Journal articles on the topic 'Novel rotary engine'

In recent years, there is an effort to develop a portable, autonomous micro power generation system to obtain an order of magnitude improvement in energy density over general alkaline or lithium ion batteries. As hydrocarbon fuels have much higher energy to weight ratios than general batteries, researches to realize micro-engines fueled by such hydrocarbon fuels are carried out in some universities or institutes. The first key problem of the researches is how to get a micro-engine structure suitable for MEMS (Micro-Electro Mechanical Systems) fabrication. This micro-engine structure needs characteristics such as planar geometry, self-valving operation and a minimal number of moving parts and so on. In this paper, a micro sliding rotary type combustion engine structure is presented and described. The intrinsic characteristics of the engine housing curve named of “kindred cardioids curve” are described in details. The structural scheme and cycle process of the micro-engine are discussed. Some performance parameters of the micro engine are theoretically calculated with H2-Air mixture and specified geometry parameters. The primitive calculated results indicate that the sliding rotary combustion engine is workable and effective.

This paper broadly discusses aspects of the novel Rotary Vane Engine (RVE). It also considers, in detail, the geometrical structure of work unit and the entire engine. The rigorous mathematical description of work unit and torque transmission mechanism are presented for a first time in literature. Although the RVE is a simple structure possessing a small number of moving parts, it is this property that provides the RVE with an important advantage when compared to a usual reciprocating engine. The main idea is to use noncircular gears in torque transmission mechanism together with Kauertz-Virmel work unit. It is found that the rotary engine can produce almost constant angular velocity of the flywheel, which would result in an efficient and smooth performance.

Abstract An axial vane rotary engine (AVRE) is a novel type of rotary engines. The engine is a positive displacement mechanism that permits the four “stroke” action to occur in one revolution of the shaft with a minimum number of moving components in comparison to reciprocating engines. In this paper, a two-zone combustion model is developed for a spark ignition AVRE. The combustion chamber is divided into burned and unburned zones and differential equations are developed for the change in pressure and change in temperature in each zone. The modelling is based on equations for energy and mass conservation, equation of state, and burned mass fraction. The assumption is made that both zones are at the same pressure P, and the ignition temperature is the adiabatic flame temperature based on the mixture enthalpy at the onset of combustion. The developed code for engine simulation in MATLAB is applied to another engine and there is a good agreement between results of this code and results related to the engine chosen for validation, so the modelling is independent of configuration.

A novel model for predicting heat transfer in a rotary engine was formulated and implemented in a zero-dimensional engine performance model. Results were compared with a commonly used intermittent combustion engine heat transfer model and with results from a three-dimensional simulation of flow within a rotary engine. When squish effects associated with fluid motion within the chamber were included, the Couette flow model reproduced peak heat transfer rates and timing for the peak heat transfer rate was better than that of the commonly used heat transfer model. Previously, rotary engine performance models have employed flat plate type heat transfer correlations. These correlations, though useful, do not model the flow physics in the rotary engine faithfully. Rather than flow over a flat plate, flow in the rotary engine was approximated as turbulent Couette flow. The Couette model was altered to account for centre-line velocities higher than half the rotor speed. There are two advantages to using the Couette flow model. Firstly, as noted, the underlying physics of the Couette flow model is closer to conditions in the rotary engine. Secondly, with the Couette flow model it is possible to differentiate between the rotor and housing heat transfer coefficients.

This paper introduces a mathematical model to analyze the dynamic behavior of a novel rotary vane engine (RVE). The RVE can be considered to have a number of advantages when compared to a majority of other reciprocating engine types. The advantages are found in the simple structure and the small number of moving parts. In this paper the geometrical structure and dynamical behavior of engines with a different number of work units is considered in detail. This has been examined through a study of torque transmission with a particular reference to how this is affected by the noncircular geometry of gear pitch curves. Using the Coulomb friction model, consideration has been given to the mechanical power loss due to friction in different parts of the engine, which must be taken into account. The study also proposes a possible method for balancing of asymmetric cogwheels. The analysis concludes that by using an appropriate design and arrangement of cogwheels and all moving parts, vibration can be attenuated due to impulsive gas torque.

The current paper investigates two particular features of a novel rotary split engine. This internal combustion engine incorporates a number of positive advantages in comparison to conventional reciprocating piston engines. As a split engine, it is characterized by a significant difference between the expansion and compression ratios, the former being higher. The processes are decoupled and take place simultaneously, in different chambers and on the different sides of the rotating pistons. Initially, a brief description of the engine’s structure and operating principle is provided. Next, the configuration of the compression chamber and the sealing system are examined. The numerical study is conducted using CFD simulation models, with the relevant assumptions and boundary conditions. Two parameters of the compression chamber were studied, the intake port design (initial and optimized) and the sealing system size (short and long). The best option was found to be the combination of the optimized intake port design with the short seal, in order to keep the compression chamber as close as possible to the engine shaft. A more detailed study of the sealing system included different labyrinth geometries. It was found that the stepped labyrinth achieves the highest sealing efficiency.

A novel concept for rotary machines is described. A rotor is positioned acentrically in a cylindrical cavity. One or more (typically, three or four) vanes slide radially in slots in the rotor. The vanes are connected to an axle such that the tip of a vane follows the internal surface of the housing without touching it. It is shown how the concept can be utilized in the design of compressors, expanders, and internal combustion engines. A thermodynamic model is formulated for the engine process, and calculations for a chosen set of geometrical data are presented. It is concluded that the machine can be described mathematically, and that it can work as claimed by the inventor, Kjell Vading. Some potential advantages over other concepts are discussed.

A novel micropump is proposed comprising a PMMA-based rotor, a circular PDMS micro-chamber, and a semi-circular PDMS microchannel connecting the inlet and outlet reservoirs as the rotor spins, a plug of sample fluid is trapped within the microchannel between neighboring blades of the rotor and is driven through the channel toward the outlet. Meanwhile, the rotors periodically compress and release the inlet and outlet regions of the microchannel. Thus, as the rotor turns, one plug of sample fluid is drawn into the microchannel as another is ejected into the outlet reservoir. In other words, a peristaltic pumping effect is achieved. It is shown that the flow rate in the proposed device can be controlled simply by adjusting the rotational velocity of the rotor. A maximum flow rate of 1.22 ml/min is obtained given de-ionized water as the working fluid and a rotational velocity of 232 rpm. Moreover, given the same rotational velocity, flow rates of 0.724 ml/min and 0.336 ml/min are obtained for salad oil and engine oil, respectively.

Purpose – The paper aims to report the development of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Testbed Training Platform (TTP). The development is to enable users to safely fly and control the UAV in real time within a limited (yet unconstrained) virtually created environment. Thus, the paper introduces a hardware–virtual environment coupling concept, the Panda3D gaming engine utilization to develop the graphical user interface (GUI) and the 3D-flying environment, as well as the interfacing electronics that enables tracking, monitoring and mapping of real-time movement onto the virtual domain and vice verse. Design/methodology/approach – The platform comprises a spring-shuttle assembly fixed to a heavy aluminium base. The spring supports a rotating platform (RP), which is intended to support UAVs. The RP yaw, pitch and roll are measured by an inertial measurement unit, its climb/descend is measured by a low cost infrared proximity sensor and its rotation is measured by a rotary optical encoder. The hardware is coupled to a virtual environment (VE), which was developed using the Panda3D gaming engine. The VE includes a GUI to generate, edit, load and save real-life environments. Hardware manoeuvres are reflected into the VE. Findings – The prototype was proven effective in dynamically mapping and tracking the rotating platform movements in the virtual environment. This should not be confused with the hardware in loop approach, which requires the inclusion of a mathematical model of the hardware in a loop. The finding will provide future means of testing navigation and tracking algorithms. Research limitations/implications – The work is still new, and there is great room for improvement in many aspects. Here, this paper reports the concept and its technical implementation only. Practical implications – In the literature, various testbeds were reported, and it is felt that there is still room to come up with a better design that enables UAV flying in safer and unlimited environments. This has many practical implications, particularly in testing control and navigation algorithms in hazardous fields. Social implications – The main social impact is to utilise the concept to develop systems that are capable of autonomous rescue mission navigation in disaster zones. Originality/value – The authors are aware that various researchers have developed various testbeds, at different degrees of freedom. Similarly, the authors are also aware that researchers have used game engines to simulate mobile robots or sophisticated equipment (like the VICON Motion Capture System) to measure to perform complex manoeuvres. However, the cost of this kind of equipment is very high, autonomous movements are planned in restricted environments and tested systems are only autonomous in certain setups. However, the idea of mapping the dynamics of an avatar flying object onto a 3D-VE is novel. To improve productivity and rapid prototyping, this paper proposes the use of commercially available game engines, such as the Panda3D, to create virtual environments.

In order to avoid blood clotting, in the second generation of rotary blood pumps the impeller is suspended without mechanical bearing, using balance of magnetic and hydrodynamic forces. Reaching single tens of microns gap between pump housing and impeller is crucial for level of blood traumatization by the pump. In this paper we would like to present the method of physical measurement of this gap on a running pump with the use of commercial fiber-optic proximity sensor on the example of Polish rotary blood pump ReligaHeart ROT. We also discussed technical requirements of the construction of laboratory stand. Full Text: PDF ReferencesS. Westaby, "Rotary blood pumps as definitive treatment for severe heart failure", Future Cardiol. 9, 2 (2013). CrossRef R. Delgado, M. Bergheim, "HeartMate® II left ventricular assist device: a new device for advanced heart failure", Epert Rev. Med. Devices, 2, 5 (2005). CrossRef M. Ozban, T. Yagdi, C. Engin et al, Transplant proc., 44, 6 (2012). CrossRef A.T. Lanfear, M. Hamandi, J. Fan et al., "Trends in HeartMate 3: What we know so far", J. Card. Surg., 35, 1 (2020). CrossRef Ch. Zengsheng, S. Anqiang, W. Hongyu, "Non-physiological shear stress-induced blood damage in ventricular assist device", Medicine in Novel Technology and Devices, 3 (2019). CrossRef A. M. Robertson, A. Sequeira, R. G. Owens, Rheological models of blood In: L. Formaggia, A. Quarteroni, A Veneziani (eds) Cardiovascular Mathematics (Milano, Springer-Verlag 2009) CrossRef M. Gawlikowski et al., "Necessity of telemonitoring in patients treated by means of cardiac assist systems on the example of Polish rotary blood pump ReligaHeart ROT", Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, 925 (2019). CrossRef R. Kustosz, et al., "The tin coating utilisation as blood contact surface modification in implantable rotary left ventricle assist device religaheart ROT", Arch. Matall. Mater., 60, 3 (2015). CrossRef S. S. Patil, A. D. Shaligram, "Analytical study of performance variations of fiber optic micro-displacement sensor configurations using mathematical modeling and an experimental test jig", IJSER, 4, 11 (2013). DirectLink Philtec Application Note, 6, 25 (2017) CrossRef

This article discusses features and advantages of BiVACOR, an artificial heart machine. It also presents a brief overview of medical successes of Billy Cohn, a medical doctor. The BiVACOR heart is a rotary pump with a single moving part that consists of two impellers on a magnetically suspended rotor. Cohn along with his older brother built homemade gadgets, rocket engines, and a variety of incendiary devices in the garage. As Cohn progressed in his medical career, he never stopped tinkering. He was fast becoming one of the finest heart surgeons in the country, yet he spent his free time in his home workshop, prototyping medical devices to assist his operations. Cohn and O.H. ‘Bud’ Frazier, a cardiac surgeon who had performed more than 1000 heart transplants, led the work on AbioCor from the Texas Heart Institute in Houston and worked on a completely novel approach to artificial heart design—continuous flow. The heart, built by the two surgeons, is set out to build would replace those metaphorical flappy wings with fixed ones.

The production and repair of blades for aerospace engines and energy turbines is a complex process due their inherently low stiffness and damping properties. The final recontouring operation is usually performed by milling operations where regenerative chatter is one of the main productivity limiting factors. With the objective of avoiding specific stiffening fixtures for each blade geometry, this paper proposes a semi-active tuneable clamping table (TCT) based on mode tuning for blade machining. The active mode of the device can be externally controlled by means of a rotary spring and eddy current damping modules. Its in-series architecture allows damping to be introduced to the critical mode of the thin-walled part without any direct contact in the machining area and enables a more universal clamping. Its chatter suppression capabilities are maximized by means of a novel self-tuning algorithm that iteratively optimizes the tuning for the measured chatter frequency. The benefits of the iterative algorithm are validated through semidiscretization and initial value time-domain simulations, showing a clear improvement in blade recontouring stability compared to regular broad-bandwidth tuning methods.

Optimizing the surface topography of cast iron crankshafts offers the opportunity to use this material as an alternative to steel in high-performance combustion engines. In the past, this was not possible due to the higher wear on bearing shells and the higher friction losses in relation to forged steel shafts. In order to find an optimized shaft micro topography, the friction and wear behavior of steel and cast iron shafts with different surface treatments were compared to each other, using a combined physical (experimental) and a virtual (computational) simulation approach. The experiments were carried out with a rotary tribometer using a journal bearing test configuration with the possibility to test real-life bearing shells and shaft specimens, manufactured from real-life crankshafts. In the experiments, a polished steel shaft with low bearing wear was effective. The optimization of cast iron crankshafts by a novel surface treatment showed a significant reduction of bearing wear in relation to the classical surface finishing procedures of cast iron shafts. A computational simulation approach, considering the real-life micro topography by using the Navier–Stokes equations for the calculation of micro hydrodynamics, supports the assessment of fluid friction. The virtual simulation shows, in accordance to the experimental results, only a minor influence of the investigated shaft topographies on the fluid friction. Further optimization of shaft surfaces for journal bearing systems seems possible only by the usage of patterned micro topographies.

Hundreds of new features and functionalities have been introduced as in-vehicle systems (IVS) mature. However, it remains unclear whether these novel designs have appropriately addressed driver preferences and requirements, especially when factors such as geographical or cultural differences are considered. An empirical study was conducted to determine cultural differences between young Chinese and German drivers with respect to (a) preferences for 18 selected IVS and (b) behavioral effects in six secondary driving tasks. Data from 232 Chinese and 94 German drivers were collected through an online questionnaire and the results indicate that young Chinese drivers value most of the selected IVS designs more significantly than the Germans do, except in categories such as radio, navigation and autonomous emergency braking. In addition, rotary with a display screen is the most preferred interaction modality for both groups. As for behavioral effects when performing secondary tasks, young Chinese drivers are more likely to engage in safety-related scenarios while the Germans in efficiency-related scenarios. An ordinal logistic regression analysis suggested a strong correlation between secondary tasks (looking up navigation, dialing the phone and connecting Bluetooth) and behavioral degradation for young Chinese drivers, whereas the six secondary tasks seem to affect German drivers minimally. Based on the preference analysis and attitudes to behavioral impacts, implications for the design of IVS are discussed to better satisfy needs from drivers of different cultural backgrounds.

Manufacturing and production industries are increasingly turning to robots to carry out repetitive picking operations in an efficient manner. This paper focuses on tackling the novel challenge of automating the bin picking process for entangled objects, for which there is very little research. The chosen case study are sets of freely curved tubes, which are prone to occlusions and entanglement. The proposed algorithm builds a representation of the tubes as an ordered list of cylinders and joints using a point cloud acquired by a 3D scanner. This representation enables the detection of occlusions in the tubes. The solution also performs grasp planning and motion planning, by evaluating post-grasp trajectories via simulation using Gazebo and the ODE physics engine. A force/torque sensor is used to determine how many items were picked by a robot gripper and in which direction it should rotate to solve cases of entanglement. Real-life experiments with sets of PVC tubes and rubber radiator hoses showed that the robot was able to pick a single tube on the first try with success rates of 99% and 93%, respectively. This study indicates that using simulation for motion planning is a promising solution to deal with entangled objects.

Gas turbine engines demand material with unique properties like high-temperature oxidation and corrosion resistance, high specific strength, etc. All over the world material development to meet these requirements has led to the development of novel alloys. While Titanium base alloys are used in the low-temperature regime of the gas turbine engine, Nickel-basedsuperalloys are used for hot end components of the engine. With the increase in the temperature requirement for the turbine parts, the form of the Ni-based superalloys changed from wrought to cast superalloys. As an inherent process of investment cast superalloy blades and vanes which has serpentine passages for air cooling, these passages are required to be closed after casting. The numerous adapters also need to be joined on the cast superalloy casings for various instrumentation, lube oil ports. These cast superalloys are nonweldable and joining these pose a challenge. In this present investigation, the joining of the Nibasedsuperalloy BZL12Y and martensitic stainless steel AE961W using rotary friction welding process. The mechanical properties of the dissimilar joints were evaluated as per the ASTM standards. Microstructural features of various regions of welded joints using optical microscopy (OM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The material is welded in different condition to obtain the maximum tensile strength of the weld joint. From this investigation, it was found that the combination of aging and h & t condition weld joint gives good strength and a stable hardness value. Correlation between tensile properties and microstructural features were analyzed and reported in this paper.

In today’s civilization the excessive use of hydrocarbon fuels in transport sector is causing serious effect on environmental damage to the extent of 77.8% due to its tail pipe emission which mainly releases: carbon dioxide, carbon mono-oxide, nitrous oxide, and other un-burnt gases contributing to green house gases. The excessive consumption of hydrocarbon fuel has also led to the danger of depletion of hydrocarbon fuel and oil wells are likely to be dried around 2047, leaving much disastrous effect like global warming, tsunami, hurricane and health hazards etc.. This paper describes the compressed air as a clean energy source that can be utilized with the help of suitable air driven engine to develop shaft work to run the light transport vehicles along with compressed air storage tank system. A novel rotary air engine has been designed and developed to produce 73–97% of its performance efficiency. Supplementing the hydrocarbon fueled vehicles with the use of compressed air for running vehicles will significantly control the emissions and enhance the energy sustainability.

AbstractMachining operations on titanium and its alloys have always been a challenge in the design of compressor blade in the jet engine which undergo profound stress during impact of debris and affects the life span of both static and rotary blades. Titanium grade 5 alloy is used to resist the creep and fatigue due to the thermal expansion and sudden impact including bird strike. However, machining them is difficult. An attempt was made to mitigate the temperature during drilling of Ti-6Al-4V by adopting cryogenic coolants LN2, CO2 and a novel approach of coconut oil under varying cutting speed and feed rates. LN2 provided 17 and 55% reduction in temperature over CO2 and coconut oil condition respectively. Employing the optimum machining procedure for Titanium alloy can reduce the weight of the aircraft by mounting the titanium alloy at the leading edge of the carbon fiber reinforced plastic composite blades.

The atmospheric air is freely available but once it is compressed, it develops the potential power source for running any prime mover as a zero pollutant. Thus air turbine proposed to be installed here on motorbike transforms the energy of the compressed air into shaft work in place of an internal combustion engine. This paper details a mathematical modeling and performance evaluation of an air driven vane type rotary novel air turbine / engine. The effect of isobaric admission and adiabatic expansion of high pressure air for different rotor to casing diameter ratios at optimum vane and injection angles as 450, 300 respectively have been considered and analyzed. The optimum work output is seen at some typical values of rotor / casing diameter ratios at moderate air consumptions. In this study, the power obtained along linear expansion (without excessive air consumption) as 6.0-7.6 kW (8-10 HP) between rotor to casing diameter ratios 0.85 to 0.80, at casing diameter of 200 mm, injection pressure of 90 psi (6 bar) and speed of rotation 2500 rpm which is enough to run any motorbike or light vehicle.

Various Kalman filter approaches have been presented for performance estimation of aircraft engines provided that sensor measurement numbers are sufficient and all of them are available. However, it is difficult to collect all physical parameters along the gas path since the complex structure limits sensor installation, especially around the high-pressure turbine. The contribution of this article is to create a virtual sensor in the hot-section based on the component physical characteristics and aerothermodynamic theory and develop a dual hypothesis test strategy combined with a state estimator to track abrupt degradation of the engine component. A novel couple algorithm of the unscented Kalman filter using a virtual sensor is developed that has three primary advantages: (i) The performance degradation of four rotatory components can be estimated without sensor P43. (ii) The accuracy of state estimation using the virtual sensor is equivalent to that of sensor P43, and it adapts to the abrupt change of engine operating condition in the whole flight envelope. (iii) If the sensor can be installed in the future, it can be engaged to its analytical redundancy. Simulations are carried out on typical abrupt degradation datasets of aircraft engines, which demonstrate the superiority of anomaly detection of gas path component performance using virtual sensor measurements, especially hot-section components.

The demand of further increased bypass ratio of aero engines will lead to low pressure turbines with larger diameters, which rotate at lower speed. Therefore, it is necessary to guide the flow leaving the high pressure turbine to the low pressure turbine at larger diameters minimizing the losses and providing an adequate flow at the low pressure (LP)-turbine inlet. Due to costs and weight, this intermediate turbine duct has to be as short as possible. This would lead to an aggressive (high diffusion) s-shaped duct geometry. It is possible to shorten the duct simply by reducing the length but the risk of separation is rising and losses increase. Another approach to shorten the duct and thus the engine length is to apply a so called integrated concept. These are novel concepts where the struts, mounted in the transition duct, replace the usually following LP-vane row. This configuration should replace the first LP-vane row from a front bearing engine architecture where the vane needs a big area to hold bearing services. That means the rotor is located directly downstream of the strut. This means that the struts have to provide the downstream blade row with undisturbed inflow with suitable flow angle and Mach number. Therefore, the (lifting) strut has a distinct three-dimensional design in the more downstream part, while in the more upstream part, it has to be cylindrical to be able to lead through supply lines. In spite of the longer chord compared with the base design, this struts have a thickness to chord ratio of 18%. To apply this concept, a compromise must be found between the number of struts (weight), vibration, noise, and occurring flow disturbances due to the secondary flows and losses. The struts and the outer duct wall have been designed by Industria de Turbopropulsores. The inner duct was kept the same as for the base line configuration (designed by Motoren und Turbinen Union). The aim of the design was to have similar duct outflow conditions (exit flow angle and radial mass flow distribution) as the base design with which it is compared in this paper. This base design consists of a single transonic high pressure (HP)-turbine stage, an aggressive s-shaped intermediate turbine duct, and a LP-vane row. Both designs used the same HP-turbine and were run in the continuously operating Transonic Test Turbine Facility at Graz University of Technology under the same engine representative inlet conditions. The flow field upstream and downstream the LP-vane and the strut, respectively, has been investigated by means of five hole probes. A rough estimation of the overall duct loss is given as well as the upper and lower weight reduction limit for the integrated concept.

Latches are essential machine elements utilized by all sectors (military, automotive, consumer, manufacturing, etc.) with a growing need for active capabilities such as automatic release and reset, which require actuation. Shape memory alloy (SMA) actuation is an attractive alternative technology to conventional actuation (electrical, hydraulic, etc.) because SMA, particularly in the wire form, is simple, inexpensive, lightweight, and compact. This paper introduces a fundamental latch technology, referred to as the T-latch, which is driven by an ultrafast SMA wire actuator that employs a novel spool-packaged architecture to produce the necessary rotary release motion within a compact footprint. The T-latch technology can engage passively, maintain a strong structural connection in multiple degrees of freedom with zero power consumption, actively release within a very short timeframe (<20 ms, utilizing the SMA spooled actuator), and then repeat operation with automatic reset. The generic architecture of the T-latch and governing operational behavioral models discussed within this paper provide the background for synthesizing basic active latches across a broad range of applications. To illustrate the utility and general operation of the T-latch, a proof-of-concept prototype was designed, built, and experimentally characterized regarding the basic functions of engagement, retention, release, and reset for a common case study of automotive panel lockdown. Based on the successful demonstration and model validation presented in this study, the T-latch demonstrates its promise as an attractive alternative technology to conventional technologies with the potential to enable simple, low-cost, lightweight, and compact active latches across a broad range of industrial applications.

Re-Framing Participation in the Architecture Studio Recently, within design literature, significant attention has been given to collaboration across different disciplines (see for instance, Nicolini et al.; Carlile), as well as consideration of the breakdown of traditional disciplinarity and the corresponding involvement of users in co-generation (Sanders and Stappers, “Co-Creation” 11–12) through the development and deployment of structured methods and toolkits (Sanders et al., “Framework”; Sanders and Stappers, “Probes”). Relatively less attention has been paid to the workings of the “communities of practice” (Wenger) operating within the disciplinary domain of architecture. The discourse around concept design in architecture has tended to emphasise individualist approaches driven by personal philosophies, inspirations, imitation of a more experienced designer, and emphasis on latent talent or genius (for instance, Moneo). This can be problematic because without a shared language and methods there are limited opportunities for making meaning to facilitate participation between collaborators in architectural studio settings. It is worth asking then: are there things that “Architecture” might learn from “Design” about the deployment of structured methods, and might this interdisciplinary exchange promote participatory practices in studio-based cultures? We address this question by connecting and building on two important concepts relevant to design methods, meta-design as described in the open design literature (De Mul 36–37), and design frames as described by Schön and formalised by Dorst (‘Core’; Frame; see also Weedon). Through this combination, we propose a theory of participation by making shared meaning in architectural design. We animate our theoretical contribution through a design toolkit we have developed, refined, and applied over several years in typologically focused architectural design studios in Australian university contexts. One important contribution, we argue, is to the area of design theory-building, by taking two previously unrelated concepts from the design methods literature. We draw them together using an example from our own design practices to articulate a new term and concept for making shared meaning in design. The other contribution made is to the translation of this concept into the context of studio-based architectural practice, a setting that has traditionally struggled to accept structured methods. The existence of other form-metaphor design tools available for architecture and the theoretical basis of their development and connection to design literature more broadly has not always been clearly articulated (see for example Di Mari and Yoo; Lewis et al.). The rationale for giving an account of the construction and deployment of our own toolkit is to illustrate its theoretical contribution while providing the basis for future field testing and translation (including by other researchers), noting the established trajectory of this kind of work in the design literature (see, for example, Hoolohan and Browne; Visser et al.; Vaajakallio and Mattelmäki; Sanders and Stappers, “Co-Creation” and ”Probes”). In line with this issue’s thematic and epistemological agenda, we adopt what Cross identifies as “designerly ways of knowing” (223), and is at least partly a reflection on a practice in which we engage with our own disciplines and research interests to propose and deploy design thinking as a kind of critical “reflection-in-action” (Robertson and Simonsen 2). Meta-Framing: Combining Meta-Design and Framing Meta-design is a term used in open design literature to describe approaches aimed toward orchestration of a project in such a way that people are afforded the agency to become effective co-designers, regardless of their pre-existing skills or design-specific knowledge (De Mul 36). According to a meta-design approach, design is conceived of as a shared project of mutual learning instead of an individualistic expression of singular genius. Through the establishment of shared protocols and formats, what Ehn (1) calls “infrastructuring”, individuals with even very limited design experience are provided scaffolds that enable them to participate in a design project. One important way in which meta-design helps “create a pathway through a design space” is through the careful selection and adoption of shared guiding metaphors that provide common meanings between co-designers (De Mul 36). The usefulness of metaphors is also recognised in the context of design frames, the second concept on which we build our theory. Conceptualised as “cognitive shortcuts” for making “sense of complex situations” (Haase and Laursen 21), design frames were first conceived of by Schön (132) as a rational approach to design, one guided by “epistemological norms”. Frames have subsequently been further developed within the design methods literature and are defined as a system of counterfactual design decision-making that uses metaphors to provide a rationale for negotiating ill-structured problems. According to Dorst, frames involve: the creation of a (novel) standpoint from which a problematic situation can be tackled … . Although frames are often paraphrased by a simple metaphor, they are in fact very complex sets of statements that include the specific perception of a problem situation, the (implicit) adoption of certain concepts to describe the situation, a ‘working principle’ that underpins a solution and the key thesis: IF we look at the problem situation from this viewpoint, and adopt the working principle associated with that position, THEN we will create the value we are striving for. (525) Despite Schön choosing to illustrate his original conception of framing through the example of a student’s architectural design project, there has been limited subsequent consideration of framing in architectural studio contexts—an exception being Eissa in 2019. This may be because formalised design methods have tended to be treated with suspicion within architectural culture. For instance, Christopher Alexander’s Pattern Language is one such “highly systemised design process” (Dawes and Ostwald 10) that despite its potential to guide participatory design has had an “uneven reception” (Bhatt 716) within architecture itself. One way architecture as a disciplinary domain and as a profession has attempted to engage with design method is through typology, which is one of the few persistent and recurring notions in architectural discourse (Bandini; Grover et al.). As a system of classification, typology categorises “forms and functions as simply and unequivocally as possible” (Oechslin 37). In addition to being used as a classification system, typology has also been positioned as “a process as much as an object”, one with the potential for an “active role in the process of design” (Lathouri 25). Type and typology have been conceptualised as a particular way of projecting architecture’s “disciplinary agency” (Jacoby 936), and this goes some way to explaining their enduring value. A potentially valid criticism of framing is that it can tend toward “design fixation”, when a pre-existing assumption “inadvertently restricts the designers’ imagination” (Crilly). Similarly, typology-as-method—as opposed to a classification tool—has been criticised for being relatively “inflexible” or “reductive” (Shane 2011) and responsible for perpetuating “conservative, static norms” (Jacoby 932) if applied in a rote and non-reflexive way. We deal with these concerns in the discussion of the deployment of our Typekit below. We are drawing here on our experience teaching in the first two years of undergraduate architecture degrees in Australian university settings. As well as being equipped with a diversity of educational, social, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds, students typically have divergent competencies in the domain-specific skills of their discipline and a limited vocabulary for making shared meaning in relation to an architectural proposal. The challenge for studio-based collaborative work in such a context is developing shared understandings and a common language for working on a design project to enable a variety of different design solutions. The brief for a typical studio project will specify a common site, context, and program. Examples we have used include a bathhouse, fire station, archive, civic centre, and lifesaving club. There will then be multiple design solutions proposed by each studio participant. Significantly we are talking about relatively well-structured problems here, typically a specific building program for a specified site and user group. These are quite unlike the open-ended aims of “problem frames” described in the design thinking literature “to handle ill-defined, open-ended, and ambiguous problems that other problem-solving methodologies fail to handle” (Haase and Laursen 21). However, even for well-structured problems, there is still a multitude of possible solutions possible, generated by students working on a particular project brief. This openness reduces the possibility of making shared meaning and thus hinders participation in architectural design. Designing the Typekit The Typekit was developed heuristically out of our experiences teaching together over several years. As part of our own reflective practice, we realised that we had begun to develop a shared language for describing projects including that of students, our own, precedents and canonical works. Often these took the form of a simple formal or functional metaphor such as “the building is a wall”; “the building is an upturned coracle”; or “the building is a cloud”. While these cognitive shortcuts proved useful for our communication there remained the possibility for this language to become esoteric and exclusionary. On the other hand, we recognised the potential for this approach to be shared beyond our immediate “interpretive community” (Fish 485) of two, and we therefore began to develop a meta-design toolkit. Fig. 1: Hybrid page from the Typekit We began by developing a visual catalogue of formal and functional metaphors already present within the panoply of constructed contemporary architectural projects assembled by surveying the popular design media for relevant source material. Fig. 2: Classification of contemporary architectural built work using Typekit metaphors We then used simple line drawings to generate abstract representations of the observed building metaphors adopting isometry to maintain a level of objectivity and a neutral viewing position (Scolari). The drawings themselves were both revelatory and didactic and by applying what Cross calls “designerly ways of knowing” (Cross 223) the toolkit emerged as both design artefact and output of design research. We recognised two fundamentally different kinds of framing metaphors in the set of architectural projects we surveyed, rule-derived and model-derived—terms we are adapting from Choay’s description of “instaurational texts” (8). Rule-derived types describe building forms that navigate the development of a design from a generic to a specific form (Baker 70–71) through a series of discrete “logical operators” (Choay 134). They tend to follow a logic of “begin with x … perform some operation A … perform some operation B … end up with y”. Examples of such operations include add, subtract, scale-translate-rotate, distort and array. Model-derived framing metaphors are different in the way they aim toward an outcome that is an adapted version of an ideal initial form. This involves selecting an existing type and refining it until it suits the required program, site, and context. Examples of the model-derived metaphors we have used include the hedgehog, caterpillar, mountain, cloud, island, and snake as well as architectural Ur-types like the barn, courtyard, tent, treehouse, jetty, and ziggurat. The framing types we included in the Typekit are a combination of rule-derived and model-derived as well as useful hybrids that combined examples from different categories. This classification provides a construct for framing a studio experience while acknowledging that there are other ways of classifying formal types. Fig. 3: Development of isometric drawings of metaphor-frames After we developed a variety of these line drawings, we carried out a synthesis and classification exercise using a version of the KJ method. Like framing, KJ is a technique of abduction developed for dealing objectively with qualitative data without a priori categorisation (Scupin; Kawakita). It has also become an established and widely practiced method within design research (see, for instance, Hanington and Martin 104–5). Themes were developed from the images, and we aimed at balancing a parsimony of typological categories with a saturation of types, that is to capture all observed types/metaphors and to put them in as few buckets as possible. Fig. 4: Synthesis exercise of Typekit metaphors using the KJ method (top); classification detail (bottom) Deploying the Typekit We have successfully deployed the Typekit in architectural design studios at two universities since we started developing it in 2018. As a general process participants adopt a certain metaphor as the starting point of their design. Doing so provides a frame that prefigures other decisions as they move through a concept design process. Once a guiding metaphor is selected, it structures other decision-making by providing a counterfactual logic (Byrne 30). For instance, if a building-as-ramp is chosen as the typology to be deployed this guides a rationale as to where and how it is placed on the site. People should be able to walk on it; it should sit resolutely on the ground and not be floating above it; it should be made of a massive material with windows and doors appearing to be carved out of it; it can have a green occupiable roof; quiet and private spaces should be located at the top away from street noise; active spaces such as a community hall and entry foyer should be located at the bottom of the ramp … and so on. The adoption of the frame of “building-as-ramp” by its very nature is a crucial and critical move in the design process. It is a decision made early in the process that prefigures both “what” and “how” types of questions as the project develops. In the end, the result seems logical even inevitable but there are many other types that could have potentially been explored and these would have posed different kinds of questions and resulted in different kinds of answers during the process. The selection of a guiding metaphor also allows students to engage with historical and contemporary precedents to offer further insights into the development—as well as refinement—of their own projects within that classification. Even given the well-structured nature of the architectural project, precedents provide useful reference points from which to build domain-specific knowledge and benchmarks to measure the differences in approaches still afforded within each typological classification. We believe that our particular meta-framing approach addresses concerns about design fixation and balances mutual learning with opportunities for individual investigation. We position framing less about finding innovative solutions to wicked problems to become more about finding ways for a group of people to reason together through a design problem process by developing and using shared metaphors. Thus our invocation of framing is aligned to what Haase and Laursen term “solution frames” meaning they have an “operational” meaning-making agenda and provide opportunities for developing shared understanding between individuals engaged in a given problem domain (Haase and Laursen 20). By providing a variety of opportunities within an overarching “frame of frames” there are opportunities for parallel design investigation to be undertaken by individual designers. Meta-framing affords opportunities for shared meaning-making and a constructive discourse between different project outcomes. This occurs whether adopting the same type to enable questions including “How is my building-as-snake different from your building-as-snake?”, “Which is the most snake-like?”, or different types (“In what ways is my building-as-ramp different to your building-as-stair?”) By employing everyday visual metaphors, opportunities for “mutual learning between mutual participants” (Robertson and Simonsen 2) are enhanced without the need for substantial domain-specific architectural knowledge at a project’s outset. We argue that the promise of the toolkit and our meta-framing approach more generally is that it actually multiples rather than forecloses opportunities while retaining a shared understanding and language for reasoning through a project domain. This effectively responds to concerns that typology-as-method is a conservative or reductive approach to architectural design. It is important to clarify the role of our toolkit and its relationship to our theory-building agenda. On the basis of the findings accounted for here we do claim to draw specific conclusions about the efficacy of our toolkit. We simply did not collect experimental data relevant to that task. We can, however, use the example of our toolkit to animate, flesh out, and operationalise a model for collaboration in architectural design that may be useful for teaching and practicing architecture in collaborative, team-based contexts. The contribution of this account, therefore, is theoretical. That is, the adaptation of concepts from design literature modified and translated into a new domain to serve new purposes. The Promise of Meta-Framing through Typology Through our work, we have outlined the benefits of adopting formalised design methods in architecture as a way of supporting participation, including using toolkits for scaffolding architectural concept design. Meta-framing has shown itself to be a useful approach to enable participation in architectural design in a number of ways. It provides coherence of an idea and architectural concept. It assists decision-making in any given scenario because a designer can decide which out of a set of choices makes more sense within the “frame” adopted for the project. The question becomes then not “what do I like?” or “what do I want?” but “what makes sense within the project frame?” Finally and perhaps most importantly it brings a common understanding of a project that allows for communication across a team working on the same problem, supporting a variety of different approaches and problem-solving logics a voice. By combining methodologies and toolkits from the design methods literature with architecture’s domain-specific typological classifications we believe we have developed an effective and adaptive model for scaffolding participation and making shared meaning in architecture studio contexts. References Baker, Geoffrey H. Design Strategies in Architecture: An Approach to the Analysis of Form. Taylor and Francis, 2003. Bandini, Micha. “Typology as a Form of Convention.” AA Files 6 (1984): 73–82. Bhatt, Ritu. “Christopher Alexander’s Pattern Language: An Alternative Exploration of Space-Making Practices.” Journal of Architecture 15.6 (2010): 711–29. Byrne, Ruth M.J. The Rational Imagination: How People Create Alternatives to Reality. MIT P, 2005. Carlile, Paul R. “Transferring, Translating, and Transforming: An Integrative Framework for Managing Knowledge across Boundaries”. Organization Science 15.5 (2004): 555–68. Choay, Françoise. The Rule and the Model: On the Theory of Architecture and Urbanism. MIT P, 1997 [1980]. Crilly, Nathan. “Methodological Diversity and Theoretical Integration: Research in Design Fixation as an Example of Fixation in Research Design?” Design Studies 65 (2019): 78–106. Cross, Nigel. “Designerly Ways of Knowing”. Design Studies 3.4 (1982): 221–27. Dawes, Michael J., and Michael J. Ostwald. “Christopher Alexander’s A Pattern Language: Analysing, Mapping and Classifying the Critical Response.” City, Territory and Architecture 4.1 (2017): 1–14. De Mul, Jos. “Redesigning Design”. In Open Design Now: Why Design Cannot Remain Exclusive, eds. Bas Van Abel, Lucas Evers, Roel Klaassen, and Peter Troxler. BIS Publishers, 2011. 34–39. Di Mari, Anthony, and Nora Yoo. Operative Design. BIS Publishers, 2012. Dorst, Kees. “The Core of ‘Design Thinking’ and Its Application”. Design Studies 32.6 (2011): 521–32. <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2011.07.006>. ———. Frame Innovation: Create New Thinking by Design. Design Thinking, Design Theory. MIT P, 2015. Ehn, Pelle. “Participation in Design Things.” In Proceedings of the Participatory Design Conference 2008. Bloomington, Indiana, 2008. 92–101 Eissa, Doha. “Concept Generation in the Architectural Design Process: A Suggested Hybrid Model of Vertical and Lateral Thinking Approaches.” Thinking Skills and Creativity 33 (2019). Fish, Stanley E. “Interpreting the ‘Variorum’.” Critical Inquiry 2.3 (1976): 465–85. Grover, Robert, Stephen Emmitt, and Alex Copping. “The Language of Typology.” Arq 23.2 (2019): 149–56. <https://doi.org/10.1017/S1359135519000198>. Haase, Louise Møller, and Linda Nhu Laursen. “Meaning Frames: The Structure of Problem Frames and Solution Frames”. Design Issues 35.3 (2019): 20–34. <https://doi.org/10.1162/desi_a_00547>. Hanington, Bruce, and Bella Martin. Universal Methods of Design: 100 Ways to Research Complex Problems, Develop Innovative Ideas, and Design Effective Solutions. Rockport Publishers, 2012. Hoolohan, Claire, and Alison L Browne. “Design Thinking for Practice-Based Intervention: Co-Producing the Change Points Toolkit to Unlock (Un)Sustainable Practices.” Design Studies 67 (2020): 102–32. Jacoby, Sam. “Typal and Typological Reasoning: A Diagrammatic Practice of Architecture.” Journal of Architecture 20.6 (2015): 938–61. <https://doi.org/10.1080/13602365.2015.1116104>. Kawakita, Jiro. “The KJ Method and My Dream towards the ‘Heuristic’ Regional Geography.” Japanese Journal of Human Geography 25.5 (1973): 493–522. Lathouri, Marina. “The City as a Project: Types, Typical Objects and Typologies.” Architectural Design 81.1 (2011): 24–31. Lewis, Paul, Marc Tsurumaki, and David J Lewis. Manual of Section. Princeton Architectural P, 2016. Moneo, José Rafael. Theoretical Anxiety and Design Strategies in the Work of Eight Contemporary Architects. MIT P, 2004. Nicolini, Davide, Jeanne Mengis, and Jacky Swan. “Understanding the Role of Objects in Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration”. Organization Science (Providence, R.I.) 23.3 (2012): 612–29. Oechslin, Werner. “Premises for the Resumption of the Discussion of Typology.” Assemblage 1 (1986): 37–53. Panzano, Megan. “Foreword.” In Operative Design: A Catalogue of Spatial Verbs, by Anthony Di Mari and Nora Yoo. Amsterdam: BIS Publishers, 2012. 6–7. Robertson, Toni, and Jesper Simonsen. “Participatory Design: An Introduction”. In Routledge International Handbook of Participatory Design, eds. Toni Robertson and Jesper Simonsen. Taylor and Francis, 2012. 1–18. Sanders, Elizabeth B.-N., Eva Brandt, and Thomas Binder. “A Framework for Organizing the Tools and Techniques of Participatory Design.” Proceedings of the 11th Biennial Participatory Design Conference. ACM, 2010. 195–98. DOI: 10.1145/1900441.1900476. Sanders, Elizabeth B.-N., and Pieter Jan Stappers. “Co-Creation and the New Landscapes of Design.” Co-Design 4.1 (2008,): 5–18. ———. “Probes, Toolkits and Prototypes: Three Approaches to Making in Codesigning.” CoDesign 10.1 (2014): 5–14. Schön, Donald A. “Problems, Frames and Perspectives on Designing.” Design Studies 5.3 (1984): 132–36. <https://doi.org/10.1016/0142-694X(84)90002-4>. Scolari, Massimo. Oblique Drawing: A History of Anti-Perspective. MIT P, 2012. Scupin, Raymond. “The KJ Method: A Technique for Analyzing Data Derived from Japanese Ethnology.” Human Organization, 1997. 233–37. Shane, David Grahame. "Transcending Type: Designing for Urban Complexity." Architectural Design 81.1 (2011): 128-34. Vaajakallio, Kirsikka, and Tuuli Mattelmäki. “Design Games in Codesign: As a Tool, a Mindset and a Structure.” CoDesign 10.1 (2014): 63–77. <https://doi.org/10.1080/15710882.2014.881886>. Visser, Froukje Sleeswijk, Pieter Jan Stappers, Remko van der Lugt, and Elizabeth B.N. Sanders. “Contextmapping: Experiences from Practice.” CoDesign 1.2 (2005): 119–49. Weedon, Scott. “The Core of Kees Dorst’s Design Thinking: A Literature Review.” Journal of Business and Technical Communication 33.4 (2019): 425–30. <https://doi.org/10.1177/1050651919854077>. Wenger, Etienne. Communities of Practice : Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Learning in Doing. Cambridge UP, 1988. Yaneva, Albena. The Making of a Building: A Pragmatist Approach to Architecture. Peter Lang, 2009.

In the contemporary era, media spectacle organizes and mobilizes economic life, political conflict, social interactions, culture, and everyday life. My recently published book Media Spectacle explores a profusion of developments in hi-tech culture, media-driven society, and spectacle politics. Spectacle culture involves everything from film and broadcasting to Internet cyberculture and encompasses phenomena ranging from elections to terrorism and to the media dramas of the moment. For ‘Logo’, I am accordingly sketching out briefly a terrain I probe in detail in the book from which these examples are taken.1 During the past decades, every form of culture and significant forms of social life have become permeated by the logic of the spectacle. Movies are bigger and more spectacular than ever, with high-tech special effects expanding the range of cinematic spectacle. Television channels proliferate endlessly with all-day movies, news, sports, specialty niches, re-runs of the history of television, and whatever else can gain an audience. The rock spectacle reverberates through radio, television, CDs, computers networks, and extravagant concerts. The Internet encircles the world in the spectacle of an interactive and multimedia cyberculture. Media culture excels in creating megaspectacles of sports championships, political conflicts, entertainment, "breaking news" and media events, such as the O.J. Simpson trial, the Death of Princess Diana, or the sex or murder scandal of the moment. Megaspectacle comes as well to dominate party politics, as the political battles of the day, such as the Clinton sex scandals and impeachment, the 36 Day Battle for the White House after Election 2000, and the September 11 terrorist attacks and subsequent Terror War. These dramatic media passion plays define the politics of the time, and attract mass audiences to their programming, hour after hour, day after day. The concept of "spectacle" derives from French Situationist theorist Guy Debord's 1972 book Society of the Spectacle. "Spectacle," in Debord's terms, "unifies and explains a great diversity of apparent phenomena" (Debord 1970: #10). In one sense, it refers to a media and consumer society, organized around the consumption of images, commodities, and spectacles. Spectacles are those phenomena of media culture which embody contemporary society's basic values, and dreams and nightmares, putting on display dominant hopes and fears. They serve to enculturate individuals into its way of life, and dramatize its conflicts and modes of conflict resolution. They include sports events, political campaigns and elections, and media extravaganzas like sensational murder trials, or the Bill Clinton sex scandals and impeachment spectacle (1998-1999). As we enter a new millennium, the media are becoming ever more technologically dazzling and are playing an increasingly central role in everyday life. Under the influence of a postmodern image culture, seductive spectacles fascinate the denizens of the media and consumer society and involve them in the semiotics of a new world of entertainment, information, a semiotics of a new world of entertainment, information, and drama, which deeply influence thought and action. For Debord: "When the real world changes into simple images, simple images become real beings and effective motivations of a hypnotic behavior. The spectacle as a tendency to make one see the world by means of various specialized mediations (it can no longer be grasped directly), naturally finds vision to be the privileged human sense which the sense of touch was for other epochs; the most abstract, the most mystifiable sense corresponds to the generalized abstraction of present day society" (#18). Today, however, I would maintain it is the multimedia spectacle of sight, sound, touch, and, coming to you soon, smell that constitutes the multidimensional sense experience of the new interactive spectacle. For Debord, the spectacle is a tool of pacification and depoliticization; it is a "permanent opium war" (#44) which stupefies social subjects and distracts them from the most urgent task of real life -- recovering the full range of their human powers through creative praxis. The concept of the spectacle is integrally connected to the concept of separation and passivity, for in passively consuming spectacles, one is separated from actively producing one's life. Capitalist society separates workers from the products of their labor, art from life, and consumption from human needs and self-directing activity, as individuals passively observe the spectacles of social life from within the privacy of their homes (#25 and #26). The situationist project by contrast involved an overcoming of all forms of separation, in which individuals would directly produce their own life and modes of self-activity and collective practice. Since Debord's theorization of the society of the spectacle in the 1960s and 1970s, spectacle culture has expanded in every area of life. In the culture of the spectacle, commercial enterprises have to be entertaining to prosper and as Michael J. Wolf (1999) argues, in an "entertainment economy," business and fun fuse, so that the E-factor is becoming major aspect of business.2 Via the "entertainmentization" of the economy, television, film, theme parks, video games, casinos, and so forth become major sectors of the national economy. In the U.S., the entertainment industry is now a $480 billion industry, and consumers spend more on having fun than on clothes or health care (Wolf 1999: 4).3 In a competitive business world, the "fun factor" can give one business the edge over another. Hence, corporations seek to be more entertaining in their commercials, their business environment, their commercial spaces, and their web sites. Budweiser ads, for instance, feature talking frogs who tell us nothing about the beer, but who catch the viewers' attention, while Taco Bell deploys a talking dog, and Pepsi uses Star Wars characters. Buying, shopping, and dining out are coded as an "experience," as businesses adopt a theme-park style. Places like the Hard Rock Cafe and the House of Blues are not renowned for their food, after all; people go there for the ambience, to buy clothing, and to view music and media memorabilia. It is no longer good enough just to have a web site, it has to be an interactive spectacle, featuring not only products to buy, but music and videos to download, games to play, prizes to win, travel information, and "links to other cool sites." To succeed in the ultracompetitive global marketplace, corporations need to circulate their image and brand name so business and advertising combine in the promotion of corporations as media spectacles. Endless promotion circulates the McDonald’s Golden Arches, Nike’s Swoosh, or the logos of Apple, Intel, or Microsoft. In the brand wars between commodities, corporations need to make their logos or “trademarks” a familiar signpost in contemporary culture. Corporations place their logos on their products, in ads, in the spaces of everyday life, and in the midst of media spectacles like important sports events, TV shows, movie product placement, and wherever they can catch consumer eyeballs, to impress their brand name on a potential buyer. Consequently, advertising, marketing, public relations and promotion are an essential part of commodity spectacle in the global marketplace. Celebrity too is manufactured and managed in the world of media spectacle. Celebrities are the icons of media culture, the gods and goddesses of everyday life. To become a celebrity requires recognition as a star player in the field of media spectacle, be it sports, entertainment, or politics. Celebrities have their handlers and image managers to make sure that their celebrities continue to be seen and positively perceived by publics. Just as with corporate brand names, celebrities become brands to sell their Madonna, Michael Jordan, Tom Cruise, or Jennifer Lopez product and image. In a media culture, however, celebrities are always prey to scandal and thus must have at their disposal an entire public relations apparatus to manage their spectacle fortunes, to make sure their clients not only maintain high visibility but keep projecting a positive image. Of course, within limits, “bad” and transgressions can also sell and so media spectacle contains celebrity dramas that attract public attention and can even define an entire period, as when the O.J. Simpson murder trials and Bill Clinton sex scandals dominated the media in the mid and late 1990s. Entertainment has always been a prime field of the spectacle, but in today's infotainment society, entertainment and spectacle have entered into the domains of the economy, politics, society, and everyday life in important new ways. Building on the tradition of spectacle, contemporary forms of entertainment from television to the stage are incorporating spectacle culture into their enterprises, transforming film, television, music, drama, and other domains of culture, as well as producing spectacular new forms of culture such as cyberspace, multimedia, and virtual reality. For Neil Gabler, in an era of media spectacle, life itself is becoming like a movie and we create our own lives as a genre like film, or television, in which we become "at once performance artists in and audiences for a grand, ongoing show" (1998: 4). On Gabler’s view, we star in our own "lifies," making our lives into entertainment acted out for audiences of our peers, following the scripts of media culture, adopting its role models and fashion types, its style and look. Seeing our lives in cinematic terms, entertainment becomes for Gabler "arguably the most pervasive, powerful and ineluctable force of our time--a force so overwhelming that it has metastasized into life" to such an extent that it is impossible to distinguish between the two (1998: 9). As Gabler sees it, Ralph Lauren is our fashion expert; Martha Stewart designs our sets; Jane Fonda models our shaping of our bodies; and Oprah Winfrey advises us on our personal problems.4 Media spectacle is indeed a culture of celebrity who provide dominant role models and icons of fashion, look, and personality. In the world of spectacle, celebrity encompasses every major social domain from entertainment to politics to sports to business. An ever-expanding public relations industry hypes certain figures, elevating them to celebrity status, and protects their positive image in the never-ending image wars and dangers that a celebrity will fall prey to the machinations of negative-image and thus lose celebrity status, and/or become figures of scandal and approbation, as will some of the players and institutions that I examine in Media Spectacle (Kellner 2003). Sports has long been a domain of the spectacle with events like the Olympics, World Series, Super Bowl, World Soccer Cup, and NBA championships attracting massive audiences, while generating sky-high advertising rates. These cultural rituals celebrate society's deepest values (i.e. competition, winning, success, and money), and corporations are willing to pay top dollar to get their products associated with such events. Indeed, it appears that the logic of the commodity spectacle is inexorably permeating professional sports which can no longer be played without the accompaniment of cheerleaders, giant mascots who clown with players and spectators, and raffles, promotions, and contests that feature the products of various sponsors. Sports stadiums themselves contain electronic reproduction of the action, as well as giant advertisements for various products that rotate for maximum saturation -- previewing environmental advertising in which entire urban sites are becoming scenes to boost consumption spectacles. Arenas, like the United Center in Chicago, America West Arena in Phoenix, on Enron Field in Houston are named after corporate sponsors. Of course, after major corporate scandals or collapse, like the Enron spectacle, the ballparks must be renamed! The Texas Ranger Ballpark in Arlington, Texas supplements its sports arena with a shopping mall, office buildings, and a restaurant in which for a hefty price one can watch the athletic events while eating and drinking.5 The architecture of the Texas Rangers stadium is an example of the implosion of sports and entertainment and postmodern spectacle. A man-made lake surrounds the stadium, the corridor inside is modeled after Chartes Cathedral, and the structure is made of local stone that provides the look of the Texas Capitol in Austin. Inside there are Texas longhorn cattle carvings, panels of Texas and baseball history, and other iconic signifiers of sports and Texas. The merging of sports, entertainment, and local spectacle is now typical in sports palaces. Tropicana Field in Tampa Bay, Florida, for instance, "has a three-level mall that includes places where 'fans can get a trim at the barber shop, do their banking and then grab a cold one at the Budweiser brew pub, whose copper kettles rise three stories. There is even a climbing wall for kids and showroom space for car dealerships'" (Ritzer 1998: 229). Film has long been a fertile field of the spectacle, with "Hollywood" connoting a world of glamour, publicity, fashion, and excess. Hollywood film has exhibited grand movie palaces, spectacular openings with searchlights and camera-popping paparazzi, glamorous Oscars, and stylish hi-tech film. While epic spectacle became a dominant genre of Hollywood film from early versions of The Ten Commandments through Cleopatra and 2001 in the 1960s, contemporary film has incorporated the mechanics of spectacle into its form, style, and special effects. Films are hyped into spectacle through advertising and trailers which are ever louder, more glitzy, and razzle-dazzle. Some of the most popular films of the late 1990s were spectacle films, including Titanic, Star Wars -- Phantom Menace, Three Kings, and Austin Powers, a spoof of spectacle, which became one of the most successful films of summer 1999. During Fall 1999, there was a cycle of spectacles, including Topsy Turvy, Titus, Cradle Will Rock, Sleepy Hollow, The Insider, and Magnolia, with the latter featuring the biblical spectacle of the raining of frogs in the San Fernando Valley, in an allegory of the decadence of the entertainment industry and deserved punishment for its excesses. The 2000 Academy Awards were dominated by the spectacle Gladiator, a mediocre film that captured best picture award and best acting award for Russell Crowe, thus demonstrating the extent to which the logic of the spectacle now dominates Hollywood film. Some of the most critically acclaimed and popular films of 2001 are also hi-tech spectacle, such as Moulin Rouge, a film spectacle that itself is a delirious ode to spectacle, from cabaret and the brothel to can-can dancing, opera, musical comedy, dance, theater, popular music, and film. A postmodern pastiche of popular music styles and hits, the film used songs and music ranging from Madonna and the Beatles to Dolly Parton and Kiss. Other 2001 film spectacles include Pearl Harbor, which re-enacts the Japanese attack on the U.S. that propelled the country to enter World War II, and that provided a ready metaphor for the September 11 terror attacks. Major 2001 film spectacles range from David Lynch’s postmodern surrealism in Mulholland Drive to Steven Spielberg’s blending of his typically sentimental spectacle of the family with the formalist rigor of Stanley Kubrick in A.I. And the popular 2001 military film Black-Hawk Down provided a spectacle of American military heroism which some critics believed sugar-coated the actual problems with the U.S. military intervention in Somalia, causing worries that a future U.S. adventure by the Bush administration and Pentagon would meet similar problems. There were reports, however, that in Somalian cinemas there were loud cheers as the Somalians in the film shot down the U.S. helicopter, and pursued and killed American soldiers, attesting to growing anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world against Bush administration policies. Television has been from its introduction in the 1940s a promoter of consumption spectacle, selling cars, fashion, home appliances, and other commodities along with consumer life-styles and values. It is also the home of sports spectacle like the Super Bowl or World Series, political spectacles like elections (or more recently, scandals), entertainment spectacle like the Oscars or Grammies, and its own spectacles like breaking news or special events. Following the logic of spectacle entertainment, contemporary television exhibits more hi-tech glitter, faster and glitzier editing, computer simulations, and with cable and satellite television, a fantastic array of every conceivable type of show and genre. TV is today a medium of spectacular programs like The X-Files or Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, and spectacles of everyday life such as MTV's The Real World and Road Rules, or the globally popular Survivor and Big Brother series. Real life events, however, took over TV spectacle in 2000-2001 in, first, an intense battle for the White House in a dead-heat election, that arguably constitutes one of the greatest political crimes and scandals in U.S. history (see Kellner 2001). After months of the Bush administration pushing the most hardright political agenda in memory and then deadlocking as the Democrats took control of the Senate in a dramatic party re-affiliation of Vermont’s Jim Jeffords, the world was treated to the most horrifying spectacle of the new millennium, the September 11 terror attacks and unfolding Terror War that has so far engulfed Afghanistan and Iraq. These events promise an unending series of deadly spectacle for the foreseeable future.6 Hence, we are emerging into a new culture of media spectacle that constitutes a novel configuration of economy, society, politics, and everyday life. It involves new cultural forms, social relations, and modes of experience. It is producing an ever-proliferating and expanding spectacle culture with its proliferating media forms, cultural spaces, and myriad forms of spectacle. It is evident in the U.S. as the new millennium unfolds and may well constitute emergent new forms of global culture. Critical social theory thus faces important challenges in theoretically mapping and analyzing these emergent forms of culture and society and the ways that they may contain novel forms of domination and oppression, as well as potential for democratization and social justice. Works Cited Debord, Guy. Society of the Spectacle. Detroit: Black and Red, 1967. Gabler, Neil. Life the Movie. How Entertainment Conquered Reality. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998. Kellner, Douglas. Grand Theft 2000. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001. Kellner, Douglas. From 9/11 to Terror War: Dangers of the Bush Legacy. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003. Kellner, Douglas. Media Spectacle. London and New York: Routledge, 2003. Ritzer, George. The McDonaldization Thesis: Explorations and Extensions. Thousand Oaks, Cal. and London: Sage, 1998. Wolf, Michael J. Entertainment Economy: How Mega-Media Forces are Transforming Our Lives. New York: Times Books, 1999. Notes 1 See Douglas Kellner, Media Spectacle. London and New York: Routledge, 2003. 2 Wolf's book is a detailed and useful celebration of the "entertainment economy," although he is a shill for the firms and tycoons that he works for and celebrates them in his book. Moreover, while entertainment is certainly an important component of the infotainment economy, it is an exaggeration to say that it drives it and is actually propelling it, as Wolf repeatedly claims. Wolf also downplays the negative aspects of the entertainment economy, such as growing consumer debt and the ups and downs of the infotainment stock market and vicissitudes of the global economy. 3 Another source notes that "the average American household spent $1,813 in 1997 on entertainment -- books, TV, movies, theater, toys -- almost as much as the $1,841 spent on health care per family, according to a survey by the US Labor Department." Moreover, "the price we pay to amuse ourselves has, in some cases, risen at a rate triple that of inflation over the past five years" (USA Today, April 2, 1999: E1). The NPD Group provided a survey that indicated that the amount of time spent on entertainment outside of the home –- such as going to the movies or a sport event – was up 8% from the early to the late 1990s and the amount of time in home entertainment, such as watching television or surfing the Internet, went up 2%. Reports indicate that in a typical American household, people with broadband Internet connections spend 22% more time on all-electronic media and entertainment than the average household without broadband. See “Study: Broadband in homes changes media habits” (PCWORLD.COM, October 11, 2000). 4 Gabler’s book is a synthesis of Daniel Boorstin, Dwight Macdonald, Neil Poster, Marshall McLuhan, and other trendy theorists of media culture, but without the brilliance of a Baudrillard, the incisive criticism of an Adorno, or the understanding of the deeper utopian attraction of media culture of a Bloch or Jameson. Likewise, Gabler does not, a la cultural studies, engage the politics of representation, or its economics and political economy. He thus ignores mergers in the culture industries, new technologies, the restructuring of capitalism, globalization, and shifts in the economy that are driving the impetus toward entertainment. Gabler does get discuss how new technologies are creating new spheres of entertainment and forms of experience and in general describes rather than theorizes the trends he is engaging. 5 The project was designed and sold to the public in part through the efforts of the son of a former President, George W. Bush. Young Bush was bailed out of heavy losses in the Texas oil industry in the 1980s by his father's friends and used his capital gains, gleaned from what some say as illicit insider trading, to purchase part-ownership of a baseball team to keep the wayward son out of trouble and to give him something to do. The soon-to-be Texas governor, and future President of the United States, sold the new stadium to local taxpayers, getting them to agree to a higher sales tax to build the stadium which would then become the property of Bush and his partners. This deal allowed Bush to generate a healthy profit when he sold his interest in the Texas Rangers franchise and to buy his Texas ranch, paid for by Texas tax-payers (for sources on the scandalous life of George W. Bush and his surprising success in politics, see Kellner 2001 and the further discussion of Bush Jr. in Chapter 6). 6 See Douglas Kellner, From 9/11 to Terror War: Dangers of the Bush Legacy. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Kellner, Douglas. "Engaging Media Spectacle " M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0306/09-mediaspectacle.php>. APA Style Kellner, D. (2003, Jun 19). Engaging Media Spectacle . M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0306/09-mediaspectacle.php>