Journal articles on the topic 'Machinery Aesthetic aspects'

Abstract This article investigates the beginnings of Arabic typographic composition with typesetting machinery. It discusses different claims in literature of the first instance of mechanical composition and juxtaposes them with findings from original research in archives of typesetting machinery manufacturers active at the beginning of the twentieth century. Based on this evidence, it suggests a new account of the development and use of the first Arabic casting machine. The article raises geographical and socio-cultural aspects that provided the circumstances for this development and re-situates it from the Middle East to the United States. It identifies the manufacturer of the first Arabic composition machine and type founts, as well as the customer who initiated and contributed to its development. It then considers how the Arabic Linotype was likely conceived in a collaboration between the customer and the manufacturer, pooling cultural and technical expertise for this pioneering effort. Finally, the article discusses the resulting type fount and considers its characteristics from a technical and a typographic-aesthetic perspective, illustrating some of the effects mechanisation had on Arabic typography.

Kerry Tribe’s recent film on the Los Angeles River, Exquisite Corpse (2016), blurs the lines between genres. With aspects of documentary and experimental filmmaking, it captures interactions among human and non-human life, ecological systems and machines along the river. This article develops a post-anthropocentric aesthetics from the film by drawing on Sianne Ngai’s book, Our Aesthetic Categories (2012), and Rosi Braidotti’s (2013) work on post-anthropocentrism. Bringing these resources together leads to three productive transformations of Ngai’s categories: the commodity aesthetic of cuteness becomes the differential aesthetic of interaction; the performative aesthetic of zaniness becomes the functional aesthetic of activity; and the discursive aesthetic of information becomes the peri-discursive aesthetic of sensation. The article concludes by arguing that these three aesthetic categories are well suited for describing how the contemporary built environment and the complexity of life within it might be perceived and assessed and, following Jacques Rancière, affirms these categories’ role in building a politics that is attuned to such complexities.

Departing from the artistic research project Goodbye Intuition (GI) hosted by the Norwegian Academy of Music in Oslo, this article discusses the aesthetics of improvising with machines. Playing with a system such as the one described in this article, with limited intelligence and no real cognitive skills, will obviously reveal the weaknesses of the system, but it will also convey part of the preconditions and aesthetic frameworks that the human improviser brings to the table. If we want the autonomous system to have the same kind of freedom we commonly value in human players’ improvisational practice, are we prepared to accept that it may develop in a direction that departs from our original aesthetical ambitions? The analyses is based on some of the documented interplay between the musicians in a group in workshops and laboratories. The question of what constitutes an ethical relationship in this kind of improvisation is briefly discussed. The aspect of embodiment emerges as a central obstacle in the development of musical improvisation with machines.

This paper deals with the analysis of noise music by the Japanese artist Merz-bow, especially emphasizing the posthumanistic ethical and aesthetical paradigm as his artistic and political project. This project, or assemblage, has several aspects, three being particularly important: "musical" system (acoustic material, creator, listener), visual and textual material (album covers, articles and interviews), and the attitude towards the non-human (machines, animals, nature in general). These three aspects are a particular assemblage that enables the critique of the "everyday body" and the contemporary society, by creating special aesthetics of existence and lines of flight, an aesthetics which, ultimately, removes the human subject and replaces it with an (in)organic multiplicity.

Concrete is a quite recent material in the history of architecture. However, there are a large number of buildings whose structure consists on this material nowadays. Despite its excellent performance, concrete has a useful lifetime. When this time comes to its end, the structural element needs to be treated, repaired or replaced. We are getting to the point at which many of the concrete constructions are reaching, or already surpassing, the useful lifetime of the material. At this point, the Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer (CFRP) takes on importance, appearing on the market as a modern and high performance tool, in terms of structural reinforcement of the concrete. Nevertheless, this relatively new system presents yet some aspects to study and research, such as its long-term behaviour under extreme conditions. This is the departure point of our research, focused on the response of the CFRP system, both fiber and matrix, to adverse temperature conditions. This high and maintained temperature can be reached in places such as structures undergone to large periods of solar radiation around Equator latitudes, machinery installations enclosures which generate high temperatures focused on specific points, and brief small fires, among other situations, which surpass the maximum service temperature recommended by the manufacturers. In order to study this influence, a comparison of the compressive strengths of three groups of standard concrete test specimens has been carried out. Each group consisted of three cylindrical specimens, all manufactured on the same date. The first two groups were tested after their 28 day curing in chamber: one of them without any confinement and the other with CFRP sheet applied according to the manufacturer's specifications. The third group of specimens spent 90 days on a climatic chamber subjected to a temperature of 75°C, above the maximum temperature recommended by the manufacturer, 50°C. This third group was tested 388 days after their manufacture. In order to obtain a reliable basis on which to compare the effective strength provided by the deteriorated CFRP, it was needed to calculate the acquisition of theoretical strength that the concrete would have reached after the mentioned period of time without any added reinforcement. With all the results, it is possible to conclude that, after this period of heat attack, despite having produced an aesthetic degradation of the CFRP sheets, most of the compressive strength of the specimens remains.

With the high speed of scientific technology, people now lead a more hurried, fashionable and convenient life. The products which pay more attention to humanism are appreciated by the market. The article clarifies the humanizing design of this product mainly through three aspects: appearance design, product function and aesthetic value.

In this article, the authors analyze the process of humanmachine interaction in the context of artistic domains, as a framework for exploring creativity and producing results that could not be obtained without such interaction. “ArTbitration” denotes a process aimed at improving users' aesthetic judgment involving evolutionary computation and other computational intelligence methodologies. The authors interpret it as an interactive, iterative optimization process. They also suggest ArTbitration as an effective way to produce art through the efficient manipulation of information and the proper use of computational creativity to increase the complexity of the results, without neglecting the aesthetic aspects. The article emphasizes the spoken, visual and musical domains, since these are generally characterized by the lack of a systematic way to determine the quality of the result.

with the rapid development of the society, hairdryer, as one of the necessity in life, has been unable to meet the demand for high quality and fast pace of life, all because its modeling defects and a single feature. This article aims to elaborate the creative design and humanistic embodiment of this product, mainly from the following three aspects: the taste design of man-machine hairdryer shape, reasonable combination of features, and aesthetic unity of color and texture.

Felix Guattari was a modernist. He not only liked a lot of modernist artists, but his ‘aesthetic paradigm’ found its generative diagram in modern art. The most important aspect of this diagram was its insistence on the production of the new, the way it produced a utopian projection of a ‘people to come’, and so a politics whose only horizon was the future. Also important for Guattari's diagram of the ‘modern’ were the forces of abstraction, autonomy and immanent critique. Together these elements construct an artwork that is radically singular and separate, composed of a-signifying, a-temporal and invisible forces, sensations that go beyond our human conditions of possibility. In this Guattari's modernism must be understood as being quite different from his co-option by contemporary art theorists influenced by post-Operaist thought. Post-Operaism understands politics as ‘being-against’, a dialectical form of negation that finds its political condition of possibility in what already exists. Because such thought sees modern art as being entirely subsumed by the institutions and markets that contain it, art itself must be negated in order for aesthetic powers to become political. This has lead post-Operaist thought to align itself strongly with the avant-garde positions of institutional-critique and art-into-life, or ‘non-art’. Guattari's modernism takes him in a very different direction, affirming modern art despite its institutional enframing, because art is forever in the process of escaping itself. This makes modern art the model in Guattari's thought for politics itself.

The purpose of this study was to find out: (1) Comparison of the process of designing and producing serving serveware from wood and clay materials in CV Estetika Indonesia. (2) Types of food serveware products at CV Aesthetic Indonesia. (3) Comparison of design aspects of food and wood products from clay in CV Estetika Indonesia. This research was carried out at CV Estetika Indonesia and wood suppliers in Putat Wetan Village and Clay suppliers in Melikan Village, Klaten from 10 May to 10 June 2019. This study used a descriptive comparative method with a qualitative approach. The data used in this study are qualitative data with data sources in the form of informants, documents, observations, interviews, and documentation. Based on the results of the study it can be concluded: (1) The process of designing design serveware at CV Estetika Indonesia refers to the briefs given by the buyer. The process of designing food serveware products with wood material is carried out with machines so that it is more in line with the concept of the mass product or industrial products. While clay products are more directed at handicrafts because the products are produced manually using hands. (2) Types of fast food products CV Aesthetics of wood and clay materials include trays (tray), plates (cutting board), bowls (bowls), plates (plates), glass (glass), and coasters (coasters). (3) Design comparisons of serving serveware products include the design process, style and theme, finishing, color, ergonomics, and packaging.

Condemned as degenerate art during the Third Reich, German Zeitopern and their artistic treatment of technological infiltration during die Weimar Republic have sparked a variety of new research projects, world-wide musical performances and CD releases from Decca/London in a continuing series entitled ‘Entartete Kunst.’ Manifestos were written in response to the penetration of technology into nearly every aspect of human life, envisaging a future where human beings would interact organically with their new urban environments. Expressionism, Americanism and the concept of Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) symbolized fresh driving forces that emerged most visibly in opera. In contrast to pre-war Romanticism and Wagnerian mythology, the ‘New Objectivity’ demonstrated a radical commitment to the modern environment, focusing on visible, objective reality rather dian on the emotions of the artist. Particularly in Zeitopern, composers like Max Brand, Paul Hindemith, and Ernst Krenek embraced contemporary ideas of progress, new technological inventions, modern electronic communication systems and means of transportation as props, story topics and artistic vehicles to introduce new sound-effects. In several instances modern technology appeared as simply anodier stage-prop in die long history of opera stage design. In die context of European conceptions of Americanism, technology was pardy understood as a threat to the establishment's reverence for Romantic high culture. And yet in many instances it was also a welcome tool in the project of redirecting all the arts from their stagnant, inflexible pasts to modern, progressive forms of contemporary entertainment. Such diverse attitudes to the potent symbolism of the machine indicate a conflict inherent in aesthetic practice at the time and raise fundamental questions. Do composers successfully represent human beings as creative and autonomous individuals while simultaneously introducing technological images of dominance and depersonalization? If there are contradictory aspects in the representation of technology, how do they relate to the various aesthetic views of the 1920s? Max Brand's central work and acclaimed prototype of Zeitopern, Maschinist Hopkins (1928), brings the world of technology and its sophisticated artifacts to the musical stage. A close analysis reveals basic contradictions, symptomatic of the era, in the composer's embrace of modern technology.

Abstract Skeletal defects reconstruction, using custom-made substitutes, represents a valid solution to replacing lost and damaged anatomical bone structures, renew their original function, and at the same time, restore the original aesthetic aspect. Rapid prototyping (RP) techniques allow the construction of complex physical models based on 3D clinical images. However, RP machines usually work with synthetic polymers; therefore, producing custom-made scaffolds using a biocompatible material directly by RP is an exciting challenge. The aim of the present work is to investigate the potentiality of 3D printing as a manufacturing method to produce an osteogenic hydroxyapatite-polylactic acid bone graft substitute.

AbstractThis paper introduces new research that seeks to develop low-cost, high quality, mass customizable building assembly systems that provide visually rich design variations for housing or other small structures. The building systems are intended to be tailored for particular cultures and communities by incorporating vernacular decorative design into the assembly design. Two complementary research areas are brought together in this work: shape grammars and digital fabrication. The visual, aesthetic aspects of the research are explored through shape grammars. The physical design and manufacturing aspects are explored through advanced digital design and fabrication technologies, and in particular, build on recent work on monomaterial assemblies with interlocking components that can be fabricated with computer numerical control machines and assembled easily by hand. The long-term objective of this research is the development of formal, visual–physical grammars with rules that generate complete computer-assisted design/computer-assisted manufacturing data for fabrication of full-scale components for assembly design variations. This paper reports on the first phase of this research: pilot studies for prototype assembly systems that incorporate vernacular languages from different parts of the world. The results of these studies are very promising, and demonstrate a spectrum of strategies for embedding visual properties in structural systems. Important next steps in this research are outlined. If successful, this work will lead to new solutions for low-cost, easily manufactured housing, which is especially critical in developing countries and for postdisaster environments. These new housing solutions will not only provide shelter but also support important cultural values through the integration of familiar visual design features. Beyond the specific context of housing and building assemblies, the research has the potential to impact the design and manufacture of designed artifacts on many scales and in many domains, especially in domains where visual aesthetics need to be considered jointly with physical, structural, or material requirements, and where design customization and variation is important.

The present paper aims to throw light on the environmental sensitivity illustrated through art on a hill signifying interface of nature and culture .Ayodhya Hill in Purulia district, displays an aspect of aesthetic attachment of humans with nature in the form of in-situ rock cut sculpture ‘Pakhi Pahar’which has transformed the bare hill into a piece of art. For the past three decades the hill has been sculpted by a group of local artists, creating around 65 birds.Even the boulders lying on the foot of the hill are sculpted, to save these fragile components of nature from stone quarrying and crushing machines which are demolishing and fragmenting the rocks and hills of the chotanagpur terrain to gather stone chips for commercial use. It may also be argued by a few ,that the natural environment of Matha range of Ayodhya Hill is infringed upon for the sake of art. The present researcher seeks to explain through empirical observation, narrative analysis and perception study of local people whether Pakhi Pahar is an “Aesthetic Regard” or “Aesthetic Affront” for nature . This paper also tries to bring in to focus the future potential of this cultural landscape in developing as a tourism site and giving employment to the local youth.

At the core of Félix Guattari’s ethico-aesthetic paradigm is a conception of subjectivity that somehow relies upon the notion of animism. Even though this apparently Romantic return to animism may seem vague and perhaps even naive, it forms the very framework that Guattari asks us to pass through, at least provisionally, in order to fully grasp his last project. I will therefore attempt to demystify this important concept theoretically before showing how the aesthetic machines of Japanese contemporary art – and more specifically, the conceptual art of Yoko Ono – stage one key aspect of Guattari’s animism: machinic heterogenesis. Guattari travelled to Japan many times in the years leading up to the publication of Chaosmosis and Japanese contemporary art allowed him to bolster some of its theoretical claims with concrete examples. I will argue that it is through the lens of Japanese contemporary art that Guattari’s ethico-aesthetic paradigm might propel us beyond the old-guard strategies of modernism. Just as we are asked to pass through a certain notion of animism to understand the relational onto-logic of Chaosmosis, Japanese contemporary art itself demands a similar conceptual framework in order to be disappropriated from an all-too-Western canon. To this end, I supplement Guattari’s work with speculative readings of Japanese philosophy.

In the late 1950s and early-to-mid-1960s, Glasgow led the world in the development of diagnostic obstetric ultrasound technology, the result of fortuitous collaboration between key individuals advancing the application of an industrial technology. Originally used to detect flaws in metal pressure vessels, the obstetrician Ian Donald, during his military service, reflected on how ultrasound could benefit his own field. Donald involved the engineer Tom Brown to tackle the technical challenges. Brown, in turn, employed a young graduating industrial designer, Dugald Cameron, to address the design, aesthetic and ergonomic aspects of these early engineering prototypes. While previous accounts of these developments have rightly celebrated the medical, technical engineering and imaging achievements of this innovative technology, the discussion of the role of the creative design expertise which addressed serious ergonomic, aesthetic and production manufacturing shortcomings of the first prototypes has been less coherent. This article relates, through key drawings, extracts from witness statements and discussions with Cameron himself, the key design decisions and features resulting in the Sundén and Diasonograph machines, the latter being the world’s first commercial production-series obstetric ultrasound machine, deployed in Glasgow hospitals and beyond.

Technology influences all art, and therefore all music, including composition, performance and listening. It always has, and it always will. For example, technical developments in materials, mechanics and manufacturing were important factors that permitted the piano to supersede the harpsichord as the primary concert Western keyboard instrument by about 1800. And with each new technical development new performance issues have been introduced. Piano performance technique is quite different from harpsichord technique, and composers responded to these differences with new music ideas and gestures. The multiple relationships between technology and composer and performer are dynamic and of paramount importance to each party. And a true consideration of any aspect of music requires that all three areas be examined. This has always been a part of music, and so these relationships are inherently important within computer music. The difference is that electronic technology has caused a fundamental change for all aspects of music, a difference that is as pivotal in the history of Western music as was the shift from oral to written preservation of music over a thousand years ago, and then also the accessibility provided by printed music five hundred years ago. In computer music, all parties are always acutely aware of the presence and influence of machine technology in both the visual and audible realms.

Abstract In the food sector, automation is increasingly a requirement to meet the requisite aspects of quality control, delivery performance, labour shortages, and revenue growth. Because of extremely competitive retailers always pulling to low prices, raw costs of raw material, and skyrocketing charges for utilization in an environment of labor-intensive production, food manufacturers are looking to automate their manufacturing operations. The capacity to mimic a product’s aesthetic and quality with the least amount of materials not only increases line efficiency and profits, but it also has the potential to enhance sales. It also decreases the amount of work that has to be done. This food squeezing machine will squeeze food at a fast speed and in a more precise shape. In comparison to manual and traditional processes, the production rate is also high.

This review surveys late 19th century kinematics and the theory of machines as seen through the contributions of the German engineering scientist, Franz Reuleaux (1829–1905), often called the “Father of Kinematics.” Extremely famous in his time and one of the first honorary members of ASME, Reuleaux was largely forgotten in much of modern mechanics literature in English until the recent rediscovery of some of his work. In addition to his contributions to kinematics, we review Reuleaux’s ideas about design synthesis, optimization and aesthetics in design, and in engineering education, as well as his early contributions to biomechanics. A unique aspect of this review has been the use of Reuleaux’s kinematic models at Cornell University and in the Deutsches Museum, in Munich, as a tool to rediscover lost engineering and kinematic knowledge of 19th century history of machines. This review article cites 108 references.

The beginnings of skin ultrasound date back to about 50 years ago. However, the dynamic progress of skin ultrasound took place in the last twenty years, when the unprecedented development of computer technologies occurred, which resulted in the popularization of and easier access to modern ultrasound equipment. Skin tests can be performed with both classic scanners equipped with broadband transducers with a minimum frequency of 15 MHz, and specially dedicated skin systems with high-frequency scanners, which are equipped with mechanical transducers with a frequency of 20 MHz to up to 100 MHz. Owing to technologically advanced machines, ultrasonography has proved to be useful in many areas. The aim of this study was to present the current knowledge and possibilities of skin imaging using highfrequency ultrasonography. Te paper discusses technical aspects, types of devices available on the market, as well as methods for the analysis of ultrasound skin images and parameters useful in their interpretation. We also present current applications of skin ultrasound, with particular emphasis on dermatology and aesthetic medicine. In the field of dermatology, we discussed imaging of focal lesions as well as an assessment of pathologically changed skin and treatment monitoring. We also focused on the use of high-frequency ultrasonography in aesthetic medicine and cosmetology. The popularity of this method is constantly growing in these fields, and ultrasound is now used in everyday practice to assess the skin, plan and monitor procedures, as well as to treat potential complications. High-frequency ultrasonography is a highly effective method for skin evaluation, although still underappreciated in may fields. Further research is needed to standardize this modality, as well as to implement training for operators, and to popularize this imaging technique.

In the post-epidemic era, there is an endless supply of epidemic prevention products that cover a wide range of public areas. The introduction of such products has eased the tense pattern of virus proliferation in the context of the epidemic, and effectively demonstrated the initiatives implemented by the Chinese people in response to the outbreak. This paper therefore begins with the study of contactless epidemic prevention products, which appear in a form that meets the needs of contemporary society and offers a new mode of living to it. It enriches the measures for epidemic prevention and control. By obtaining satisfaction ratings from the user community, the performance of such products can be understood in time to provide a substantial basis for the subsequent upgrading and optimization or transformation of such products. This study uses the KJ method and questionnaires to construct an index system for contactless epidemic prevention products, grasp users’ needs for epidemic prevention products in real time, classify and identify such products, and select such products as epidemic prevention smart security gates, medical delivery robots, infrared handheld thermometers, thermographic body temperature screening, contactless inductive lift buttons, and contactless medical vending machines. The questionnaire was designed with four dimensions: safety, intelligence, aesthetics and economy. A sample size of 262 was collected through the distribution of questionnaires. We used AHP and entropy weighting methods for the comprehensive evaluation; AHP basically tells us how satisfied most users are with this type of product. The use of the entropy weighting method can achieve objectivity in the weighting process. Combining the two approaches helps to improve the scientific nature of the weighting of the evaluation indexes for contactless and epidemic-proof products. It is clear from the AHP analysis that, firstly, there are differences in the perceptions of the performance of this type of product between different age groups. Secondly, the user group rated the perceived performance of the product presented as high (Bn>0.200), which users can subjectively and directly perceive. Next, the perceived future sustainable economic development of this product category is low (Bn≤0.200), and users place low importance on its economic aspects as an objective additional condition. The entropy method of analysis shows that, under reasonable government control of the market for intelligent products, the safety, intelligence and aesthetic effects of these products are significant (Cm≤0.100); further, the economic presentation of these products has yet to be optimized and upgraded (Cm>0.100).

The use of Hand-Held Laser Welding (HHLW) systems in the industry has been rapidly growing in recent years as an alternative solution to conventional manual arc-based welding systems. The decreasing cost of fiber laser sources and optics has been a driving factor in enabling a wider use of HHLW systems, beyond the established advantages of laser technology with respect to arc-based systems. While the industrial use of HHLW increases, the subject matter has been studied sparingly in the scientific literature. Due to the intrinsic flexibility of the technology, HHLW systems are highly appealing for joining relatively low thickness metals (≤2 mm) in autogenous configuration in sectors where production lots present low batch and high variability. However, a critical aspect of HHLW is correlated to the operator skill, where welding velocities can vary within and between the welds affecting both their aesthetic and mechanical properties. Hence, the development of combined digital and physical approaches to support manual operations may be highly beneficial. The current study presents an open laboratory HHLW system designed for process development purposes. Beyond conventional manual welding operations, the welding torch could be arranged in different configurations. The system could be combined with a linear axis (enabling welding with stable velocity and inclination) or manually with the aid of a newly developed roller device designed to provide constant speed and inclination. First, the process was benchmarked by joining in butt weld configuration 2 mm thick AISI301LN stainless steel sheets with the linear axis. Successively, four operators with different levels of training (rookie and professional) realized welds with the system in hand-held configuration and with the mechanical roller. The weld width variability was assessed as a direct indicator for aesthetic compliance while tensile tests were allowed to determine the mechanical properties of the joint obtained with different configurations.

Abstract High demands on the aesthetics of the final product as well as sophisticated packaging shapes make the labeling process an operation that requires more and more precision and quality of workmanship. The quality of the labeling process is influenced mainly by the technology used, i.e. machinery and equipment, the knowledge, skills, and experience of operators, organization and working methods used, and by aspects related to proper maintenance. This article is a case study on the analysis and evaluation of the technology used in the process of labeling glass packaging and its impact on quality and work safety. The article aims to answer the question: does the labeling machine used by the surveyed company, due to the current portfolio of modernity of its parts and subassemblies, guarantee the realization of the labeling process at a high quality level and work safety. The article discusses in depth the factors influencing the quality of the process of labeling glass packaging in the studied company, paying attention to the issues related to the applied technology. ABC technology method was used to assess technology level and also indirectly safety level and Ishikawa diagram, L shape matrix diagram and affinity diagram to analyze and improve quality level. The article ends with a list of specific improvement actions to be taken to achieve the ultimate goal of managing the technology of glass packaging labeling - high quality of the final product resulting from the labeling process.

Video artworks are closely linked with the development of contemporary technology. Therefore, it is widely used in various fields of social life. Video art has become one of the main media forms of contemporary art. In the practice of art teaching, how to combine the existing content of traditional art teaching with video technology and how to understand the inner connection between traditional aesthetics and technological aesthetics have become issues that workers in the new era must think about and pay attention to. As a typical case of influencing works of art, movie animation is loved by the majority of young people. In order to quantify the application effect of machine learning in video art and film animation text mining, this paper conducts prediction research and analysis on several main aspects of color features involved in film animation. By introducing three typical machine learning methods, this paper analyzes the distribution law of the color features of film animation from the perspective of machine learning and its influence on artistic texts. Specifically, the paper uses machine learning methods as a carrier to predict the performance of multiple main modules of color features in movie animation. The prediction results show that the square of the correlation coefficient corresponding to the extreme learning machine is the largest, and the root mean square error, the mean absolute percentage error, and the median absolute error are the smallest, which shows that the extreme learning machine has the best prediction effect. Therefore, it corresponds to the best prediction. In addition, the comparison between the predicted data and the measured data shows that the relationship between the two is approximately a linear function of y = x. At the same time, the fitting calculation shows that the predicted data corresponding to the two main modules of the main color and the color structure in the color feature exhibit a good functional relationship of polynomial functions.

Detection of defects including cracks and spalls on wall surface in high-rise buildings is a crucial task of buildings’ maintenance. If left undetected and untreated, these defects can significantly affect the structural integrity and the aesthetic aspect of buildings. Timely and cost-effective methods of building condition survey are of practicing need for the building owners and maintenance agencies to replace the time- and labor-consuming approach of manual survey. This study constructs an image processing approach for periodically evaluating the condition of wall structures. Image processing algorithms of steerable filters and projection integrals are employed to extract useful features from digital images. The newly developed model relies on the Support vector machine and least squares support vector machine to generalize the classification boundaries that categorize conditions of wall into five labels: longitudinal crack, transverse crack, diagonal crack, spall damage, and intact wall. A data set consisting of 500 image samples has been collected to train and test the machine learning based classifiers. Experimental results point out that the proposed model that combines the image processing and machine learning algorithms can achieve a good classification performance with a classification accuracy rate = 85.33%. Therefore, the newly developed method can be a promising alternative to assist maintenance agencies in periodic building surveys.

ABSTRACTSince 1970, as computed axial tomography machines became easily available and became more sophisticated, image acquisition techniques and analysis improved, developed rapidly and became very useful in medical diagnosis. Today it is possible to examine either the anatomic and functional aspects of deep body organs and tissues including all the minute details as well as their morphological relations with superficial structures. Through precise graphic elaboration programs we can obtain information about spatial relations which was not possible using simply classical clinical examination. It is possible, for example, to "point out" an area of interest from its anatomic context, to carry out virtual cleavage of planes and to measure volumes and distances. New developments in image acquisition systems permit transfer of three-dimensional data directly from existing objects. The three -dimensional computerized axial tomography for deep structures, and the laser scanners for superficial structure, quickly furnish (1-3 seconds for the laser scanners) useful information to plan the surgical operation.When analysing 3D-imaging techniques it is important to appreciate their utility for the planning and the follow up of surgery, particularly for the head and thorax, where the three dimensional evaluation is better than the classic double dimensional system that is incomplete and difficult to interpret. In the future, these systems will be important for the best aesthetic and functional results and above all for reducing the surgical time.

Background:The school environment can play an important role in the prevention of childhood overweight and obesity. Photos of the school environment may contribute to more adequate measurement of the school environment, as photos can be rated by different assessors. We aimed to examine the interrater reliability for rating characteristics of primary school environments related to physical activity and eating.Methods:Photos taken at 172 primary schools in 7 European countries were rated according to a standardized protocol. Briefly, after categorizing all photos in subsections of physical activity or eating opportunities, 2 researchers independently rated aspects of safety, functionality, aesthetics, type of food/drinks advertised, type/variety of foods provided. Interrater reliability was assessed using the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) and Cohen’s kappa.Results:Six subsections of the photo-rating instrument showed excellent (ICC or Cohen’s kappa ≥0.81) or good (ICC or Cohen’s kappa 0.61 to 0.80) interrater reliability. Outdoor physical activity facilities (ICC = 0.54) showed moderate, and school canteens (Cohen’s kappa = 0.05) and vending machines showed poor (Cohen’s kappa = 0.16) interrater reliability.Conclusion:Interrater reliability of the ENERGY (EuropeaN Energy balance Research to prevent excessive weight Gain among Youth) photo-rating instrument was good-to-excellent for 6 out of 9 characteristics of primary school environment components related to physical activity and eating.

One of the more telling indicators of Luigi Russolo's (1885–1947) Anglo-American reception is his description in Grove as an ‘Italian inventor, painter and composer’. Within this lurks the devaluation of his composing efforts in comparison to his work as the maker of intonarumori (noise instruments), his authoring of new aesthetic ideas, and his activities as a painter. There is little, perhaps, to argue with in this assessment, for (somewhat ironically) Russolo's music of the future has been consigned irrevocably to the music of the past; Raymond Fearn has suggested that ‘the musical remnants from this period have remained to a large extent in the realm of musical archaeology’. The only material traces available for musical archaeologists are the opening seven bars of the score of Il risveglio di una città (The Awakening of the City; 1913–14): the machines that were to play it were destroyed during the Second World War. The loss of Russolo's compositions has inevitably distorted our understanding of his work and has served to throw attention onto those progressive, and sometimes speculative, theoretical and mechanical aspects of it that have survived in written accounts, at the expense of those elements that are of a more traditional or pragmatic nature. Study of the remaining fragments of Il risveglio di una città, leavened with necessary doses of circumspection and speculation, forms a vital and hitherto under-utilized component to any assessment of Russolo's career.

As autonomous vehicles and machines, such as self-driving cars, agricultural drones and industrial robots, become ubiquitous, there is an increasing need to understand the objective performance of cameras to support these functions. Images go beyond aesthetic and subjective roles as they assume increasing aspects of control, safety, and diagnostic capabilities. Radiometry and photometry are fundamental to describing the behavior of light and modeling the signal chain for imaging systems, and as such, are crucial for establishing objective behavior. As an engineer or scientist, having an intuitive feel for the magnitude of units and the physical behavior of components or systems in any field improves development capabilities and guards against rudimentary errors. Back-of-the-envelope estimations provide comparisons against which detailed calculations may be tested and will urge a developer to “try again” if the order of magnitude is off for example. They also provide a quick check for the feasibility of ideas, a “giggle” or “straight-face” test as it is sometimes known. This paper is a response to the observation of the authors that, amongst participants that are newly relying on the imaging field and existing image scientists alike, there is a general deficit of intuition around the units and order of magnitude of signals in typical cameras for autonomous vehicles and the conditions within which they operate. Further, there persists a number of misconceptions regarding general radiometric and photometric behavior. Confusion between the inverse square law as applied to illumination and consistency of image luminance versus distance is a common example. The authors detail radiometric and photometric model for an imaging system, using it to clarify vocabulary, units and behaviors. The model is then used to estimate the number of quanta expected in pixels for typical imaging systems for each of the patches of a MacBeth color checker under a wide variety of illumination conditions. These results form the basis to establish the fundamental limits of performance for passive camera systems based both solely on camera geometry and additionally considering typical quantum efficiencies available presently. Further a mental model is given which will quickly allow user to estimate numbers of photoelectrons in pixel.

✓ Brain–machine interface (BMI) is the latest solution to a lack of control for paralyzed or prosthetic limbs. In this paper the authors focus on the design of anatomical robotic hands that use BMI as a critical intervention in restorative neurosurgery and they justify the requirement for lower-level neuromusculoskeletal details (relating to biomechanics, muscles, peripheral nerves, and some aspects of the spinal cord) in both mechanical and control systems. A person uses his or her hands for intimate contact and dexterous interactions with objects that require the user to control not only the finger endpoint locations but also the forces and the stiffness of the fingers. To recreate all of these human properties in a robotic hand, the most direct and perhaps the optimal approach is to duplicate the anatomical musculoskeletal structure. When a prosthetic hand is anatomically correct, the input to the device can come from the same neural signals that used to arrive at the muscles in the original hand. The more similar the mechanical structure of a prosthetic hand is to a human hand, the less learning time is required for the user to recreate dexterous behavior. In addition, removing some of the nonlinearity from the relationship between the cortical signals and the finger movements into the peripheral controls and hardware vastly simplifies the needed BMI algorithms. (Nonlinearity refers to a system of equations in which effects are not proportional to their causes. Such a system could be difficult or impossible to model.) Finally, if a prosthetic hand can be built so that it is anatomically correct, subcomponents could be integrated back into remaining portions of the user's hand at any transitional locations. In the near future, anatomically correct prosthetic hands could be used in restorative neurosurgery to satisfy the user's needs for both aesthetics and ease of control while also providing the highest possible degree of dexterity.

Noise is one of the most frequent consequences of traffic. Public transportation systems, such as the Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART) authority provides various modes of transportation. Even though the availability of commuting service for the public is a boon to communities, mass transit systems are potential sources of excessive sound levels in daily urban life. This article examines the nexus between the transit station facilities of light rail train (LRT) stations and noise implications at both station and neighborhood scales by studying selected LRT stations. A multilevel linear analysis was conducted to understand the degree of train station amenities and neighborhood characteristics that affect sound levels. Using a type II sound pressure level (SPL)meter, sound measurements were obtained during the weekdays and weekends over several weeks. Upon examining the station amenities, and built environment and sociodemographic characteristics of the neighborhood, findings of this comprehensive research reveal significant implications for sound levels. Stations with ticket vending machines and informative message boards include a higher degree of significance on SPLs, while shelters, crew rooms, bike lockers, restrooms, and windshields are significantly and negatively associated with the noise levels. Additionally, neighborhoods with dense roads, higher speed limits, more neighborhood facilities, and a higher number of transit routes have an increased likelihood of noise levels. Recommendations include creating transformative policies for implementation, and approaches addressing noise for transit authorities, transportation engineers, and planners are presented. Planning and engineering aspects of comfort, aesthetics, safety, and public health, as train stations are daily use spaces for commuters and surrounding communities, should also be considered.

In facing ever-growing technology of audio peripherals, there is a concern of balancing in delivering technical knowledge to students dealing with audio recordings in the Music Department at Putra University, Malaysia (UPM). It seems to be difficult for them to do current multitrack recordings and at the same time maintaining the aesthetic aspect of past technology. In other words, if one preserves the recorded item, they have also to care about the specific features coming with these recordings. It is not the primary recorded subject alone they may have to consider. There is an urgency to migrate the recorded material such as cassette tapes that come in varying forms ranging from Ferric-Oxide, to Cro2, and Metal. These carriers are warranted to be extracted and migrate onto a more stable medium, not only in general as everywhere in the world, but also since it has become the university policy that equipment’s exceeding certain years will be disposed of. The selection focuses on the recording materials that includes live musical performances, multitrack musical compositions, and final recording projects. In this context the ‘recording’ may just mean the audio information. It is important for any archive to establish a general policy with regard to the limits of its collection as was pointed out repeatedly (Schuursma, 2010). Viewing from the perspective of preservation (Musib, 2015) of content, a lack of awareness in handling these carriers may lead to complications when extracting the signal from still available machines. The paper is intended to discuss the challenges and requirements in the process of signal extractions using exemplarily the two formats, namely the 4-track recorder and the digital standalone multitrack machine.

Purpose: Using a Systems’ Approach, this study explores what aspects are essential for stone quarries to adopt a functional environmental management plan and whether compliance with environmental laws enhances business performance. The specific objectives of the study were: To evaluate the bio-physical effects of quarrying activities in selected quarries in Tezo ward and to evaluate the socio-economic effects of quarrying activities in selected quarries in Tezo ward. Methodology: The study adopted descriptive survey design; the research data collection instrument was questionnaires. The study adopted purposive sampling; a survey of 134 respondents representing 80 quarry workers, 40 quarry owners, 10 EIA Experts, 3 NEMA staff and 1 County geologist were sampled purposively. Weighted and the Consolidated Scores were entered on Microsoft Excel for cleaning and later transferred to Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS version 23.0) for statistical analyses. Data was presented inform of graphs, pie-charts, tables and narration in the thematic areas. Findings: The study found out that there were health and ecological problems associated with quarrying. The application of heavy quarrying machines resulted to soil erosion, destruction of flora and threatens biodiversity aesthetic. The study revealed that quarrying was a source for livelihood among the community and more men (90%) were involved in quarrying due to masculinity nature of the task. EMPs were found to be significant in management of quarries. The development of EMPs and EIA was influenced by different actors and informal sector was a significant influencer of EMPs implementation. The study concluded that EMPs were effective in management of quarries despite varied challenges facing the NEMA official and the EIA experts. Unique contribution to theory, practice and policy: The study recommends the need for transparency in the EIA as well as in the development of EMPs, to avoid discrimination and non-adherence. Further research is needed to understand the perception of community members on the effectiveness of EMPs in sustainable management of quarries and environment in general.

The article addresses improving the performance of man-machine systems (MMS) by improving the quality of decision support system software (DSSS). The proposed solutions are based on existing models and methods, which have been analysed in detail in a scientific study, in particular the application of methodical static application debugging in certain solutions obtained. It is proposed to use the methods for solving the problem of MMS control according to the vector criterion as the basis for solving this problem. A mechanism for synthesizing a comprehensive plan of operations to improve the quality of the DSS software is proposed, and the possibility of analysing the step-by-step implementation of a plan to obtain an analytical assessment is shown. For this purpose, a comprehensive plan is presented in the form of a relevance tree, built in accordance with the provisions of graph theory and the rank approach. The time complexity of the algorithms implementing the relevance tree tasks was evaluated. Based on the formalized solutions obtained, it was found that the maximum number of edges for a graph that implements the relevance tree does not exceed , the number of views of edges does not exceed , that is, the total number of operations that implements the scanning of edges and adding them to the weighted minimum cover (WMC) does not exceeds . It is established that during the implementation of the operation of adding ribs in the WMC, at each step, after the fixation of the previous result, the number of ribs to be examined decreases, so the total complexity of the algorithms will not exceed . The solutions obtained meet the requirements of DSTU ISO/IEC 9126, ISO DSTU / IEC 14598, and take into account the requirements of the Software Quality Requirements and Evaluation series of standards as the value of the vertices of the event tree graph. In the process of solving the problem, the specificity of the functioning of the MMS was taken into account, the possibility of formalizing various aspects of knowledge (aesthetic, disizional, causal, diontic) and ensuring a given level of efficiency in finding solutions.

The ecological restoration of urban parks is used to increase their recreational attractiveness, improve air quality, mitigate urban heat island effects, improve stormwater infiltration, and provide other social and environmental benefits. The dynamics of plant communities after urban forest restoration requires investigation. The study assessed the impact of urban park reconstruction on the state of grass cover, phytoindication of changes in light regime caused by park reconstruction and found out the dependence of reliability of phytoindication assessment on the number of species in the relevant area. The study was conducted in the recreational area of the Botanical Garden of the Oles Honchar Dnipro National University (Ukraine). A tree plantation was created after the Second World War in the location of a natural oak forest. In 2019, a 2.8 ha area of the park was reconstructed. The samples were taken within polygons, two of which were placed in the reconstruction area and two of which were placed in a similar section of the park where no reconstruction was performed. During the reconstruction process, walkways were rebuilt, shrubs were removed, old, damaged trees were removed, and tree crowns were trimmed. Juvenile trees were planted in place of the removed old trees. Old outbuildings, which greatly impaired the aesthetic perception of the park, were also removed. Transport and construction machinery was involved in the reconstruction. A total of 65 plant species were found within the studied polygons. The number of herbaceous species in the park area after reconstruction was higher than without reconstruction. The crown closure in the reconstructed area was significantly lower than that in the untreated conditions. The phytoindication assessment showed that the light regime varies from the conditions suitable for the scyophytes (plants of typical foliage forests) to the conditions suitable for the sub-heliophytes (plants of light forests and shrubberies, or high herbaceous communities; lower layers are in the shade). The light regime in the park area after reconstruction was statistically significantly different from the regime in the untreated park area. The lighting regime after the reconstruction was favourable to sub-heliophytes, and without reconstruction the regime favoured hemi-scyophytes. Tree canopy crown closure negatively correlated with grass height and herbaceous layer projective cover. The tree canopy crown closure, grass height, and herbaceous layer projective cover were able to explain 86% of the phytoindication assessment of the lighting regime variation. These parameters negatively affected the light regime. The prospect of further research is to investigate the dependence of indicative reliability of the assessment of other environmental factors with the help of phytoindication depending on the number of species. In addition to the indication of traditional ecological factors it is of particular interest to clarify the aspect of the dynamics of hemeroby indicators as a result of park reconstruction.

1. A Minor Philosopher According to Guattari and Deleuze's definition, a 'minor literature' is the literature of a minority that makes use of a major language, a literature which deterritorialises that language and interconnects meanings of the most disparate levels, inseparably mixing and implicating poetic, psychological, social and political issues with each other. In analogy, the Japanese media theorist Toshiya Ueno has refered to Félix Guattari as a 'minor philosopher'. Himself a practicing psychoanalyst, Guattari was a foreigner to the Grand Nation of Philosophy, whose natives mostly treat him like an unworthy bastard. And yet he has established a garden of minor flowers, of mongrel weeds and rhizomes that are as polluting to philosophy as Kafka's writing has been to German literature (cf. Deleuze & Guattari, Kafka). The strategies of 'being minor' are, as exemplified by Guattari's writings (with and without Deleuze), deployed in multiple contexts: intensification, re-functionalisation, estrangement, transgression. The following offers a brief overview over the way in which Guattari conceptualises media, new technologies and art, as well as descriptions of several media art projects that may help to illustrate the potentials of such 'minor machines'. Without wanting to pin these projects down as 'Guattarian' artworks, I suggest that the specific practices of contemporary media artists can point us in the direction of the re-singularising, deterritorialising and subjectifying forces which Guattari indicated as being germane to media technologies. Many artists who work with media technologies do so through strategies of appropriation and from a position of 'being minor': whenever a marginality, a minority, becomes active, takes the word power (puissance de verbe), transforms itself into becoming, and not merely submitting to it, identical with its condition, but in active, processual becoming, it engenders a singular trajectory that is necessarily deterritorialising because, precisely, it's a minority that begins to subvert a majority, a consensus, a great aggregate. As long as a minority, a cloud, is on a border, a limit, an exteriority of a great whole, it's something that is, by definition, marginalised. But here, this point, this object, begins to proliferate ..., begins to amplify, to recompose something that is no longer a totality, but that makes a former totality shift, detotalises, deterritorialises an entity.' (Guattari, "Pragmatic/Machinic") In the context of media art, 'becoming minor' is a strategy of turning major technologies into minor machines. a. Krzysztof Wodiczko (PL/USA): Alien Staff Krzysztof Wodiczko's Alien Staff is a mobile communication system and prosthetic instrument which facilitates the communication of migrants in their new countries of residence, where they have insufficient command of the local language for communicating on a par with the native inhabitants. Alien Staff consists of a hand-held staff with a small video monitor and a loudspeaker at the top. The operator can adjust the height of the staff's head to be at a level with his or her own head. Via the video monitor, the operator can replay pre-recorded elements of an interview or a narration of him- or herself. The recorded material may contain biographical information when people have difficulties constructing coherent narratives in the foreign language, or it may include the description of feelings and impressions which the operator normally doesn't get a chance to talk about. The Staff is used in public places where passers-by are attracted to listen to the recording and engage in a conversation with the operator. Special transparent segments of the staff contain memorabilia, photographs or other objects which indicate a part of the personal history of the operator and which are intended to instigate a conversation. The Alien Staff offers individuals an opportunity to remember and retell their own story and to confront people in the country of immigration with this particular story. The Staff reaffirms the migrant's own subjectivity and re-singularises individuals who are often perceived as representative of a homogenous group. The instrument displaces expectations of the majority audience by articulating unformulated aspects of the migrant's subjectivity through a medium that appears as the attractive double of an apparently 'invisible' person. 2. Mass Media, New Technologies and 'Planetary Computerisation' Guattari's comments about media are mostly made in passing and display a clearly outlined opinion about the role of media in contemporary society: a staunch critique of mass media is coupled with an optimistic outlook to the potentials of a post-medial age in which new technologies can develop their singularising, heterogenic forces. The latter development is, as Guattari suggests, already discernible in the field of art and other cultural practices making use of electronic networks, and can lead to a state of 'planetary computerisation' in which multiple new subject-groups can emerge. Guattari consistently refers to the mass media with contempt, qualifying them as a stupefying machinery that is closely wedded to the forces of global capitalism, and that is co-responsible for much of the reactionary hyper-individualism, the desperation and the "state of emergency" that currently dominates "four-fifth of humanity" (Guattari, Chaosmosis 97; cf. Guattari, Drei Ökologien 16, 21). Guattari makes a passionate plea for a new social ecology and formulates, as one step towards this goal, the necessity, "to guide these capitalist societies of the age of mass media into a post-mass medial age; by this I mean that the mass media have to be reappropriated by a multiplicity of subject-groups who are able to administer them on a path of singularisation" (Guattari, "Regimes" 64). Guattari consistently refers to the mass media with contempt, qualifying them as a stupefying machinery that is closely wedded to the forces of global capitalism, and that is co-responsible for much of the reactionary hyper-individualism, the desperation and the "state of emergency" that currently dominates "four-fifth of humanity" (Guattari, Chaosmosis 97; cf. Guattari, Drei Ökologien 16, 21). Guattari makes a passionate plea for a new social ecology and formulates, as one step towards this goal, the necessity, "to guide these capitalist societies of the age of mass media into a post-mass medial age; by this I mean that the mass media have to be reappropriated by a multiplicity of subject-groups who are able to administer them on a path of singularisation" (Guattari, "Regimes" 64). b. Seiko Mikami (J/USA): World, Membrane and the Dismembered Body An art project that deals with the cut between the human subject and the body, and with the deterritorialisation of the sense of self, is Seiko Mikami's World, Membrane and the Dismembered Body. It uses the visitor's heart and lung sounds which are amplified and transformed within the space of the installation. These sounds create a gap between the internal and external sounds of the body. The project is presented in an-echoic room where sound does not reverberate. Upon entering this room, it is as though your ears are no longer living while paradoxically you also feel as though all of your nerves are concentrated in your ears. The sounds of the heart, lungs, and pulse beat are digitised by the computer system and act as parameters to form a continuously transforming 3-d polygonal mesh of body sounds moving through the room. Two situations are effected in real time: the slight sounds produced by the body itself resonate in the body's internal membranes, and the transfigured resonance of those sounds is amplified in the space. A time-lag separates both perceptual events. The visitor is overcome by the feeling that a part of his or her corporeality is under erasure. The body exists as abstract data, only the perceptual sense is aroused. The visitor is made conscious of the disappearance of the physical contours of his or her subjectivity and thereby experiences being turned into a fragmented body. The ears mediate the space that exists between the self and the body. Mikami's work fragments the body and its perceptual apparatus into data, employing them as interfaces and thus folding the body's horizon back onto itself. The project elucidates the difference between an actual and a virtual body, the actual body being deterritorialised and projected outwards towards a number of potential, virtual bodies that can, in the installation, be experienced as maybe even more 'real' than the actual body. 3. Artistic Practice Guattari's conception of post-media implies criss-crossing intersections of aesthetic, ethical, political and technological planes, among which the aesthetic, and with it artistic creativity, are ascribed a position of special prominence. This special role of art is a trope that recurs quite frequently in Guattari's writings, even though he is rarely specific about the artistic practices he has in mind. In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari give some detailled attention to the works of artists like Debussy, Boulez, Beckett, Artaud, Kafka, Kleist, Proust, and Klee, and Chaosmosis includes longer passages and concrete examples for the relevance of the aesthetic paradigm. These examples come almost exclusively from the fields of performing arts, music and literature, while visual arts are all but absent. One reason for this could be that the performing arts are time-based and processual and thus lend themselves much better to theorisation of flows, transformations and differentiations. The visual arts can be related to the abstract machine of faciality (visageité) which produces unified, molar, identical entities out of a multiplicity of different singularities, assigning them to a specific category and associating them with particular social fields (cf. Deleuze & Guattari, Tausend Plateaus 167-91) This semiotic territorialisation is much more likely to happen in the case of static images, whether two- or three-dimensional, than in time-based art forms. An interesting question, then, would be whether media art projects, many of which are time-based, processual and open-ended, can be considered as potential post-medial art practices. Moreover, given the status of computer software as the central motor of the digital age, and the crucial role it plays in aesthetic productions like those discussed here, software may have to be viewed as the epitome of post-medial machines. Guattari seems to have been largely unaware of the beginnings of digital media art as it developed in the 1980s. In generalistic terms he suggests that the artist is particularly well-equipped to conceptualise the necessary steps for this work because, unlike engineers, he or she is not tied to a particular programme or plan for a product, and can change the course of a project at any point if an unexpected event or accident intrudes (cf. Guattari, Drei Ökologien 50). The significance of art for Guattari's thinking comes primarily from its close relation with processes of subjectivation. "Just as scientific machines constantly modify our cosmic frontiers, so do the machines of desire and aesthetic creation. As such, they hold an eminent place within assemblages of subjectivation, themselves called to relieve our old social machines which are incapable of keeping up with the efflorescence of machinic revolutions that shatter our epoch' (Guattari, Chaosmosis 54). The aesthetic paradigm facilitates the development of new, virtual forms of subjectivity, and of liberation, which will be adequate to these machinic revolutions. c. Knowbotic Research + cF: IO_Dencies The Alien Staff project was mentioned as an example for the re-singularisation and the virtualisation of identity, and World, Membrane and the Dismembered Body as an instance of the deterritorialisation and virtualisation of the human body through an artistic interface. The recent project by Knowbotic Research, IO_Dencies -- Questioning Urbanity, deals with the possibilities of agency, collaboration and construction in translocal and networked environments. It points in the direction of what Guattari has called the formation of 'group subjects' through connective interfaces. The project looks at urban settings in different megacities like Tokyo, São Paulo or the Ruhr Area, analyses the forces present in particular local urban situations, and offers experimental interfaces for dealing with these local force fields. IO_Dencies São Paulo enables the articulation of subjective experiences of the city through a collaborative process. Over a period of several months, a group of young architects and urbanists from São Paulo, the 'editors', provided the content and dynamic input for a database. The editors collected material (texts, images, sounds) based on their current situation and on their personal urban experience. A specially designed editor tool allowed the editors to build individual conceptual 'maps' in which to construct the relations between the different materials in the data-pool according to the subjective perception of the city. On the computational level, connectivities are created between the different maps of the editors, a process that is driven by algorithmic self-organisation whose rules are determined by the choices that the editors make. In the process, the collaborative editorial work in the database generates zones of intensities and zones of tension which are visualised as force fields and turbulences and which can be experienced through interfaces on the Internet and at physical exhibition sites. Participants on the Net and in the exhibition can modify and influence these electronic urban movements, force fields and intensities on an abstract, visual level, as well as on a content-based, textual level. This engagement with the project and its material is fed back into the database and influences the relational forces within the project's digital environment. Characteristic of the forms of agency as they evolve in networked environments is that they are neither individualistic nor collective, but rather connective. Whereas the collective is determined by an intentional and empathetic relation between agents within an assemblage, the connective rests on any kind of machinic relation and is therefore more versatile, more open, and based on the heterogeneity of its components or members. In the IO_Dencies interfaces, the different networked participants become visible for each other, creating a trans-local zone of connective agency. The inter-connectedness of their activities can be experienced visually, acoustically, and through the constant reconfiguration of the data sets, an experience which can become the basis of the formation of a specific, heterogeneous group subject. 4. Guattari's Concept of the Machinic An important notion underlying these analyses is that of the machine which, for Guattari, relates not so much to particular technological or mechanical objects, to the technical infrastructure or the physical flows of the urban environment. 'Machines' can be social bodies, industrial complexes, psychological or cultural formations, they are assemblages of heterogeneous parts, aggregations which transform forces, articulate and propel their elements, and force them into a continuous state of transformation and becoming. An important notion underlying these analyses is that of the machine which, for Guattari, relates not so much to particular technological or mechanical objects, to the technical infrastructure or the physical flows of the urban environment. 'Machines' can be social bodies, industrial complexes, psychological or cultural formations, they are assemblages of heterogeneous parts, aggregations which transform forces, articulate and propel their elements, and force them into a continuous state of transformation and becoming. d. Xchange Network My final example is possibly the most evocative in relation to Guattari's notions of the polyvocity and heterogenesis that new media technologies can trigger. It also links up closely with Guattari's own engagement with the minor community radio movement. In late 1997, the E-Lab in Riga initiated the Xchange network for audio experiments on the Internet. The participating groups in London, Ljubljana, Sydney, Berlin, and many other minor and major places, use the Net for distributing their original sound programmes. The Xchange network is "streaming via encoders to remote servers, picking up the stream and re-broadcasting it purely or re-mixed, looping the streams" (Rasa Smite). Xchange is a distributed group, a connective, that builds creative cooperation in live-audio streaming on the communication channels that connect them. They explore the Net as a sound-scape with particular qualities regarding data transmission, delay, feedback, and open, distributed collaborations. Moreover, they connect the network with a variety of other fields. Instead of defining an 'authentic' place of their artistic work, they play in the transversal post-medial zone of media labs in different countries, mailing lists, net-casting and FM broadcasting, clubs, magazines, stickers, etc., in which 'real' spaces and media continuously overlap and fuse (cf. Slater). 5. Heterogenic Practices If we want to understand the technological and the political implications of the machinic environment of the digital networks, and if we want to see the emergence of the group subjects of the post-media age Guattari talks about, we have to look at connectives like Xchange and the editor-participant assemblages of IO_Dencies. The far-reaching machinic transformations which they articulate, hold the potential of what Guattari refers to as the 'molecular revolution'. To realise this revolution, it is vital to "forge new analytical instruments, new concepts, because it is ... the transversality, the crossing of abstract machines that constitute a subjectivity and that are incarnated, that live in very different regions and domains and ... that can be contradictory and antagonistic". For Guattari, this is not a mere theoretical question, but one of experimentation, "of new forms of interactions, of movement construction that respects the diversity, the sensitivities, the particularities of interventions, and that is nonetheless capable of constituting antagonistic machines of struggle to intervene in power relations" (Guattari, "Pragmatic/Machinic" 4-5). The implication here is that some of the minor media practices pursued by artists using digital technologies point us in the direction of the positive potentials of post media. The line of flight of such experimentation is the construction of new and strong forms of subjectivity, "an individual and/or collective reconstitution of the self" (Guattari, Drei Ökologien 21), which can strengthen the process of what Guattari calls "heterogenesis, that is a continuous process of resingularisation. The individuals must, at the same time, become solidary and ever more different" (Guattari, Drei Ökologien 76). References Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. Kafka: Pour une Litterature Mineur. Paris: Ed. de Minuit, 1975. ---. Tausend Plateaus. (1980) Berlin: Merve, 1992. Guattari, Félix. Cartographies Schizoanalytiques. Paris: Ed. Galilée, 1989. ---. Chaosmosis: An Ethico-Aesthetic Paradigm. (1992) Sydney: Power Publications, 1995. ---. Die drei Ökologien. (1989) Wien: Passagen Verlag, 1994. ---. "Pragmatic/Machinic." Discussion with Guattari, conducted and transcribed by Charles J. Stivale. (1985) Pre/Text 14.3-4 (1995). ---. "Regimes, Pathways, Subjects." Die drei Ökologien. (1989) Wien: Passagen Verlag, 1994. 95-108. ---. "Über Maschinen." (1990) Schmidgen, 115-32. Knowbotic Research. IO_Dencies. 1997-8. 11 Sep. 1999 <http://io.khm.de/>. De Landa, Manuel. "The Machinic Phylum." Technomorphica. Eds. V2_Organisation. Rotterdam: V2_Organisation, 1997. Mikami, Seiko. World, Membrane and the Dismembered Body. 1997. 11 Sep. 1999 <http://www.ntticc.or.jp/permanent/mikami/mikami_e.php>. Schmidgen, Henning, ed. Ästhetik und Maschinismus: Texte zu und von Félix Guattari. Berlin: Merve, 1995. ---. Das Unbewußte der Maschinen: Konzeptionen des Psychischen bei Guattari, Deleuze und Lacan. München: Fink, 1997. Slater, Howard. "Post-Media Operators." Nettime, 10 June 1998. 11 Sep. 1999 <http://www.factory.org>. Wodiczko, Krzysztof. 11 Sep. 1999 <http://cavs.mit.edu/people/kw.htm>. Xchange. 11 Sep. 1999 <http://xchange.re-lab.net>. (Note: An extended, Dutch version of this text was published in: Oosterling/Thissen, eds. Chaos ex Machina: Het ecosofisch Werk van Félix Guattari op de Kaart Gezet. Rotterdam: CFK, 1998. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Andreas Broeckmann. "Minor Media -- Heterogenic Machines: Notes on Félix Guattari's Conceptions of Art and New Media." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.6 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9909/minor.php>. Chicago style: Andreas Broeckmann, "Minor Media -- Heterogenic Machines: Notes on Félix Guattari's Conceptions of Art and New Media," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 6 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9909/minor.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Andreas Broeckmann. (1999) Minor Media -- Heterogenic Machines: Notes on Félix Guattari's Conceptions of Art and New Media. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(6). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9909/minor.php> ([your date of access]).

The article deals with the evolution of the sound image of the piano in the context of the integration of urban motifs into the system of instrumental thinking. On the example of individual compositions of European and American composers of the beginning of the twentieth century, the specificity of the embodiment of "machine" dynamism by means of piano writing was investigated and the phenomenon of the polivariance of the sound formation of the piano in the era of style radicalism was investigated. In the early twentieth century. European civilization extrapolates into the artistic space the dynamic impulses of technicalism and machinery as a reflection of the rapid industrialization and mechanization of everyday life. Not only does urban aesthetics dictate the newest principles of the formation and structuring of artistic objects, but it also radically influences the transformation and rethinking of the sound "play" of traditional instruments. After all, every instrument, as a sound symbol of the era, has historical preconditions for interpreting the volume, which determine its ability to reflect the concept of an intimate worldview. Piano music, focusing on the spiritual and stylistic beginnings of contemporary art of the early twentieth century, fully demonstrates the contradictions of all the antignomes of modern musical thinking. It is obvious that multilingualism and sound-polymarial variance, ability to make various modifications and to reproduce textures of any type have become the main factors for the active involvement of the piano in the sphere of sound projections of the newest urban-industrial sound landscape, and the diverse sound-image is sonoristic-coloristic to shock-noise - it was fully in demand by young composers.

This study illustrates how user-generated content, posted in the form of heritage site reviews on social media, can serve to reveal the relationship between the co-created interpretation of World Heritage Sites (WHSs) — in terms of values, tangible and intangible attributes, as well as site visit logistics — and the emotional experience of the site. Two WHSs are taken as a case study. More than 2000 reviews were retrieved from TripAdvisor and analyzed through the application of a mixed-method that integrates qualitative digital ethnography and machine learning. Results show that TripAdvisor reviews capture tourists’ emotional reactions from personal encounters with heritage and provide insights into the range of values — including the social, historic, and aesthetical values — that visitors experience when engaging with aspects of the past to associate meanings for the present. Results also show that the relation between experiences gained at WHSs and contextual aspects is not linear, instead, it is a complex one that results from the interaction of different factors and their associated sentiments. We discuss our results by reflecting on their theoretical and practical implications.

AbstractRecently, applications of soil and water bioengineering constructions using living plants and supplementary materials have become increasingly popular. Besides technical effects, soil and water bioengineering has the advantage of additionally taking into consideration ecological values and the values of landscape aesthetics. When implementing soil and water bioengineering structures, suitable plants must be selected, and the structures must be given a dimension taking into account potential impact loads. A consideration of energy flows and the potential negative impact of construction in terms of energy and greenhouse gas balance has been neglected until now. The current study closes this gap of knowledge by introducing a method for detecting the possible negative effects of installing soil and water bioengineering measures. For this purpose, an environmental life cycle assessment model has been applied. The impact categories global warming potential and cumulative energy demand are used in this paper to describe the type of impacts which a bioengineering construction site causes. Additionally, the water bioengineering measure is contrasted with a conventional civil engineering structure. The results determine that the bioengineering alternative performs slightly better, in terms of energy demand and global warming potential, than the conventional measure. The most relevant factor is shown to be the impact of the running machines at the water bioengineering construction site. Finally, an integral ecological assessment model for applications of soil and water bioengineering structures should point out the potential negative effects caused during installation and, furthermore, integrate the assessment of potential positive effects due to the development of living plants in the use stage of the structures.

Introduction The trope of food is often used in the humanities to discuss aspects of a culture that are customarily overlooked by a textualist approach, for food embodies a kind of knowledge that comes from the direct engagement with materials and processes, and involves taste as an aesthetics that exceeds the visual concept of the “beautiful.” Moreover, cooking is one of the most ancient cultural practices, and is considered the habit that defines us as humans in comparison to other animals—not only culturally, but also physiologically (Wrangham). Today we have entered a post-human age in which technological augmentations, while promoting the erasure of embodiment in favour of intelligence (Hayles), create new assemblages between the organic and the digital, thus redefining what it means to be human. In this context, a reassessment of the practice of cooking as the manipulation of what constitutes food—both for thought and for the body—may promote a more nuanced approach to contemporary culture, in which the agency of the non-human (from synthetic materials to the digital) affects our modes of being and reflects on our aesthetic sensibility. In the 1980s, Guy Debord observed that the food industry's standardisation and automation of methods of production and consumption have anaesthetised the consumer palate with broader political and cultural implications. Today the Internet has extended the intertwinement of food and technology to the social and aesthetic spheres, thus further impacting on taste. For instance, cultural trends such as “foodism” and “slow food” thrive on blogs and social networks and, while promoting an artisanal style in food preparation and presentation, they paradoxically may also homogenise cooking techniques and the experience of sharing a meal. This leads to questions regarding the extent to which the digitalisation of culture might be hindering our capacity to taste. Or, given the new possibilities for connectivity, can this digitalisation also foster an aesthetic sensibility associated with different attitudes and approaches to food—one that transgresses both the grand narratives and the standardisation promoted by such gastronomic fashions? It also leads to the question of how such activities reflect on the collective sphere, considering the contagious character of networked communication. While foodism thrives online, the Internet has nevertheless prompted a renewed interest in DIY (do-it-yourself) cooking techniques. As a recent issue of M/C Journal testifies, today cookbooks are produced and consulted at an unprecedented rate—either in print or online (Brien and Wessell). Taking the example of the online diffusion of DIY cheese-making recipes, I will below trace the connections between cooking, computer culture, and taste with the support of Gilbert Simondon's metaphysics of technics. Although Simondon never extensively discussed food in relation to technology, the positioning of technicity at the heart of culture allows his work to be used to address the multifaceted nature of taste in the light of recent technological development, in particular of the Network. As a matter of fact, today cooking is not only a technical activity, in the sense that it requires a certain practical and theoretical skilfulness—it is also a technological matter, for the amount of networked machines that are increasingly used for food production and marketing. Specifically, this paper argues that by disentangling the human—albeit partially—from the capitalist cycle of production-marketing-consumption and by triggering an awareness of the increasingly dominant role technology plays in food processing and manufacturing, the online sharing of home-cooking advice may promote a reconfiguration of taste, which would translate into a more nuanced approach to contemporary techno-culture. In the first part of this discussion, I introduce Simondon’s philosophy and foreground the technical dimension of cooking by discussing cheese-making as a process of individuation. In the second, I focus on Simondon’s definition of technical objects and technical ensembles to position Internet culture in relation to cooking, and highlight how technicity folds back on taste as aesthetic impression. Ultimately, I conclude with some reflections on how such a culinary-aesthetic approach may find application in other techno-cultural fields by promoting an aesthetic sensibility that extends beyond the experience of the “social” to encompass an ethical component. Cooking as Individuation: The Networked Dimension of Taste Simondon is known as the thinker, and “tinkerer”, of technics. His project is concerned with ontogenesis—that is, the becoming of objects in relation to the terms that constitute them as individual. Simondon’s philosophy of individuation allows for a better understanding of how the Internet fosters certain attitudes to food, for it is grounded on a notion of “energetic materiality in movement” (Deleuze and Guattari 408) that explains how “immaterial” algorithms can affect individual experience and cultural production. For Simondon, individuation is the process that arises from objects being out-of-phase with themselves. Put differently, individuation allows for “the conservation of being through becoming” (Genesis 301). Likewise, individualisation is “the individuation of an individuated being, resulting from an individuation, [and creating] a new structuration within the individual” (L’Individuation 132). Individuation and individualisation are processes common to all kinds of being. Any individual operates an internal and an external resonance within the system in which it is enmeshed, and produces an “associated milieu” capable of entering into relation with other individuals within the system. Simondon maintains that nature consists of three regimes of individuation, that is, three possible phases of every being: the physical, the biological, and the psycho-social—that develop from a metastable pre-individual field. Technology traverses all three regimes and allows for further individualisation via transductive operations across such phases—that is, via operations of conversion of energy from one form to another. The recent online diffusion of DIY cheese-making recipes lends itself to be analysed with the support of Simondon’s philosophy. Today cheese dominates degustation menus beside the finest wines, and constitutes a common obsession among “foodies.” Although, as an object, cheese defies more traditional canons of beauty and pleasure—its usual pale yellow colour is not especially inviting and, generally speaking, the stinkier and mouldier it is, the more exclusive and expensive it usually is—it has played a sizeable role in the collective imagination since ancient times. Although the genesis of cheese predates archival memory, it is commonly assumed to be the fruit of the chemical reaction naturally occurring in the interaction of milk with the rennet inherently contained in the bladders made of ruminants’ stomachs in which milk was contained during the long transits undertaken by the nomadic cultures of Central Asia. Cheese is an invention that reportedly occurred without human intervention, and only the technical need to preserve milk in high temperature impelled humans to learn to produce it. Since World War II its production is most exclusively factory-based, even in the case of artisanal cheese (McGee), which makes the renewed concern for homemade cheese more significant from a techno-cultural perspective. Following Simondon, the individualisation of cheese—and of people in relation to cheese—depends on the different objects involved in its production, and whose associated milieu affects the outcome of the ontogenetic process via transductive operations. In the specific case of an industrial block of cheese, these may include: the more or less ethical breeding and milking of cows in a factory environment; the types of bacteria involved in the cheese-making process; the energy and costs inherent in the fabrication of the packaging material and the packaging process itself; the CO2 emissions caused by transportations; the physical and intellectual labour implied in marketing, retailing and selling; and, last but not least, the arguable nutritional value of the factory-produced cheese—all of which, in spite of their “invisibility” to the eyes of the consumer, affect physical conditions and moods when they enter into relation with the human body (Bennet). To these, we may add, with specific reference to the packaging: the RFID tags that electronically index food items into databases for a more efficient management of supplies, and the QR codes used for social media marketing purposes. In contrast, the direct engagement with the techno-material conditions at the basis of the home cookery process allows one to grasp how different operations may affect the outcome of the recipe. DIY cheese-making recipes are specifically addressed to laypeople and, because they hardly demand professional equipment, they entail a greater attunement with, and to, the objects and processes required by the recipe. For instance, one needs to “feel” when milk has reached the right temperature (specifically, 82 degrees centigrade, which means that the surface of the milk should be slightly bubbly but not fully boiling) and, with practice, one learns how the slightest movement of the hand can lead to different results, in terms of consistency and aspect. Ultimately, DIY cheese-making allows the cook to be creative with moulding, seasonings, and marinading. Indeed, by directly engaging with the undiscovered properties and potentials of ingredients, by understanding the role that energy (both in the sense of induction and “transduction”) plays on form and matter, and by developing—often via processes of trial and error—technics for stirring, draining, moulding, marinading, canning, and so forth, making cheese at home an exercise in speculative pragmatics. An experimental approach to cooking, as the negotiation between the rigid axioms that make up a recipe and the creative and experimental components inherent in the operations of mixing and blending, allows one to feel the ultimate outcome of the cooking process as an event. The taste of a homemade cheese is linked to a new kind of knowledge—that is, an epistemology based on continuous breakages that allow for the cooking process to carry on until the ultimate result. It is a knowledge that comes from a commitment to objects being out-of-phase, and from the acknowledgement of the network of technical operations that bring cheese to our tables. The following section discusses how another kind of object may affect the outcome of a recipe, with important implications for aesthetics, that is, technical objects. The Internet as Ingredient: Technical Objects, Aesthetics, and Invention The notion of technical objects complements Simondon’s theory of individuation to define the becoming of technology in relation to culture. To Simondon: “the technical object is not this or that thing, given hic et nunc, but that of which there is a genesis” (Du Mode 20). Technical objects, therefore, are not simply technological artifacts but are constituted by a series of events that determine their evolution (De Vries). Analogously to other kinds of individuals, they are constituted by transductive operations across the three aforementioned phases of being. The evolution of technical objects extends from the element to the individual, and ultimately to the technical ensemble. Elements are less than individualised technical objects, while individuals that are in a relation of interconnection are called ensembles. According to Simondon, technical ensembles fully individualise with the realisation of the cybernetic project. Simondon observes that: “there is something eternal in a technical ensemble [...] and it is that which is always present, and can be conserved in a thing” (Les Cahiers 87). The Internet, as a thing-network, could be regarded as an instance of such technical ensembles, however, a clarification needs to be made. Simondon explains that “true technical ensembles are not those that use technical individuals, but those that are a network of technical individuals in a relation of interconnection” (Du mode 126). To Simondon, humankind has ceased to be a technical individual with the industrialisation and automation of methods of production, and has consigned this function to machines (128). Expanding this line of thought, examples such as the viral spreading of memes, and the hypnotic power of online marketing campaigns, demonstrate how digital technology seems to have intensified this process of alienation of people from the functioning of the machine. In short, no one seems to know how or why things happen on the Internet, but we cannot help but use it. In order to constitute “real” technical ensembles, we need to incorporate technics again into culture, in a relation of reciprocity and complementarity with machines, under the aegis of a technical culture. Simondon specifies that such a reconfiguration of the relation between man and machines can only be achieved by means of an invention. An invention entails the individualisation of the technical ensemble as a departure from the mind of the inventor or designer that conceived it, in order to acquire its own autonomous existence (“Technical Mentality”). It refers to the origin of an operative solidarity between individual agents in a network, which provides the support for a human relation based on the “model of transidividuality” (Du Mode 247). A “transindividual relation” is a relation of relations that puts the individual in direct contact with a real collective. The notion of real collective is opposed to that of an interindividual community or social sphere, which is poisoned by the anxieties that stem from a defected relation with the technical ensemble culture is embedded in. In the specific context of the online sharing of DIY cheese-making recipes, rather than a fully individualised technical ensemble per se, the Internet can be regarded as one of the ingredients that make up the final recipe—together with human and the food—for the invention of a true technical ensemble. In such a framework, praxis, as linked to the kind of non-verbal knowledge associated with “making,” defines individuation together with the types of objects that make up the Network. While in the case of foodism, the practice of online marketing and communication homogenises culture by creating “social phenomena,” in the case of DIY cooking advice, it fosters a diversification of tastes, experiences, and flavours linked to individual modes of doing and cooking, that put the cook in a new relation with the culinary process, with food, and with the guests who have the pleasure to taste her meal. This is a qualitative change in the network that constitutes culture, rather than a mere quantitative shift in energy induction. The term “conviviality” (from the Latin con-vivere) specifically means this: a “living together,” rather than a mere dinner party. For Simondon, a real technical ensemble is an assemblage of humans, machines, tools, resources and milieus, which can only be éprouve—i.e., experienced, also in the sense of “experimented with”—rather than represented. A technical ensemble is first and foremost an aesthetic affair—it can only be perceived by experimenting with the different agents involved in the networked operations that constitute it. For Simondon “aesthetics comes after technicity [and] it also returns to us in the heart of technicity” (Michaud in De Boever et al. 122). Therefore, any object bears an aesthetic potential—even something as trivial as a homemade block of cheese. Simondon rejects the idea of an aesthetic object, but affirms the power of technicity to foreground an aesthetic impression, which operates a convergence between the diverging forces that constitute the mediation between man and world, in terms of an ethical treatment of technics. For Simondon, the beautiful is a process: “it is never, properly speaking, the object that is beautiful: it is the encounter operating a propos of the object between a real aspect of the world and a human gesture” (Du Mode 191 emphasis added). If an analysis of cooking as individuation already foregrounds an aesthetics that is both networked and technical, the relational capabilities afforded by networked media have the power to amplify the aesthetic potential of the human gesture implied in a block of homemade cheese—which today extends from searching for (or writing) a recipe online, to pouring the milk and seasoning the cheese, and which entails less environmental waste due to the less intensive processing and the lack of, or certainly a reduction in, packaging materials (Rastogi). The praise of technical creativity resounds throughout Simondon’s thought. By using the Internet in order to create (or indeed cook) something new, the online sharing of DIY cooking techniques like cheese-making, which partially disengages the human (and food itself) from the cycle of production-marketing-consumption that characterises the food industry in capitalist society by fostering an awareness of the networked operations that constitute her as individual, is an invention in its own right. Although the impact of these DIY activities on the global food industry is still very limited, such a hands-on approach, imbued with a dose of technical creativity, partially overcomes the alienation of the individual from the production process, by providing the conditions to “feel” how the individualisation of cheese (and the human) is inscribed in a larger metabolism. This does not stop within the economy of the body but encompasses the techno-cultural ensemble that forms capitalist society as a whole, and in which humans play only a small part. This may be considered a first step towards the reconciliation between humans and technical culture—a true technical ensemble. Indeed, eating involves “experiments in art and technology”—as the name of the infamous 1960s art collective (E.A.T.) evokes. Home-cooking in this sense is a technical-aesthetic experiment in its own right, in which aesthetics acquires an ethical nuance. Simondon’s philosophy highlights how the aesthetics involved in the home cooking process entails a political component, aimed at the disentanglement of the human from the “false” technical ensemble constituted by capitalist society, which is founded on the alienation from the production process and is driven by economic interests. Surely, an ethical approach to food would entail considering the biopolitics of the guts from the perspective of sourcing materials, and perhaps even building one’s own tools. These days, however, keeping a cow or goat in the backyard is unconceivable and/or impossible for most of us. The point is that the Internet can foster inventiveness and creativity among the participants to the Network, in spite of the fixity of the frame in which culture is increasingly inscribed (for instance, the standardised format of a Wordpress blog), and in this way, can trigger an aesthetic impression that comprises an ethical component, which translates into a political stand against the syncopated, schizophrenic rhythms of the market. Conclusion In this discussion, I have demonstrated that cooking can be considered a process of individuation inscribed in a techno-cultural network in which different transductive operations have the power to affect the final taste of a recipe. Simondon’s theory of individuation allows us to account for the impact of ubiquitous networked media on traditionally considered “human” practices, thus suggesting a new kind of humanism—a sort of technological humanism—on the basis of a new model of perception, which acknowledges the non-human actants involved in the process of individuation. I have shown that, in the case of the online sharing of cheese-making recipes, Simondon’s philosophy allows us to uncover a concept of taste that extends beyond the mere gustatory experience provided by foodism, and in this sense it may indeed affirm a reconfiguration of human culture based on an ethical approach towards the technical ensemble that envelops individuals of any kind—be they physical, living, or technical. Analogously, a “culinary” approach to techno-culture in terms of a commitment to the ontogenetic character of objects’ behaviours could be transposed to the digital realm in order to enlighten new perspectives for the speculative design of occasions of interaction among different beings—including humans—in ethico-aesthetic terms, based on a creative, experimental engagement with techniques and technologies. As a result, this can foreground a taste for life and culture that exceeds human-centred egotistic pleasure to encompass both technology and nature. Considering that a worryingly high percentage of digital natives both in Australia and the UK today believe that cheese and yogurt grow on trees (Howden; Wylie), perhaps cooking should indeed be taught in school alongside (rather than separate to, or instead of) programming. References Bennet, Jane. Vibrant Matter: a Political Ecology of Things. Durham: Duke UP, 2010 Brien, Donna Lee, and Adele Wessell. “Cookbook: A New Scholarly View.” M/C Journal 16.3 (2013). 7 Jan. 2014. ‹http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/viewArticle/688›. Crary, Jonathan, and Sanford Kwinter. Incorporations. New York: Zone, 1992. De Boever, Arne, Alex Murray, Jon Roffe, and Ashley Woodward, eds. Gilbert Simondon: Being and Technology. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2012. De Vries, Marc. “Gilbert Simondon and the Dual Nature of Technical Artifacts.” Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology 12.1 (2008). Debord, Guy. “Abat-Faim.” Encyclopedie des Nuisances 5 (1985) 2 Jan. 2014. ‹http://www.notbored.org/abat-faim.html›. Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus. London: Continuum, 2004. Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999. Howden, Saffron. “Cultural Cringe: Schoolchildren Can’t See the Yoghurt for the Trees.” The Sydney Morning Herald 5 Mar. 2012. 5 Jan. 2014. ‹http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/cultural-cringe-schoolchildren-cant-see-the-yoghurt-for-the-trees-20120304-1ub55.html›. McGee, Harold. On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen. New York: Scribner, 2004. Michaud, Yves. “The Aesthetics of Gilbert Simondon: Anticipation of the Contemporary Aesthetic Experience.” Gilbert Simondon: Being and Technology. Eds. Arne De Boever, Alex Murray, Jon Roffe, and Ashley Woodward. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2012. 121–32. Rastogi, Nina. “Soft Cheese for a Clean Planet”. Slate 15 Dec. 2009. 25 Jan. 2014. ‹http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/the_green_lantern/2009/12/soft_cheese_for_a_clean_planet.html›. Simondon, Gilbert. Du Mode d’Existence des Objets Techniques. Paris: Aubier, 2001. ---. L’Individuation a La Lumière Des Notions de Forme et d’Information. Grenoble: Millon, 2005. ---. “Les Cahiers du Centre Culturel Canadien” 4, 2ème Colloque Sur La Mécanologie. Paris, 1976. ---. “Technical Mentality.” Parrhesia 7 (2009): 17–27.---. “The Genesis of the Individual.” Incorporations. Eds. Jonathan Crary, and Sanford Kwinter. New York: Zone, 1992. 296–319. Wrangham, Richard. “Reason in the Roasting of Eggs.” Collapse: Philosophical Research and Development Volume VII. Eds. Reza Negarestani, and Robin Mackay. London: Urbanomic, 2011. 331–44. Wylie, Catherine. “Significant Number of Children Believe Cheese Comes from Plants, Reveals New Survey.” The Independent 3 Jun. 2013. 5 Jan. 2014. ‹http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/significant-number-of-children-believe-cheese-comes-from-plants-reveals-new-survey-8641771.html›.

Abstract The SKF ball bearing on display in the 1934 ‘Machine Art’ exhibition in the Museum of Modern Art is an icon referenced throughout visual culture studies but this article recognizes its materiality, identifying the corporate logotype and other branded markings that complicate its identity as anonymous or, in the words of museum curator Philip Johnson, as ‘plain’. SKF, Svenska Kullagerfabriken (The Swedish ball bearing factory), had a fully developed global advertising campaign that made it a more established brand name than MoMA, and pioneered the contemporary mode of speaking and thinking in logotypes—by 1934, Johnson’s claim notwithstanding, no one could ‘see’ an SKF ball bearing without seeing the company’s logo. Scholarly commentary has adhered to MoMA’s description as if the bearing were anonymous and not visibly branded. This essay describes the history of the SKF logotype and situates it as both pioneering and part of a complex corporate culture and aspect of brand standardization that intersected with globalization in unexpected ways. To delve into the commercial context and production of ball bearings is to unravel the contradictions inherent in identifying design as national or global, and the modernist idealization of anonymous industrial form as an aesthetic ideal.

The purpose of the article is to reveal the “consonance” of urban-artistic reflections of musical and literary works in intermedial-eminent context. The research methodology are based on the complementary principle. The intermedial approach to the study of various artistic codes in one work was applied, as well as to the search of the consonant symbols and signs of a city in different types of synchronic and artistic practice. System-analytical, typological and comparative methods have been used in drawing the parallels and finding the coincidences and differences of realization of the “urban music” in the piano cycle “A Notebook of Miniatures” by the composer Mykola Zaderatskyi and a in the novel “City” written by V. Pidmohylnyi. A receptive methodology, as well as the empirical methods of description, observation and reflection, has been applied. Scientific novelty lies in an attempt of an intermedial comparison of the images of urban sounding in modernistic works of different arts by means of semantic-semiotic interferences. A concept of eminence has been used for the first time for a comparative characteristic of the urban music in the artifacts of the Ukrainian culture of the Industrialization era. Conclusions. Various scenes, pictures, emotional reactions, “technocratic” symbols became common audial-semiotic images of the city in the program-cyclic and novelistic discourses. The contrasts of sounding of the natural beauty of the clouds and artificial aesthetics of the machines, the silence as a contemporary island of self-concentration and “muscular strength” of the crowd (according to V. Zaderatskyi, Jr.), song folklore and a jazz band, a flashy poster and a spinning carousel in a symbolic and intermedial way reflect the interaction of sociological and psychological aspects of urbanism, i.e. personal and collective (private and public), contemplative and effective, emotional and rational, spiritual and material. “Notebook of Miniatures” and “musical-audial” fragments of “City” – are “eminent texts” (H. G. Gadamer) which interpret the encoded in them additional foreign medial contents (verbal – in a musical piece, and musical – in a literary work). Key words: urbanism, urban music, composer, writer, novel, piano cycle, intermediality, eminent text.

Dégueulasse is French slang for “disgusting,” derived in 1867 from the French verb dégueuler, to vomit. Despite its vulgar status, it is frequently used by almost every French speaker, including foreigners and students. It is also a term that has often been employed to describe the 1973 cult film, La Grande bouffe [Blow Out], by Marco Ferreri, which recounts in grotesque detail the gastronomic suicide of four male protagonists. This R-rated French-Italian production was booed, and the director spat on, at the 26th Cannes Film Festival—the Jury President, Ingrid Bergman, said it was the most “sordid” film she’d ever seen, and is even reported to have vomited after watching it (Télérama). Ferreri nevertheless walked away with the Prix FIPRESCI, awarded by the Federation of International Critics, and it is apparently the largest grossing release in the history of Paris with more than 700,000 entries in Paris and almost 3 million in France overall. Scandal sells, and this was especially seemingly so 1970s, when this film was avidly consumed as part of an unholy trinity alongside Bernardo Bertolucci’s Le Dernier Tango à Paris [Last Tango in Paris] (1972) and Jean Eustache’s La Maman et la putain [The Mother and the Whore] (1973). Fast forward forty years, though, and at the very moment when La Grande bouffe was being commemorated with a special screening on the 2013 Cannes Film Festival programme, a handful of University of Melbourne French students in a subject called “Matters of Taste” were boycotting the film as an unacceptable assault to their sensibilities. Over the decade that I have been showing the film to undergraduate students, this has never happened before. In this article, I want to examine critically the questions of taste that underpin this particular predicament. Analysing firstly the intradiegetic portrayal of taste in the film, through both gustatory and aesthetic signifiers, then the choice of the film as a key element in a University subject corpus, I will finally question the (dis)taste displayed by certain students, contextualising it as part of an ongoing socio-cultural commentary on food, sex, life, and death. Framed by a brief foray into Bourdieusian theories of taste, I will attempt to draw some conclusions on the continual renegotiation of gustatory and aesthetic tastes in relation to La Grande bouffe, and thereby deepen understanding of why it has become the incarnation of dégueulasse today. Theories of Taste In the 1970s, the parameters of “good” and “bad” taste imploded in the West, following political challenges to the power of the bourgeoisie that also undermined their status as the contemporary arbiters of taste. This revolution of manners was particularly shattering in France, fuelled by the initial success of the May 68 student, worker, and women’s rights movements (Ross). The democratization of taste served to legitimize desires different from those previously dictated by bourgeois norms, enabling greater diversity in representing taste across a broad spectrum. It was reflected in the cultural products of the 1970s, including cinema, which had already broken with tradition during the New Wave in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and became a vector for political ideologies as well as radical aesthetic choices (Smith). Commonly regarded as “the decade that taste forgot,” the 1970s were also a time for re-assessing the sociology of taste, with the magisterial publication of Pierre Bourdieu’s Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (1979, English trans. 1984). As Bourdieu refuted Kant’s differentiation between the legitimate aesthetic, so defined by its “disinterestedness,” and the common aesthetic, derived from sensory pleasures and ordinary meanings, he also attempted to abolish the opposition between the “taste of reflection” (pure pleasure) and the “taste of sense” (facile pleasure) (Bourdieu 7). In so doing, he laid the foundations of a new paradigm for understanding the apparently incommensurable choices that are not the innate expression of our unique personalities, but rather the product of our class, education, family experiences—our habitus. Where Bourdieu’s theories align most closely with the relationship between taste and revulsion is in the realm of aesthetic disposition and its desire to differentiate: “good” taste is almost always predicated on the distaste of the tastes of others. Tastes (i.e. manifested preferences) are the practical affirmation of an inevitable difference. It is no accident that, when they have to be justified, they are asserted purely negatively, by the refusal of other tastes. In matters of taste, more than anywhere else, all determination is negation; and tastes are perhaps first and foremost distastes, disgust provoked by horror or visceral intolerance (“sick-making”) of the tastes of others. “De gustibus non est disputandum”: not because “tous les goûts sont dans la nature,” but because each taste feels itself to be natural—and so it almost is, being a habitus—which amounts to rejecting others as unnatural and therefore vicious. Aesthetic intolerance can be terribly violent. Aversion to different life-styles is perhaps one of the strongest barriers between the classes (Bourdieu). Although today’s “Gen Y” Melbourne University students are a long way from 1970s French working class/bourgeois culture clashes, these observations on taste as the corollary of distaste are still salient tools of interpretation of their attitudes towards La Grande bouffe. And, just as Bourdieu effectively deconstructed Kant’s Critique of Aesthetic Judgement and the 18th “century of taste” notions of universality and morality in aesthetics (Dickie, Gadamer, Allison) in his groundbreaking study of distinction, his own theories have in turn been subject to revision in an age of omnivorous consumption and eclectic globalisation, with various cultural practices further destabilising the hierarchies that formerly monopolized legitimate taste (Sciences Humaines, etc). Bourdieu’s theories are still, however, useful for analysing La Grande bouffe given the contemporaneous production of these texts, as they provide a frame for understanding (dis)taste both within the filmic narrative and in the wider context of its reception. Taste and Distaste in La Grande bouffe To go to the cinema is like to eat or shit, it’s a physiological act, it’s urban guerrilla […] Enough with feelings, I want to make a physiological film (Celluloid Liberation Front). Marco Ferreri’s statements about his motivations for La Grande bouffe coincide here with Bourdieu’s explanation of taste: clearly the director wished to depart from psychological cinema favoured by contemporary critics and audiences and demonstrated his distaste for their preference. There were, however, psychological impulses underpinning his subject matter, as according to film academic Maurizio Viano, Ferrari had a self-destructive, compulsive relation to food, having been forced to spend a few weeks in a Swiss clinic specialising in eating disorders in 1972–1973 (Viano). Food issues abound in his biography. In an interview with Tullio Masoni, the director declared: “I was fat as a child”; his composer Phillipe Sarde recalls the grand Italian-style dinners that he would organise in Paris during the film; and, two of the film’s stars, Marcello Mastroianni and Ugo Tognazzi, actually credit the conception of La Grande bouffe to a Rabelaisian feast prepared by Tognazzi, during which Ferreri exclaimed “hey guys, we are killing ourselves!” (Viano 197–8). Evidently, there were psychological factors behind this film, but it was nevertheless the physiological aspects that Ferreri chose to foreground in his creation. The resulting film does indeed privilege the physiological, as the protagonists fornicate, fart, vomit, defecate, and—of course—eat, to wild excess. The opening scenes do not betray such sordid sequences; the four bourgeois men are introduced one by one so as to establish their class credentials as well as display their different tastes. We first encounter Ugo (Tognazzi), an Italian chef of humble peasant origins, as he leaves his elegant restaurant “Le Biscuit à soupe” and his bourgeois French wife, to take his knives and recipes away with him for the weekend. Then Michel (Piccoli), a TV host who has pre-taped his shows, gives his apartment keys to his 1970s-styled baba-cool daughter as he bids her farewell, and packs up his cleaning products and rubber gloves to take with him. Marcello (Mastroianni) emerges from a cockpit in his aviator sunglasses and smart pilot’s uniform, ordering his sexy airhostesses to carry his cheese and wine for him as he takes a last longing look around his plane. Finally, the judge and owner of the property where the action will unfold, Philippe (Noiret), is awoken by an elderly woman, Nicole, who feeds him tea and brioche, pestering him for details of his whereabouts for the weekend, until he demonstrates his free will and authority, joking about his serious life, and lying to her about attending a legal conference in London. Having given over power of attorney to Nicole, he hints at the finality of his departure, but is trying to wrest back his independence as his nanny exhorts him not to go off with whores. She would rather continue to “sacrifice herself for him” and “keep it in the family,” as she discreetly pleasures him in this scene. Scholars have identified each protagonist as an ideological signifier. For some, they represent power—Philippe is justice—and three products of that ideology: Michel is spectacle, Ugo is food, and Marcello is adventure (Celluloid Liberation Front). For others, these characters are the perfect incarnations of the first four Freudian stages of sexual development: Philippe is Oedipal, Michel is indifferent, Ugo is oral, and Marcello is impotent (Tury & Peter); or even the four temperaments of Hippocratic humouralism: Philippe the phlegmatic, Michel the melancholic, Ugo the sanguine, and Marcello the choleric (Calvesi, Viano). I would like to offer another dimension to these categories, positing that it is each protagonist’s taste that prescribes his participation in this gastronomic suicide as well as the means by which he eventually dies. Before I develop this hypothesis, I will first describe the main thrust of the narrative. The four men arrive at the villa at 68 rue Boileau where they intend to end their days (although this is not yet revealed). All is prepared for the most sophisticated and decadent feasting imaginable, with a delivery of the best meats and poultry unfurling like a surrealist painting. Surrounded by elegant artworks and demonstrating their cultural capital by reciting Shakespeare, Brillat-Savarin, and other classics, the men embark on a race to their death, beginning with a competition to eat the most oysters while watching a vintage pornographic slideshow. There is a strong thread of masculine athletic engagement in this film, as has been studied in detail by James R. Keller in “Four Little Caligulas: La Grande bouffe, Consumption and Male Masochism,” and this is exacerbated by the arrival of a young but matronly schoolmistress Andréa (Ferréol) with her students who want to see the garden. She accepts the men’s invitation to stay on in the house to become another object of competitive desire, and fully embraces all the sexual and gustatory indulgence around her. Marcello goes further by inviting three prostitutes to join them and Ugo prepares a banquet fit for a funeral. The excessive eating makes Michel flatulent and Marcello impotent; when Marcello kicks the toilet in frustration, it explodes in the famous fecal fountain scene that apparently so disgusted his then partner Catherine Deneuve, that she did not speak to him for a week (Ebert). The prostitutes flee the revolting madness, but Andréa stays like an Angel of Death, helping the men meet their end and, in surviving, perhaps symbolically marking an end to the masculinist bourgeoisie they represent.To return to the role of taste in defining the rise and demise of the protagonists, let me begin with Marcello, as he is the first to die. Despite his bourgeois attitudes, he is a modern man, associated with machines and mobility, such as the planes and the beautiful Bugatti, which he strokes with greater sensuality than the women he hoists onto it. His taste is for the functioning mechanical body, fast and competitive, much like himself when he is gorging on oysters. But his own body betrays him when his “masculine mechanics” stop functioning, and it is the fact that the Bugatti has broken down that actually causes his death—he is found frozen in driver’s seat after trying to escape in the Bugatti during the night. Marcello’s taste for the mechanical leads therefore to his eventual demise. Michel is the next victim of his own taste, which privileges aesthetic beauty, elegance, the arts, and fashion, and euphemises the less attractive or impolite, the scatological, boorish side of life. His feminized attire—pink polo-neck and flowing caftan—cannot distract from what is happening in his body. The bourgeois manners that bind him to beauty mean that breaking wind traumatises him. His elegant gestures at the dance barre encourage rather than disguise his flatulence; his loud piano playing cannot cover the sound of his loud farts, much to the mirth of Philippe and Andréa. In a final effort to conceal his painful bowel obstruction, he slips outside to die in obscene and noisy agony, balanced in an improbably balletic pose on the balcony balustrade. His desire for elegance and euphemism heralds his death. Neither Marcello nor Michel go willingly to their ends. Their tastes are thwarted, and their deaths are disgusting to them. Their cadavers are placed in the freezer room as silent witnesses to the orgy that accelerates towards its fatal goal. Ugo’s taste is more earthy and inherently linked to the aims of the adventure. He is the one who states explicitly: “If you don’t eat, you won’t die.” He wants to cook for others and be appreciated for his talents, as well as eat and have sex, preferably at the same time. It is a combination of these desires that kills him as he force-feeds himself the monumental creation of pâté in the shape of the Cathedral of Saint-Peter that has been rejected as too dry by Philippe, and too rich by Andréa. The pride that makes him attempt to finish eating his masterpiece while Andréa masturbates him on the dining table leads to a heart-stopping finale for Ugo. As for Philippe, his taste is transgressive. In spite of his upstanding career as a judge, he lies and flouts convention in his unorthodox relationship with nanny Nicole. Andréa represents another maternal figure to whom he is attracted and, while he wishes to marry her, thereby conforming to bourgeois norms, he also has sex with her, and her promiscuous nature is clearly signalled. Given his status as a judge, he reasons that he can not bring Marcello’s frozen body inside because concealing a cadaver is a crime, yet he promotes collective suicide on his premises. Philippe’s final transgression of the rules combines diabetic disobedience with Oedipal complex—Andréa serves him a sugary pink jelly dessert in the form of a woman’s breasts, complete with cherries, which he consumes knowingly and mournfully, causing his death. Unlike Marcello and Michel, Ugo and Philippe choose their demise by indulging their tastes for ingestion and transgression. Following Ferreri’s motivations and this analysis of the four male protagonists, taste is clearly a cornerstone of La Grande bouffe’s conception and narrative structure. It is equally evident that these tastes are contrary to bourgeois norms, provoking distaste and even revulsion in spectators. The film’s reception at the time of its release and ever since have confirmed this tendency in both critical reviews and popular feedback as André Habib’s article on Salo and La Grande bouffe (2001) meticulously demonstrates. With such a violent reaction, one might wonder why La Grande bouffe is found on so many cinema studies curricula and is considered to be a must-see film (The Guardian). Corpus and Corporeality in Food Film Studies I chose La Grande bouffe as the first film in the “Matters of Taste” subject, alongside Luis Bunuel’s Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie, Gabriel Axel’s Babette’s Feast, and Laurent Bénégui’s Au Petit Marguery, as all are considered classic films depicting French eating cultures. Certainly any French cinema student would know La Grande bouffe and most cinephiles around the world have seen it. It is essential background knowledge for students studying French eating cultures and features as a key reference in much scholarly research and popular culture on the subject. After explaining the canonical status of La Grande bouffe and thus validating its inclusion in the course, I warned students about the explicit nature of the film. We studied it for one week out of the 12 weeks of semester, focusing on questions of taste in the film and the socio-cultural representations of food. Although the almost ubiquitous response was: “C’est dégueulasse!,” there was no serious resistance until the final exam when a few students declared that they would boycott any questions on La Grande bouffe. I had not actually included any such questions in the exam. The student evaluations at the end of semester indicated that several students questioned the inclusion of this “disgusting pornography” in the corpus. There is undoubtedly less nudity, violence, gore, or sex in this film than in the Game of Thrones TV series. What, then, repulses these Gen Y students? Is it as Pasolini suggests, the neorealistic dialogue and décor that disturbs, given the ontologically challenging subject of suicide? (Viano). Or is it the fact that there is no reason given for the desire to end their lives, which privileges the physiological over the psychological? Is the scatological more confronting than the pornographic? Interestingly, “food porn” is now a widely accepted term to describe a glamourized and sometimes sexualized presentation of food, with Nigella Lawson as its star, and hundreds of blog sites reinforcing its popularity. Yet as Andrew Chan points out in his article “La Grande bouffe: Cooking Shows as Pornography,” this film is where it all began: “the genealogy reaches further back, as brilliantly visualized in Marco Ferreri’s 1973 film La Grande bouffe, in which four men eat, screw and fart themselves to death” (47). Is it the overt corporeality depicted in the film that shocks cerebral students into revulsion and rebellion? Conclusion In the guise of a conclusion, I suggest that my Gen Y students’ taste may reveal a Bourdieusian distaste for the taste of others, in a third degree reaction to the 1970s distaste for bourgeois taste. First degree: Ferreri and his entourage reject the psychological for the physiological in order to condemn bourgeois values, provoking scandal in the 1970s, but providing compelling cinema on a socio-political scale. Second degree: in spite of the outcry, high audience numbers demonstrate their taste for scandal, and La Grande bouffe becomes a must-see canonical film, encouraging my choice to include it in the “Matters of Taste” corpus. Third degree: my Gen Y students’ taste expresses a distaste for the academic norms that I have embraced in showing them the film, a distaste that may be more aesthetic than political. Oui, c’est dégueulasse, mais … Bibliography Allison, Henry E. Kant’s Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgement. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2001. Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Trans. Richard Nice. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard UP, 1984. Calvesi, M. “Dipingere all moviola” (Painting at the Moviola). Corriere della Sera, 10 Oct. 1976. Reprint. “Arti figurative e il cinema” (Cinema and the Visual Arts). Avanguardia di massa. Ed. M. Calvesi. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1978. 243–46. Celluloid Liberation Front. “Consumerist Ultimate Indigestion: La Grande Bouffe's Deadly Physiological Pleasures.” Bright Lights Film Journal 60 (2008). 13 Jan. 2014 ‹http://brightlightsfilm.com/60/60lagrandebouffe.php#.Utd6gs1-es5›. Chan, Andrew. “La Grande bouffe: Cooking Shows as Pornography.” Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture 3.4 (2003): 47–53. Dickie, George. The Century of Taste: The Philosophical Odyssey of Taste in the Eighteenth Century. New York and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996. Ebert, Roger, “La Grande bouffe.” 13 Jan. 2014 ‹http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/la-grande-bouffe-1973›. Ferreri, Marco. La Grande bouffe. Italy-France, 1973. Freedman, Paul H. Food: The History of Taste. U of California P, 2007. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method. Trans. Joel Winsheimer and Donald C. Marshall. New York: Continuum, 1999. Habib, André. “Remarques sur une ‘réception impossible’: Salo and La Grande bouffe.” Hors champ (cinéma), 4 Jan. 2001. 11 Jan. 2014 ‹http://www.horschamp.qc.ca/cinema/030101/salo-bouffe.html›. Keller, James R. “Four Little Caligulas: La Grande bouffe, Consumption and Male Masochism.” Food, Film and Culture: A Genre Study. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co, 2006: 49–59. Masoni, Tullio. Marco Ferreri. Gremese, 1998. Pasolini, P.P. “Le ambigue forme della ritualita narrativa.” Cinema Nuovo 231 (1974): 342–46. Ross, Kristin. May 68 and its Afterlives. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2008. Smith, Alison. French Cinema in the 1970s: The Echoes of May. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2005. Télérama: “La Grande bouffe: l’un des derniers grands scandales du Festival de Cannes. 19 May 2013. 13 Jan. 2014 ‹http://www.telerama.fr/festival-de-cannes/2013/la-grande-bouffe-l-un-des-derniers-grands-scandales-du-festival-de-cannes,97615.php›. The Guardian: 1000 films to see before you die. 2007. 17 Jan. 2014 ‹http://www.theguardian.com/film/series/1000-films-to-see-before-you-die› Tury, F., and O. Peter. “Food, Life, and Death: The Film La Grande bouffe of Marco Ferreri in an Art Psychological Point of View.” European Psychiatry 22.1 (2007): S214. Viano, Maurizio. “La Grande Abbuffata/La Grande bouffe.” The Cinema of Italy. Ed. Giorgio Bertellini. London: Wallflower Press, 2004: 193–202.

In his recent re-evaluation of McLuhanite theories for the information age, Digital McLuhan, Paul Levinson makes what at first glance appears to be a curious statement: he says that on the Web "the common denominator ... is the written word, as it is and has been with all things having to do with computers -- and will likely continue to be until such time, if ever, that the spoken word replaces the written as the vehicle of computer commands" (38). This, however, seems to directly contradict what any Web user has been able to experience for several years now: Web content has increasingly come to rely on graphics, at first still, now also often animated, and continues to include more and more audiovisual elements of various kinds. We don't even have to look at the current (and, hopefully, passing) phase of interminable Shockwave splash pages, which users have to endure while they wait to be transferred to the 'real' content of a site: even on as print-focussed a page as the one you're currently reading, you'll see graphical buttons to the left and at the bottom, for example. Other sites far surpass this for graphical content: it is hard to imagine what the official Olympics site or that of EXPO 2000 would look like in text-only versions. The drive towards more and more graphics has long been, well, visible. Already in 1997 (at a time when 33.6k modems were considered fast) Marshall considered the Internet to have entered its "graphic stage, a transitional media form that has made surfing the net feel like flipping through a glossy magazine or the interlinkages of a multimedia game or encyclopedia CD-ROMs"; to him this stage "relies on a construction that is textual and graphically enhanced through software overlays ... and highlighted by sample images, sound bites and occasionally short, moving images" (51). This historicised view mirrors a distinction made around the same time by Lovink, who divided users into "IBM-PC-modernists" still running text-based interfaces, and those enjoying the "Apple-Windows 95-postmodernism" of their graphical user interfaces (Lovink and Winkler 15). In the age of GUIs, in fact, 'text' in itself does not really exist on screen any more: everything from textual to graphical information consists of individual pixels in the same way, which is precisely what makes Levinson's initial statement appear so anachronistic. The move from 'text' to 'graphics and text' could thus be seen as a sign of the overall shift from the industrial to the information age -- a view not without precedent, since the transition from modernist to postmodernist times is similarly contemporaneous with the rise of graphic design as a form of communication as well as art. Beyond such broad strokes, we can also identify some of the finer details presented by the current state of graphics on the Web, however. Marshall's 'graphic stage', after all, was a 'transitional' one, and by now it seems that we might have passed it already, entering into a new aesthetic paradigm which appears to have borrowed many of its approaches from the realm of computer games: the new Web vision is shiny, colourful, animated, and increasingly also accompanied by sound effects. This is no surprise since the mass acceptance of personal computers themselves was largely driven by their use as a source of entertainment. Gaming and computers are inseparably interconnected, and the development of home computers' graphical capabilities in particular has long been driven almost exclusively by players' needs for better, faster, more realistic graphics. Of course, the way we interact with computers also owes a significant debt to games. Engagement in a dialogue with the machine, in which the computer displays both our own actions and its responses, representing us and itself simultaneously on screen, is the predominant mode of computing, and such a mode of engagement (dissolving the barriers between human mind and machinic computation) can now also be found in our interaction with the Web. Here, too, individual knowledge blends with the information available on the network as we immerse ourselves in hypertextual connectivity. As Talbott writes, "clearly, a generation raised on Adventure and video games -- where every door conceals a treasure or a monster worth pursuing in frenetic style -- has its own way of appreciating the hypertext interface" (13); not only has the Web taken on the aesthetics of computer gaming, then, but using the Web itself exhibits aspects of participation in a global 'knowledge game'. Talbott means to criticise this when he writes that thus "the doctrines of endless Enlightenment and Progress become the compelling subtext of a universal video game few can resist playing" (196), but however we may choose to evaluate this game, the observation itself is sound. One possible reason for taking a critical view of this development is that computer and video games rarely present more than the appearance of participation; while players may have a feeling of control over features of the game, the game itself usually remains entirely unaffected and ready for a restart at any moment. Web users might similarly feel empowered by the wealth of information to which they have gained access online, without actually making use of that information to form new knowledge for themselves. This is a matter for the individual user, however; where they have a true interest in the information they seek, we can have every confidence that they will process it to their advantage, too. Beyond this, the skills of information seeking learnt from Web use might also have overall benefits for users, as a kind of 'mind-eye coordination' similar to the 'hand-eye coordination' benefits often attributed to the playing of action games. The ability to figure out unknown problems, the desire to understand and gain control of a situation, which they can learn from computer games, is likely to help them better understand the complexity and interconnectedness of anything they might learn: "it could ... well be true that the cross-linking inherent in hypertext encourages people to see the connections among different aspects of the world so that they will get less fragmented knowledge" (Nielsen 190). The increasingly graphical nature of Web content could appear to work against this, however: "extensions of traditional hyperTEXT systems to encompass hyperMEDIA introduces [sic] a new dimension. ... The picture that 'speaks a thousand words' may say a thousand different words to different viewers. Pictures or graphics lend themselves much more than does text to multiple interpretations", as McAleese claims (12-13) -- but perhaps this overrates significantly the ability of text to anchor down meaning to any one point. Rather, it is questionable whether text and images really are that different from one another -- viewed from a historical perspective, certainly, opinions are divided, it seems: "the medieval church feared the power of the visual image because of the way it appeared to licence the imagination and the consideration of alternatives. Obversely, contemporary cultural critics fear that the abandonment of the written word in favour of graphics is stifling critical and creative powers" (Moody 60) -- take, for example, the commonly held view that movies made from novels limit the reader's imagination to the particular portrayal of events chosen for the film. In fact, there are good reasons to believe that both text and images (especially when they are increasingly easy to manipulate by digital means, thus losing once and for all their claim to photographic 'realism') can 'say a thousand different words to different viewers' -- indeed, traditional photography has also been described as 'writing with light'. As Levinson notes, therefore, "once the photograph is converted to a digital format, it is as amenable to manipulation, as divorced from the reality it purports to represent, as the words which appear on the same screen. On that score, the Internet's co-option of photography -- the rendering of the formerly analogue image as its content -- is at least as profound as the Internet's promotion of written communication" (43), and this, then, may perhaps begin to provide a resolution to his overall preference for writing as the predominant Internet communication form, as quoted above: online writing now includes in almost equal measure 'print' text and graphical images, both of which are of course graphically rendered on screen by the computer anyway; they combine into a new form of writing not unlike ancient hieroglyphics. On the Web, writing has come full circle: from the iconographic representations of the earliest civilisations through their simplification and solidification into the various alphabets back to a new online iconography. This also demonstrates the strong Western bias of this technology, of course: had computers emerged from Chinese or Japanese culture, for example -- where alphabets in the literal sense don't exist -- chances are they would never have existed in a text-only form. Now that we have passed the alphabetic stage to re-enter an era of iconography, then, it remains to be seen how this change along with our overall "'immersion' in hypertext will affect the way that we mentally structure our world. Linear argumentation is more a consequence of alphabetic writing than of printed books and it remains to be seen if hypertext presentation will significantly erode this predominant convention for mentally ordering our world" (McKnight et al. 41). Perhaps the computer game experience (where a blending of text and graphics had begun some time before the Web) can provide some early pointers already, then. The game-like nature of information search and usage online might help to undermine some of the more heavily encrusted structures of information dissemination that are still dominant: "we are promised, on the information 'library' side, less of the dogmatic and more of the ludic, less of the canonical and more of the festive. Fewer arguments from authority, through more juxtaposition of authorities" (Debray 146). This is also supported by the fact that there usually exists no one central authority, no one central site, in any field of information covered by the Web, but that there rather is a multiplicity of sources and viewpoints with varying claims to 'authority' and 'objectivity'; rather than rely on authorities to determine what is accepted knowledge, Web users must, and do, distil their own knowledge from the information they find in their searches. Kumon and Aizu's notion that from the industrial-age "wealth game" we have now moved into the "wisdom game" (320) sums up this view. However, for all the ludic exuberance of this game, we should also be concerned that, as in any game, we are also likely to see winners and losers. Those unaware of the rules of the game, and people who are prevented from playing for personal or socioeconomic reasons (the increased use of graphics will make it much more difficult for certain disabled readers to use the Web, for example) must not be left out of it. In gaming terminology, perhaps the formation of teams including such disadvantaged people is the answer? References Debray, Régis. "The Book as Symbolic Object." The Future of the Book. Ed. Geoffrey Nunberg. Berkeley: U of California P, 1996. 139-51. Kumon, Shumpei, and Izumi Aizu. "Co-Emulation: The Case for a Global Hypernetwork Society." Global Networks: Computers and International Communication. Ed. Linda M. Harasim. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT P, 1994. 311-26. Levinson, Paul. Digital McLuhan: A Guide to the Information Millennium. London: Routledge, 1999. Lovink, Geert, and Hartmut Winkler. "The Computer: Medium or Calculating Machine." Convergence 3.2 (1997): 10-18. Marshall, P. David. "The Commodity and the Internet: Interactivity and the Generation of Audience Commodity." Media International Australia 83 (Feb. 1997): 51-62. McAleese, Ray. "Navigation and Browsing in Hypertext." Hypertext: Theory into Practice. Ed. Ray McAleese. Oxford: Intellect, 1993. 5- 38. McKnight, Cliff, Andrew Dillon, and John Richardson. Hypertext in Context. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1991. Moody, Nickianne. "Interacting with the Divine Comedy." Fractal Dreams: New Media in Social Context. Ed. Jon Dovey. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1996. 59-77. Nielsen, Jakob. Hypertext and Hypermedia. Boston: Academic P, 1990. Talbott, Stephen L. The Future Does Not Compute: Transcending the Machines in Our Midst. Sebastopol, Calif.: O'Reilly and Associates, 1995. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Axel Bruns. "The Knowledge Adventure: Game Aesthetics and Web Hieroglyphics." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.5 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0010/adventure.php>. Chicago style: Axel Bruns, "The Knowledge Adventure: Game Aesthetics and Web Hieroglyphics," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 5 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0010/adventure.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: AxeM/C: A Journal of Media and Culture l Bruns. (2000) The knowledge adventure: game aesthetics and Web hieroglyphics. 3(5). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0010/adventure.php> ([your date of access]).

Discussing the interaction between representation and narrative structures, Anthony Mandal argues that the Gothic has always been “an intrinsically intertextual genre” (Mandal 350). From its inception, the intertextuality of the Gothic has taken many and varied incarnations, from simple references and allusions between texts—dates, locations, characters, and “creatures”—to intricate and evocative uses of style and plot organisation. And even though it would be unwise to reduce the Gothic “text” to a simple master narrative, one cannot deny that, in the midst of re-elaborations and re-interpretations, interconnections and interpolations also appear, a collective gathering of ideas and writing practices that construct what is known as “the Gothic intertext” (Mishra 235). As far as storytelling, characterisation, and symbolism are concerned, the Gothic finds strength in its ability to develop as well as negate expectation, re-moulding the culturally known and the aesthetically acceptable in order to present its audience with a multi-faceted and multi-layered narrative. Although the Gothic has traditionally found fertile ground in literary works—a connection that is now a legacy as much as an origin—other contemporary media, such as animation, have offered the Gothic a privileged chance for growth and adaptation. An evocative example of the mergence between the Gothic mode and the animated medium is Alex Hirsch’s Gravity Falls. This visual text provides an example of the reach of the Gothic within popular culture, where intersecting hideous creatures and interconnected narrative structures, although simple and “for children” on the surface, reveal the presence of a dense and intertextual Gothic network. Those interlacings are, of course, never disconnected from the wider cultural framework, and clearly occupy an important part in unravelling the insidious aspects of human nature, from the difficulties of finding “oneself” to the loneliness of the everyday. Gravity Falls is an animated television series created by Alex Hirsch. It premiered on the Disney Channel in the United States on 15 June 2012. Now scheduled for its second season of running, Gravity Falls follows the adventures of 12-year-old twin siblings Dipper and Mabel Pines while on their summer vacation in the small town of Gravity Falls, Oregon. The choice of “twins” as main characters reveals, even at such an embryonic level, a connection to Gothicised structures, as the mode itself, as Vijay Mishra suggests, finds an affinity with doublings and “specular identifications” that “confuse the norm” (63). The presence of twins makes the double nature of character, traditionally a metaphorical and implicit idea in the Gothic, a very obvious and explicit one. Dipper and Mabel are staying with their eccentric and money-grabbing Great Uncle Stan—often referred to as “Grunkle Stan”—who runs the local curiosity shop known as the Mystery Shack. It becomes very obvious from the very beginning that an air of mystery truly surrounds the Shack, which quickly lives up to its name, and the eponymous town. In an aptly Gothic manner, things are definitely not what they seem and the twins are caught in odd plots, eerily occurrences, and haunted/haunting experiences on a daily basis. The instigator for the twins’ interest in the odd manifestations is the finding of a mysterious journal, a manual the relays detailed descriptions of the creatures that inhabit the forest in the town of Gravity Falls. The author of the journal remains unknown, and is commonly known only as “3”, an unexplained number that marks the cover of the book itself. Although the connection between the Gothic and animation may be obscure, it is in fact possible to identify many common and intersecting elements—aesthetically, narratively, and conceptually—that highlight the two as being intrinsically connected. The successful relation that the Gothic holds with animation is based in the mode’s fundamental predilection for not only subversion, excess and the exploration of the realm of the “imagination”, but also humour and self-reflexivity. These aspects are shared with animation which, as a medium, is ideally placed for exploring and presenting the imaginative and the bizarre, while pushing the boundaries of the known and the proper. Julia Round suggests that the Gothic “has long been identified as containing a dual sense of play and fear” (7). The playfulness and destabilisation that are proper to the mode find a fertile territory in animation in view of not only its many genres, but also its style and usually sensational subject matter. This discourse becomes particularly relevant if one takes into consideration matters of audienceship, or, at least, receivership. Although not historically intended for younger viewers, the animation has evolved into a profoundly children-orientated medium. From cinema to television, animated features and series are the domain of children of various ages. Big production houses such as Disney and Warner Bros have capitalised on the potential of the medium, and established its place in broadcasting slots for young viewers. Not unlike comics—which is, in a way, its ancestral medium—animation is such a malleable and contextual form that it requires a far-reaching and inclusive approach, one that is often interdisciplinary in scope; within this, where the multi-faceted nature of the Gothic opens up the way for seeing animated narratives as the highly socio-historical mediums they are. And not unlike comics, animation shares a common ground with the Gothic in requiring a vast scope of analysis, one that is intrinsically based on the conceptual connections between “texts”. Round has also aptly argued that, like comics, animated series lend themselves to malleable and mouldable re-elaboration: “from the cultural to the aesthetic, the structural to the thematic”, graphic media always reflect the impact of “intertextual and historical references” (8). Animation’s ability to convey, connect, and revolutionise ideas is, therefore, well-matched to the aesthetic and conceptual idiosyncrasies of Gothic tropes. Dipper and Mabel’s vacation in the town of Gravity Falls is characterised by the appearance of numerous super- and preter-natural creatures. The list of “monsters” encountered by the twins is long and growing, from gnomes, goblins, mermaids and zombies, to ghosts, clones, and a wide and colourful variety of demons. And although, at first glance, this list would appear to be a simple and simplistic grouping of bizarre and creatively assembled creatures, it is made quickly apparent that these “monsters” are all inspired, often very directly, by “existing”—or, at least, well-known—Gothic creatures, and their respective contexts of development. Indeed, the links to the Gothic in contemporary popular culture are unavoidable. The creatures in Gravity Falls are presented with subtle references to Gothic literature and cinema, from John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) and Joe Dante’s Gremlins (1984), to Stephen King’s The Shining (1977) and Needful Things (1991). Borrowing from these texts, the creatures in the series all have strange names that rely on play-on-words and re-inventions, and the rubric twists that they undertake are part of a system of both homage and conceptual interdependency. One can find, for instance, “Manotaurs”—creatures that are half-bull and half-man, and that value “manliness” in their society above all else—and the “Gremlobin” – a gigantic monster somewhere in between, we are told, a “gremlin” and a “goblin”, whose eyes can show “your worst nightmares”. But the range extends to other bizarre “creatures” that are clearly very spooky, such as the “Summewrween Trickster”—a large, shadowy, purple/orange monster with a “jack-o’-melon” mask – the living “mailbox”—a sentient and omniscient object—and the truly haunting Bill Cipher—a mind demon that can be summoned through an incantation and enter a person’s subconscious. The connection to the Gothic in popular culture is instrumental for the construction of the Gothic intertext in Gravity Falls. In episode One, “Tourist Trapped” (1.01), Mabel is kidnapped by a tribe of gnomes, who are set on making her their queen. The gnomes are incongruous creatures: on the one hand, they are vengeful and spiteful, recalling the horror monsters found in movies such as the questionable Blood Gnome (2004). On the other, however, they wear red pointy hats and white beards, and their friendly smiles recall the harmless appearance of actual garden gnomes. When the gnomes grow upset, they throw up rainbows; this strange fact destroys their potential as a Gothic horror icon, and makes them accessible and amusing. This subversion of iconography takes place with a number of other “creatures” in Gravity Falls, with the Summerween Trickster—subverting the “terror” of Hallowe’en—being another fitting example. When the gnomes are attempting to woe Mabel, they do not appear to her in their real form: they camouflage themselves into a teenage boy— one who is moody, brooding, and mysterious—and become Mabel’s boyfriend; the “boy’s” interest in her, however, is so intense, that Dipper suspects him to be a member of “The Undead”, a category of monster that is closely described in 3’s journal: due to their “pale skin” and “bad attitudes”, they are often mistaken for “teenagers”. Clues to Dipper’s doubts include the teenage boy’s hand “falling off” while he is hugging Mabel, a clear sign—it would seem—that the boy is obviously a decaying, zombie corpse. The intertextual connection to several horror visual narratives where limbs “fall off” the undead and the monstrous is clear here, with apt film examples being Dawn of the Dead (1978), The Fly (1986), horror comedy Army of Darkness (1992), and, more recently, television’s The Walking Dead (2010-). The references to well-known horror films are scattered throughout the series, and comprise the majority of the lampooned cultural context in which the creatures appear. In spite of Dipper’s suspicions, the situation is revealed to have a rather different outcome. When the boyfriend tells Mabel he has a big secret to reveal, her mind wanders into another direction, choosing a different type of undead, as she expectantly thinks: “Please be a vampire…please be a vampire”. It is not difficult to spot the conceptual connection here to narratives such as Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight saga (2005-2008), both in its literary and cinematic variations, where brooding and mysterious teenage boys find ideal incarnations as the undead creature. The romanticised nature of teenage fictional narratives such as the Twilight saga is also mirrored in Mabel’s distinctive love-centred interest in the potential vampire, revealing an intertextual and highly contextual association to seeing the creature as part of an amorous relationship, as opposed to a blood-thirsty murderer. Mabel’s dreams of vampric love are unfortunately shattered when the boyfriend is revealed to be several gnomes carefully assembled to operate a human-like body, rather than one immortal lover. Irrespective of its desire to parody the Gothic, however, Gravity Falls still maintains unavoidable links to the notion of terror. Clear evidence of this is to be found in the fact that all “creatures” in the series present a level of anthropomorphism about them, and this is interpreted by the characters—and the viewers—as one of their scariest aspects. Leigh Blackmore suggests that a special brand of terror can be found in “anthropomorphic beings” that are in fact not human (Blackmore 95). Most of the creatures in the series are humanoid in shape, and can speak like humans. From gnomes to mermaids, mailboxes and demons, the creatures act as humans, but they are in fact something “other”, something that only recalls the human itself. This idea of being “almost human”, but “not quite”, is disturbing in itself, and connects the presentation of the creatures to the Gothic via the notion of the uncanny: “a crisis of the natural, touching upon everything that one might have thought was ‘part of nature’ […] human nature, the nature of reality and the world” (Royle 1). The uncanny nature of the creatures in Gravity Falls is maintained through their profound inhumanity, and their simultaneous links to human ways of acting, speaking, and even thinking. Indeed, most of the creatures are presented as petty, bitter, and childish, and often seen as greedy and sulking. In a way, the creatures lampoon some of the most intrinsic qualities of the human species, what separates us from animals. The supernatural creatures operate here as a critique of the humans themselves, exposing, as the Gothic often does, the most disturbing parts of humanity. The creatures are presented initially as scary, recalling—albeit very briefly—notions of terror and horror, but that façade is quickly destroyed as their “real nature” is exposed. They are de-terrorised by not only making them common, but also ridiculing their habits and de-constructing their thinly-veiled Gothic personas. The creatures in Gravity Falls are a subversion of the subversion, a re-thinking of the Gothic through parody that allows their conceptual, and culturally relevant, function to be rapidly exposed. The impact of the Gothic intertext in Gravity Falls is not only visible in its representational forms—its monsters and “creatures”—but also extends to its structural organisation. Jerrold Hogle has argued that, although they maintain a heterogeneous construction of texts and contexts, there are certain qualities applicable to “Gothic texts”: an antiquated space (often decaying); a concealed secret from the historical past; a physical or psychological haunting; and an oscillation between “reality” and the “supernatural” (3). Although Hogle’s pinpointing of what he calls the “Gothic matrix” (3) is mainly focused on the literary world, a broader and more wide-reaching understanding of the Gothic text allows these qualities to be clearly identifiable in other narrative mediums, such as an animated series. Indeed, Gravity Falls presents the main elements of the “Gothic matrix”: the Mystery Shack is an old and isolated place, physically crumbling and in constant state of disrepair; it is made clear that the Shack harbours many secrets—filled as it is with hidden passageways and underground vaults—connected to the shady past of Grunkle Stan and its unresolved connections to mysticism and magic; there are plenty of hauntings to be found in the series: from physical ones—in the form of demons and ghosts—to psychological ones, condensed in Dipper and Mabel’s difficulties with their approaching puberties and “growing up”; finally, the line between reality and supernatural is constantly challenged by the appearance of multiple creatures that are clearly not of this world, and even though several characters doubt their existence within the story, their very presence challenges the stability of the boundaries between real and unreal. On the surface, the series is presented as a standard linear narrative, where the linear journey of each 20-minute episode culminates with the resolution of the main “haunting”, and the usual destruction or appeasing of the “creature”. And while the series’ use of cliff-hangers is, in true television style, a common presence, they also expose and recall the unresolved nature of the narrative. Indeed, the story’s structure in Gravity Falls is reliant on narrative undertellings and off-shoots that often lie underneath the logical “line” of the plot. Sub-plots reign supreme, and multiple motives for the characters’ actions are introduced but not expanded upon, leaving the series impregnated with an aura of uncertainty and chaos. The focus of the storytelling is also denied; one moment, it appears to be Dipper’s desire to discover the “secrets” of the forest; the other, it is Grunkle Stan’s long-time battle with his arch-nemesis Gideon over the ownership of the Shack. This plot confusion in Gravity Falls continues to expose its narrative debt to the Gothic intertext, since “structural multiplicity”, as Round suggests, is “a defining feature of the Gothic” (19). The series’ narrative structure is based on numerous multiplicities, an open denial of linear journeys that is dependant, paradoxically, on the illusion of resolution. The most evocative example of Gravity Falls’ denial of clear-cut structures is arguably to be found in the narrative underlayers added by 3’s monster manual. It is obvious from the beginning that 3’s stay in the town of Gravity Falls was riddled with strange experiences, and that his sojourn intersected, at one point or the other, with the lives and secrets of Grunkle Stan and his enemies. It is also made clear that 3’s journal is not a solitary presence in the narrative, but is in fact only one in a triad of mystical books—these books, it is suggested, have great power once put together, but the resolution to this mystery is yet to be revealed. As Grunkle Stan and Gideon fight (secretly) over the possession of the three books, it is openly suggested that several uncovered stories haunt the main narrative in the series and, unknown Dipper and Mabel, are responsible for many of the strange occurrences during their stay at the Shack. Jean-Jacques Lecercle has long argued that one of the defining characteristics of the Gothic, and its intertextual structure, is the presence of “embedded narratives” (72). In Gravity Falls, the use of 3’s manual as not only an initiator of the plot, but also as a continuous performative link to the “haunted” past, uncovers the series’ re-elaboration of the traditional structure of Gothic narratives. As a paratextual presence in the story—one that is, however, often responsible for the development of the main narrative—3’s manual draws attention to the importance of constructing layered stories in order to create the structures of terror, and subsequent horror, that are essential to the Gothic itself. Although it often provides Dipper with information for solving the mysteries of the Shack, and subduing the supernatural creatures that overtake it, 3’s manual is, in reality, a very disruptive presence in the story. It creates confusion as it begins storytelling without concluding it, and opens the way to narrative pathways that are never fully explored. This is of course in keeping with the traditional narrative structures of the Gothic mode, where ancient books and stories— belonging to “antiquity”—are used as a catalyst for the present narrative to take place, but are also strangely displaced from it. This notion recalls Victor Sage’s suggestion that, in Gothic narratives, ancient books and stories paradoxically “disrupt” the main narrative, starting a separate dialogue with a storytelling structure that is inevitably unexplored and left unanswered (86). Canonical examples such as Ann Radcliffe’s The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794) and Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847) inevitably come to mind here, but also more recent cinematic examples such as the Evil Dead franchise (1978-), where ancient books and old storytellers uncover hoary secrets that instigate, as well as obscure, the main narrative. In Gravity Falls, the interaction with 3’s manual is inherently performative, and continuously intertextual, but it is also deeply confusing, adding to the feeling of strangeness and mystery that is the conceptual basis for the series itself. The intertextual connections that drive the narrative in Gravity Falls construct lampooned versions of both the traditional concepts of Gothic horror and Gothic terror. Hogle has suggested that Gothic terror is apparent in the construction of suspense, achieved through an exploration of psychological hauntings, human nature and its un/limitations, and that which is kept out sight, the expected “hidden secrets” (3). Gothic horror, on the other hand, is characterised by the consequences of these occurrences; the physical manifestation of the “haunting”, so to speak, is achieved through the presentation of something repulsive and horrific, the monstrous in its various incarnations (Hogle 3). In Gravity Falls, the connection to the traditional Gothic intertext is made clear through both elicitations of “terror”, and subsequent manifestations of “horror”. Indeed, the “hidden secrets” of the Shack, and to some extent, the fears and insecurities of the characters, are mediated through the appearance of horrific machinery and creatures. The Shack always conceals something hidden, a magical element of sort that is kept secret by intricate passageways. The shadowy nature of the building – evoking the psychological hauntings of Gothic terror – inevitably causes the appearance of something physically disturbing, finding its apogee in a Gothic horror experience. A clear example of this can be found in the episode “Double Dipper” (1.07). Desperate to impress his co-worker and secret love-interest Wendy, and “haunted” by his lack of self-worth, Dipper roams the rooms of the Shack and discovers a very old and enchanted photocopier machine; the machine copies “people”, making clones of the original. The “clones” themselves are a manifestation of horror, a presence that breaks the boundaries of propriety, and worries its viewers in view of its very existence. The cloning copy machine is strongly intertextual as it not only provides conceptual links to numerous cinematic and literary examples where a “haunted machine” threats to destroy humanity— in examples such as Stephen King’s Christine (1983) —but also evokes the threat of “doubles”, another powerfully Gothic conduit (Royle). As it is often the case in Gravity Falls, Dipper loses control of the situation, and the dozens of clones he unwittingly created take over his life and threaten to annihilate him. Dipper must destroy the “horror” —the clones—and confront the “terror”—his haunting insecurities and personal secrets—in order to restore the original balance. This intertextual dynamic validates Hogle’s contention that, in Gothic narratives, both the physical and the psychological “hauntings” rise from view “within the antiquated space” and “manifest unresolved conflicts that can no longer be successfully buried from view” (Hogle 2). The “hidden secrets” of Gravity Falls, and their manifestations through both Gothic horror and terror, are clearly connected to explorations of human nature and deeply existentialist crises that are put forward through humour and parody. These range from Grunkle Stan’ inability to commit to a relationship—and his feeling that life is slipping away in his old age—to the twins’ constant insecurities about pre-teen amorous encounters. Not to mention the knowledge that, in reality, Dipper and Mabel were “abandoned” by their mother in the care of Stan, as she had other plans for the summer. As Round has argued, the Gothic’s most significant development seems to have been the “transvaluation of moral issues”, as notions of “monsters have become less clear cut” (18). The series’ successful engagement with the wider “monstrous” intertext, and its connection to moral issues and “hidden” preoccupations, uncovers the ability of the Gothic, as Catherine Spooner puts it, to act as “commodity”, no longer a marginalised cultural presence, but a fully purchasable item in consumer-capitalist systems (Spooner 2007). The evocations of both horror and terror in Gravity Falls are, naturally, unavoidably diluted, a homage as much as a direct encounter. The use of the monstrous and the haunted in the series is domesticated, made accessible so that it can be presented to a younger and more commercial audience. The profound interlacings with the Gothic intertext remain, however, unchanged, as the series reconciles its subversive, uncanny elements with the inevitably conventional, Disney-fied context in which it is placed. References Blackmore, Leigh. “Marvels and Horrors: Terry Dowling’s Clowns at Midnight”. 21st Century Gothic: Great Gothic Novels Since 2000, ed. Danel Olson. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2011. 87-97. Gravity Falls. Disney Television. Disney Channel, Los Angeles. 2012-2014. Hogle, Jerrold. “Introduction: The Gothic in Western Culture”. The Cambridge Companion of Gothic Fiction, ed. Jerrold Hogle. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. 1-20. Lecercle, Jean-Jacques. “The Kitten’s Nose: Dracula and Witchcraft”. The Gothic, ed. Fred Botting. D.S Brewer: Cambridge, 2001. 71-86. Mandal, Anthony. “Intertext”. The Encyclopaedia of the Gothic, ed. David Punter, Bill Hughes and Andrew Smith. Basingstoke: Wiley, 2013. 350-355. Mishra, Vijay. The Gothic Sublime. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994. Round, Julia. Gothic in Comics and Graphic Novels. Jefferson: McFarland, 2014. Royle, Nicholas. The Uncanny. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003. Sage, Victor. “Irish Gothic: C.R. Maturin and J.S. LeFanu. A Companion to the Gothic, ed. David Punter. Oxford; Blackwell, 2001. 81-93. Spooner, Catherine. Contemporary Gothic. London: Reaktion, 2007.

Graffiti remains a particularly resilient aspect of the contemporary urban landscape and as a pillar of Hip-Hop culture enjoys an enduring popularity as a subject of academic inquiry.1 As the practice of graffiti is so historically broad it is within the context of Hip-Hop culture that I will limit my observations. In this tradition, graffiti is often rationalised as either a rebellious attempt at territorial reclamation by an alienated subculture or reduced to a practice of elaborate attention seeking. This type of account is offered in titles such as Nelson George's Hip-Hop America (George 1998, 14-15) and David Toop's Rap Attack series (Toop 2000, 11-14). Whilst I am in accord with their respective analyses of graffiti's role as a territorial practice, these discussions concentrate on graffiti's social significance and neglect the immanent logistical processes that precede artistic practice. A Deleuze-Guattarian approach would emphasise the process over the final product, as they believe, '[w]riting has nothing to do with signifying. It has to do with surveying, mapping, even realms that are yet to come' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 4-5).2 This undermines the self-contained approach to graffiti as artistic signification and offers a more encompassing approach to investigating the graffiti writers' desire to physically connect with the architecture of the city. It was William Upski Wimsatt's 'underground bestseller' Bomb the Suburbs that inspired my Deleuze-Guattarian perspective on the processes behind graffiti. After reading the testimonies of the author and his peers about the niceties of underground graffiti writing, I was struck by the profound affective relations to technology they described. Many discussions of graffiti, academic or otherwise, relegate the artists' exploration of the urban environment and its technologies to be of secondary importance to the production of the artwork itself. Wimsatt's affectionate account of a city discovered via graffiti writing appeared to have resonance with the Deleuze-Guattarian concept of 'becoming'. For Deleuze (both alone and in conjunction with Felix Guattari), the concept of 'becoming' was a complex redefinition, or perhaps destruction, of the traditional dichotomy between 'subject' and 'object'. Baring in mind that this concept was developed across the breadth of his work, here I offer a concise, and perhaps more readily accessible definition of 'becoming' from Claire Colebrook's Gilles Deleuze: 'The human becomes more than itself - by becoming-hybrid with what is not itself. This creates 'lines of flight'; from life itself we imagine all the becomings of life, using the human power of imagination to overcome the human' (Colebrook 2001, 129). Using 'becoming' as a conceptual approach provides a rather more productive consideration of the graffiti writers' endeavours rather than simply reducing their status to simple archetypes such as 'criminal', 'rebel' or even 'visual artist'. In this way we could look at their ongoing and active engagement with the city's architecture as an ongoing 'becoming' with urban technologies. This is manifest in the graffiti writers' willingness to break the law and even risk physical danger in order to find new ways of moving about the city. Bomb the Suburbs outlines the trials and tribulations of Chicago based, 'old school' graffiti artist Wimsatt who writes about his first-hand observations on the decaying urban environment within major US cities. Bomb the Suburbs is both a handbook of Hip-Hop culture, as well as an astute piece of social analysis. Wimsatt's approach is self-consciously provocative, and shining through all the revolutionary rhetoric is essentially a love affair with the city and its technologies. 'As a writer, there is nothing I love better, nowhere in the city I love more, than the CTA (Chicago Transit Authority). Whether it's climbing on the tracks, playing in the tunnels, or just chillin' in between cars, I think of the CTA as my personal jungle gym. The fact is, we graffiti writers have a very close relationship with the train lines. Yet it is our goal to fuck them up' (Wimsatt 1994, 143). Such an extraordinary physical relationship with the city's technology obviously surpasses the general public's more mundane interactions. The amount of dedication required by the graffiti writers to scale buildings, trains and bridges, obviously goes beyond a mere desire of exposure for their art. Hence I regard the writers as having perhaps the strongest affective bond with the city of any resident, as their pioneering of unorthodox navigational feats requires a level of commitment that far exceeds the rest of the population. Thus the artistry justifies the means of the exploratory process and the graffiti merely serves as a premise to interact with the city's architecture. Wimsatt's enthusiastic account of the CTA infers the desire to realise new interactions that surpass the rather more average ambition of getting on and off at the right stops. An inordinate amount of attention to potential vehicles of exposure, such as the city's rail system becomes a requirement of any self-respecting graffiti writer. Hence they acquire an intricate knowledge of the logistical processes that keep the city's transportation system ticking over. Detailed knowledge of platforms, schedules, right up to employee shift changes are necessary and each of these aspects in turn open out into a variety of assemblages that offer insight into the inner workings of the city. Unfortunately for these urban explorers, their unorthodox interactions with the city architecture are invariably considered 'illegal', and reminiscent of the Foucauldian assertion, the transgression of law only adds to affective investment. This transgression of 'the law', also offers potential for new becomings, and the graffiti writers, in turn, acquire a 'virtual' nature as 'becoming-criminal' or 'becoming-hero', even perhaps perpetuating the struggle for an alternative 'becoming-law'. Hence the dour reflection at the end of Wimsatt's quote which highlights his exasperation over the underlying political tensions that conspire toward his beloved rail system's destruction. It is perhaps the barriers, both physical and legal that are placed between the writers and their beloved lines, which fosters the type of emotional displacement that incites such revenge. To prove that the law can't contain their desire, the writers ironically destroy the city's property so that the technology will forever bear the mark of their challenge. Wimsatt doesn't advocate this destruction, but rather he is trying to implore other writers to see the error of their ways, 'If we love trains, then bombing the CTA is biting the hand that feeds us' (Wimsatt 1994, 143). His idealistic alternative is to 'bomb the suburbs' (for the uninitiated the bombing they refer to is of the acrylic as opposed to the explosive kind) to symbolically deflect attention from the rail yards and into the homes of the indifferent. 'Bomb The Suburbs means let's celebrate the city. Let's celebrate the ghetto and the few people who aren't running away from it. Let's stop fucking up the city. Let's stop fucking up the ghetto. Let's start defending it and making it work for us' (11). Emphasising the division between the urban and suburban way of life, Wimsatt beckons graffiti writers to 'bomb the suburbs' in what I perceive, as an unorthodox means of inclusion. This call to violate suburban property is purely a scare tactic, an avenue that Wimsatt admits he is not keen to explore (143). This contempt for the suburbs is directed at what is perceived as its residents' collective escape from an inclusive dialogue. The graffiti artists are frustrated over the suburban residents' economic control of their inner city space and they have no accessible political vehicle to voice this complaint. In the minds of the graffiti writers, the suburban population is ungrateful, as the technology such as the CTA is taken for granted, or not even used at all. Wimsatt hates the insular culture of the car owning commuters that symbolise the suburban condition. They are deemed to pollute the city and will subsequently be the first to retreat from any adversity as their collective goal has been to acquire the means to take an out of sight, out of mind approach to urban life. Thus, Wimsatt blames the suburban population for the continuing malaise suffered by inner city residents. Their collective exodus to the suburbs has negatively impacted on city funding and continues to erode the quality of life of its inhabitants. Wimsatt's admonition of the suburban condition begins in the introduction on the front cover of the book stating, 'The suburbs is more than just an unfortunate geographical location, it is an unfortunate state-of-mind. It's the American state-of-mind, founded on fear, conformity, shallowness of character, and dullness of imagination.' Yet Wimsatt would have difficulty convincing his posse of writers to 'bomb the suburbs' for a solely political purpose as the attributes of the city that make it so accessible conversely makes the suburbs logistically difficult to conquer. By his own admission the pleasure of graffiti writing lies in the thrill of exploring the city's architecture as this process in its entirety forms an affective assemblage. For Deleuze and Guattari these 'affects are becomings' (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 256), perhaps simply understood as the affective intensities that influence our movement through the world, and this is how the graffiti writers integrate themselves into the matrix of the city assemblage. Furthermore, Deleuze and Guattari offer that art consists of blocs of affects and percepts and that its role is to draw attention to these processes (Deleuze and Guattari 1994, 163-199), '[a]ffects are sensible experiences in their singularity, liberated from organising systems of representation' (Colebrook 2001, 22). Thus graffiti operates on a purely affective level and the works of its anonymous authors, whose collective texts are often indecipherable, appear to have little cultural relevance to the general public. This is demonstrative of a Deleuze-Guattarian reading where graffiti's significance as 'writing' is actually negligible. The pragmatic significance of graffiti in terms of territorial marking is its role as a refrain, providing infinite transference of signification. The refrains create relations of corresponding affective assemblages and in this way the graffiti is able to generate a range of audience positions. Whilst it may indicate signify a hostile environment for some, it similarly provides information to others or is perhaps merely treated with indifference. To this extent the recollections of Wimsatt and his peers recall Deleuzean empiricism and its 'commitment to experience,' as '[o]ne way of thinking empiricism is to see all life as a flow and connection of interacting bodies, or 'desiring machines'. These connections form regularities, which can then be organised through 'social machines' (Colebrook 2001, 89). Graffiti consciously draws attention to its procedure thus creating corresponding affective assemblages, and the ensuing relations inform audience opinions. Many would contend that graffiti is inherently destructive and would necessarily disagree with my claim that it derives from a love of the city. Dissenting opinion is invariably based on relative aesthetic merits and as a result will always be inconclusive. The only thing that can be tangibly measured is the ownership of capital and in this context graffiti will always remain the visual sign of a losing battle. Graffiti is the evidence of its writers' respective status as 'ghosts in the machine'. Presented in terms of information theory, we could view graffiti as feedback, either signal or noise depending on how you are positioned. As a permanent fixture of the urban environment it is indicative of a city that is all but running smoothly. The nature of this underlying antagonism is elaborated in Houston A Baker jr's Black Studies, Rap and the Academy where graffiti is 'perceived as the ethnic pollution of public space' by the 'other' (Baker 1993, 43). Baker then proceeds to the heart of the matter, questioning the values inherent in the regulation of public space, 'the contest was urbanely proprietorial: Who owns the public spaces? What constitutes information and what constitutes noise? Just what is visually and audibly pure and what precisely is noise pollution or graffiti?'. He contends that community opinion over such aesthetic maintenance of the public space will continue to be dominated by corporate capital. 'Urban public spaces of the late twentieth century are spaces of audiovisual contest. It's something like this: My billboards and neon and handbills and high-decibel-level television advertising are purely for the public good. Your boom boxes and graffiti are evil pollutants. Erase them, shut them down! (43)' Graffiti writers are fully aware that any attempt for consensus over aesthetics is futile as the urban subcultures have little political clout. Their ongoing battle is a vain attempt at seeking alternate ways to access this public space and will continue to sustain casualties both architectural and human. Thus the visibility of graffiti on a train line provides an affective assemblage that is as intrinsic to the network as the tracks themselves. As public property3 the railway is installed to serve the collective population and graffiti writers, it can be argued, just seek to use it in an unorthodox manner. Their work is undoubtedly just as creative and perhaps less objectionable than most billboard ads. Advertising on the other hand, represents the collusion of private property ownership that informs public opinion. This view perpetuates the 'reasonable' assumption that advertisements are an acceptable use of the public space based on the 'logic' that they are spatially contained and regulated by capital. Alienated from that sphere of capital ownership, graffiti impinges on this private stranglehold of public aesthetics. In this capacity graffiti artists invite a momentary existential awakening, drawing attention to our internalised self-regulation. It is such conditioning that in turn may provoke us to mouth an obligatory 'tut tut'. Yet, running into this visual 'other' requires self-reflection, caught up in our daily routine we are oblivious to our physical surroundings and only realise what we are missing when it has been tampered with. The writers' unorthodox interaction with city architecture questions our fetishizing of blank walls, and our instilled lack of practical interaction with our surrounds. Nevertheless, the reality is that graffiti signifies to a large percentage of the population a sense of danger, a side effect that Wimsatt is indeed aware and is trying to discourage. Bomb the Suburbs is concerned with mapping out relations within the city's delicate ecosystem and how the mere act of graffiti affects a feedback loop that ends up in the pockets of the corporates: 'Every time we fat cap an outside, or even scratch-bomb a window, we've got guys with last names like Ford, Toyota, and Isuzu with us all the way, cheering us on - we're helping them fuck up public transportation for free' (Wimsatt 1994, 142). So the more graffiti, the fewer people ride the subway and will instead continue to buy cars and perpetuate the urban/suburban divide. Wimsatt and his peers are embittered that those who actually own most of the city care so little about it that they leave for the suburbs every night, to retreat from the 'urban noise' epitomised by graffiti culture to one of secluded suburban silence. Hence Wimsatt's enthusiasm for a communal project of graffiti led urban renewal believing it will liven up neglected and plain forgotten parts of the city (104). He goes out of his way to visit the more ravaged and neglected cities in the US, dreaming of how graffiti could help promote reinvestment, both emotional and financial, back into the heart of the city. Wimsatt also realises this can only be achieved with the grass roots support of the graffiti writing community themselves. 'I'm not even going to talk about the train yards. Yes, they're easy, but you're not allowed to bomb them as a personal favor to me. Cleveland is struggling not to become another Detroit and scare all its capital off to the suburbs. If you're going to do graffiti in Cleveland, do it to help Cleveland back up, not to kick it while it's down' (43). Yet his vision of urban renewal is one that scorns permission for legal designs (113) as the impetus for this project must derive organically from the graffiti writers' collective process of observation via urban exploration. For them, legal design defeats the purpose of this empirical process, and for this reason the artists believe there is no challenge in doing 'pieces' in the easy spots as a necessary part of the process requires the 'becoming' with the urban environment. The graffiti writers' lifestyle is itself an experimental project intended as a direct challenge on the 'conventional' epitomised by suburban existence. The graffiti markings operate as Deleuze-Guattarian 'lines of flight' that indicate that there are alternate ways of moving about the city, replete with a set of refrains to indicate the existence of a suitably alternative culture. We are aware that the smooth running of the urban capitalist machine requires the striations that demarcate no-go areas and territories forbidden to pubic access. To paraphrase Deleuze and Guattari, that in order to run smoothly, you have to striate, and there is a lot of wasted space created in the process. The graffiti writers merely seek to claw back these neglected territories. Notes 1. The following list is provided as a guide, and is by no means considered exhaustive, of some of the key texts employed in my research: Castleman, Craig. Getting Up: Subway Graffiti in New York. New York: MIT Press, 1984; Chalfant, Henry, and James Prigoff. Spraycan Art. New York, N.Y.: Thames and Hudson, 1987; Baker, Houston A. Black Studies, Rap, and the Academy. Black Literature and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993; Wimsatt, William 'Upski'. Bomb the Suburbs. New York: Soft Skull Press, 1994; George, Nelson. Hip Hop America. London: Penguin, 1998; Poschardt, Ulf. DJ Culture. Trans. Shaun Whiteside. London: Quartet Books, 1998; Light, Alan. The Vibe History of Hip Hop. Three Rivers Press, New York, 1999; Ogg, Alex, and David Upshal. The Hip-Hop Years: A History of Rap. London: Channel 4 Books, 1999; Toop, David. Rap Attack # 3: African Rap to Global Hip Hop. London: Serpent's Tail, 2000; Gonzales, Michael A. 'Hip-Hop Nation: From Rockin' the House to Planet Rock' in Crossroads. Seattle, Marquand Books, 2000. 2. Note: The relation of this quote to the practice of graffiti writing was previously outlined in Richard Higgins article 'Machines, Big and Little' available at http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/gsandss/sl... My discovery of this essay occurred during my research and whilst my own analysis takes a different approach I am obviously compelled to acknowledge my familiarity with this excellent piece of work. 3. Although this situation is rapidly changing as railway's status as public property is being slowly compromised as its running is increasingly handled by the private sector. References Baker, Houston A. jr. (1993) Black Studies, Rap, and the Academy. Black Literature and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Castleman, Craig. (1984) Getting Up: Subway Graffiti in New York. New York: MIT Press. Chalfant, Henry, and James Prigoff. (1987) Spraycan Art. New York, N.Y.: Thames and Hudson. Colebrook, Claire. (2001) Gilles Deleuze. London: Routledge. Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. (1987) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi. London: Athlone Press. Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. (1994) What Is Philosophy? Trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchill. New York: Columbia University Press. George, Nelson. (1998) Hip Hop America. London: Penguin. Gonzales, Michael A. (2000) 'Hip-Hop Nation: From Rockin' the House to Planet Rock.' Crossroads. Seattle: Marquand Books. Light, Alan. (1999) The Vibe History of Hip Hop. Three Rivers Press, New York. Ogg, Alex, and David Upshal. (1999) The Hip-Hop Years: A History of Rap. London: Channel 4 Books. Poschardt, Ulf. (1998) DJ Culture. Trans. Shaun Whiteside. London: Quartet Books. Toop, David. (2000) Rap Attack # 3: African Rap to Global Hip Hop. London: Serpent's Tail. Wimsatt, William. (1994) 'Upski'. Bomb the Suburbs. New York: Soft Skull Press. Links http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/gsandss/slavic/papers/rhizome.html. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Scannell, John. "Becoming-City" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.2 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0205/becoming.php>. Chicago Style Scannell, John, "Becoming-City" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 2 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0205/becoming.php> ([your date of access]). APA Style Bennett, Simon A.. (2002) A City Divided. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(2). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0205/divided.php> ([your date of access]).

Culture: Its Many Meanings One of the problems we encounter in dealing with culture is that there are so many different meanings and definitions attached to the term. We think of culture two ways: first, in terms of aesthetic matters (relative to thearts) and second, as a concept used by anthropologists to describe the way people live. There are, so I understand, something like a hundred different definitions of culture used by anthropologists. The Origins of the Term "Culture" The word 'culture' comes from the Latin cultus, which means 'care', and from the French colere which means 'to till' as in 'till the ground'. There are many terms that stem from the word culture. For example, there is the term 'cult' which suggests some kind of a religious organisation. We are continually amazed at the power cults have to shape our behavior, to brainwash us -- to turn intelligent and educated people into fanatics. Here we are dealing with the power of charismatic personalities and of groups over individuals. If cults can exercise enormous power over individuals and groups of people, can't we say that cultures also can do the same thing, though usually not to the same extreme degree? There is also the term 'cultivated', which means something that has been grown or, in the realm of aesthetics and the arts, sophisticated taste. Just as plants only exist because they are cared for by some cultivator, over a period of time, so people's taste and cultivation only are developed by education and training. It takes time to develop a refined sensibility, to become discriminating, to appreciate texts that are difficult and complex and not immediately satisfying. Bacteriologists also speak about cultures, but they use the term to describe the bacteria that are grown in Petri dishes if they are given suitable media (sources of nourishment). This matter of bacteria growing in media may be an important metaphor for us: just as bacteria need media to grow into culture, so do human beings need cultures to survive and develop themselves. We don't do it all on our own. In the chart below I show the interesting parallels: Bacteriology Bacteria Grow in media Form cultures Sociology/Anthropology Humans Affected by media Form cultures Of course we are much more complex than bacteria; in truth, each of us form a kind of medium for countless kinds of bacteria that inhabit our mouths and various other parts of our bodies. Bacteriology involves the cultivation and study of micro-organisms (bacteria) in prepared nutrients and the study of media (and what is often called cultural criticism nowadays) involves the study of individuals and groups in a predominantly, but not completely, mass-mediated culture. Not all culture is mass mediated. An Anthropological Definition of Culture Let me offer a typical anthropological definition of culture. It is by Henry Pratt Fairchild and appeared in his Dictionary of Sociology and Related Sciences: A collective name for all behavior patterns socially acquired and transmitted by means of symbols; hence a name for all the distinctive achievements of human groups, including not only such items as language, tool-making, industry, art, science, law, government, morals and religion, but also the material instruments or artifacts in which cultural achievements are embodied and by which intellectual cultural features are given practical effect, such as buildings, tools, machines, communication devices, art objects, etc. (80) Let's consider some of the topics Fairchild mentions. Behavior Patterns. We are talking about codes and patterns of behavior here that are found in groups of people. Socially Acquired. We are taught these behavior patterns as we grow up in a family in some geographical location and are profoundly affected by the family we are born into, its religion, and all kinds of other matters. Socially Acquired. We are taught these behavior patterns as we grow up in a family in some geographical location and are profoundly affected by the family we are born into, its religion, and all kinds of other matters. The Distinctive Achievements of Human Groups. It is in groups that we become human and become enculturated or acculturated (two words for the same thing, for all practical purposes). We have our own distinctive natures but we are also part of society. Artifacts in which cultural achievements are embodied. The artifacts we are talking about here are the popular culture texts carried in the various media and other non-mediated aspects of popular culture (or not directly mediated) such as fashions in clothes, food preferences, artifacts (what anthropologists call 'material culture'), language use, sexual practices and related matters. We know that a great deal of our popular culture, while not carried by the media, is nevertheless profoundly affected by it. We can see, then, that culture is a very complicated phenomenon that plays some kind of a role in shaping our consciousness and our behavior. You may think you are immune from the impact of the media and popular culture, but that is a delusion that is generated, I would suggest, by the media. We think we are not affected in significant ways by the media and popular culture (sometimes called mass mediated culture) and culture in general but we are wrong. Culture affects us but it doesn't necessarily determine every act we do; though some scholars, who believe the media are very powerful, might argue with this point. Falling Off the Map: What Travel Literature Reveals For a graphic example of how cultures differ, let me offer two quotations from the travel writer Pico Iyer from his book Falling Off the Map: Some Lonely Places of the World, a collection of travel articles about seldom-visited places (by American travelers, at least). Saigon: the only word for Saigon is 'wild'. One evening I counted more than a hundred two-wheel vehicles racing past me in the space of sixty seconds, speeding around the jam-packed streets as if on some crazy merry-go-round, a mad carnival without a ringmaster; I walked into a dance club and found myself in the midst of a crowded floor of hip gay boys in sleeveless T-shirts doing the latest moves to David Byrne; outside again, I was back inside the generic Asian swirl, walking through tunnels of whispers and hisses. "You want boom-boom?" "Souvenir for you dah-ling?" "Why you not take special massage?" Shortly before midnight, the taxi girls stream out of their nightclubs in their party dresses and park their scooters outside the hotels along 'Simultaneous Uprising' Street. (134-5) Compare his description of Saigon with his portrait of Reykjavik, Iceland, equally as fascinating and fantastic but considerably different from Saigon. Even 'civilization' seems to offer no purchase for the mind here: nothing quite makes sense. Iceland boasts the largest number of poets, presses, and readers per capita in the world: Reykjavik, a town smaller than Rancho Cucamonga, California, has five daily newspapers, and to match the literary production of Iceland, the U.S. would have to publish twelve hundred new books a day. Iceland has the oldest living language in Europe; its people read the medieval sagas as if they were tomorrow's newspaper and all new concepts, such as 'radio' and 'telephone', are given poetical medieval equivalents. Roughly three eldest children in every four are illegitimate here, and because every son of Kristjan is called Kristjansson, and every daughter Kristjansdottir, mothers always have different surnames from their children (and in any case are rarely living with the fathers). The first day I ever spent in 'Surprise City' (as Reykjavik is called), I found golden-haired princesses and sword-wielding knights enacting fairy-tale sagas on the main bridge in the capital. (67-8) We can see that there are considerable differences between Saigon and Reykjavik, though just as (to be fair) Iyer points out the incredible differences between cities in Vietnam, such as the differences between Saigon and Hue. Iyer's description of the landscape of Iceland may help explain the national character of the Icelanders. As he writes: I knew, before I visited, a little about the epidemic oddness of the place: there was no beer in Iceland in 1987, and no television on Thursdays; there were almost no trees, and no vegetables. Iceland is an ungodly wasteland of volcanoes and tundra and Geysir, the mother of geysirs, a country so lunar that NASA astronauts did their training there. (67) There has to be some influence of this remarkable landscape and climate, of the Iceland geographical location, the amount of light and darkness in which people live, upon the people who live there and there has to be some influence of the jungle and the climate of Vietnam on its people. What we become is, it seems to me, due to some curious combination of factors involving our natures (that is, the hard-wired elements of our personalities) and our cultures, with the matter of chance playing a big role as well. What we become is, it seems to me, due to some curious combination of factors involving our natures (that is, the hard-wired elements of our personalities) and our cultures, with the matter of chance playing a big role as well. References Fairchild, Henry Pratt. Dictionary of Sociology and Related Sciences. Totawa, NY: Littlefield, Adams & Co., 1967. Iyer, Pico. Falling Off the Map: Some Lonely Places of the World. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Arthur Asa Berger. "The Meanings of Culture." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.2 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0005/meaning.php>. Chicago style: Arthur Asa Berger, "The Meanings of Culture," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 2 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0005/meanings.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Arthur Asa Berger. (2000) The meanings of culture. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(2). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0005/meaning.php> ([your date of access]).

The contemporary debate on ecology is largely influenced by the theses of the French anthropologist Philippe Descola, who in his masterpiece published in 2005 “Par-delà nature et culture” describes how different cultures relate to what the West calls nature1. Nature, in this framework, is itself a cultural element differently accessible according to the way it is thought and described. This is a very important contribution and not only for European anthropology. However, one of the theses of this book is particularly problematic: the one that leads Descola to recognize in Western culture a “naturalist” attitude, that is, objectifying the rest of non-human living beings. In the West, “nature” would be unified and defined by its very absence of soul or spirit, whereas other cultures recognize a form of subjectivity in everything that lives and for this very reason are forced to think in “nature” a “cultural” plurality that the West does not perceive. The problematic aspect of this thesis is the idea that animism, the attitude that recognizes the existence of a mind or self-consciousness even outside of humanity or a small number of animals, would be impossible or a minority in Western cultures. To this hypothesis, the one that Western culture devoid of any animist sensibility, was actually already opposed a few years before the publication of Descola’s masterpiece another great European anthropologist, Alfred Gell. At the end of the last century, Gell published a masterpiece entitled “Art and Agency. An Anthropological Theory”2, in which he described the cultural forms through which, even in Western culture, becomes possible to attribute agency to artifacts and objects and then practice a form of structural animism for our societies, even if irreflective and unconscious. First of all, there is a very common form of domestic and everyday animism, thanks to which we attribute personality to things: this is the case of children and their relationship with dolls and soft toys, but also of adults, every time they are surprised to talk to a car or a computer. It is, however, an ironic and metastable attitude: in this kind of behavior, often the dominant attitude is that of as if, of play, of fiction, which means that the human subject who, for example, talks to objects or places himself in front of them as if he were in front of another subject, can regularly enter and leave this kind of posture. The attribution of subjectivity is not an act that obliges us to some consequence and has no temporal continuity. Yet there is another form of animism, deeper and more deeply rooted, in which the recognition of the subjective character of objects is neither ironic nor unstable: this is art. In Western society there is a sphere in which we are all unconsciously but invariably animists: we actually call art that cultural space in which we relate to objects as if they were subjects. It is enough to think of what happens in a museum: a museum, after all, is a warehouse full of old objects for which we have a sort of special veneration. Every day, in the “western” world, millions of people enter these enormous storerooms and come across more or less finished portions of linen cloth covered with layers of pigment, or structures of steel, marble, wood: yet, instead of seeing only geometric shapes of extended matter (as the cultural attitude that Descola calls naturalism would presuppose) they see the presence of a subject or a soul, they read opinions, or a vision of the world of someone who existed hundreds or thousands of years before. When we deal with an artistic artifact (but we could also say when we are in front of a book or a written page), we accept the idea that it contains a psychological, emotional, mental intensity that is present regardless of the non-anatomical nature of the material in which it insists. That is to say, in front of artistic objects we are all animists. We don’t even need to go into museums to be one. We are animist even before we open our front door. The British anthropologist who founded material anthropology, Daniel Miller, published a very nice book a few years ago about the way we accumulate things at home, called “The Comfort of Things”3. He looked at some thirty apartments on one street in London and described the different ways people use objects to furnish their homes. Miller considers that this form of choices is a kind of small personal cosmology: deciding what to keep at home and what to throw away is not just an aesthetic or economic decision, it is a cosmological decision, because it involves trying to reconstruct the world differently. And vice versa, everything in the house seems to exude the personality of those who live there: things take on the same status as their subjects. From this point of view, houses are vernacular spaces of animism: places where matter is always imbued with soul and subjectivity. Home is that space in which we are used to relating to everything objective as if it were the presence of something subjective4. Once again, we are animists, without needing to be conscious of it. Art, design and architecture are, in this sense, immense archives and repositories of collective animism that educate us to see subjects where anyone else sees only objects; they accustom us to confer agentivity on any portion of matter, to relate to the world as if it were populated by souls different from our own. In the gaze of these three forms of knowledge, matter is endowed with a spiritual life that is the same as that which allows us to be conscious, sentient and self-reflective. This is why the ecological problem must be transformed into an aesthetic problem. A great Australian eco-feminist who lived in the last century, Val Plumwood, had identified the main reason for the ecological crisis with the absence of animism or “panpsychism” in Western culture: it is because we are unable to recognize the subjectivity of plants, animals and bacteria that we are guilty of genocide on a planetary scale5. The solution, according to Plumvood, would be to disperse the creativity and agentivity, that theology has attributed only to God and his copy – the human species – to all the inhabitants of the earth, allowing to consider evolution itself as «the proof of the existence of a mind present in nature, of the intelligence that implies the elaboration and differentiation of species». It would therefore be a matter of extending to nature the supplementary animism with which art, architecture and design require ourselves to relate to our own artifacts. Yet the analysis of these unconscious forms of animism or “european” panpsychism does not end here. In fact, in these cases we are dealing with positions that allow us to relate socially to matter as if it were endowed with agentivity and subjectivity, without constructing a real ontology. But there are other examples, more radical, in which, even if unconsciously, a form of ontological animism has been achieved. Bruno Latour had suggested some years ago that even science is an immense reservoir of unconscious animism. Applying to scientific laboratories the method that ethnography of the last century applied to non-European societies without writing, Latour realized that science, precisely where it keeps repeating that there is an ontological divide between subjects and objects, never stops transgressing this division. Scientists cannot help but relate to machines and matter as if they were subjects: they attribute to them the ability to act but also the ability to speak. We do the same every time we think that the thermometer “tells us” our temperature. Thus, Pasteur’s great revolution was more political than purely ontological: it was more a question of recognizing the political agentiveness of microbes than of discovering their mere existence. Science does not cease to ontologically constitute its objects into subjects, even if it claims exactly the opposite. More generally, if European modernity affirms a fundamental metaphysical division (a constitution in Latour’s words) between subjects and objects, it does not cease to confuse the two categories and make objects live in the manner of subjects. In some way we have always been animists6. That is, we should stop linking the animist attitude to a specific culture or era: it is a universal attitude that is proper to any living being. Latour’s insight is however important for another reason. If science always does the opposite of what it says, that is, if, while claiming to relate to what it studies as objects, it actually treats them as if they were subjects, then we must read any scientific paper as if it were a huge exercise in ethnography of the non-human. Whether it be botany or zoology, virology or electronics, computer science or physics, everything we have grouped under the somewhat claudicant rubric of natural science is nothing but an investigation of the behavior of subjects who do not share our form. Often, exactly like the anthropologists of the last century, we have pretended to derive universal rules from their behavior; yet beyond the conclusions, we should grasp in this literature only an exercise of falsetto in which ethnography does its best not to appear as such, but a sort of ventriloquism of the non-human by interposed person. And it is through this point of observation that the world becomes animated: there is no need to penetrate further into the matter of this world, there is no need to add discoveries to what we know, there is no need, above all, to deny inanely a culture in order to invoke in a simplistic way the conversion to another culture. It is enough to observe differently the knowledge that surrounds us and grasp in them their own reality: the knowledge that surrounds us will also become deposits of animism that will allow us to recognize the presence of subjects where we used to see only objects.

The latest reality program about weight loss makeover, Australian Channel Seven’s Bringing Sexy Back maintained the dominant frame of fat as bad, shameful and unsexy. Similar to other programs’ point of view, only slim bodies could claim to be healthy and sexy. Conversely the Fat Acceptance movement presents fat as beautiful, sexy, and healthy. But what did online audiences in 2014 think about Bringing Sexy Back? In this article online-viewer-generated comments are analysed to find out: a) whether audiences challenged and contested the dominant framing; and b) what phrases did they use to do this. The research task is a discourse analysis in which key words and phrases are highlighted and colour coded as categories and patterns begin to emerge. My intention is to represent the expressions of the participants responding to the articles and or online forums about the program. The focus is on the ‘language-in-use’ (Gee 34), in particular their gut reactions to the idea of whether only slim people can be sexy and their experience of viewing the program. Selected television websites, online television forums and blogs will be analysed. Introduction The latest makeover television program drawing on the obesity-epidemic discourse Bringing Sexy Back (BSB) promises the audience that by the end of the program participants will have bought their sexy back. Sexy in the program is equated with one’s younger and slimmer self; the program host Samantha Armytage (from Sunrise the national Australian morning show) tells viewers sexy can be reclaimed if participants (from their late 30s and up to 51 years) drop kilos, commit to a strenuous exercise regime, and re-style their wardrobe. Experts, the usual suspects, are bought in—the medical machinery, the personal trainer, the stylist, and the hairdresser etc.—to assess, admonish, advise and appraise the participants. At the final reveal the audience—made up of family, friends and the local community—show enthusiasm for the aesthetic desirability of the participants slimmer sexier body as evidenced by descriptors such as “wow”, and “oh my God” as well as an outpouring of emotion such as crying and squeals of delight. Previous researchers of fat-shaming television programs have found audience’s reactions divided: some audience members see it as motivating; others see it as humiliating; and others see it as what the contestants deserve (Holland, Blood and Thomas; Rodan, Ellis and Lebeck; Sender and Sullivan)! I want to find out if online and social media audiences of the relatively tame makeover program BSB, which features individual Australians and couples who are overweight and obese, challenge and contest the dominant framing. In my analysis of the phrases online audiences’ have used about BSB, posters mostly found the program inspiring and motivating. From this inauspicious first strike, I will push onto examine the phrases posters have used to respond to the program. The paper begins with a short background about the program. The key elements of the makeover television genre are then discussed. Following this, I provide an analysis of the program’s official BSB Facebook site, and unofficial viewer-generated sites, such as the bubhub, TVTONIGHT, MamaMia, The Hoopla and the hashtag #sexybackau on Twitter. Posters to these sites were regular, infrequent or intermittent viewers. My approach to the analysis of these online forums and social media sites is a discourse analysis that examines “language-in-use”—as well as other elements such as values, symbols, tools and thinking styles—so as to identify and track tacit knowledge—that is, meanings emerging from obesity-epidemic discourse (Gee 34, 40–41). Such a method is apt given its capacity to analyse contributors’ spontaneous statements of their feelings—in particular their gut reactions to the program and the participants. The paper ends with my findings and conclusions. Bringing Sexy Back: Background Information Screened in 2014, season one of BSB format consists of a host Samantha Armytage, fitness trainer Cameron Byrnes and stylist Jules Sebastian and her team of hairdresser, groomers etc. Undoubtedly, part of the program’s construction is to select participants who appeal to a broad range of viewers. Participants’ ages range from 21 years (Courney Gollings) to 51 years (Vicki Gollings). The individuals or couples who make up the series include: Ned (truck driver), Sam and Gary (parents of two boys), Lisa Wilson (single mother and hairdresser), Vicki and Courtney Golling (mother and daughter), Livio Caldarone (pizza/small restaurant owner), and Paula Beckton (mother of four), The first episode was aired on Australia’s Channel Seven on 12 August 2014 and the final episode on 13 January 2015. This particular series consisted of 9 episodes. In this paper I focus on the six episodes that were aired in 2014. Generally each individual episode consisted of: the intervention, presenting medical facts about participant’s weight; the helper figures setting training and diet regimes; the trials leading to transformation; and the happy ending evident in the reveal. Essentially, these segments illustrate that the program series is highly contrived and they also demonstrate the program’s method of challenging participants to lose weight. Makeover Television I now provide a further construct to assist the reader’s understanding of ‘what is going on’ in the BSB program, which fits within the genre of makeover program. As reflected in the literature, makeover television has some or all of the following ingredients: personal fitness trainer as expertstylist and grooming expertsfamily members and contestant’s reflexivity (reflect on their own behaviour)new self-celebrated photo shootscontestant winning challengessymbols, such as the dream outfit, and before and after photographstransformation before the ‘big reveal’ Moreover, makeover programs are about the ordinary person on television. According to Redden, identities on these programs are individual rather than collective in that they serve to show a type of “individuality” as if it exists irrespective of any social or cultural group (156). And what is the role of the expert? Redden points out the expert on makeover programs interprets the “life situation of the given person, who may represent a certain social category of ordinary person” (153). So while makeover programs purport to be about the ordinary person and make claims about the actuality of the ordinary person’s life (Skeggs and Wood 559; Stagi 138), they also depict a hierarchy of social categories. The participants’ class also features in makeover programs like BSB. Class is evident in that participants who are selected to be on the program are often from lower-middle class backgrounds. Most participants have non-professional occupations—truck driver (Ned), hairdresser (Lisa), pizza/small restaurant owner (Livio), body caster, a person who makes body casts (Paula). Similar to The Biggest Loser (2004–2014) on American NBC, and Australia Network Ten, the participants in BSB were also mainly from lower–middle class backgrounds (Rodan; Sender and Sullivan 575) Several researcher’s show that makeover television promises advancement for lower–middle class citizens (Fraser 188–189; Miller 589; Redden 155; Skeggs and Wood 561) based on the proposition that contestants have the power to transform themselves (Bratich 17; Ouellette and Hay 471–472; Lewis 443; Sender and Sullivan 581). Like other makeover programs BSB takes advantage of the aspirations of working and lower-middle class participants. And, not surprisingly, the desired transcendence is something most participants/viewers from lower-middle and working class backgrounds cannot strive to achieve without participating in the program (Miller 589). Transcendence in BSB comes from losing weight, and acquiring new gym equipment, gym clothing, access to a personal trainer, gym membership, holiday at a health retreat, new wardrobe, new haircut, and new gym clothes. These acts to transform oneself are often “presented” as the middle class “standard,” taste and specific ongoing “intimate practices” of the “middle class” (Skeggs and Wood 561; Redden 155). But clearly much of the sprucing up (such as a private gym at home, personal trainers) are expensive and beyond the budget of even an Australian middle-class family. Analysis Posters on the official BSB Channel Seven Facebook forum overall were the most positive about the program—they found the program motivating and inspiring. Several posters on Facebook asked how they might apply to be on the program. After the airing of the reveal, posters on all the online forums and social media analysed consistently used adjectives such as fantastic, awesome, congratulations, stunning, amazing, gorgeous, wow, incredible, look sensational, look hot, look great, champion effort, fabulous, impressive, beautiful, inspirational. Fat-Shaming In BSB fat-shaming works through the use of medical machines and imagery, which measure weight and body fat percentage (BMI) using the DXA scanner and X-ray machine. Even though many physicians object to BMI measurement, it has become an “infallible marker of dangerous risk-saturated obesity” (Morgan 205) in Health Department campaigns, insurance company policies and on makeover television. Participants’ current weight is compared to the weight of their 20 year-old self. The program also induces fat-shaming through visuals of food and drink stashes found in participant’s bedroom cupboards (Ned), remnants of take-away packaging in rubbish bins (Lisa), processed foods in pantry cupboards (Vicki and Courtney), and pizza cartons at work (Livio). Here food amounts are quantified for audiences to gasp with shock and horror reinforcing the stereotype that people are fat because they have insufficient willpower and overeat (Farrell 34), thus perpetuating the view that obese people are undisciplined, sloppy and “less likely to do productive work” (Greenberg et al.). Banners are produced of participants’ photographs in their 20s; the photographs chosen have been taken when participants were slim and looked hot at the beach or night clubbing. These banners are juxtaposed with a banner of participant’s current self—appearing overweight in unflattering short crop top and underwear. Both banners are flashed onto the screen during the program especially in the final reveal presumably as a visual measurement to shame participants for “letting themselves go”. Even though host Samantha provides reasons for participants gaining weight—such as the stress of being a single parent, having a busy life as a mother of four, work commitments etc—the visual banners powerfully signify more than the presenter’s dialogue. Katrina Dowd on Facebook suggests it is the banners that signified the truth about participants’ lifestyles when she comments: Absolutely. Amazing how people whom follow unhealthy eating patterns for years with lack of exercise get congratulated because they’ve lost weight. Should never have let yourself get to that stage. Using your children and work commitments as excuses for why you got that way is a big “fail”. Some social media participants on Twitter and online forum posters saw the participants as “Bogan” ( a white working-class person who lacks fashion sense, is uncouth unsophisticated and invokes disgust), lazy, slobs as represented in the following comments: “Bogan Hunters Makeover” (tvaddict); “STILL A FUCKING FAT BOGAN […] JUST STOP EATING” (Al_Mack); “Stop being a lazy bitch […] Seriously lazy slobs” (Dutchess of Tweet St); “learn to cook lazy cow” (Gidgit VonLaRue). Thus, for Katrina and the posters above, it is the “fat body” that is seen as the “uncivilized body” that lacks the self-control of the thin body (Richardson 80). Inspirational and Motivational I discovered that many online forum and social media participants found the program BSB inspiring and motivating. A similar finding to my study of The Biggest Loser online viewers (Rodan), as well as other researchers who interviewed audiences about The Biggest Loser (Readdy and Ebbeck). For instance, Twitter posters said the BSB inspires “everyday women” (Sharon@Shar0n) and “inspires me that I can do the same” (Sharon@KeepitRealV), “another great show #inspiring” (miss shadow). On Facebook most of the posters talked about how inspired they were by the show and or by the individual participants, for instance: Hi Lisa, I think I see a lot of me in you, I pretty much cried through the whole show. You have inspired me, much admiration for sharing your story with Australia. (Haigh) Many posters on Facebook identified with Lisa as a single mother (Jenkins) and her declaration that she was “an emotional eater” (McTavish). This may account for Lisa Wilson (5,824 likes) receiving the most likes on Facebook. There were those who identified with individual participants, such as Paula, who were attempting to lose weight. On the forum the bubhub, a forum for parents established in 2002, the administrator BH-bubhub started a thread titled “Need some motivation to shift those kilos? Our pal Paula is here to help hubbers!” Paula was the participant on BSB who lost the most weight, and was invited onto the forum to answer forum members’ questions. On this forum, disparaging, negative, demotivating comments were removed from public viewing (see caveat BH-bubhub). Overall, online forum posters on the bubhub expressed positive feelings about BSB as a weight loss program. Participants comments included “Awesome work Paula, I have no doubt you will inspire many and I look forward to hearing all your tips” (Mod-Uniquey) “and … you look fabulous” (BH-KatiesMum), “Wow, you must be so proud of yourself! That is an amazing effort and you look great” (Curby), “What an inspirational story!” (Mod-Nomsie). Facebook posters on the BSB official forum found the show motivating and evidence of others finding the same are: “I feel great after watching #sexybackau” (Freeburn), “an uplifting hour” (Hustwaite), “feeling motivated now to change a lot of things about myself” (McDonald). However, online posters rarely commented that the program inspired or motivated them to take specific actions about their own body size or lifestyle. For some, as other researchers have found about makeover programs, it is a form of televisual escapism (Holland, Blood and Thomas; Readdy and Ebbeck 585)—that is, the pleasure of watching others’ emotions in achieving their goal. For many others, identifying with the participants’ struggle, and seeing them overcome daily challenges and obstacles to losing weight, gave posters insights about themselves and how to change their own lifestyle. But maintaining weight-loss and a lifestyle that supports it—as Facebook posters frequently suggest—is very challenging for most people who are overweight. The transformations and reveals make for fairy-tale endings (the essence of makeover television), but the reality of losing weight is persistence, perseverance and hard work. Criticisms of the Program Posters on Facebook were censored more than some of the other online forums and social media. Facebook criticisms about the program BSB were dealt with swiftly by other posters—that is, posters were pressured to only express positive feelings about the program. For instance, Lynne Nicholas in response to Peter Thomson’s criticism that the program is “exploiting these people for cheap television entertainment” (Facebook, 14 August 2014) posted on Facebook: If you don’t like the show then don’t come on the page and comment. Channel 7 gives these people a chance to change their life and inspire others to do the same. (Facebook, 14 Aug. 2014) And in response to criticisms about the amount of processed food Cam discarded from participants Vicki and Courtney’s cupboard, Emily McCabe commented: If you don’t enjoy the concept of the program, feel free to change the channel and keep your negative comments to yourself. (Facebook, 2 Sep. 2014) Nevertheless, a lot of criticism appeared on the various online and social media outlets ranging from: the commercial aspects (matúš; Hales); the constant use of the word “fat” by the host (Spencer); the sponsorship and advertisements by a take-away food company (Daisy Murray; Patriot); the “irresponsible/unsafe training!” (M_Gardner; Ashton); the insufficient number of “diet tips” (Pedron-Peggs); and “sick of seeing all that food thrown away!!” (Barkla; Dunell; Robbie; Martin; Coupland). As noted above, some of the sites were censored. Criticisms of the program were only aired if the online forum and social media allowed people to vent their feelings and express their opinion. Allowing viewers to express their concerns about mainstream television programs such as BSB counters the argument made by other researchers suggesting that makeover programs do the work of audiences becoming “self-managing” and self-governing citizens (see Stagi; Ouellette and Hay 471-472; Sender and Sullivan 581; Ringrose and Walkerdine); and makeover programs perpetuate the myth that obesity is solely an individual behavioural problem (Yoo). Such critical comments (above) reveal that some viewers do question the show’s premises, and as a consequence they do not accept the dominant framing. Thus the hypothesis that all viewers of makeover programs are pliable and docile cannot be supported in my analysis. Findings and Conclusion Most BSB posters said they found the program inspiring and motivating. It seems many of the online posters identified with the participants’ struggle to lose their weight, and stay motivated to keep it off. So there was little fat-shaming from posters on Facebook and the online forums. The posters on Facebook expressed the most positive comments about the BSB program and the participants; however, the Facebook site was the official BSB social media site. It seems that many of the Facebook and online forum discussants were makeover television fans who had acquired a taste for the makeover genre – that is the transformation and the big reveal at the end, the re-styled self, the symbols as well as the tips, information and ideas about how to lose weight and change their lifestyle. Questions were often asked by posters about the participants’ eating plan, exercise regime, maintenance program etc., as well as how they (the posters) could apply to be on the show. Very few social media or online posters questioned and challenged the makeover genre, the advertising during the program, the quality and number of diet and nutrition tips, and the time as well as financial cost required to maintain the new self. References Al_Mack. “STILL A FUCKING FAT BOGAN.” 26 Aug. 2014, no time. Tweet. Al_Mack. “JUST STOP EATING.” 26 Aug. 2014, no time. Tweet. Ashton, Susan. “Bringing Sexy Back.” 13 Jan. 2015, 17:56. Facebook comment. Barkla, Michelle. “Bringing Sexy Back.” 9 Sep. 2014, 18:39. Facebook comment. BH-bubhub Administrator. “Need Some Motivation to Shift Those Kilos? Our Pal Paula Is Here to Help Hubbers!” The Bubhub 3 March 2015. 15:27. BH-KatiesMum. “Need Some Motivation to Shift Those Kilos? Our Pal Paula Is Here to Help Hubbers!” The Bubhub 3 Mar. 2015 19:26. Bratich, Jack Z. “Programming Reality: Control Societies, New Subjects and the Powers of Transformation.” Ed. Dana Heller. Makeover Television: Realities Remodelled. London: I.B. Tauris, 2007. 6-22. Coupland, Allison. “Bringing Sexy Back.” 2 Sep. 2014, 17:55. Facebook comment. Curby. “Need Some Motivation to Shift Those Kilos? Our Pal Paula Is Here to Help Hubbers!” The Bubhub 3 Mar. 2015, 19.30. Dowd, Katrina. “Bringing Sexy Back.” 19 Aug. 2014, 21:07. Facebook comment. Dunell, Meredith. “Bringing Sexy Back.” 9 Sep. 2014, 17:54pm. Facebook comment. Dutchess of Tweet St (Appy_Dayz). “Seriously lazy slobs feeling sorry for themselves on #SexyBackAu are just bloody annoying.” 19 Aug. 2014, no time. Tweet. Farrell, Amy E. Fat Shame: Stigma and the Fat Body in American Culture. New York: New York University Press, 2011. Fraser, Kathryn. “‘Now I Am Ready to Tell How Bodies Are Changed into Different Bodies…’ Ovid, The Metamorphoses.” Ed. Dana Heller. Makeover Television: Realities Remodelled. London: I.B. Tauris, 2007. 177-92. 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Sharon (Shar0n). “Watched #SexyBackAu for the first time tonight; a top show to motivate and inspire everyday women to be healthier and set achievable goals.” 26 Aug. 2014, no time. Tweet. Sharon (KeepitRealV). “#SexyBackAu watching another single mum challenge herself and change her life really inspires me that I can do the same!” 26 Aug. 2014, no time. Tweet. Skeggs, Beverley, and Helen Wood. “The Labour of Transformation and Circuits of Value ‘around’ Reality Television.” Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 22.4 (2008): 559-72. Spencer, Amby. “Bringing Sexy Back.” 17 Aug. 2014, 13:55. Facebook comment. Stagi, Luisa. “Lifestyle Television and Diet: Body Care as a Duty.” Italian Journal of Sociology of Education 6.3 (2014): 130-52. Thomson, Peter. “Bringing Sexy Back.” 14 Aug. 2014, 20:03. Facebook comment. Tvaddict. “Bringing Sexy Back.” TV Tonight 13 Aug. 2014, 18:17. Yoo, Jina. “No Clear Winner: Effects of The Biggest Loser on Stigmatization of Obese Persons. 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IntroductionAccording to Friedrich Nietzsche, the death of Man follows the death of God. Man as a concept must be overcome. Yet Nietzsche extends humanism’s jargon of creativity that privileges Man over animal. To truly overcome the notion of Man, one must undercome Man, in other words go below Man. Once undercome, creativity devolves into a type of building and unbuilding, affording art the ability to conceive of the subject emptied of divine creation. This article will examine how Man is unbuilt in three works by three different artists: Francis Bacon’s “Study of a Baboon” (1953), Jan Švankmajer’s Darkness, Light, Darkness (1989), and Patricia Piccinini’s “The Young Family” (2002). All three artists evoke the animalistic in their depiction of what could be called the sub-subject, a diminished agent. Unbuilding the subject becomes the basis for building the sub-subject in these depictions of the human remainder. Man, from this vantage, will be examined as a cultural construct. Man largely means human, yet the Renaissance concept favoured a certain type of powerful male. Instead of rescuing Man, Bacon, Švankmajer and Piccinini, present the remnants of the human amidst the animal rather than the human subject detached from the animal. Such works challenge humanism, expressed in Giorgio Vasari’s analysis of art and creativity as indicative of Man’s closeness to the divine, which in a strange way, is extended in Nietzsche’s writings. These artists dismantle and build a subhuman form of subjectivity and thereby provide a challenge to traditional conceptions of creativity that historically favour Man as the creator beneath only God Himself. In the course of this article, I explore the violence of Bacon’s painted devolution, the deflationary animation of Švankmajer and Piccinini’s subhuman tenderness. I do not argue that we must abandon humanism altogether as there are a multiplicity of humanisms, or attempt to invalidate all the various posthumanisms, transhumanisms and antihumanisms. Rather, I attempt to show that Nietzsche’s posthumanism is a suprahumanism and that one possible way to frame the death of Man is through undercoming Man. Art, held in high esteem by Renaissance humanism, becomes a vehicle to imagine and engage with subhuman subjectivity.What Is Humanism? Humanism has numerous connotations from designating atheism to celebrating culture to privileging humans above other animals. The type of humanism I am interested in is not secular humanism, but rather humanism that celebrates and conceptualises Man’s place in the universe and does so through accentuating his (and I mean his given humanism’s often sexist, masculinist history) creativity and intellectual power. This celebration of creativity depends in part on a type of religious view, where Man is at the centre of God’s design. Such a view holds that Man’s power to shape nature’s materials resembles God. This type of humanism remains today but usually in a more humbled form, enfeebled by the scientific realisations that characterised the Enlightenment, namely the realisation that Man was not the centre of God’s universe. The Enlightenment is sometimes characterised as the birth of modern humanism, where the human subject undergoes estrangement from his surroundings through the conceptualisation of the subject–object division, and gains control over nature. A common narrative is that the subject’s autonomy and power came to extend to art itself, which in turn, became valued as possessing its own aesthetic legitimacy and yet also becoming an alienated commodity. Yet Cary Wolfe, in What Is Posthumanism?, echoes Michel Foucault’s claim that the Enlightenment could be viewed in tension to humanism (“Introduction” n.p.). Indeed, the Enlightenment’s creation of modern science would come to seriously challenge any view of humanity’s privileged status in this world. In contrast, Renaissance humanism conceived of Man as the centrepiece of God’s design and gifted with artistic creation and the ability to uncover truth. Renaissance HumanismRenaissance humanism is encapsulated by Vasari’s preface to The Lives of the Artists. In his preface, Vasari contends that God was the first artist, being both a painter and sculptor: God on High, having created the great body of the world and having decorated the heavens with its brightest lights, descended with His intellect further down into the clarity of the atmosphere and the solidity of the earth, and, shaping man, discovered in the pleasing invention of things the first form of sculpture and painting. (3)Interestingly, God discovers creation, which is a type of decoration, where the skies are decorated with bright lights—the stars. Giving colour, light and shade to the world and heavens, qualifies God as a painter. The human body, according to Vasari, is sculpted by God, which in turn inspires artists to depict the human form. Art and design—God’s design—is thereby ‘at the origin of all things’ and not merely painting and sculpture, though the reality we know is still the product of God’s painting and sculpture. According to Vasari, God privileges Man not for his intellect per se, but by bestowing him with the ability of creation and design. Indeed, creativity and design are for Vasari a part of all intellectual discovery. Intellect is the mode of discovering design, which for Vasari, is also creation. Vasari claims “that divine light infused in us by a special act of grace which has not only made us superior to other animals but even similar, if it is permitted to say so, to God Himself” (4). God is more than just a maker, he is a creator with an aesthetic sense. All intellectual human endeavours, claims Vasari, are aesthetic and creative, in their comprehension of God’s design of the world. Vasari’s emphasis on design became outmoded as Renaissance humanism was challenged by the Enlightenment’s interest in humans and other animals as machines. However, evolution challenges even some mechanistic understandings of the human subject, which sometimes presupposed that the human-machine had a maker, as with William Paley’s watchmaker theory. As Richard Dawkins put it in The Blind Watchmaker, nature “has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If [evolution] can be said to play the role of the watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker” (“Chapter One: Explaining the Very Improbable” n.p.). No longer was God’s universe designed for Man’s comprehension and appreciation, foretelling humanity’s own potential extinction.Man and God’s DeathThe idea that humanity was created by blind processes raises the question of what sort of depiction of the human subject is possible after the death of God and the Enlightenment’s tendency toward disenchantment? An art and self-understanding founded on atheism would be in sharp distinction to Vasari’s characterisation of the nature as an artwork coloured by the divine painter and sculptor in the heavens. Man’s creativity and design are, for the Renaissance humanist, part of discovery, the embodied realisations and iterations of the Platonic realm of divine forms. But such designs, wondrous for Vasari, can be viewed as shadows without origin in a post-God world. In Vasari, Platonism is still present where the artist’s creation becomes a way of discerning the origin of all forms, God himself. Yet, without divine origin, these forms are no longer discoveries and the possibility emerges that they are not even creations, emptied of the divine meaning that gave Man’s creative and scientific work value. Nietzsche understood that the loss of God called for the revaluation of all values. This is why Nietzsche claims that God’s death signifies the death of Man. For Nietzsche, the last Man was such an iteration, a shadow of what man had been (Thus Spoke Zarathustra 9-10). The Post-Man, the Übermensch, is one who extends the human power of creation and evaluation. In Vasari, Man is a model created by God. Nietzsche extends this logic: Man is his own creation as is God Man’s model. Man is capable of self-construction and overcoming without the hindrance of the divine. This freedom unlocked by auto-creation renders Man capable of making himself God. As such, art remains a source of sacred power for Nietzsche since it is a process of creative evaluation. The sacred is affirmed against secular profanity. For Nietzsche, God must be envisaged as Dionysus, a God that Nietzsche claims takes on a human form in Greek festivals dedicated to creation and fecundity. Mankind, in order to continue to have value after God’s death, “must become gods”, must take the place of God (The Gay Science 120). Nietzsche, All-Too HumanistNietzsche begins a project of rethinking Man as a category. Yet there is much in common with Renaissance humanism generated by Nietzsche’s Dionysian belief in a merger between God and Man. Man is overcome by a stronger and more creative figure, that of the Übermensch. By comparing Nietzsche with Vasari we can understand just how humanist Nietzsche remained. Indeed, Nietzsche fervently admired the Renaissance as a rebirth of paganism. Such an assessment of the rebirth of pagan art and values can almost be found in Vasari himself. Vasari claimed that pagan art, far from being blasphemous, brought Man closer to the divine in a tribute to the creativity of God. Vasari’s criticism of Christianity is careful but present. Indeed, Vasari—in a way that anticipates Nietzsche’s view that secular sacrilege was merely an extension of Christian sacrilege—attacks Christian iconoclasm, noting that barbarians and Christians worked together to destroy sacred forms of art: not only did [early Christianity] ruin or cast to the ground all the marvellous statues, sculptures, paintings, mosaics, and ornaments of the false pagan gods, but it also did away with the memorials and testimonials to an infinite number of illustrious people, in whose honour statues and other memorials had been constructed in public places by the genius of antiquity. (5) In this respect, Vasari embodies the values Nietzsche so praised in the Italian Renaissance. Vasari emphasises the artistic creations that enshrine distinctions of value and social hierarchy. While Vasari continues Platonic notions that ideals exist before human creation, he nevertheless holds human creation as a realisation and embodiment of the ideal, which is not dissimilar to Nietzsche’s notion of divine embodiment. For Nietzsche and Vasari, Man is exulted when he can rise, like a god, above other men. Another possibility would be to lower Man to just another animal. One way to envision such a lowering would be to subvert the mode by which Man is deemed God-like. Art that engages with the death of Man helps conceptualise subhumanism and the way that the subject ceases to be raised above the animal. What follows are studies of artworks that unbuild the subject. Francis Bacon’s “Study of a Baboon”Francis Bacon’s work challenges the human subject by depicting nonhuman subjects, where the flesh is torn open and Man’s animal flesh is exposed. Sometimes Bacon does not merely disfigure the human form but violently abandons it to focus on animals that reveal animal qualities latent in the subject. Bacon’s “Study of a Baboon”, expresses a sense of human devolution: Man devolved to monkey. In the work, we see a baboon within an enclosure, sitting above a tree that simultaneously resembles a gothic shadow, a cross, and even a smear. The dark, cross-like tree may suggest the conquering of God by a baboon, a type of monkey, recalling the old slander of Darwin’s theory, namely that Darwinism entailed that humanity descended from monkeys (which Darwin’s theory does not claim). But far from victorious, the monkey is in a state of suffering. While the baboon is not crucified on or by the tree, suffering pervades the frame. Its head resembles some sort of skull. The body is faintly painted in a melancholy blue with smudges of purple and is translucent and ghostly—at once a lump of matter and a spectral absence. We do not see the baboon through the cage. Instead we see through the baboon at the cage. Indeed, its very physiology involves the encountering of trauma as the head of the baboon does not simply connect to the body but stabs through the body as a sharp bone, perhaps opaquely evoking the violence of evolution. Similarly, the baboon’s tail seems to stab through the tree. Its eye is an enlarged void and a pupil is indicated by a bluish white triangle splitting through the void. The tree has something of the menacing and looming quality of a shadow and there is a sense of wilderness confronted by death and entrapment, evoked through the background. The yellowy ground is suggestive of dead grass. While potentially gesturing to the psychical confusion and intensity of Vincent Van Gogh or Edvard Munch, the yellowed grass more likely evokes the empty, barren and hostile planes of the desert and contrasts with the darkened colours. The baboon sitting on the cross/tree may seem to have reached some sort of pinnacle but such a status is mocked by the tree that manages to continue outside the fence: the branches nightmarishly protrude through the fence to conquer the frame, which in turn furthers the sense of inescapable entrapment and threat. The baboon is thereby precluded from reaching a higher point on the tree, unable to climb the branches, and underscores the baboon’s confines. The painting is labelled a study, which may suggest it is unfinished. However, Bacon’s completed works preserve an unfinished quality. This unfinished quality conveys a sense in which Man and evolution are unfinished and that being finished in the sense of being completed is no longer possible. The idea that there can finished work of art, a work of art that preserves an eternal meaning, has been repeatedly subject to serious doubt, including by artists themselves. Indeed, Bacon’s work erases the potential for perfection and completion, and breaks down, through devolution, what has been achieved by Man and the forces that shaped him. The subject is lowered from that of human to that of a baboon and is therefore, by Vasari’s Renaissance reasoning, not a subject at all. Bacon’s sketch and study exist to evoke a sense of incompletion, involving pain without resolution. The animal state of pain is therefore married with existential entrapment and isolation as art ceases to express the Platonic ideal and aims to show the truth of the shadow—namely that humanity is without a God, a God that previously shed light on humanity’s condition and anchored the human subject. If there is a trace or echo of human nobility left, such a trace functions through the wild and violent quality of animal indignation. A scream of painful indignity is the last act approaching (or descending from) any dignity that is afforded. Jan Švankmajer’s Darkness, Light, DarknessAn even more extreme case of the subject no longer being the subject, of being broken and muted—so much so that animal protest is annulled—can be witnessed in Jan Švankmajer’s animated short Darkness, Light, Darkness. In the animation, green clay hands mould and form a human body in order to be part of it. But when complete, the human body is trapped, grotesquely out of proportion with its environment. The film begins in a darkened house. There is a knocking of the door, and then the first green hand opens the door and turns on the light. The hand falls to the floor, blindly making its way to another door on the opposite side of the house. The hand opens the door only for eyeballs to roll out. The eyes look around. The hand pushes its clay fingers against the eyeballs, and the eyeballs become attached to the fingers. Suddenly with sight, the hand is able to lift itself up. The hand discovers that another hand is knocking at the door. The first hand helps the second hand, and then goes to the window where a pair of ears are stuck together flapping like a moth. The hands work together and break the ears apart. The first hand, the one with eyes, attaches the ears to the second hand. Then a head with a snout, but missing eyes and ears, enters through the door. The hands pull the snout until it becomes a nose, suppressing and remoulding the animal until it becomes human. As with Bacon, the violence of evolution, of auto-construction is conveyed indirectly: in Bacon’s case, through painted devolution and, in the case of the claymation, through a violent construction based on mutilation and smashing body parts together.Although I have described only three minutes of the seven-minute film, it already presents an image of human construction devoid of art or divine design. Man, or rather the hands, become the blind watchman of evolution. The hands work contingently, with what they are provided. They shape themselves based on need. The body, after all, exists as parts, and the human body is made up of other life forms, both sustaining and being sustained by them. The hands work together, and sacrifice sight and hearing for the head. They tear off the ears and remove the eyes and give them to the head. Transcendence is exchanged for subsistence. The absurdity of this contingency becomes most apparent when the hands attempt to merge with the head, to be the head’s feet. Then the feet actually arrive and are attached to the head’s neck. The human subject in such a state is thereby deformed and incomplete. It is a frightened form, cowering when it hears banging at the door. It turns out that the banging is being produced by an angry erect penis pounding at the door. However, even this symbol of masculine potency is subdued, rendered harmless by the hands that splash a bucket of cold water on it. The introduction of the penis signifies the masculinist notions implicit in the term Man, but we only ever see the penis when it is flaccid. The human subject is able to be concluded when clay pours from both doors and the window. The hands sculpt the clay and make the body, which, when complete is oversized and barely fits within the house. The male subject is then trapped, cramped in a foetal position. With its head against the ceiling next to the light, breathing heavily, all it can do is turn out the light. The head opens its mouth either in horror or a state of exertion and gasps. The eyes bulge before one of the body’s hands turns switch, perhaps suggesting terror before death or simply the effort involved in turning off the light. Once completed and built, the human subject remains in the dark. Despite the evident quirky, playful humour, Švankmajer’s film reflects an exhaustion with art itself. Human life becomes clay comically finding its own form. For Vasari, the ideal of the human form is realised first by God and then by Man through marble; for Švankmajer it is green clay. He demotes man back to the substance for a God to mould but, as there is no God to breathe life into it and give form, there is just the body to imperfectly mould itself. The film challenges both Vasari’s humanism and the suprahumanism of Nietzschean spectacle. Instead of the self-generating power and radical interdependence and agency of Übermensch, Švankmajer’s sub-subject is Man undercome—man beneath as opposed to over man, man mocked by its ambition, and with no space to stand high. Švankmajer thereby realises the anti-Nietzschean potential inherent within cinema’s anti-spectacular nature. Antonin Artaud, who extends the aesthetics advanced by Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy, contrasts the theatre’s sense of animal life with cinema. Artaud observes that movies “murder us with second-hand reproductions […] filtered through machines” (84). Thus, films murder creative and animal power as film flattens life to a dead realm of reproduction. Continuing Jacques Derrida’s hauntological framing of the screen, the animation theorist Alan Cholodenko has argued that the screen implies death. Motion is dead and replaced by illusion, a recording relayed back to us. What renders cinema haunting also renders it hauntological. For Cholodenko, cinema’s animation challenges ontology and metaphysics by eschewing stable ontologies through a process that entails both presence and absence. As Cholodenko points out, all film is a type of animation and reanimation, of making images move that are not in fact moving. Thus, one can argue that the animated-animation (such as Švankmajer’s claymation) becomes a refinement of death, a Frankesteinian reanimation of dead material. Indeed, Darkness, Light, Darkness accentuates the presence of death with the green clay almost resembling putrefaction. The fingerprints on the clay accentuate a lack of life, for the autonomous and dead matter that constructs and shapes a dead body from seemingly severed body parts. Even the title of the film, Darkness, Light, Darkness reflects an experience of cinema as deflation rather than joyous spectacle. One goes to a darkened space, watches light flicker on a screen and then the light goes out again. The cartoonish motions of the hands and body parts in the film look only half alive and therefore seem half-dead. Made in the decaying Communist state of Czechoslovakia, Švankmajer’s film aptly acknowledges the deflation of cinema, reflecting that illumination—the light of God, is put out, or more specifically, switched off. With the light of God switched off, creation becomes construction and construction becomes reconstruction, filtered through cinema’s machine processes as framed through Cholodenko. Still, Švankmajer’s animation is not unsympathetic to the plight of the hands. We do see the body parts work together. When a vulgar, meaty, non-claymation tongue comes out through the door, it goes straight to the other door to let the teeth in. The teeth and tongue are aided by the hands to complete the face. Indeed, what they produce is a human being, which has some sense of coherence and success—a success enmeshed with failure and entrapment. Piccinini’s “The Young Family”Patricia Piccinini’s sculptural works offer a more tender approach to the subject, especially when her works focus on the nonhuman animal with human characteristics. Piccinini is interested in the combinations of the animal and the machine, so her ideas can be seen almost as transhuman, where the human is extended beyond humanism. Her work is based on connection and connectedness, but does not emphasise the humanist values of innovation and self-creation often inherent to transhumanism. Indeed, the emphasis on connection is distinct from the entrapment of Bacon’s baboon and Švankmajer’s clay human, which half lament freedom’s negation.The way that Piccinini preserves aspects of humanism within a framework of subhumanism is evident in her work “The Young Family”. The hypperrealistic sculpture depicts a humanoid pig form, flopped, presumably exhausted, as piglet-babies suckle on her nipples. The work was inspired by a scientific proposal for pigs to be genetically modified to provide organs for humans (“Educational Resource” 5). Such a transhuman setting frames a subhuman aesthetic. Care is taken to render the scene with sentiment but without a sense of the ideal, without perfection. One baby-piglet tenderly grasps its foot with both hands and stares with love at its mother. We see two piglets enthusiastically sucking their mother’s teat, while a third baby/piglet’s bottom is visible, indicating that there is a third piglet scrambling for milk. The mother gazes at us, with her naked mammalian body visible. We see her wrinkles and veins. There is some fur on her head and some hair on her eyebrows humanising her. Indeed, her eyes are distinctly human and convey affection. Affection seems to be a motif that carries through to the materials (carefully crafted by Piccinini’s studio). The affection displayed in the artwork is trans-special, emphasising that human tenderness is in fact mammalian tenderness. Such tenderness conflates the human, the nonhuman animal and the material out of which the humanoid creature and its young are constructed. The sub-agency brings together the young and the old by displaying the closeness of the family. Something of this sub-subjectivity is theorised in Malcolm Bull’s Anti-Nietzsche, where he contrasts Nietzsche’s idea of the Übermensch with the idea of the subhuman. Bull writes that subhumanism involves giving up on “becoming more than a man and think[ing] only of becoming something less” (n.p.; Chapter 2, sec. “The Subhuman”). Piccinini depicts vulnerability and tenderness with life forms that are properly speaking subhuman, and reject the displays of strength of Nietzsche’s suprahumanism or Vasari’s emphasis on art commemorating great men. But Piccinini’s subhumanism preserves enough humanism to understand art’s ability to encourage an ethics of nurturing. In this respect, her works offer an alternative to Bull’s subhumanism that aims, so Bull argues, to devalue art altogether. Instead, Piccinini affirms imagination, but through its ability to conjure new ways to perceive animal affection. The sub-subject thereby functions to reveal states of emotion common to mammals (including humans) and other animals. ConclusionThese three artists therefore convey distinct, if related and intersecting, ways of visualising the sub-subject: Bacon through animal suffering, Švankmajer through adaptation that ultimately leads to the agent’s entrapment, and Piccinini who, instead of marrying anti-humanism with the subhumanism (the procedure of Švankmajer, and Bacon), integrates aspects of transhumanism and Renaissance humanism into her subhuman vision. As such, these works present a realisation of how we might think of the going under of the human subject after Darwin, Nietzsche and the deaths of God, Man and the diminishment of creativity. Such works remain not only antithetical to Vasari’s humanism but also to Nietzsche’s suprahumanism. These artists use art’s power to humble—not through overpowering awe but through the visible breakdown of the human agent, speaking for and to the sub-subject. Such art, by unbuilding and dismantling the subject, draws on prehuman trajectories of evolution, and in the case of Piccinini, transhuman trajectories. Art ceases to be about the grandiose evocations of power. Rather, more modestly, these works build a connection between the human with other mammals. Acknowledgements I wish to acknowledge Daniel Canaris for his valuable insights into Christianity and the Italian Renaissance, Alan Cholodenko for providing copies of his works that were central to my interpretation of Švankmajer, and Rachel Franks and Simon Dwyer for their invaluable assistance and finding very helpful reviewers. References Artaud, Antonin. The Theatre and Its Double. New York: Grove P, 1958.Art Gallery of South Australia. “Educational Resource Patricia Piccinini.” Adelaide: Art Gallery of South Australia. 11 Dec. 2016 <https://www.artgallery.sa.gov.au/agsa/home/Learning/docs/Online_Resources/Piccinini_online_resource.pdf>.Bacon, Francis. “Head I.” 1948. Oil on Canvas. 100.3 x 74.9cm. ———. “Study of a Baboon.” 1953. Oil on Canvas. 198.3 x 137.3cm. Bull, Malcolm. Anti-Nietzsche. New York: Verso, 2011. Cholodenko, Alan. “First Principles of Animation.” Animating Film Theory. Ed. Karen Beckman. Duke UP, 2014. 98-110.———. “The Crypt, the Haunted House, of Cinema.” Cultural Studies Review 10.2 (2004): 99-113. Darkness, Light, Darkness. Jan Švankmajer, 1990. 35mm. Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007. ———. The Gay Science. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007. ———. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006.Piccinini, Patricia. “The Young Family.” 2002. Silicone, Polyurethane, Leather, Plywood, Human Hair, 80 x 150 x 110cm. Vasari, Giorgio. The Lives of Artists. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998.Wolfe, Cary. What Is Posthumanism? Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2010.