what is good about advertising? I’m not the first to make the welcomed association between graffiti and advertising. In an interview with the vastly capable scholar, Joe Austin, New York graffiti legend IZ THE WIZ explained it thusly: OK, now you’re on a poorer economic level and what do you have? Years ago, and even today, a boxer makes a name for himself in the boxing ring. So when this art form starts developing, why would it be any different? It’s all in the name. When you’re poor, that’s all you got. (40) Austin elaborates on this insight, explaining: The proliferation of posters, advertisements, and signs bearing the images and names of products and proprietors in twentieth-century cities is one obvious place to begin. These are the directly visible extensions of individual/corporate identities into the new shared urban public spaces of the streets, a quantitatively and qualitatively new site in human history where hundreds of thousands of often spectacularly displayed names abound, each catching the eyes of potential consumers and imprinting itself on their memories. (39) So, on one level, the story of Chaka is the story of a poor man who went toe to toe with big media, in a town run by big media, and held his own. It is the story of someone who has managed to say in no insignificant way, “I am here.” Or has Ramos himself yelled as he was being shackled by police, “I am the famous ‘Chaka’” (Walker A4). In spite of everything else, Ramos had a name that was widely recognized, respected by some, reviled by others. Nancy Macdonald, in her important study the culture of writing, shifts the focus away from the more solidly class-based argument employed by Austin in his study of the origins of New York graffiti art to one which lends itself more readily to understanding the culture of writing in the 1990s, after hip hop had become more accessible to middleclass enthusiasts. Macdonald explains, “Writers use the respect and recognition of their peers to validate their masculine identities” (124). While I am reluctant to downplay the class struggle that certainly seems to have implicitly informed Chaka’s quest for recognition, his outlaw appeal lends itself such an interpretation. In a city like Los Angeles, where middle class agency and upward mobility for the service class are not simply functions of wealth, but also of scrupulously maintained images, feelings of powerlessness associated with the lack of a compelling image are to be expected. It is the engine that drives the exuberant extravagance of consumer culture, lifestyle choices, and ultimately biopolitics. In a society where culture and capital are the dual poles which determine one’s social standing, the pursuit of notoriety is not simply a measure of masculinity – hijacking images is a way to assert one’s agency in spite of the diminished value of unskilled labor and the collective fear of underclass masculinities. In her book Wallbangin’: Graffiti and Gangs in L.A., Susan A. Philips provides discussion of Chaka’s contribution to L.A. graffiti. Notably, Chaka was seen by those in the graffiti community as an everyman, who was responsible for two significant cultural achievements: he “open[ed] up the style of the New York-based tags and creat[ed] the phenomenon of the individual tagger” (Phillips 320). He also, as Phillips notes, “wrote tags that you could read…in blockish gang-type lettering” (320). Unlike his New York graffiti-writing peers, which are best known for their beautiful “wildstyle,” Chaka did not typically traffic in multicolor murals and displays of painterly virtuosity. His chief accomplishment was his cunning pervasiveness and daring criminality. As such, his body of work should be seen as incompatible with High Art attempts to bring collectible graffiti into gallery spaces through the 1980s and ‘90s. Chaka’s medium, in a sense, has less to do with paint, than it has to do with the city and its rules. For the majority of the public, Chaka was seen as an individual face for the graffiti pandemic that was strategically linked in the public mind with specter of gang violence. However, to those familiar with the writing scene in L.A., Chaka is more than a lone individual: THE OG’Z OF THE LEGION OF DOOM WERE THE ONE RESPONSIBLE FOR BRINGING THE EARLY LOS ANGELES GRAFFITI SCENE TO IT’S KNEES! AND GAVE US MOST OF THE LEGENDS WE KNOW TODAY! I REMEMBER I TIME WHEN EVERY LOS ANGELES INTERSTATE HEAVEN ROCKED BY EITHER LEST-CAB-STANS-SUB OR THE CHAKA!!! (god i miss those days!) remember the CAB undercover story on the news where he did those loks on dope throwies on the 110 pasadena? I think it was chuck henry channel 7 ??? does anyone still have that on vhs? i had it on vhs along with the CHAKA PUBLIC SERVICE ANOUNCEMENT (that was great!). (Poncho1DEcrew) Instead of being an individual tagger, Chaka is recognized as a member of a crew (LOD), who managed to get up in legendary ways. In reclaiming freeway overpasses (the “Heavens”), walls, trains, road signs, and just about everything else for his crew, vicariously for the many other people who respect his name, and also for himself, Chaka is more than simply selfish, as is often suggested by his detractors. In the heavens is the right place to begin. High up in the sky, over the freeways, for all to see, the writing in the heavens is visible, mysterious, and ultimately risky. The problem of climbing along the girders underneath the bridges, escaping detection, but leaving something bold points to what distinguishes writing from an ad-campaign. Sure, some of what the tagger does is about simply being a recognized image all over the place. But the other part is about finding the place, working within environmental constraints, battling against time, stretching one’s limits, and doing it with style. While the image may be everywhere, the act of writing itself is a singularity, shrouded by secrecy, and defined by the moment of its doing. The aftereffect is a puzzle. And in the case of Chaka, the question is, “How the hell did this guy get up over 10,000 times?” While I can’t see how he did it and I don’t know where, exactly, he got all that paint, I do know one thing: Chaka went everywhere. He mapped the city out as a series of landmarks, he put his name to the space, and he claimed Los Angeles for people other than the ones who claim to own the rights to beam their generalized and monolithic messages into our living rooms. Instead of archiving the city in the banalities of mass media, he has created an archive of an alternative L.A., filled with singularities, and famous in the way that only one’s hometown can be. Instead of being a celebrity, renowned by virtue of a moderately unique character, his ability to generate money, and an elite image, Chaka represents an alternative fame. As a modern day “everyman” and folk hero, he brings a message that the city belongs to all people. Far from the naïve and mean-spirited equations between graffiti writing and canine scent-marking as a primitive drive to mark territorial boundaries with undesirable substances (writers:paint::dogs:piss), Chaka’s all-city message is not so much a practice of creating exclusionary spaces as it is an assertion of one’s identity in a particular space. A postmodern pilgrim, Chaka has marked his progress through the city leaving a perceptible record of his everyday experience, and opening up that possibility for others. This is not to say that it is necessary for all people to paint in order to break loose from the semiotic order of the city, it is only to say that is hopeful to realize that this order is not fixed and that is not even necessarily our own. Reflecting back on my own experience as one who has grown up very much in love in the produced spaces of the scripted and archived fame of Los Angeles, the realization that such an overwhelming place is open even to my own inscriptions is an important one. This realization, which has been many years in the making, was set into place by the curious fame of Chaka. For a writer and scholar disturbed by the “death of the author,” it comes as a relief to see writing resurrected in the anti-authoritarian practice of a teenage boy from the projects. References Austin, Joe. Taking the Train: How Graffiti Art Became an Urban Crisis in New York City. New York: Columbia UP, 2001. Costello, D. “Writing Was on the Wall.” Courier-Mail 9 May 1991. Macdonald, Nancy. The Graffiti Subculture: Youth, Masculinity and Identity in London and New York. Hampshire: Palgrave, 2001. Phillips, Susan A. Wallbangin’: Graffiti and Gangs in L.A. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1999. Poncho1DEcrew. 50mm Los Angeles Forum. 18 June 2004. 11 July 2004 http://www.50mmlosangeles.com/>. Walker, Jill. “Letter from the Streets; Handwriting on the Wall: 10,000 Chakas.” Washington Post 4 May 1991: A4. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Heckman, Davin. "Being in the Shadow of Hollywood: Celebrity, Banality, and the Infamous Chaka." M/C Journal 7.5 (2004). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0411/12-heckman.php>. APA Style Heckman, D. (Nov. 2004) "Being in the Shadow of Hollywood: Celebrity, Banality, and the Infamous Chaka," M/C Journal, 7(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0411/12-heckman.php>.