Journal articles: 'Including lines in this process managers are playing which' – Grafiati (2024)

Abstract:

The aim of this study is to get a better understanding for the effect of the set of the risks in the construction projects, in addition to how mitigating these risks in those projects. Indeed risks are frequently playing the same rules, but the nature of project defines the specific risks of the project. The first step in process of risks assessment is identification them. Once risk identification is complete, risk analysis is used to identify the likelihood the risks that have been identified will happen. Thus by using evidence from other research in the area, this study showed the impact of the set of the stages in the risk management process in the construction projects, which were discussed in greater detail in the theoretical aspect of the current study. The findings of the study were revealed the fact that the comprehension of risk and its management has the direct effect of understanding specific issues that involve to the project. In addition to that, the integration of a risk management process at each stage of its stages in construction projects must be oriented to the progress of the project and permeate all areas, functions and processes of the project. In this regard, the most successful project managers maintain open lines of communication throughout their organizations to stay in touch with constituent’s needs.

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Traditional companies used to design products, evaluate marketing messages, and control product distribution channels with a low level of customer contribution. Nonetheless, with the advancements in communication and information technologies, the interaction between customers and company is much higher compared to the past, and it is no longer solely controlled by the companies; thus, users can now impact companies by simultaneously playing two roles as value creators and as consumers. The present study develops a conceptual framework for value co-creation in small- and medium-sized tourism agencies. The sample consisted of 23 purposefully selected employees and managers of small- and medium-sized tourism agencies. Data were extracted from semi-structured interviews and analyzed with open and axial coding. For validity, an eight-person panel of experts was asked to review the framework and to apply corrective comments. The reliability was tested using a re-test method, which confirmed the reliability of the coding with a re-test reliability of 79%. Based on the findings, the proposed framework contains eight components including value inception, value conception, value risk, resource planning, platform, actors, co-creation process, co-created value, and learning process, whose components were identified and encoded.

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Objective: This theoretical essay aims to explore how the controller participates in the strategy formation process, in the perspective of strategy as a practice.Method: We developed a theoretical essay based on the main issues related to the role of the controller in organizations and a general explanation of the theoretical model of strategy as a practice proposed by Jarzabkowski and Spee (2009).Originality/Relevance: We propose a new approach for management accounting studies by bringing together two fields of knowledge – accountability and strategy – under a constructivist perspective, exploring the role of the controller as a business partner and a strategy practitioner. We argue controllers act as middle managers in the implementation of organizational strategies, playing a fundamental role in strategy translation, communication and on its operational issues.Results: From the intersection between the two themes, three general propositions were developed, combining elements of strategy as practice (practice, praxis and practitioners) and the role of the controller, which serve as a basis for the advance of future research. This is a seminal step into future avenues of research and theoretical or empirical studies about the microperspective of management accounting.Theoretical/Methodological contributions: This theoretical essay analyzes the controller role in the micro-organizational perspective of the strategy as practice, addressing future research possibilities that unite the two lines of knowledge.

Abstract:

Objective: Relative to the global investment in hospital accreditation programs overall, both the total amount and methodological quality of existing accreditation research is mediocre. To address this apparent gap in knowledge, we undertook a study of the experiences and perspectives of hospital staff, those most underrepresented in the accreditation research literature, including those working on the front lines and non-leaders who may or may not have been directly involved in the preparation for the accreditation survey visit.Methods: Design: Qualitative descriptive interview study. Setting: Tertiary care teaching hospital in Toronto, Ontario Canada. Study Participants: Program directors, unit managers, physicians, nurses, health discipline professionals (HDP), and non-clinical staff.Results: We have grouped what we heard from the data into three major groups of findings which we have titled: a) perceptions of the purpose of accreditation; b) the “work” of accreditation; and c) dissemination gaps regarding results. Informative finding from this study include the fact that participants put surprising value on the accreditation process, although mistaken feel it is mandatory; that the “work” of accreditation can be disappointing and feels disconnected from the bigger QI picture, and that the disconnect also exists in terms of their knowledge of and belief in the actual results of the process.Conclusions: These findings point to potential gaps in the accreditation culture which can be detrimental to the impact of the accreditation process. Such gaps likely exist in other health care organizations and could inform similar evaluations in other settings.

Abstract:

This study examines industrial upgrading in manufacturing firms in Dongguan, China in the context of the Dongguan government’s recent policy initiative to boost its manufacturing sector by encouraging industrial upgrading. To implement its so-called ‘Replacing Humans with Robots’ policy, which we see as an expression of the central government’s ‘Made in China 2025’ policy, the Dongguan government offers incentives to manufacturers’ region to automate their production lines with a range of assets including computer numerical control (CNC) machines and industrial robots. Applying Humphrey and Schmitz’s (Regional Studies 36[9]:1017–1027, 2002) taxonomy of industrial upgrading, our mixed-methods ethnographic and documentary research identified three types of upgrading at the factories we studied: process, product and functional upgrading. While our data draw on the perspectives of factory owners and managers, they bear important implications for workers. Future studies are needed to elaborate those implications.

Abstract:

With the rise of large-scale environmental models comes new challenges for how we best utilize this information in research, management and decision making. Interactive data visualizations can make large and complex datasets easier to access and explore, which can lead to knowledge discovery, hypothesis formation and improved understanding. Here, we present a web-based interactive data visualization framework, the Interactive Catchment Explorer (ICE), for exploring environmental datasets and model outputs. Using a client-based architecture, the ICE framework provides a highly interactive user experience for discovering spatial patterns, evaluating relationships between variables and identifying specific locations using multivariate criteria. Through a series of case studies, we demonstrate the application of the ICE framework to datasets and models associated with three separate research projects covering different regions in North America. From these case studies, we provide specific examples of the broader impacts that tools like these can have, including fostering discussion and collaboration among stakeholders and playing a central role in the iterative process of data collection, analysis and decision making. Overall, the ICE framework demonstrates the potential benefits and impacts of using web-based interactive data visualization tools to place environmental datasets and model outputs directly into the hands of stakeholders, managers, decision makers and other researchers.

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2,4-dimethylamine salt (2,4-D) is a selective broadleaf herbicide commonly applied to turfgrass systems, including athletic fields, which can dislodge from treated vegetation. Building on previous research confirming 2,4-D dislodgeability is affected by management inputs, field research was initiated in 2014 and 2015 in North Carolina and Tennessee to quantify the effects of sprayer setup on dislodgeable 2,4-D foliar residue from hybrid bermudagrass, which is the most common athletic field playing surface in subtropical and tropical climates. More specifically, research evaluated dislodgeable 2,4-D foliar residue following spray applications (2.1 kg ae ha−1) at varying carrier volumes (187, 374, or 748 L ha−1) and nozzles delivering varying droplet sizes (fine=extended range [XR], coarse=drift guard, or extra coarse=air induction extended range [AIXR]). Overall, data suggest minimal 2,4-D dislodge occurs via soccer ball roll (3.6 m) outside the day of application; however, increasing carrier volume and droplet size can further decrease dislodgeable 2,4-D foliar residue. At 2 d after treatment (DAT), 3.87% of applied 2,4-D dislodged when applied at 187 L ha−1compared to 2.05% at 748 L ha−1. Pooled over data from 1 to 6 DAT, 1.59% of applied 2,4-D dislodged following XR nozzle application compared to 1.13% with AIXR nozzle. While these are small numerical differences, dislodgeable residue was measured via one soccer ball roll, which is a repeated process within the sport and the additive effect of sprayer setup treatments can be employed by turfgrass managers to reduce potential human 2,4-D human exposure.

Abstract:

Aims The principal chaparral species in California, Adenostoma fasciculatum, an evergreen, sclerophyllous shrub, is broadly distributed and provides habitat and food resources for a large and diverse animal community. The effects of climate change, including elevated temperatures, fire frequency and severity, along with increased urban encroachment, have placed pressure on chaparral habitats in California. Our goal is to investigate aspects of reproductive ecology as a measure of the potential resiliency of A. fasciculatum. We focus on seed rain (all seed falling into the seed traps regardless of origin) and seed banks in the context of plant-animal interactions and regeneration. Methods Stand recovery following disturbance is achieved through both resprouting and germination from established persistent soil seed banks. In this study we focus on seed ecology using a series of experiments to document the length and quantity of seed rain, seed predation, parsing the importance of the community of granivores, and evaluating the connection between stand age and germination rate from soil seed banks. Important findings Our research documented an 8-month seed rain duration with over 1 million seeds per m2, multiple seed predators including passerines (songbirds) and rodents, and points to the possibility of native ants playing a role in the seed dispersal process. This is important given the recent advancement of the invasive Argentine ant (Linepthema humile) into Californian chaparral. This research demonstrates a clear relationship between A. fasciculatum and both resident and migratory granivores in the chaparral. We documented that a 39-year-old stand had higher germination rates than those which were 16, 20, 41 and 71 years old and how seed banks play a major role in assuring resiliency following fire. These findings are important for wildland managers to assure the continued resiliency of A. fasciculatum.

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Purpose – The aim of this paper is to develop a detailed descriptive model for kitting operations, allowing resources sizing and computation of systems’ economic performances. Design/methodology/approach – A mathematical model allows to size resources, given product characteristics and production mix, and determines total system costs by assessing relevant cost items including investment costs (vehicles, containers, storage racks), direct operating costs (transport and kitting workforce, vehicles energy consumption and maintenance, quality costs), indirect operating costs (space requirements, work in process (WIP) and safety stock holding costs, administration and control). Findings – The choice of parts delivery supply to assembly lines requires a thorough economic comparison of alternatives. However, existing models are often simplistic and neglect many critical factors which affect the systems’ performances. As a consequence, industries are unsure about which system is best for their environment. This model allows assessment of the cost and suitability of kitting in any specific industrial setting. Results of the model application are case-specific and cannot be generalized, but the major impact of labour and error correction cost has been highlighted. Research limitations/implications – The model at present focusses on the in-house kitting systems based on travelling kits concept only. Although all quantitative cost drivers are included, some context-related qualitative decision factors are not yet included. The model assumes that the information about product structure and part requirements is known and that a preliminary design of the assembly system (i.e. line balancing) has been carried out. Practical implications – Production managers are given a quantitative decision tool to properly assess the implementation of kitting policies at an early decision stage. This allows exploring the trade-offs between the alternatives and properly planning the adoption of kitting systems, as well as comparing kitting with alternative material supply methods. Originality/value – With respect to previous simplified literature models, this new approach allows quantification of a number of additional factors which are critical for successful implementation of cost-effective kitting systems, including kitting errors. An exhaustive cost estimation of kitting systems in multiple, mixed-model assembly lines is thus permitted.

Abstract:

Declared in 1985 by the Soviet leadership headed by Mikhail Gorbachev, the policy of «perestroika» was based on a pecu- liarly understood return to the principles of the reign of V. I. Lenin. The reforms included the process of introducing industrial democracy along the lines of the Yugoslav economy. The election of the management staff of state-owned enterprises should 1) contribute to improving the efficiency of the national economy; 2) extend electoral procedures to the sphere of economic corporations, thus supporting the reform of the political system in the area of transition to competitive elections. The concept of «industrial democracy» is extremely policemen. Western researchers include in its framework very diverse phenomena and processes, from the right of employees to speak out on important management issues, to participate in the management of the enterprise and receive a share of the company's profits. The Soviet reformers of the perestroika period were based on the Yugoslav experience, embodying the philanthropic prin- ciple of «class cooperation» in the process of socialist construction. Moreover, the results of attracting employees to the en- terprise management process were very contradictory. The article considers one of the aspects of this process – sociological research conducted by Soviet researchers at state- owned enterprises. Sociologists studied 1) the attitude of employees to the system of elective leadership; 2) the reaction to the introduction of institutions of industrial democracy; 3) the compliance of the results with the stated goals of the party leadership. As a result, the following main positions were identified: the unwillingness of employees to accept innovations «from above» as an urgent need; the incompetence of employees, including candidates for managers of enterprises and institutions; the preservation of relative inviolability of forms of state ownership, which did not allow the introduction of a new system for managing this property.

Abstract:

With China’s government facilitating railway projects, more railway lines inevitably pass through ecological fragile regions (EFRs). Railway construction activities in EFRs might cause detrimental impacts on the local water-soil environment (WSE), which is the basis of the local ecological system that if destroyed can induce secondary disasters. Studies on the WSE risk (WSER) during railway construction in EFRs are limited. As such, this study aims to offer preliminary insight into the WSER assessment of railway construction in EFRs. WSERs were identified firstly based on the literature review and field surveys, and thus a risk index framework for WSER assessment including 5 categories of WSERs and 16 second-order risks was established. Then a comprehensive quantitative assessment method was developed by integrating analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and matter-element analysis (MEA) to assess the overall WSERs of railway construction in EFRs. A case (i.e., the Mingan subproject of Hefei-Fuzhou railway) was selected to demonstrate and validate the developed approach. Results show that the proposed assessment approach can be applied to evaluate the WSERs during railway construction. In addition, the case study demonstrates that the risk of construction methods should be the key focus. Findings from this study enrich the knowledge body of sustainable railways and guide the project managers to conduct practical WSER assessment of railway construction.

Abstract:

The health business is adjusting to a new reality where bargaining power has shifted to consumers. Consumers are now playing a key role in the commercialization process, making them important stakeholders to fulfill their needs. Health business reforms have convinced consumers to give protection a greater priority than ever since the COVID-19 pandemic escalated around the world. Health care businesses in Indonesia are no exception, should increase their brand trust, because of the huge responsibility to protect consumers from the prevention of COVID-19, and brand trust also gives added value to the hospital's own brand. A brand with the right value proposition can "prove" the true value of its product or service to patients in the minds of consumers, one of which is from medical waste management. Hospital waste is usually a contagious and toxic chemical that can affect human health and environmental impacts if not treated properly. Medical waste including sharp objects, infectious waste, pharmaceutical waste, and other waste is mostly generated in health facilities such as health centers and hospitals. such as intravenous lines, syringes, gloves, which after use must be handled and destroyed in such a way that they do not fall into the hands of the public or even injure medical personnel. The Smart Waste concept is here to answer the challenges of trust in hospital brands in Indonesia, especially in the city of Bandung, increasing the sense of security of consumers is the main goal of this concept where hospital safety boxes work together with sensors and microcontrollers, disposal of syringes can be done more intelligently. , safe and the risk of medical personnel punctured by infected needle waste can be reduced.

Abstract:

Synopsis: We have conducted a detailed investigation of the change in deformational, structural, molecular and rheological characteristics that are attendant on a PVC-p compound experiencing higher processing temperatures. Our study reflects an experience that occurs in the PVC industry and for which a loss of processing performance accompanies the excursions to higher temperatures. It is apparent that as this process continues the material will eventually become unprocessable, unless changes are made.The change that accompanies the material as it passes from an experience of low processing temperatures to high processing temperatures has been thoroughly mapped. However, it has been difficult to make precise observation of the molecular and structural changes occurring. This has not been without application of a number of likely candidate methodologies, including DSC, TGA, WAXS, GPC and fluorescence spectroscopy. It would seem that some additional crystallization is accompanying the increase in gelation that occurs at higher processing temperatures. At the same time, the observations on the influence of annealing hint that this is not the only consideration and that diffusion of the plasticiser into the PVC particles might also be playing a role or even residual stresses in the materials might be important.This study has not only been concerned with an in depth materials characterisation; it has also explored ways of alleviating the loss of processability. Two particular lines of study involving pre-shear history and blending with higher plasticised compounds have provided interest albeit inconclusive results. On the other hand, there are strong implications from the DSC study that reversibility of the "process aging" is not likely. In conclusion, it is interesting to observe that by conducting this study through an IUPAC Working Party it has been helpful to pool the resources and experience of an international community of scientists which has likely given us an opportunity of conducting this study at much lower costs than might have otherwise been the case.

Abstract:

Abstract. Growing evidence points to the dynamic role that kerogen is playing on Earth's surface in controlling atmospheric chemistry over geologic time. Although quantitative constraints on the weathering of kerogen remain loose, its changing weathering behavior modulated by the activity of glaciers suggests that this largest pool of reduced carbon on Earth may have played a key part in atmospheric CO2 variability across recent glacial–interglacial cycles and beyond. This work enunciates the possibility of kerogen oxidation as a major driver of atmospheric CO2 increase in the wake of glacial episodes. This hypothesis of centennial- and millennial-timescale relevance for this chemical weathering pathway is substantiated by several lines of independent evidence synthesized in this contribution, including the timing of atmospheric CO2 increase, atmospheric CO2 isotope composition (13C and 14C), kerogen oxidation kinetics, observations of kerogen reburial, and modeling results. The author hypothesizes that the deglaciation of kerogen-rich lithologies in western Canada contributed to the characteristic deglacial increase in atmospheric CO2, which reached an inflection point ≤ 300 years after the Laurentide Ice Sheet retreated into the kerogen-poor Canadian Shield. To reconcile the release of isotopically light carbon via kerogen oxidation with Earth surface carbon pool constraints, major oceanic degassing and biospheric regrowth must have acted in concert across glacial–interglacial transitions. Additionally, a process such as a strong shift in the ratio of C3 to C4-derived organic matter must be invoked to maintain isotope mass balance, a point key for reconciling the hypothesis with the carbon isotope record of marine dissolved inorganic carbon. In order to test this hypothesis, quantitative constraints on the contribution of kerogen oxidation to CO2 rise at glacial terminations are needed through systematic studies on (1) CO2 fluxes emanating from the weathering of different lithologies, (2) oxidation kinetics of kerogen along glacial chronosequences, and (3) high-resolution temporal changes in the aerial extent of glacially exposed lithological units and glacial flour.

Abstract:

The article discusses the methods of knowledge management for E/U-Learning systems, which will provide the opportunities for the construction of a unified all-pervasive electronic educational environment. Authors analyze the development of a new phase of e-learning (E-Learning 3.0) in which will play an important role distributed computer systems, cloud computing, mobile personal devices and wireless networks, artificial intelligence and virtual reality tools. Today, there is a fundamental scientific problem of creating a unified interstate intellectual environment for e-education services. This environment should include heterogeneous forms of knowledge representation, interstate standards and forms of learning, international faculty and student teams. The article suggests a possible knowledge management methods and the approach to the construction of an all-pervading intellectual environment for e-learning services. The proposed approach is based on the integration of multiple technologies, such as: service-oriented design, engineering of DSPL (Dynamic Software Product Lines), wireless telecommunications, interaction of intelligent e-learning agents. Structural basis of this approach is interconnected pair of intelligent software agents: student’s and teacher’s software agents. These agents are able to adapt itself: to the current level of student’s knowledge; to the available software, hardware and network equipment; to the current demands of the environment (e.g. labor markets); to the modern educational standards. As a basis of software agents self-adaptation is a mathematical variability model, including the three basic features hierarchy: educational content, interface, software and technical support. Application of such variability model does not require recompilation of the source code (to make changes in the agents properties) and allows to organize a continuous process of e-learning and significantly increase the life cycle of the entire system of distance learning. Moreover, the authors propose a service-oriented scheme for knowledge flows management. The article will be useful for experts in e-learning, developers of service-oriented systems and for managers in the field of socio-economic systems.

Abstract:

The Ilizarov technology was honored as a "milestone" in the history of orthopedics in the 20th century, benefiting tens of thousands of patients around the world, including Chinese patients. The paper presents an analysis of the integration of the method into Chinese medicine, taking into account national traditions, culture and clinical thinking. Ilizarov technology has revolutionized the orthopaedic surgery and clinical limb regeneration medicine in China. Ilizarov's methodology arose suddenly and brought about revolutionary changes in terms of theoretical guidance, methods of thinking, tools used and medical procedures. For the first time, Ilizarov's discovery made people realize that the human body, natural selection in biology and joint symbiotic evolutionary characteristics are common, namely, as long as the levers activate the tissue regeneration switch and changes in regulation, any tissue at any age and to any degree can complete the self-healing process in according to the requirements of doctors and the expectations of patients, similar to the growth of children. The process of working with an external Ilizarov fixator is like playing chess and changing a kaleidoscope, and the countless number of free combinations of stress configurations can be changed in accordance with the needs of the treatment. In China, Qin Xihe integrated the Chinese culture into the Ilizarov technology, thus forming the Chinese Ilizarov technology. He proposed new concepts such as the concept of natural reconstruction, evolutionary orthopedics, interpretation of body language, one walk, two lines, the principle of three balances, happy orthopedics, etc., which were introduced into clinical practice in the field of limb deformity correction and functional reconstruction. As of December 31, 2018, 35,075 cases of various deformities and disorders of the limbs were entered into the Qinsihe orthopedic database, of which 8113 cases were treated with external fixation (Ilizarov technology). The statistics of a large number of cases showed striking results: diseases treated with this technique covered almost all sections of orthopedic pathology and more than 10 sections of non-orthopedic and traumatological pathology, including vascular, nervous, genetic, metabolic, and skin diseases. In addition to orthopedic, there are more than 170 diseases in total. When Ilizarov's technology is applied, it can magically transform the old into the young. Therefore it is known as a "lifeboat". Conclusion Over the past 70 years, Ilizarov's ideas and technologies have been preserved, updated and augmented. Ilizarov's technology serves as an evolutionary phenomenon that transcends bone science. If you understand this technique, you will understand the direction of modern orthopedic surgery and regenerative medicine. Professor Ilizarov's morale and the spirit of fighting to alleviate the suffering of patients were transferred to the Chinese medical community. This awakened many Chinese doctors who followed the norms of the old and stereotyped medicine. After celebrating the centenary of the birth of Professor Ilizarov, ASAMI China will also prepare for the “Sixth ASAMI & ILLRS-BR World Conference (Beijing – 2023)”. We believe that orthopedics and allied disciplines around the world have a bright future.

Abstract:

Abstract Leukemias are composed of a hierarchy of cells only a fraction of which have stem cell like properties, and are capable of self-renewal. MLL fusion proteins produced by translocations involving the Mixed Lineage Leukemia (MLL) gene on chromosome 11q23 confer stem cell-like properties on committed hematopoietic progenitors. This provides an opportunity to determine if global cellular reprogramming is necessary for leukemia stem cell (LSC) generation from committed progenitors or if induction of a more limited self-renewal signature in committed progenitors is sufficient. We transduced murine IL-7R− Lin− Sca-1− c-Kit+ CD34+ FcγRII/IIIhi granulocyte macrophage progenitors (GMPs) with retroviruses encoding the MLL-AF9 fusion protein, which led to the development of acute myelogenous leukemia. From the leukemias we isolated a population of IL-7R− Lin− Sca-1− c-Kit+ CD34int. FcγRII/IIIint. LSCs which can transplant the disease when fewer than 20 cells are injected into secondary recipients. We used hierarchical clustering, K-means clustering and principal component analysis to compare gene expression profiles of the LSC population to the normal lin− sca-1+ c-kit+ HSC-enriched population, IL-7R− Lin− Sca-1− c-Kit+ CD34+ FcγRII/IIIlo common myeloid progenitors (CMPs), IL-7R− Lin− Sca-1− c-Kit+ CD34− FcγRII/III− megakaryocyte erythroid progenitors (MEPs) and GMPs and found that the global gene expression profile most resembles the normal GMP from which they arose. However, a leukemia self-renewal signature was identified that shows significant overlap with a group of genes normally highly expressed in HSCs whose expression decreases during the transition to normal committed progenitors. Supervised analysis and gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) demonstrated approximately 300 genes in the leukemia self-renewal signature. This is only a subset of the approximately 1500 genes that are highly expressed in the normal HSC-enriched population that show decreased expression in CMPs, MEPs, and GMPs. Next, we determined if this 300-gene leukemia stem cell signature is directly regulated by MLL-AF9 or if there is a hierarchy of gene expression. Assessment of gene expression changes 48 hours after MLL-AF9 expression in isolated GMPs demonstrated increased expression of 23/300 genes in the leukemia self-renewal signature. Of interest, there is a high degree of similarity between the 23 MLL immediate response genes and human MLL-rearranged AMLs including HOXA5, HOXA7, HOXA9, HOXA10, MEIS1 and genes not previously known to have a role in MLL-mediated leukemogenesis such as myocyte enhancer factor 2C (MEF2C). Detailed loss-of-function studies using shRNA and dominant negative mutants show inhibition of MEF2C reduces LSC colony formation and serial replating in semi-solid culture to less than 20% of control. Furthermore shRNA mediated inhibition of MEF2C has a significant impact on proliferation of human MLL-AF9 dependent leukemia cell lines, but not cell lines from other subtypes of AML. These data demonstrate LSCs can be generated from committed progenitors without widespread reprogramming of gene expression, and a leukemia self-renewal signature is activated in the process. We have used this program to identify MEF2C as playing a role in MLL-AF9 induced AML. Identification of this program provides an opportunity to further assess its importance in normal tissue homeostasis and neoplastic self-renewal/proliferation, and defines the progression from normal hematopoietic progenitor to leukemia stem cell.

Abstract:

Background. Johannes Brahms composed his two Clarinet Sonatas, op. 120, in 1894, and dedicated them to the outstanding clarinet player Richard Mühlfeld. These were the last chamber pieces he wrote before his death, when he became interested in the possibilities the clarinet offered. Nowadays they are considered to be masterpieces of the clarinet repertoire, legitimizing the combination of piano and clarinet in new composers’ works. Brahms lavished particular care and affection on these works, and he clearly wished them to have the widest possible circulation, for he adapted them – with a certain amount of recomposition in each case – in two parallel forms: as sonatas for viola and piano, and for violin and piano. The violin versions are rarely heard, but the viola sonatas have become cornerstones of this instrument’s repertoire, just as the original forms have for the repertoire of the clarinet. Brahms was effectively establishing a new genre, since before they appeared there were virtually no important duo sonatas for viola and piano. These sonatas embody his compositional technique in its ultimate taut, essentialized, yet marvelously flexible manner. The purpose of this article is to show the interaction of variable and invariant components of the musical text as a factor influencing performance decisions in the process of working on a piece of music. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to conduct a comparative analysis of the musical text of clarinet and viola parts in the Sonatas of J. Brahms op 120, which are the material of this study. The article relevance is in the importance of comprehension the performing differences for pianists (especially, for those specialized on the sphere of chamber music) working J. Brahms’ Sonatas op. 120 with clarinetists or violists. Every piece could offer its own unique complex of special “challenges”, thus the need of analyzing specifics of performance in every such a piece of music appears. This uniqueness is the basis for the innovativeness of the results of the study of the performance specifics of J. Brahms’ Sonata op. 120 in a selected aspect. Results of the research. Clarinet and viola versions Sonatas by J. Brahms op. 120 occupy a prominent place in the performing repertoire, including training. Because the article provides a comparative analysis of the musical text of clarinet and viola parts with the same piano part; provides a comparative overview of the specifics of the artistic expression of the clarinet and viola to determine the performing strategy of the pianist in the ensemble. The differences found in the viola and clarinet parts are divided into the groups – octave transfers, addition of double notes and melismatics, changes in melodic lines, difference in the strokes (staccato, non legato, tenuto, portamento etc.). There is also a detailed description of clarinet and viola timbres. Due to the different possibilities of the instruments, it is quite obvious that the pianist faces certain creative tasks and in general they can be formulated as follows: when playing the viola, the dynamic range of the piano should be smaller than when performing with the clarinet. In addition, you need to pay attention to other details, such as pedal, texture quality, articulation. Yes, the viola sounds much more confident against the background of a “thick” pedal, while the clarinet in this case loses the volume of its sound. With regard to phrasing, it should be borne in mind that the clarinetist needs to take a breath, and the violist’s ability to lead a bow for a long time does not depend on his physiological characteristics. The question arises: which is more important – tempo or phrasing? In this situation, the specificity is that phrasing should be given more attention. The tempo when performing with the clarinet varies significantly than with the viola, and it is also chosen and changed for practical reasons that follow from the physical data of the performer. The pianist should also pay special attention to the differentiation of voices and the quality of articulation. In terms of sound balance, it is obvious that the clarinet needs more piano support than the viola, because it is dynamically brighter. Nevertheless, this does not mean that piano shades “p” should be avoided, because the contrast of dynamics expands the acoustic range of Sonatas and their expressive potential. Conclusion. The comparative-analytical description contributes to the awareness of the differences in the dynamic balance due to the change of the obligatory instrument. Accurate knowledge of where and how such changes occur not only focuses the musicians’ attention on the relevant details in the performance process, but also encourages them to make more informed decisions about the dynamic balance of performance in general.

Abstract:

The proliferation of international legal regimes, norms, and institutions in the post-Cold War era, known as the ‘fragmentation’ of international law, has sparked extensive debate among jurists. This debate has evolved as a dialectical process, seeing legal scholarship shifting from grave concern about fragmentation’s potentially negative impacts on the international legal order to a more optimistic view of the phenomenon, with recent literature suggesting that the tools needed to contain fragmentation’s ill-effects are today all at hand, thus arguing that the time has come ‘to bid farewell to the f-word.’ Drawing on the COVID-19 crisis as a test case and considering the unresolved problems in existing fragmentation literature that this crisis brings to the fore, this article asks whether such calls have perhaps been premature. Existing works on fragmentation, the article submits, including those bidding farewell to the f-word, have mainly focused on the problems of conflicts between international norms or international institutions, especially conflicts between international courts over competing jurisdictions and interpretations of law. But, as the COVID-19 case – and, particularly, the deficient cooperation marked between the numerous international organizations reacting to the crisis – shows, the fragmentation of the international legal order does not only give rise to the potential consequences of conflicts of norms and clashes between international courts. Fragmentation also gives rise to pressing challenges of coordination when a proactive and cohesive international response is required to address global problems like COVID-19, which cut across multiple international organizations playing critical roles in the creation, administration, and application of international law. By foregrounding cooperation between international organizations as a vital-yet-deficient form of governance under conditions of fragmentation, the article argues, the COVID-19 crisis not only denotes that the time is not yet ripe to bid farewell to the f-word. It further points to the need to expand the fragmentation debate, going beyond its conflict- and court-centred focus, while probing new tools for tackling unsettled problems that arise from the segmentation of international law along sectoral lines.

Abstract:

I want to argue here that the use of terms like “disabled” has very concrete and practical consequences; such language choices are significant and constitutive, not simply the abstract subject of a theoretical debate or a “politically correct” storm in a teacup. In this paper I want to examine some significant moments of conflict over and resistance to definitions of “disability” in an arts project, “In the Picture”, run by one of the UK’s largest disability charities, Scope. In the words of its webpages, this project “aims to encourage publishers, illustrators and writers to embrace diversity - so that disabled children are included alongside others in illustrations and story lines in books for young readers” (http://www.childreninthepicture.org.uk/aboutus.htm). It sought to raise awareness of “ableism” in the book world and through its webpage, offer practical advice and examples of how to include disabled children in illustrated children’s books. From 2005 to 2007, I tracked the progress of the project’s Stories strand, which sought to generate exemplary inclusive narratives by drawing on the experiences of disabled people and families of disabled children. My research drew on participant observation and interviews, but also creative audience research — a process where, in the words of David Gauntlett, “participants are asked to create media or artistic artefacts themselves.” Consequently, when I’m talking here about definitions of “disability’, I am discussing not just the ways people talk about what the word “disabled” might mean, but also the ways in which such identities might appear in images. These definitions made a real difference to those participating in various parts of the project and the types of inclusive stories they produced. Scope has been subject to substantial critique from the disability movement in the past (Benjamin; Carvel; Shakespeare, "Sweet Charity"). “In the Picture” was part of an attempt to resituate the charity as a campaigning organization (Benjamin; O’Hara), with the campaign’s new slogan “Time to get Equal” appearing prominently at the top of each page of the project’s website. As a consequence the project espoused the social model of disability, with its shift in focus from individual peoples’ bodily differences, towards the exclusionary and unequal society that systematically makes those differences meaningful. This shift in focus generates, some have argued, a performative account of disability as an identity (Sandhal; Breivik). It’s not simply that non-normative embodiment or impairment can be (and often is) acquired later in life, meaning that non-disabled people are perhaps best referred to as TABs — the “temporarily able bodied” (Duncan, Goggin and Newell). More significantly, what counts as a “disabled person” is constituted in particular social, physical and economic environments. Changing that environment can, in essence, create a disabled person, or make a person cease to be dis-abled. I will argue that, within the “In the Picture” project, this radically constructionist vision of disablement often rubbed against more conventional understandings of the term “disabled people”. In the US, the term “people with disabilities” is favoured as a label, because of its “people first” emphasis, as well as its identification of an oppressed minority group (Haller, Dorries and Rahn, 63; Shakespeare, Disability Rights). In contrast, those espousing the social model of disability in the UK tend to use the phrase “disabled people”. This latter term can flag the fact that disability is not something emanating from individuals’ bodily differences, but a social process by which inaccessible environments disable particular people (Oliver, Politics). From this point of view the phrase “people with disabilities” might appear to ascribe the disability to the individual rather than the society — it suggests that it is the people who “have” the disability, not the society which disables. As Helen Meekosha has pointed out, Australian disability studies draws on both US civil rights languages and the social model as understood in the UK. While I’ve chosen to adopt the British turn of phrase here, the broader concept from an Australian point of view, is that the use of particular sets of languages is no simple key to the perspectives adopted by individual speakers. My observations suggest that the key phrase used in the project — “ disabled people” — is one that, we might say, “passes”. To someone informed by the social model it clearly highlights a disabling society. However, it is a phrase that can be used without obvious miscommunication to talk to people who have not been exposed to the social model. Someone who subscribes to a view of “disability” as impairment, as a medical condition belonging to an individual, might readily use the term “disabled people”. The potentially radical implications of this phrase are in some ways hidden, unlike rival terms like “differently abled”, which might be greeted with mockery in some quarters (eg. Purvis; Parris). This “passing” phrase did important work for the “In the Picture” project. As many disability activists have pointed out, “charity” and “concern” for disabled people is a widely espoused value, playing a range of important psychic roles in an ableist society (eg. Longmore; Hevey). All the more evocative is a call to support disabled children, a favoured object of the kinds of telethons and other charitable events which Longmore discusses. In the words of Rosemarie Garland Thomson, the sentimentality often used in charity advertising featuring children “contains disability’s threat in the sympathetic, helpless child for whom the viewer is empowered to act” (Garland Thomson, 63). In calling for publishers to produce picture books which included disabled children, the project had invested in this broad appeal — who could argue against such an agenda? The project has been successful, for example, in recruiting support from many well known children’s authors and illustrators, including Quentin Blake and Dame Jackie Wilson. The phrase “disabled children”, I would argue, smoothed the way for such successes by enabling the project to graft progressive ideas —about the need for adequate representation of a marginalized group — onto existing conceptions of an imagined recipient needing help from an already constituted group of willing givers. So what were the implications of using the phrase “disabled children” for the way the project unfolded? The capacity of this phrase to refer to both a social model account of disability and more conventional understandings had an impact on the recruitment of participants for writing workshops. Participants were solicited via a range of routes. Some were contacted through the charity’s integrated pre-school and the networks of the social workers working beside it. The workshops were also advertised via a local radio show, through events run by the charity for families of disabled people, through a notice in the Disabled Parents site, and announcements on the local disability arts e- newsletter. I am interested in the way that those who heard about the workshops might have been hailed by —or resisted the lure of — those labels “disabled person” or “parent of a disabled child” or at least the meaning of those labels when used by a large disability charity. For example, despite a workshop appearing on the programme of Northwest Disability Arts’ Deaf and Disability Arts Festival, no Deaf participants became involved in the writing workshops. Some politicised Deaf communities frame their identities as an oppressed linguistic minority of sign language users, rather than as disabled people (Corker; Ladd). As such, I would suggest that they are not hailed by the call to “disabled people” with which the project was framed, despite the real absence of children’s books drawing on Deaf culture and its rich tradition of visual communication (Saunders; Conlon and Napier). Most of those who attended were (non-disabled) parents or grandparents of disabled children, rather than disabled people, a fact critiqued by some participants. It’s only possible to speculate about the reasons for this imbalance. Was it the reputation of this charity or charities in general (see Shakespeare, "Sweet Charity") amongst politicised disabled people that discouraged attendance? A shared perspective with those within the British disabled peoples’ movement who emphasise the overwhelming importance of material changes in employment, education, transport rather than change in the realm of “attitudes” (eg Oliver, Politics)? Or was it the association of disabled people undertaking creative activities with a patronising therapeutic agenda (eg Hevey, 26)? The “pulling power” of a term even favoured by the British disability movement, it seems, might be heavily dependent on who was using it. Nonetheless, this term did clearly speak to some people. In conversation it emerged that most of those who attended the workshops either had young family members who were disabled or were imbricated in educational and social welfare networks that identified them as “disabled” — for example, by having access to Disability Living Allowance. While most of the disabled children in participants’ families were in mainstream education, most also had an educational “statement” enabling them to access extra resources, or were a part of early intervention programmes. These social and educational institutions had thus already hailed them as “families of disabled children” and as such they recognised themselves in the project’s invitation. Here we can see the social and institutional shaping of what counts as “disabled children” in action. One participant who came via an unusual route into the workshops provides an interesting reflection of the impact of an address to “disabled people”. This man had heard about the workshop because the local charity he ran had offices adjacent to the venue of one of the workshops. He started talking to the workshop facilitator, and as he said in an interview, became interested because “well … she mentioned that it was about disabilities and I’m interested in people’s disabilities – I want to improve conditions for them obviously”. I probed him about the relationship between his interest and his own experiences as a person with dyslexia. While he taught himself to read in his thirties, he described his reading difficulties as having ongoing impacts on his working life. He responded: first of all it wasn’t because I have dyslexia, it was because I’m interested in improving people’s lives in general. So, I mean particularly people who are disabled need more care than most of us don’t they? …. and I’d always help whenever I can, you know what I mean. And then thinking that I had a disability myself! The dramatic double-take at the end of this comment points to the way this respondent positions himself throughout as outside of the category of “disabled”. This self- identification points towards the stigma often attached to the category “disabled”. It also indicates the way in which this category is, at least in part, socially organised, such that people can be in various circ*mstances located both inside and outside it. In this writer’s account “people who are disabled” are “them” needing “more care than most of us”. Here, rather than identifying as a disabled person, imagined as a recipient of support, he draws upon the powerful discourses of charity in a way that positions him giving to and supporting others. The project appealed to him as a charity worker and as a campaigner, and indeed a number of other participants (both “disabled” and “non-disabled”) framed themselves in this way, looking to use their writing as a fundraising tool, for example, or as a means of promoting more effective inclusive education. The permeability of the category of “disabled” presented some challenges in the attempt to solicit “disabled peoples’” voices within the project. This was evident when completed stories came to be illustrated by design, illustration and multimedia students at four British universities: Liverpool John Moores University, the University of Wolverhampton, the University of Teeside and the North East Wales Institute. Students attending an initial briefing on the project completed a questionnaire which included an item asking whether they considered themselves to be disabled. While around eight of the eighty respondents answered “yes” to this question, the answers of these students and some others were by no means clear cut. A number of students identified themselves as dyslexic, but contested the idea that this diagnosis meant that they were disabled. One respondent commented along similar lines: “My boyfriend was very upset that the university considers him to be disabled because he is dyslexic”. How can we make sense of these responses? We could note again that the identity of “disabled” is highly stigmatised. Many disabled students believe that they are seen as lazy, demanding excessive resources, or even in the case of some students with non- visible impairments, lying (Kleege; Olney and Brockman). So we could view such responses as identity management work. From this point of view, an indicator of the success of the project in shifting some of the stigma attached to the label of “disabled” might be the fact that at least one of the students participants “came out” as dyslexic to her tutors in the course of her participation in the project. The pattern of answers on questionnaire returns suggests that particular teaching strategies and administrative languages shape how students imagine and describe themselves. Liverpool John Moores University, one of the four art schools participating in the project, had a high profile programme seeking to make dyslexic students aware of the technical and writing support available to them if they could present appropriate medical certification (Lowy). Questionnaires from LJMU included the largest number of respondents identifying themselves as both disabled and dyslexic, and featured no comment on any mismatch between these labels. In the interests of obtaining appropriate academic support and drawing on a view of dyslexia not as a deficit but as a learning style offering significant advantages, it might be argued, students with dyslexia at this institution had been taught to recognise themselves through the label “disabled”. This acknowledgement that people sharing some similar experiences might describe themselves in very different ways depending on their context suggests another way of interpreting some students’ equivocal relationship to labels like “dyslexia” and “disabled”. The university as an environment demanding the production of very formal styles of writing and rapid assimilation of a high volume of written texts, is one where particular learning strategies of people with dyslexia come to be disabling. In many peoples’ day to day lives – and perhaps particularly in the day to day lives of visual artists – less conventional ways of processing written information simply may not be disabling. As such, students’ responses might be seen less as resistance to a stigmatised identity and more an acknowledgement of the contingent nature of disablement. Or perhaps we might understand these student responses as a complex mix of both of these perspectives. Disability studies has pointed to the coexistence of contradictory discourses around disability within popular culture (eg, Garland-Thomson; Haller, Dorries and Rahn). Similarly, the friezes, interactive games, animations, illustrated books and stand-alone images which came out of this arts project sometimes incorporate rival conceptions of disability side by side. A number of narratives, for example, include pairs of characters, one of which embodies conventional narratives of disability (for example, being diagnostically labelled or ‘cured’), while the other articulates alternative accounts (celebrating diversity and enabling environments). Both students and staff reported that participation in the project prompted critical thinking about accessible design and inclusive representation. Some commented in interviews that their work on the project had changed their professional practice in ways they thought might have longer term impact on the visual arts. However, it is clear that in student work, just as in the project itself, alternative conceptions of what “disability” might mean were at play, even as reframing such conceptions are explicitly the aim of the enterprise. Such contradictions point towards the difficulties of easily labelling individual stories or indeed the wider project “progressive” or otherwise. Some illustrated narratives and animations created by students were understood by the project management to embody the definitions of “disabled children” within the project’s ten principles. This work was mounted on the website to serve as exemplars for the publishing industry (http://www.childreninthepicture.org.uk/stories.htm). Such decisions were not unreflective, however. There was a good deal of discussion by students and project management about how to make “disabled children” visible without labelling or pathologising. For example, one of the project’s principles is that “images of disabled children should be used casually or incidentally, so that disabled children are portrayed playing and doing things alongside their non- disabled peers” (see also Bookmark). Illustrator Jane Ray commented wryly in an article on the website on her experience of including disabled characters in a such a casual way in her published work that no-one notices it! (Ray). As I’ve discussed in more detail elsewhere (Matthews, forthcoming), the social model, espoused by the project, with its primary focus on barriers to equality rather than individual impaired bodies, presented some challenges to such aims. While both fairytales and, increasingly, contemporary books for young people, do sometimes engage with violence, marginalisation and social conflict (Saunders), there is a powerful imperative to avoid such themes in books for very young children. In trying to re-narrativise disabled children outside conventional paradigms of “bravery overcoming adversity”, the project may have also pushed writers and illustrators away from engaging with barriers to equality. The project manager commented in an interview: “probably in the purest form the social model would show in stories the barriers facing disabled children, whereas we want to show what barriers have been knocked down and turn it round into a more positive thing”. While a handful of the 23 stories emerging from the writing workshops included narratives around bullying and or barriers to equal access, many of the stories chose to envisage more utopian, integrated environments. If it is barriers to inequality that, at least in part, create “disabled people”, then how is it possible to identify disabled children with little reference to such barriers? The shorthand used by many student illustrators, and frequently too in the “images for inspiration” part of the project’s website, has been the inclusion of enabling technologies. A white cane, a wheelchair or assistive and augmentative communication technologies can be included in an image without making a “special” point of these technologies in the written text. The downside to this shorthand, however, is the way that the presence of these technologies can serve to naturalise the category of “disabled children”. Rather than being seen as a group identity constituted by shared experiences of discrimination and exclusion, the use of such “clues” to which characters “are disabled” might suggest that disabled people are a known group, independent of particular social and environmental settings. Using this arts project as a case study, I have traced here some of the ways people are recognised or recognise themselves as “disabled”. I’ve also suggested that within this project other conceptions of what “disabled” might mean existed in the shadows of the social constructionist account to which it declared its allegiances. Given the critiques of the social model which have emerged within disability studies over the last fifteen years (e.g. Crowe; Shakespeare, Disability Rights), this need not be a damning observation. The manager of this arts project, along with writer Mike Oliver ("If I Had"), has suggested that the social model might be used strategically as a means of social transformation rather than a complete account of disabled peoples’ lives. However, my analysis here has suggested that we can not only imagine different ways that “disabled people” might be conceptualised in the future. Rather we can see significant consequences of the different ways that the label “disabled” is mobilised here and now. Its inclusion and exclusions, what it makes it easy to say or difficult to imagine needs careful thinking through. References Benjamin, Alison. “Going Undercover.” The Guardian, Society, April 2004: 8. Bookmark. Quentin Blake Award Project Report: Making Exclusion a Thing of the Past. The Roald Dahl Foundation, 2006. Breivik, Jan Kare. “Deaf Identities: Visible Culture, Hidden Dilemmas and Scattered Belonging.” In H.G. Sicakkan and Y.G. Lithman, eds. What Happens When a Society Is Diverse: Exploring Multidimensional Identities. Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2006. 75-104. Carvel, John. “Demonstrators Rattle Scope.” The Guardian, Society section, 6 Oct. 2004: 4. Conlon, Caroline, and Jemina Napier. “Developing Auslan Educational Resources: A Process of Effective Translation of Children’s Books.” Deaf Worlds 20.2. (2004): 141-161. Corker, Mairian. Deaf and Disabled or Deafness Disabled. Buckingham: Open University Press, 1998. Crow, Liz. “Including All of Our Lives: Renewing the Social Model of Disability.” In Jenny Morris, ed. Encounters with Strangers: Feminism and Disability. Women’s Press, 1996. 206-227. Davis, John, and Nick Watson. “Countering Stereotypes of Disability: Disabled Children and Resistance.” In Mairian Corker and Tom Shakespeare, eds. Disability/Postmodernity: Embodying Disability Theory. London: Continuum, 2002. 159-174. Duncan, Kath, Gerard Goggin, and Christopher Newell. “Don’t Talk about Me… like I’m Not Here: Disability in Australian National Cinema.” Metro Magazine 146-147 (2005): 152-159. Garland Thomson, Rosemarie. “The Politics of Staring: Visual Rhetorics of Disability in Popular Photography.” In Sharon L. Snyder, Brenda Jo Bruggemann, and Rosemarie Garland Thomson, eds. Disability Studies: Enabling the Humanities. New York: MLAA, 2002. 56-75. Gauntlett, David. “Using Creative Visual Research Methods to Understand Media Audiences.” MedienPädagogik 4.1 (2005). Haller, Beth, Bruce Dorries, and Jessica Rahn. “Media Labeling versus the US Disability Community Identity: A Study of Shifting Cultural Language.” In Disability & Society 21.1 (2006): 61-75. Hevey, David. The Creatures Time Forgot: Photography and Disability Imagery. London: Routledge, 1992. Kleege, Georgia. “Disabled Students Come Out: Questions without Answers.” In Sharon Snyder, Brenda Jo Brueggeman, and Rosemarie Garland Thomson, eds. Disability Studies: Enabling the Humanities. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2002. 308-316. Ladd, Paddy. Understanding Deaf Culture: In Search of Deafhood. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 2003. Longmore, Paul. “Conspicuous Contribution and American Cultural Dilemma: Telethon Rituals of Cleansing and Renewal.” In David T. Mitchell and Sharon L. Snyder, eds. The Body and Physical Difference: Discourses of Disability. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1997. 134-158. Lowy, Adrienne. “Dyslexia: A Different Approach to Learning?” JMU Learning and Teaching Press 2.2 (2002). Matthews, Nicole. “Contesting Representations of Disabled Children in Picture Books: Visibility, the Body and the Social Model of Disability.” Children’s Geographies (forthcoming). Meekosha, Helen. “Drifting Down the Gulf Stream: Navigating the Cultures of Disability Studies.” Disability & Society 19.7 (2004): 720-733. O’Hara, Mary. “Closure Motion.” The Guardian, Society section, 30 March 2005: 10. Oliver, Mike. The politics of Disablement. London: Macmillan, 1990. ———. “If I Had a Hammer: The Social Model in Action.” In John Swain, Sally French, Colin Barnes, and Carol Thomas, eds. Disabling Barriers – Enabling Environments. London: Sage, 2002. 7-12. Olney, Marjorie F., and Karin F. Brockelman. "Out of the Disability Closet: Strategic Use of Perception Management by Select University Students with Disabilities." Disability & Society 18.1 (2003): 35-50. Parris, Matthew. “Choose Your Words Carefully If You Want to Be Misunderstood.” The Times 10 July 2004. Purves, Libby. “Handicap, What Handicap?” The Times 9 Aug. 2003. Ray, Jane. “An Illustrator’s View: Still Invisible.” In the Picture. < http://www.childreninthepicture.org.uk/au_illustrateview.htm >.Sandhal, Carrie. “Queering the Crip or Cripping the Queer: Intersections of Queer and Crip Identities in Solo Autobiographical Performance.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 9.1-2 (2003): 25-56. Saunders, Kathy. Happy Ever Afters: A Storybook Guide to Teaching Children about Disability. London: Trenton Books, 2000. Shakespeare, Tom. “Sweet Charity?” 2 May 2003. Ouch! < (http://www.bbc.co.uk/ouch/features/charity.shtml >. Shakespeare, Tom. Disability Rights and Wrongs. London: Routledge, 2006.

Abstract:

Innovation in family firms is still a controversial issue within the academic community and poses some unique challenges for family business owners and managers. This special issue on innovation in family firms results from the cooperation of both academic and business guest editors, in a pioneering initiative that is not usual in academic journals. Indeed, a key feature of this Special Issue has been the collaboration with two family business leaders, who have been involved in the editorial process together with the academics. The two business editors that we involved are Antonio Gallardo, Vicepresident of Almiralland former director of FBN-Family Business Network,andIgnacio Osborne, CEO of the Osborne Groupand Chairman of the Spanish Family Firm Institute. In order to introduce the six papers that make up this special issue on innovation in family firms, we as academic editors are pleased to include some comments from the business editors that emerged during our interactions with the aim to make a step forward toward bridging the gap between research and practice on family business innovation, acknowledging the different perspectives and approaches adopted by academics and practitioners. As the business editor Mr. Osborne points: “Innovation issues in family firms are nowadays more important than ever, due to the rapid developments that are occurring in the business world and its corresponding technologies”. Despite being a topic analyzed by a number of authors over time (Feranita, Kotlar and De Massis, 2017; Aparicio, Iturralde and Sánchez-Famoso, 2020 in this issue; Chrisman, Chua, De Massis, Frattini and Wright, 2015), the study of innovation in family business still requires a greater volume of research to provide answers to the needs of family businesses. The distinctive nature of family firms results in a complex influence on the innovation process (De Massis, Frattini and Lichtenthaler, 2013), which is reflected in mixed research findings. For instance, the conclusions of the published research offer sometimes contradictory results, since family businesses can be considered innovative (Aronoff, 1998; Craig and Moores, 2006) or conservative (Sharma, Chrisman, y Chua, 1997; Zahra, Hayton y Salvato, 2004; Gómez-Mejía et al., 2007), with several studies that can support whatever of the two options. Family businesses present a number of characteristics that, a priori, seem to favor innovation, such as long-term orientation (Tagiuri and Davis, 1996; Ward and Aronoff, 1994), the desire for continuity through the following generations (Miroshnychenko et al., 2020; Gallo, 1995), patient capital (De Massis, Audretsch, Uhlaner and Kammerlander, 2018; Sirmon and Hitt, 2003), and the long tenure of their main leaders (Lorenzo, 2020). The replacement of the prior generation by the next generation implies the access of younger people to the leadership of the company, who also often present a greater level of qualification (De Massis et al., 2008; Cabrera-Suárez, 2011). Young and qualified leaders would provide a new momentum to the firm, by means of the renewal of the firm (Núñez-Cacho and Lorenzo, 2020). Likewise, the successors receive an important legacy by means of the values of the family business (Erdogan et al., 2020), such as effort, perseverance, austerity, excellence, long-term orientation and entrepreneurial spirit, as basic foundations of their way of understanding business activity (Bermejo, 2008). Accordingly, the new generation managers could be in the best conditions to reinvent the company, since they know the business from within and they also provide the new vision of a person with a working life ahead. Another factor that favors the renewal impulse of the next generation is the familial support to carry out a prolonged tenure over time, which will not be as conditioned by short-term results as in other types of companies, by the so-called patient capital (Sirmon and Hitt, 2003) of the family business (Lorenzo, 2020). But, even if these ideal conditions are met in a specific family firm, it is not guaranteed that the company realizes the innovation it needs. Therefore, it is needed to shed more light about the determinants and conditions for innovation. The editors of this special issue selected a number of papers to reflect the state-of-the-art on this topic, indicating some of the most promising research lines on innovation. According to the business editor Mr. Gallardo, “A very important aspect emerging from this special issue is that the papers published in it reveal that external contributions to the internal know-how of the family and the business are often vital to help produce the changes needed by a family firm for innovation to take place”. Innovation in the family business has been a phenomenon of great interest to researchers, especially in the last decade. This is highlighted in the article that opens this special issue by presenting a complete bibliometric review of the literature on innovation in family businesses. Generally, researchers have noted that the influence of the family is the factor that makes this type of businesses different from the other ones (Habbershon and Williams, 1999; Lorenzo and Núñez-Cacho, 2012). However, in order to conclude that this is really true, it is necessary to identify the nature of these differences and determine how and why they affect the innovative behavior of the family business. The paper Innovation on family businesses: A holistic bibliometric(Aparicio, Iturralde and Sánchez-Famoso, 2020) offers an overview of the research field through an analysis of 207 articles that were published between 1994 and 2017. The authors complement other recent reviews such as those by Feranita, Kotlar and De Massis (2017) and Calabrò, Vecchiarini, Gast, Campopiano, De Massis and Kraus (2019), and reflect about the take-off of research on innovation that takes place since 2009. In the study two differentiated periods are highlighted: An initial one that covers the years 1994 to 2009, and one of expansion from 2010 to 2017. In addition, they identify the most influential journals, the most referenced articles, the most productive scholars -namely, De Massis, Frattini, Craig, Chrisman, Fang, Kotlar and Nordqvist appear as the most productive and referenced ones- and the main lines of research developed, providing a clear and synthetic map of innovation research in family businesses today. This paper approaches innovation from a more theoretical perspective, and also presents the lines of research that are currently being developed. These lines include the internal factors of the family business and its influence on innovation, as well as external factors, among others advances in research in the subject. The paper An Analysis of Open Innovation Determinants: The Case Study of Singapore based Family owned Enterprises, by Koh, Kong and Timperio (2020, this issue) analyzes the drivers of open innovation by studying cases of family businesses in Singapore. The authors highlight the external determinants and catalysts of innovation projects, such as family and business culture, access to external funds, government support for initiatives, market dynamics and partnership between companies. In addition to these six external determinants, there are two other factors that have a great influence on open innovation. First, family capital, which is the main source of financing for innovative initiatives. Second, a strong external network, supported by Singapore's legal and regulatory framework that fosters innovation, promotes the development of an enabling business environment so that the spirit of innovation can truly thrive. Most of the surveyed companies’ managers mentioned process innovation as the most critical aspect, and also organizational innovation. Process innovation is considered superior by the companies included in the sample due to their capabilities to drive product innovation, marketing and organizational structure (and people). Organizational innovation is also considered of utmost importance, due to the need to adopt technologies such as digitalization, robotics or automation, which require an adequate organizational structure. Some ideas from the surveyed managers highlight these statements, like: "The correct processes create the necessary conditions to shape the products, as well as the marketing and organization structures," as well as "Having cutting-edge processes underway is a key differentiator." This study also reflects the need to establish new financing mechanisms adapted to the peculiarities of innovation processes. External capital injection and stimulus policies are necessary, although not sufficient, since they must be combined with the determinants of the internal functioning of family businesses. The relevance of the external network is also highlighted in the paper Collaborative innovation in the family SME: conceptualization, goals, and success factors, by Arzubiaga, Maseda, Uribarri and Palma Ruiz (2020, this issue), which analyzes the strategy of collaborative innovation that seeks the creation of knowledge, new product designs and Improving the efficiency of the production process. Among the conditions of collaborative innovation, four groups stand out: The composition of the management team (in terms of family members percentage and number of generations involved in management), abilities (cognitive factors, absorption capacity and trajectory in innovation), attitudes, and legacy preservation, (referring to socio-emotional wealth and internal behavior). These factors of small and medium family businesses play a crucial role in the successful design and implementation of collaborative innovation. The main contributions of this paper can be summarized in the need for establish solid bases to deepen in the future the study of collaborative innovation. Moreover, a second contribution refers to the identification of the distinguishing characteristics of family SMEs. Arzubiaga, Maseda, Uribarri and Palma Ruiz (2020, this issue) also propose the analysis of the possible moderating effects of firm size and the sector to refine the impact of the variables in this model, looking to achieve excellence in collaborative innovation. As business reviewer, Mr. Osbornehave highlighted collaborative innovation as one of the relevant issues in order to reinforce the role of innovation in their companies. Absorptive capacity is another aspect of great interest to researchers. There are numerous factors that condition it, some of them are features of the family character that make the behavior of family businesses paradoxical (Kotlar et al. 2020). The paper titled A mediating model of innovative capacity between absorptive capacity and family business performanceby Hernández-Perlines, Ariza-Montes and Araya-Castillo (2020, this issue) addresses the issue about absorptive capacity. Absorptive capacity is related to the identification, assimilation and exploitation of new knowledge by the company. Those family businesses that have these capabilities improve their performance. In addition, this effect is enhanced by the innovative capacity of the company, which acts as a mediator between absorption capacity and the company's performance, reinforcing this relationship. Thus, family business managers should focus their efforts on providing their organizations with the necessary skills to absorb and exploit knowledge. This will be easier if the company has developed innovative capabilities. In this sense, the business editor Mr. Gallardo points that: “There is also the possibility of establishing an advisory council with external collaborators that serves as a contrast to the company's board, in which oftentimes the weight of the family is too decisive.” The last two papers in this special issue address the role of family involvement in relation to innovation. Does too much love hinder innovation? Family involvement and firms' innovativeness in family-owned Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs), by Filippo Ferrari (2020, this issue) reflects on the role of family cohesion and its flexibility in the process of innovation, drawing upon the Olson Circumplex model (Olson, 2000) which is applied in a sample of Italian family businesses. The study indicates that unbalanced families show the lowest levels of innovation, although family cohesion and flexibility do not show a significant correlation with the overall level of organizational innovation. Flexibility shows a positive correlation with the process and behavioral innovation, which can be explained by the demand for new forms and organizational routines to deal with process innovation. Here the author suggests some human resources practices that promote flexibility, such as labor rotation (Ortega, 2001), or the development of a horizontal internal career (Ichniowsky et al. 1996, 1997, 1999). Families that lack cohesion show a negative correlation with strategic innovation and process innovation. Ferrari (2020, this issue) considers as disconnected family systems those in which family members are not cohesive and have little family loyalty. On the other hand, innovation in processes is encouraged with new ideas through contributions in terms of new ways of doing things. According to the authors, the Olson Circumplex model (Olson, 2000) offers a framework that can diagnose the extent to which family systems are balanced and how the effects of balanced or unbalanced family dynamics can affect the family business (Daspit et al. 2018). Business reviewers were especially interested on the conclusions of this paper, and also pointed that it would be necessary more research on that kind of negative influences stemmed from lack of cohesion within the business family. Entrepreneurial orientation and product innovation: The moderating role of family involvement in management, by Fredyma, Ruiz Palomo and Diéguez (2020, this issue) addresses a classic concept closely linked to the study of innovation such as entrepreneurial orientation. The relationships between this variable and product innovation, incremental innovation and radical innovation are examined. The influence of family performance on the company is also analyzed. In their conclusions, Fredyma, Ruiz Palomo and Diéguez (2020, this issue) point out that family involvement weakens the positive effect of entrepreneurial orientation in product innovation, especially in case of radical innovation. Therefore, the family business must be aware of these weaknesses to correct them, professionalizing with non-family managers and including their participation in innovation decisions. This conclusion is stressed by both business editors, Mr. Osborne and Mr. Gallardo, who point out that: “Having a network of external collaborators, some of them generalists and others specialized in specific problems, is nowadays practically indispensable.” Finally, the academic editors sincerely appreciate the contributions of two prominent Spanish businessmen, who have contributed to enrich this special issue with a business perspective, which helps to overcome the division that is sometimes perceived between the academic world and the business one. Both Antonio Gallardo and Ignacio Osborne represent the entrepreneurial vision that they have been able to maintain in their families and in their companies for generations. We all know how challenging it is for a family business to be entrepreneurial across generations (e.g., De Massis, Eddleston and Rovelli, 2020). Last but now least, we want to express our gratitude to the editor of the European Journal of Family Business, Professor Vanesa Guzmán for her collaboration and contributions. The Osborne Group, founded in 1772, is one of the oldest family businesses in Europe. The group evolved from the original business of raising and exporting wines from Jerez to a wider food and beverage group which includes quality wines from various Spanish designations of origin, premium spirits, and products derived from Iberian pork, with a growing international acceptance, entering markets as demanding as China. Ignacio Osborne, a member of the sixth family generation, is the current president of the company since 2017, after 21 years as CEO. The company has been especially innovative in marketing, creating the symbol of the bull in the 50s, which has become a symbol that identifies the Spanish, transcending its initial origin as a reference for the winery. Almirallis a pharmaceutical company founded in 1943. It is currently run by the second generation, which are giving way to the third. Although innovation is an essential requirement to compete in pharmaceutics, Almirall has managed to develop some well-known products in Spain, as Almax and Cleboril, becoming one of most innovative companies in the industry. Antonio Gallardo is honorary vice president of his company, which he chaired for 26 years. In addition, he was also president of the Family Council and the Family Office, as well as a member of the Executive Committee of the Family Business Network and vice president of the Family Business Institute.

Abstract:

The L Word: Generation Q is the reboot of The L Word, a long running series about a group of lesbians and bisexuals in Los Angeles in the early 2000s. Both programmes are unique in their positioning of lesbian characters and have been well received by audiences and critics alike. These programmes present a range of characters and narratives, previously excluded from mainstream film and television, bringing a refreshing change from the destructive images typically presented before. We argue that the reboot Generation Q now offers more meaningful representation of the broader lesbian and transgender communities, and discuss its relevance in the changing portrayals of gay representation. Gay visibility has never really been an issue in the movies. Gays have always been visible. It is how they have been visible that has remained offensive for almost a century. (Russo 66) In 2004 The L Word broke new ground as the very first television series written and directed by predominantly queer women. This set it apart from previous representations of lesbians by Hollywood because it portrayed a community rather than an isolated or lone lesbian character, that was extraneous to a cast of heterosexuals (Moore and Schilt). The series brought change, and where Hollywood was more often “reluctant to openly and non-stereotypically engage with gay subjects and gay characters” (Baker 41), the L Word offered an alternative to the norm in media representation. “The L Word’s significance lies in its very existence” according to Chambers (83), and this article serves to consider this significance in conjunction with its 2019 reboot, the L Word: Generation Q, to ascertain if the enhanced visibility and gay representation influences the system of representation that has predominantly been excluding and misrepresentative of gay life. The exclusion of authentic representation of lesbians and gays in Hollywood film is not new. Over time, however, there has been an increased representation of gay characters in film and television. However, beneath the positive veneer remains a morally disapproving undertone (Yang), where lesbians and gays are displayed as the showpiece of the abnormal (Gross, "Out of the Mainstream"). Gross ("Out of the Mainstream") suggests that through the ‘othering’ of lesbians and gays within media, a means of maintaining the moral order is achieved, and where being ‘straight’ results in a happy ending. Lesbians and gays in film thus achieve what Gerbner referred to as symbolic annihilation, purposefully created in a bid to maintain the social inequity. This form of exclusion often saw controversial gay representation, with a history of portraying these characters in a false, excluding, and pejorative way (Russo; Gross, "What Is Wrong"; Hart). The history of gay representation in media had at times been monstrous, playing out the themes of gay sexuality as threatening to heterosexual persons and communities (Juárez). Gay people were incorrectly stereotyped, and gay lives were seen through the slimmest of windows. Walters (15) argued that it was “too often” that film and television images would narrowly portray gays “as either desexualized or over sexualized”, framing their sexuality as the sole identity of the character. She also contested that gay characters were “shown as nonthreatening and campy 'others' or equally comforting and familiar boys (and they are usually boys, not girls) next door” (Walters 15). In Russo’s seminal text, The Celluloid Closet, he demonstrated that gay characters were largely excluded from genuine and thoughtful presentation in film, while the only option given to them was how they died. Gay activists and film makers in the 1980s and beyond built on the momentum of AIDS activism (Streitmatter) to bring films that dealt with gay subject matter more fairly than before, with examples like The Birdcage, Philadelphia, To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar, and In and Out. Walters argues that while “mainstream films like Brokeback Mountain and The Kids are Alright entertain moviegoers with their forthright gay themes and scenes” (12), often the roles have been more of tokenisation, representing the “surprisingly gay characters in a tedious romcom, the coyly queer older man in a star-studded indie hit, the incidentally gay sister of the lead in a serious drama” (Walters 12). This ambivalence towards the gay role model in the media has had real world effects on those who identify themselves as lesbian or gay, creating feelings of self-hatred or of being ‘unacceptable’ citizens of society (Gamson), as media content “is an active component in the cultural process of shaping LGBT identities” (Sarkissian 147). The stigmatisation of gays was further identified by the respondents to a study on media and gay identity, where “the prevailing sentiment in these discussions was a sense of being excluded from traditional society” (Gomillion and Guiliano 343). Exclusion promotes segregation and isolation, and since television media are ever-present via conventional and web-based platforms, their messages are increasingly visible and powerful. The improved portrayal of gay characters was not just confined to the area of film and television however, and many publications produced major stories on bi-sexual chic, lesbian chic, the rise of gay political power and gay families. This process of greater inclusion, however, has not been linear, and in 2013 the media advocacy group known as the Gay and Lesbian Alliance against Defamation (GLAAD) mapped the quantity, quality, and diversity of LGBT people depicted in films, finding that there was still much work to be done to fairly include gay characters (GLAAD Studio Responsibility Index). In another report made in 2019, which examined cable and streaming media, GLAAD found that of the 879 regular characters expected to appear on broadcast scripted primetime programming, 10.2% were identified as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and or queer (GLAAD Where Are We on TV). This was the highest number of queer characters recorded since the start of their reporting. In January 2004, Showtime launched The L Word, the first scripted cable television to focus chiefly on lesbians. Over the course of six seasons it explored the deep bonds that linked the members of an evolving lesbian friendship circle. The central themes of the programme were the love and friendship between the women, and it was a television programme structured by its own values and ideologies. The series offered a moral argument against the widespread sexism and anti-gay prejudice that was evident in media. The cast, however, were conventionally beautiful, gender normative, and expensively attired, leading to fears that the programme would appeal more to straight men, and that the sex in the programme would be exploitative and p*rnographic. The result, however, was that women’s sex and connection were foregrounded, and appeared as a central theme of the drama. This was, however, ground-breaking television. The showrunner of the original L Word, Ilene Chaiken, was aware of the often-damning account of lesbians in Hollywood, and the programme managed to convey an indictment of Hollywood (Mcfadden). The L Word increased lesbian visibility on television and was revolutionary in countering some of the exclusionary and damaging representation that had taken place before. It portrayed variations of lesbians, showing new positive representations in the form of power lesbians, sports lesbians, singles, and couples. Broadly speaking, gay visibility and representation can be marked and measured by levels of their exclusion and inclusion. Sedgwick said that the L Word was particularly important as it created a “lesbian ecology—a visible world in which lesbians exist, go on existing, exist in forms beyond the solitary and the couple, sustain and develop relations among themselves of difference and commonality” (xix). However, as much as this programme challenged the previous representations it also enacted a “Faustian bargain because television is a genre which ultimately caters to the desires and expectations of mainstream audiences” (Wolfe and Roripaugh 76). The producers knew it was difficult to change the problematic and biased representation of queer women within the structures of commercial media and understood the history of queer representation and its effects. Therefore, they had to navigate between the legitimate desire to represent lesbians as well as being able to attract a large enough mainstream audience to keep the show commercially viable. The L Word: Generation Q is the reboot of the popular series, and includes some of the old cast, who have also become the executive producers. These characters include Bette Porter, who in 2019 is running for the office of the Mayor of Los Angeles. Shane McCutchen returns as the fast-talking womanising hairdresser, and Alice Pieszecki in this iteration is a talk show host. When interviewed, Jennifer Beals (executive producer and Bette Porter actor) said that the programme is important, because there have been no new lesbian dramas to follow after the 2004 series ended (Beals, You Tube). Furthermore, the returning cast members believe the reboot is important because of the increased attacks that queer people have been experiencing since the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Between the two productions there have been changes in the film and television landscape, with additional queer programmes such as Pose, Orange Is the New Black, Euphoria, RuPaul’s Drag Race, and Are You the One, for example. The new L Word, therefore, needed to project a new and modern voice that would reflect contemporary lesbian life. There was also a strong desire to rectify criticism of the former show, by presenting an increased variation of characters in the 2019 series. Ironically, while the L Word had purposefully aimed to remove the negativity of exclusion through the portrayal of a group of lesbians in a more true-to-life account, the limited character tropes inadvertently marginalised other areas of lesbian and queer representation. These excluded characters were for example fully representative trans characters. The 2000s television industry had seemingly returned to a period of little interest in women’s stories generally, and though queer stories seeped into popular culture, there was no dedicated drama with a significant focus on lesbian story lines (Vanity Fair). The first iteration of The L Word was aimed at satisfying lesbian audiences as well as creating mainstream television success. It was not a tacky or p*rnographic television series playing to male voyeuristic ideals, although some critics believed that it included female-to-female sex scenes to draw in an additional male viewership (Anderson-Minshall; Graham). There was also a great emphasis on processing the concept of being queer. However, in the reboot Generation Q, the decision was made by the showrunner Marja-Lewis Ryan that the series would not be about any forms of ‘coming out stories’, and the characters were simply going about their lives as opposed to the burdensome tropes of transitioning or coming out. This is a significant change from many of the gay storylines in the 1990s that were seemingly all focussed on these themes. The new programme features a wider demographic, too, with younger characters who are comfortable with who they are. Essentially, the importance of the 2019 series is to portray healthy, varied representations of lesbian life, and to encourage accurate inclusion into film and television without the skewed or distorted earlier narratives. The L Word and L Word: Generation Q then carried the additional burden of countering criticisms The L Word received. Roseneil explains that creating both normalcy and belonging for lesbians and gays brings “cultural value and normativity” (218) and removes the psychosocial barriers that cause alienation or segregation. This “accept us” agenda appears through both popular culture and “in the broader national discourse on rights and belongings” (Walters 11), and is thus important because “representations of happy, healthy, well integrated lesbian and gay characters in film or television would create the impression that, in a social, economic, and legal sense, all is well for lesbians and gay men” (Schacter 729). Essentially, these programmes shouldered the burden of representation for the lesbian community, which was a heavy expectation. Critiques of the original L Word focussed on how the original cast looked as if they had all walked out of a high-end salon, for example, but in L Word: Generation Q this has been altered to have a much more DIY look. One of the younger cast members, Finlay, looks like someone cut her hair in the kitchen while others have styles that resemble YouTube tutorials and queer internet celebrities (Vanity Fair). The recognisable stereotypes that were both including and excluding have also altered the representation of the trans characters. Bette Porter’s campaign manager, for example, determines his style through his transition story, unlike Max, the prominent trans character from the first series. The trans characters of 2019 are comfortable in their own skins and supported by the community around them. Another important distinction between the representation of the old and new cast is around their material wealth. The returning cast members have comfortable lives and demonstrate affluence while the younger cast are less comfortable, expressing far more financial anxiety. This may indeed make a storyline that is closer to heterosexual communities. The L Word demonstrated a sophisticated awareness of feminist debates about the visual representation of women and made those debates a critical theme of the programme, and these themes have been expanded further in The L Word: Generation Q. One of the crucial areas that the programme/s have improved upon is to denaturalise the hegemonic straight gaze, drawing attention to the ways, conventions and techniques of reproduction that create sexist, heterosexist, and hom*ophobic ideologies (McFadden). This was achieved through a predominantly female, lesbian cast that dealt with stories amongst their own friend group and relationships, serving to upend the audience position, and encouraging an alternative gaze, a gaze that could be occupied by anyone watching, but positioned the audience as lesbian. In concluding, The L Word in its original iteration set out to create something unique in its representation of lesbians. However, in its mission to create something new, it was also seen as problematic in its representation and in some ways excluding of certain gay and lesbian people. The L Word: Generation Q has therefore focussed on more diversity within a minority group, bringing normality and a sense of ‘realness’ to the previously skewed narratives seen in the media. In so doing, “perhaps these images will induce or confirm” to audiences that “lesbians and gay men are already ‘equal’—accepted, integrated, part of the mainstream” (Schacter 729). 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Abstract:

Partaking of theatrical events is something that hearing and seeing members of the community can largely take for granted. In Australia, this is still not accessible to all. Crossbow Production’s 2009 staging of William Gibson’s The Miracle Worker offered the opportunity not only to explore the issues of the play, but this issue of accessibility for whom the protagonist can be considered the exemplary role-model. Crossbow’s aim was to introduce a mainstream audience to some of the world experience of those living with disabilities. This was achieved through the exploration of objects apart from their contexts, emphasising the senses of touch, taste and smell, and through the discourse of marginalisation as an integral part of the staging of this theatrical event. Sign language interpreters were given centre-stage and techniques were used to, at times, marginalise the largely non-signing audience. Post-performance discussions were held which privileged the comments of the deaf and the blind audience members. This paper argues, through the example and evidence of this theatrical event that a way needs to be found to increase access to theatrical events for the deaf.“Accessibility for all” is one of the marketing phrases employed by major events companies. In contemporary society where wheelchair access, audio description and assistance dogs are advertised as part of accessibility, it is surprising how many Australian state theatre companies provide very little if any real access for the deaf. In the United States, it would be atypical to attend a large public event, be it a theatre production, a church service or a public event that was not sign language interpreted or open captioned for the deaf, at least in large cities. One of the few theatre companies in Australia that offers interpretation for the deaf is Sydney Theatre Company. Yet only one performance of four plays in a season of 13 plays is interpreted. In a progressive incentive, Melbourne Theatre Company invest $40 000 a year towards accessibility for those living with disabilities. Similar to Sydney Theatre Company, one performance in each production is open captioned for the deaf. Queensland Theatre Company provides access to one performance only in a yearly season of 255 performances. Access for the deaf to attend mainstream theatre productions in Australia is relatively restricted if not totally denied.Crossbow Productions is an independent, not-for-profit professional theatre company which presented a production that engaged with these issues. William Gibson’s The Miracle Worker was staged at the Brisbane Powerhouse in June 2009. The play explores issues of marginalisation, communication and empowerment. Helen Keller (1880 – 1968) was a deaf-blind author, activist and outspoken speaker who become a world famous inspirational presenter and author. She grew up in an influential family in post-civil war Alabama and was struck deaf and blind after contracting (likely) scarlet fever at eighteen months. Determined to find help, her mother appealed to many high-profile doctors and educators, including Alexander G. Bell. Annie Sullivan then became Helen’s governess, teacher and life-long companion. The Miracle Worker explores Annie’s beleaguered attempts to communicate with Helen and concludes with an epiphany for Helen as she learns the significance of words, and eventually how to speak. It asks the audience to confront the issues faced by the deaf and the blind and questions the audience’s perceptions of the sensory world. Crossbow’s production at the Powerhouse included elements to construct a sensory world for the audience. As a concession to hearing and seeing audience members, saturated colours were chosen for each scene and live music was a feature. The senses of smell, taste and touch, however, were particularly emphasised. This gave audience members a sense of Helen’s world and how rich it can be without reliance on sight and sound for information and experience. To introduce fragrance, large arrangements of live scented flowers were placed on the stage. Two hot meals were served. Food emerged as a language in itself: as both a communicative tool to pacify Helen and as a reward to access her latent intelligence. Touch was an integral part of the production with fabric textures, a variety of materials and objects’ shapes explored by Helen and was emphasised from the commencement of the rehearsal process. The actor playing Helen, Louise Brehmer, was blindfolded and wore earplugs for much of the rehearsal period. Immersed in a dark and soundless world she discovered how to read situations, people and objects by touch. This translated into the performances. The audience vicariously experienced discoveries of explored objects with Helen. As Helen explored found objects such as the contents of a suitcase, the audience was confronted with the Heideggerian question: what is a thing? In Helen’s predicament things could be examined apart from their function, accepted meaning or name. This was emphasised by Helen exploring the form and material of each new object and thinking less about their function or context. Annie Sullivan’s glasses became “that hard thing”, her scarf “that soft, light thing”, her suitcase “that cube-like thing.” People may often miss out on the richness of objects’ attributes because they are placed in a functional context quickly. Helen’s discovery of found objects asked the audience to consider their unexamined assumptions about what a suitcase or a flower was (Heidegger 49-50). It is interesting to note that Brehmer’s acclaimed performance was so convincing that many audience members thought that she was indeed deaf and blind. The sensory discourses of the play forced hearing audiences to question their perceptions. The following excerpt from a post-performance discussion illustrates this: I thought I would be thinking more about sight and hearing. But it was actually touch and smell that intrigued me. But even more than that, I found myself trying to conceive of the timeframe. What time must have meant: a totally different dimension of time. I was dwelling on that quite a bit through the play: Helen was floating in her own individual time.And to add to that gentleman’s comment: what stimulates the mind, in those blank times when there is no tactile, no communication with reality: what keeps the mind alive?The most important addition to the production of The Miracle Worker was the inclusion of “shadow-signing” a process in which a signer closely follows actors playing certain characters. Sign interpretation was not a part of Gibson’s play. The added signing exemplified a central issue of this production: sign interpreters are usually “marginalised” by being placed at the sides of the events they are interpreting. This becomes a metaphor for the continued marginalisation of those living with disabilities. In The Miracle Worker they were placed onstage and were part of the production’s narrative. Furthermore, the signers interpreted the emotional states of the characters they were shadowing through facial and body expression. At times they stood beside the characters and other times they sat together on the edge of the stage in conversation. The addition of interpreter/actors added new layers of meaning for the audience. In theatrical performances, layers of meaning are carried to the audience through various texts or public discourses (Knowles 91): the written text, music, lighting, staging, actors’ movements and characterisation and so forth. By being placed on stage, the signing became a text in itself rather than merely a means of interpreting a text unavailable to deaf people. Signers use their body and facial expression as signifiers of meaning. This was used artistically on stage. Signing is an expressive drama in itself, emphasising movement and expression. At times, for example, the signers were sitting close together on the edge of the stage, at others they were far apart at the back, and at other times they would offer a commentary on the action of the play through their body language and positioning. This was extended to the non-signing characters: each character had their own kinesics. The actor playing Annie was directed to use her hands a lot to express herself. Conversely, the actor playing Helen’s mother was directed to use her hands less and be “held together” when it came to non-verbal expression. This carried various meanings to the audience over and beyond the meaning of the words themselves. As the Australian version of the language of signing, Auslan, grew out of the work of Annie Sullivan and her attempts to communicate with Helen, this language of signing was integral to the core issues of the play.In addition to bringing deaf issues centre-stage, the sign interpretation was used to give the mainstream audience, unused to experiencing marginalisation in the theatre, an understanding of exclusion. The play opened and closed with the interpreters signing to the audience. As this was not underscored by any spoken dialogue the non-signers did not understand what was communicated. This gave some audience members a sense of displacement. An audience member commented: I thought how you started and finished the play with sign language was very powerful. It really raised my awareness of people that feel marginalised. Because I, as a hearing person, couldn’t understand the signing and felt left out. It just opened my eyes, just a little bit to what it must be like. (Heim 2)At one matinee performance, episodes occurred in which the entire hearing audience experienced exclusion. The number of deaf people came close to equalising the hearing. In this performance a number of elements worked to marginalise the hearing audience. The actors playing Helen and Annie were scripted to sign words to each other. During these moments, the words were signed before they were spoken or they were not spoken at all. Deaf audience members understood the meaning of the lines before, or to the exclusion of, the hearing audience. Some of these communications were humourous. The deaf audience would break into laugher while the hearing audience sat bewildered. One of the most significant aspects of this particular performance was the relative abandonment of accepted theatre etiquette strictures. In contemporary theatre, audience behaviour is regulated to laughter and applause in appropriate moments (Kershaw 140, 151). During this performance many deaf audience members, having never attended a theatre performance before, laughed in “inappropriate” places, applauded during the performance, wept out loud and spoke back to the actors on stage or to each other. This was a theatrical event enjoyed as if in the nineteenth century when audience members laughed, cried, stamped, sang and spoke (Blackadder 120) through performances. Not only enjoyed by the audience, the actors found this particular performance one of their most heightened experiences in the theatre. In a significant inversion, the hearing mainstream audience was marginalised and the deaf audience privileged. Interestingly, in a post-performance discussion, one audience member suggested a complete inversion: “Did you think of just having the main actors act and sign at the same time?” (Heim 3). Post-performance discussions also raised hearing audience member’s awareness of those living with disabilities. Discussions were held where the audience was given an opportunity to discuss their stories. A large variety of issues were discussed by the hearing and deaf participants such as the genuine struggles faced in a household with a deaf person, sibling rivalry and communication issues. Comments ranged from “I could relate to Helen’s family. It was like that in my family with me growing up deaf. The frustration is enormous. There were tantrums and fights. Families need to learn signing, after all, it is our first language” (Heim 2) to “I think everyone is still drying their eyes. Very moving. Very, very moving” (Heim 1). In one discussion Penny Harland, a blind and deaf educator was introduced and spoke to the audience. A question was asked by a hearing member that worked to further marginalise the mainstream audience: “What did you think of in those moments when you couldn’t understand or communicate anything of the world?” (Heim 4). Harland refused to answer the question and instead described a moment from the play where Helen was discovering a suitcase and explained how inaccurate the actor was in her “discovery.” Heidegger’s concept of the difference in “experiencing” objects was painfully exposed (49, 50). Comments from post-performance discussions emphasised the great need for more accessibility. As one participant commented: “I’m deaf and we should be able to go to anything, and you’ve done that for us” (Heim 1). Others complained that not every word was interpreted. Because of budget restrictions, Crossbow hired actors that could sign and were willing to perform and interpret for a small fee. The actors were not confident enough as interpreters to sign the whole production. Comments such as “We appreciated the signing, but we wanted more” (Heim 1) and “we were disappointed the whole thing wasn’t signed. There were words going on we didn’t understand” (Heim 4) were frequent. As there were also tactile tours of the set before each performance for the blind, one blind audience member commented: As a blind person, I got a great deal from it. I found it extremely moving and it has motivated me to read more about miraculous stories. The opportunity to have the tactile tour before the show did help me to visualise better what was going on, so that was a very welcome innovation as well. So I found the night thoroughly moving and worthwhile and I’ll certainly agree with the comment that there should be a thousand or so in the audience rather than a hundred so that everyone can experience it. (Heim 3)These comments and many more from both the discussions and emails to the Powerhouse after the production emphasised not only the gratefulness of the deaf community but more importantly the need for more accessibility to theatre events. The response to The Miracle Worker from the deaf community was significant. Over 250 deaf people attended and 70 of these had never been to a theatrical production before. Deaf Services Queensland and Vision Australia were both supportive offering in-kind assistance, promotion and assistance with signing. For its future plays, Crossbow Productions will continue to give tactile tours and, due to cost factors, will sign one performance only using Auslan sign language interpreters. The fee is significant for an independent theatre company: over $1000 to sign a single performance. The response to the staging by Crossbow Productions of William Gibson’s The Miracle Worker strongly suggests that there is significant demand for increased access for deaf audiences at theatrical events. Rather than merely reducing marginalisations, their stories and journeys can be presented and explored in such a way as to enrich the theatrical experience of the mainstream and the marginalised. Exploring objects, emphasising the senses of touch, taste and smell and including signing added to the richness of the theatrical experience. Significantly, the experience of marginalisation of the mainstream in this production also added to the meaning of the theatrical experience. It was hoped that this fostered the appreciation in audience members that the need to increased access for all can be more than worth the cost.ReferencesBlackadder, Neil. Performing Opposition: Modern Theatre and the Scandalised Audience. Westport: Praeger, 2003. Heidegger, Martin. What Is a Thing? Trans. W.B. Barton, Jr., and Vera Deutsch. Chicago: H. Regnery, 1967.Heim, Caroline. Transcript of Post-Performance Discussions of “The Miracle Worker.” By William Gibson, dir. Christian Heim. Visy Theatre, Brisbane Powerhouse, Brisbane, 7-17 June 2009. Kershaw, Baz. “Oh for Unruly Audiences! Or, Patterns of Participation in Twentieth Century Theatre.” Modern Drama 42.2 (2001): 133-54. Knowles, Ric. Reading the Material Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004.

Abstract:

Introduction -- Making Sense of the (Virtual) World Computer games are never "just games". Computer games are models of reality and if they were not, we would never be able to understand them. Models serve three functions; they capture important, critical features of that which is to be represented while ignoring the irrelevant, they are appropriate for the person and they are appropriate for the task -- thereby enhancing the ability to make judgements and discover relevant regularities and structures (Norman 1993). Despite the inherently unvisualisable nature of computer code -- the flexible material of which all software constructs are built -- computer code is still the most "salient" ingredient in computer games. Less salient are those assumptions that are "built into" the software. By filtering out those parts of reality that are deemed irrelevant or unnecessary, different sorts of assumptions, different sorts of bias are automatically built into the software, reified in the very computer code (Friedman 1995, Friedman and Nissenbaum 1997). Here I will analyse some of the built-in structures that constitute the fabric of a special sort of game, a MUD. A MUD is an Internet-accessible "multi-participant, user-extensible virtual reality whose user interface is entirely textual" (Curtis, 1992). The specific MUD in question is a nine-year old Swedish-language adventure MUD called SvenskMUD ("SwedishMUD") that is run by Lysator, the academic computer club at Linköping University, Sweden. I have done field studies of SvenskMUD over a period of three and a half years (Pargman, forthcoming 2000). How is the SvenskMUD adventure world structured and what are the rules that are built into the fabric of this computer game? I will describe some of the ways in which danger and death, good and evil, courage, rewards and wealth are handled in the game. I will conclude the paper with a short analysis of the purpose of configuring the player according to those structures. Revocable Deaths Characters (personae/avatars) in SvenskMUD can be divided into two categories, players and magicians. Making a career as a player to a large part involves solving quests and killing "monsters" in the game. The magicians are all ex-players who have "graduated" and gone beyond playing the game of SvenskMUD. They have become the administrators, managers and programmers of SvenskMUD. A watchful eye is kept on the magicians by "God", the creator, owner and ultimate custodian of SvenskMUD. My own first battle in the game, in a sunlit graveyard with a small mouse, is an example of a bit-sized danger suitable for newcomers, or "newbies". I correctly guessed that the mouse was a suitably weak opponent for my newborn character, but still had to "tickle" the mouse on its belly (a euphemism for hitting it without much force) 50 times before I managed to kill it. Other parts of this epic battle included 45 failed attempts of mine to "tickle" the mouse, 39 successful "tickles" of the mouse and finally a wild chase around the graveyard before I caught up with the mouse, cornered it and managed to kill it and end the fight. Although I was successful in my endeavour, I was also more than half dead after my run-in with the mouse and had to spend quite some time engaged in more peaceful occupations before I was completely healed. It was only later that I learned that you can improve your odds considerably by using weapons and armour when you fight... Should a SvenskMUD player fail in his (or less often, her) risky and adventurous career and die, that does not constitute an insurmountable problem. Should such a thing pass, the player's ghost only has to find the way back to a church in one of the villages. In the church, the player is reincarnated, albeit with some loss of game-related abilities and experience. The way the unfortunate event of an occasional death is handled is part of the meta-rules of SvenskMUD. The meta-rules are the implicit, underlying rules that represent the values, practices and concerns that shape the frame from which the "ordinary" specific rules operate. Meta-rules are part of the "world view that directs the game action and represents the implicit philosophy or ideals by which the world operates" (Fine 1983, 76). Despite the adventure setting with all its hints of medieval lawlessness and unknown dangers lurking, SvenskMUD is in fact a very caring and forgiving environment. The ultimate proof of SvenskMUD's forgiveness is the revocable character of death itself. Fair Dangers Another SvenskMUD meta-rule is that dangers (and death) should be "fair". This fairness is extended so as to warn players explicitly of dangers. Before a dangerous monster is encountered, the player receives plenty of warnings: You are standing in the dark woods. You feel a little afraid. East of you is a small dark lake in the woods. There are three visible ways from here: east, north and south. It would be foolish to direct my character to go east in this situation without being adequately prepared for encountering and taking on something dangerous in battle. Those preparations should include a readiness to flee if the expected danger proves to be superior. If, in the example above, a player willingly and knowingly directs a character to walk east, that player has to face the consequences of this action. But if another player is very cautious and has no reason to suspect a deadly danger lurking behind the corner, it is not considered "fair" if that player's character dies or is hurt in such a way that it results in damage that has far-reaching consequences within the game. The dangerous monsters that roam the SvenskMUD world are restricted to roam only "dangerous" areas and it is considered good manners to warn players in some way when they enter such an area. Part of learning how to play SvenskMUD successfully becomes a matter of understanding different cues, such as the transition from a safe area to a dangerous one, or the different levels of danger signalled by different situations. Should they not know it in advance, players quickly learn that it is not advisable to enter the "Valley of Ultimate Evil" unless they have reached a very high level in the game and are prepared to take on any dangers that come their way. As with all other meta-rules, both players and magicians internalise this rule to such an extent that it becomes unquestionable and any transgression (such as a dangerous monster roaming around in a village, killing newbie characters who happen to stray its way) would immediately render complaints from players and corresponding actions on behalf of the magicians to rectify the situation. Meta-Rules as "Folk Ideas" Fine (1983, 76-8) enumerates four meta-rules that Dundes (1971) has described and applies them to the fantasy role-playing games he has studied. Dundes's term for these meta-rules is "folk ideas" and they reflect existing North American (and Western European) cultural beliefs. Fine shows that these folk ideas capture core beliefs or central values of the fantasy role-playing games he studied. Three of Dundes's four folk ideas are also directly applicable to SvenskMUD. Unlimited Wealth The first folk idea is the principle of unlimited good. There is no end to growth or wealth. For that reason, treasure found in a dungeon doesn't need a rationale for being there. This folk idea is related to the modernist concept of constant, unlimited progress. "Some referees even 'restock' their dungeons when players have found a particular treasure so that the next time someone enters that room (and kills the dragon or other beasties guarding it) they, too, will be rewarded" (Fine 1983, 76). To restock all treasures and reawaken all killed monsters at regular intervals is standard procedure in SvenskMUD and all other adventure MUDs. The technical term is that the game "resets". The reason why a MUD resets at regular intervals is that, while the MUD itself is finite, there is no end to the number of players who want their share of treasures and other goodies. The handbook for SvenskMUD magicians contains "design guidelines" for creating quests: You have to invent a small story about your quest. The typical scenario is that someone needs help with something. It is good if you can get the story together in such a way that it is possible to explain why it can be solved several times, since the quest will be solved, once for each prospective magician. Perhaps a small spectacle a short while after (while the player is pondering the reward) that in some way restore things in such a way that it can be solved again. (Tolke 1993, my translation) Good and Evil The second folk idea is that the world is a battleground between good and evil. In fantasy literature or a role-playing game there is often no in-between and very seldom any doubt whether someone encountered is good or evil, as "referees often express the alignment [moral character] of nonplayer characters through stereotyped facial features or symbolic colours" (Fine 1983, 77). "Good and evil" certainly exists as a structuring resource for the SvenskMUD world, but interestingly the players are not able to be described discretely in these terms. As distinct from role-playing games, a SvenskMUD player is not created with different alignments (good, evil or neutral). All players are instead neutral and they acquire an alignment as they go along, playing SvenskMUD -- the game. If a player kills a lot of mice and cute rabbits, that player will turn first wicked and then evil. If a player instead kills trolls and orcs, that player first turns good and then saint-like. Despite the potential fluidity of alignment in SvenskMUD, some players cultivate an aura of being good or evil and position themselves in opposition to each other. This is most apparent with two of the guilds (associations) in SvenskMUD, the Necromancer's guild and the Light order's guild. Courage Begets Rewards The third folk idea is the importance of courage. Dangers and death operate in a "fair" way, as should treasures and rewards. The SvenskMUD world is structured both so as not to harm or kill players "needlessly", and in such a way that it conveys the message "no guts, no glory" to the players. In different places in the MUD (usually close to a church, where new players start), there are "easy" areas with bit-sized dangers and rewards for beginners. My battle with the mouse was an example of such a danger/reward. A small coin or an empty bottle that can be returned for a small finder's fee are examples of other bit-sized rewards: The third folk idea is the importance of courage. Dangers and death operate in a "fair" way, as should treasures and rewards. The SvenskMUD world is structured both so as not to harm or kill players "needlessly", and in such a way that it conveys the message "no guts, no glory" to the players. In different places in the MUD (usually close to a church, where new players start), there are "easy" areas with bit-sized dangers and rewards for beginners. My battle with the mouse was an example of such a danger/reward. A small coin or an empty bottle that can be returned for a small finder's fee are examples of other bit-sized rewards: More experienced characters gain experience points (xps) and rise in levels only by seeking out and overcoming danger and "there is a positive correlation between the danger in a setting and its payoff in treasure" (Fine 1983, 78). Just as it would be "unfair" to die without adequate warning, so would it be (perceived to be) grossly unfair to seek out and overcome dangerous monsters or situations without being adequately rewarded. And conversely, it would be perceived to be unfair if someone "stumbled over the treasure" without having deserved it, i.e. if someone was rewarded without having performed an appropriately difficult task. Taken from the information on etiquette in an adventure MUD, Reid's quote is a good example of this: It's really bad form to steal someone else's kill. Someone has been working on the Cosmicly Invulnerable Utterly Unstoppable Massively Powerful Space Demon for ages, leaves to get healed, and in the interim, some dweeb comes along and whacks the Demon and gets all it's [sic] stuff and tons of xps [experience points]. This really sucks as the other person has spent lots of time and money in expectation of the benefits from killing the monster. The graceful thing to do is to give em [sic] all the stuff from the corpse and compensation for the money spent on healing. This is still a profit to you as you got all the xps and spent practically no time killing it. (Reid 1999, 122, my emphasis) The User Illusion An important objective of the magicians in SvenskMUD is to describe everything that a player experiences in the SvenskMUD world in game-related terms. The game is regarded as a stage where the players are supposed to see only what is in front of, but not behind the scenes. A consistent use of game-related terms and game-related explanations support the suspension of disbelief and engrossment in the SvenskMUD fantasy world. The main activity of the MUD users should be to enter into the game and guide their characters through a fascinating (and, as much as possible and on its own terms, believable) fantasy world. The guiding principle is therefore that the player should never be reminded of the fact that the SvenskMUD world is not for real, that SvenskMUD is only a game or a computer program. From this perspective, the worst thing players can encounter in SvenskMUD is a breakdown of the user illusion, a situation that instantly transports a person from the SvenskMUD world and leaves that person sitting in front of a computer screen. Error messages, e.g. the feared "you have encountered a bug [in the program]", are an example of this. If a magician decides to change the SvenskMUD world, that magician is supposed to do the very best to explain the change by using game-related jargon. This is reminiscent of the advice to "work within the system": "wherever possible, things that can be done within the framework of the experiential level should be. The result will be smoother operation and greater harmony among the user community" (Morningstar and Farmer 1991, 294). If for some reason a shop has to be moved from one village to another, a satisfactory explanation must be given, e.g. a fire occurring in the old shop or the old shop being closed due to competition (perhaps from the "new", relocated shop). Explanations that involve supernatural forces or magic are also fine in a fantasy world. Explanations that remind the player of the fact that the SvenskMUD world is not for real ("I moved the shop to Eriksros, because all magicians decided that it would be so much better to have it there"), or even worse, that SvenskMUD is a computer program ("I moved the program shop.c to another catalogue in the file structure") are to be avoided at all costs. Part of socialising magicians becomes teaching them to express themselves in this way even when they know better about the machinations of SvenskMud. There are several examples of ingenious and imaginative ways to render difficult-to-explain phenomena understandable in game-related terms: There was a simple problem that appeared at times that made the computer [that SvenskMUD runs on] run a little slower, and as time went by the problem got worse. I could fix the problem easily when I saw it and I did that at times. After I had fixed the problem the game went noticeably faster for the players that were logged in. For those occasions, I made up a message and displayed it to everyone who was in the system: "Linus reaches into the nether regions and cranks a little faster". (Interview with Linus Tolke, "God" in SvenskMUD) When a monster is killed in the game, it rots away (disappears) after a while. However, originally, weapons and armour that the monster wielded did not disappear; a lucky player could find valuable objects and take them without having "deserved" them. This specific characteristic of the game was deemed to be a problem, not least because it furthered a virtual inflation in the game that tended to decrease the value of "honestly" collected weapons and loot. The problem was discussed at a meeting of the SvenskMUD magicians that I attended. It was decided that when a monster is killed and the character that killed it does not take the loot, the loot should disappear ("rot") together with the monster. But how should this be explained to the players in a suitable way if they approach a magician to complain about the change, a change that in their opinion was for the worse? At the meeting it was suggested that from now on, all weapons and shields were forged with a cheaper, weaker metal. Not only would objects of this metal "rot" away together with the monster that wielded them, but it was also suggested that all weapons in the whole game should in fact be worn down as time goes by. (Not to worry, new ones appear in all the pre-designated places every time the game resets.) Conclusion -- Configuring the Player SvenskMUD can easily be perceived as a "blooming buzzing confusion" for a new player and my own first explorations in SvenskMUD often left me confused even as I was led from one enlightenment to the next. Not everyone feels inclined to take up the challenge to make sense of a world where you have to learn everything anew, including how to walk and how to talk. On the other hand, in the game world, much is settled for the best, and a crack in a subterranean cave is always exactly big enough to squeeze through... The process of becoming part of the community of SvenskMUD players is inexorably connected to learning to become an expert in the activities of that community, i.e. of playing SvenskMUD (Wenger 1998). A player who wants to program in SvenskMUD (thereby altering the fabric of the virtual world) will acquire many of the relevant concepts before actually becoming a magician, just by playing and exploring the game of SvenskMUD. Even if the user illusion succeeds in always hiding the computer code from the player, the whole SvenskMUD world constitutes a reflection of that underlying computer code. An implicit understanding of the computer code is developed through extended use of SvenskMUD. The relationship between the SvenskMUD world and the underlying computer code is in this sense analogous to the relationship between the lived-in world and the rules of physics that govern the world. All around us children "prepare themselves" to learn the subject of physics in school by throwing balls up in the air (gravity) and by pulling carts or sledges (friction). By playing SvenskMUD, a player will become accustomed to many of the concepts that govern the SvenskMUD world and will come to understand the goals, symbols, procedures and values of SvenskMUD. This process bears many similarities to the "primary socialisation" of a child into a member of society, a socialisation that serves "to make appear as necessity what is in fact a bundle of contingencies" (Berger and Luckmann 1966, 155). This is the purpose of configuring the player and it is intimately connected to the re-growth of SvenskMUD magicians and the survival of SvenskMUD itself over time. However, it is not the only possible outcome of the SvenskMUD socialisation process. The traditional function of trials and quests in fantasy literature is to teach the hero, usually through a number of external or internal encounters with evil or doubt, to make the right, moral choices. By excelling at these tests, the protagonist shows his or her worthiness and by extension also stresses and perhaps imputes these values in the reader (Dalquist et al. 1991). Adventure MUDs could thus socialise adolescents and reinforce common moral values in society; "the fantasy hero is the perfectly socialised and exemplary subject of a society" (53, my translation). My point here is not that SvenskMUD differs from other adventure MUDs. I would imagine that most of my observations are general to adventure MUDs and that many are applicable also to other computer games. My purpose here has rather been to present a perspective on how an adventure MUD is structured, to trace the meaning of that structure beyond the game itself and to suggest a purpose behind that organisation. I encourage others to question built-in bias and underlying assumptions of computer games (and other systems) in future studies. References Berger, P., and T. Luckmann. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. London: Penguin, 1966. Curtis, P. "MUDding: Social Phenomena in Text-Based Virtual Realities." High Noon on the Electronic Frontier. Ed. P. Ludlow. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 1996. 13 Oct. 2000 <http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/academic/computer-science/virtual-reality/communications/papers/muds/muds/Mudding-Social-Phenomena.txt>. Dalquist, U., T. Lööv, and F. Miegel. "Trollkarlens lärlingar: Fantasykulturen och manlig identitetsutveckling [The Wizard's Apprentices: Fantasy Culture and Male Identity Development]." Att förstå ungdom [Understanding Youth]. Ed. A. Löfgren and M. Norell. Stockholm/Stehag: Brutus Östlings Bokförlag Symposion, 1991. Dundes, A. "Folk Ideas as Units of World View." Toward New Perspectives in Folklore. Ed. A. Paredes and R. Bauman. Austin: U of Texas P, 1971. Fine, G.A. Shared Fantasy: Role-Playing Games as Social Worlds. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1983. Friedman, B. and H. Nissenbaum. "Bias in Computer Systems." Human Values and the Design of Computer Technology. Ed. B. Friedman. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 1997. Friedman, T. "Making Sense of Software: Computer Games and Interactive Textuality." Cybersociety: Computer-Mediated Communication and Community. Ed. S. Jones. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995. Morningstar, C. and F. R. Farmer. "The Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat." Cyberspace: The First Steps. Ed. M. Benedikt. Cambridge: MA, MIT P, 1991. 13 Oct. 2000 <http://www.communities.com/company/papers/lessons.php>. Norman, D. Things That Make Us Smart: Defending Human Attributes in the Age of the Machine. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1993. Pargman, D. "Code Begets Community: On Social and Technical Aspects of Managing a Virtual Community." Ph.D. dissertation. Dept. of Communication Studies, Linköping University, Sweden, forthcoming, December 2000. Reid, E. "Hierarchy and Power: Social Control in Cyberspace." Communities in Cyberspace. Ed. M. Smith and P. Kollock. London, England: Routledge, 1999. Tolke, L. Handbok för SvenskMudmagiker: ett hjälpmedel för byggarna i SvenskMUD [Handbook for SvenskMudmagicians: An Aid for the Builders in SvenskMUD]. Printed and distributed by the author in a limited edition, 1993. Wenger, E. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 1998. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Daniel Pargman. "The Fabric of Virtual Reality -- Courage, Rewards and Death in an Adventure MUD." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.5 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0010/mud.php>. Chicago style: Daniel Pargman, "The Fabric of Virtual Reality -- Courage, Rewards and Death in an Adventure MUD," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 5 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0010/mud.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Daniel Pargman. (2000) The Fabric of Virtual Reality -- Courage, Rewards and Death in an Adventure MUD. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(5). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0010/mud.php> ([your date of access]).

Abstract:

The computer game is perhaps the fastest growing and most quickly evolving cultural leisure technology in the western world. Invented as a form just under 40 years ago with the creation of Space War at MIT, computer and video games collectively account for hundreds of billions of dollars in sales across the world. And yet critical analysis of this cultural form is still in its infancy. Perhaps the sheer speed of the development of games may account for this. Thirty years ago, strategy games were screens of text instructions and a prompt where you could type a weather forecast. Today pretty much all games are flawlessly shaded and rendered polygons. The technology of film has barely changed at all in the same period. In any case, the critical study of games began in the eighties. The focus initially was on the psychology of the gamer. Most game players were children and teenagers during this period, and the focussing of their leisure time on this new and strange computer technology became a source of extreme moral panic for educators, parents and researchers alike. Later, research into the cultures of gaming would become more nuanced, and begin to detail the semiotics and narrative structures of games. It is in that kind of frame that this article is positioned. I want to look closely at a particular strategy game series, The Settlers. Firstly, however, a description of the strategy game genre. Strategy games put the player into a simulated inhabited environment and give the player almost total control over that environment and its simulated inhabitants. The strategy game has many genres, including the simulation game and the god game, but the sub-genre I will focus on in this paper is the real-time strategy game. The game requires the player to develop a functioning economy, geared around the production of weapons and armies, which are sent out to combat neighbouring tribes or armies. Real-time games typically give greater tactical control of the armies to the player, and slightly less detailed economic control. The aim is basically to amass as much gold or whatever as possible to buy as many troops as possible. However, the game I am about to discuss is, in addition to being a simple game of war, a very interesting simulation of economic and logistical constraints. The Settlers is series of fantasy computer strategy games developed by the German game design firm Blue Byte. The three extant Settlers games can be considered an evolution of game design rather than a continuing narrative, so, given the time constraints, for the purposes of this paper I will address only one game in the series, the most recently released title, The Settlers 3. The Settlers 3 tells the story of three expansionist empires, the Romans, the Egyptians, and the Asians, who have been thrust onto an uninhabited continent by the gods of their peoples to determine who is the fittest to survive. In other words, the game is founded from the beginning on a socio-Darwinian premise. In each level of the game, the settlers of each tribe must, under their player's direction, build an efficient and well maintained colony with a fully operating economy in order to achieve a set objective, which is usually to wipe out the opposing tribes by building up a large army, though it may be also to amass a predetermined level of a particular resource. Each level begins with about twenty settlers, a small guard hut to define the limits of the borders and a barely adequate supply of wooden planks, stone slabs and tools with which to begin to construct the economy. The player chooses building types from a menu and places them on the screen. Immediately the appropriate number of settlers walk across the landscape, leaving visible tracks in their wake, to pick up tools and supplies in order to construct the building. Typically, the player will order the construction of a woodcutter's hut, a sawmill, a stone cutter and a forester to ensure the steady flow of the basic construction materials to the rest of the colony. From this point more guard huts and towers are constructed to expand into new territory, and farms are built to feed the miners. Once constructed, the mine produce coal, gold and ore, which is sent down to the smelters to make iron bars (to make swords and tools) and gold bars (to pay the troops). Luxuries such as beer and wine are produced as a sacrifice to the gods. This results in rewards such as magical spells and promotion of the soldiers. Occasionally, incursions of enemy troops must be dealt with -- if they take a guard tower in battle, the borders, represented by lines of coloured flags, shrink, leading to the collapse and destruction of any building outside the boundaries. Finally, sufficient swords, bows and spears are produced, the soldiers are promoted, and they set off to pillage and destroy their neighbours' territory. If the previously mentioned enemy incursions were frequent enough, the final conflict where the player's warriors brutally annihilate the enemy is tremendously satisfying. The problematics of that particular game construct are left as an exercise for the audience. When territory is taken, the villages of the enemy go up in smoke and their resources are left lying on the ground, for the settlers to pick up and use for the benefit of the player. One of the things that make the game so fascinating to play is the complexity of the simulation. It must be said right away that the game employs many abstractions to make it playable and not utterly boring. For instance, only the miners out of all the settlers actually need food, and the mechanism by which new settlers are actually created is a bit vague (you construct a building called a "residence", and when it's completed, new setters simply troop out. And there only seem to be male settlers, unless you play the Amazons). Nonetheless, the game still quite explicitly details things most games of its type gloss right over. Unlike most games, pulling out all the stops in production just leads to bottlenecks where the transportation infrastructure can't get the goods to their destinations. Production levels have to be carefully monitored and throttled back where necessary to ensure the smooth flow of resources from A to B, C and D. Resources themselves -- coal lumps, gold bricks, fish, loaves of bread, swords --are modelled individually: you can actually track the process whereby an individual sheaf of wheat is harvested, picked up by a settler, carried off to the mill, turned into flour, sent to the bakery, made into a loaf of bread, and delivered to the coal miner for consumption. With its attention to the gritty detail of getting stuff from one place to the next, The Settlers is one of the very few truly logistically precise strategy games. Before I begin the analysis proper, I want to introduce some key terms that I'll be using a bit idiosyncratically in this paper. I'll be talking about gameplay quite a bit. Gameplay is a bit of a sliding signifier in the discourse of gaming theory -- loosely speaking it's that indefinable something that gets a player heated up about a game and keeps them playing for days on end. But here I want to be more precise. I'll offer a strategic definition. Gameplay is a way of quantifying the operations of a kind of economy of desire that operates between the player and the game itself. This economy has, as its constitutive elements, such factors as attention span, pleasure, ratio of novelty to repetition. These elements are in constant circulation in a game and the resulting economy is responsible for a good deal of the dynamism of the experience: in other words, the gameplay. What I want to focus on in this paper is what comes from the precise moment where two, quite central impulses of gameplay are in perfect balance, just before the first surrenders its grasp and the second takes over. The first impulse of play consists of two elements -- the visual presentation of the game, i.e. the pretty pictures that draw you in, and the narrative pretext of the story, the thing that gives what you are doing some kind of sense. It is on these two elements that classical ideological analysis of gameplay is typically founded. For instance, the archetypal platform game where all the female characters are helpless maidens who only exist as a way of getting the masculine protagonist into the action. The second impulse of gameplay is what might be called the "process", the somewhat under-theorised state where the visual trappings of the game and the motivating story line have slipped into the background, leaving only the sense of seamless integration of the player into the game's cybernetic feedback loop. The visual presentation and narrative pretext of The Settlers draws the player into a familiar fantasy of pre-modern existence. Presented to the player is a beautifully rendered virgin wilderness, filled with rolling hills, magnificent mountain ranges and vast forests, resounding with the sounds of the stream and brook, and the rustling of the wildlife. Into this wilderness the player must project an empire. That empire will consist of an elaborately detailed network (and I use the term deliberately) of cottage industries, labourers, paths, commodities, resources, defensive structures and places of worship. Real-world economic activities are consummately simulated as complex flows of information. The simulation is always fascinating to watch. Each node in this network, be it a fisherman's hut, a bakery, or a smelter, is exquisitely rendered, and full of picturesque, yet highly functional, animation. For instance, the process of a fisherman leaving his hut, going to a stream, setting his line, and catching a fish is visually expressive and lively, but it also is a specific bottleneck in the production process -- it takes a finite time, during which the carrier settlers stand around waiting for produce to deliver. This, then, is the game's crucial dialectic. What is depicted is a visually sumptuous, idyllic existence, but on closer inspection is a model of constant, uninterrupted, backbreaking labour. There are not even demarcations of day and night in the game -- life is perpetually midday and the working day will last forever. To put it less simply, perhaps, the game purposefully reifies the human social condition as being a reflexively structured mechanism of economic production under the guise of an ideologically idyllic pastoral paradise. It positions the player as not merely complicit in this mechanism but the fundamental point of determination within it. The balancing moment then is the point where the player begins to ignore or take for granted the visual lushness of the game's graphics and to focus instead on the underlying system, to internalise the lessons of the game -- the particular ideological and discursive assumptions about how economic and political systems successfully operate -- and to apply these lessons to the correct playing of the game, almost like a transition between REM dream-state sleep and deep sleep. And the analogy to sleep is not entirely specious -- critics and players alike have noted the way time stops when you play a game, with whole nights and days seemingly swallowed up in seconds of game time. The type of focus I am describing is not an interpretative one -- players are not expected to gain new insights of meaning from the act of playing at this new level of intensity, instead they are simply to blend their thoughts, actions and reactions with the dynamic processes of the game system. In a sense, a computer game is less a textual form than it is a kind of tool: in the same way proficient word processor users becomes so fluent in the operations of their software that the trappings -- toolbars, menus, mouse -- become secondary to the smooth continuous process of churning out words. Such a relationship does not exactly inspire thoughtful contemplation about the repressive qualities of Microsoft's hegemonic domination of office software, and the similar relationship with the computer game makes any kind of reflexivity about the gameplay's cultural referents seem simply counterproductive. It's an interesting dilemma for the theorist of gaming -- the point at which the underlying structure comes most clearly into focus during the state of play/analysis is also the moment when one is most resistant to the need to draw the wider connections. In this paper, I've tried to take a suggestive approach, to point out some of the ways that ideological assumptions about culture and production can be actualised in a simulated environment. And hopefully, I've also pointed out some of the pitfalls in a purely ideological analysis of games. Games are never just about the ideology. A nuanced analysis from a cultural studies point of view must also take into account the quite complex ways games not only articulate certain ideologies but they also complicate them. Beyond that, analysis must take into account the ways that games go beyond the paradigm of textuality and begin to take on the aspect of being whole systems of symbolic manipulation and transmission. It is only at this point that any kind of comprehensive and theoretically precise engagement with games as cultural texts and processes can be seriously begun. References Crawford, Chris. The Art of Computer Game Design. Berkeley, California: Osborne / McGraw-Hill, 1984. Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: HarperCollins, 1990. Fleming, Dan. Powerplay: Toys as Popular Culture. Manchester and New York: Manchester UP, 1996. Freidman, Ted. "Making Sense of Software: Computer Games and Interactive Textuality." CyberSociety: Computer-Mediated Communication and Community. Ed. Steven G. Jones. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1995. 73-89. Virilio, Paul. War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception. Trans. Patrick Camiller. London and New York: Verso, 1989. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Nick Caldwell. "Settler Stories: Representational Ideologies in Computer Strategy Gaming." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.5 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0010/settlers.php>. Chicago style: Nick Caldwell, "Settler Stories: Representational Ideologies in Computer Strategy Gaming," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 5 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0010/settlers.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Nick Caldwell. (2000) Settler Stories: Representational Ideologies in Computer Strategy Gaming. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(5). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0010/settlers.php> ([your date of access]).

Abstract:

The technical apparatus is, then, being made at home with the rest of our world. And that's a thing that's routinely being done, and it's the source of the failure of technocratic dreams that if only we introduced some fantastic new communication machine, the world will be transformed. Where what happens is that the object is made at home in the world that has whatever organisation it already has. -- Harvey Sacks (Lectures on Conversation Vol. 2., 548-9) Chatting, or having a conversation, has long been a favourite activity for people. It seemed so ordinary, if not to say trivial, that it has for almost equally long not been studied in any dedicated way. It was only when Harvey Sacks and his early collaborators started using the tape recorder to study telephone conversations that 'conversation' as a topic has become established (cf. Sacks, Lectures Vol. 1). Inspired by Harold Garfinkel, the perspective chosen was a procedural one: they wanted to analyse how conversations are organised on the spot. As Sacks once said: The gross aim of the work I am doing is to see how finely the details of actual, naturally occurring conversation can be subjected to analysis that will yield the technology of conversation. (Sacks, "On Doing 'Being Ordinary'" 411) Later, Sacks also started using data from audio-recorded face-to-face encounters. Most of the phenomena that the research on telephone conversation unearthed could also be found in face-to-face data. Whether something was lost by relying on just audio materials was not clear at the beginning. But with video-based research, as initiated by Charles Goodwin in the 1970s, one was later able to demonstrate that visual exchanges did play an essential role the actual organisation of face-to-face conduct. When using telephone technology, people seemed to rely on a restricted set of the interactional procedures used in face-to-face settings. But new ways to deal with both general and setting-specific problems, such as mutual identification, were also developed. Now that an increasing number of people spend various amounts of their time 'online', chatting with friends or whoever is available, it is time to study Computer-Mediated Conversation (CMC), as we previously studied face-to-face conversation and Telephone (Mediated) Conversation, using the same procedural perspective. We may expect that we will encounter many phenomena that have become familiar to us, and that we will be able to use many of the same concepts. But we will probably also see that people have developed new technical variations of familiar themes as they adapt the technology of conversation to the possibilities and limitations of this new technology of communicative mediation. In so doing, they will make the new technology 'at home in the world that has whatever organisation it already has.' Space does not allow a full discussion of the properties of text-based CMC as instantiated in 'chat' environments, but comparing CMC with face-to-face communication and telephone conversations, it is obvious that the means to convey meanings are severely restricted. In face-to-face encounters, many of the more subtle aspects of the conversation rely on visual and vocal productions and perceptions, which are more or less distinguishable from the 'text' that has been uttered. Following the early work of Gregory Bateson, these aspects are mostly conceived of as a kind of commentary on the core communication available in the 'text', that is as 'meta-communication'. While the 'separation' between 'levels' of communication, that these conceptualisations imply may distort what actually goes on in face-to-face encounters, there is no doubt that telephone conversations, in which the visual 'channel' is not available, and text-based CMC, which in addition lacks access to voice qualities, do confront participants with important communicative restrictions. An important aspect of text-based computer-mediated chatting is that it offers users an unprecedented anonymity, and therefore an unprecedented licence for unaccountable action, ranging from bland banality to criminal threat, while passing through all imaginable sexual 'perversities'. One upshot of this is that they can present themselves as belonging to any plausible category they may choose, but they will -- in the chat context -- never be sure whether the other participants 'really' are legitimate members of the categories they claim for themselves. In various other formats for CMC, like MUDs and MOOs, the looseness of the connections between the people who type messages and the identities they project in the chat environment seems often to be accepted as an inescapable fact, which adds to the fascination of participation1. The typists can then be called 'players' and the projected identities 'characters', while the interaction can be seen as a game of role-playing. In general chat environments, as the one I will discuss later, such a game-like quality seems not to be openly admitted, although quite often hinted at. Rather, the participants stick to playing who they claim they are. In my own text, however, I will use 'player' and 'character' to indicate the two faces of participation in computer-mediated, text-based chats. In the following sections, I will discuss the organised ways in which one particular problem that chat-players have is dealt with. That problem can be glossed as: how do people wanting to 'chat' on the Internet find suitable partners for that activity? The solution to that problem lies in the explicit naming or implicit suggestion of various kinds of social categories, like 'age', 'sex' and 'location'. Chat players very often initiate a chat with a question like: "hi, a/s/l please?", which asks the other party to self-identify in those terms, as, for instance "frits/m/amsterdam", if that fits the character the player wants to project. But, as I will explain, categorisation plays its role both earlier and later in the chat process. 'Membership Categorisation' in Finding Chat Partners The following exploration is, then, an exercise in Membership Categorisation Analysis (MCA; Hester & Eglin) as based on the ideas developed by Harvey Sacks in the 1960s (Sacks, "An Initial Investigation", "On the Analyzability of Stories", Lectures on Conversation Vol. 1). An immense part of the mundane knowledge that people use in living their everyday lives is organised in terms of categories that label members of some population as being of certain types. These categories are organised in sets, called Membership Categorisation Devices (MCDs). The MCD 'sex' (or 'gender'), for instance, consists of the two categories of 'male' and 'female'. Labelling a person as being male or female carries with it an enormous amount of implied properties, so called 'category-predicates', such as expectable or required behaviours, capacities, values, etc. My overall thesis is that people who want to chat rely mostly on categorical predications to find suitable chat partners. Finding a chat partner or chat partners is an interactive process between at least two parties. Their job involves a combination of presenting themselves and reading others' self presentations. For each, the job has a structure like 'find an X who wants a Y as a partner', where X is the desired chat character and Y is the character you yourself want to play. The set of XY-combinations varies in scope, of course, from very wide, say any male/female combination, to rather narrow, as we will see. The partner finding process for chats can be loosely compared with partly similar processes in other environments, such as co*cktail parties, poster sessions at conferences, and telephone calls. The openings of telephone calls have been researched extensively by conversation analysts, especially Schegloff ("Sequencing", "Identification", "Routine"; also Hopper). An interesting idea from this work is that a call opening tends to follow a loosely defined pattern, called the canonical model for telephone openings. This involves making contact, mutual identification/recognition, greetings and 'how-are-you?'s, before the actual business of the call is tackled. When logging on to a chat environment, one enters a market of sorts, where the participants are both buyers and sellers: a general sociability-market like a co*cktail party. And indeed some writers have characterised chat rooms as 'virtual co*cktail parties'. Some participants in a co*cktail party may, of course, have quite specific purposes in mind, like wanting to meet a particular kind of person, or a particular individual, or even being open to starting a relationship which may endure for some time after the event. The same is true for CMC chats. The trajectory that the partner-finding process will take is partly pre-structured by the technology used. I have limited my explorations to one particular chat environment (Microsoft Chat). In that program, the actual partner-finding starts even before logging on, as one is required to fill in certain information slots when setting up the program, such as Real Name and Nickname and optional slots like Email Address and Profile. When you click on the Chat Room List icon, you are presented with a list of over a thousand rooms, alphabetically arranged, with the number of participants. You can select a Room and click a button to enter it. When you do, you get a new screen, which has three windows, one that represents the ongoing general conversation, one with a list of the participants' nicks, and a window to type your contributions in. When you right-click on a name in the participant list, you get a number of options, including Get Profile. Get Profile allows you to get more information on that person, if he/she has filled in that part of the form, but often you get "This person is too lazy to create a profile entry." Categorisation in Room Names When you log in to the chat server, you can search either the Chat Room List or the Users List. Let us take the Chat Room List first. Some room names seem to be designed to come early in the alphabetically ordered list, by starting with one or more A's, as in A!!!!!!!!!FriendlyChat, while others rely on certain key words. Scanning over a thousand names for those words by scrolling the list might take a lot of time, but the Chat Room List has a search facility. You can type a string and the list will be shortened to only those with that string in their name. Many room names seem to be designed for being found this way, by containing a number of more or less redundant strings that people might use in a search. Some examples of room names are: A!!!!!!!!!FriendlyChat, Animal&Girls, Australia_Sydney_Chat_Room, christian evening post, desert_and_cactus_only, engineer, francais_saloppes, francais_soumise_sub_slave, german_deutsch_rollenspiele, hayatherseyeragmensürüyor, holland_babbel, italia_14_19anni, italia_padania_e_basta, L@Ros@deiVenti, nederlandse_chat, sex_tr, subslavespankbondage, Sweet_Girl_From_Alabama, #BI_LES_FEM_ONLY, #Chinese_Chat, #France, #LesbiansBiTeenGirls_Cam_NetMeeting, #polska_do_flirtowania, #russian_Virtual_Bar?, #tr_%izmir, #ukphonefantasy. A first look at this collection of room names suggests two broad classes of categorisation: first a local/national/cultural/ethnic class, and second one oriented to topics, with a large dose of sexual ones. For the first class, different kinds of indicators are available, such as naming as in Australia_Sydney_Chat_Room, and the use of a local language as in hayatherseyeragmensürüyor, or in combination: german_deutsch_rollenspiele. When you enter this type of room, a first function of such categorisations becomes apparent in that non-English categorisations suggest a different language practice. While English is the default language, quite a few people prefer using their own local language. Some rooms even suggest a more restricted area, as in Australia_Sydney_Chat_Room, for those who are interested in chatting with people not too far off. This seems a bit paradoxical, as chatting in a world-wide network allows contacts between people who are physically distant, as is often mentioned in chats. Rooms with such local restrictions may be designed, however, to facilitate possible subsequent face-to-face meetings or telephone contacts, as is suggested by names like Fr@nce_P@ris_Rencontre and #ukphonefantasy. The collection of sexually suggestive names is not only large, but also indicative of a large variety of interests, including just (probably heterosexual) sex, male gay sex, female lesbian or bi-sexuality. Some names invoke some more specialized practices like BDSM, and a collection of other 'perversities', as in names like 'francais_soumcateise_sub_slave', 'subslavespankbondage', 'golden_shower' or 'family_secrets'. But quite often sexual interest are only revealed in subsequent stages of contact. Non-sexual interests are, of course, also apparent, including religious, professional, political or commercial ones, as in 'christian evening post', or 'culturecrossing', 'holland_paranormaal', 'jesussaves', 'Pokemon_Chat', 'francais_informatique', and '#Russian_Philosophy_2918'. Categorisation through Nicknames Having selected a room, your next step is to see who is there. As chatting ultimately concerns exchanges between (virtual) persons, it is no surprise that nicknames are used as concise 'labels' to announce who is available on the chat network or in a particular room. Consider some examples: ^P0371G , amanda14, anneke, banana81, Dream_Girl, emma69, ericdraven, latex_bi_tch1 , Leeroy, LuCho1, Mary15, Miguelo, SomeFun, Steffi, teaser. Some of these are rather opaque, at least at first, while others seem quite ordinary. Anneke, for instance, is an ordinary Dutch name for girls. So, by using this nick name, a person at the same time categorises herself in two Membership Categorisation Devices: gender: 'female' and language: 'Dutch'. When using this type of nick, you will quite often be addressed in Dutch, for instance with the typically Dutch chat-greeting "hoi" and/or by a question like "ben jij Nederlandse?" ("are you Dutch?" -- female form). This question asks you to categorise yourself, using the nationality device 'Dutch/Belgian', within the language category 'speaker of Dutch'. Many other first names like 'amanda' and 'emma', do not have such a language specificity and so do not 'project' a specific European language/nationality as 'anneke' does. Some French names, like 'nathalie' are a bit ambiguous in that respect, as they are used in quite a number of other language communities, so you may get a more open question like "bonjour, tu parle francais?" ("hi, do you speak French?"). A name like 'Miguelo' suggests a roman language, of course, while 'LuCho1' or 'Konusmaz' indicate non-European languages (here Chinese and Turkish, respectively). Quite often, a first name nick also carries an attached number, as in 'Mary15'. One reason for such attachments is that a nick has to be unique, so if you join the channel with a nick like 'Mary', there will mostly be another who has already claimed that particular name. An error message will appear suggesting that you take another nick. The easiest solution, then, is to add an 'identifying detail', like a number. Technically, any number, letter or other character will do, so you can take Mary1, or Mary~, or Mary_m. Quite often, numbers are used in accord with the nick's age, as is probably the case in our examples 'Mary15' and 'amanda14', but not in 'emma69', which suggests an 'activity preference' rather than an age category. Some of the other nicks in our examples suggest other aspects, claims or interests, as in Dream_Girl, latex_bi_tch1, SomeFun, or teaser. Other examples are: 'machomadness', 'daddyishere', 'LadySusan28', 'maleslave', 'curieuse33', 'patrickcam', or 'YOUNG_GAY_BOY'. More elaborate information about a character can sometimes be collected from his or her profile, but for reasons of space, I will not discuss its use here. This paper's interest is not only in finding out which categories and MCDs are actually used, but also how they are used, what kind of function they can be seen to have. How do chat participants organise their way to 'the anchor point' (Schegloff, "Routine"), at which they start their actual chat 'business'? For the chatting environment that I have observed, there seems to be two major purposes, one may be called social, i.e. 'just chatting', as under the rubric 'friendly chat', and the other is sexual. These purposes may be mixed, of course, in that the first may lead to the second, or the second accompanied by the first. Apart from those two major purposes, a number of others can be inferred from the room titles, including the discussion of political, religious, and technical topics. Sexual chats can take various forms, most prominently 'pic trading' and 'cybersex'. As becomes clear from research by Don Slater, an enormous 'market' for 'pic trading' has emerged, with a quite explicit normative structure of 'fair trading', i.e. if one receives something, one should reciprocate in kind. When one is in an appropriate room, and especially if one plays a female character, other participants quite often try to initiate pic trading. This can have the form of sending a pic, without any verbal exchange, possibly followed by a request like 'send also'. But you may also get a verbal request first, like "do you have a (self) pic?" If you reply in a negative way, you often do not get any further reaction, or just "ok." A 'pic request' can also be preceded by some verbal exchanges; social, sexual or both. That question -- "have a pic?" or "wanna trade" -- can then be considered the real starting point for that particular encounter, or it can be part of a process of getting to know each other: "can i c u?" The second form of sexual chats involves cyber sex. This may be characterised as interactionally improvised p*rnography, the exchange of sexually explicit messages enacting a sexual fantasy or a shared masturbation session. There is a repertoire of opening moves for these kinds of games, including "wanna cyber?", "are you alone?" and "what are you wearing now?" Functions of Categorisations Categorisations in room names, nicks and profiles has two major functions: guiding the selection of suitable chat partners and suggesting topics. Location information has quite diverse implications in different contexts, e.g. linguistic, cultural, national and geographical. Language is a primordial parameter in any text-based activity, and chatting offers numerous illustrations for this. Cultural implications seem to be more diffuse, but probably important for some (classes of?) participants. Nationality is important in various ways, for instance as an 'identity anchor'. So when you use a typically Dutch nick, like 'frits' or 'anneke', you may get first questions asking whether you are from the Netherlands or from Belgium and subsequently from which region or town. This may be important for indicating reachability, either in person or over the phone. Location information can also be used as topic opener. So when you mention that you live in Amsterdam, you often get positive remarks about the city, like "I visited Amsterdam last June and I liked it very much", or "I would die to live there" (sic) from a pot-smoking U.S. student. After language, age and gender seem to be the most important points in exploring mutual suitability. When possible partners differ in age or gender category, this quite often leads to questions like "Am I not too old/young for you?" Of course, age and gender are basic parameters for sexual selection, as people differ in their range of sexual preferences along the lines of these categories, i.e. same sex or opposite sex, and roughly the same age or older/younger age. Such preferences intersect with straight or kinky ones, of which a large variety can be found. Many rooms are organised around one or another combination, as announced in names like '#LesbiansBiTeenGirls_Cam_NetMeeting', 'Hollandlolita' or '#Lesbian_Domination'. In some of these, the host makes efforts to keep to a more or less strict 'regime', for instance by banning obvious males from a room like '#BI_LES_FEM_ONLY'. In others, an automated welcome message is used to lay out the participation rules. Conclusion To sum up, categorisation plays an essential role in a sorting-out process leading, ideally, to small-group or dyadic suitability. A/S/L, age, sex and location, are obvious starting points, but other differentiations, as in sexual preferences which are themselves partly rooted in age/gender combinations, also play a role. In this process, suitability explorations and topic initiations are intimately related. Chatting, then, is text-based categorisation. New communication technologies are invented with rather limited purposes in mind, but they are quite often adopted by masses of users in unexpected ways. In this process, pre-existing communicational purposes and procedures are adapted to the new environment, but basically there does not seem to be any radical change. Comparing mutual categorisation in face-to-face encounters, telephone calls, and text-based CMC as in online chatting, one can see that similar procedures are being used, although in a more and more explicit manner, as in the question: "a/s/l please?" Footnote These ideas have been inspired by Schaap; for an ethnography focussing on the connection between 'life online' and 'real life', see Markham, 1998. References Hopper, Robert. Telephone Conversation. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1992. Hester, Stephen, and Peter Eglin, eds. Culture in Action: Studies in Membership Categorisation Analysis. Washington, D.C.: UP of America, 1997. Markham, Annette H. Life Online: Researching Real Experience in Virtual Space. Walnut Creek, London, New Delhi: Altamira P, 1998. Sacks, Harvey. "An Initial Investigation of the Usability of Conversational Data for Doing Sociology." Studies in Social Interaction. Ed. D. Sudnow. New York: Free P, 1972. 31-74. ---. Lectures on Conversation. Vol. 1. Ed. Gail Jefferson, with an introduction by Emanuel A. Schegloff. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1992. ---. Lectures on Conversation. Vol. 2. Ed. Gail Jefferson, with an introduction by Emanuel A. Schegloff. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1992. ---. "On Doing 'Being Ordinary'." Structures of Social Action: Studies in Conversation Analysis. Ed. J. Maxwell Atkinson and John Heritage. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1984. 413-29. ---. "On the Analyzability of Stories by Children." Directions in Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of Communication. Ed. John. J. Gumperz and Dell Hymes. New York: Rinehart & Winston, 1972. 325-45. Schaap, Frank. "The Words That Took Us There: Not an Ethnography." M.A. Thesis in Anthropology, University of Amsterdam, 2000. <http://fragment.nl/thesis/>. Schegloff, Emanuel A. "Identification and Recognition in Telephone Conversation Openings." Everyday Language: Studies in Ethnomethodology. Ed. George Psathas. New York: Irvington, 1979. 23-78. ---. "The Routine as Achievement." Human Studies 9 (1986): 111-52. ---. "Sequencing in Conversational Openings." American Anthropologist 70 (1968): 1075-95. Slater, Don R. "Trading Sexpics on IRC: Embodiment and Authenticity on the Internet." Body and Society 4.4 (1998): 91-117. Ten Have, Paul. Doing Conversation Analysis: A Practical Guide. Introducing Qualitative Methods. London: Sage, 1999. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Paul ten Have. "Computer-Mediated Chat: Ways of Finding Chat Partners." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.4 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0008/partners.php>. Chicago style: Paul ten Have, "Computer-Mediated Chat: Ways of Finding Chat Partners," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 4 (2000), <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0008/partners.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Paul ten Have. (2000) Computer-mediated chat: ways of finding chat partners. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(4). <http://www.api-network.com/mc/0008/partners.php> ([your date of access]).

Abstract:

As a specialist in culture and communication studies, teaching in a school of business, I realised that the notion of interdisciplinarity is usually explored in the comfort of one's own discipline. Meanwhile, the practice of interdisciplinarity is something else. The very notion of disciplinarity implies a regime of discursive practices, but in the zone between disciplines, there is often no adequate language. This piece of writing is a brief analysis of an example of the language of business studies when business studies thinks about culture. It looks at how business studies approaches cultural difference in context of intercultural contact. Geert Hofstede's Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind (1991) This article is a brief and very selective critique of Geert Hofstede's notion of culture in Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind. Hofstede has been publishing his work on cross-cultural management since the 1960s. His work is routinely used in reference to cross/multi/intercultural issues in business studies (a term I use to include commerce, finance, management, and marketing). Before I begin, I must insist that Hofstede's Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind is a very useful text for business studies students, as it introduces them to useful concepts in relation to culture, like culture shock, acculturation (not enculturation -- I suppose managers are repatriated before that happens), and training for successful cross-cultural communication. It is worth including here a brief note on the subtitle of Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind. This "software of the mind" is clearly analogous to computer programming. However, Hofstede disavows the analogy, which is central to his thesis, saying that people are not programmed the way computers are. So they are, but not really. Hofstede claims that in order to learn something different, one "must unlearn ... (the) ... patterns of thinking, feeling, and potential acting which were learned throughout (one's) lifetime". And it is this thinking/feeling/acting function he calls the "software of the mind" (4). So, is the body the hardware? Thinking and feeling are abstract and could, with a flight of fancy, be seen as "software". However, acting is visible, tangible, and often visceral. I am suggesting that "acting" either represents or is just about all we have as culture. Acting (in the fullest sense, including speech, gesture, manners, textual production, etc.) is not evidence of culture, it is culture. Also, computer technology, like every other technology, is part of culture, as evident in this journal. Culture I share Clifford Geertz's concept of culture as a semiotic one, where interpretation is a search for meaning, and where meaning lies in social relations. Geertz writes that to claim that culture consists in brute patterns of behaviour in some identifiable community is to reduce it (the community and the notion of culture). Human behaviour is symbolic action. Culture is not just patterned conduct, a frame of mind which points to some sort of ontological status. Culture is public, social, relational, and contextual. To quote Geertz: "culture is not a power, something to which social events, behaviours, institutions, or processes can be causally attributed; it is a context" (14). Culture is not an ontological essence or set of behaviours. Culture is made up of webs of relationships. That Hofstede locates culture in the mind is probably the most problematic aspect of his writing. Culture is difficult for any discipline to describe because different disciplines have their own view of social reality. They operate in their own paradigms. Hofstede uses a behaviourist psychological approach to culture, which looks at what he calls national character and typical behaviours. Even though Hofstede is aware of being, as an observer of human behaviour, an integral part of his object of analysis (other cultures), he nevertheless continuously equates the observed behaviour to particular kinds of national thinking and feeling where national is often collapsed into cultural. Hofstede uses an empirical behaviourist paradigm which measures certain behaviours, as if the observer is outside the cultural significance attributed to behaviours, and attributes them to culture. Hofstede's Notion of Culture Hofstede's work is based on quantitative data gathered from questionnaires administered to IBM corporation employees in various countries. He looked at 72 national subsidiaries, 38 occupations, 20 languages, and at two points in time (1968 and 1972), and continued his commentary on that data into the 1990s. He claims that because the entire sample has a common corporate culture, the only thing that can account for systematic and consistent differences between national groups within a hom*ogeneous multinational organisation is nationality itself. It is as if corporate culture is outside, has nothing to do with, national culture (itself a complex and dynamic concept). Hofstede's work does not account for the fact that IBM is an American multinational corporation and, as such, whatever attributes are used to measure cultural difference, those found in American corporate culture will set the benchmark for whatever other cultures are measured. This view is supported in business studies in general where American management practices are seen as universal and normal, even when they are described as 'Western'. The areas Hofstede's IBM survey looked at are: 1. Social inequality, including the relationship with authority (also described as power distance); 2. The relationship between the individual and the group (also described as individualism versus collectivism); 3. Concepts of masculinity and femininity: the social implications of having been born as a boy or a girl (also described as masculinity versus femininity); 4. Ways of dealing with uncertainty, relating to the control of aggression and the expression of emotions (also described as uncertainty avoidance). These concepts are in themselves culturally specific and have become structurally embedded in organisational theory. Hofstede writes that these four dimensions of culture are aspects of culture that can be measured relative to other cultures. What these four dimensions actually do is not to combine to give us a four-dimensional (complex?) appreciation of culture. Rather, they map onto each other and reinforce a politically conservative, Eurocentric view of culture. Hofstede does admit to having had "a 'Western' way of thinking", but he inevitably goes back to "the mind" as a place or goal. He refers to a questionnaire composted by "Eastern', in this case Chinese minds ... [which] ... are programmed according to their own particular cultural framework" (171). So there is this constant reference to culturally programmed minds that determine certain behaviours. In his justification of using typologies to categorise people and their behaviour (minds?) Hofstede also admits that most people / cultures are hybrids. And he admits that rules are made arbitrarily in order to classify people / cultures (minds?). However, he insists that the statistical clusters he ends up with are an empirical typology. Such a reduction of "culture" to this kind of radical realism is absolutely anatomical and enumerative. And, the more Hofstede is quoted as an authority on doing business across cultures, the more truth value his work accrues. The sort of language Hofstede uses to describe culture attributes intrinsic meanings and, as a result, points to difference rather than diversity. Languages of difference are based on binaristic notions of masculine/feminine, East/West, active/passive, collective/individual, and so on. In this opposition of activity and passivity, the East (feminine, collectivist) is the weaker partner of the West (masculine, individualist). There is a nexus of knowledge and power that constructs cultural difference along such binaristic lines. While a language of diversity take multiplicity as a starting point, or the norm, Hofstede's hegemonic and instrumentalist language of difference sees multiplicity as problematic. This problem is flagged at the very start of Cultures and Organizations. 12 Angry Men: Hofstede Interprets Culture and Ignores Gender In the opening page of Cultures and Organizations there is a brief passage from Reginald Rose's play 12 Angry Men (1955). (For a good review of the film see http://www.film.u- net.com/Movies/Reviews/Twelve_Angry.html. The film was recently remade.) Hofstede uses it as an example of how twelve different people with different cultural backgrounds "think, feel and act differently". The passage describes a confrontation between what Hofstede refers as "a garage owner" and "a European-born, probably Austrian, watchmaker". Such a comparison flags, right from the start, a particular way of categorising and distinguishing between two people, in terms of visible and audible signs and symbols. Both parties are described in terms of their occupation. But then the added qualification of one of the parties as being "European-born, probably Austrian" clearly indicates that the unqualified party places him in the broad category "American". In other words, the garage owner's apparently neutral ethnicity implies a normative "American", against which all markers of cultural difference are measured. Hofstede is aware of this problem. He writes that "cultural relativism does not imply normlessness for oneself, nor for one's society" (7). However, he still uses the syntax of binaristic classification which repeats and perpetuates the very problems he is apparently addressing. One of the main factors that makes 12 Angry Men such a powerful drama is that each man carries / inscribes different aspects of American culture. And American culture is idealised in the justice system, where rationality and consensus overcomes prejudice and social pressure. Each man has a unique make-up, which includes class, occupation, ethnicity, personality, intelligence, style and experience. But 12 Angry Men is also an interesting exploration of masculinity. Because Hofstede has included a category of "masculine/feminine" in his study of national culture, it is an interesting oversight that he does not comment on this powerful element of the drama. People identify along various lines, in terms of ethnicities, languages, histories, sexuality, politics and nationalism. Most people do have multiple and varied aspects to their identity. However, Hofstede sees multiple lines of identification as causing "conflicting mental programs". Hofstede claims that identification on the gender level of his hierarchy is determined "according to whether a person was born as a girl or as a boy" (10). Hofstede misses the crucial point that whilst whether one is born female or male determines one's sex, whether one is enculturated as and identifies as feminine or masculine indicates one's gender. Sex and gender are not the same thing. Sex is biological (natural) and gender is ideological (socially constructed and naturalised). This sort of blindness to the ideological component of identity is a fundamental flaw in Hofstede's thesis. Hofstede takes ideological constructions as given, as natural. For example, in endnote 1 of Chapter 4, "He, she, and (s)he", he writes "My choice of the terms (soft feminine and hard masculine) is based on what is in virtually all societies, not on what anybody thinks should be (107, his italics). He reinforces the notion of gendered essences, or essences which constitute national identity. Indeed, the world is not made up of entities or essences that are masculine or feminine, Western or Eastern, active or passive. And the question is not so much about empirical accuracy along such lines, but rather what are the effects of always reinscribing cultures as Western or Eastern, masculine or feminine, collectivist or individualist. In an era of globalism and mass, interconnected communication, identities are multiple, and terms like East and West, masculine and feminine, active and passive, should be used as undecidable codes that, at the most, flag fragments of histories and ideologies. Identity East and West are concepts that did not come out of a political or cultural vacuum. They are categories, or concepts, that originated and flourished with European expansionism from the 17th century. They underwrote imperialism and colonisation. They are not inert labels that merely point to something "out there". East and West, like masculine and feminine or any other binary pair, indicate an imaginary relationship that prioritises one of the pair over the other. People and cultures cannot be separated into static Western and Eastern essences. Culture itself is always diverse and dynamic. It is marked by migration, diaspora, and exile, not to mention historical change. There are no "original" cultures. The sort of discourse Hofstede uses to describe cultures is based on an ontological and epistemological distinction made between East and West. Culture is not something invisible or intangible. Culture is not something obscure that is in the mind (whatever or wherever that is) which manifests itself in peculiar behaviours. Culture is what and how we communicate, whether that takes the form of speech, gestures, novels, plays, architecture, style, or art. And, as such, communication includes the objects we produce and exchange and the symbols to which we give meaning. So, when Hofstede writes that the Austrian watchmaker acts the way he does because he cannot behave otherwise. After many years in his new home country, he still behaves the way he was raised. He carries within himself an indelible pattern of behaviour he is attributing a whole range of qualities which are frequently given by dominant cultures to their cultural "others" (1). Hofstede attributes politeness, tradition, and, above all, stasis, to the European-Austrian watchmaker. The phrase "after many years in his new home country" is contradictory. If so many years have passed, why is "home" still "new"? And, indeed, the watchmaker might still behave the way he was raised, but it would be safe to assume that the garage owner also behaves the way he was raised. One of the main points made in 12 Angry Men is that twelve American men are all very different to each other in terms of values and behaviour. All this is represented in the dialogue and behaviour of twelve men in a closed room. If we are concerned with different kinds of social behaviour, and we are not concerned with pathological behaviour, then how can we know what anyone carries within themselves? Why do we want to know what anyone carries within themselves? From a cultural studies perspective, the last question is political. However, from a business studies perspective, that question is naïve. The radical economic rationalist would want to know as much as possible about cultural differences so that we can better target consumer groups and be more successful in cross-cultural negotiations. In colonial days, foreigners often wielded absolute power in other societies and they could impose their rules on it [sic]. In these postcolonial days, foreigners who want to change something in another society will have to negotiate their interventions. (7) Those who wielded absolute power in the colonies were the non-indigenous colonisers. It was precisely the self-legitimating step of making a place a colony that ensured an ongoing presence of the colonising power. The impetus behind learning about the Other in the colonial times was a combination of spiritual salvation (as in the "mission civilisatrice") and economic exploitation (colonies were seen as resources for the benefit of the European and later American centres). And now, the impetus behind learning about cultural difference is that "negotiation is more likely to succeed when the parties concerned understand the reasons for the differences in viewpoints" (7). Culture as Commerce What, in fact, happens, is that business studies simultaneously wants to "do" components of cross-cultural studies, as it is clearly profitable, while shunning the theoretical discipline of cultural studies. A fundamental flaw in a business studies perspective, which is based on Hofstede's work, is a blindness to the ideological and historical component of identity. Business studies has picked up just enough orientalism, feminism, marxism, deconstruction and postcolonialism to thinly disavow any complicity with dominant (and dominating) discourses, while getting on with business-as-usual. Multiculturalism and gender are seen as modern categories to which one must pay lip service, only to be able to get on with business-as-usual. Negotiation, compromise and consensus are desired not for the sake of success in civil processes, but for the material value of global market presence, acceptance and share. However, civil process and commercial interests are not easily separable. To refer to a cultural economy is not just to use a metaphor. The materiality of business, in the various forms of commercial transactions, is itself part of one's culture. That is, culture is the production, consumption and circulation of objects (including less easily definable objects, like performance, language, style and manners). Also, culture is produced and consumed socially (in the realm of the civil) and circulates through official and unofficial social and commercial mechanisms. Culture is a material and social phenomenon. It's not something hidden from view that only reveals itself in behaviours. Hofstede rightly asserts that culture is learned and not inherited. Human nature is inherited. However, it is very difficult to determine exactly what human nature is. Most of what we consider to be human nature turns out to be, upon close inspection, ideological, naturalised. Hofstede writes that what one does with one's human nature is "modified by culture" (5). I would argue that whatever one does is cultural. And this includes taking part in commercial transactions. Even though commercial transactions (including the buying and selling of services) are material, they are also highly ritualistic and highly symbolic, involving complex forms of communication (verbal and nonverbal language). Culture as Mental Programming Hofstede's insistent ontological reference to 'the sources of one's mental programs' is problematic for many reasons. There is the constant ontological as well as epistemological distinction being made between cultures, as if there is a static core to each culture and that we can identify it, know what it is, and deal with it. It is as if culture itself is a knowable essence. Even though Hofstede pays lip service to culture as a social phenomenon, saying that "the sources of one's mental programs lie within the social environments in which one grew up and collected one's life experiences" (4), and that past theories of race have been largely responsible for massive genocides, he nevertheless implies a kind of biologism simply by turning the mind (a radical abstraction) into something as crude as computer software, where data can be stored, erased or reconfigured. In explaining how culture is socially constructed and not biologically determined, Hofstede says that one's mental programming starts with the family and goes on through the neighbourhood, school, social groups, the work place, and the community. He says that "mental programs vary as much as the social environments in which they were acquired", which is nothing whatsoever like computer software (4-5). But he carries on to claim that "a customary term for such mental software is culture" (4, my italics). Before the large-scale changes which took place in the second half of the twentieth century in disciplines like anthropology, history, linguistics, and psychology, culture was seen to be a recognisable, determined, contained, consistent way of living which had deep psychic roots. Today, any link between mental processes and culture (formerly referred to as "race") cannot be sustained. We must be cautious against presuming to understand the relationship between mental process and social life and also against concluding that the content of the mind in each racial (or, if you like, ethnic or cultural) group is of a peculiar kind, because it is this kind of reductionism that feeds stereotypes. And it is the accumulation of knowledge about cultural types that implies power over the very types that are thus created. Conclusion A genuinely interdisciplinary approach to communication, commerce and culture would make business studies more theoretical and more challenging. And it would make cultural studies take commerce more seriously, beyond a mere celebration of shopping. This article has attempted to reveal some of the cracks in how business studies accounts for cultural diversity in an age of global commercial ambitions. It has also looked at how Hofstede's writings, as exemplary of the business studies perspective, papers over those cracks with a very thin layer of pluralist cultural relativism. This article is an invitation to open up a critical dialogue which dares to go beyond disciplinary traditionalisms in order to examine how meaning, communication, culture, language and commerce are embedded in each other. References Carothers, J.C. Mind of Man in Africa. London: Tom Stacey, 1972. Degabriele, Maria. Postorientalism: Orientalism since "Orientalism". Ph.D. Thesis. Perth: Murdoch University, 1997. Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books, 1973. Hofstede, Geert. Cultures and Organisations: Software of the Mind. Sydney: McGraw-Hill, 1991. Moore, Charles A., ed. The Japanese Mind: Essentials of Japanese Philosophy and Culture. Honolulu: East-West Centre, U of Hawaii, 1967. Patai, Raphael. The Arab Mind. New York: Scribner, 1983. Toffler, Alvin. Future Shock: A Study of Mass Bewildernment in the Face of Accelerating Change. Sydney: Bodley Head, 1970. 12 Angry Men. Dir. Sidney Lumet. Orion-Nova, USA. 1957. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Maria Degabriele. "Business as Usual: How Business Studies Thinks Culture." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.2 (2000). [your date of access] Chicago style: Maria Degabriele, "Business as Usual: How Business Studies Thinks Culture," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 2 (2000), ([your date of access]). APA style: Maria Degabriele. (2000) Business as usual: how business studies thinks culture. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(2). ([your date of access]).

Abstract:

Getting the Family Together: A Fieldwork Account The final gig of Bob Corbett and the Roo Grass Band’s 2013 tour is a hometown show at New Lambton Community Hall in Newcastle on the coast of New South Wales, Australia. The tour had already covered Newcastle and surrounds at various locations within 50 to 100km of the Newcastle CBD. In addition to lead singer and guitarist Bob Corbett, there are three main members of the Roo Grass Band, Sue Carson on fiddle and mandolin, Dave Carter on banjo, bass and bagpipes and Robbie Long on guitar, mandolin and bass. I enter the building and at the top of the stairs a tall, slim woman with a shock of red hair rushes to greet me with a hug, “It is so good to see you!”This is Veronica, Bob Corbett’s Mum. She’s been busy setting up the merchandise desk, taking tickets, and greeting almost every member of the audience by name. Veronica has functioned as de facto tour manager throughout the band’s Lucky Country Hall Tour. As well as running the merchandise desk and ticketing, she’s occasionally acted as roadie, and has supervised the packing of cars and trailers. These day-to-day jobs on the tour have been done with help from either her sister Roberta or, for most of the tour, a close friend of the band, Jenny. I deposit home-made chocolate brownies and biscuits in the kitchen, setting them up alongside fruit brownies made by Veronica for the audience. Bob’s wife, Kirrily, comes and says hello, followed by their son Marley, who heads straight for the goodies. Their daughter Matilda is running around with her best friend and next-door neighbour, Sophie. Dave, who plays banjo, bass and bagpipes in the band, greets his wife Karen as she arrives with their kids. The band’s fiddle player, Sue, is pacing around, looking fractious. I ask if she’s okay. “Yeah, it is just that my family is meant to be here already and they’re running late. They’re going to miss it.”Not long after, Sue’s partner, Michael (who is also Veronica’s brother, Bob’s uncle) arrives with their son Elijah and his son Gabe, in time for the show. This final gig of the tour seemed to have been largely arranged for the families of the band, and there was little advertising for it. In the way of family get-togethers a mix of tension and excitement fill the room. But once the band starts playing things calm down, a group of kids occupy the dance floor, twirling, swaying, skipping and running along with the music. Family, Authenticity, and Commercial Practices in Australian Country MusicI open with this fieldwork account to illuminate how the presence and involvement of family, through parents, spouses, aunts, uncles, children and even close friends are central to the experience of what it is to be a country music artist in Australia. In the case of Bob Corbett and the Roo Grass Band, for example, band members make choices to involve family in the activity of “being” a band—touring, performing, engaging with fans—and these choices have emotional value for them, but are also yoked to broader discourses of family which circulate in the field of Australian country music. This field story reveals that “family” is not something carved off from artists’ public engagement with the field of Australian country music but is central to it. Discourses of and around “family” are implicit in the practices of Australian country music artists and are strategically used by artists to define what country music is and what is valued in the field. Crucially, the discourse of family is used to support claims to authenticity within country music culture. Ideas about and associated practices concerning, “authenticity” permeate the culture of country music. The discourse reaches across all aspects of the field, and all participants in the scene are compelled to at least turn their minds to questions of authenticity, and develop strategies for dealing with them. Value is conferred on artists seen to convey so-called “true” and “genuine” personas. Indeed the country music community demands something referred to as “honesty” from performers. It needs to be noted that country music is a commercial popular music form and culture. Many agents in the scene have an uneasy symbolic relationship with the commercial aspects of country music, but it is a basic premise within the field: the music exists to make money. This is not to say that financial and popular success (in their quantifiable forms: money made, units sold, crowd sizes, radio spins) is the only thing valued in country music. As a form of cultural capital, authenticity is also valued. But within Australian country music a tension exists between the part of field underpinned by commercial logic and the idea of the popular and those underpinned by notions of creativity, independence and musical integrity. Authenticity is deployed to distinguish country music from other styles of music in a number of keys ways. Authenticity can be taken as an essential quality of music, which “honestly” reflects or expresses an identity or experience (e.g., Australian national identity, rural experience, heartbreak) (Watson, Volume 1; Watson, Volume 2; Sanjek); as a proper way of relating music, artist and audience (Smith); as a ideological watchword which tempers commerciality (Sanjek); or as something “fabricated” or constructed in the codification of the genre (Akenson; Peterson; Carriage and Hayward). I am not positing authenticity as a feature unique to Australian country music. A number of authors have highlighted the role authenticity plays in many forms of popular music to navigate, understand or obfuscate the functions of the commercial music industry and shape its output (Frith; Sanjek; Barker and Taylor). The scholarship on country music and popular music in general often explores how authenticity is inscribed in the products of country music, rather than the processes and practices behind those products: the everyday, extra-musical activities of participants in the scene. This article is concerned then with how discourses of authenticity are sutured to business, musical and promotional practices, and how such tropes function alongside discourses and practices concerning “family” in the negotiation of commercial realities in Australian country music. Rather than looking at end products, my research takes a ground-up approach, exploring what people are doing and how they talk about their practices and decisions. Discourses of “family”, and practices around kin, provide one of many possible entry points for this exploration. MethodologyThis article is based on ethnographic research on Australian country music. Between 2012-2014 I spent many months of focused immersion with Bob Corbett and the Roo Grass Band at festivals and on tour. This research was part of broader participant observation I conducted which included attending more than 150 country music events across New South Wales and Queensland. I also conducted hundreds of informal interviews at these events, as well as in-depth, semi-structured interviews with key informants, including band members Bob Corbett, Sue Carson, Robbie Long, and Michael Carpenter (sometimes drummer).Bob Corbett was recognised by the “mainstream” Australian country music scene in 2012 after winning the Star Maker competition. Since the win Bob and the band’s success within the field has increased—higher album sales, larger crowds, more airplay, recognition, sponsorships and nomination for Golden Guitar Awards (the main Australian country music industry awards). They play a mercurial mix of styles including bluegrass, Western swing, pop folk, and rock. At the core is a concern with storytelling and live, acoustic based performance is central. Bob and the band are primarily engaging with the field of Australian country music (through festivals, media, and self-identification), rather than the folk or bluegrass scenes, which, while related, are distinct fields with different logics, rules and relations.The conceptual framework for this article is indebted to Pierre Bourdieu. In using the term “field” to talk about Australian country music, I understand it as a discrete, relatively autonomous social microcosm, which is located within the social space of Australian society and the broader music industry, yet it is ruled by logics which are “specific and irreducible to those that regulate other fields” (Bourdieu in Bourdieu and Wacquant 97). Australian country music consists of systems of relations, which define the occupants of the field—country musicians, country music stars, or country music fans (to name but a few)—and shape the products and practices of the field. Bob Corbett and the Roo Grass Band are participants in the field of Australian country music, and work to differentiate their position, and gain a monopoly over authority and influence within the field—to be recognised as successful, authentic country music artists (Bourdieu and Wacquant 100). This framework allows analytic space for exploring and understanding a tension between authenticity, as a form of cultural capital, and the commercial imperatives of country music as a popular music form.Family Bands and the Family BusinessThe significance and foregrounded presence of “family” within Australian country music is a result of the history of the field in which family bands have been prominent. The practice of touring with your spouse, children or other kin has been connected to a discourse of the “Family Band” in Australian country music. Slim Dusty and his family, as pioneers in the Australian country music industry, and arguably the most commercially and culturally successful artists in the scene’s history, are held up as an example par excellence of the country music canon, and provide the model for how country music should or could be done as a family. Slim, his wife Joy, daughter Anne Kirkpatrick and other extended family worked as a “family band” touring, performing, songwriting, recording, and being country music artists. As the “first family” Australian country music band (Baker; Ellis) they dominate the social and cultural imaginary of Australian country music. They represent a tradition of family involvement in the business of country music as a way of dealing with the practical realities of touring, providing emotional support and enjoyment, and as a part of a relatively conservative set of values drawn from country life­. These features work together to discursively distance the “family band” from the commercial music industry and imbue integrity and naturalness in those artists’ engagement with the music business. Bob Corbett and the Roo Grass Band is a family band: fiddle player Sue is Bob’s aunty; her partner Michael Stove, Bob’s uncle, was an original member of the Roo Grass Band. But more than that, the band understands themselves as a “family”. Sometimes-drummer in the band, Michael Carpenter, talked at length about the “Roo Grass Family” when I interviewed him, including the affective value he places on those relationships:I love it when Bob says… ‘Michael’s been a part of the Roo Grass family for a long time’ … it’s a very country music thing to say … when Bob says it, it actually means something, there’s a certain level of weight to it, because I know the way he treats his bands, I know the way he treats the people who are involved ... it does make them feel like they are a part of something special and so, and that’s beyond just doing a gig … it kind of creates this sense of loyalty that is important to me.The other members of the band also understand and value their involvement with the band in a similar way, and it spills into the chemistry the band has on stage, and the enjoyment they derive from playing together. The idea of the family band opens out beyond the actual band as well: the “Roo Grass Family” includes friends, fans and others with strong ties and involvement with the band.Practical, on the ground support (both on tour and also at home) offered by family to artists in Australian country music is a significant source of capital for those artists. However, participants also talk about this family help as a chance to spend time together, and couch it within discourses of loyalty, love, fun and commitment. Practices and discourses of small, DIY business are also sutured to discourse of family, as a way of reinforcing the fierce independence from big business and record companies. The fieldwork account at the beginning of this article reveals some of the work done by family on tour for Bob and the band, mainly through the presence of Bob’s mum, Veronica, as defacto tour manager. During the gig Bob offered a series of acknowledgments for the tour. After thanking the audiences and tour sponsors, he moved on to family:Bob: I’d like to thank my aunty Roberta, she came along and helped us on a tour leg … Ah, I’m going to forget people, I’m going to leave the special ones to last … I would like to thank Kirrily personally, but as Sue said, all partners and stuff, so I love you Kiz. But the most special one of all: Mrs Veronica Corbett [loud applause and cheers]. She’s the backbone! Of the tour, so thanks mum, thanks for everything.Veronica: Absolute pleasure Bobby.Bob: It’s been, it’s been a pleasure. You love doing it.Veronica: I love it.Bob: Yeah, you do love doing it, it’s been great, you know. I don’t want to get too, too sentimental, but, um just before dad died, he turned to me and said ‘look after mum’, and I don’t, I don’t look after mum, but in a way, just sharing all these experiences, like, we’re looking after each other, so, thank you for doing that.In this account, I am interested in the ways in which Bob, Veronica and Sue talk about the labour provided by family. There are a number of ways that participants talk about the practice of getting family to help do the work of touring and performing country music, which emerge here, and are consistently used by Bob and the band. It is spoken of in terms of “spending time” with each other, and of loving that time. Discourses of enjoyment and sociality permeate Bob, Veronica, and others’ discussions of the practical reality of people giving up their time to help. This is part of the cultural capital of authenticity: being a professional country music band out on the road is about more than hard slog, making money and cold business; it is an enjoyable experience, underpinned with love. To be authentic, it should be about more than the dollars.While the involvement of family in the activities of the band is discussed and understood as a chance to spend time together, an enjoyable experience, there are also discourses of support and help tied to these practices by those in and around the band. It is often acknowledged as a practical reality that family members are involved in the activities of the band (or in maintaining the home front) as a source of free or cheap labour which makes touring and performing possible. Sue acknowledged the importance of family support to the band, particularly as an independent band, in the interview: Main sources of support? … the management from Toyota and everything … after winning Star Maker, that was really great, so they’ve really helped … and also family … you certainly need that support, because you can’t, you’ve got to get out there and do it, that’s the only way to do it … it’s very personal support in a lot of ways … we’re not at that stage where, we’re not at a bigger level where there’s plenty of money being thrown around by record companies, that sort of support.In acknowledging the role of family at home while the band tours, as well as the “personal support” given to the band, Sue binds the practices of individuals staying at home, minding kids and maintaining home life, to the discourse of family. She is also linking the practices to the band’s “independent” status and the lack of “money being thrown around by record companies” as the reason this support and other on the road, tour based work, is essential. Within Sue’s account here, and at other times during my fieldwork, there was a sense that she saw the need for family support as a sign of inadequacy, a sign that the band had not yet “made it” to the level where the support comes from record companies, and there will be money thrown around to support the activities of the band. This touches on a broader set of discourses that circulate in the country music community about professionalism and amateurism, which are also linked to ideas about family. While the foregrounding of family has value within the field of country music, there is something else going on here. A division is often drawn between “commercial” and “creative” endeavours in Australian country music. By linking practices involving kin and discourses of family, Bob Corbett and the Roo Grass Band position themselves as authentic, or real, grass roots, and with creative freedom, in contrast to being creatively constrained or selling out. Within this division, a reliance on one’s family can be understood in some ways as a rejection of the commercial, business networks of country music. In the case of Sue’s account above there is a sense that it is also a way of negotiating success when you do not have access to a record label or other big business support, which may seem the easier route. Sue’s view differs somewhat from Bob’s in this respect. Bob often expressed pride in the fact that they are “doing it on their own” and boasting an independent DIY model of music business (for example through ticketing, tour organisation and production); a business model that relies on the support of their family, but which is respected and valued within Australian country music. ConclusionArtists such as Bob Corbett and the Roo Grass Band all occupy “positions” in the field of Australian country music, and the discourses of “commercial”, “creative”, and “authentic” all work to categorise artists, and their position in the field. Economic and material circ*mstances limit, enable or influence the decisions to involve families or not: for Bob, a desire to remain in control of his creative output and career, and the need to maximise income to feed his family makes DIY ticketing, and taking his mum and friends on the road a good choice. But these material factors work with symbolic and cultural factors, in the game of cultural legitimisation about what it is to be a country music artist. The way in which Bob and the band invoked particular discourses of family, loyalty, fun and enjoyment, to talk about the on-the-ground practices of having family involved (or not) in their working lives as musicians is part of the work these bands and artists are doing to represent themselves to the country music community; they are attempting to establish themselves as adequately, legitimately and authentically “country”. In the process they are also shaping what it is to be a country music artist and what is valued within the field—in this case “family”. The constant struggles over what country music is, what is “authentic” country and what represents success, are struggles over the “schemata of classification … which construct social reality” (Bourdieu 20). Bob Corbett and the Roo Grass Band are using strategies in this struggle, in this case the strategies link practices involving kin to discourses of honesty and openness by collapsing public and private, heritage and tradition through the family band, and authenticity, professionalism, and success in the way family support can limit the need to rely on record labels and big business. ReferencesAkenson, James E. “Australia, The United States and Authenticity.” Outback and Urban: Australian Country Music. Ed. Philip Hayward. Gympie, QLD: aicmPress for the Australian Institute of Country Music, 2003. 187–206. Baker, Glen A. “Liner Notes - Annethology: The Best of Anne Kirkpatrick.” July 2010.Barker, Hugh, and Yuval Taylor. Faking It: The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music. New York: W.W. Norton, 2007.Bourdieu, Pierre. “Social Space and Symbolic Power.” Sociological Theory 7.1 (1989): 14–25. Bourdieu, Pierre, and Loïc J. D. Wacquant, eds. An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1992. Carriage, Leigh, and Philip Hayward. “Heartlands: Kasey Chambers, Australian Country Music and Americana.” Outback and Urban: Australian Country Music. Ed. Philip Hayward. Gympie, QLD: aicmPress for the Australian Institute of Country Music, 2003. 113–143. Ellis, Max. “Liner Notes: The Slim Dusty Family Reunion CD.” 2008.Frith, Simon. Music for Pleasure: Essays in the Sociology of Pop. Oxford: Polity Press, 1988.Peterson, Richard A. Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1997.Sanjek, David. “Pleasures and Principles: Issues of Authenticity in the Analysis of Rock’n’Roll.” Journal of Popular Music Studies 4.2 (1992): 12-21.Sanjek, David. “Blue Moon of Kentucky Rising Over the Mystery Train: The Complex Construction of Country Music.” In Reading Country Music: Steel Guitars, Opry Stars, and Honky-tonk Bars. Ed. Cecelia Tichi. Durham: Duke UP, 1998. 22–44. Smith, Graeme. Singing Australian: The History of Folk and Country Music. North Melbourne, VIC: Pluto Press Australia, 2005. Watson, Eric. Eric Watson’s Country Music in Australia, Volume 1. Pennsylvania: Rodeo Publications, 1982. Watson, Eric. Eric Watson’s Country Music in Australia, Volume 2. Pennsylvania: Rodeo Publications, 1983.

Abstract:

“...children’s play seems to become more and more a product of the educational and cultural orientation of parents...” — Stephen Kline, The Making of Children’s Culture We live in a world saturated by design and through design artefacts, one can glean unique insights into a culture's values and norms. In fact, some academics, such as British media and film theorist Ben Highmore, see the two areas so inextricably intertwined as to suggest a wholesale “re-branding of the cultural sciences as design studies” (14). Too often, however, everyday objects are marginalised or overlooked as objects of scholarly attention. The field of material culture studies seeks to change that by focussing on the quotidian object and its ability to reveal much about the time, place, and culture in which it was designed and used. This article takes on one such object, a mid-century children's toy tea set, whose humble journey from 1968 Sears catalogue to 2014 thrift shop—and subsequently this author’s basem*nt—reveals complex rhetorical messages communicated both visually and verbally. As material culture studies theorist Jules Prown notes, the field’s foundation is laid upon the understanding “that objects made ... by man reflect, consciously or unconsciously, directly or indirectly, the beliefs of individuals who made, commissioned, purchased or used them, and by extension the beliefs of the larger society to which they belonged” (1-2). In this case, the objects’ material and aesthetic characteristics can be shown to reflect some of the pervasive stereotypes and gender roles of the mid-century and trace some of the prevailing tastes of the American middle class of that era, or perhaps more accurately the type of design that came to represent good taste and a modern aesthetic for that audience. A wealth of research exists on the function of toys and play in learning about the world and even the role of toy selection in early sex-typing, socialisation, and personal identity of children (Teglasi). This particular research area isn’t the focus of this article; however, one aspect that is directly relevant and will be addressed is the notion of adult role-playing among children and the role of toys in communicating certain adult practices or values to the child—what sociologist David Oswell calls “the dedifferentiation of childhood and adulthood” (200). Neither is the focus of this article the practice nor indeed the ethicality of marketing to children. Relevant to this particular example I suggest, is as a product utilising messaging aimed not at children but at adults, appealing to certain parents’ interest in nurturing within their child a perceived era and class-appropriate sense of taste. This was fuelled in large part by the curatorial pursuits of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York, coupled with an interest and investment in raising their children in a design-forward household and a desire for toys that reflected that priority; in essence, parents wishing to raise modern children. Following Prown’s model of material culture analysis, the tea set is examined in three stages, through description, deduction and speculation with each stage building on the previous one. Figure 1: Porcelain Toy Tea Set. Description The tea set consists of twenty-six pieces that allows service for six. Six cups, saucers, and plates; a tall carafe with spout, handle and lid; a smaller vessel with a spout and handle; a small round bowl with a lid; a larger oval bowl with a lid, and a coordinated oval platter. The cups are just under two inches tall and two inches in diameter. The largest piece, the platter is roughly six inches by four inches. The pieces are made of a ceramic material white in colour and glossy in texture and are very lightweight. The rim or edge of each piece is decorated with a motif of three straight lines in two different shades of blue and in different thicknesses, interspersed with a set of three black wiggly lines. Figure 2: Porcelain Toy Tea Set Box. The set is packaged for retail purposes and the original box appears to be fully intact. The packaging of an object carries artefactual evidence just as important as what it contains that falls into the category of a “‘para-artefact’ … paraphernalia that accompanies the product (labels, packaging, instructions etc.), all of which contribute to a product’s discourse” (Folkmann and Jensen 83). The graphics on the box are colourful, featuring similar shades of teal blue as found on the objects, with the addition of orange and a silver sticker featuring the logo of the American retailer Sears. The cover features an illustration of the objects on an orange tabletop. The most prominent text that confirms that the toy is a “Porcelain Toy Tea Set” is in an organic, almost psychedelic style that mimics both popular graphics of this era—especially album art and concert posters—as well as the organic curves of steam that emanate from the illustrated teapot’s spout. Additional messages appear on the box, in particular “Contemporary DESIGN” and “handsome, clean-line styling for modern little hostesses”. Along the edges of the box lid, a detail of the decorative motif is reproduced somewhat abstracted from what actually appears on the ceramic objects. Figure 3: Sears’s Christmas Wishbook Catalogue, page 574 (1968). Sears, Roebuck and Co. (Sears) is well-known for its over one-hundred-year history of producing printed merchandise catalogues. The catalogue is another important para-artefact to consider in analysing the objects. The tea set first appeared in the 1968 Sears Christmas Wishbook. There is no date or copyright on the box, so only its inclusion in the catalogue allows the set to be accurately dated. It also allows us to understand how the set was originally marketed. Deduction In the deduction phase, we focus on the sensory aesthetic and functional interactive qualities of the various components of the set. In terms of its function, it is critical that we situate the objects in their original use context, play. The light weight of the objects and thinness of the ceramic material lends the objects a delicate, if not fragile, feeling which indicates that this set is not for rough use. Toy historian Lorraine May Punchard differentiates between toy tea sets “meant to be used by little girls, having parties for their friends and practising the social graces of the times” and smaller sets or doll dishes “made for little girls to have parties with their dolls, or for their dolls to have parties among themselves” (7). Similar sets sold by Sears feature images of girls using the sets with both human playmates and dolls. The quantity allowing service for six invites multiple users to join the party. The packaging makes clear that these toy tea sets were intended for imaginary play only, rendering them non-functional through an all-capitals caution declaiming “IMPORTANT: Do not use near heat”. The walls and handles of the cups are so thin one can imagine that they would quickly become dangerous if filled with a hot liquid. Nevertheless, the lid of the oval bowl has a tan stain or watermark which suggests actual use. The box is broken up by pink cardboard partitions dividing it into segments sized for each item in the set. Interestingly even the small squares of unfinished corrugated cardboard used as cushioning between each stacked plate have survived. The evidence of careful re-packing indicates that great care was taken in keeping the objects safe. It may suggest that even though the set was used, the children or perhaps the parents, considered the set as something to care for and conserve for the future. Flaws in the glaze and applique of the design motif can be found on several pieces in the set and offer some insight as to the technique used in producing these items. Errors such as the design being perfectly evenly spaced but crooked in its alignment to the rim, or pieces of the design becoming detached or accidentally folded over and overlapping itself could only be the result of a print transfer technique popularised with decorative china of the Victorian era, a technique which lends itself to mass production and lower cost when compared to hand decoration. Speculation In the speculation stage, we can consider the external evidence and begin a more rigorous investigation of the messaging, iconography, and possible meanings of the material artefact. Aspects of the set allow a number of useful observations about the role of such an object in its own time and context. Sociologists observe the role of toys as embodiments of particular types of parental messages and values (Cross 292) and note how particularly in the twentieth century “children’s play seems to become more and more a product of the educational and cultural orientation of parents” (Kline 96). Throughout history children’s toys often reflected a miniaturised version of the adult world allowing children to role-play as imagined adult-selves. Kristina Ranalli explored parallels between the practice of drinking tea and the play-acting of the child’s tea party, particularly in the nineteenth century, as a gendered ritual of gentility; a method of socialisation and education, and an opportunity for exploratory and even transgressive play by “spontaneously creating mini-societies with rules of their own” (20). Such toys and objects were available through the Sears mail-order catalogue from the very beginning at the end of the nineteenth century (McGuire). Propelled by the post-war boom of suburban development and homeownership—that generation’s manifestation of the American Dream—concern with home décor and design was elevated among the American mainstream to a degree never before seen. There was a hunger for new, streamlined, efficient, modernist living. In his essay titled “Domesticating Modernity”, historian Jeffrey L. Meikle notes that many early modernist designers found that perhaps the most potent way to “‘domesticate’ modernism and make it more familiar was to miniaturise it; for example, to shrink the skyscraper and put it into the home as furniture or tableware” (143). Dr Timothy Blade, curator of the 1985 exhibition of girls’ toys at the University of Minnesota’s Goldstein Gallery—now the Goldstein Museum of Design—described in his introduction “a miniaturised world with little props which duplicate, however rudely, the larger world of adults” (5). Noting the power of such toys to reflect adult values of their time, Blade continues: “the microcosm of the child’s world, remarkably furnished by the miniaturised props of their parents’ world, holds many direct and implied messages about the society which brought it into being” (9). In large part, the mid-century Sears catalogues capture the spirit of an era when, as collector Thomas Holland observes, “little girls were still primarily being offered only the options of glamour, beauty and parenthood as the stuff of their fantasies” (175). Holland notes that “the Wishbooks of the fifties [and, I would add, the sixties] assumed most girls would follow in their mother’s footsteps to become full-time housewives and mommies” (1). Blade grouped toys into three categories: cooking, cleaning, and sewing. A tea set could arguably be considered part of the cooking category, but closer examination of the language used in marketing this object—“little hostesses”, et cetera—suggests an emphasis not on cooking but on serving or entertaining. This particular category was not prevalent in the era examined by Blade, but the cultural shifts of the mid-twentieth century, particularly the rapid popularisation of a suburban lifestyle, may have led to the use of entertaining as an additional distinct category of role play in the process of learning to become a “proper” homemaker. Sears and other retailers offered a wide variety of styles of toy tea sets during this era. Blade and numerous other sources observe that children’s toy furniture and appliances tended to reflect the style and aesthetic qualities of their contemporary parallels in the adult world, the better to associate the child’s objects to its adult equivalent. The toy tea set’s packaging trumpets messages intended to appeal to modernist values and identity including “Contemporary Design” and “handsome, clean-line styling for modern little hostesses”. The use of this coded marketing language, aimed particularly at parents, can be traced back several decades. In 1928 a group of American industrial and textile designers established the American Designers' Gallery in New York, in part to encourage American designers to innovate and adopt new styles such as those seen in the L’ Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes (1925) in Paris, the exposition that sparked international interest in the Art Deco or Art Moderne aesthetic. One of the gallery founders, Ilonka Karasz, a Hungarian-American industrial and textile designer who had studied in Austria and was influenced by the Wiener Werkstätte in Vienna, publicised her new style of nursery furnishings as “designed for the very modern American child” (Brown 80). Sears itself was no stranger to the appeal of such language. The term “contemporary design” was ubiquitous in catalogue copy of the nineteen-fifties and sixties, used to describe everything from draperies (1959) and bedspreads (1961) to spice racks (1964) and the Lady Kenmore portable dishwasher (1961). An emphasis on the role of design in one’s life and surroundings can be traced back to efforts by MoMA. The museum’s interest in modern design hearkens back almost to the institution’s inception, particularly in relation to industrial design and the aestheticisation of everyday objects (Marshall). Through exhibitions and in partnership with mass-market magazines, department stores and manufacturer showrooms, MoMA curators evangelised the importance of “good design” a term that can be found in use as early as 1942. What Is Good Design? followed the pattern of prior exhibitions such as What Is Modern Painting? and situated modern design at the centre of exhibitions that toured the United States in the first half of the nineteen-fifties. To MoMA and its partners, “good design” signified the narrow identification of proper taste in furniture, home decor and accessories; effectively, the establishment of a design canon. The viewpoints enshrined in these exhibitions and partnerships were highly influential on the nation’s perception of taste for decades to come, as the trickle-down effect reached a much broader segment of consumers than those that directly experienced the museum or its exhibitions (Lawrence.) This was evident not only at high-end shops such as Bloomingdale’s and Macy’s. Even mass-market retailers sought out well-known figures of modernist design to contribute to their offerings. Sears, for example, commissioned noted modernist designer and ceramicist Russel Wright to produce a variety of serving ware and decor items exclusively for the company. Notably for this study, he was also commissioned to create a toy tea set for children. The 1957 Wishbook touts the set as “especially created to delight modern little misses”. Within its Good Design series, MoMA exhibitions celebrated numerous prominent Nordic designers who were exploring simplified forms and new material technologies. In the 1968 Wishbook, the retailer describes the Porcelain Toy Tea Set as “Danish-inspired china for young moderns”. The reference to Danish design is certainly compatible with the modernist appeal; after the explosion in popularity of Danish furniture design, the term “Danish Modern” was commonly used in the nineteen-fifties and sixties as shorthand for pan-Scandinavian or Nordic design, or more broadly for any modern furniture design regardless of origin that exhibited similar characteristics. In subsequent decades the notion of a monolithic Scandinavian-Nordic design aesthetic or movement has been debunked as primarily an economically motivated marketing ploy (Olivarez et al.; Fallan). In the United States, the term “Danish Modern” became so commonly misused that the Danish Society for Arts and Crafts called upon the American Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to legally restrict the use of the labels “Danish” and “Danish Modern” to companies genuinely originating in Denmark. Coincidentally the FTC ruled on this in 1968, noting “that ‘Danish Modern’ carries certain meanings, and... that consumers might prefer goods that are identified with a foreign culture” (Hansen 451). In the case of the Porcelain Toy Tea Set examined here, Sears was not claiming that the design was “Danish” but rather “Danish-inspired”. One must wonder, was this another coded marketing ploy to communicate a sense of “Good Design” to potential customers? An examination of the formal qualities of the set’s components, particularly the simplified geometric forms and the handle style of the cups, confirms that it is unlike a traditional—say, Victorian-style—tea set. Punchard observes that during this era some American tea sets were actually being modelled on coffee services rather than traditional tea services (148). A visual comparison of other sets sold by Sears in the same year reveals a variety of cup and pot shapes—with some similar to the set in question—while others exhibit more traditional teapot and cup shapes. Coffee culture was historically prominent in Nordic cultures so there is at least a passing reference to that aspect of Nordic—if not specifically Danish—influence in the design. But what of the decorative motif? Simple curved lines were certainly prominent in Danish furniture and architecture of this era, and occasionally found in combination with straight lines, but no connection back to any specific Danish motif could be found even after consultation with experts in the field from the Museum of Danish America and the Vesterheim National Norwegian-American Museum (personal correspondence). However, knowing that the average American consumer of this era—even the design-savvy among them—consumed Scandinavian design without distinguishing between the various nations, a possible explanation could be contained in the promotion of Finnish textiles at the time. In the decade prior to the manufacture of the tea set a major design tendency began to emerge in the United States, triggered by the geometric design motifs of the Finnish textile and apparel company Marimekko. Marimekko products were introduced to the American market in 1959 via the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based retailer Design Research (DR) and quickly exploded in popularity particularly after would-be First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy appeared in national media wearing Marimekko dresses during the 1960 presidential campaign and on the cover of Sports Illustrated magazine. (Thompson and Lange). The company’s styling soon came to epitomise a new youth aesthetic of the early nineteen sixties in the United States, a softer and more casual predecessor to the London “mod” influence. During this time multiple patterns were released that brought a sense of whimsy and a more human touch to classic mechanical patterns and stripes. The patterns Piccolo (1953), Helmipitsi (1959), and Varvunraita (1959), all designed by Vuokko Eskolin-Nurmesniemi offered varying motifs of parallel straight lines. Maija Isola's Silkkikuikka (1961) pattern—said to be inspired by the plumage of the Great Crested Grebe—combined parallel serpentine lines with straight and angled lines, available in a variety of colours. These and other geometrically inspired patterns quickly inundated apparel and decor markets. DR built a vastly expanded Cambridge flagship store and opened new locations in New York in 1961 and 1964, and in San Francisco in 1965 fuelled in no small part by the fact that they remained the exclusive outlet for Marimekko in the United States. It is clear that Marimekko’s approach to pattern influenced designers and manufacturers across industries. Design historian Lesley Jackson demonstrates that Marimekko designs influenced or were emulated by numerous other companies across Scandinavia and beyond (72-78). The company’s influence grew to such an extent that some described it as a “conquest of the international market” (Hedqvist and Tarschys 150). Subsequent design-forward retailers such as IKEA and Crate and Barrel continue to look to Marimekko even today for modern design inspiration. In 2016 the mass-market retailer Target formed a design partnership with Marimekko to offer an expansive limited-edition line in their stores, numbering over two hundred items. So, despite the “Danish” misnomer, it is quite conceivable that designers working for or commissioned by Sears in 1968 may have taken their aesthetic cues from Marimekko’s booming work, demonstrating a clear understanding of the contemporary high design aesthetic of the time and coding the marketing rhetoric accordingly even if incorrectly. Conclusion The Sears catalogue plays a unique role in capturing cross-sections of American culture not only as a sales tool but also in Holland’s words as “a beautifully illustrated diary of America, it’s [sic] people and the way we thought about things” (1). Applying a rhetorical and material culture analysis to the catalogue and the objects within it provides a unique glimpse into the roles these objects played in mediating relationships, transmitting values and embodying social practices, tastes and beliefs of mid-century American consumers. Adult consumers familiar with the characteristics of the culture of “Good Design” potentially could have made a connection between the simplified geometric forms of the components of the toy tea set and say the work of modernist tableware designers such as Kaj Franck, or between the set’s graphic pattern and the modernist motifs of Marimekko and its imitators. But for a much broader segment of the population with a less direct understanding of modernist aesthetics, those connections may not have been immediately apparent. The rhetorical messaging behind the objects’ packaging and marketing used class and taste signifiers such as modern, contemporary and “Danish” to reinforce this connection to effect an emotional and aspirational appeal. These messages were coded to position the set as an effective transmitter of modernist values and to target parents with the ambition to create “appropriately modern” environments for their children. References Ancestry.com. “Historic Catalogs of Sears, Roebuck and Co., 1896–1993.” <http://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=1670>. Baker Furniture Inc. “Design Legacy: Our Story.” n.d. <http://www.bakerfurniture.com/design-story/ legacy-of-quality/design-legacy/>. Blade, Timothy Trent. “Introduction.” Child’s Play, Woman’s Work: An Exhibition of Miniature Toy Appliances: June 12, 1985–September 29, 1985. St. Paul: Goldstein Gallery, U Minnesota, 1985. Brown, Ashley. “Ilonka Karasz: Rediscovering a Modernist Pioneer.” Studies in the Decorative Arts 8.1 (2000-1): 69–91. Cross, Gary. “Gendered Futures/Gendered Fantasies: Toys as Representatives of Changing Childhood.” American Journal of Semiotics 12.1 (1995): 289–310. Dolansky, Fanny. “Playing with Gender: Girls, Dolls, and Adult Ideals in the Roman World.” Classical Antiquity 31.2 (2012): 256–92. Fallan, Kjetil. Scandinavian Design: Alternative Histories. Berg, 2012. Folkmann, Mads Nygaard, and Hans-Christian Jensen. “Subjectivity in Self-Historicization: Design and Mediation of a ‘New Danish Modern’ Living Room Set.” Design and Culture 7.1 (2015): 65–84. Hansen, Per H. “Networks, Narratives, and New Markets: The Rise and Decline of Danish Modern Furniture Design, 1930–1970.” The Business History Review 80.3 (2006): 449–83. Hedqvist, Hedvig, and Rebecka Tarschys. “Thoughts on the International Reception of Marimekko.” Marimekko: Fabrics, Fashions, Architecture. Ed. Marianne Aav. Bard. 2003. 149–71. Highmore, Ben. The Design Culture Reader. Routledge, 2008. Holland, Thomas W. Girls’ Toys of the Fifties and Sixties: Memorable Catalog Pages from the Legendary Sears Christmas Wishbooks, 1950-1969. Windmill, 1997. Hucal, Sarah. "Scandi Crush Saga: How Scandinavian Design Took over the World." Curbed, 23 Mar. 2016. <http://www.curbed.com/2016/3/23/11286010/scandinavian-design-arne-jacobsen-alvar-aalto-muuto-artek>. Jackson, Lesley. “Textile Patterns in an International Context: Precursors, Contemporaries, and Successors.” Marimekko: Fabrics, Fashions, Architecture. Ed. Marianne Aav. Bard. 2003. 44–83. Kline, Stephen. “The Making of Children’s Culture.” The Children’s Culture Reader. Ed. Henry Jenkins. New York: NYU P, 1998. 95–109. Lawrence, Sidney. “Declaration of Function: Documents from the Museum of Modern Art’s Design Crusade, 1933-1950.” Design Issues 2.1 (1985): 65–77. Marshall, Jennifer Jane. Machine Art 1934. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2012. McGuire, Sheila. “Playing House: Sex-Roles and the Child’s World.” Child’s Play, Woman’s Work: An Exhibition of Miniature Toy Appliances : June 12, 1985–September 29, 1985. St. Paul: Goldstein Gallery, U Minnesota, 1985. Meikel, Jeffrey L. “Domesticating Modernity: Ambivalence and Appropriation, 1920–1940.” Designing Modernity; the Arts of Reform and Persuasion. Ed. Wendy Kaplan. Thames & Hudson, 1995. 143–68. O’Brien, Marion, and Aletha C. Huston. “Development of Sex-Typed Play Behavior in Toddlers.” Developmental Psychology, 21.5 (1985): 866–71. Olivarez, Jennifer Komar, Jukka Savolainen, and Juulia Kauste. Finland: Designed Environments. Minneapolis Institute of Arts and Nordic Heritage Museum, 2014. Oswell, David. The Agency of Children: From Family to Global Human Rights. Cambridge UP, 2013. Prown, Jules David. “Mind in Matter: An Introduction to Material Culture Theory and Method.” Winterthur Portfolio 17.1 (1982): 1–19. Punchard, Lorraine May. Child’s Play: Play Dishes, Kitchen Items, Furniture, Accessories. Punchard, 1982. Ranalli, Kristina. An Act Apart: Tea-Drinking, Play and Ritual. Master's thesis. U Delaware, 2013. Sears Corporate Archives. “What Is a Sears Modern Home?” n.d. <http://www.searsarchives.com/homes/index.htm>. "Target Announces New Design Partnership with Marimekko: It’s Finnish, Target Style." Target, 2 Mar. 2016. <http://corporate.target.com/article/2016/03/marimekko-for-target>. 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Abstract:

Introduction Children are not only born digital, they are fashioned toward a lifestyle that needs them to be digital all the time (Palfrey and Gasser). They click, tap, save, circulate, download, and upload the texts of their lives, their friends’ lives, and the anonymous lives of the people that surround them. They are socialised as Internet consumers ready to participate in digital services targeted to them as they age such as Snapchat, Instagram, and YouTube. But they are also fashioned as producers, whereby their lives are sold as content on these same markets. As commodities, the minutiae of their lives become the fodder for online circulation. Paradoxically, we also celebrate these digital behaviours as a means to express identity. Personal profile-building for adults is considered agency-building (Beer and Burrows), and as a consequence, we praise children for mimicking these acts of adult lifestyle. This article reflects on the Kids, Creative Storyworlds, and Wearables project, which involved an ethnographic study with five young children (ages 4-7), who were asked to share their autobiographical stories, creative self-narrations, and predictions about their future mediated lives (Atkins et al.). For this case study, we focus on commercialised forms of children’s automedia, and we compare discussions we had with 6-year old Cayden, a child we met in the study who expresses the desire to make himself famous online, with videos of Jacob, a child vlogger on YouTube’s Kinder Playtime, who clearly influences children like Cayden. We argue that child social influencers need consideration both as autobiographical agents and as child subjects requiring a sheltered approach to their online lives.Automedia Automedia is an emergent genre of autobiography (Smith and Watson Reading 190; “Virtually Me” 78). Broadcasting one’s life online takes many forms (Kennedy “Vulnerability”). Ümit Kennedy argues “Vlogging on YouTube is a contemporary form of autobiography in which individuals engage in a process of documenting their life on a daily or weekly basis and, in doing so, construct[ing] their identity online” (“Exploring”). Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson write that “visual and digital modes are projecting and circulating not just new subjects but new notions of subjectivity through the effects of automediality” with the result that “the archive of the self in time, in space and in relation expands and is fundamentally reorganized” (Reading 190). Emma Maguire addresses what online texts “tell us about cultural understandings of selfhood and what it means to communicate ‘real’ life through media” naming one tool, “automedia”. Further, Julie Rak calls on scholars “to rethink ‘life’ and ‘writing’ as automedia” to further “characterize the enactment of a personal life story in a new media environment.” We define automedia as a genre that involves the practices of creating, performing, sharing, circulating, and (at times) preserving one’s digital life narrative meant for multiple publics. Automedia revises identity formation, embodiment, or corporealities in acts of self-creation (Brophy and Hladki 4). Automedia also emphasizes circulation. As shared digital life texts now circulate through the behaviours of other human subjects, and automatically via algorithms in data assemblages, we contend that automediality currently involves a measure of relinquishing control over perpetually evolving mediatised environments. One cannot control how a shared life narrative will meet a public in the future, which is a revised way of thinking about autobiography. For the sake of this paper, we argue that children’s automedia ought to be considered a creative, autobiographical act, in order to afford child authors who create them the consideration they deserve as agents, now and in the future. Automedial practices often begin when children receive access to a device. The need for a distraction activity is often the reason parents hand a young child a smartphone, iPad, or even a wearable camera (Nansen). Mirroring the lives of parents, children aspire to share representations of their own personal lives in pursuit of social capital. They are often encouraged to use technologies and apps as adults do–to track aspects of self, broadcast life stories and eventually “live share” them—effectively creating, performing, sharing, and at times, seeking to preserve a public life narrative. With this practice, society inculcates children into spheres of device ubiquity, “socializing them to a future digital lifestyle that will involve always carrying a computer in some form” (Atkins et al. 49). Consequently, their representations become inculcated in larger media assemblages. Writing about toddlers, Nansen describes how the “archiving, circulation and reception of these images speaks to larger assemblages of media in which software protocols and algorithms are increasingly embedded in and help to configure everyday life (e.g. Chun; Gillespie), including young children’s media lives (Ito)” (Nansen). Children, like adult citizens, are increasingly faced with choices “not structured by their own preferences but by the economic imperatives of the private corporations that have recently come to dominate the internet” (Andrejevic). Recent studies have shown that for children and youth in the digital age, Internet fame, often characterized by brand endorsem*nts, is a major aspiration (Uhls and Greenfield, 2). However, despite the ambition to participate as celebrity digital selves, children are also mired in the calls to shield them from exposure to screens through institutions that label these activities detrimental. In many countries, digital “protections” are outlined by privacy commissioners and federal or provincial/state statutes, (e.g. Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada). Consequently, children are often caught in a paradox that defines them either as literate digital agents able to compose or participate with their online selves, or as subjectified wards caught up in commercial practices that exploit their lives for commercial gain.Kids, Creative Storyworlds and Wearables ProjectBoth academic and popular cultural critics continually discuss the future but rarely directly engage the people who will be empowered (or subjugated) by it as young adults in twenty years. To address children’s lack of agency in these discussions, we launched the Kids, Creative Storyworlds and Wearables project to bring children into a dialogue about their own digital futures. Much has been written on childhood agency and participation in culture and mediated culture from the discipline of sociology (James and James; Jenks; Jenkins). In previous work, we addressed the perspective of child autobiographical feature filmmakers to explore issues of creative agency and consent when adult gatekeepers facilitate children in film production (Pedersen and Aspevig “My Eyes”; Pedersen and Aspevig “Swept”). Drawing on that previous work, this project concentrates on children’s automediated lives and the many unique concerns that materialize with digital identity-building. Children are categorised as a vulnerable demographic group necessitating special policy and legislation, but the lives they project as children will eventually become subsumed in their own adult lives, which will almost certainly be treated and mediated in a much different manner in the future. We focused on this landscape, and sought to query the children on their futures, also considering the issues that arise when adult gatekeepers get involved with child social media influencers. In the Storyworlds ethnographic study, children were given a wearable toy, a Vtech smartwatch called Kidizoom, to use over a month’s timeframe to serve as a focal point for ethnographic conversations. The Kidizoom watch enables children to take photos and videos, which are uploaded to a web interface. Before we gave them the tech, we asked them questions about their lives, including What are machines going to be like in the future? Can you imagine yourself wearing a certain kind of computer? Can you tell/draw a story about that? If you could wear a computer that gave you a super power, what would it be? Can you use your imagination to think of a person in a story who would use technology? In answering, many of them drew autobiographical drawings of technical inventions, and cast themselves in the images. We were particularly struck by the comments made by one participant, Cayden (pseudonym), a 6-year-old boy, and the stories he told us about himself and his aspirations. He expressed the desire to host a YouTube channel about his life, his activities, and the wearable technologies his family already owned (e.g. a GroPro camera) and the one we gave him, the Kidizoom smartwatch. He talked about how he would be proud to publically broadcast his own videos on YouTube, and about the role he had been allowed to play in the making of videos about his life (that were not broadcast). To contextualize Cayden’s commentary and his automedial aspirations, we extended our study to explore child social media influencers who broadcast components of their personal lives for the deliberate purpose of popularity and the financial gain of their parents.We selected the videos of Jacob, a child vlogger because we judged them to be representative of the kinds that Cayden watched. Jacob reviews toys through “unboxing videos,” a genre in which a child tells an online audience her or his personal experiences using new toys in regular, short videos on a social media site. Jacob appears on a YouTube channel called Kinder Playtime, which appears to be a parent-run channel that states that, “We enjoy doing these things while playing with our kids: Jacob, Emily, and Chloe” (see Figure 1). In one particular video, Jacob reviews the Kidizoom watch, serving as a child influencer for the product. By understanding Jacob’s performance as agent-driven automedia, as well as being a commercialised, mediatised form of advertising, we get a clearer picture of how the children in the study are coming to terms with their own digital selfhood and the realisation that circulated, life-exposing videos are the expectation in this context.Children are implicated in a range of ways through “family” influencer and toy unboxing videos, which are emergent entertainment industries (Abidin 1; Nansen and Nicoll; Craig and Cunningham 77). In particular, unboxing videos do impact child viewers, especially when children host them. Jackie Marsh emphasizes the digital literacy practices at play here that co-construct viewers as “cyberflâneur[s]” and she states that “this mode of cultural transmission is a growing feature of online practices for this age group” (369). Her stress, however, is on how the child viewer enjoys “the vicarious pleasure he or she may get from viewing the playing of another child with the toy” (376). Marsh writes that her study subject, a child called “Gareth”, “was not interested in being made visible to EvanHD [a child celebrity social media influencer] or other online peers, but was content to consume” the unboxing videos. The concept of the cyberflâneur, then, is fitting as a mediatising co-constituting process of identity-building within discourses of consumerism. However, in our study, the children, and especially Cayden, also expressed the desire to create, host, and circulate their own videos that broadcast their lives, also demonstrating awareness that videos are valorised in their social circles. Child viewers watch famous children perform consumer-identities to create an aura of influence, but viewers simultaneously aspire to become influencers using automedial performances, in essence, becoming products, themselves. Jacob, Automedial Subjects and Social Media InfluencersJacob is a vlogger on YouTube whose videos can garner millions of views, suggesting that he is also an influencer. In one video, he appears to be around the age of six as he proudly sits with folded hands, bright eyes, and a beaming, but partly toothless smile (see Figure 2). He says, “Welcome to Kinder Playtime! Today we have the Kidi Zoom Smartwatch DX. It’s from VTech” (Kinder Playtime). We see the Kidi Zoom unboxed and then depicted in stylized animations amid snippets of Jacob’s smiling face. The voice and hands of a faceless parent guide Jacob as he uses his new wearable toy. We listen to both parent and child describe numerous features for recording and enhancing the wearer’s daily habits (e.g. calculator, calendar, fitness games), and his dad tells him it has a pedometer “which tracks your steps” (Kinder Playtime). But the watch is also used by Jacob to mediate himself and his world. We see that Jacob takes pictures of himself on the tiny watch screen as he acts silly for the camera. He also uses the watch to take personal videos of his mother and sister in his home. The video ends with his father mentioning bedtime, which prompts a “thank you” to VTech for giving him the watch, and a cheerful “Bye!” from Jacob (Kinder Playtime). Figure 1: Screenshot of Kinder Playtime YouTube channel, About page Figure 2: Screenshot of “Jacob,” a child vlogger at Kinder Playtime We chose Jacob for three reasons. First, he is the same age as the children in the Storyworlds study. Second, he reviews the smart watch artifact that we gave to the study children, so there was a common use of automedia technology. Third, Jacob’s parents were involved with his broadcasts, and we wanted to work within the boundaries of parent-sanctioned practices. However, we also felt that his playful approach was a good example of how social media influence overlaps with automediality. Jacob is a labourer trading his public self-representations in exchange for free products and revenue earned through the monetisation of his content on YouTube. It appears that much of what Jacob says is scripted, particularly the promotional statements, like, “Today we have the Kidizoom Smartwatch DX. It’s from VTech. It’s the smartest watch for kids” (Kinder Playtime). Importantly, as an automedial subject Jacob reveals aspects of his self and his identity, in the manner of many child vloggers on public social media sites. His product reviews are contextualised within a commoditised space that provides him a means for the public performance of his self, which, via YouTube, has the potential to reach an enormous audience. YouTube claims to have “over a billion users—almost one-third of all people on the Internet—and every day people watch hundreds of millions of hours on YouTube and generate billions of views” (YouTube). Significantly, he is not only filmed by others, Jacob is also a creative practitioner, as Cayden aspired to become. Jacob uses high-tech toys, in this case, a new wearable technology for self-compositions (the smart watch), to record himself, friends, family or simply the goings-on around him. Strapped to his wrist, the watch toy lets him play at being watched, at being quantified and at recording the life stories of others, or constructing automediated creations for himself, which he may upload to numerous social media sites. This is the start of his online automediated life, which will be increasingly under his ownership as he ages. To greater or lesser degrees, he will later be able to curate, add to, and remediate his body of automedia, including his digital past. Kennedy points out that “people are using YouTube as a transformative tool, and mirror, to document, construct, and present their identity online” (“Exploring”). Her focus is on adult vloggers who consent to their activities. Jacob’s automedia is constructed collaboratively with his parents, and it is unclear how much awareness he has of himself as an automedia creator. However, if we don’t afford Jacob the same consideration as we afford adult autobiographers, that the depiction of his life is his own, we will reduce his identity performance to pure artifice or advertisem*nt. The questions Jacob’s videos raise around agency, consent, and creativity are important here. Sidonie Smith asks “Can there be a free, agentic space; and if so, where in the world can it be found?” (Manifesto 188). How much agency does Jacob have? Is there a liberating aspect in the act of putting personal technology into the hands of a child who can record his life, himself? And finally, how would an adult Jacob feel about his childhood self advertising these products online? Is this really automediality if Jacob does not fully understand what it means to publicly tell a mediated life story?These queries lead to concerns over child social media influence with regard to legal protection, marketing ethics, and user consent. The rise of “fan marketing” presents a nexus of stealth marketing to children by other children. Stealth marketing involves participants, in this case, fans, who do not know they are involved in an advertising scheme. For instance, the popular Minecon Minecraft conference event sessions have pushed their audience to develop the skills to become advocates and advertisers of their products, for example by showing audiences how to build a YouTube channel and sharing tips for growing a community. Targeting children in marketing ploys seems insidious. Marketing analyst Sandy Fleisher describes the value of outsourcing marketing to fan labourers:while Grand Theft Auto spent $120 million on marketing its latest release, Minecraft fans are being taught how to create and market promotional content themselves. One [example] is Minecraft YouTuber, SkydoesMinecraft. His nearly 7 million strong YouTube army, almost as big as Justin Bieber’s, means his daily videos enjoy a lot of views; 1,419,734,267 to be precise. While concerns about meaningful consent that practices like this raise have led some government bodies, and consumer and child protection groups to advocate restrictions for children, other critics have questioned the limits placed on children’s free expression by such restrictions. Tech commentator Larry Magid has written that, “In the interest of protecting children, we sometimes deny them the right to access material and express themselves.” Meghan M. Sweeney notes that “the surge in collaborative web models and the emphasis on interactivity—frequently termed Web 2.0—has meant that children are not merely targets of global media organizations” but have “multiple opportunities to be active, critical, and resistant producers”...and ”may be active agents in the production and dissemination of information” (68). Nevertheless, writes Sweeney, “corporate entities can have restrictive effects on consumers” (68), by for example, limiting imaginative play to the choices offered on a Disney website, or limiting imaginative topics to commercial products (toys, video games etc), as in YouTube review videos. Automedia is an important site from which to consider young children’s online practices in public spheres. Jacob’s performance is indeed meant to influence the choice to buy a toy, but it is also meant to influence others in knowing Jacob as an identity. He means to share and circulate his self. Julie Rak recalls Paul John Eakin’s claims about life-writing that the “process does not even occur at the level of writing, but at the level of living, so that identity formation is the result of narrative-building.” We view Jacob’s performance along these lines. Kinder Playtime offers him a constrained, parent-sanctioned (albeit commercialised) space for role-playing, a practice bound up with identity-formation in the life of most children. To think through the legality of recognising Jacob’s automedial content as his life, Rak is also useful: “In Eakin’s work in particular, we can see evidence of John Locke’s contention that identity is the expression of consciousness which is continuous over time, but that identity is also a product, one’s own property which is a legal entity”. We have argued that children are often caught in the paradox that defines them either as literate digital creators composing and circulating their online selves or as subjectified personas caught up in commercial advertising practices that use their lives for commercial gain. However, through close observation of individual children, one who we met and questioned in our study, Cayden, the other who we met through his mediated, commercialized, and circulated online persona, Jacob, we argue that child social influencers need consideration as autobiographical agents expressing themselves through automediality. As children create, edit, and grow digital traces of their lives and selves, how these texts are framed becomes increasingly important, in part because their future adult selves have such a stake in the matter: they are being formed through automedia. Moreover, these children’s coming of age may bring legal questions about the ownership of their automedial products such as YouTube videos, an enduring legacy they are leaving behind for their adult selves. Crucially, if we reduce identity performances such as unboxing, toy review videos, and other forms of children’s fan marketing to pure advertisem*nt, we cannot afford Jacob and other child influencers the agency that their self representation is legally and artistically their own.ReferencesAbidin, Crystal. “#familygoals: Family Influencers, Calibrated Amateurism, and Justifying Young Digital Labor.” Social Media + Society 3.2 (2017): 1-15.Andrejevic, Mark. “Privacy, Exploitation, and the Digital Enclosure.” Amsterdam Law Forum 1.4 (2009). <http://amsterdamlawforum.org/article/view/94/168>.Atkins, Bridgette, Isabel Pedersen, Shirley Van Nuland, and Samantha Reid. “A Glimpse into the Kids, Creative Storyworlds and Wearables Project: A Work-in-Progress.” ICET 60th World Assembly: Teachers for a Better World: Creating Conditions for Quality Education – Pedagogy, Policy and Professionalism. 2017. 49-60.Beer, David, and Roger Burrows. “Popular Culture, Digital Archives and the New Social Life of Data.” Theory, Culture & Society 30.4 (2013): 47–71.Brophy, Sarah, and Janice Hladki. Introduction. Pedagogy, Image Practices, and Contested Corporealities. Eds. Sarah Brophy and Janice Hladki. New York, NY: Routledge, 2014. 1-6.Craig, David, and Stuart Cunningham. “Toy Unboxing: Living in a(n Unregulated) Material World.” Media International Australia 163.1 (2017): 77-86.Fleischer, Sandy. “Watch Out for That Creeper: What Minecraft Teaches Us about Marketing.” Digital Marketing Magazine. 30 May 2014. <http://digitalmarketingmagazine.co.uk/articles/watch-out-for-that-creeper-what-minecraft-teaches-us-about-marketing>.James, Allison, and Adrian James. Key Concepts in Childhood Studies. London: Sage, 2012.Jenkins, Henry. The Childhood Reader. New York: NYU P, 1998.Jenks, Chris. Childhood. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2015.Kennedy, Ümit. "Exploring YouTube as a Transformative Tool in the 'The Power of MAKEUP!' Movement." M/C Journal 19.4 (2016). <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/1127>.———. “The Vulnerability of Contemporary Digital Autobiography” a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 32.2 (2017): 409-411.Kinder Playtime. “VTech Kidizoom Smart Watch DX Review by Kinder Playtime.” YouTube, 4 Nov. 2015. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaxCSjwZjcA&t=28s>.Magid, Larry. “Protecting Children Online Needs to Allow for Their Right to Free Speech.” ConnectSafely 29 Aug. 2014. <http://www.connectsafely.org/protecting-children-online-needs-to-allow-for-their-right-to-free-speech/>.Maguire, Emma. “Home, About, Shop, Contact: Constructing an Authorial Persona via the Author Website.” M/C Journal 17.3 (2014). <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/821>.Marsh, Jackie. “‘Unboxing’ Videos: Co-construction of the Child as Cyberflâneur.” Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 37.3 (2016): 369-380.Nansen, Bjorn. “Accidental, Assisted, Automated: An Emerging Repertoire of Infant Mobile Media Techniques.” M/C Journal 18.5 (2015). <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/1026>.———, and Benjamin Nicoll. “Toy Unboxing Videos and the Mimetic Production of Play.” Paper presented at the 18th Annual Conference of Internet Researchers (AoIR), Tartu, Estonia. 2017.Palfrey, John, and Urs Gasser. 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Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2010.———. “Virtually Me: A Toolbox about Online Self-Presentation.” Identity Technologies: Constructing the Self Online. Eds. Anna Poletti and Julie Rak. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 2014. 70-95.Sweeney, Meghan. “‘Where Happily Ever After Happens Every Day’: Disney's Official Princess Website and the Commodification of Play.” Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures 3.2 (2011): 66-87.Uhls, Yalda, and Particia Greenfield. “The Value of Fame: Preadolescent Perceptions of Popular Media and Their Relationship to Future Aspirations.” Developmental Psychology 48.2 (2012): 315-326.YouTube. “YouTube for Press.” 2017. <https://www.youtube.com/yt/about/press/>.

Abstract:

The contemporary video game market is as recognisable for its brands as it is for the characters that populate their game worlds, from franchise-leading characters like Garrus Vakarian (Mass Effect original trilogy), Princess Zelda (The Legend of Zelda franchise) and Cortana (HALO franchise) to more recent game icons like Miles Morales (Marvel's Spiderman game franchise) and Judy Alvarez (Cyberpunk 2077). Interactions with these casts of characters enhance the richness of games and their playable worlds, giving a sense of weight and meaning to player actions, emphasising thematic interests, and in some cases acting as buffers to (or indeed hindering) different aspects of gameplay itself. As Jordan Erica Webber writes in her essay The Road to Journey, “videogames are often examined through the lens of what you do and what you feel” (14). For many games, the design of interactions between the player and other beings in the world—whether they be intrinsic to the world (non-playable characters or NPCs) or other live players—is a bridging aspect between what you do and how you feel and is thus central to the communication of more cohesive and focussed work. This essay will discuss two examples of game design techniques present in Transistor by Supergiant Games and Journey by thatgamecompany. It will consider how the design of “playful” interactions between the player and other characters in the game world (both non-player characters and other player characters) can be used as a tool to align a player’s experience of “intent” with the thematic objectives of the designer. These games have been selected as both utilise design techniques that allow for this “playful” interaction (observed in this essay as interactions that do not contribute to “progression” in the traditional sense). By looking closely at specific aspects of game design, it aims to develop an accessible examination by “focusing on the dimensions of involvement the specific game or genre of games affords” (Calleja, 222). The discussion defines “intent”, in the context of game design, through a synthesis of definitions from two works by game designers. The first being Greg Costikyan’s definition of game structure from his 2002 presentation I Have No Words and I Must Design, a paper subsequently referenced by numerous prominent game scholars including Ian Bogost and Jesper Juul. The second is Steven Swink’s definition of intent in relation to video games, from his 2009 book Game Feel: A Game Designer’s Guide to Virtual Sensation—an extensive reference text of game design concepts, with a particular focus on the concept of “game feel” (the meta-sensation of involvement with a game). This exploratory essay suggests that examining these small but impactful design techniques, through the lens of their contribution to overall intent, is a useful tool for undertaking more holistic studies of how games are affective. I align with the argument that understanding “playfulness” in game design is useful in understanding user engagement with other digital communication platforms. In particular, platforms where the presentation of user identity is relational or performative to others—a case explored in Playful Identities: The Ludification of Digital Media Cultures (Frissen et al.). Intent in Game Design Intent, in game design, is generated by a complex, interacting economy, ecosystem, or “game structure” (Costikyan 21) of thematic ideas and gameplay functions that do not dictate outcomes, but rather guide behaviour and progression forward through the need to achieve a goal (Costikyan 21). Intent brings player goals in line with the intrinsic goals of the player character, and the thematic or experiential goals the game designer wants to convey through the act of play. Intent makes it easier to invest in the game’s narrative and spatial context—its role is to “motivate action in game worlds” (Swink 67). Steven Swink writes that it is the role of game design to create compelling intent from “a seemingly arbitrary collection of abstracted variables” (Swink 67). He continues that whether it is good or bad is a broader question, but that “most games do have in-born intentionality, and it is the game designer who creates it” (67). This echoes Costikyan’s point: game designers “must consciously set out to decide what kind of experiences [they] want to impart to players and create systems that enable those experiences” (20). Swink uses Mario 64 as one simple example of intent creation through design—if collecting 100 coins did not restore Mario’s health, players would simply not collect them. Not having health restricts the ability for players to fulfil the overarching intent of progression by defeating the game’s main villain (what he calls the “explicit” intent), and collecting coins also provides a degree of interactivity that makes the exploration itself feel more fulfilling (the “implicit” intent). This motivation for action may be functional, or it may be more experiential—how a designer shapes variables into particular forms to encourage the particular kinds of experience that they want a player to have during the act of play (such as in Journey, explored in the latter part of this essay). This essay is interested in the design of this compelling thematic intent—and the role “playful” interactions have as a variable that contributes to aligning player behaviours and experience to the thematic or experiential goals of game design. “Playful” Communication and Storytelling in Transistor Transistor is the second release from independent studio Supergiant Games and has received over 100 industry accolades (Kasavin) since its publication in 2014. Transistor incorporates the suspense of turn-based gameplay into an action role-playing game—neatly mirroring a style of gameplay to the suspense of its cyber noir narrative. The game is also distinctly “artful”. The city of Cloudbank, where the game takes place, is a cyberpunk landscape richly inspired by art nouveau and art deco style. There is some indication that Cloudbank may not be a real city at all—but rather a virtual city, with an abundance of computer-related motifs and player combat abilities named as if they were programming functions. At release, Transistor was broadly recognised in the industry press for its strength in “combining its visuals and music to powerfully convey narrative information and tone” (Petit). If intent in games in part stems from a unification of goals between the player and design, the interactivity between player input and the actions of the player character furthers this sense of “togetherness”. This articulation and unity of hand movement and visual response in games are what Kirkpatrick identified in his 2011 work Aesthetic Theory and the Video Game as the point in which videogames “broke from the visual entertainment culture of the last two centuries” (Kirkpatrick 88). The player character mediates access to the space by which all other game information is given context and allows the player a degree of self-expression that is unique to games. Swink describes it as an amplified impression of virtual proprioception, that is “an impression of space created by illusory means but is experienced as real by the senses … the effects of motion, sound, visuals, and responsive effects combine” (Swink 28). If we extend Swink’s point about creating an “impression of space” to also include an “impression of purpose”, we can utilise this observation to further understand how the design of the playful interactions in Transistor work to develop and align the player’s experience of intent with the overarching narrative goal (or, “explicit” intent) of the game—to tell a compelling “science-fiction love story in a cyberpunk setting, without the gritty backdrop” (Wallace) through the medium of gameplay. At the centre of any “love story” is the dynamic of a relationship, and in Transistor playful interaction is a means for conveying the significance and complexity of those dynamics in relation to the central characters. Transistor’s exposition asks players to figure out what happened to Red and her partner, The Boxer (a name he is identified by in the game files), while progressing through various battles with an entity called The Process to uncover more information. Transistor commences with player-character, Red, standing next to the body of The Boxer, whose consciousness and voice have been uploaded into the same device that impaled him: the story’s eponymous Transistor. The event that resulted in this strange circ*mstance has also caused Red to lose her ability to speak, though she is still able to hum. The first action that the player must complete to progress the game is to pull the Transistor from The Boxer’s body. From this point The Boxer, speaking through the Transistor, becomes the sole narrator of the game. The Boxer’s first lines of dialogue are responsive to player action, and position Red’s character in the world: ‘Together again. Heh, sort of …’ [Upon walking towards an exit a unit of The Process will appear] ‘Yikes … found us already. They want you back I bet. Well so do I.’ [Upon defeating The Process] ‘Unmarked alley, east of the bay. I think I know where we are.’ (Supergiant Games) This brief exchange and feedback to player movement, in medias res, limits the player’s possible points of attention and establishes The Boxer’s voice and “character” as the reference point for interacting with the game world. Actions, the surrounding world, and gameplay objectives are given meaning and context by being part of a system of intent derived from the significance of his character to the player character (Red) as both a companion and information-giver. The player may not necessarily feel what an individual in Red’s position would feel, but their expository position is aligned with Red’s narrative, and their scope of interaction with the world is intrinsically tied to the “explicit” intent of finding out what happened to The Boxer. Transistor continues to establish a loop between Red’s exploration of the world and the dialogue and narration of The Boxer. In the context of gameplay, player movement functions as the other half of a conversation and brings the player’s control of Red closer to how Red herself (who cannot communicate vocally) might converse with The Boxer gesturally. The Boxer’s conversational narration is scripted to occur as Red moves through specific parts of the world and achieves certain objectives. Significantly, The Boxer will also speak to Red in response to specific behaviours that only occur should the player choose to do them and that don’t necessarily contribute to “progressing” the game in the mechanical sense. There are multiple points where this is possible, but I will draw on two examples to demonstrate. Firstly, The Boxer will have specific reactions to a player who stands idle for too long, or who performs a repetitive action. Jumping repeatedly from platform to platform will trigger several variations of playful and exasperated dialogue from The Boxer (who has, at this point, no choice but to be carried around by Red): [Upon repeatedly jumping between the same platform] ‘Round and round.’ ‘Okay that’s enough.’ ‘I hate you.’ (Supergiant Games) The second is when Red “hums” (an activity initiated by the player by holding down R1 on a PlayStation console). At certain points of play, when making Red hum, The Boxer will chime in and sing the lyrics to the song she is humming. This musical harmonisation helps to articulate a particular kind of intimacy and flow between Red and The Boxer —accentuated by Red’s animation when humming: she is bathed in golden light and holds the Transistor close, swaying side to side, as if embracing or dancing with a lover. This is a playful, exploratory interaction. It technically doesn’t serve any “purpose” in terms of finishing the game—but is an action a player might perform while exploring controls and possibilities of interactivity, in turn exploring what it is to “be” Red in relation to the game world, the story being conveyed, and The Boxer. It delivers a more emotional and affective thematic idea about a relationship that nonetheless relies just as much on mechanical input and output as engaging in movement, exploration, and combat in the game world. It’s a mechanic that provides texture to the experience of inhabiting Red’s identity during play, showcasing a more individual complexity to her story, driven by interactivity. In techniques like this, Transistor directly unifies its method for information-giving, interactivity, progression, and theme into a single design language. To once again nod to Swink and Costikyan, it is a complex, interacting economy or ecosystem of thematic ideas and gameplay structures that guide behaviour and progression forward through the need to achieve a single goal (Costikyan 21), guiding the player towards the game’s “explicit” intent of investment in its “science fiction love story”. Companionship and Collaboration in Journey Journey is regularly praised in many circles of game review and discussion for its powerful, pared-back story conveyed through its exceptional game design. It has won a wide array of awards, including multiple British Academy Games Awards and Game Developer’s Choice Awards, and has been featured in highly regarded international galleries such as the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Its director, Jenova Chen, articulated that the goal of the game (and thus, in the context of this essay, the intent) was “to create a game where people who interact with each other in an online community can connect at an emotional level, regardless of their gender, age, ethnicity, and social status” (Webber 14). In Journey, the player controls a small robed figure moving through a vast desert—the only choices for movement are to slide gracefully through the sand or to jump into the air by pressing the X button (on a PlayStation console), and gracefully float down to the ground. You cannot attack anything or defend yourself from the elements or hostile beings. Each player will “periodically find another individual in the landscape” (Isbister 121) of similar design to the player and can only communicate with them by experimenting with simple movements, and via short chirping noises. As the landscape itself is vast and unknown, it is what one player referred to as a sense of “reliance on one another” that makes the game so captivating (Isbister 12). Much like The Boxer in Transistor, the other figure in Journey stands out as a reference point and imbues a sense of collaboration and connection that makes the goal to reach the pinprick of light in the distance more meaningful. It is only after the player has finished the game that the screen reveals the other individual is a real person, another player, by displaying their gamer tag. One player, playing the game in 2017 (several years after its original release in 2012), wrote: I went through most of the game by myself, and when I first met my companion, it was right as I walked into the gate transitioning to the snow area. And I was SO happy that there was someone else in this desolate place. I felt like it added so much warmth to the game, so much added value. The companion and I stuck together 100% of the way. When one of us would fall the slightest bit behind, the other would wait for them. I remember saying out loud how I thought that my companion was the best programmed AI that I had ever seen. In the way that he waited for me to catch up, it almost seemed like he thanked me for waiting for him … We were always side-by-side which I was doing to the "AI" for "cinematic-effect". From when I first met him up to the very very end, we were side-by-side. (Peace_maybenot) Other players indicate a similar bond even when their companion is perhaps less competent: I thought my traveller was a crap AI. He kept getting launched by the flying things and was crap at staying behind cover … But I stuck with him because I was like, this is my buddy in the game. Same thing, we were communicating the whole time and I stuck with him. I finish and I see a gamer tag and my mind was blown. That was awesome. (kerode4791) Although there is a definite object of difference in that Transistor is narrated and single-player while Journey is not, there are some defined correlations between the way Supergiant Games and thatgamecompany encourage players to feel a sense of investment and intent aligned with another individual within the game to further thematic intent. Interactive mechanics are designed to allow players a means of playful and gestural communication as an extension of their kinetic interaction with the game; travellers in Journey can chirp and call out to other players—not always for an intrinsic goal but often to express joy, or just to experience and sense of connectivity or emotional warmth. In Transistor, the ability to hum and hear The Boxer’s harmony, and the animation of Red holding the Transistor close as she does so, implying a sense of protectiveness and affection, says more in the context of “play” than a literal declaration of love between the two characters. Graeme Kirkpatrick uses dance as a suitable metaphor for this kind of experience in games, in that both are characterised by a certainty that communication has occurred despite the “eschewal of overt linguistic elements and discursive meanings” (120). There is also a sense of finite temporality in these moments. Unlike scripted actions, or words on a page, they occur within a moment of being that largely belongs to the player and their actions alone. Kirkpatrick describes it as “an inherent ephemerality about this vanishing and that this very transience is somehow essential” (120). This imbuing of a sense of time is important because it implies that even if one were to play the game again, repeating the interaction is impossible. The communication of narrative within these games is not a static form, but an experience that hangs unique at that moment and space of play. Thatgamecompany discussed in their 2017 interviews with Webber, published as part of her essay for the Victoria & Albert’s Video Games: Design/Play/Disrupt exhibition, how by creating and restricting the kind of playful interaction available to players within the world, they could encourage the kind of emotional, collaborative, and thoughtful intent they desired to portray (Webber 14). They articulate how in the development process they prioritised giving the player a variety of responses for even the smallest of actions and how that positive feedback, in turn, encourages play and prevented players from being “bored” (Webber 22). Meanwhile, the team reduced responsiveness for interactions they didn’t want to encourage. Chen describes the approach as “maximising feedback for things you want and minimising it for things you don’t want” (Webber 27). In her essay, Webber writes that Chen describes “a person who enters a virtual world, leaving behind the value system they’ve learned from real life, as like a baby banging their spoon to get attention” (27): initially players could push each other, and when one baby [player] pushed the other baby [player] off the cliff that person died. So, when we tested the gameplay, even our own developers preferred killing each other because of the amount of feedback they would get, whether it’s visual feedback, audio feedback, or social feedback from the players in the room. For quite a while I was disappointed at our own developers’ ethics, but I was able to talk to a child psychologist and she was able to clarify why these people are doing what they are doing. She said, ‘If you want to train a baby not to knock the spoon, you should minimise the feedback. Either just leave them alone, and after a while they’re bored and stop knocking, or give them a spoon that does not make a sound. (27) The developers then made it impossible for players to kill, steal resources from, or even speak to each other. Players were encouraged to stay close to each other using high-feedback action and responsiveness for doing so (Webber 27). By using feedback design techniques to encourage players to behave a certain way to other beings in the world—both by providing and restricting playful interactivity—thatgamecompany encourage a resonance between players and the overarching design intent of the project. Chen’s observations about the behaviour of his team while playing different iterations of the game also support the argument (acknowledged in different perspectives by various scholarship, including Costikyan and Bogost) that in the act of gameplay, real-life personal ethics are to a degree re-prioritised by the interactivity and context of that interactivity in the game world. Intent and the “Actualities of (Game) Existence” Continuing and evolving explorations of “intent” (and other parallel terms) in games through interaction design is of interest for scholars of game studies; it also is an important endeavour when considering influential relationships between games and other digital mediums where user identity is performative or relational to others. This influence was examined from several perspectives in the aforementioned collection Playful Identities: The Ludification of Digital Media Cultures, which also examined “the process of ludification that seems to penetrate every cultural domain” of modern life, including leisure time, work, education, politics, and even warfare (Frissen et al. 9). Such studies affirm the “complex relationship between play, media, and identity in contemporary culture” and are motivated “not only by the dominant role that digital media plays in our present culture but also by the intuition that ‘“play is central … to media experience” (Frissen et al. 10). Undertaking close examinations of specific “playful” design techniques in video games, and how they may factor into the development of intent, can help to develop nuanced lines of questioning about how we engage with “playfulness” in other digital communication platforms in an accessible, comparative way. We continue to exist in a world where “ludification is penetrating the cultural domain”. In the first few months of the global COVID-19 pandemic, Nintendo released Animal Crossing: New Horizons. With an almost global population in lockdown, Animal Crossing became host to professional meetings (Espiritu), weddings (Garst), and significantly, a media channel for brands to promote content and products (Deighton). TikTok, panoramically, is a platform where “playful” user trends— dances, responding to videos, the “Tell Me … Without Telling Me” challenge—occur in the context of an extremely complex algorithm, that while automated, is created by people—and is thus unavoidably embedded with bias (Dias et al.; Noble). This is not to say that game design techniques and broader “playful” design techniques in other digital communication platforms are interchangeable by any measure, or that intent in a game design sense and intent or bias in a commercial sense should be examined through the same lens. Rather that there is a useful, interdisciplinary resource of knowledge that can further illuminate questions we might ask about this state of “ludification” in both the academic and public spheres. We might ask, for example, what would the implications be of introducing an intent design methodology similar to Journey, but using it for commercial gain? Or social activism? Has it already happened? There is a quotation from Nathan Jurgensen’s 2016 essay Fear of Screens (published in The New Inquiry) that often comes to my mind when thinking about interaction design in video games in this way. In his response to Sherry Turkle’s book, Reclaiming Conversation, Jurgensen writes: each time we say “IRL,” “face-to-face,” or “in person” to mean connection without screens, we frame what is “real” or who is a person in terms of their geographic proximity rather than other aspects of closeness — variables like attention, empathy, affect, erotics, all of which can be experienced at a distance. We should not conceptually preclude or discount all the ways intimacy, passion, love, joy, pleasure, closeness, pain, suffering, evil and all the visceral actualities of existence pass through the screen. “Face to face” should mean more than breathing the same air. (Jurgensen) While Jurgensen is not talking about communication in games specifically, there are comparisons to be drawn between his “variables” and “visceral actualities of existence” as the drivers of social meaning-making, and the methodology of games communicating intent and purpose through Swink’s “seemingly arbitrary collection of abstracted variables” (67). When players interact with other characters in a game world (whether they be NPCs or other players), they are inhabiting a shared virtual space, and how designers articulate and present the variables of “closeness”, as Jurgensen defines it, can shape player alignment with the overarching design intent. These design techniques take the place of Jurgensen’s “visceral actualities of existence”. While they may not intrinsically share an overarching purpose, their experiential qualities have the ability to align ethics, priorities, and values between individuals. Interactivity means game design has the potential to facilitate a particular kind of engagement for the player (as demonstrated in Journey) or give opportunities for players to explore a sense of what an emotion might feel like by aligning it with progression or playful activity (as discussed in relation to Transistor). Players may not “feel” exactly what their player-characters do, or care for other characters in the world in the same way a game might encourage them to, but through thoughtful intent design, something of recognition or unity of belief might pass through the screen. References Bogost, Ian. Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Video Games. MIT P, 2007. Calleja, Gordon. “Ludic Identities and the Magic Circle.” Playful Identities: The Ludification of Digital Media Cultures. Eds. Valerie Frissen et al. Amsterdam UP, 2015. 211–224. Costikyan, Greg. “I Have No Words & I Must Design: Toward a Critical Vocabulary for Games.” Computer Games and Digital Cultures Conference Proceedings 2002. Ed. Frans Mäyrä. Tampere UP. 9-33. Dias, Avani, et al. “The TikTok Spiral.” ABC News, 26 July 2021. <https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-26/tiktok-algorithm-dangerous-eating-disorder-content-censorship/100277134>. Deighton, Katie. “Animal Crossing Is Emerging as a Media Channel for Brands in Lockdown.” The Drum, 21 Apr. 2020. <https://www.thedrum.com/news/2020/04/21/animal-crossing-emerging-media-channel-brands-lockdown>. Espiritu, Abby. “Japanese Company Attempts to Work Remotely in Animal Crossing: New Horizons.” The Gamer, 29 Mar. 2020. <https://www.thegamer.com/animal-crossing-new-horizons-work-remotely/>. Frissen, Valerie, et al., eds. Playful Identities: The Ludification of Digital Media Cultures. Amsterdam UP, 2015. Garst, Aron. “The Pandemic Canceled Their Wedding. So They Held It in Animal Crossing.” The Washington Post, 2 Apr. 2020. <https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2020/04/02/animal-crossing-wedding-coronavirus/>. Isbister, Katherine. How Games Move Us: Emotion by Design. MIT P, 2016. Journey. thatgamecompany. 2012. Jurgensen, Nathan. “Fear of Screens.” The New Inquiry, 25 Jan. 2016. <https://thenewinquiry.com/fear-of-screens/>. Kasavin, Greg. “Transistor Earns More than 100+ Industry Accolades, Sells More than 600k Copies.” Supergiant Games, 8 Jan. 2015. <https://www.supergiantgames.com/blog/transistor-earns60-industry-accolades-sells-more-than-600k-copies/>. kerode4791. "Wanted to Share My First Experience with the Game, It Was That Awesome.”Reddit, 22 Mar. 2017. <https://www.reddit.com/r/JourneyPS3/comments/60u0am/wanted_to_share_my_f rst_experience_with_the_game/>. Kirkpatrick, Graeme. Aesthetic Theory and the Video Game. Manchester UP, 2011. Noble, Safiya Umoja. Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. New York UP, 2018. peace_maybenot. "Wanted to Share My First Experience with the Game, It Was that Awesome” Reddit, 22 Mar. 2017. <https://www.reddit.com/r/JourneyPS3/comments/60u0am/wanted_to_share_my_f rst_experience_with_the_game/>. Petit, Carolyn. “Ghosts in the Machine." Gamespot, 20 May 2014. <https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/transistor-review/1900-6415763/>. Swink, Steve. Game Feel: A Game Designer’s Guide to Virtual Sensation. Amsterdam: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers/Elsevier, 2009. Transistor. Supergiant Games. 2014. Wallace, Kimberley. “The Story behind Supergiant Games’ Transistor.” Gameinformer, 20 May 2021. <https://www.gameinformer.com/2021/05/20/the-story-behind-supergiant-games-transistor>. Webber, Jordan Erica. “The Road to Journey.” Videogames: Design/Play/Disrupt. Eds. Marie Foulston and Kristian Volsing. V&A Publishing, 2018. 14–31.

Abstract:

The twentieth was, from one perspective, the democratic century — a span of one hundred years which began with no fully functioning democracies in existence anywhere on the planet (if one defines democracy as a political system in which there is both universal suffrage and competitive elections), and ended with 120 countries out of 192 classified by the Freedom House think tank as ‘democratic’. There are of course still many societies where democracy is denied or effectively neutered — the remaining outposts of state socialism, such as China, Cuba, and North Korea; most if not all of the Islamic countries; exceptional states such as Singapore, unapologetically capitalist in its economic system but resolutely authoritarian in its political culture. Many self-proclaimed democracies, including those of the UK, Australia and the US, are procedurally or conceptually flawed. Countries emerging out of authoritarian systems and now in a state of democratic transition, such as Russia and the former Soviet republics, are immersed in constant, sometimes violent struggle between reformers and reactionaries. Russia’s recent parliamentary elections were accompanied by the intimidation of parties and politicians who opposed Vladimir Putin’s increasingly populist and authoritarian approach to leadership. The same Freedom House report which describes the rise of democracy in the twentieth century acknowledges that many self-styled democracies are, at best, only ‘partly free’ in their political cultures (for detailed figures on the rise of global democracy, see the Freedom House website Democracy’s Century). Let’s not for a moment downplay these important qualifications to what can nonetheless be fairly characterised as a century-long expansion and globalisation of democracy, and the acceptance of popular sovereignty, expressed through voting for the party or candidate of one’s choice, as a universally recognised human right. That such a process has occurred, and continues in these early years of the twenty-first century, is irrefutable. In the Gaza strip, Hamas appeals to the legitimacy of a democratic election victory in its campaign to be recognised as the voice of the Palestinian people. However one judges the messianic tendencies and Islamist ideology of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, it must be acknowledged that the Iranian people elected him, and that they have the power to throw him out of government next time they vote. That was never true of the Shah. The democratic resurgence in Latin America, taking in Venezuela, Peru and Bolivia among others has been a much-noted feature of international politics in recent times (Alves), presenting a welcome contrast to the dictatorships and death squads of the 1980s, even as it creates some uncomfortable dilemmas for the Bush administration (which must champion democratic government at the same time as it resents some of the choices people may make when they have the opportunity to vote). Since 9/11 a kind of democracy has expanded even to Afghanistan and Iraq, albeit at the point of a gun, and with no guarantees of survival beyond the end of military occupation by the US and its coalition allies. As this essay was being written, Pakistan’s state of emergency was ending and democratic elections scheduled, albeit in the shadow cast by the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December 2007. Democracy, then — imperfect and limited as it can be; grudgingly delivered though it is by political elites in many countries, and subject to attack and roll back at any time — has become a global universal to which all claim allegiance, or at least pay lip service. The scale of this transformation, which has occurred in little more than one quarter of the time elapsed since the Putney debates of 1647 and the English revolution first established the principle of the sovereignty of parliament, is truly remarkable. (Tristram Hunt quotes lawyer Geoffrey Robertson in the Guardian to the effect that the Putney debates, staged in St Mary’s church in south-west London towards the end of the English civil war, launched “the idea that government requires the consent of freely and fairly elected representatives of all adult citizens irrespective of class or caste or status or wealth” – “A Jewel of Democracy”, Guardian, 26 Oct. 2007) Can it be true that less than one hundred years ago, in even the most advanced capitalist societies, 50 per cent of the people — women — did not have the right to vote? Or that black populations, indigenous or migrant, in countries such as the United States and Australia were deprived of basic citizenship rights until the 1960s and even later? Will future generations wonder how on earth it could have been that the vast majority of the people of South Africa were unable to vote until 1994, and that they were routinely imprisoned, tortured and killed when they demanded basic democratic rights? Or will they shrug and take it for granted, as so many of us who live in settled democracies already do? (In so far as ‘we’ includes the community of media and cultural studies scholars, I would argue that where there is reluctance to concede the scale and significance of democratic change, this arises out of continuing ambivalence about what ‘democracy’ means, a continuing suspicion of globalisation (in particular the globalisation of democratic political culture, still associated in some quarters with ‘the west’), and of the notion of ‘progress’ with which democracy is routinely associated. The intellectual roots of that ambivalence were various. Marxist-leninist inspired authoritarianism gripped much of the world until the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the cold war. Until that moment, it was still possible for many marxians in the scholarly community to view the idea of democracy with disdain — if not quite a dirty word, then a deeply flawed, highly loaded concept which masked and preserved underlying social inequalities more than it helped resolve them. Until 1989 or thereabouts, it was possible for ‘bourgeois democracy’ to be regarded as just one kind of democratic polity by the liberal and anti-capitalist left, which often regarded the ‘proletarian’ or ‘people’s’ democracy prevailing in the Soviet Union, China, Cuba or Vietnam as legitimate alternatives to the emerging capitalist norm of one person, one vote, for constituent assemblies which had real power and accountability. In terms not very different from those used by Marx and Engels in The German Ideology, belief in the value of democracy was conceived by this materialist school as a kind of false consciousness. It still is, by Noam Chomsky and others who continue to view democracy as a ‘necessary illusion’ (1989) without which capitalism could not be reproduced. From these perspectives voting gave, and gives us merely the illusion of agency and power in societies where capital rules as it always did. For democracy read ‘the manufacture of consent’; its expansion read not as progressive social evolution, but the universalisation of the myth of popular sovereignty, mobilised and utilised by the media-industrial-military complex to maintain its grip.) There are those who dispute this reading of events. In the 1960s, Habermas’s hugely influential Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere critiqued the manner in which democracy, and the public sphere underpinning it, had been degraded by public relations, advertising, and the power of private interests. In the period since, critical scholarly research and writing on political culture has been dominated by the Habermasian discourse of democratic decline, and the pervasive pessimism of those who see democracy, and the media culture which supports it, as fatally flawed, corrupted by commercialisation and under constant threat. Those, myself included, who challenged that view with a more positive reading of the trends (McNair, Journalism and Democracy; Cultural Chaos) have been denounced as naïve optimists, panglossian, utopian and even, in my own case, a ‘neo-liberal apologist’. (See an unpublished paper by David Miller, “System Failure: It’s Not Just the Media, It’s the Whole Bloody System”, delivered at Goldsmith’s College in 2003.) Engaging as they have been, I venture to suggest that these are the discourses and debates of an era now passing into history. Not only is it increasingly obvious that democracy is expanding globally into places where it never previously reached; it is also extending inwards, within nation states, driven by demands for greater local autonomy. In the United Kingdom, for example, the citizen is now able to vote not just in Westminster parliamentary elections (which determine the political direction of the UK government), but for European elections, local elections, and elections for devolved assemblies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The people of London can vote for their mayor. There would by now have been devolved assemblies in the regions of England, too, had the people of the North East not voted against it in a November 2004 referendum. Notwithstanding that result, which surprised many in the New Labour government who held it as axiomatic that the more democracy there was, the better for all of us, the importance of enhancing and expanding democratic institutions, of allowing people to vote more often (and also in more efficient ways — many of these expansions of democracy have been tied to the introduction of systems of proportional representation) has become consensual, from the Mid West of America to the Middle East. The Democratic Paradox And yet, as the wave of democratic transformation has rolled on through the late twentieth and into the early twenty first century it is notable that, in many of the oldest liberal democracies at least, fewer people have been voting. In the UK, for example, in the period between 1945 and 2001, turnout at general elections never fell below 70 per cent. In 1992, the last general election won by the Conservatives before the rise of Tony Blair and New Labour, turnout was 78 per cent, roughly where it had been in the 1950s. In 2001, however, as Blair’s government sought re-election, turnout fell to an historic low for the UK of 59.4 per cent, and rose only marginally to 61.4 per cent in the most recent general election of 2005. In the US presidential elections of 1996 and 2000 turnouts were at historic lows of 47.2 and 49.3 per cent respectively, rising just above 50 per cent again in 2004 (figures by International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance). At local level things are even worse. In only the second election for a devolved parliament in Scotland (2003) turnout was a mere 48.5 per cent, rising to 50.5 in 2007. These trends are not universal. In countries with compulsory voting, they mean very little — in Australia, where voting in parliamentary elections is compulsory, turnout averages in the 90s per cent. In France, while turnouts for parliamentary elections show a similar downward trend to the UK and the UK, presidential contests achieve turnouts of 80-plus per cent. In the UK and US, as noted, the most recent elections show modest growth in turnout from those historic lows of the late 1990s and early Noughties. There has grown, nonetheless, the perception, commonplace amongst academic commentators as well as journalists and politicians themselves, that we are living through a ‘crisis’ of democratic participation, a dangerous decline in the tendency to vote in elections which undermines the legitimacy of democracy itself. In communication scholarship a significant body of research and publication has developed around this theme, from Blumler and Gurevitch’s Crisis of Public Communication (1996), through Barnett and Gaber’s Westminster Tales (2000), to more recent studies such as Lewis et al.’s Citizens or Consumers (2005). All presume a problem of some kind with the practice of democracy and the “old fashioned ritual” of voting, as Lewis et al. describe it (2). Most link alleged inadequacies in the performance of the political media to what is interpreted as popular apathy (or antipathy) towards democracy. The media are blamed for the lack of public engagement with democratic politics which declining turnouts are argued to signal. Political journalists are said to be too aggressive and hyper-adversarial (Lloyd), behaving like the “feral beast” spoken of by Tony Blair in his 2007 farewell speech to the British people as prime minister. They are corrosively cynical and a “disaster for democracy”, as Steven Barnett and others argued in the first years of the twenty first century. They are not aggressive or adversarial enough, as the propaganda modellists allege, citing what they interpret as supine media coverage of Coalition policy in Iraq. The media put people off, rather than turn them on to democracy by being, variously, too nice or too nasty to politicians. What then, is the solution to the apparent paradox represented by the fact that there is more democracy, but less voting in elections than ever before; and that after centuries of popular struggle democratic assemblies proliferate, but in some countries barely half of the eligible voters can be bothered to participate? And what role have the media played in this unexpected phenomenon? If the scholarly community has been largely critical on this question, and pessimistic in its analyses of the role of the media, it has become increasingly clear that the one arena where people do vote more than ever before is that presented by the media, and entertainment media in particular. There has been, since the appearance of Big Brother and the subsequent explosion of competitive reality TV formats across the world, evidence of a huge popular appetite for voting on such matters as which amateur contestant on Pop Idol, or X Factor, or Fame Academy, or Operatunity goes on to have a chance of a professional career, a shot at the big time. Millions of viewers of the most popular reality TV strands queue up to register their votes on premium phone lines, the revenue from which makes up a substantial and growing proportion of the income of commercial TV companies. This explosion of voting behaviour has been made possible by the technology-driven emergence of new forms of participatory, interactive, digitised media channels which allow millions to believe that they can have an impact on the outcome of what are, at essence, game and talent shows. At the height of anxiety around the ‘crisis of democratic participation’ in the UK, observers noted that nearly 6.5 million people had voted in the Big Brother UK final in 2004. More than eight million voted during the 2004 run of the BBC’s Fame Academy series. While these numbers do not, contrary to popular belief, exceed the numbers of British citizens who vote in a general election (27.2 million in 2005), they do indicate an enthusiasm for voting which seems to contradict declining rates of democratic participation. People who will never get out and vote for their local councillor often appear more than willing to pick up the telephone or the laptop and cast a vote for their favoured reality TV contestant, even if it costs them money. It would be absurd to suggest that voting for a contestant on Big Brother is directly comparable to the act of choosing a government or a president. The latter is recognised as an expression of citizenship, with potentially significant consequences for the lives of individuals within their society. Voting on Big Brother, on the other hand, is unmistakeably entertainment, game-playing, a relatively risk-free exercise of choice — a bit of harmless fun, fuelled by office chat and relentless tabloid coverage of the contestants’ strengths and weaknesses. There is no evidence that readiness to participate in a telephone or online vote for entertainment TV translates into active citizenship, where ‘active’ means casting a vote in an election. The lesson delivered by the success of participatory media in recent years, however — first reality TV, and latterly a proliferation of online formats which encourage user participation and voting for one thing or another — is that people will vote, when they are able and motivated to do so. Voting is popular, in short, and never more so, irrespective of the level of popular participation recorded in recent elections. And if they will vote in their millions for a contestant on X Factor, or participate in competitions to determine the best movies or books on Facebook, they can presumably be persuaded to do so when an election for parliament comes around. This fact has been recognised by both media producers and politicians, and reflected in attempts to adapt the evermore sophisticated and efficient tools of participatory media to the democratic process, to engage media audiences as citizens by offering the kinds of voting opportunities in political debates, including election processes, which entertainment media have now made routinely available. ITV’s Vote for Me strand, broadcast in the run-up to the UK general election of 2005, used reality TV techniques to select a candidate who would actually take part in the forthcoming poll. The programme was broadcast in a late night, low audience slot, and failed to generate much interest, but it signalled a desire by media producers to harness the appeal of participatory media in a way which could directly impact on levels of democratic engagement. The honourable failure of Vote for Me (produced by the same team which made the much more successful live debate shows featuring prime minister Tony Blair — Ask Tony Blair, Ask the Prime Minister) might be viewed as evidence that readiness to vote in the context of a TV game show does not translate directly into voting for parties and politicians, and that the problem in this respect — the crisis of democratic participation, such that it exists — is located elsewhere. People can vote in democratic elections, but choose not to, perhaps because they feel that the act is meaningless (because parties are ideologically too similar), or ineffectual (because they see no impact of voting in their daily lives or in the state of the country), or irrelevant to their personal priorities and life styles. Voting rates have increased in the US and the UK since September 11 2001, suggesting perhaps that when the political stakes are raised, and the question of who is in government seems to matter more than it did, people act accordingly. Meantime, media producers continue to make money by developing formats and channels on the assumption that audiences wish to participate, to interact, and to vote. Whether this form of participatory media consumption for the purposes of play can be translated into enhanced levels of active citizenship, and whether the media can play a significant contributory role in that process, remains to be seen. References Alves, R.C. “From Lapdog to Watchdog: The Role of the Press in Latin America’s Democratisation.” In H. de Burgh, ed., Making Journalists. London: Routledge, 2005. 181-202. Anderson, P.J., and G. Ward (eds.). The Future of Journalism in the Advanced Democracies. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2007. Barnett, S. “The Age of Contempt.” Guardian 28 October 2002. < http://politics.guardian.co.uk/media/comment/0,12123,820577,00.html >. Barnett, S., and I. Gaber. Westminster Tales. London: Continuum, 2001. Blumler, J., and M. Gurevitch. The Crisis of Public Communication. London: Routledge, 1996. Habermas, J. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989. Lewis, J., S. Inthorn, and K. Wahl-Jorgensen. Citizens or Consumers? What the Media Tell Us about Political Participation. Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 2005. Lloyd, John. What the Media Are Doing to Our Politics. London: Constable, 2004. McNair, B. Journalism and Democracy: A Qualitative Evaluation of the Political Public Sphere. London: Routledge, 2000. ———. Cultural Chaos: News, Journalism and Power in a Globalised World. London: Routledge, 2006.

Abstract:

The twentieth was, from one perspective, the democratic century — a span of one hundred years which began with no fully functioning democracies in existence anywhere on the planet (if one defines democracy as a political system in which there is both universal suffrage and competitive elections), and ended with 120 countries out of 192 classified by the Freedom House think tank as ‘democratic’. There are of course still many societies where democracy is denied or effectively neutered — the remaining outposts of state socialism, such as China, Cuba, and North Korea; most if not all of the Islamic countries; exceptional states such as Singapore, unapologetically capitalist in its economic system but resolutely authoritarian in its political culture. Many self-proclaimed democracies, including those of the UK, Australia and the US, are procedurally or conceptually flawed. Countries emerging out of authoritarian systems and now in a state of democratic transition, such as Russia and the former Soviet republics, are immersed in constant, sometimes violent struggle between reformers and reactionaries. Russia’s recent parliamentary elections were accompanied by the intimidation of parties and politicians who opposed Vladimir Putin’s increasingly populist and authoritarian approach to leadership. The same Freedom House report which describes the rise of democracy in the twentieth century acknowledges that many self-styled democracies are, at best, only ‘partly free’ in their political cultures (for detailed figures on the rise of global democracy, see the Freedom House website Democracy’s Century). Let’s not for a moment downplay these important qualifications to what can nonetheless be fairly characterised as a century-long expansion and globalisation of democracy, and the acceptance of popular sovereignty, expressed through voting for the party or candidate of one’s choice, as a universally recognised human right. That such a process has occurred, and continues in these early years of the twenty-first century, is irrefutable. In the Gaza strip, Hamas appeals to the legitimacy of a democratic election victory in its campaign to be recognised as the voice of the Palestinian people. However one judges the messianic tendencies and Islamist ideology of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, it must be acknowledged that the Iranian people elected him, and that they have the power to throw him out of government next time they vote. That was never true of the Shah. The democratic resurgence in Latin America, taking in Venezuela, Peru and Bolivia among others has been a much-noted feature of international politics in recent times (Alves), presenting a welcome contrast to the dictatorships and death squads of the 1980s, even as it creates some uncomfortable dilemmas for the Bush administration (which must champion democratic government at the same time as it resents some of the choices people may make when they have the opportunity to vote). Since 9/11 a kind of democracy has expanded even to Afghanistan and Iraq, albeit at the point of a gun, and with no guarantees of survival beyond the end of military occupation by the US and its coalition allies. As this essay was being written, Pakistan’s state of emergency was ending and democratic elections scheduled, albeit in the shadow cast by the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December 2007. Democracy, then — imperfect and limited as it can be; grudgingly delivered though it is by political elites in many countries, and subject to attack and roll back at any time — has become a global universal to which all claim allegiance, or at least pay lip service. The scale of this transformation, which has occurred in little more than one quarter of the time elapsed since the Putney debates of 1647 and the English revolution first established the principle of the sovereignty of parliament, is truly remarkable. (Tristram Hunt quotes lawyer Geoffrey Robertson in the Guardian to the effect that the Putney debates, staged in St Mary’s church in south-west London towards the end of the English civil war, launched “the idea that government requires the consent of freely and fairly elected representatives of all adult citizens irrespective of class or caste or status or wealth” – “A Jewel of Democracy”, Guardian, 26 Oct. 2007) Can it be true that less than one hundred years ago, in even the most advanced capitalist societies, 50 per cent of the people — women — did not have the right to vote? Or that black populations, indigenous or migrant, in countries such as the United States and Australia were deprived of basic citizenship rights until the 1960s and even later? Will future generations wonder how on earth it could have been that the vast majority of the people of South Africa were unable to vote until 1994, and that they were routinely imprisoned, tortured and killed when they demanded basic democratic rights? Or will they shrug and take it for granted, as so many of us who live in settled democracies already do? (In so far as ‘we’ includes the community of media and cultural studies scholars, I would argue that where there is reluctance to concede the scale and significance of democratic change, this arises out of continuing ambivalence about what ‘democracy’ means, a continuing suspicion of globalisation (in particular the globalisation of democratic political culture, still associated in some quarters with ‘the west’), and of the notion of ‘progress’ with which democracy is routinely associated. The intellectual roots of that ambivalence were various. Marxist-leninist inspired authoritarianism gripped much of the world until the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the cold war. Until that moment, it was still possible for many marxians in the scholarly community to view the idea of democracy with disdain — if not quite a dirty word, then a deeply flawed, highly loaded concept which masked and preserved underlying social inequalities more than it helped resolve them. Until 1989 or thereabouts, it was possible for ‘bourgeois democracy’ to be regarded as just one kind of democratic polity by the liberal and anti-capitalist left, which often regarded the ‘proletarian’ or ‘people’s’ democracy prevailing in the Soviet Union, China, Cuba or Vietnam as legitimate alternatives to the emerging capitalist norm of one person, one vote, for constituent assemblies which had real power and accountability. In terms not very different from those used by Marx and Engels in The German Ideology, belief in the value of democracy was conceived by this materialist school as a kind of false consciousness. It still is, by Noam Chomsky and others who continue to view democracy as a ‘necessary illusion’ (1989) without which capitalism could not be reproduced. From these perspectives voting gave, and gives us merely the illusion of agency and power in societies where capital rules as it always did. For democracy read ‘the manufacture of consent’; its expansion read not as progressive social evolution, but the universalisation of the myth of popular sovereignty, mobilised and utilised by the media-industrial-military complex to maintain its grip.) There are those who dispute this reading of events. In the 1960s, Habermas’s hugely influential Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere critiqued the manner in which democracy, and the public sphere underpinning it, had been degraded by public relations, advertising, and the power of private interests. In the period since, critical scholarly research and writing on political culture has been dominated by the Habermasian discourse of democratic decline, and the pervasive pessimism of those who see democracy, and the media culture which supports it, as fatally flawed, corrupted by commercialisation and under constant threat. Those, myself included, who challenged that view with a more positive reading of the trends (McNair, Journalism and Democracy; Cultural Chaos) have been denounced as naïve optimists, panglossian, utopian and even, in my own case, a ‘neo-liberal apologist’. (See an unpublished paper by David Miller, “System Failure: It’s Not Just the Media, It’s the Whole Bloody System”, delivered at Goldsmith’s College in 2003.) Engaging as they have been, I venture to suggest that these are the discourses and debates of an era now passing into history. Not only is it increasingly obvious that democracy is expanding globally into places where it never previously reached; it is also extending inwards, within nation states, driven by demands for greater local autonomy. In the United Kingdom, for example, the citizen is now able to vote not just in Westminster parliamentary elections (which determine the political direction of the UK government), but for European elections, local elections, and elections for devolved assemblies in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The people of London can vote for their mayor. There would by now have been devolved assemblies in the regions of England, too, had the people of the North East not voted against it in a November 2004 referendum. Notwithstanding that result, which surprised many in the New Labour government who held it as axiomatic that the more democracy there was, the better for all of us, the importance of enhancing and expanding democratic institutions, of allowing people to vote more often (and also in more efficient ways — many of these expansions of democracy have been tied to the introduction of systems of proportional representation) has become consensual, from the Mid West of America to the Middle East. The Democratic Paradox And yet, as the wave of democratic transformation has rolled on through the late twentieth and into the early twenty first century it is notable that, in many of the oldest liberal democracies at least, fewer people have been voting. In the UK, for example, in the period between 1945 and 2001, turnout at general elections never fell below 70 per cent. In 1992, the last general election won by the Conservatives before the rise of Tony Blair and New Labour, turnout was 78 per cent, roughly where it had been in the 1950s. In 2001, however, as Blair’s government sought re-election, turnout fell to an historic low for the UK of 59.4 per cent, and rose only marginally to 61.4 per cent in the most recent general election of 2005. In the US presidential elections of 1996 and 2000 turnouts were at historic lows of 47.2 and 49.3 per cent respectively, rising just above 50 per cent again in 2004 (figures by International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance). At local level things are even worse. In only the second election for a devolved parliament in Scotland (2003) turnout was a mere 48.5 per cent, rising to 50.5 in 2007. These trends are not universal. In countries with compulsory voting, they mean very little — in Australia, where voting in parliamentary elections is compulsory, turnout averages in the 90s per cent. In France, while turnouts for parliamentary elections show a similar downward trend to the UK and the UK, presidential contests achieve turnouts of 80-plus per cent. In the UK and US, as noted, the most recent elections show modest growth in turnout from those historic lows of the late 1990s and early Noughties. There has grown, nonetheless, the perception, commonplace amongst academic commentators as well as journalists and politicians themselves, that we are living through a ‘crisis’ of democratic participation, a dangerous decline in the tendency to vote in elections which undermines the legitimacy of democracy itself. In communication scholarship a significant body of research and publication has developed around this theme, from Blumler and Gurevitch’s Crisis of Public Communication (1996), through Barnett and Gaber’s Westminster Tales (2000), to more recent studies such as Lewis et al.’s Citizens or Consumers (2005). All presume a problem of some kind with the practice of democracy and the “old fashioned ritual” of voting, as Lewis et al. describe it (2). Most link alleged inadequacies in the performance of the political media to what is interpreted as popular apathy (or antipathy) towards democracy. The media are blamed for the lack of public engagement with democratic politics which declining turnouts are argued to signal. Political journalists are said to be too aggressive and hyper-adversarial (Lloyd), behaving like the “feral beast” spoken of by Tony Blair in his 2007 farewell speech to the British people as prime minister. They are corrosively cynical and a “disaster for democracy”, as Steven Barnett and others argued in the first years of the twenty first century. They are not aggressive or adversarial enough, as the propaganda modellists allege, citing what they interpret as supine media coverage of Coalition policy in Iraq. The media put people off, rather than turn them on to democracy by being, variously, too nice or too nasty to politicians. What then, is the solution to the apparent paradox represented by the fact that there is more democracy, but less voting in elections than ever before; and that after centuries of popular struggle democratic assemblies proliferate, but in some countries barely half of the eligible voters can be bothered to participate? And what role have the media played in this unexpected phenomenon? If the scholarly community has been largely critical on this question, and pessimistic in its analyses of the role of the media, it has become increasingly clear that the one arena where people do vote more than ever before is that presented by the media, and entertainment media in particular. There has been, since the appearance of Big Brother and the subsequent explosion of competitive reality TV formats across the world, evidence of a huge popular appetite for voting on such matters as which amateur contestant on Pop Idol, or X Factor, or Fame Academy, or Operatunity goes on to have a chance of a professional career, a shot at the big time. Millions of viewers of the most popular reality TV strands queue up to register their votes on premium phone lines, the revenue from which makes up a substantial and growing proportion of the income of commercial TV companies. This explosion of voting behaviour has been made possible by the technology-driven emergence of new forms of participatory, interactive, digitised media channels which allow millions to believe that they can have an impact on the outcome of what are, at essence, game and talent shows. At the height of anxiety around the ‘crisis of democratic participation’ in the UK, observers noted that nearly 6.5 million people had voted in the Big Brother UK final in 2004. More than eight million voted during the 2004 run of the BBC’s Fame Academy series. While these numbers do not, contrary to popular belief, exceed the numbers of British citizens who vote in a general election (27.2 million in 2005), they do indicate an enthusiasm for voting which seems to contradict declining rates of democratic participation. People who will never get out and vote for their local councillor often appear more than willing to pick up the telephone or the laptop and cast a vote for their favoured reality TV contestant, even if it costs them money. It would be absurd to suggest that voting for a contestant on Big Brother is directly comparable to the act of choosing a government or a president. The latter is recognised as an expression of citizenship, with potentially significant consequences for the lives of individuals within their society. Voting on Big Brother, on the other hand, is unmistakeably entertainment, game-playing, a relatively risk-free exercise of choice — a bit of harmless fun, fuelled by office chat and relentless tabloid coverage of the contestants’ strengths and weaknesses. There is no evidence that readiness to participate in a telephone or online vote for entertainment TV translates into active citizenship, where ‘active’ means casting a vote in an election. The lesson delivered by the success of participatory media in recent years, however — first reality TV, and latterly a proliferation of online formats which encourage user participation and voting for one thing or another — is that people will vote, when they are able and motivated to do so. Voting is popular, in short, and never more so, irrespective of the level of popular participation recorded in recent elections. And if they will vote in their millions for a contestant on X Factor, or participate in competitions to determine the best movies or books on Facebook, they can presumably be persuaded to do so when an election for parliament comes around. This fact has been recognised by both media producers and politicians, and reflected in attempts to adapt the evermore sophisticated and efficient tools of participatory media to the democratic process, to engage media audiences as citizens by offering the kinds of voting opportunities in political debates, including election processes, which entertainment media have now made routinely available. ITV’s Vote for Me strand, broadcast in the run-up to the UK general election of 2005, used reality TV techniques to select a candidate who would actually take part in the forthcoming poll. The programme was broadcast in a late night, low audience slot, and failed to generate much interest, but it signalled a desire by media producers to harness the appeal of participatory media in a way which could directly impact on levels of democratic engagement. The honourable failure of Vote for Me (produced by the same team which made the much more successful live debate shows featuring prime minister Tony Blair — Ask Tony Blair, Ask the Prime Minister) might be viewed as evidence that readiness to vote in the context of a TV game show does not translate directly into voting for parties and politicians, and that the problem in this respect — the crisis of democratic participation, such that it exists — is located elsewhere. People can vote in democratic elections, but choose not to, perhaps because they feel that the act is meaningless (because parties are ideologically too similar), or ineffectual (because they see no impact of voting in their daily lives or in the state of the country), or irrelevant to their personal priorities and life styles. Voting rates have increased in the US and the UK since September 11 2001, suggesting perhaps that when the political stakes are raised, and the question of who is in government seems to matter more than it did, people act accordingly. Meantime, media producers continue to make money by developing formats and channels on the assumption that audiences wish to participate, to interact, and to vote. Whether this form of participatory media consumption for the purposes of play can be translated into enhanced levels of active citizenship, and whether the media can play a significant contributory role in that process, remains to be seen. References Alves, R.C. “From Lapdog to Watchdog: The Role of the Press in Latin America’s Democratisation.” In H. de Burgh, ed., Making Journalists. London: Routledge, 2005. 181-202. Anderson, P.J., and G. Ward (eds.). The Future of Journalism in the Advanced Democracies. Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2007. Barnett, S. “The Age of Contempt.” Guardian 28 October 2002. http://politics.guardian.co.uk/media/comment/0,12123,820577,00.html>. Barnett, S., and I. Gaber. Westminster Tales. London: Continuum, 2001. Blumler, J., and M. Gurevitch. The Crisis of Public Communication. London: Routledge, 1996. Habermas, J. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989. Lewis, J., S. Inthorn, and K. Wahl-Jorgensen. Citizens or Consumers? What the Media Tell Us about Political Participation. Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 2005. Lloyd, John. What the Media Are Doing to Our Politics. London: Constable, 2004. McNair, B. Journalism and Democracy: A Qualitative Evaluation of the Political Public Sphere. London: Routledge, 2000. ———. Cultural Chaos: News, Journalism and Power in a Globalised World. London: Routledge, 2006. Citation reference for this article MLA Style McNair, Brian. "Vote!." M/C Journal 10.6/11.1 (2008). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0804/01-mcnair.php>. APA Style McNair, B. (Apr. 2008) "Vote!," M/C Journal, 10(6)/11(1). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0804/01-mcnair.php>.

Abstract:

IntroductionThe European will to modify the natural world emerged through English landscape design during the eighteenth century. Released from the neo-classical aesthetic dichotomy of the beautiful and the ugly, new categories of the picturesque and the sublime gestured towards an affective relationship to nature. Europeans began to see the world as a picture, the elements of which were composed as though part of a theatrical scene. Quite literally, as I shall discuss below, gardens were “composed with ‘pantomimic’ elements – ruins of castles and towers, rough hewn bridges, Chinese pagodas and their like” (McGillivray 134–35) transforming natural vistas into theatrical scenes. Such a transformation was made possible by a habit of spectating that was informed by the theatrical metaphor or theatrum mundi, one version of which emphasised the relationship between spectator and the thing seen. The idea of the natural world as an aesthetic object first developed in poetry and painting and then through English landscape garden style was wrought in three dimensions on the land itself. From representations of place a theatrical transformation occurred so that gardens became a places of representation.“The Genius of the Place in All”The eighteenth century inherited theatrum mundi from the Renaissance, although the genealogy of its key features date back to ancient times. Broadly speaking, theatrum mundi was a metaphorical expression of the world and humanity in two ways: dramaturgically and formally. During the Renaissance the dramaturgical metaphor was a moral emblem concerned with the contingency of human life; as Shakespeare famously wrote, “men and women [were] merely players” whose lives consisted of “seven ages” or “acts” (2.7.139–65). In contrast to the dramaturgical metaphor with its emphasis on role-playing humanity, the formalist version highlighted a relationship between spectator, theatre-space and spectacle. Rooted in Renaissance neo-Platonism, the formalist metaphor configured the world as a spectacle and “Man” its spectator. If the dramaturgical metaphor was inflected with medieval moral pessimism, the formalist metaphor was more optimistic.The neo-Platonist spectator searched in the world for a divine plan or grand design and spectatorship became an epistemological challenge. As a seer and a knower on the world stage, the human being became the one who thought about the world not just as a theatre but also through theatre. This is apparent in the etymology of “theatre” from the Greek theatron, or “seeing place,” but the word also shares a stem with “theory”: theaomai or “to look at.” In a graceful compression of both roots, Martin Heidegger suggests a “theatre” might be any “seeing place” in which any thing being beheld offers itself to careful scrutiny by the beholder (163–65). By the eighteenth century, the ancient idea of a seeing-knowing place coalesced with the new empirical method and aesthetic sensibility: the world was out there, so to speak, to provide pleasure and instruction.Joseph Addison, among others, in the first half of the century reconsidered the utilitarian appeal of the natural world and proposed it as the model for artistic inspiration and appreciation. In “Pleasures of the Imagination,” a series of essays in The Spectator published in 1712, Addison claimed that “there is something more bold and masterly in the rough careless strokes of nature, than in the nice touches and embellishments of art,” and compared to the beauty of an ordered garden, “the sight wanders up and down without confinement” the “wide fields of nature” and is “fed with an infinite variety of images, without any certain stint or number” (67).Yet art still had a role because, Addison argues, although “wild scenes [. . .] are more delightful than any artificial shows” the pleasure of nature increases the more it begins to resemble art; the mind experiences the “double” pleasure of comparing nature’s original beauty with its copy (68). This is why “we take delight in a prospect which is well laid out, and diversified, with fields and meadows, woods and rivers” (68); a carefully designed estate can be both profitable and beautiful and “a man might make a pretty landskip of his own possessions” (69). Although nature should always be one’s guide, nonetheless, with some small “improvements” it was possible to transform an estate into a landscape picture. Nearly twenty years later in response to the neo-Palladian architectural ambitions of Richard Boyle, the third Earl of Burlington, and with a similarly pictorial eye to nature, Alexander Pope advised:To build, to plant, whatever you intend,To rear the Column, or the Arch to bend,To swell the Terras, or to sink the Grot;In all, let Nature never be forgot.But treat the Goddess like a modest fair,Nor over-dress, nor leave her wholly bare;Let not each beauty ev’ry where be spy’d,Where half the skill is decently to hide.He gains all points, who pleasingly confounds,Surprizes, varies, and conceals the Bounds.Consult the Genius of the Place in all;That tells the Waters or to rise, or fall,Or helps th’ ambitious Hill the heav’ns to scale,Or scoops in circling theatres the Vale,Calls in the Country, catches opening glades, Joins willing woods, and varies shades from shades,Now breaks or now directs, th’ intending Lines;Paints as you plant, and, as you work, designs. (Epistle IV, ll 47–64) Whereas Addison still gestured towards estate management, Pope explicitly advocated a painterly approach to garden design. His epistle articulated some key principles that he enacted in his own garden at Twickenham and which would inform later garden design. No matter what one added to a landscape, one needed to be guided by nature; one should be moderate in one’s designs and neither plant too much nor too little; one must be aware of the spectator’s journey through the garden and take care to provide variety by creating “surprises” that would be revealed at different points. Finally, one had to find the “spirit” of the place that gave it its distinct character and use this to create the cohesion in diversity that was aspired to in a garden. Nature’s aestheticisation had begun with poetry, developed into painting, and was now enacted on actual natural environments with the emergence of English landscape style. This painterly approach to gardening demanded an imaginative, emotional, and intellectual engagement with place and it stylistically rejected the neo-classical geometry and regularity of the baroque garden (exemplified by Le Nôtre’s gardens at Versailles). Experiencing landscape now took on a third dimension as wealthy landowners and their friends put themselves within the picture frame and into the scene. Although landscape style changed during the century, a number of principles remained more or less consistent: the garden should be modelled on nature but “improved,” any improvements should not be obvious, pictorial composition should be observed, the garden should be concerned with the spectator’s experience and should aim to provoke an imaginative or emotional engagement with it. During the seventeenth century, developments in theatrical technology, particularly the emergence of the proscenium arch theatre with moveable scenery, showed that poetry and painting could be spectacularly combined on the stage. Later in the eighteenth century the artist and stage designer Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg combined picturesque painting aesthetics with theatrical design in works such as The Wonders of Derbyshire in 1779 (McGillivray 136). It was a short step to shift the onstage scene outside. Theatricality was invoked when pictorial principles were applied three dimensionally; gardens became sites for pastoral genre scenes that ambiguously positioned their visitors both as spectators and actors. Theatrical SceneryGardens and theatres were explicitly connected. Like “theatre,” the word “garden” was sometimes used to describe a collection, in book form, which promised “a whole world of items” which was not always “redeemable” in “straightforward ways” (Hunt, Gardens 54–55). Theatrum mundi could be emblematically expressed in a garden through statues and architectural fabriques which drew spectators into complex chains of associations involving literature, art, and society, as they progressed through it.In the previous century, writes John Dixon Hunt, “the expectation of a fine garden [. . .] was that it work upon its visitor, involving him [sic] often insidiously as a participant in its dramas, which were presented to him as he explored its spaces by a variety of statues, inscriptions and [. . .] hydraulically controlled automata” (Gardens 54). Such devices, which featured heavily in the Italian baroque garden, were by the mid eighteenth century seen by English and French garden theorists to be overly contrived. Nonetheless, as David Marshall argues, “eighteenth-century garden design is famous for its excesses [. . .] the picturesque garden may have aimed to be less theatrical, but it aimed no less to be theater” (38). Such gardens still required their visitors’ participation and were designed to deliver an experience that stimulated the spectators’ imaginations and emotions as they moved through them. Theatrum mundi is implicit in eighteenth-century gardens through a common idea of the world reimagined into four geographical quadrants emblematically represented by fabriques in the garden. The model here is Alexander Pope’s influential poem, “The Temple of Fame” (1715), which depicted the eponymous temple with four different geographic faces: its western face was represented by western classical architecture, its east face by Chinese, Persian, and Assyrian, its north was Gothic and Celtic, and its south, Egyptian. These tropes make their appearance in eighteenth-century landscape gardens. In Désert de Retz, a garden created between 1774 and 1789 by François Racine de Monville, about twenty kilometres west of Paris, one can still see amongst its remaining fabriques: a ruined “gothic” church, a “Tartar” tent (it used to have a Chinese maison, now lost), a pyramid, and the classically inspired Temple of Pan. Similar principles underpin the design of Jardin (now Parc) Monceau that I discuss below. Retz: Figure 1. Tartar tent.Figure 2. Temple of PanStowe Gardens in Buckinghamshire has a similar array of structures (although the classical predominates) including its original Chinese pavillion. It, too, once featured a pyramid designed by the architect and playwright John Vanbrugh, and erected as a memorial to him after his death in 1726. On it was carved a quote from Horace that explicitly referenced the dramaturgical version of theatrum mundi: You have played, eaten enough and drunk enough,Now is time to leave the stage for younger men. (Garnett 19) Stowe’s Elysian Fields, designed by William Kent in the 1730s according to picturesque principles, offered its visitor two narrative choices, to take the Path of Virtue or the Path of Vice, just like a re-imagined morality play. As visitors progressed along their chosen paths they would encounter various fabriques and statues, some carved with inscriptions in either Latin or English, like the Vanbrugh pyramid, that would encourage associations between the ancient world and the contemporary world of the garden’s owner Richard Temple, Lord Cobham, and his circle. Stowe: Figure 3. Chinese Pavillion.Figure 4. Temple of VirtueKent’s background was as a painter and scene designer and he brought a theatrical sensibility to his designs; as Hunt writes, Kent particularly enjoyed designing “recessions into woodland space where ‘wings’ [were] created” (Picturesque 29). Importantly, Kent’s garden drawings reveal his awareness of gardens as “theatrical scenes for human action and interaction, where the premium is upon more personal experiences” and it this spatial dimension that was opened up at Stowe (Picturesque 30).Picturesque garden design emphasised pictorial composition that was similar to stage design and because a garden, like a stage, was a three-dimensional place for human action, it could also function as a set for that action. Unlike a painting, a garden was experiential and time-based and a visitor to it had an experience not unlike, to cautiously use an anachronism, a contemporary promenade performance. The habit of imaginatively wandering through a theatre in book-form, moving associatively from one item to the next, trying to discern the author’s pattern or structure, was one educated Europeans were used to, and a garden provided an embodied dimension to this activity. We can see how this might have been by visiting Parc Monceau in Paris which still contains remnants of the garden designed by Louis Carrogis (known as Carmontelle) for the Duc de Chartres in the 1770s. Carmontelle, like Kent, had a theatrical background and his primary role was as head of entertainments for the Orléans family; as such he was responsible for designing and writing plays for the family’s private theatricals (Hays 449). According to Hunt, Carmontelle intended visitors to Jardin de Monceau to take a specific itinerary through its “quantity of curious things”:Visitors entered by a Chinese gateway, next door to a gothic building that served as a chemical laboratory, and passed through greenhouses and coloured pavilions. Upon pressing a button, a mirrored wall opened into a winter garden painted with trompe-l’œil trees, floored with red sand, filled with exotic plants, and containing at its far end a grotto in which supper parties were held while music was played in the chamber above. Outside was a farm. Then there followed a series of exotic “locations”: a Temple of Mars, a winding river with an island of rocks and a Dutch mill, a dairy, two flower gardens, a Turkish tent poised, minaret-like, above an icehouse, a grove of tombs [. . .], and an Italian vineyard with a classical Bacchus at its center, regularly laid out to contrast with an irregular wood that succeeded it. The final stretches of the itinerary included a Naumachia or Roman water-theatre [. . .], more Turkish and Chinese effects, a ruined castle, yet another water-mill, and an island on which sheep grazed. (Picturesque 121) Monceau: Figure 5. Naumachia.Figure 6. PyramidIn its presentation of a multitude of different times and different places one can trace a line of descent from Jardin de Monceau to the great nineteenth-century World Expos and on to Disneyland. This lineage is not as trite as it seems once we realise that Carmontelle himself intended the garden to represent “all times and all places” and Pope’s four quadrants of the world were represented by fabriques at Monceau (Picturesque 121). As Jardin de Monceau reveals, gardens were also sites for smaller performative interventions such as the popular fêtes champêtres, garden parties in which the participants ate, drank, danced, played music, and acted in comedies. Role playing and masquerade were an important part of the fêtes as we see, for example, in Jean-Antoine Watteau’s Fêtes Vénitiennes (1718–19) where a “Moorishly” attired man addresses (or is dancing with) a young woman before an audience of young men and women, lolling around a fabrique (Watteau). Scenic design in the theatre inspired garden designs and gardens “featured prominently as dramatic locations in intermezzi, operas, and plays”, an exchange that encouraged visitors to gardens to see themselves as performers as much as spectators (Hunt, Gardens 64). A garden, particularly within the liminal aegis of a fête was a site for deceptions, tricks, ruses and revelations, assignations and seductions, all activities which were inherently theatrical; in such a garden visitors could find themselves acting in or watching a comedy or drama of their own devising. Marie-Antoinette built English gardens and a rural “hamlet” at Versailles. She and her intimate circle would retire to rustic cottages, which belied the opulence of their interiors, and dressed in white muslin dresses and straw hats, would play at being dairy maids, milking cows (pre-cleaned by the servants) into fine porcelain buckets (Martin 3). Just as the queen acted in pastoral operas in her theatre in the grounds of the Petit Trianon, her hamlet provided an opportunity for her to “live” a pastoral fantasy. Similarly, François Racine de Monville, who commissioned Désert de Retz, was a talented harpist and flautist and his Temple of Pan was, appropriately, a music room.Versailles: Figure 7. Hamlet ConclusionRichard Steele, Addison’s friend and co-founder of The Spectator, casually invoked theatrum mundi when he wrote in 1720: “the World and the Stage [. . .] have been ten thousand times observed to be the Pictures of one another” (51). Steele’s reiteration of a Renaissance commonplace revealed a different emphasis, an emphasis on the metaphor’s spatial and spectacular elements. Although Steele reasserts the idea that the world and stage resemble each other, he does so through a third level of abstraction: it is as pictures that they have an affinity. World and stage are both positioned for the observer within complementary picture frames and it is as pictures that he or she is invited to make sense of them. The formalist version of theatrum mundi invokes a spectator beholding the world for his (usually!) pleasure and in the process nature itself is transformed. No longer were natural landscapes wildernesses to be tamed and economically exploited, but could become gardens rendered into scenes for their aristocratic owners’ pleasure. Désert de Retz, as its name suggests, was an artfully composed wilderness, a version of the natural world sculpted into scenery. Theatrum mundi, through the aesthetic category of the picturesque, emerged in English landscape style and effected a theatricalised transformation of nature that was enacted in the aristocratic gardens of Europe.ReferencesAddison, Joseph. The Spectator. No. 414 (25 June 1712): 67–70. Eighteenth Century Collections Online.Garnett, Oliver. Stowe. Buckinghamshire. The National Trust, 2011.Hays, David. “Carmontelle's Design for the Jardin de Monceau: A Freemasonic Garden in Late-Eighteenth-Century France.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 32.4 (1999): 447–62.Heidegger, Martin. The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. Trans. William Lovitt. New York: Harper and Row, 1977.Hunt, John Dixon. Gardens and the Picturesque: Studies in the History of Landscape Architecture. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1992.———. The Picturesque Garden in Europe. London: Thames and Hudson, 2002.Marshall, David. The Frame of Art. Fictions of Aesthetic Experience, 1750–1815. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2005.Martin, Meredith S. Dairy Queens: The Politics of Pastoral Architecture from Catherine de' Medici to Marie-Antoinette. Harvard: Harvard UP, 2011.McGillivray, Glen. "The Picturesque World Stage." Performance Research 13.4 (2008): 127–39.Pope, Alexander. “Epistle IV. To Richard Boyle, Earl of Burlington.” Epistles to Several Persons. London, 1744. Eighteenth Century Collections Online.———. The Temple of Fame: A Vision. By Mr. Pope. 2nd ed. London, 1715. Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Shakespeare, William. As You Like It. Ed. Agnes Latham. London: Routledge, 1991.Steele, Richard. The Theatre. No. 7 (23 January 1720).

Abstract:

The Resident Evil video game series is especially notable for engaging with uncanny nature and monstrous reproduction, often facilitated through viral contamination. These third-person games usually feature an outbreak of some kind, instigated by a shadowy organisation, and star a member of law enforcement or the military as the protagonist. However, the seventh and eighth games of the franchise were different. While they explored many of the same themes and conventions as their predecessors, the technologies by which they evoked fear and suspense had become further immersed in the survival horror genre and ecoGothic affect. Survival horror video games, which often exploit anxieties surrounding uncanny motherhood to produce feelings of dread, use the processes and spectacle of reproduction, gestation, and childbirth as the locus of player fear. The ecoGothic, that is the non-human ecology rendered uncanny, monstrous, and sublime, permeates survival horror spaces and has the potential to empower these malevolent matriarchs. In Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (Nakanishi) and Resident Evil VIII: Village (Sato), player-protagonist Ethan Winters is under constant attack from female antagonists. From unexpected onslaughts from his rapidly transforming wife Mia at the beginning of Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, to his heart being wrenched from his body by the overarching villain Mother Miranda in Resident Evil VIII: Village, Ethan’s life is under constant threat from women and girls infected by a parasitic fungus. These monstrous females, through their corporeal forms and means of control, blur the boundaries between the human and the non-human. Furthermore, they represent the perceived degradation of the human form and delegitimisation of man's dominion over nature. These women—who have merged with the non-human ecosystem—have become creatures that challenge our conception of what it is to be human. It is this intersection of ecophobia and the perceived transgression of gender roles that make up the anatomy of the female and non-cis-masculine presenting videoludic monster. Using Resident Evil 7: Biohazard and Resident Evil VIII: Village as my primary examples, in this article I unpack the implications of these fungus-infested women, and explore how family and trauma play a role in their narratives. EcoGothic Origins In defining the ecoGothic it is important to acknowledge its origins as a response to the idealised ecologies of the nature writing of the Romantic period (Smith and Hughes 2). Rather than sweeping through the green pastoral valleys of the Romantic novel, the ecoGothic lurks in the shadows of labyrinthine forests and stands awestruck before sublime wonders. The ecoGothic shatters the illusion of human control, confronting the audience with their fears and anxieties. The ecoGothic monsters of Resident Evil 7: Biohazard (referred to here as Resident Evil 7) and Resident Evil VIII: Village (referred to here as Village) represent deep-seated anxieties about the boundaries between the human and the non-human. Whilst Gothic narratives have traditionally expressed fears about the loss of control to nature, Estok notes that this loss of control is a real and present threat in the environmental crisis of the Anthropocene (Estok 29), lending these modern ecoGothic monsters additional relevance and potency. The ecoGothic challenges human corporeality through transformation, hybridity, and invasion, destabilising our ideas of the human as separate from, and superior to, the greater ecology. It is vital to interrogate assumptions associated with the false dichotomy between humans and nature to demonstrate the anxieties at play within these manifestations of female eco-monstrosity. As Tidwell notes, ecohorror narratives are “fundamentally predicated upon a relationship between humanity and nature that does not allow for their interconnectedness” (539). These games, through the compromised, infected form of the protagonist, problematise the dichotomy between the good of humanity and the evil of the non-human. However, they still weaponise anxieties about human specificity and depict hybridity as monstrous and unstable. The patriarchal fear of transgressive female power is similarly weaponised through the female antagonists. These monstrous female antagonists are used to police boundaries of acceptable womanhood and their fates demonstrate the dangers of transgressing those boundaries. Through an ecofeminist lens we can examine the interplay between anxieties surrounding gender and anxieties surrounding the wildness and unpredictability of the ecology. As the intersection between ecocriticism, which is interested in the interconnectedness of ecologies, and feminism, which is interested in the “social analysis” of power structures and systems of domination (Carr 160), ecofeminism allows us to analyse the subjugation, exploitation, and demonisation of the feminine and the broader ecology. Part of what makes a female monster so threatening is that she transgresses two societal modes of categorisation. She is a predator rather than prey, no longer fitting the submissive female archetype, and she has become a hybrid form closely associated with the animal. Krzywinska highlights the role of this altered power relationship as being a potent manifestation of the Gothic in video games (33). This common expression of transgressive and monstrous female power draws on the traditional role of the Gothic in facilitating the male experience of fear and vulnerability with impunity (Krzywinska 33). Resident Evil as a video game series has an inconsistent history of depicting women and female-presenting entities, both antagonists and protagonists alike. MacCallum-Stewart asserts that the series’ shift towards more problematic and monstrous female representation coincides with a move from action-adventure to survival horror (170). The series has long been preoccupied with monstrous inheritance and legacy, but Resident Evil 7 and Village represent a new move towards female villains, abandoning patriarchal dynasties like the Weskers. The female ecoGothic monsters of Resident Evil 7 and Village transgress gender and species norms, signifying a move further into the ecoGothic realm of the uncanny. The Technology of Ecohorror The Resident Evil series uses science fiction conventions to explain the mystery that lies at the centre of its horrific spectacles. Despite the distinctly ecoGothic affect of Resident Evil 7 and Village, the ’scientific’ explanation provided in-game for these supernatural occurrences is a mutated fungus with psychotropic and self-replicating properties. The Cadou (Romanian for “gift”) is a fictional fungus developed from a fungal root under the village, and altered to create bioweapons by a shadowy organisation, The Connections. Known as the megamycete in the English script (not used in the Japanese script), the fungus has various effects including controlling its host, retaining and replicating genetic information, and rapid growths capable of focussed movement. A second fungal root was established in Louisiana, under the Baker House of Resident Evil 7. As a locus of human anxiety, fungal bodies are inherently unstable and defy characterisation, thus queering ideas of the corporeal body (Bishop et al. 220). Bishop posits that in the human consciousness fungus is closely linked to the animal as they live on “dead or decomposing matter”. Some fungal species reproduce asexually “through the release of spores that produces new organisms that are genetically identical to the parent organism” (Bishop et al. 204). This asexual reproduction means that fictional fungal bodies are representative of a reproductive process that runs contrary to the human-sanctioned sexual reproduction and established gendered power dynamics. Reproduction through tiny spores allows the site of reproduction to go undetected, opening the possibility within the human imagination for the invasion and violation of the human form. Bishop also notes that fungal bodies “are hardly contained organisms; they form complex systems of mycorrhizae, symbiotic underground relationships with other fungal and vegetal life” (Bishop et al. 204). It is this resistance to categorisation is an emergent theme as we define the parameters of these female eco-monsters. Whilst the fungal properties of the Cadou are behind the malevolent forces at work within Resident Evil 7 and Village, the mould and associated slime are a looming presence in the bulk of the gameplay. It clings to the walls in the Baker house and lurks in the shadows of the Village. It exists within the interior and exterior of the human body, threatening to control, corrupt, and engulf. The invasive presence of the mould in the Old House places the phenomenon firmly in the domestic sphere, in the space to which the matriarch of the family, Marguerite, is bound (McGreevy et al. 254). Hurley notes that slime “constitutes a threat to the integrity of the human subject” (35), due to its lack of fixed identity and form. Slime represents a challenge to the human understanding of the body as a closed system that is impenetrable and self-contained. Estok posits that slime’s resistance to categorisation and refusal to fit within male delineated boundaries creates an association with the feminine (33). Slime is unstable and resists control, making it a culturally pervasive expression of fears about the loss of established systems of power that reinforce sexism and misogyny (Estok 31). This theory of the gendered significance of slime brings new meaning to use of the mould and slime forms of the Cadou for the purposes of unnatural reproduction and the exercising of psychological control. The abhuman, or not-quite-human (Hurley 3), spectacles of Resident Evil’s Cadou infected antagonists are able to be at once tragic and disposable. While the player is required to kill vast hordes of amorphous “molded”, emaciated “thralls” and degenerated “lycans”, the humanoid bosses or key antagonists complicate human claims to exceptionalism and specificity. Tidwell notes that “this breakdown of the animacy hierarchy and of separations between human and nonhuman emphasizes materiality itself and de-emphasizes consciousness or sentience” (546). It is implied that we are to think of the zombie-like hordes of non-player combatants as non-sentient, as under the complete control of the non-human, therefore entirely expendable. This othering of non-player combatant is a staple of the survival horror genre as it offers monstrosity as both motive and mitigation. As Perron notes, the monsters of videoludic horror are constructed from “mundane” player anxieties, allowing the player to kill that which they fear (11). The Scientist and the ‘Broodmother’ The dangerous potential of the grieving mother is demonstrated in the actions of Mother Miranda, whose loss of her daughter Eva serves as the catalyst for the Cadou narrative arc of Resident Evil 7 and Village. Miranda, through her experimentation with the mould and her pathological determination to resurrect her child, becomes a monstrous maternal spectacle. Miranda forces both children and adults to become infantilised, deferential hosts to the Cadou, attempting to create a “vessel” to carry her daughter’s DNA and consciousness. As Paxton notes, such monstrous and destructive maternal behaviour is “pathologized as unnatural and identified as the seamy underside of woman’s nature” (170). This depiction of unnatural maternal behaviour is compounded by her means of reproduction and the multitudes of “children” she has produced. Stang notes that “the monster polices the borders of what is permissible” and Miranda’s status as the “Broodmother”, through her complex combination of asexual reproduction and infection, represents transgressions of those borders that circumvent patriarchal processes (235). Killing Miranda is the culmination of a two-game arc that requires the player-character to kill her “false children”. The similarities between the unnatural birth of Frankenstein’s creature and the unnatural birth of Miranda’s children are significant. Facilitated by science and societal transgression, they are constructed from death and ultimately result in parental rejection. Miranda cements her status as the monstrous mother by revealing that the player has been doing her bidding in killing her children: "you've fulfilled your purpose, Mr. Winters. You disposed of my false children and awakened the glorious Megamycete” (Sato). In creating these “children” and then casting them aside, Mother Miranda fashions a hierarchy of hybrid entities, desperate for her approval and under her thrall due to the controlling properties of the Cadou. The player-character’s mission to kill Miranda as the monstrous maternal figure expresses a “revulsion and fear towards female fecundity” and a “potent fear” of “female reproduction without male input” (Stang 238). The damage perpetuated by Miranda’s unnatural motherhood is far reaching, with one of her “failed vessels”, Eveline, becoming the source of the Louisiana Cadou infestation from Resident Evil 7. Eveline was originally created as a bioweapon (or B.O.W.) using the DNA of Miranda’s dead daughter and a sample of the Cadou mould. Manifesting as a ten-year old girl, Eveline has an insatiable drive to create a family which motivates her manipulation and infection of the Bakers, Mia, and the play-character Ethan. "I don't want to live at the lab anymore. I want a house. And I want you to be my mommy" says Eveline to Mia (Nakanishi). Eveline’s ability to reproduce and infect is even more monstrous and abject than that of her “Broodmother” as she is ostensibly a young girl. Her status as an uncanny, abhuman “mother” is not a means of empowerment and comes at a tremendous cost. As Stang writes the ecoGothic mother’s reproductive power “is often the result of infection, contamination, or mutation and causes abject transformations, madness, and, eventually, death at the hands of the protagonist” (238). Therefore, with each one of these abject mothers Ethan kills he is completing the patriarchal narrative of the dangers of unnatural reproduction and matriarchal power structures. The Abhuman Mother Resident Evil 7 antagonist Marguerite Baker is already a mother when the Cadou, brought into her home by Eveline, establishes fungal growths on her brain. She and Jack take in Eveline and Mia out of a genuine human concern and compassion which has completely disappeared by the time Ethan arrives in the home. Soon Eveline’s drive for a family kicks in and she begins to insidiously control the Bakers, worming her way into their psyche and infecting them with the mould. From this point on Marguerite begins to mutate into a maternal monster, referring to spiders and insects as her babies. Not only does her nurturing begin to transgress species, but she begins to feed her human family human flesh, creating grotesque parodies of the nurturing and nourishing mother: "I'll feed you to my babies and fertilize the garden with what was left" Marguerite to Ethan (Nakanishi). As Marguerite begins her homicidal pursuit of Ethan, the ecohorror of her monstrous body is revealed. She transforms becoming progressively less human. Her “monster” form, with its elongated limbs and mutated vulva, becomes more closely aligned with a female arthropod or arachnid. McGreevy et al notes that “Marguerite’s transformation mirrors the impact of mycoestrogens, such as zearalenone, which the body treats as a high dose of estrogen … . The infection thus amplifies feminine traits to a dangerous level, as the female body is abject: horrific and alluring” (261). The insects that are birthed from her genitals have an intrinsic association with death and decomposition, playing a key role in the process of disarticulating the human form (Shelomi 31). From this association we might infer that the fear and disgust the player feels at Marguerite’s association with insects and her mutated arachnid form goes beyond anxieties of ambiguity between the human and the non-human. The Eastern European castle and snow-capped peaks of Village offer a different type of female monstrosity to that found on the bayou in Louisiana. Whilst not a vampire through the traditional transmission mode of Dracula and his ilk, Alcina Dimitrescu’s vampirism is necessitated by an inherited blood condition and invites discussion of matriarchal lines of reproduction. The inhabitants of the Castle Dimitrescu play into the same ecoGothic conventions as that have been employed in female vampire narratives. These narratives play into anxieties about unnatural reproduction, in this case reproduction without the men or masculine forces. Paxton in their exploration of Le Fanu’s Carmilla draws connections between female vampirism and parasitic ichneumon wasps, resonating with the depiction of Cadou infestation in Resident Evil (170). Like fungus vampirism is depicted as parasitic and a disruption to the patriarchal lineage through its potential for asexual reproduction. Not unlike the structure of infection, psychic control, and reproduction that we see in vampire fiction, Mother Miranda operates as matriarchal head of an expansive hivemind that mimics a family like structure. Alcina Dimitrescu is a sexualised spectacle whose rejection and suspicion of men reinforces her role as a transgressive woman. Alcina and her daughters determine the fates of their victims by gender, with men being consumed and women being enslaved and drained of blood for the production of wine. She further transgresses normative expectations of the mother through the animalism associated with vampirism (Paxton 178) and her stature. She is an imposing nine feet tall with rapidly growing claws due to the effects of the Cadou, making her difficult to dominate through brute strength. Further compounding her threat to patriarchal power structures, she explicitly expresses hatred for men during her attacks. Her voice lines demonstrate a powerful drive to protect her daughters from patriarchal power and masculine violence: “You ungrateful, selfish wretch! You come into MY house—You lay your filthy man-hands on MY daughters”—Alcina Dimetrescu to Ethan (Sato). Depicted as a beautiful, elegant lady, the vampiric body of Alcina Dimitrescu, transforms into a grotesque dragon-like creature, providing visual confirmation of her underlying status as non-human. The abhuman as the covert and deceptive non-human monstrosity plays into her late-stage transformation reinforces her disconnect from the human, legitimising her death. Mother Miranda’s daughter Donna Beneviento poses a deeper psychological threat to the player, stepping further away from the action-adventure genre with which Resident Evil has previously been associated. Like Marguerite, her house manifests her psychological state, reflecting her trauma and implied mental illness. This trauma manifests externally, turning the Beneviento mansion into an extension of her psychic agency. She achieves this through the use of secreted fungal hallucinogens activated by pollen allowing her to manifest and prey on the anxieties of her victims. Donna Beneviento’s relationship to her Cadou infested and their uncanny animation echoes the unnatural reproduction of Mother Miranda. Throughout the Beneviento mansion motifs of parenthood and childbirth play out in increasingly grotesque forms, culminating in a giant foetus monster emerging from the shadows, wailing and giggling. Donna Beneviento is playing with Ethan expressing her status as child, despite the reality of her adulthood. Donna is infantilised, crafting dolls in an expression her loneliness and desire for family in a manner similar to Eveline’s misguided attempts to construct a family. The Sanctioned Mother and the Good Daughter The counterpoint to these spectacles of female monstrosity are female characters who manage to maintain the appearance of human specificity and adherence to societal norms. Marguerite’s daughter Zoe remains relatively unaffected by the Cadou and retains her humanity, aligning herself with the player-character. She is the good daughter, the sanctioned and acceptable human daughter. Ethan’s wife Mia is intermittently affected by the same fungal infestation as Marguerite, yet her initial monstrous manifestation and frenzied chainsaw attack on Ethan at the beginning of the game is all but forgotten through her subsequent ability to maintain the appearance of human specificity. By the beginning of Village Mia is depicted as an ideal picture of rehabilitated motherhood and femininity. Positioning herself as the “good” in the good/bad mother dichotomy, she is cooking, wearing soft fabrics and colours, and is nurturing her baby (Digioia 15-16). But this figure of the socially sanctioned mother has been replaced by the “bad” Mother Miranda. This raises further questions about the illusory and performative qualities of maternal affection in the Resident Evil series. After being kidnapped, Ethan’s baby Rose is dissected into four parts and given to four main antagonists of Village. It is only through her integration with the Cadou and the resurrection procedure of Mother Miranda that she is revived. Rose’s resurrection is an obscured and noncorporeal affair, unlike the resurrection of Alcina Dimatrescu’s daughters Bela, Daniela, and Cassandra, which is documented in scientific detail. As a discarded “Insect observation journal” notes, their corpses became covered in carnivorous insects that “vigorously consume meat”, morphing and mutating to recreate their resurrected human forms (Sato). The visceral descriptions of this process and their subsequent ability to control hordes of insects are reminiscent Marguerite’s monster form. Like Mia and Zoe, Rose’s acceptability and status as the good daughter is predicated on her ability to adhere to societal norms and patriarchal categorisations. Conclusion In depicting female antagonists as ecoGothic monstrosities, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard and Resident Evil VIII: Village position the player character in vain defence of human specificity and supremacy. It is telling that, as a figure who has been unknowingly infected with the Cadou, Ethan Winters has already lost the battle against the parasitic invasion of his own corporeal form. By tapping into ecophobic anxieties about fungus and slime that defy categorisation, Resident Evil is able to challenge the player’s human specificity and agency. This lack of specificity and agency is only accentuated by the monstrous and transgressive presence of the unnatural mother and the dangerous female. It is this loss of control and vulnerability that is common to both the ecoGothic and the survival horror genre. By contrasting examples of the monstrous feminine with sanctioned feminine figures like Mia, Rose, and Zoe, Resident Evil 7: BioHazard and Resident Evil VIII: Village establish policeable boundaries for female behaviour and a means of justifying the killing of abhuman bodies. While the powerful monstrous female antagonists of the games are able to exert a phenomenal amount of agency when compared to their monstrous peers, their construction still plays into destructive misogynist and ecophobic ideas of the female and the non-human world. References Bishop, Katherine E., David Higgins, and Jerry Määttä. Plants in Science Fiction: Speculative Vegetation. Cardiff: U of Wales P, 2020. Carr, Emily. “The Riddle Was the Angel in the House: Towards an American Ecofeminist Gothic.” Ecogothic. Eds. Andrew Smith and William Hughes. United Kingdom: Manchester UP, 2016. 160-176. DiGioia, Amanda. Childbirth and Parenting in Horror Texts : The Marginalized and the Monstrous. Bingley: Emerald, 2017. Estok, Simon C. “Corporeality, Hyper-Consciousness, and the Anthropocene ecoGothic: Slime and Ecophobia”. Neohelicon 1 (2020). 27 Aug. 2021 <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11059-020-00519-0>. Hurley, Kelly. The Gothic Body: Sexuality, Materialism, and Degeneration at the Fin de Siècle. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004. Krzywinska, Tanya. “The Gamification of Gothic Coordinates”. Revenant: Critical and Creative Studies of the Supernatural 1 (2015). 26 Aug. 2021 <http://www.revenantjournal.com/contents/the-gamification-of-gothic-coordinates-in-videogames/>. McGreevy, Alan, Christina Fawcett, and Marc A. Ouellette. “The House and the Infected Body: The Metonomy of Resident Evil 7.” 2020. 28 Aug. 2021 <https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/english_fac_pubs/155/>. Paxton, Amanda. “Mothering by Other Means: Parasitism and J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla”. ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 1 (2021). 2 Aug. 2021 <https://doi-org.ezproxy-f.deakin.edu.au/10.1093/isle/isz119>. Perron, Bernard. The World of Scary Video Games: A Study in Videoludic Horror. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018. Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. Dev. Koshi Nakanishi. Capcom 2017. Resident Evil Village. Dev. Morimasa Sato. Capcom, 2021. Shelomi, Matan. “Entomoludology: Arthropods in Video Games”. American Entomologist 2 (2019). 28 Aug. 2021 <https://doi.org/10.1093/ae/tmz028>. Smith, Andrew, and William Hughes. Introduction. In EcoGothic. Manchester University Press, 2015. Stang, Sarah. “The Broodmother as Monstrous – Feminine – Abject Maternity in Video Games.” 42 (2019). 28 Aug. 2021 <https://doi.org/10.7557/13.5014>. Tidwell, Christy. “Monstrous Natures Within: Posthuman and New Materialist Ecohorror in Mira Grant’s ‘Parasite’.” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 3 (2014). 27 Aug. 2021 <https://www.jstor.org/stable/26430361>.

Abstract:

IntroductionIn Nancy Meyers’s 2015 film The Intern a particular kind of masculinity is celebrated through the material accoutrements of Ben Whittaker (Robert De Niro). A retired 70-year-old manager, Ben takes up a position as a “senior” Intern in an online clothing distribution company run by Jules Ostin (Anne Hathaway). Jules’s company, All About Fit, is the embodiment of the Gen Y creative workplace operating in an old Brooklyn warehouse. Ben’s presence in this environment is anachronistic and yet also stylishly retro in an industry where “vintage” is a mode of dress but also offers alternative ethical values (Veenstra and Kuipers). The alternative that Ben offers is figured through his sartorial style, which mobilises a specific kind of retro masculinity made available through his senior white male body. This paper investigates how and why retro masculinity is materialised and embodied as both a set of values and a set of objects in The Intern.Three particular objects are emblematic of this retro masculinity and come to stand in for a body of desirable masculine values: the business suit, the briefcase, and the handkerchief. In the midst of an indie e-commerce garment business, Ben’s old-fashioned wardrobe registers a regular middle class managerial masculinity from the past that is codified as solidly reliable and dependable. Sherry Turkle reminds us that “material culture carries emotions and ideas of startling intensity” (6), and these impact our thinking, our emotional life, and our memories. The suit, briefcase, and handkerchief are material reminders of this reliable masculine past. The values they evoke, as presented in this film, seem to offer sensible solutions to the fast pace of twenty-first century life and its reconfigurations of family and work prompted by feminism and technology.The film’s fetishisation of these objects of retro masculinity could be mistaken for nostalgia, in the way that vintage collections elide their political context, and yet it also registers social anxiety around gender and generation amid twenty-first century social change. Turner reminds us of the importance of film as a social practice through which “our culture makes sense of itself” (3), and which participates in the ongoing negotiation of the meanings of gender. While masculinity is often understood to have been in crisis since the advent of second-wave feminism and women’s mass entry into the labour force, theoretical scrutiny now understands masculinity to be socially constructed and changing, rather than elemental and stable; performative rather than innate; fundamentally political, and multiple through the intersection of class, race, sexuality, and age amongst other factors (Connell; Butler). While Connell coined the term “hegemonic masculinity,” to indicate “masculinity which occupies the hegemonic position in a given pattern of gender relations” (76), it is always intersectional and contestable. Ben’s hegemonic position in The Intern might be understood in relation to what Buchbinder identifies as “inadequate” or “incompetent” masculinities, which offer a “foil for another principal character” (232), but this movement between margin and hegemony is always in process and accords with the needs that structure the story, and its attendant social anxieties. This film’s fetishising of Ben’s sartorial style suggests a yearning for a stable and recognisable masculine identity, but in order to reinstall these meanings the film must ignore the political times from which they emerge.The construction of retro masculinity in this case is mapped onto Ben’s body as a “senior.” As Gilleard notes, ageing bodies are usually marked by a narrative of corporeal decline, and yet for men of hegemonic privilege, non-material values like seniority, integrity, wisdom, and longevity coalesce to embody “the accumulation of cultural or symbolic capital in the form of wisdom, maturity or experience” (1). Like masculinity, then, corporeality is understood to be a set of unstable signifiers produced through particular cultural discourses.The Business SuitThe business suit is Ben Whittaker’s habitual work attire, so when he comes out of retirement to be an intern at the e-commerce company he re-adopts this professional garb. The solid outline of a tailored and dark-coloured suit signals a professional body that is separate, autonomous and impervious to the outside world, according to Longhurst (99). It is a body that is “proper,” ready for business, and suit-ed to the professional corporate world, whose values it also embodies (Edwards 42). In contrast, the costuming code of the Google generation of online marketers in the film is defined as “super cas[ual].” This is a workplace where the boss rides her bicycle through the open-space office and in which the other 219 workers define their individuality through informal dress and decoration. In this environment Ben stands out, as Jules comments on his first day:Jules: Don’t feel like you have to dress up.Ben: I’m comfortable in a suit if it’s okay.Jules: No, it’s fine. [grins] Old school.Ben: At least I’ll stand out.Jules: I don’t think you’ll need a suit to do that.The anachronism of a 70-year-old being an intern is materialised through Ben’s dress code. The business suit comes to represent Ben not only as old school, however, but as a “proper” manager.As the embodiment of a successful working woman, entrepreneur Jules Ostin appears to be the antithesis of the business-suit model of a manager. Consciously not playing by the book, her company is both highly successful, meeting its five-year objectives in only nine months, and highly vulnerable to disasters like bedbugs, delivery crises, and even badly wrapped tissue. Shaped in her image, the company is often directly associated with Jules herself, as Ben continually notes, and this comes to include the mix of success, vulnerability, and disaster. In fact, the success of her company is the reason that she is urged to find a “seasoned” CEO to run the company, indicating the ambiguous, simultaneous guise of success and disaster.This relationship between individual corporeality and the corporate workforce is reinforced when it is revealed that Ben worked as a manager for 40 years in the very same warehouse, reinforcing his qualities of longevity, reliability, and dependability. He oversaw the printing of the physical telephone book, another quaint material artefact of the past akin to Ben, which is shown to have literally shaped the building where the floor dips over in the corner due to the heavy printers. The differences between Ben and Jules as successive generations of managers in this building operate as registers of social change inflected with just a little nostalgia. Indeed, the name of Jules’s company, All About Fit, seems to refer more to the beautifully tailored “fit” of Ben’s business suit than to any of the other clothed bodies in the company.Not only is the business suit fitted to business, but it comes to represent a properly managed body as well. This is particularly evident when contrasted with Jules’s management style. Over the course of the film, as she endures a humiliating series of meetings, sends a disastrous email to the wrong recipient, and juggles her strained marriage and her daughter’s school schedule, Jules is continuously shown to teeter on the brink of losing control. Her bodily needs are exaggerated in the movie: she does not sleep and apparently risks “getting fat” according to her mother’s research; then when she does sleep it is in inappropriate places and she snores loudly; she forgets to eat, she cries, gets drunk and vomits, gets nervous, and gets emotional. All of these outpourings are in situations that Ben remedies, in his solid reliable suited self. As Longhurst reminds us,The suit helps to create an illusion of a hard, or at least a firm and “proper,” body that is autonomous, in control, rational and masculine. It gives the impression that bodily boundaries continually remain intact and reduce potential embarrassment caused by any kind of leakage. (99)Ben is thus suited to manage situations in ways that contrast to Jules, whose bodily emissions and emotional dramas reinforce her as feminine, chaotic, and emotionally vulnerable. As Gatens notes of our epistemological inheritance, “women are most often understood to be less able to control the passions of the body and this failure is often located in the a priori disorder or anarchy of the female body itself” (50). Transitioning these philosophical principles to the 21st-century workplace, however, manifests some angst around gender and generation in this film.Despite the film’s apparent advocacy of successful working women, Jules too comes to prefer Ben’s model of corporeal control and masculinity. Ben is someone who makes Jules “feel calm, more centred or something. I could use that, obviously,” she quips. After he leads the almost undifferentiated younger employees Jason, Davis, and Lewis on a physical email rescue, Jules presents her theory of men amidst shots at a bar to celebrate their heist:Jules: So, we were always told that we could be anything, do anything, and I think guys got, maybe not left behind but not quite as nurtured, you know? I mean, like, we were the generation of You go, Girl. We had Oprah. And I wonder sometimes how guys fit in, you know they still seem to be trying to figure it out. They’re still dressing like little boys, they’re still playing video games …Lewis: Well they’ve gotten great.Davis: I love video games.Ben: Oh boy.Jules: How, in one generation, have men gone from guys like Jack Nicholson and Harrison Ford to … [Lewis, Davis, and Jason look down at themselves]Jules: Take Ben, here. A dying breed. Look and learn boys, because if you ask me, this is what cool is.Jules’s excessive drinking in this scene, which is followed by her vomiting into a rubbish bin, appears to reinforce Ben’s stable sobriety, alongside the culture of excess and rapid change associated with Jules through her gender and generation.Jules’s adoption of Ben as the model of masculinity is timely, given that she consistently encounters “sexism in business.” After every meeting with a potential CEO Jules complains of their patronising approach—calling her company a “chick site,” for example. And yet Ben echoes the sartorial style of the 1960s Mad Men era, which is suffused with sexism. The tension between Ben’s modelling of old-fashioned chivalry and those outdated sexist businessmen who never appear on-screen remains linked, however, through the iconography of the suit. In his book Mediated Nostalgia, Lizardi notes a similar tendency in contemporary media for what he calls “presentist versions of the past […] that represent a simpler time” (6) where viewers are constructed as ”uncritical citizens of our own culture” (1). By heroising Ben as a model of white middle-class managerial masculinity that is nostalgically enduring and endearing, this film betrays a yearning for such a “simpler time,” despite the complexities that hover just off-screen.Indeed, most of the other male characters in the film are found wanting in comparison to the retro masculinity of Ben. Jules’s husband Matt appears to be a perfect modern “stay-at-home-dad” who gives up his career for Jules’s business start-up. Yet he is found to be having an affair with one of the school mums. Lewis’s clothes are also condemned by Ben: “Why doesn’t anyone tuck anything in anymore?” he complains. Jason does not know how to speak to his love-interest Becky, expecting that texting and emailing sad emoticons will suffice, and Davis is unable to find a place to live. Luckily Ben can offer advice and tutelage to these men, going so far as to house Davis and give him one of his “vintage” ties to wear. Jules endorses this, saying she loves men in ties.The BriefcaseIf a feature of Ben’s experienced managerial style is longevity and stability, then these values are also attached to his briefcase. The association between Ben and his briefcase is established when the briefcase is personified during preparations for Ben’s first day: “Back in action,” Ben tells it. According to Atkinson, the briefcase is a “signifier of executive status […] entwined with a ‘macho mystique’ of concealed technology” (192). He ties this to the emergence of Cold War spy films like James Bond and traces it to the development of the laptop computer. This mix of mobility, concealment, glamour, and a touch of playboy adventurousness in a mass-produced material product manifested the values of the corporate world in latter 20th-century work culture and rendered the briefcase an important part of executive masculinity. Ben’s briefcase is initially indicative of his anachronistic position in All About Fit. While Davis opens his canvas messenger bag to reveal a smartphone, charger, USB drive, multi-cable connector, and book, Ben mirrors this by taking out his glasses case, set of pens, calculator, fliptop phone, and travel clock. Later in the film he places a print newspaper and leather bound book back into the case. Despite the association with a pre-digital age, the briefcase quickly becomes a product associated with Ben’s retro style. Lewis, at the next computer console, asks about its brand:Ben: It’s a 1973 Executive Ashburn Attaché. They don’t make it anymore.Lewis: I’m a little in love with it.Ben: It’s a classic Lewis. It’s unbeatable.The attaché case is left over from Ben’s past in executive management as VP for sales and advertising. This was a position he held for twenty years, during his past working life, which was spent with the same company for over 40 years. Ben’s long-serving employment record has the same values as his equally long-serving attaché case: it is dependable, reliable, ages well, and outlasts changes in fashion.The kind of nostalgia invested in Ben and his briefcase is reinforced extradiagetically through the musical soundtracks associated with him. Compared to the undifferentiated upbeat tracks at the workplace, Ben’s scenes feature a slower-paced sound from another era, including Ray Charles, Astrud Gilberto, Billie Holiday, and Benny Goodman. These classics are a point of connection with Jules, who declares that she loves Billie Holiday. Yet Jules is otherwise characterised by upbeat, even frantic, timing. She hates slow talkers, is always on the move, and is renowned for being late for meetings and operating on what is known as “Jules Standard Time.” In contrast, like his music, Ben is always on time: setting two alarm clocks each night, driving shorter and more efficient routes, seeing things at just the right time, and even staying at work until the boss leaves. He is reliable, steady, and orderly. He restores order both to the office junk desk and to the desk of Jules’s personal assistant Becky. These characteristics of order and timeliness are offered as an alternative to the chaos of 21st-century global flows of fashion marketing. Like his longevity, time is measured and managed around Ben. Even his name echoes that veritable keeper of time, Big Ben.The HandkerchiefThe handkerchief is another anachronistic object that Ben routinely carries, concealed inside his suit rather than flamboyantly worn on the outside pocket. A neatly ironed square of white hanky, it forms a notable part of Ben’s closet, as Davis notices and enquires about:Davis: Okay what’s the deal with the handkerchief? I don’t get that at all.Ben: It’s essential. That your generation doesn’t know that is criminal. The reason for carrying a handkerchief is to lend it. Ask Jason about this. Women cry Davis. We carry it for them. One of the last vestiges of the chivalrous gent.Indeed, when Jules’s personal assistant Becky bursts into tears because her skills and overtime go unrecognised, Ben is able to offer the hanky to Jason to give her as a kind of white flag, officially signaling a ceasefire between Becky and Jason. This scene is didactic: Ben is teaching Jason how to talk to a woman with the handkerchief as a material prop to prompt the occasion. He also offers advice to Becky to keep more regular hours, and go out and have fun (with Jason, obviously). Despite Becky declaring she “hates girls who cry at work,” this reaction to the pressures of a contemporary work culture that is irregular, chaotic, and never-ending is clearly marking gender, as the handkerchief also marks a gendered transaction of comfort.The handkerchief functions as a material marker of the “chivalrous gent” partly due to the number of times women are seen to cry in this film. In one of Ben’s first encounters with Jules she is crying in a boardroom, when it is suggested that she find a CEO to manage the company. Ben is clearly embarrassed, as is Jules, indicating the inappropriateness of such bodily emissions at work and reinforcing the emotional currency of women in the workplace. Jules again cries while discussing her marriage crisis with Ben, a scene in which Ben comments it is “the one time when he doesn’t have a hanky.” By the end of the film, when Jules and Matt are reconciling, she suggests: “It would be great if you were to carry a handkerchief.” The remaking of modern men into the retro style of Ben is more fully manifested in Davis who is depicted going to work on the last day in the film in a suit and tie. No doubt a handkerchief lurks hidden within.ConclusionThe yearning that emerges for a masculinity of yesteryear means that the intern in this film, Ben Whittaker, becomes an internal moral compass who reminds us of rapid social changes in gender and work, and of their discomfits. That this should be mapped onto an older, white, heterosexual, male body is unsurprising, given the authority traditionally invested in such bodies. Ben’s retro masculinity, however, is a fantasy from a fictional yesteryear, without the social or political forces that render those times problematic; instead, his material culture is fetishised and stripped of political analysis. Ben even becomes the voice of feminism, correcting Jules for taking the blame for Matt’s affair. Buchbinder argues that the more recent manifestations in film and television of “inadequate or incomplete” masculinity can be understood as “enacting a resistance to or even a refusal of the coercive pressure of the gender system” (235, italics in original), and yet The Intern’s yearning for a slow, orderly, mature, and knowing male hero refuses much space for alternative younger models. Despite this apparently unerring adulation of retro masculinity, however, we are reminded of the sexist social culture that suits, briefcases, and handkerchiefs materialise every time Jules encounters one of the seasoned CEOs jostling to replace her. The yearning for a stable masculinity in this film comes at the cost of politicising the past, and imagining alternative models for the future.ReferencesAtkinson, Paul. “Man in a Briefcase: The Social Construction of the Laptop Computer and the Emergence of a Type Form.” Journal of Design History 18.2 (2005): 191-205. Buchbinder, David. “Enter the Schlemiel: The Emergence of Inadequate of Incompetent Masculinities in Recent Film and Television.” Canadian Review of American Studies 38.2 (2008): 227-245.Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble. New York: Routledge, 1990.Connell, R.W. Masculinities. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005.Edwards, Tim. Fashion in Focus: Concepts, Practices and Politics. London: Routledge, 2010.Gatens, Moira. Imaginary Bodies: Ethics, Power and Corporeality. New York: Routledge, 1996.Gilleard, Chris, and Paul Higgs. Ageing, Corporeality and Embodiment. London: Anthem, 2014.Lizardi, Ryan. Mediated Nostalgia: Individual Memory and Contemporary Mass Media. London: Lexington Books, 2015.Longhurst, Robyn. Bodies: Exploring Fluid Boundaries. London: Routledge, 2001.Meyers, Nancy, dir. The Intern. Warner Bros. Pictures, 2015.Turkle, Sherry. “The Things That Matter.” Evocative Objects: Things We Think With. Ed. Sherry Turkle. Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2007.Turner, Graeme. Film as Social Practice. 3rd ed. London: Routledge, 2002.Veenstra, Aleit, and Giselinde Kuipers. “It Is Not Old-Fashioned, It Is Vintage: Vintage Fashion and the Complexities of 21st Century Consumption Practices.” Sociology Compass 7.5 (2013): 355-365.

Abstract:

Introduction The study of online conspiracy theory communities presents unique methodological challenges. Online conspiracy theorists often adhere to an individualistic knowledge culture of “doing one’s own research” (Fenster 158). This results in a decentralised landscape of theories, narratives and communities that challenges conventional top-down approaches to analysis. Moreover, conspiracy theories tend to be discussed on the fringes of the online ecosystem, in chat groups, small subcultural Web forums and away from mainstream social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter (Frenkel; see also De Zeeuw et al.). In this context, the messaging app Telegram has developed into a particularly prominent space (Rogers, “Deplatforming”; Urman and Katz). On the one hand, this platform is not quite part of the same mainstream as Facebook or Twitter, owing in part to its emphasis on security, “social privacy”, and lack of central moderation (Rogers, “Deplatforming”). But it is also not quite an “alternative social medium” (Gehl), as it does not position itself in opposition to mainstream platforms per se, nor does its business model centered around investor funding and advertisem*nts present a break from the “dominant political economy” (ibid.). This ambiguous position might account for Telegram’s wide adoption, as well as its status as a relatively safe haven for communities deplatformed elsewhere – including a lively ecosystem of conspiracy theory communities (La Morgia et al.). Because Telegram communities are distributed over a wide range of channels and chat groups, they cannot always be investigated using existing analytical approaches for social media research. Confronting this challenge, we propose and discuss a method for studying Telegram communities that repurposes the “methods of the medium” (Rogers, Digital Methods). Specifically, our method appropriates Telegram’s feature of forwarding messages from one group to another to discover interlinked distributed communities, collect data from these communities for close reading, and map their information sharing practices. In this article, we will first present this approach and illustrate the types of analyses the collected data might afford in relation to a brief case study on Dutch-speaking conspiracy theories. In this short illustration, we map the convergence of right-wing and conspiratorial communities, both structurally and discursively. As Vieten discusses, “digital pandemic populism during lockdown might have pushed further the mobilisation of the far right, also on the streets”. In the Dutch context there has been a demonstrated connection between the two. Because of this connection, we were drawn to the questions of what these entanglements might look like in a relatively unmoderated Telegram environment. We then proceed to discuss some strengths and limitations, identify avenues for future research, and conclude with some ethical, methodological and epistemological reflections. Overview of Method Our method first combines expert knowledge, and the affordances of the Telegram app’s ‘search’ function to retrieve a set of channels mentioning specific politicians or political parties, as well as other marked terms that might point towards far-right or conspiratorial content. This includes wakker (awakened), variations of batavier and geus (nationalist demonyms), names of known far right politicians (such as The Netherlands’ Thierry Baudet and Flanders’ Dries Van Langenhove) and conspiracy theory activists, and volk (a term meaning roughly “our people”). As this approach precludes discovery of related groups that do not match the queries exactly, this initial curated list is then supplemented with channels advertised elsewhere, such as those featured on the Websites of far-right politicians and organisations, as well as channels covered in mainstream news media. This yields an initial expert list of channels, in our sample case of Dutch-speaking right-wing and conspiracist actors comprising 50 items. One might stop here, and collect data for this manually curated list of groups, as in Nikkhah et al.’s study of Telegram use among the Iranian diaspora in the United States, or Davey and Weinberg’s analysis of far-right groups used in the US military. But this would exclude any groups not known by the researchers; and groups are not always easy to naively discover on Telegram. Because of this, in a subsequent step, we expanded the initial set of relevant Telegram channels by crawling posts in these channels that were forwarded from other channels, constituting links between these channels. We used a custom crawler based on the open source library Selenium, which allows one to control a browser programmatically. The browser was then made to scroll through the Web-based view of the selected channels (e.g. https://t.me/s/durov). In principle, all messages ever posted in a channel are available in this view. We then follow those links, and store the names of the linked channels. Overall, this method thus presumes that if a channel forwards a message from another channel there will be some overlap in terms of topic of discussion between both, making the newly discovered channel similarly relevant to the analysis. This results in a network-like representation of connections between channels. In the context of our case study, this process expands our initial seed list to a list of over 215 relevant public channels, after discarding groups that are not germane to the case study, i.e. those that were not related to far-right or conspiracy theory-related communities. To verify this, channels were inductively coded by a team of four researchers after capture. We then repeat the data collection for this new list of channels, retrieving forwarded messages from over 370,000 total messages spanning the period 2017-2021. This dataset then serves as a starting point for structural analysis of the wider context of the community, aspects of which will be illustrated in the next section. Illustration Emphasising the value of a “quali-quanti” (Venturini and Latour) approach we offer a tentative analysis of the decentralised Dutch-speaking conspiracist narratives and communities on Telegram, and in a broader sense observe what such a distributed community may look like on the platform. This then suggests the various affordances which a dataset collected with this method can offer. Fig. 1: Network visualisation of collected channels (depth: 1) including channels forwarded from (4354 nodes). Nodes are sized and coloured by degree (amount of connections to other channels). A first observation that can be made concerns the topology of the network of channels we found (see fig. 1). A network analysis is a suitable distant reading approach for this kind of data, because it “maps and measures formal and informal relationships … viz., who knows whom, and who shares what information and knowledge with whom” (Serrat 40). It is a type of analysis that can reveal the relevance and positioning of actors and narratives within the data. In our network visualisation, we use the ForceAtlas2 algorithm (Jacomy et al.) to position the nodes. This algorithm makes more connected nodes “gravitate” towards each other; the more central a node is, the more connected it is to the rest of the network, roughly speaking (Figure 1). Highlighting the channels representing political parties shows, for example, that while the Dutch far right party FvD (FVDNL) is quite central (connected), this is not the case for the Flemish far right politician Dries Van Langenhove (kiesdries). This suggests that compared to a similar Flemish politician, the Dutch FvD is a more prominent part of the general conspiracist discussion – which is then perhaps more overtly politicised in the Dutch context. We can additionally discern channels that we might label “content aggregators”, which forward large numbers of messages from other channels but post comparatively little original content, occupying a relatively central place in the wider network. These content aggregators play an important structural role in the network, as other channels might forward messages from these collections on a “pick and choose” basis. More abstractly, they also serve to confirm thematic similarity between the channels messages are forwarded from, with the owners of the aggregator channels playing the role of a curator that collects interesting content about a certain topic of interest. Furthermore, our data reveal that the network is highly dynamic. As forwarded messages are timestamped, we can plot the graph at different moments in time. When comparing changes over a year, we can observe a significant growth in the number of channels that connect to the network particularly between 2020 and 2021 (see fig. 2). This growth, and the associated diversity of the network, can be attributed to Telegram’s role as a haven for actors that were deplatformed (or present themselves as targets of deplatforming and censorship) from other social media; a “platform of last resort”. Previous research has for instance indicated that a number of alt-right fringe actors moved to Telegram after being deplatformed from Facebook or Twitter (Rogers, “Deplatforming”). It can be hypothesised that events such as Donald Trump’s removal from Twitter around the time of the January 2021 Capitol riots might similarly have inspired other actors to move to Telegram in response to the platform policies of mainstream social media. Fig. 2: The channel network based on messages sent before June 2020 (334 nodes). Same layout and parameters as in Figure 1 (not to scale). Nodes also appearing in Figure 1 are highlighted. The structure of the network (in fig. 1) can also be used to discern ‘sub-communities’, which forward messages mutually but have relatively few links to the broader network. These can then be analysed qualitatively. This may then reveal that Flemish groups that oppose COVID-19 policies are less connected with the far right, whereas such groups that can be identified as Dutch seem to merge more easily with far-right channels. As discussed, this is also suggested by the position of FVDNL, the Dutch far-right political party Forum voor democratie (FvD) which is central in the network. On this level, this suggests that structurally, Dutch far-right parties are more explicitly affiliating themselves with conspiracy-related channels than Flemish parties. Actual textual analyses of the channels’ posts and images, however, could offer a more nuanced picture, whereby structurally unconnected channels might still share common harmful narratives, spanning anti-progressive discourse, anti-mainstream sentiments, anti-government discourse, and evocations of prominent conspiracy theories such as QAnon and The Great Reset. These structural analyses then present a number of possibilities for further content analysis, where one might for example “zoom in” on Dutch far-right groups in particular, and qualitatively study images posted therein to identify salient narratives and positions. Discussion Methodological Gains Variations of the proposed approach have been used in other work (e.g. Hashemi and Chahooki; La Morgia et al.). Most prominently, the Pushshift Telegram Dataset (Baumgartner et al.) comprises a large dataset of channel metadata, author metadata and messages. This dataset was collected by discovering new channels from an initial seed list of approximately 300 channels using forwarded messages, and then collecting messages from these channels. While there is great archival value in the resulting datasets, our approach differs from these earlier approaches in a number of instructive ways. Like other work we appropriate an affordance of Telegram – forwarded messages – for our own research purposes, but we purposely limit the extent of “following” these forwarded messages. Though one could keep following links indefinitely, not every link is a link that is structural to the distributed community of users that is of interest here. Though more extensive crawling might reveal ever more channels and associated data, these are also increasingly unlikely to be related to the initial topic of interest, and are in any case further removed from the users of the initial seed groups. For this reason, we use a relatively shallow crawl depth and only retain links up to two “hops” away from the initial seed channels. This trades a higher number of crawled channels for a higher likelihood that the captured channels are indeed relevant to the case study. The suitable crawl depth would differ from case to case. In our case, it was established empirically through pilot crawls, which were stopped once collected groups appeared to no longer be strongly connected to the initial seed groups by topic. Datasets of this type are often also difficult to reproduce or qualify. For example for the datasets compiled by La Morgia et al. as well as for Baumgartner et al., the original seed list is not provided. Because of this, it is impossible to see where the network of found groups originates and how it might be biased one way or another. We suggest that where possible, this seed list is documented and shared. In our case, this would be particularly important as the seeds represent an intentional and explicit bias; that is, Dutch-speaking conspiracy-themed and far-right groups. If the starting point of the crawl is documented, one could potentially re-collect the data later from the same starting points and compare results to those found initially, allowing for longitudinal analyses of the topology of these communities. Ethics The method described here does not deal with personally identifiable information (PII) per se; one can map the channel network on a structural level without collecting user data or analysing specific messages, when purely tracing the origin of forwarded messages. It should be noted, however, that in the process of collecting these structural data, one can potentially go further. For example, it is possible to scrape the full content of messages. When also including chat groups, user details including (user-provided) full names are also available. Their inclusion in (public) datasets should be subject to closer scrutiny than that of public channels, as the former may represent conversations had under the assumption that this conversation was more or less off the record; while the latter are explicitly intended for information broadcast. Even if many of these chat groups are technically public, we should consider that "even if users are aware of being observed by others, they do not consider the possibility that their actions and interactions may be documented and analysed in detail at a later occasion" (Sveningsson Elm 77). In many cases, a (structural) analysis of only channels strikes a good balance between collecting representative data and respecting the privacy of those who produce the collected data. Avenues for Future Research The method may be expanded in a number of ways. One could, as discussed, increase the amount of crawl iterations, which would expand the network at the potential cost of case-specificity. A larger seed list could also increase the quantity of the data, though the effect of this can often be limited, as a relatively limited amount of channels forward messages from other channels. Links between channels could be collected not only from forwarded messages, as we do here, but also via other repurposed Telegram features such as channel invitation links or simple hyperlinks to other channels found in message content. The latter would require more fine-grained parsing of the message texts through natural language processing, for example, as a hyperlink can suggest a wider range of connections than an intentionally forwarded message. Additionally, and as previously mentioned, one could include not only public channels but also public chat groups, which are often linked to these channels and offer a space for people to discuss the content posted in them. While this can be an attractive way of acquiring extra data, we forego this in our example. As discussed, there are ethical trade-offs to consider when deciding to work with data from groups; but, it can be argued that Telegram channels represent an explicit “broadcast” style of communication (Shehabat et al.). Because the channel owner(s) decide what is worthy of sharing, one can reasonably assume that if one “follows the medium” here, all content retrieved from a channel will be somewhat relevant to the channel's purported theme. Conversely, discourse in chat groups might be expected to meander into a variety of directions and can easily include many (forwarded) messages only tangentially related to the case study of interest. Conclusion In this article we have sought to present one methodological approach to studying communities on Telegram. Rather than presenting a thorough case study or a definitive analysis of the Telegram-based community we discuss, our goal was to demonstrate the method's benefits but also its potential shortcomings, avenues of further development, and what types of analysis data collected with it might afford. A cursory analysis of the fringe community we studied here shows how with such data one can map a given community or set of communities on a structural level, which may then be used to demarcate areas of interest for further content analysis. The observations presented in this article are far from a complete picture of the data collected, but can serve as suggestions for analytical avenues one might venture down in a more substantive analysis. Beyond these observations, our repurposing of “the methods of the medium” (Rogers, Digital Methods) through forwarded messages allows us to contribute an empirically informed reflection on the possibilities and limitations of studying conspiracist information sharing practices on Telegram. Our method for instance highlights tensions between public and private knowledge, whereby we only consider information from public channels, and for technical and ethical reasons omit Telegram’s closed-off, private chat groups from our analysis. Our method of sourcing channels through forwarded messages does not preclude the existence of isolated channels or clusters of channels that, for a lack of forwarded messages from channels that were already identified, elude the scope of such snowballing efforts. Along the same lines, one could imagine that a deeper, more far-reaching crawl would reveal some strange bedfellows for the initial seed that were not part of our a priori understanding and hypotheses concerning the communities of interest. All of these considerations represent choices that may be taken differently depending on the case study at hand. Statement on Data and Ethics The analysis on offer in this article is limited to names of public channels on Telegram and we purposely refrain from citing channel names or analysing specific messages so they cannot be traced back to single persons. Our analysis does not comprise live subjects or PII, and thus did not require ERB clearance from our respective institutions. The anonymised dataset described above is available upon request via Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6344795. Acknowledgements We would like to thank Nathalie van Raemdonck (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) and Jasmin Seijbel (Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam) for their contributions to the empirical work underlying this article. References Baumgartner, Jason, et al. “The Pushshift Telegram Dataset.” Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media 14 (2020): 840–847. Blondel, Vincent D., et al. “Fast Unfolding of Communities in Large Networks.” Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment 2008.10 (2008): P10008. Davey, Jacob, and Dana Weinberg. Influence: Discussions of the US Military in Extreme Right-Wing Telegram Channels. ISD Global, 2021. De Zeeuw, Daniel et al. “Tracing Normiefication: A Cross-Platform Analysis of the QAnon Conspiracy Theory.” First Monday 25.1 (2020). Fenster, Mark. Conspiracy Theories. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2008. Frenkel, Sheera. “Facebook Amps Up Its Crackdown on QAnon.” The New York Times 6 Oct. 2020, sec. Technology. <https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/06/technology/facebook-qanon-crackdown.html>. Gehl, Robert W. “The Case for Alternative Social Media.” Social Media + Society 1.2 (2015). Hashemi, Ali, and Mohammad Ali Zare Chahooki. “Telegram Group Quality Measurement by User Behavior Analysis.” Social Network Analysis and Mining 9.1 (2019): 33. Jacomy, Mathieu, et al. “ForceAtlas2, a Continuous Graph Layout Algorithm for Handy Network Visualization Designed for the Gephi Software.” PLOS ONE 9.6 (2014): e98679. La Morgia, Massimo et al. “Uncovering the Dark Side of Telegram: Fakes, Clones, Scams, and Conspiracy Movements.” arXiv:2111.13530 [cs] (2021). <http://arxiv.org/abs/2111.13530>. Nikkhah, Sarah, et al. “Coming to America: Iranians’ Use of Telegram for Immigration Information Seeking.” Aslib Journal of Information Management 72.4 (2020): 561–585. Rogers, Richard. “Deplatforming: Following Extreme Internet Celebrities to Telegram and Alternative Social Media.” European Journal of Communication 35.3 (2020): 213–229. ———. Digital Methods. Cambridge: MIT P, 2013. Serrat, Olivier. “Social Network Analysis.” In Knowledge Solutions: Tools, Methods, and Approaches to Drive Organizational Performance. Ed. Olivier Serrat. Singapore: Springer, 2017. 39–43. <https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0983-9_9>. Shehabat, Ahmad, Teodor Mitew, and Yahia Alzoubi. “Encrypted Jihad: Investigating the Role of Telegram App in Lone Wolf Attacks in the West.” Journal of Strategic Security 10.3 (2017): 27–53. Sveningsson Elm, Malin. “How Do Various Notions of Privacy Influence Decisions in Qualitative Internet Research?” In Internet Inquiry: Conversations about Method. Eds. Annette Markham and Nancy Baym. SAGE, 2009. 69–97. Urman, Aleksandra, and Stefan Katz. “What They Do in the Shadows: Examining the Far-Right Networks on Telegram.” Information, Communication & Society (2020). Venturini, Tommaso, and Bruno Latour. “The Social Fabric: Digital Footprints and Quali-quantitative Methods.” In Proceedings of Futur en Seine 2009: The Digital Future of the City. Festival for Digital Life and Creativity, 2010. 87-101. Vieten, Ulrike M. “The ‘New Normal’ and ‘Pandemic Populism’: The COVID-19 Crisis and Anti-Hygienic Mobilisation of the Far-Right.” Social Sciences 9.9 [165] (2020).

Abstract:

In 1956, John Cage predicted that “in the future, records will be made from records” (Duffel, 202). Certainly, musical creativity has always involved a certain amount of appropriation and adaptation of previous works. For example, Vivaldi appropriated and adapted the “Cum sancto spiritu” fugue of Ruggieri’s Gloria (Burnett, 4; Forbes, 261). If stuck for a guitar solo on stage, Keith Richards admits that he’ll adapt Buddy Holly for his own purposes (Street, 135). Similarly, Nirvana adapted the opening riff from Killing Jokes’ “Eighties” for their song “Come as You Are”. Musical “quotation” is actively encouraged in jazz, and contemporary hip-hop would not exist if the genre’s pioneers and progenitors had not plundered and adapted existing recorded music. Sampling technologies, however, have taken musical adaptation a step further and realised Cage’s prediction. Hardware and software samplers have developed to the stage where any piece of audio can be appropriated and adapted to suit the creative impulses of the sampling musician (or samplist). The practice of sampling challenges established notions of creativity, with whole albums created with no original musical input as most would understand it—literally “records made from records.” Sample-based music is premised on adapting audio plundered from the cultural environment. This paper explores the ways in which technology is used to adapt previous recordings into new ones, and how musicians themselves have adapted to the potentials of digital technology for exploring alternative approaches to musical creativity. Sampling is frequently defined as “the process of converting an analog signal to a digital format.” While this definition remains true, it does not acknowledge the prevalence of digital media. The “analogue to digital” method of sampling requires a microphone or instrument to be recorded directly into a sampler. Digital media, however, simplifies the process. For example, a samplist can download a video from YouTube and rip the audio track for editing, slicing, and manipulation, all using software within the noiseless digital environment of the computer. Perhaps it is more prudent to describe sampling simply as the process of capturing sound. Regardless of the process, once a sound is loaded into a sampler (hardware or software) it can be replayed using a MIDI keyboard, trigger pad or sequencer. Use of the sampled sound, however, need not be a faithful rendition or clone of the original. At the most basic level of manipulation, the duration and pitch of sounds can be altered. The digital processes that are implemented into the Roland VariOS Phrase Sampler allow samplists to eliminate the pitch or melodic quality of a sampled phrase. The phrase can then be melodically redefined as the samplist sees fit: adapted to a new tempo, key signature, and context or genre. Similarly, software such as Propellerhead’s ReCycle slices drum beats into individual hits for use with a loop sampler such as Reason’s Dr Rex module. Once loaded into Dr Rex, the individual original drum sounds can be used to program a new beat divorced from the syncopation of the original drum beat. Further, the individual slices can be subjected to pitch, envelope (a component that shapes the volume of the sound over time) and filter (a component that emphasises and suppresses certain frequencies) control, thus an existing drum beat can easily be adapted to play a new rhythm at any tempo. For example, this rhythm was created from slicing up and rearranging Clyde Stubblefield’s classic break from James Brown’s “Funky Drummer”. Sonic adaptation of digital information is not necessarily confined to the auditory realm. An audio editor such as Sony’s Sound Forge is able to open any file format as raw audio. For example, a Word document or a Flash file could be opened with the data interpreted as audio. Admittedly, the majority of results obtained are harsh white noise, but there is scope for serendipitous anomalies such as a glitchy beat that can be extracted and further manipulated by audio software. Audiopaint is an additive synthesis application created by Nicolas Fournel for converting digital images into audio. Each pixel position and colour is translated into information designating frequency (pitch), amplitude (volume) and pan position in the stereo image. The user can determine which one of the three RGB channels corresponds to either of the stereo channels. Further, the oscillator for the wave form can be either the default sine wave or an existing audio file such as a drum loop can be used. The oscillator shapes the end result, responding to the dynamics of the sine wave or the audio file. Although Audiopaint labours under the same caveat as with the use of raw audio, the software can produce some interesting results. Both approaches to sound generation present results that challenge distinctions between “musical sound” and “noise”. Sampling is also a cultural practice, a relatively recent form of adaptation extending out of a time honoured creative aesthetic that borrows, quotes and appropriates from existing works to create new ones. Different fields of production, as well as different commentators, variously use terms such as “co-creative media”, “cumulative authorship”, and “derivative works” with regard to creations that to one extent or another utilise existing works in the production of new ones (Coombe; Morris; Woodmansee). The extent of the sampling may range from subtle influence to dominating significance within the new work, but the constant principle remains: an existing work is appropriated and adapted to fit the needs of the secondary creator. Proponents of what may be broadly referred to as the “free culture” movement argue that creativity and innovation inherently relies on the appropriation and adaptation of existing works (for example, see Lessig, Future of Ideas; Lessig, Free Culture; McLeod, Freedom of Expression; Vaidhyanathan). For example, Gwen Stefani’s 2004 release “Rich Girl” is based on Louchie Lou and Michie One’s 1994 single of the same title. Lou and One’s “Rich Girl”, in turn, is a reggae dance hall adaptation of “If I Were a Rich Man” from Fiddler on the Roof. Stefani’s “na na na” vocal riff shares the same melody as the “Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum” riff from Fiddler on the Roof. Samantha Mumba adapted David Bowie’s “Ashes to Ashes” for her second single “Body II Body”. Similarly, Richard X adapted Tubeway Army’s “Are ‘Friends’ Electric?’ and Adina Howard’s “Freak Like Me” for a career saving single for Sugababes. Digital technologies enable and even promote the adaptation of existing works (Morris). The ease of appropriating and manipulating digital audio files has given rise to a form of music known variously as mash-up, bootleg, or bastard pop. Mash-ups are the most recent stage in a history of musical appropriation and they epitomise the sampling aesthetic. Typically produced in bedroom computer-based studios, mash-up artists use software such as Acid or Cool Edit Pro to cut up digital music files and reassemble the fragments to create new songs, arbitrarily adding self-composed parts if desired. Comprised almost exclusively from sections of captured music, mash-ups have been referred to as “fictional pop music” because they conjure up scenarios where, for example, Destiny’s Child jams in a Seattle garage with Nirvana or the Spice Girls perform with Nine Inch Nails (Petridis). Once the initial humour of the novelty has passed, the results can be deeply alluring. Mash-ups extract the distinctive characteristics of songs and place them in new, innovative contexts. As Dale Lawrence writes: “the vocals are often taken from largely reviled or ignored sources—cornball acts like Aguilera or Destiny’s Child—and recast in wildly unlikely contexts … where against all odds, they actually work”. Similarly, Crawford argues that “part of the art is to combine the greatest possible aesthetic dissonance with the maximum musical harmony. The pleasure for listeners is in discovering unlikely artistic complementarities and revisiting their musical memories in mutated forms” (36). Sometimes the adaptation works in the favour of the sampled artist: George Clinton claims that because of sampling he is more popular now than in 1976—“the sampling made us big again” (Green). The creative aspect of mash-ups is unlike that usually associated with musical composition and has more in common with DJing. In an effort to further clarify this aspect, we may regard DJ mixes as “mash-ups on the fly.” When Grandmaster Flash recorded his quilt-pop masterpiece, “Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel,” it was recorded while he performed live, demonstrating his precision and skill with turntables. Modern audio editing software facilitates the capture and storage of sound, allowing mash-up artists to manipulate sounds bytes outside of “real-time” and the live performance parameters within which Flash worked. Thus, the creative element is not the traditional arrangement of chords and parts, but rather “audio contexts”. If, as Riley pessimistically suggests, “there are no new chords to be played, there are no new song structures to be developed, there are no new stories to be told, and there are no new themes to explore,” then perhaps it is understandable that artists have searched for new forms of musical creativity. The notes and chords of mash-ups are segments of existing works sequenced together to produce inter-layered contexts rather than purely tonal patterns. The merit of mash-up culture lies in its function of deconstructing the boundaries of genre and providing new musical possibilities. The process of mashing-up genres functions to critique contemporary music culture by “pointing a finger at how stifled and obvious the current musical landscape has become. … Suddenly rap doesn’t have to be set to predictable funk beats, pop/R&B ballads don’t have to come wrapped in cheese, garage melodies don’t have to recycle the Ramones” (Lawrence). According to Theodor Adorno, the Frankfurt School critic, popular music (of his time) was irretrievably simplistic and constructed from easily interchangeable, modular components (McLeod, “Confessions”, 86). A standardised and repetitive approach to musical composition fosters a mode of consumption dubbed by Adorno “quotation listening” and characterised by passive acceptance of, and obsession with, a song’s riffs (44-5). As noted by Em McAvan, Adorno’s analysis elevates the producer over the consumer, portraying a culture industry controlling a passive audience through standardised products (McAvan). The characteristics that Adorno observed in the popular music of his time are classic traits of contemporary popular music. Mash-up artists, however, are not representative of Adorno’s producers for a passive audience, instead opting to wrest creative control from composers and the recording industry and adapt existing songs in pursuit of their own creative impulses. Although mash-up productions may consciously or unconsciously criticise the current state of popular music, they necessarily exist in creative symbiosis with the commercial genres: “if pop songs weren’t simple and formulaic, it would be much harder for mashup bedroom auteurs to do their job” (McLeod, “Confessions”, 86). Arguably, when creating mash-ups, some individuals are expressing their dissatisfaction with the stagnation of the pop industry and are instead working to create music that they as consumers wish to hear. Sample-based music—as an exercise in adaptation—encourages a Foucauldian questioning of the composer’s authority over their musical texts. Recorded music is typically a passive medium in which the consumer receives the music in its original, unaltered form. DJ Dangermouse (Brian Burton) breached this pact to create his Grey Album, which is a mash-up of an a cappella version of Jay-Z’s Black Album and the Beatles’ eponymous album (also known as the White Album). Dangermouse says that “every kick, snare, and chord is taken from the Beatles White Album and is in their original recording somewhere.” In deconstructing the Beatles’ songs, Dangermouse turned the recordings into a palette for creating his own new work, adapting audio fragments to suit his creative impulses. As Joanna Demers writes, “refashioning these sounds and reorganising them into new sonic phrases and sentences, he creates acoustic mosaics that in most instances are still traceable to the Beatles source, yet are unmistakeably distinct from it” (139-40). Dangermouse’s approach is symptomatic of what Schütze refers to as remix culture: an open challenge to a culture predicated on exclusive ownership, authorship, and controlled distribution … . Against ownership it upholds an ethic of creative borrowing and sharing. Against the original it holds out an open process of recombination and creative transformation. It equally calls into question the categories, rifts and borders between high and low cultures, pop and elitist art practices, as well as blurring lines between artistic disciplines. Using just a laptop, an audio editor and a calculator, Gregg Gillis, a.k.a. Girl Talk, created the Night Ripper album using samples from 167 artists (Dombale). Although all the songs on Night Ripper are blatantly sampled-based, Gillis sees his creations as “original things” (Dombale). The adaptation of sampled fragments culled from the Top 40 is part of Gillis’ creative process: “It’s not about who created this source originally, it’s about recontextualising—creating new music. … I’ve always tried to make my own songs” (Dombale). Gillis states that his music has no political message, but is a reflection of his enthusiasm for pop music: “It’s a celebration of everything Top 40, that’s the point” (Dombale). Gillis’ “celebratory” exercises in creativity echo those of various fan-fiction authors who celebrate the characters and worlds that constitute popular culture. Adaptation through sampling is not always centred solely on music. Sydney-based Tom Compagnoni, a.k.a. Wax Audio, adapted a variety of sound bytes from politicians and media personalities including George W. Bush, Alexander Downer, Alan Jones, Ray Hadley, and John Howard in the creation of his Mediacracy E.P.. In one particular instance, Compagnoni used a myriad of samples culled from various media appearances by George W. Bush to recreate the vocals for John Lennon’s Imagine. Created in early 2005, the track, which features speeded-up instrumental samples from a karaoke version of Lennon’s original, is an immediate irony fuelled comment on the invasion of Iraq. The rationale underpinning the song is further emphasised when “Imagine This” reprises into “Let’s Give Peace a Chance” interspersed with short vocal fragments of “Come Together”. Compagnoni justifies his adaptations by presenting appropriated media sound bytes that deliberately set out to demonstrate the way information is manipulated to present any particular point of view. Playing the media like an instrument, Wax Audio juxtaposes found sounds in a way that forces the listener to confront the bias, contradiction and sensationalism inherent in their daily intake of media information. … Oh yeah—and it’s bloody funny hearing George W Bush sing “Imagine”. Notwithstanding the humorous quality of the songs, Mediacracy represents a creative outlet for Compagnoni’s political opinions that is emphasised by the adaptation of Lennon’s song. Through his adaptation, Compagnoni revitalises Lennon’s sentiments about the Vietnam War and superimposes them onto the US policy on Iraq. An interesting aspect of sampled-based music is the re-occurrence of particular samples across various productions, which demonstrates that the same fragment can be adapted for a plethora of musical contexts. For example, Clyde Stubblefield’s “Funky Drummer” break is reputed to be the most sampled break in the world. The break from 1960s soul/funk band the Winstons’ “Amen Brother” (the B-side to their 1969 release “Color Him Father”), however, is another candidate for the title of “most sampled break”. The “Amen break” was revived with the advent of the sampler. Having featured heavily in early hip-hop records such as “Words of Wisdom” by Third Base and “Straight Out of Compton” by NWA, the break “appears quite adaptable to a range of music genres and tastes” (Harrison, 9m 46s). Beginning in the early 1990s, adaptations of this break became a constant of jungle music as sampling technology developed to facilitate more complex operations (Harrison, 5m 52s). The break features on Shy FX’s “Original Nutta”, L Double & Younghead’s “New Style”, Squarepusher’s “Big Acid”, and a cover version of Led Zepplin’s “Whole Lotta Love” by Jane’s Addiction front man Perry Farrell. This is to name but a few tracks that have adapted the break. Wikipedia offers a list of songs employing an adaptation of the “Amen break”. This list, however, falls short of the “hundreds of tracks” argued for by Nate Harrison, who notes that “an entire subculture based on this one drum loop … six seconds from 1969” has developed (8m 45s). The “Amen break” is so ubiquitous that, much like the twelve bar blues structure, it has become a foundational element of an entire genre and has been adapted to satisfy a plethora of creative impulses. The sheer prevalence of the “Amen break” simultaneously illustrates the creative nature of music adaptation as well as the potentials for adaptation stemming from digital technology such as the sampler. The cut-up and rearrangement aspect of creative sampling technology at once suggests the original but also something new and different. Sampling in general, and the phenomenon of the “Amen break” in particular, ensures the longevity of the original sources; sampled-based music exhibits characteristics acquired from the source materials, yet the illegitimate offspring are not their parents. Sampling as a technology for creatively adapting existing forms of audio has encouraged alternative approaches to musical composition. Further, it has given rise to a new breed of musician that has adapted to technologies of adaptation. Mash-up artists and samplists demonstrate that recorded music is not simply a fixed or read-only product but one that can be freed from the composer’s original arrangement to be adapted and reconfigured. Many mash-up artists such as Gregg Gillis are not trained musicians, but their ears are honed from enthusiastic consumption of music. Individuals such as DJ Dangermouse, Gregg Gillis and Tom Compagnoni appropriate, reshape and re-present the surrounding soundscape to suit diverse creative urges, thereby adapting the passive medium of recorded sound into an active production tool. References Adorno, Theodor. “On the Fetish Character in Music and the Regression of Listening.” The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture. Ed. J. Bernstein. London, New York: Routledge, 1991. Burnett, Henry. “Ruggieri and Vivaldi: Two Venetian Gloria Settings.” American Choral Review 30 (1988): 3. Compagnoni, Tom. “Wax Audio: Mediacracy.” Wax Audio. 2005. 2 Apr. 2007 http://www.waxaudio.com.au/downloads/mediacracy>. Coombe, Rosemary. The Cultural Life of Intellectual Properties. Durham, London: Duke University Press, 1998. Demers, Joanna. Steal This Music: How Intellectual Property Law Affects Musical Creativity. Athens, London: University of Georgia Press, 2006. Dombale, Ryan. “Interview: Girl Talk.” Pitchfork. 2006. 9 Jan. 2007 http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/feature/37785/Interview_Interview_Girl_Talk>. Duffel, Daniel. Making Music with Samples. San Francisco: Backbeat Books, 2005. Forbes, Anne-Marie. “A Venetian Festal Gloria: Antonio Lotti’s Gloria in D Major.” Music Research: New Directions for a New Century. Eds. M. Ewans, R. Halton, and J. Phillips. London: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2004. Green, Robert. “George Clinton: Ambassador from the Mothership.” Synthesis. Undated. 15 Sep. 2005 http://www.synthesis.net/music/story.php?type=story&id=70>. Harrison, Nate. “Can I Get an Amen?” Nate Harrison. 2004. 8 Jan. 2007 http://www.nkhstudio.com>. Lawrence, Dale. “On Mashups.” Nuvo. 2002. 8 Jan. 2007 http://www.nuvo.net/articles/article_292/>. Lessig, Lawrence. The Future of Ideas. New York: Random House, 2001. ———. Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity. New York: The Penguin Press, 2004. McAvan, Em. “Boulevard of Broken Songs: Mash-Ups as Textual Re-Appropriation of Popular Music Culture.” M/C Journal 9.6 (2006) 3 Apr. 2007 http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0612/02-mcavan.php>. McLeod, Kembrew. “Confessions of an Intellectual (Property): Danger Mouse, Mickey Mouse, Sonny Bono, and My Long and Winding Path as a Copyright Activist-Academic.” Popular Music & Society 28.79. ———. Freedom of Expression: Overzealous Copyright Bozos and Other Enemies of Creativity. United States: Doubleday Books. Morris, Sue. “Co-Creative Media: Online Multiplayer Computer Game Culture.” Scan 1.1 (2004). 8 Jan. 2007 http://scan.net.au/scan/journal/display_article.php?recordID=16>. Petridis, Alexis. “Pop Will Eat Itself.” The Guardian UK. March 2003. 8 Jan. 2007 http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/critic/feature/0,1169,922797,00.html>. Riley. “Pop Will Eat Itself—Or Will It?”. The Truth Unknown (archived at Archive.org). 2003. 9 Jan. 2007 http://web.archive.org/web/20030624154252 /www.thetruthunknown.com/viewnews.asp?articleid=79>. Schütze, Bernard. “Samples from the Heap: Notes on Recycling the Detritus of a Remixed Culture”. Horizon Zero 2003. 8 Jan. 2007 http://www.horizonzero.ca/textsite/remix.php?tlang=0&is=8&file=5>. Vaidhyanathan, Siva. Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity. New York, London: New York University Press, 2003. Woodmansee, Martha. “On the Author Effect: Recovering Collectivity.” The Construction of Authorship: Textual Appropriation in Law and Literature. Eds. M. Woodmansee, P. Jaszi and P. Durham; London: Duke University Press, 1994. 15. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Collins, Steve. "Amen to That: Sampling and Adapting the Past." M/C Journal 10.2 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0705/09-collins.php>. APA Style Collins, S. 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Abstract:

Cute pictures of animals feature as an inoffensive and adorable background to the contemporary online experience with cute content regularly shared on social media platforms. Indeed the demand for cuteness is so strong in the current cultural milieu that some animals become recognisable animal celebrities in the process (Hepola). However, despite the existence of this professionalisation in some sections of the cute economy, amateurs produce the majority of cute content that circulates online. This is largely because one of the central contributors to this steady stream of cute animal pictures is the subforum Aww, hosted on the online community Reddit. Aww is wholly dedicated to pictures of cute things and allows users to directly submit cute content directly to the site. Aww is one of the default subforums that new Reddit users are automatically subscribed to and is immensely popular, featuring over 4.2 million dedicated subscribers as well as untold casual visits. The section is self-described as: “Things that make you go AWW! -- like puppies, and bunnies, and so on...Feel free to post pictures, videos and stories of cute things” ("The cutest things on the internet!"). Users upload cute animal photos that they have taken and wait for the Reddit community to vote on their favourite pictures. The voting mechanism helps users to acknowledge their favourite posts, with the most popular featured on the front page of Aww (for a detailed critique of this process see van der Nagel 2013). The user-generated model of the site means that instead of visitors being confronted with a formally curated selection of cute animal photos, Aww offers a constantly changing mixture of amateur, semi-pro and professional content. Aww - and Reddit more generally - stand as an emblematic example of participatory culture (Jenkins 2006), with users playing an active role in the production and curation of online content. However, given the commercial nature of many user-generated content sites, this amateur media activity is becoming increasingly subject to intellectual property claims and conflicts (see Burgess; Kennedy). Across the internet there are growing tensions between website operators and amateur producers. As Jenny Kennedy (132) notes, while these platforms promote a public rhetoric of “sharing”, these corporate narratives “downplay their economic power” and imply “that they do not control the practices contained within their sites”. Subsequently, the expectations of users regarding how content is managed and organised can differ substantially from the corporate goals of social media companies. This paper contributes to the growing body of literature interested in the politics of amateur media production (see Hunter and Lastowka; Benkler; Burgess; Kennedy) by exploring the emergence of attribution norms and informal enforcement measures in and around the Aww online community. In contrast to professional content creators, amateurs often have fewer resources on hand to protect their copyrighted work and are also challenged by a pervasive online rhetoric that suggests that popular content essentially “belongs to the Internet” (Douglas). A number of communities on Reddit have questioned the company’s handling of amateur content with users suggesting that Reddit actively seeks to de-contextualise original content and not attribute original creators. By examining how amateur creators and online communities regulate content online, I interrogate the power relations that exist between social media platforms and users and explore how the corporate rhetoric of participatory culture interacts with the legal framework of copyright law. This article also contributes to existing legal scholarship on communities of practice and norms-based intellectual property systems. This literature has explored how social norms effectively regulate the protection of, among other things, recipes (Fauchart and Von Hippel), fashion design (Raustiala and Sprigman) and stand-up comedy routines (Oliar and Sprigman), in situations where copyright law does not function as an effective regulatory mechanism. Often these norms are in line with copyright law protections, but in other cases they diverge from these legal principles. In this paper I suggest that particular sections of Reddit function in a similar way, with their own set of self-governing norms, and that these norms largely align with the philosophical aims of copyright law. The paper begins by outlining a series of recent debates that have occurred between amateur media creators and Reddit, before exploring how norms are regulated on Reddit subforums Aww and Karma Court. I then offer some brief conclusions on the value of paying attention to how social norms structure forms of “sharing” (see Kennedy) and provide a useful way for amateur media producers to protect their content without going through formal legal processes. Introducing Reddit and the Confused Politics of Amateur Content Reddit is a social news site, a vibrant community and one of the most popular websites online. It stands as the most visible iteration of a long-standing tradition of user-generated and managed news, one that goes back to websites like Slashdot, which operated in the mid to late-90s. Founded in 2005 Reddit was launched after only one funding round of venture capital, receiving $100k in seed funding from Y Combinatory (Miller). Despite some early rivalry between Reddit and competitor site Digg, Reddit had enough potential to be purchased by Condé Nast for an estimated $20 million (Carr). Reddit’s audience numbers have grown exponentially in the last few years, with the site currently receiving over 5 billion page views and 114 million unique visitors per month (“About Reddit”). It has also changed focus significantly in the last few years with the site now “as much about posting interesting or funny pictures as it is about news” (Sepponen). Reddit hosts a number of individual subforums (called subreddits), which focus on a particular topic and function essentially like online bulletin boards. The front-page of Reddit showcases the most popular content from across the whole website, and user-generated content features heavily here. Amateur media cannot spread without the structural support of social media platforms, but this support is qualified in particular ways. Reddit stands as a paradigmatic case. Users on Reddit are “incentivized to submit direct links to images, because viewers can get to them more easily” (Douglas) and the website encourages amateur creators to use a preferred content server – Imgur – to host images. The Imgur service provides a direct public link to an image – even bypassing the Reddit discussion page – and with its free hosting and limited ads it has become a popular service and is used by most Reddit users (Slater-Robins). For the majority of Reddit users this is an unproblematic partnership. Imgur is free, effective and fast. However, a vocal minority of Reddit users and amateur creators claim that the partnership between Reddit and Imgur has created the equivalent of an online ghetto (Douglas).As Nick Douglas explains, when using services like Imgur there is no requirement to either provide an external link to a creators website or to attribute the creator, limiting the ability for an amateur creator to gain exposure. It also bypasses existing revenue streams that may have been set up by creators, including ad-supported websites or online stores offering merchandise. As a result creators have little opportunity to benefit either economically or reputationally from this system. This occurs to such an extent that “there are actually warnings against submitting your own [original] work” to particular subforums on Reddit (Douglas). For example, some forum moderators require submissions to either “link directly to a specific image file or to a website with minimal ads” (“Reddit Pics”). It is in this context, that the posting of original content without attribution is not actively policed. There are a number of complaints circulating within the Reddit community about these practices (see “Ok, look people. I know you heart Imgur, but webcomics? Just link to the freaking site”; “The problem with reddit”). Many creators have directly protested against this aspect of Reddit’s structural organisation. Blogger Benjamin Grelle (a.k.a The Frogman) and writer Chris Menning are two notable examples. Grelle’s protest was witty and dramatic. He wrote a blog post featuring a picture of an email he sent to Imgur offering the company a choice: send him a huge novelty check for $10,000 or alternatively, add a proper attribution system that allows artists, photographers and content creators to properly credit their work. Grelle estimates that his work generated around $20,000 in ad revenue for Imgur; however the structure of Reddit and Imgur meant he earned little income from the “viral” success of his content. Grelle claimed he was happy for his work to be shared, but attribution meant that it was more likely a fan would follow the link to his website and provide him with some financial recompense for his work. Unsurprisingly, Grelle didn’t receive a paycheck and so in response has developed a unique way to gain exposure. He has started to insert himself into his work, “[s]o when you see a stolen Frogman piece, you still see Ben Grelle’s face” (Douglas). Chris Menning posted a blog about being banned from Reddit, hoping to bring to light some of the inequalities that persist around Reddit’s current structure. He began by noting that he had received a significant amount of traffic from them in the past. He had responded in kind by looking to create original content for particular subforums, knowing what a particular community would enjoy. However, his habit of providing the link to his own website along with the content he posted saw him get labelled as a spammer and banned by administrators. Menning chose not to fight the ban:It seems that the only way I could avoid [getting banned] is if I were to relinquish any rights to my original content and post it exclusively to Imgur. In effect, reddit punishes the creation of original content, and rewards content theft (Menning). Instead he decided to quit Reddit, claiming that Reddit’s approach would carry long-term consequences as the platform provided little incentive for creators to produce wholly original content. It is worth noting that neither Menning nor Grelle turned to legal avenues in order to gain financial restitution. Considering the nature of the practices they were complaining about, compensation in the form of an injunction or damages would have certainly been possible. In Benjamin’s case, a user had combined a number of his copyrighted works into one image and posted the image to Imgur without attribution --this infringed Grelle’s copyright in his work as well as his moral right to be attributed as the creator of the work. However, the public comments of both creators suggest that despite the possibility of legal success, their issue was not so much to do with their individual cases but rather the broader structural issues at play within Reddit. While they might gain individually from a successful legal challenge, over the long term Reddit would continue to be a fraught place for amateur and semi-professional content creators. Certain parts of the Reddit community appear to be sympathetic to these issues, and the complaints of dissenting users like Menning and Grelle have received active support from some users and moderators on the site. This has led to changes in the way content is being posted and managed on Aww, and has also driven the emergence of a satirical user-run court entitled Karma Court. In these spaces moderators and members establish community norms, regularly police the correct attribution of works and challenge the de-contextualisation of content overtly encouraged by Reddit, Imgur and other subforums. In the following section I will examine both Aww and Karma Court in order to explore how these norms are established and negotiated by both moderators and users alike. reddit.com/r/aww: The Online Hub of Cute Animal Pictures As we have seen, the design of Reddit and Imgur creates a number of problems for amateur creators who wish to protect their intellectual property. To address these shortcomings, the Aww community has created its own informal regulatory systems. Volunteer moderators play a crucial role: they establish informal codes of conduct for the Aww community and enforce various rules about how the site should be used. One of these rules relates to attribution. Users are asked to to “post original content whenever possible or attribute original content creators” ("The cutest things on the internet!"). Due to the volunteer nature of the work and the size of the Aww sub-reddit, moderator enforcement is haphazard. Consequently, responsibility falls on the wider user community to self-police. Despite its informal nature, this process manages to facilitate a fairly consistent standard of attribution. In this way it functions as an informal method of intellectual property protection. It is worth noting however that this commitment to original content is not solely due to the moral character of Aww users. A significant motivation is the distribution of karma points amongst Reddit users. Karma, which represents your good standing within the Reddit community, can be earned through user likes and votes – these push the most popular content to the front page of each subforum. Thus karma stands as a numerical representation of a user’s value to Reddit. This ostensibly democratic system has the paradoxical effect of fuelling intellectual property violations on the site. Users often repost other users’ jpegs, animated gifs, and other content, in order to reap the social and cultural capital that comes with posting a popular picture. In some cases they claim authorship of the content; in other cases they simply re-post content that they feel “belongs to the internet” (Douglas). Some content is so popular or pervasive online (this content that is often described as “viral”) that users feel there is little reason or need to attribute content. This helps to explain the persistence of ownership and attribution conflicts on Reddit. In the eyes of some users and moderators the management of these rights and the correct distribution of karma are seen to be vital to the long-term functioning of site. The karma system offers a numerical representation of each contributor’s value. Re-posting already successful content and claiming it as your own challenges the proper functioning of the karma system and potentially ‘inhibits the innovative potential of contributions (Richterich). On Aww the re-posting of original content is viewed as a taboo act that breaches these norms. The poster is seen to have engaged in deceptive conduct in order to gain karma for their user profile. In addition there is a strong ethic that runs through these comment threads that the original creator deserves attribution. There is a presumption that this attribution is vital in order to increasing the possible marketability of the posted content and to recognise and courage creators within the community. This sort of community-driven regulation contrasts with the aforementioned site design of Reddit and Imgur, which frustrates effective authorship attribution practices. Aww users, in contrast, have shown a willingness to defend what they see as the intellectual property rights of content creators.A series of recent examples outline how this process works in practice. User “moonlikeme123” posted a picture of a cat with its hands on the steering wheel of a car. The picture was entitled “we don’t need to ask for directions, Helen”. During the same day, three separate users had identified the picture as a repost, with one noting that the same picture was already on the front page of Aww. “moonlikeme123” received no karma points for the picture. In a second example, the user “nibblur” posted a photo of a kitten “hunting” a toy mouse. Within a day, one enterprising user had identified the original photographer – “torode”, an amateur photographer – and linked to his Reddit profile (see fig. 2) ("ferocious cat hunting its prey: aww."). One further example: on 15 July 2013 “Cuzacelmare” posted a picture of two dogs comforting each other – an image which had originally been posted by “lauface”. Again, users were quick to point out the lack of attribution and the attempt to claim someone else’s content as their own (“Comforting her sister during a storm: aww). It is worth noting that some Reddit users consider attributing content to be entirely without benefit. Some deride karma as “meaningless” and suggest that as a significant amount of content online is regularly reposted elsewhere, there is little harm done in re-posting what is essentially amateur content destined to be lost in the bowels of the internet. For example, the comments that follow Cuzacelmare’s reflect an ambivalence about reposting, suggesting that users weigh up the benefits of exposure gained by the re-posting against the lack of attribution granted and the increasingly decontextualized nature of the photo itself:Why does everyone get so bitchy about reposts. Not everyone is on ALL the time or has been on Rreddit since it was created. I mean if you've seen it already ignore it. It's just picture you aren't forced to click the link. [sic] (“Comforting her sister during a storm: aww”)We're arguing semantics, but any content that gets attention can benefit the creator, whether it's reddit or Youtube (“Comforting her sister during a storm: aww”) Such discussions are common on comment threads following re-posts by other users. They underline the conflicted status of this ephemeral media and the underlying frictions that are part of these processes. These discussions underline the fact that on Reddit the “sharing” (Kennedy) and “spreading” (Jenkins et al.) of content is not seen as an unquestioned positive but rather as a contestable structural feature that needs to be constantly negotiated and discussed. These informal methods of identification, post-hoc attribution and criticism in comment threads have been the long-standing method used to redress questions of attribution and ownership of content on Reddit. However in recent times, Reddit users have turned to satirical methods of formal adjudication for particularly egregious cases. A sub-reddit, Karma Court, now functions as an informal tribunal in which punishment is meted out for “the abuse of karma and general contemptible actions heretofore identified as wrongdoing” (“Constitution and F.A.Q of the Karma Court”). Due to its double function as both an adjudicator and satire of users overly-invested in online debates, there is no limit to the possible “crimes” a user may be charged with. The following charges are only presented as guidelines and speak to common negative experiences on online: (1). Douchebaggery - When one is being a douche.(2). Defamation - Tarnishing another redditor's [user’s] username.(3). Public Indecency - When a user flexes his or her 'e-peen' with the intent to shame other users.(4). Ohsh*t.exe - Intentional reposting that results in reddit Gold.(5). GrandTheft.jpg - Reposting while claiming credit for the post.(6). Obstruction of Justice - Impeding or interfering with an investigation, such as submitting false screenshots, deleting evidence, or providing false evidence to the court.(7). Other - Literally anything else you want. We like creative names for charges.(“Constitution and F.A.Q of the Karma Court”) In Karma Court, legal representation can be sourced from a list of attorneys and judges, populated by users who volunteer to help adjudicate the case. They are required to have been a Reddit member for over six months. The only punishment is a public shaming. Interestingly Karma Court has developed a fair reposting clause that attempts to manage the complex debates around reposting and attribution. Under the non-binding satirical clause, users are able to repost content if it has not featured on the front page of a sub-reddit for seven or more days, if the re-poster acknowledges in the title or description that they are re-posting or if the original poster has less than 30,000 link karma (which means that the original poster has not substantially contributed to the Reddit community). If a re-poster does not adhere by these rules and claims a re-post as their own original content (or “OC”), they can be charged with “grandtheft.jpg” and brought to trial by another Reddit user. As one of the most popular subforums, a number of cases have emerged from Aww. The aforementioned re-poster “Cuzacelmare” (“I am bringing /U/ Cuzacelmare to trial …”) was “charged” through this process and served with a summons after denying “cute and innocent animals of that subreddit of their much deserved karma”. Similar cases to do with re-posting without attribution on Aww involve “FreshCorio” (“Reddit vs. U/FreshCorio …”) and “ninjacollin” (“People of Reddit vs. /U/ ninjacollin”) who were also brought to karma court. In each case prosecutors were adamant that false authorship claims needed to be punished. With these mock trials run by volunteers it takes time for arguments to be heard and judgment to occur; however “ninjacollin” expedited the legal process by offering a full confession. As a new user, “ninjacollin” was reprimanded severely for his actions and the users on Karma Court underlined the consequences of not identifying original content creators when re-posting content. Ownership and Attribution: Amateur Media, Distribution and Law The practices outlined above offer a number of alternate ways to think about amateur media and how it is distributed. An increasingly complex picture of content attribution and circulation emerges once we take into account the structural operation of Reddit, the intellectual property norms of users, and the various formal and informal systems of regulation that are appearing on the site. Such practices require users to negotiate complex questions of ownership between each other and in relation to corporate bodies. These negotiations often lead to informal agreements around a set of norms to regulate the spread of content within a particular community, suggesting that the lack of a formal legal process in these debates does not mean that there is an absence of regulation. As noted throughout this paper, the spread of online content often involves progressive de-contextualisation. Website design features often support this process in the hopes of encouraging content to spread in a fashion amenable to their corporate goals. Considering this tendency for content to be decontextualized online, the presence of attribution norms on subforums like Aww is significant. Instead of remixing, spreading and re-purposing content indiscriminately, users retain a concept of ownership and attribution that tracks closely to the basic principles of copyright law. Rather than users radically redefining concepts of attribution and ownership, as prefigured in some of the more utopian accounts of participatory media, the dominant norms of the Reddit community extend a discourse of copyright and ownership. As well as providing a greater level of detail to contemporary debates around amateur media and its viral or spreadable nature (Burgess; Jenkins; Jenkins et al), this analysis offers some lessons for copyright law. The emergence of norms in particular Reddit subforums which govern the use of copyrighted content and the use of a mock court structure suggests that online communities have the capacity to engage in forms of redress for amateur creators. These organic forms of copyright management operate adjacent to formal legal structures of copyright law. However, they are more accessible and practical for amateur creators, who do not always have the money to hire lawyers, especially when the market value of their content might be negligible. The informal regulatory systems outlined above may not operate perfectly but they reveal communities who are willing to engage foundational conversations around the importance of attribution and ownership. Following the existing literature (Fauchart and Von Hippel; Raustiala and Sprigman; Schultz; Oliar and Sprigman), I suggest that these online social norms provide a useful form of alternative protection for amateur creators. Acknowledgements Thanks to Ramon Lobato and Emily van der Nagel for comments and productive discussions around these issues. I am also grateful to the two anonymous peer reviewers for their assistance in developing this argument. References “About Reddit.” Reddit, 2014. 29 Apr. 2014 ‹http://www.reddit.com/about/›. Benkler, Yochai. The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. Burgess, Jean. “YouTube and the Formalisation of Amateur Media.” Amateur Media: Social, Cultural and Legal Perspectives. In Dan Hunter, Ramon Lobato, Megan Richardson, and Julian Thomas, eds. Oxford: Routledge, 2012. Carr, Nicholas. “Left Alone by Its Owner, Reddit Soars.” The New York Times: Business, 2 Sep. 2012. “Comforting Her Sister during a Storm: aww.” reddit: the front page of the internet, 15 July 2013. “Constitution and F.A.Q of the Karma Court.” reddit: the front page of the internet, 2014. Douglas, Nick. “Everything on the Internet Gets Stolen: Here’s How You Should Feel about That.” Slacktory, 8 Sep. 2009. Fauchart, Emmanual, and Eric von Hippel. “Norms-Based Intellectual Property Systems: The Case of French Chefs.” Organization Science 19.2 (2008): 187 - 201 "Ferocious Cat Hunting Its Prey: aww." reddit: the front page of the internet, 4 April 2013. 29 Apr. 2014 ‹http://www.rreddit.com/r/aww/comments/1bobcp/ferocious_cat_hunting_its_prey/›. Hepola, Sarah. “The Internet is Made of Kittens.” Salon.com, 11 Feb. 2009. 29 Apr. 2014 ‹http://www.salon.com/2009/02/10/cat_internet/›. Hunter, Dan, and Greg Lastowka. “Amateur-to-Amateur.” William & Mary Law Review 46 (2004): 951 - 1030. “I Am Bringing /U/ Cuzacelmare to Trial on the Basis of Being One of the Biggest _______ I’ve Ever Seen, by Reposting Cute Animal Pictures to /R/Awww. Feels.Jpg.” reddit: the front page of the internet, 21 March 2013. Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press, 2006. Jenkins, Henry, Sam Ford, and Joshua Green. Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture. New York: New York University Press, 2013. Menning, Chris. "So I Got Banned from Reddit" Modern Primate, 23 Aug. 2012. Miller, Keery. “How Y Combinator Helped Shape Reddit.” Bloomberg Businessweek, 26 Sep. 2007. 29 Apr. 2014 ‹http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2007-09-26/how-y-combinator-helped-shape-redditbusinessweek-business-news-stock-market-and-financial-advice›. “Ok, Look People. I Know You Heart Imgur, But Webcomics? Just Link to the Freaking Site.” reddit: the front page of the internet, 22 Aug. 2011. Oliar, Dotan, and Christopher Sprigman. “There’s No Free Laugh (Anymore): The Emergence of Intellectual Property Norms and the Transformation of Stand-Up Comedy.” Virginia Law Review 94.8 (2009): 1787 – 1867. “People of reddit vs. /U/Ninjacollin for Grandtheft.jpg.” reddit: the front page of the internet, 30 Jan. 2013. Raustiala, Kal, and Christopher Sprigman. “The Piracy Paradox: Innovation and Intellectual Property in Fashion Design”. Virginia Law Review 92.8 (2006): 1687-1777. “Reddit v. U/FreshCorio. User Uploads Popular Repost Picture of R/AWW and Claims It Is His Sister’s Cat. Falsely Claims It Is His Cakeday for Good Measure.” reddit: the front page of the internet, 12 Apr. 2013. 29 Apr. 2014 ‹http://www.reddit.com/r/KarmaCourt/comments/1c7vxz/reddit_vs_ufreshcorio_user_uploads_popular_repost/›. “Reddit Pics.” reddit: the front page of the internet, 2014. 29 Apr. 2014 ‹http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/›. Richterich, Annika. “’Karma, Precious Karma!’ Karmawhoring on Reddit and the Front Page’s Econometrisation.” Journal of Peer Production 4 (2014). 29 Apr. 2014 ‹http://peerproduction.net/issues/issue-4-value-and-currency/peer-reviewed-articles/karma-precious-karma/›. Schultz, Mark. “Fear and Norms and Rock & Roll: What Jambands Can Teach Us about Persuading People to Obey Copyright Law.” Berkley Technology Law Journal 21.2 (2006): 651 – 728. Sepponen, Bemmu. “Why Redditors Gave Imgur a Chance.” Social Media Today, 20 July 2011. Slater-Robins, Max. “From Rags to Riches: The Story of Imgur.” Neowin, 21 Apr. 2013. "The Cutest Things on the Internet!" reddit: the front page of the internet, n.d. “The Problem with reddit.” reddit: the front page of the internet, 23 Aug. 2012. 29 Apr. 2014 ‹http://www.rreddit.com/r/technology/comments/ypbe2/the_problem_with_rreddit/›. Van der Nagel, Emily. “Faceless Bodies: Negotiating Technological and Cultural Codes on reddit gonewild.” Scan: Journal of Media Arts Culture 10.2 (2013). "We Don’t Need to Ask for Directions, Helen: aww." reddit: the front page of the internet, 30 June 2013. 29 Apr. 2014 ‹http://www.rreddit.com/r/aww/comments/1heut6/we_dont_need_to_ask_for_directions_helen/›.

Abstract:

'He did what the cipher could not, he rescued himself.' -- Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination (23) On many levels, the new Nine Inch Nails album The Fragile is a gritty meditation about different types of End: the eternal relationship cycle of 'fragility, tension, ordeal, fragmentation' (adapted, with apologies to Wilhelm Reich); fin-de-siècle anxiety; post-millennium foreboding; a spectre of the alien discontinuity that heralds an on-rushing future vastly different from the one envisaged by Enlightenment Project architects. In retrospect, it's easy for this perspective to be dismissed as jargon-filled cyber-crit hyperbole. Cyber-crit has always been at its best too when it invents pre-histories and finds hidden connections between different phenomena (like the work of Greil Marcus and early Mark Dery), and not when it is closer to Chinese Water Torture, name-checking the canon's icons (the 'Deleuze/Guattari' tag-team), texts and key terms. "The organization of sound is interpreted historically, politically, socially ... . It subdues music's ambition, reins it in, restores it to its proper place, reconciles it to its naturally belated fate", comments imagineer Kodwo Eshun (4) on how cyber-crit destroys albums and the innocence of the listening experience. This is how official histories are constructed a priori and freeze-dried according to personal tastes and prior memes: sometimes the most interesting experiments are Darwinian dead-ends that fail to make the canon, or don't register on the radar. Anyone approaching The Fragile must also contend with the music industry's harsh realities. For every 10 000 Goth fans who moshed to the primal 'kill-f*ck-dance' rhythms of the hit single "Closer" (heeding its siren-call to fulfil basic physiological needs and build niche-space), maybe 20 noted that the same riff returned with a darker edge in the title track to The Downward Spiral, undermining the glorification of Indulgent hedonism. "The problem with such alternative audiences," notes Disinformation Creative Director Richard Metzger, "is that they are trying to be different -- just like everyone else." According to author Don Webb, "some mature Chaos and Black Magicians reject their earlier Nine Inch Nails-inspired Goth beginnings and are extremely critical towards new adopters because they are uncomfortable with the subculture's growing popularity, which threatens to taint their meticulously constructed 'mysterious' worlds. But by doing so, they are also rejecting their symbolic imprinting and some powerful Keys to unlocking their personal history." It is also difficult to separate Nine Inch Nails from the commercialisation and colossal money-making machine that inevitably ensued on the MTV tour circuit: do we blame Michael Trent Reznor because most of his audience are unlikely to be familiar with 'first-wave' industrial bands including Cabaret Voltaire and the experiments of Genesis P. Orridge in Throbbing Gristle? Do we accuse Reznor of being a plagiarist just because he wears some of his influences -- Dr. Dre, Daft Punk, Atari Teenage Riot, Pink Floyd's The Wall (1979), Tom Waits's Bone Machine (1992), David Bowie's Low (1977) -- on his sleeve? And do we accept no-brain rock critic album reviews who quote lines like 'All the pieces didn't fit/Though I really didn't give a sh*t' ("Where Is Everybody?") or 'And when I suck you off/Not a drop will go to waste' ("Starf*ckers Inc") as representative of his true personality? Reznor evidently has his own thoughts on this subject, but we should let the music speak for itself. The album's epic production and technical complexity turned into a post-modern studio Vision Quest, assisted by producer Alan Moulder, eleventh-hour saviour Bob Ezrin (brought in by Reznor to 'block-out' conceptual and sonic continuity), and a group of assault-technicians. The fruit of these collaborations is an album where Reznor is playing with our organism's time-binding sense, modulating strange emotions through deeply embedded tonal angularities. During his five-year absence, Trent Reznor fought diverse forms of repetitious trauma, from endogenous depression caused by endless touring to the death of his beloved grandmother (who raised him throughout childhood). An end signals a new beginning, a spiral is an open-ended and ever-shifting structure, and so Reznor sought to re-discover the Elder Gods within, a shamanic approach to renewal and secular salvation utilised most effectively by music PR luminary and scientist Howard Bloom. Concerned with healing the human animal through Ordeals that hard-wire the physiological baselines of Love, Hate and Fear, Reznor also focusses on what happens when 'meaning-making' collapses and hope for the future cannot easily be found. He accurately captures the confusion that such dissolution of meaning and decline of social institutions brings to the world -- Francis f*ckuyama calls this bifurcation 'The Great Disruption'. For a generation who experienced their late childhood and early adolescence in Reagan's America, Reznor and his influences (Marilyn Manson and Filter) capture the Dark Side of recent history, unleashed at Altamont and mutating into the Apocalyptic style of American politics (evident in the 'Star Wars'/SDI fascination). The personal 'psychotic core' that was crystallised by the collapse of the nuclear family unit and supportive social institutions has returned to haunt us with dystopian fantasies that are played out across Internet streaming media and visceral MTV film-clips. That such cathartic releases are useful -- and even necessary (to those whose lives have been formed by socio-economic 'life conditions') is a point that escapes critics like Roger Scruton, some Christian Evangelists and the New Right. The 'escapist' quality of early 1980s 'Rapture' and 'Cosmocide' (Hal Lindsey) prophecies has yielded strange fruit for the Children of Ezekiel, whom Reznor and Marilyn Manson are unofficial spokes-persons for. From a macro perspective, Reznor's post-human evolutionary nexus lies, like J.G. Ballard's tales, in a mythical near-future built upon past memory-shards. It is the kind of worldview that fuses organic and morphogenetic structures with industrial machines run amok, thus The Fragile is an artefact that captures the subjective contents of the different mind produced by different times. Sonic events are in-synch but out of phase. Samples subtly trigger and then scramble kinaesthetic-visceral and kinaesthetic-tactile memories, suggestive of dissociated affective states or body memories that are incapable of being retrieved (van der Kolk 294). Perhaps this is why after a Century of Identity Confusion some fans find it impossible to listen to a 102-minute album in one sitting. No wonder then that the double album is divided into 'left' and 'right' discs (a reference to split-brain research?). The real-time track-by-track interpretation below is necessarily subjective, and is intended to serve as a provisional listener's guide to the aural ur-text of 1999. The Fragile is full of encrypted tones and garbled frequencies that capture a world where the future is always bleeding into a non-recoverable past. Turbulent wave-forms fight for the listener's attention with prolonged static lulls. This does not make for comfortable or even 'nice' listening. The music's mind is a snapshot, a critical indicator, of the deep structures brewing within the Weltanschauung that could erupt at any moment. "Somewhat Damaged" opens the album's 'Left' disc with an oscillating acoustic strum that anchor's the listener's attention. Offset by pulsing beats and mallet percussion, Reznor builds up sound layers that contrast with lyrical epitaphs like 'Everything that swore it wouldn't change is different now'. Icarus iconography is invoked, but perhaps a more fitting mythopoeic symbol of the journey that lies ahead would be Nietzsche's pursuit of his Ariadne through the labyrinth of life, during which the hero is steadily consumed by his numbing psychosis. Reznor fittingly comments: 'Didn't quite/Fell Apart/Where were you?' If we consider that Reznor has been repeating the same cycle with different variations throughout all of his music to date, retro-fitting each new album into a seamless tapestry, then this track signals that he has begun to finally climb out of self-imposed exile in the Underworld. "The Day the World Went Away" has a tremendously eerie opening, with plucked mandolin effects entering at 0:40. The main slashing guitar riff was interpreted by some critics as Reznor's attempt to parody himself. For some reason, the eerie backdrop and fragmented acoustic guitar strums recalls to my mind civil defence nuclear war films. Reznor, like William S. Burroughs, has some powerful obsessions. The track builds up in intensity, with a 'Chorus of the Damned' singing 'na na nah' over apocalyptic end-times imagery. At 4:22 the track ends with an echo that loops and repeats. "The Frail" signals a shift to mournful introspectiveness with piano: a soundtrack to faded 8 mm films and dying memories. The piano builds up slowly with background echo, holds and segues into ... "The Wretched", beginning with a savage downbeat that recalls earlier material from Pretty Hate Machine. 'The Far Aways/Forget It' intones Reznor -- it's becoming clear that despite some claims to the contrary, there is redemption in this album, but it is one borne out of a relentless move forward, a strive-drive. 'You're finally free/You could be' suggest Reznor studied Existentialism during his psychotherapy visits. This song contains perhaps the ultimate post-relationship line: 'It didn't turn out the way you wanted it to, did it?' It's over, just not the way you wanted; you can always leave the partner you're with, but the ones you have already left will always stain your memories. The lines 'Back at the beginning/Sinking/Spinning' recall the claustrophobic trapped world and 'eternal Now' dislocation of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder victims. At 3:44 a plucked cello riff, filtered, segues into a sludge buzz-saw guitar solo. At 5:18 the cello riff loops and repeats. "We're in This Together Now" uses static as percussion, highlighting the influence of electricity flows instead of traditional rock instrument configurations. At 0:34 vocals enter, at 1:15 Reznor wails 'I'm impossible', showing he is the heir to Roger Waters's self-reflective rock-star angst. 'Until the very end of me, until the very end of you' reverts the traditional marriage vow, whilst 'You're the Queen and I'm the King' quotes David Bowie's "Heroes". Unlike earlier tracks like "Reptile", this track is far more positive about relationships, which have previously resembled toxic-dyads. Reznor signals a delta surge (breaking through barriers at any cost), despite a time-line morphing between present-past-future. At 5:30 synths and piano signal a shift, at 5:49 the outgoing piano riff begins. The film-clip is filled with redemptive water imagery. The soundtrack gradually gets more murky and at 7:05 a subterranean note signals closure. "The Fragile" is even more hopeful and life-affirming (some may even interpret it as devotional), but this love -- representative of the End-Times, alludes to the 'Glamour of Evil' (Nico) in the line 'Fragile/She doesn't see her beauty'. The fusion of synths and atonal guitars beginning at 2:13 summons forth film-clip imagery -- mazes, pageants, bald eagles, found sounds, cloaked figures, ruined statues, enveloping darkness. "Just like You Imagined" opens with Soundscapes worthy of Robert Fripp, doubled by piano and guitar at 0:39. Drums and muffled voices enter at 0:54 -- are we seeing a pattern to Reznor's writing here? Sonic debris guitar enters at 1:08, bringing forth intensities from white noise. This track is full of subtle joys like the 1:23-1:36 solo by David Bowie pianist Mike Garson and guitarist Adrian Belew's outgoing guitar solo at 2:43, shifting back to the underlying soundscapes at 3:07. The sounds are always on the dissipative edge of chaos. "Just like You Imagined" opens with Soundscapes worthy of Robert Fripp, doubled by piano and guitar at 0:39. Drums and muffled voices enter at 0:54 -- are we seeing a pattern to Reznor's writing here? Sonic debris guitar enters at 1:08, bringing forth intensities from white noise. This track is full of subtle joys like the 1:23-1:36 solo by David Bowie pianist Mike Garson and guitarist Adrian Belew's outgoing guitar solo at 2:43, shifting back to the underlying soundscapes at 3:07. The sounds are always on the dissipative edge of chaos. "Pilgrimage" utilises a persistent ostinato and beat, with a driving guitar overlay at 0:18. This is perhaps the most familiar track, using Reznor motifs like the doubling of the riff with acoustic guitars between 1:12-1:20, march cries, and pitch-shift effects on a 3:18 drumbeat/cymbal. Or at least I could claim it was familiar, if it were not that legendary hip-hop producer and 'edge-of-panic' tactilist Dr. Dre helped assemble the final track mix. "No, You Don't" has been interpreted as an attack on Marilyn Manson and Hole's Courntey Love, particularly the 0:47 line 'Got to keep it all on the outside/Because everything is dead on the inside' and the 2:33 final verse 'Just so you know, I did not believe you could sink so low'. The song's structure is familiar: a basic beat at 0:16, guitars building from 0:31 to sneering vocals, a 2:03 counter-riff that merges at 2:19 with vocals and ascending to the final verse and 3:26 final distortion... "La Mer" is the first major surprise, a beautiful and sweeping fusion of piano, keyboard and cello, reminiscent of Symbolist composer Debussy. At 1:07 Denise Milfort whispers, setting the stage for sometime Ministry drummer Bill Reiflin's jazz drumming at 1:22, and a funky 1:32 guitar/bass line. The pulsing synth guitar at 2:04 serves as anchoring percussion for a cinematic electronica mindscape, filtered through new layers of sonic chiaroscuro at 2:51. 3:06 phase shifting, 3:22 layer doubling, 3:37 outgoing solo, 3:50-3:54 more swirling vocal fragments, seguing into a fading cello quartet as shadows creep. David Carson's moody film-clip captures the end more ominously, depicting the beauty of drowning. This track contains the line 'Nothing can stop me now', which appears to be Reznor's personal mantra. This track rivals 'Hurt' and 'A Warm Place' from The Downward Spiral and 'Something I Can Never Have' from Pretty Hate Machine as perhaps the most emotionally revealing and delicate material that Reznor has written. "The Great Below" ends the first disc with more multi-layered textures fusing nostalgia and reverie: a twelve-second cello riff is counter-pointed by a plucked overlay, which builds to a 0:43 washed pulse effect, transformed by six second pulses between 1:04-1:19 and a further effects layer at 1:24. E-bow effects underscore lyrics like 'Currents have their say' (2:33) and 'Washes me away' (2:44), which a 3:33 sitar riff answers. These complexities are further transmuted by seemingly random events -- a 4:06 doubling of the sitar riff which 'glitches' and a 4:32 backbeat echo that drifts for four bars. While Reznor's lyrics suggest that he is unable to control subjective time-states (like The Joker in the Batman: Dark Knight series of Kali-yuga comic-books), the track constructions show that the Key to his hold over the listener is very carefully constructed songs whose spaces resemble Pythagorean mathematical formulas. Misdirecting the audience is the secret of many magicians. "The Way Out Is Through" opens the 'Right' disc with an industrial riff that builds at 0:19 to click-track and rhythm, the equivalent of a weaving spiral. Whispering 'All I've undergone/I will keep on' at 1:24, Reznor is backed at 1:38 by synths and drums coalescing into guitars, which take shape at 1:46 and turn into a torrential electrical current. The models are clearly natural morphogenetic structures. The track twists through inner storms and torments from 2:42 to 2:48, mirrored by vocal shards at 2:59 and soundscapes at 3:45, before piano fades in and out at 4:12. The title references peri-natal theories of development (particularly those of Stanislav Grof), which is the source of much of the album's imagery. "Into the Void" is not the Black Sabbath song of the same name, but a catchy track that uses the same unfolding formula (opening static, cello at 0:18, guitars at 0:31, drums and backbeat at 1:02, trademark industrial vocals and synth at 1:02, verse at 1:23), and would not appear out of place in a Survival Research Laboratories exhibition. At 3:42 Reznor plays with the edge of synth soundscapes, merging vocals at 4:02 and ending the track nicely at 4:44 alone. "Where Is Everybody?" emulates earlier structures, but relies from 2:01 on whirring effects and organic rhythms, including a flurry of eight beat pulses between 2:40-2:46 and a 3:33 spiralling guitar solo. The 4:26 guitar solo is pure Adrian Belew, and is suddenly ended by spluttering static and white noise at 5:13. "The Mark Has Been Made" signals another downshift into introspectiveness with 0:32 ghostly synth shimmers, echoed by cello at 1:04 which is the doubled at 1:55 by guitar. At 2:08 industrial riffs suddenly build up, weaving between 3:28 distorted guitars and the return of the repressed original layer at 4:16. The surprise is a mystery 32 second soundscape at the end with Reznor crooning 'I'm getting closer, all the time' like a zombie devil Elvis. "Please" highlights spacious noise at 0:48, and signals a central album motif at 1:04 with the line 'Time starts slowing down/Sink until I drown'. The psychic mood of the album shifts with the discovery of Imagination as a liberating force against oppression. The synth sound again is remarkably organic for an industrial album. "Starf*ckers Inc" is the now infamous sneering attack on rock-stardom, perhaps at Marilyn Manson (at 3:08 Reznor quotes Carly Simon's 'You're So Vain'). Jungle beats and pulsing synths open the track, which features the sound-sculpting talent of Pop Will Eat Itself member Clint Mansell. Beginning at 0:26, Reznor's vocals appear to have been sampled, looped and cut up (apologies to Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs). The lines 'I have arrived and this time you should believe the hype/I listened to everyone now I know everyone was right' is a very savage and funny exposure of Manson's constant references to Friedrich Nietzsche's Herd-mentality: the Herd needs a bogey-man to whip it into submission, and Manson comes dangerous close to fulfilling this potential, thus becoming trapped by a 'Stacked Deck' paradox. The 4:08 lyric line 'Now I belong I'm one of the Chosen Ones/Now I belong I'm one of the Beautiful Ones' highlights the problem of being Elect and becoming intertwined with institutionalised group-think. The album version ditches the closing sample of Gene Simmons screaming "Thankyou and goodnight!" to an enraptured audience on the single from KISS Alive (1975), which was appropriately over-the-top (the alternate quiet version is worth hearing also). "The danger Marilyn Manson faces", notes Don Webb (current High Priest of the Temple of Set), "is that he may end up in twenty years time on the 'Tonight Show' safely singing our favourite songs like a Goth Frank Sinatra, and will have gradually lost his antinomian power. It's much harder to maintain the enigmatic aura of an Evil villain than it is to play the clown with society". Reznor's superior musicianship and sense of irony should keep him from falling into the same trap. "Complication" juggernauts in at 0:57 with screaming vocals and a barrage of white noise at 1:56. It's clear by now that Reznor has read his psychological operations (PSYOP) manuals pertaining to blasting the hell out of his audiences' psyche by any means necessary. Computer blip noise and black light flotation tank memories. Dislocating pauses and time-bends. The aural equivalent of Klein bottles. "Complication" juggernauts in at 0:57 with screaming vocals and a barrage of white noise at 1:56. It's clear by now that Reznor has read his psychological operations (PSYOP) manuals pertaining to blasting the hell out of his audiences' psyche by any means necessary. Computer blip noise and black light flotation tank memories. Dislocating pauses and time-bends. The aural equivalent of Klein bottles. "The Big Come Down" begins with a four-second synth/static intro that is smashed apart by a hard beat at 0:05 and kaleidoscope guitars at 0:16. Critics refer to the song's lyrics in an attempt to project a narcissistic Reznor personality, but don't comment on stylistic tweaks like the AM radio influenced backing vocals at 1:02 and 1:19, or the use of guitars as a percussion layer at 1:51. A further intriguing element is the return of the fly samples at 2:38, an effect heard on previous releases and a possible post-human sub-text. The alien mythos will eventually reign over the banal and empty human. At 3:07 the synths return with static, a further overlay adds more synths at 3:45 as the track spirals to its peak, before dissipating at 3:1 in a mesh of percussion and guitars. "Underneath It All" opens with a riff that signals we have reached the album's climatic turning point, with the recurring theme of fragmenting body-memories returning at 0:23 with the line 'All I can do/I can still feel you', and being echoed by pulsing static at 0:42 as electric percussion. A 'Messiah Complex' appears at 1:34 with the line 'Crucify/After all I've died/After all I've tried/You are still inside', or at least it appears to be that on the surface. This is the kind of line that typical rock critics will quote, but a careful re-reading suggests that Reznor is pointing to the painful nature of remanifesting. Our past shapes us more than we would like to admit particularly our first relationships. "Ripe (With Decay)" is the album's final statement, a complex weaving of passages over a repetitive mesh of guitars, pulsing echoes, back-beats, soundscapes, and a powerful Mike Garson piano solo (2:26). Earlier motifs including fly samples (3:00), mournful funeral violas (3:36) and slowing time effects (4:28) recur throughout the track. Having finally reached the psychotic core, Reznor is not content to let us rest, mixing funk bass riffs (4:46), vocal snatches (5:23) and oscillating guitars (5:39) that drag the listener forever onwards towards the edge of the abyss (5:58). The final sequence begins at 6:22, loses fidelity at 6:28, and ends abruptly at 6:35. At millennium's end there is a common-held perception that the world is in an irreversible state of decay, and that Culture is just a wafer-thin veneer over anarchy. Music like The Fragile suggests that we are still trying to assimilate into popular culture the 'war-on-Self' worldviews unleashed by the nineteenth-century 'Masters of Suspicion' (Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche). This 'assimilation gap' is evident in industrial music, which in the late 1970s was struggling to capture the mood of the Industrial Revolution and Charles Dickens, so the genre is ripe for further exploration of the scarred psyche. What the self-appointed moral guardians of the Herd fail to appreciate is that as the imprint baseline rises (reflective of socio-political realities), the kind of imagery prevalent throughout The Fragile and in films like Strange Days (1995), The Matrix (1999) and eXistenZ (1999) is going to get even darker. The solution is not censorship or repression in the name of pleasing an all-saving surrogate god-figure. No, these things have to be faced and embraced somehow. Such a process can only occur if there is space within for the Sadeian aesthetic that Nine Inch Nails embodies, and not a denial of Dark Eros. "We need a second Renaissance", notes Don Webb, "a rejuvenation of Culture on a significant scale". In other words, a global culture-shift of quantum (aeon or epoch-changing) proportions. The tools required will probably not come just from the over-wordy criticism of Cyber-culture and Cultural Studies or the logical-negative feeding frenzy of most Music Journalism. They will come from a dynamic synthesis of disciplines striving toward a unity of knowledge -- what socio-biologist Edward O. Wilson has described as 'Consilience'. Liberating tools and ideas will be conveyed to a wider public audience unfamiliar with such principles through predominantly science fiction visual imagery and industrial/electronica music. The Fragile serves as an invaluable model for how such artefacts could transmit their dreams and propagate their messages. For the hyper-alert listener, it will be the first step on a new journey. But sadly for the majority, it will be just another hysterical industrial album promoted as selection of the month. References Bester, Alfred. The Stars My Destination. London: Millennium Books, 1999. Eshun, Kodwo. More Brilliant than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction. London: Quartet Books, 1998. Van der Kolk, Bessel A. "Trauma and Memory." Traumatic Stress: The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body, and Society. Eds. Bessel A. van der Kolk et al. New York: Guilford Press, 1996. Nine Inch Nails. Downward Spiral. Nothing/Interscope, 1994. ---. The Fragile. Nothing, 1999. ---. Pretty Hate Machine. TVT, 1989. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Alex Burns. "'This Machine Is Obsolete': A Listeners' Guide to Nine Inch Nails' The Fragile." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.8 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/nine.php>. Chicago style: Alex Burns, "'This Machine Is Obsolete': A Listeners' Guide to Nine Inch Nails' The Fragile," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 8 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/nine.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Alex Burns. (1999) 'This machine is obsolete': a listeners' guide to Nine Inch Nails' The fragile. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(8). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/nine.php> ([your date of access]).

Abstract:

From elephants to ABBA fans, silicon to hormone, the following discussion uses a new research method to look at printed text, motion pictures and a teenage rebel icon. If by ‘print’ we mean a mechanically reproduced impression of a cultural symbol in a medium, then printing has been with us since before microdot security prints were painted onto cars, before voice prints, laser prints, network servers, record pressings, motion picture prints, photo prints, colour woodblock prints, before books, textile prints, and footprints. If we accept that higher mammals such as elephants have a learnt culture, then it is possible to extend a definition of printing beyond hom*o sapiens. Poole reports that elephants mechanically trumpet reproductions of human car horns into the air surrounding their society. If nothing else, this cross-species, cross-cultural reproduction, this ‘ability to mimic’ is ‘another sign of their intelligence’. Observation of child development suggests that the first significant meaningful ‘impression’ made on the human mind is that of the face of the child’s nurturer – usually its mother. The baby’s mind forms an ‘impression’, a mental print, a reproducible memory data set, of the nurturer’s face, voice, smell, touch, etc. That face is itself a cultural construct: hair style, makeup, piercings, tattoos, ornaments, nutrition-influenced skin and smell, perfume, temperature and voice. A mentally reproducible pattern of a unique face is formed in the mind, and we use that pattern to distinguish ‘familiar and strange’ in our expanding social orbit. The social relations of patterned memory – of imprinting – determine the extent to which we explore our world (armed with research aids such as text print) or whether we turn to violence or self-harm (Bretherton). While our cultural artifacts (such as vellum maps or networked voice message servers) bravely extend our significant patterns into the social world and the traversed environment, it is useful to remember that such artifacts, including print, are themselves understood by our original pattern-reproduction and impression system – the human mind, developed in childhood. The ‘print’ is brought to mind differently in different discourses. For a reader, a ‘print’ is a book, a memo or a broadsheet, whether it is the Indian Buddhist Sanskrit texts ordered to be printed in 593 AD by the Chinese emperor Sui Wen-ti (Silk Road) or the US Defense Department memo authorizing lower ranks to torture the prisoners taken by the Bush administration (Sanchez, cited in ABC). Other fields see prints differently. For a musician, a ‘print’ may be the sheet music which spread classical and popular music around the world; it may be a ‘record’ (as in a ‘recording’ session), where sound is impressed to wax, vinyl, charged silicon particles, or the alloys (Smith, “Elpida”) of an mp3 file. For the fine artist, a ‘print’ may be any mechanically reproduced two-dimensional (or embossed) impression of a significant image in media from paper to metal, textile to ceramics. ‘Print’ embraces the Japanese Ukiyo-e colour prints of Utamaro, the company logos that wink from credit card holographs, the early photographs of Talbot, and the textured patterns printed into neolithic ceramics. Computer hardware engineers print computational circuits. Homicide detectives investigate both sweaty finger prints and the repeated, mechanical gaits of suspects, which are imprinted into the earthy medium of a crime scene. For film makers, the ‘print’ may refer to a photochemical polyester reproduction of a motion picture artifact (the reel of ‘celluloid’), or a DVD laser disc impression of the same film. Textualist discourse has borrowed the word ‘print’ to mean ‘text’, so ‘print’ may also refer to the text elements within the vision track of a motion picture: the film’s opening titles, or texts photographed inside the motion picture story such as the sword-cut ‘Z’ in Zorro (Niblo). Before the invention of writing, the main mechanically reproduced impression of a cultural symbol in a medium was the humble footprint in the sand. The footprints of tribes – and neighbouring animals – cut tracks in the vegetation and the soil. Printed tracks led towards food, water, shelter, enemies and friends. Having learnt to pattern certain faces into their mental world, children grew older and were educated in the footprints of family and clan, enemies and food. The continuous impression of significant foot traffic in the medium of the earth produced the lines between significant nodes of prewriting and pre-wheeled cultures. These tracks were married to audio tracks, such as the song lines of the Australian Aborigines, or the ballads of tramping culture everywhere. A typical tramping song has the line, ‘There’s a track winding back to an old-fashion shack along the road to Gundagai,’ (O’Hagan), although this colonial-style song was actually written for radio and became an international hit on the airwaves, rather than the tramping trails. The printed tracks impressed by these cultural flows are highly contested and diverse, and their foot prints are woven into our very language. The names for printed tracks have entered our shared memory from the intersection of many cultures: ‘Track’ is a Germanic word entering English usage comparatively late (1470) and now used mainly in audio visual cultural reproduction, as in ‘soundtrack’. ‘Trek’ is a Dutch word for ‘track’ now used mainly by ecotourists and science fiction fans. ‘Learn’ is a Proto-Indo-European word: the verb ‘learn’ originally meant ‘to find a track’ back in the days when ‘learn’ had a noun form which meant ‘the sole of the foot’. ‘Tract’ and ‘trace’ are Latin words entering English print usage before 1374 and now used mainly in religious, and electronic surveillance, cultural reproduction. ‘Trench’ in 1386 was a French path cut through a forest. ‘Sagacity’ in English print in 1548 was originally the ability to track or hunt, in Proto-Indo-European cultures. ‘Career’ (in English before 1534) was the print made by chariots in ancient Rome. ‘Sleuth’ (1200) was a Norse noun for a track. ‘Investigation’ (1436) was Latin for studying a footprint (Harper). The arrival of symbolic writing scratched on caves, hearth stones, and trees (the original meaning of ‘book’ is tree), brought extremely limited text education close to home. Then, with baked clay tablets, incised boards, slate, bamboo, tortoise shell, cast metal, bark cloth, textiles, vellum, and – later – paper, a portability came to text that allowed any culture to venture away from known ‘foot’ paths with a reduction in the risk of becoming lost and perishing. So began the world of maps, memos, bills of sale, philosophic treatises and epic mythologies. Some of this was printed, such as the mechanical reproduction of coins, but the fine handwriting required of long, extended, portable texts could not be printed until the invention of paper in China about 2000 years ago. Compared to lithic architecture and genes, portable text is a fragile medium, and little survives from the millennia of its innovators. The printing of large non-text designs onto bark-paper and textiles began in neolithic times, but Sui Wen-ti’s imperial memo of 593 AD gives us the earliest written date for printed books, although we can assume they had been published for many years previously. The printed book was a combination of Indian philosophic thought, wood carving, ink chemistry and Chinese paper. The earliest surviving fragment of paper-print technology is ‘Mantras of the Dharani Sutra’, a Buddhist scripture written in the Sanskrit language of the Indian subcontinent, unearthed at an early Tang Dynasty site in Xian, China – making the fragment a veteran piece of printing, in the sense that Sanskrit books had been in print for at least a century by the early Tang Dynasty (Chinese Graphic Arts Net). At first, paper books were printed with page-size carved wooden boards. Five hundred years later, Pi Sheng (c.1041) baked individual reusable ceramic characters in a fire and invented the durable moveable type of modern printing (Silk Road 2000). Abandoning carved wooden tablets, the ‘digitizing’ of Chinese moveable type sped up the production of printed texts. In turn, Pi Sheng’s flexible, rapid, sustainable printing process expanded the political-cultural impact of the literati in Asian society. Digitized block text on paper produced a bureaucratic, literate elite so powerful in Asia that Louis XVI of France copied China’s print-based Confucian system of political authority for his own empire, and so began the rise of the examined public university systems, and the civil service systems, of most European states (Watson, Visions). By reason of its durability, its rapid mechanical reproduction, its culturally agreed signs, literate readership, revered authorship, shared ideology, and distributed portability, a ‘print’ can be a powerful cultural network which builds and expands empires. But print also attacks and destroys empires. A case in point is the Spanish conquest of Aztec America: The Aztecs had immense libraries of American literature on bark-cloth scrolls, a technology which predated paper. These libraries were wiped out by the invading Spanish, who carried a different book before them (Ewins). In the industrial age, the printing press and the gun were seen as the weapons of rebellions everywhere. In 1776, American rebels staffed their ‘Homeland Security’ units with paper makers, knowing that defeating the English would be based on printed and written documents (Hahn). Mao Zedong was a book librarian; Mao said political power came out of the barrel of a gun, but Mao himself came out of a library. With the spread of wireless networked servers, political ferment comes out of the barrel of the cell phone and the internet chat room these days. Witness the cell phone displays of a plane hitting a tower that appear immediately after 9/11 in the Middle East, or witness the show trials of a few US and UK lower ranks who published prints of their torturing activities onto the internet: only lower ranks who published prints were arrested or tried. The control of secure servers and satellites is the new press. These days, we live in a global library of burning books – ‘burning’ in the sense that ‘print’ is now a charged silicon medium (Smith, “Intel”) which is usually made readable by connecting the chip to nuclear reactors and petrochemically-fired power stations. World resources burn as we read our screens. Men, women, children burn too, as we watch our infotainment news in comfort while ‘their’ flickering dead faces are printed in our broadcast hearths. The print we watch is not the living; it is the voodoo of the living in the blackout behind the camera, engaging the blood sacrifice of the tormented and the unfortunate. Internet texts are also ‘on fire’ in the third sense of their fragility and instability as a medium: data bases regularly ‘print’ fail-safe copies in an attempt to postpone the inevitable mechanical, chemical and electrical failure that awaits all electronic media in time. Print defines a moral position for everyone. In reporting conflict, in deciding to go to press or censor, any ‘print’ cannot avoid an ethical context, starting with the fact that there is a difference in power between print maker, armed perpetrators, the weak, the peaceful, the publisher, and the viewer. So many human factors attend a text, video or voice ‘print’: its very existence as an aesthetic object, even before publication and reception, speaks of unbalanced, and therefore dynamic, power relationships. For example, Graham Greene departed unscathed from all the highly dangerous battlefields he entered as a novelist: Riot-torn Germany, London Blitz, Belgian Congo, Voodoo Haiti, Vietnam, Panama, Reagan’s Washington, and mafia Europe. His texts are peopled with the injustices of the less fortunate of the twentieth century, while he himself was a member of the fortunate (if not happy) elite, as is anyone today who has the luxury of time to read Greene’s works for pleasure. Ethically a member of London and Paris’ colonizers, Greene’s best writing still electrifies, perhaps partly because he was in the same line of fire as the victims he shared bread with. In fact, Greene hoped daily that he would escape from the dreadful conflicts he fictionalized via a body bag or an urn of ashes (see Sherry). In reading an author’s biography we have one window on the ethical dimensions of authority and print. If a print’s aesthetics are sometimes enduring, its ethical relationships are always mutable. Take the stylized logo of a running athlete: four limbs bent in a rotation of action. This dynamic icon has symbolized ‘good health’ in Hindu and Buddhist culture, from Madras to Tokyo, for thousands of years. The cross of bent limbs was borrowed for the militarized health programs of 1930s Germany, and, because of what was only a brief, recent, isolated yet monstrously horrific segment of its history in print, the bent-limbed swastika is now a vilified symbol in the West. The sign remains ‘impressed’ differently on traditional Eastern culture, and without the taint of Nazism. Dramatic prints are emotionally charged because, in depicting hom*o sapiens in danger, or passionately in love, they elicit a hormonal reaction from the reader, the viewer, or the audience. The type of emotions triggered by a print vary across the whole gamut of human chemistry. A recent study of three genres of motion picture prints shows a marked differences in the hormonal responses of men compared to women when viewing a romance, an actioner, and a documentary (see Schultheiss, Wirth, and Stanton). Society is biochemically diverse in its engagement with printed culture, which raises questions about equality in the arts. Motion picture prints probably comprise around one third of internet traffic, in the form of stolen digitized movie files pirated across the globe via peer-to-peer file transfer networks (p2p), and burnt as DVD laser prints (BBC). There is also a US 40 billion dollar per annum legitimate commerce in DVD laser pressings (Grassl), which would suggest an US 80 billion per annum world total in legitimate laser disc print culture. The actively screen literate, or the ‘sliterati’ as I prefer to call them, research this world of motion picture prints via their peers, their internet information channels, their television programming, and their web forums. Most of this activity occurs outside the ambit of universities and schools. One large site of sliterate (screen literate) practice outside most schooling and official research is the net of online forums at imdb.com (International Movie Data Base). Imdb.com ‘prints’ about 25,000,000 top pages per month to client browsers. Hundreds of sliterati forums are located at imdb, including a forum for the Australian movie, Muriel’s Wedding (Hogan). Ten years after the release of Muriel’s Wedding, young people who are concerned with victimization and bullying still log on to http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0110598/board/> and put their thoughts into print: I still feel so bad for Muriel in the beginning of the movie, when the girls ‘dump’ her, and how much the poor girl cried and cried! Those girls were such biartches…I love how they got their comeuppance! bunniesormaybemidgets’s comment is typical of the current discussion. Muriel’s Wedding was a very popular film in its first cinema edition in Australia and elsewhere. About 30% of the entire over-14 Australian population went to see this photochemical polyester print in the cinemas on its first release. A decade on, the distributors printed a DVD laser disc edition. The story concerns Muriel (played by Toni Collette), the unemployed daughter of a corrupt, ‘police state’ politician. Muriel is bullied by her peers and she withdraws into a fantasy world, deluding herself that a white wedding will rescue her from the torments of her blighted life. Through theft and deceit (the modus operandi of her father) Muriel escapes to the entertainment industry and finds a ‘wicked’ girlfriend mentor. From a rebellious position of stubborn independence, Muriel plays out her fantasy. She gets her white wedding, before seeing both her father and her new married life as hollow shams which have goaded her abandoned mother to suicide. Redefining her life as a ‘game’ and assuming responsibility for her independence, Muriel turns her back on the mainstream, image-conscious, female gang of her oppressed youth. Muriel leaves the story, having rekindled her friendship with her rebel mentor. My methodological approach to viewing the laser disc print was to first make a more accessible, coded record of the entire movie. I was able to code and record the print in real time, using a new metalanguage (Watson, “Eyes”). The advantage of Coding is that ‘thinks’ the same way as film making, it does not sidetrack the analyst into prose. The Code splits the movie print into Vision Action [vision graphic elements, including text] (sound) The Coding splits the vision track into normal action and graphic elements, such as text, so this Coding is an ideal method for extracting all the text elements of a film in real time. After playing the film once, I had four and a half tightly packed pages of the coded story, including all its text elements in square brackets. Being a unique, indexed hard copy, the Coded copy allowed me immediate access to any point of the Muriel’s Wedding saga without having to search the DVD laser print. How are ‘print’ elements used in Muriel’s Wedding? Firstly, a rose-coloured monoprint of Muriel Heslop’s smiling face stares enigmatically from the plastic surface of the DVD picture disc. The print is a still photo captured from her smile as she walked down the aisle of her white wedding. In this print, Toni Collette is the Mona Lisa of Australian culture, except that fans of Muriel’s Wedding know the meaning of that smile is a magical combination of the actor’s art: the smile is both the flush of dreams come true and the frightening self deception that will kill her mother. Inserting and playing the disc, the text-dominant menu appears, and the film commences with the text-dominant opening titles. Text and titles confer a legitimacy on a work, whether it is a trade mark of the laser print owners, or the household names of stars. Text titles confer status relationships on both the presenters of the cultural artifact and the viewer who has entered into a legal license agreement with the owners of the movie. A title makes us comfortable, because the mind always seeks to name the unfamiliar, and a set of text titles does that job for us so that we can navigate the ‘tracks’ and settle into our engagement with the unfamiliar. The apparent ‘truth’ and ‘stability’ of printed text calms our fears and beguiles our uncertainties. Muriel attends the white wedding of a school bully bride, wearing a leopard print dress she has stolen. Muriel’s spotted wild animal print contrasts with the pure white handmade dress of the bride. In Muriel’s leopard textile print, we have the wild, rebellious, impoverished, inappropriate intrusion into the social ritual and fantasy of her high-status tormentor. An off-duty store detective recognizes the printed dress and calls the police. The police are themselves distinguished by their blue-and-white checked prints and other mechanically reproduced impressions of cultural symbols: in steel, brass, embroidery, leather and plastics. Muriel is driven in the police car past the stenciled town sign (‘Welcome To Porpoise Spit’ heads a paragraph of small print). She is delivered to her father, a politician who presides over the policing of his town. In a state where the judiciary, police and executive are hijacked by the same tyrant, Muriel’s father, Bill, pays off the police constables with a carton of legal drugs (beer) and Muriel must face her father’s wrath, which he proceeds to transfer to his detested wife. Like his daughter, the father also wears a spotted brown print costume, but his is a batik print from neighbouring Indonesia (incidentally, in a nation that takes the political status of its batik prints very seriously). Bill demands that Muriel find the receipt for the leopard print dress she claims she has purchased. The legitimate ownership of the object is enmeshed with a printed receipt, the printed evidence of trade. The law (and the paramilitary power behind the law) are legitimized, or contested, by the presence or absence of printed text. Muriel hides in her bedroom, surround by poster prints of the pop group ABBA. Torn-out prints of other people’s weddings adorn her mirror. Her face is embossed with the clown-like primary colours of the marionette as she lifts a bouquet to her chin and stares into the real time ‘print’ of her mirror image. Bill takes the opportunity of a business meeting with Japanese investors to feed his entire family at ‘Charlie Chan’’s restaurant. Muriel’s middle sister sloppily wears her father’s state election tee shirt, printed with the text: ‘Vote 1, Bill Heslop. You can’t stop progress.’ The text sets up two ironic gags that are paid off on the dialogue track: “He lost,’ we are told. ‘Progress’ turns out to be funding the concreting of a beach. Bill berates his daughter Muriel: she has no chance of becoming a printer’s apprentice and she has failed a typing course. Her dysfunction in printed text has been covered up by Bill: he has bribed the typing teacher to issue a printed diploma to his daughter. In the gambling saloon of the club, under the arrays of mechanically repeated cultural symbols lit above the poker machines (‘A’ for ace, ‘Q’ for queen, etc.), Bill’s secret girlfriend Diedre risks giving Muriel a cosmetics job. Another text icon in lights announces the surf nightclub ‘Breakers’. Tania, the newly married queen bitch who has made Muriel’s teenage years a living hell, breaks up with her husband, deciding to cash in his negotiable text documents – his Bali honeymoon tickets – and go on an island holiday with her girlfriends instead. Text documents are the enduring site of agreements between people and also the site of mutations to those agreements. Tania dumps Muriel, who sobs and sobs. Sobs are a mechanical, percussive reproduction impressed on the sound track. Returning home, we discover that Muriel’s older brother has failed a printed test and been rejected for police recruitment. There is a high incidence of print illiteracy in the Heslop family. Mrs Heslop (Jeannie Drynan), for instance, regularly has trouble at the post office. Muriel sees a chance to escape the oppression of her family by tricking her mother into giving her a blank cheque. Here is the confluence of the legitimacy of a bank’s printed negotiable document with the risk and freedom of a blank space for rebel Muriel’s handwriting. Unable to type, her handwriting has the power to steal every cent of her father’s savings. She leaves home and spends the family’s savings at an island resort. On the island, the text print-challenged Muriel dances to a recording (sound print) of ABBA, her hand gestures emphasizing her bewigged face, which is made up in an impression of her pop idol. Her imitation of her goddesses – the ABBA women, her only hope in a real world of people who hate or avoid her – is accompanied by her goddesses’ voices singing: ‘the mystery book on the shelf is always repeating itself.’ Before jpeg and gif image downloads, we had postcard prints and snail mail. Muriel sends a postcard to her family, lying about her ‘success’ in the cosmetics business. The printed missal is clutched by her father Bill (Bill Hunter), who proclaims about his daughter, ‘you can’t type but you really impress me’. Meanwhile, on Hibiscus Island, Muriel lies under a moonlit palm tree with her newly found mentor, ‘bad girl’ Ronda (Rachel Griffiths). In this critical scene, where foolish Muriel opens her heart’s yearnings to a confidante she can finally trust, the director and DP have chosen to shoot a flat, high contrast blue filtered image. The visual result is very much like the semiabstract Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock prints by Utamaro. This Japanese printing style informed the rise of European modern painting (Monet, Van Gogh, Picasso, etc., were all important collectors and students of Ukiyo-e prints). The above print and text elements in Muriel’s Wedding take us 27 minutes into her story, as recorded on a single page of real-time handwritten Coding. Although not discussed here, the Coding recorded the complete film – a total of 106 minutes of text elements and main graphic elements – as four pages of Code. Referring to this Coding some weeks after it was made, I looked up the final code on page four: taxi [food of the sea] bq. Translation: a shop sign whizzes past in the film’s background, as Muriel and Ronda leave Porpoise Spit in a taxi. Over their heads the text ‘Food Of The Sea’ flashes. We are reminded that Muriel and Ronda are mermaids, fantastic creatures sprung from the brow of author PJ Hogan, and illuminated even today in the pantheon of women’s coming-of-age art works. That the movie is relevant ten years on is evidenced by the current usage of the Muriel’s Wedding online forum, an intersection of wider discussions by sliterate women on imdb.com who, like Muriel, are observers (and in some cases victims) of horrific pressure from ambitious female gangs and bullies. Text is always a minor element in a motion picture (unless it is a subtitled foreign film) and text usually whizzes by subliminally while viewing a film. By Coding the work for [text], all the text nuances made by the film makers come to light. While I have viewed Muriel’s Wedding on many occasions, it has only been in Coding it specifically for text that I have noticed that Muriel is a representative of that vast class of talented youth who are discriminated against by print (as in text) educators who cannot offer her a life-affirming identity in the English classroom. Severely depressed at school, and failing to type or get a printer’s apprenticeship, Muriel finds paid work (and hence, freedom, life, identity, independence) working in her audio visual printed medium of choice: a video store in a new city. Muriel found a sliterate admirer at the video store but she later dumped him for her fantasy man, before leaving him too. One of the points of conjecture on the imdb Muriel’s Wedding site is, did Muriel (in the unwritten future) get back together with admirer Brice Nobes? That we will never know. While a print forms a track that tells us where culture has been, a print cannot be the future, a print is never animate reality. At the end of any trail of prints, one must lift one’s head from the last impression, and negotiate satisfaction in the happening world. References Australian Broadcasting Corporation. “Memo Shows US General Approved Interrogations.” 30 Mar. 2005 http://www.abc.net.au>. British Broadcasting Commission. “Films ‘Fuel Online File-Sharing’.’’ 22 Feb. 2005 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3890527.stm>. Bretherton, I. “The Origins of Attachment Theory: John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth.” 1994. 23 Jan. 2005 http://www.psy.med.br/livros/autores/bowlby/bowlby.pdf>. Bunniesormaybemidgets. Chat Room Comment. “What Did Those Girls Do to Rhonda?” 28 Mar. 2005 http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0110598/board/>. Chinese Graphic Arts Net. Mantras of the Dharani Sutra. 20 Feb. 2005 http://www.cgan.com/english/english/cpg/engcp10.htm>. Ewins, R. Barkcloth and the Origins of Paper. 1991. 20 Feb. 2005 http://www.justpacific.com/pacific/papers/barkcloth~paper.html>. Grassl K.R. The DVD Statistical Report. 14 Mar. 2005 http://www.corbell.com>. Hahn, C. M. The Topic Is Paper. 20 Feb. 2005 http://www.nystamp.org/Topic_is_paper.html>. Harper, D. Online Etymology Dictionary. 14 Mar. 2005 http://www.etymonline.com/>. Mask of Zorro, The. Screenplay by J McCulley. UA, 1920. Muriel’s Wedding. Dir. PJ Hogan. Perf. Toni Collette, Rachel Griffiths, Bill Hunter, and Jeannie Drynan. Village Roadshow, 1994. O’Hagan, Jack. On The Road to Gundagai. 1922. 2 Apr. 2005 http://ingeb.org/songs/roadtogu.html>. Poole, J.H., P.L. Tyack, A.S. Stoeger-Horwath, and S. Watwood. “Animal Behaviour: Elephants Are Capable of Vocal Learning.” Nature 24 Mar. 2005. Sanchez, R. “Interrogation and Counter-Resistance Policy.” 14 Sept. 2003. 30 Mar. 2005 http://www.abc.net.au>. Schultheiss, O.C., M.M. Wirth, and S.J. Stanton. “Effects of Affiliation and Power Motivation Arousal on Salivary Progesterone and Testosterone.” Hormones and Behavior 46 (2005). Sherry, N. The Life of Graham Greene. 3 vols. London: Jonathan Cape 2004, 1994, 1989. Silk Road. Printing. 2000. 20 Feb. 2005 http://www.silk-road.com/artl/printing.shtml>. Smith, T. “Elpida Licenses ‘DVD on a Chip’ Memory Tech.” The Register 20 Feb. 2005 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02>. —. “Intel Boffins Build First Continuous Beam Silicon Laser.” The Register 20 Feb. 2005 http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02>. Watson, R. S. “Eyes And Ears: Dramatic Memory Slicing and Salable Media Content.” Innovation and Speculation, ed. Brad Haseman. Brisbane: QUT. [in press] Watson, R. S. Visions. Melbourne: Curriculum Corporation, 1994. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Watson, Robert. "E-Press and Oppress: Audio Visual Print Drama, Identity, Text and Motion Picture Rebellion." M/C Journal 8.2 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0506/08-watson.php>. APA Style Watson, R. (Jun. 2005) "E-Press and Oppress: Audio Visual Print Drama, Identity, Text and Motion Picture Rebellion," M/C Journal, 8(2). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0506/08-watson.php>.

Abstract:

IntroductionIn this article, I discuss the potential of sound to construct fictional spaces and build relations between bodies using two performance installations as case studies. The first is Invisible Flock’s 105+dB, a site-specific sound work which transports crowd recordings of a soccer match to alternative geographical locations. The second is Atelier Bildraum’s Bildraum, an installation performance using live photography, architectural models, and ambient sound. By writing through these two works, I question how sound builds relations between bodies and across space as well as questioning the role of site within sound installation works. The potential for sound to create shared space and foster relationships between bodies, objects, and the surrounding environment is evident in recent contemporary art exhibitions. For MOMA’s Soundings: A Contemporary Score, curator Barbara London, sought to create a series of “tuned environments” rather than use headphones, emphasising the potential of sound works to envelop the gallery goer. Similarly, Sam Belinafante’s Listening, aimed to capture a sense of how sound can influence attention by choreographing the visitors’ experience towards the artworks. By using motorised technology to stagger each installation, gallery goers were led by their ears. Both London’s and Belinafante’s curatorial approaches highlight the current awareness and interest in aural space and its influence on bodies, an area I aim to contribute to with this article.Audio-based performance works consisting of narration or instructions received through headphones feature as a dominant trend within the field of theatre and performance studies. Well-known examples from the past decade include: Janet Cardiff’s The Missing Case Study B; Graeme Miller’s Linked; and Lavinia Greenlaw’s Audio Obscura. The use of sound in these works offers several possibilities: the layering of fiction onto site, the intensification, or contradiction of existing atmospheres and, in most cases, the direction of audience attention. Misha Myers uses the term ‘percipient’ to articulate this mode of engagement that relies on the active attendance of the participant to their surroundings. She states that it is the participant “whose active, embodied and sensorial engagement alters and determines [an artistic] process and its outcomes” (172-23). Indeed, audio-based works provide invaluable ways of considering how the body of the audience member might be engaged, raising important issues in relation to sound, embodiment and presence. Yet the question remains, outside of individual acoustic environments, how does sound build physical relations between bodies and across space? Within sound studies the World Soundscape Project, founded in the 1970s by R. Murray Schafer, documents the acoustic properties of cities, nature, technology and work. Collaborations between sound engineers and musicians indicated the musicality inherent in the world encouraging attunement to the acoustic characteristics of our environment. Gernot Böhme indicates the importance of personal and emotional impressions of space, experienced as atmosphere. Atmosphere, rather than being an accumulation of individual acoustic characteristics, is a total experience. In relation to sound, sensitivity to this mode of engagement is understood as a need to shift from hearing in “an instrumental sense—hearing something—into a way of taking part in the world” (221). Böhme highlights the importance of the less tangible, emotional consistency of our surrounding environment. Brandon Labelle further indicates the social potential of sound by foregrounding the emotional and psychological charges which support “event-architecture, participatory productions, and related performative aspects of space” (Acoustic Spatiality 2) these, Labelle claims enable sound to catalyse both the material world and our imaginations. Sound as felt experience and the emotional construction of space form the key focus here. Within architectural discourse, both Juhani Pallasmaa and Peter Zumthor point to atmospheric nuances and flows of energy which can cause events to furnish the more rigid physical constructs we exist between, influencing spatial quality. However, it is sensorial experience Jean-Paul Thibaud claims, including attention to light, sound, smell and texture that informs much of how we situate ourselves, contributing to the way we imaginatively construct the world we inhabit, even if only of temporary duration. To expand on this, Thibaud locates the sensorial appreciation of site between “the lived experience of people as well as the built environment of the place” (Three Dynamics 37) hinting at the presence of energetic flows. Such insights into how relations are built between bodies and objects inform the approach taken in this article, as I focus on sensorial modes of engagement to write through my own experience as listener-spectator. George Home-Cook uses the term listener-spectator to describe “an ongoing, intersensorial bodily engagement with the affordances of the theatrical environment” (147) and a mode of attending that privileges phenomenal engagement. Here, I occupy the position of the listener-spectator to attend to two installations, Invisible Flock’s 105+dB and Atelier Bildraum’s Bildraum. The first is a large-scale sound installation produced for Hull UK city of culture, 2017. The piece uses audio recordings from 16 shotgun microphones positioned at the periphery of Hull City’s soccer pitch during a match on 28 November 2016. The piece relocates the recordings in public space, replaying a twenty-minute edited version through 36 speakers. The second, Bildraum, is an installation performance consisting of photographer Charlotte Bouckaert, architect Steve Salembier with sound by Duncan Speakman. The piece, with a running time of 40-minutes uses architectural models, live photography, sound and lighting to explore narrative, memory, and space. In writing through these two case studies, I aim to emphasise sensorial engagement. To do so I recognise, as Salomé Voegelin does, the limits of critical discourse to account for relations built through sound. Voegelin indicates the rift critical discourse creates between what is described and its description. In her own writing, Voegelin attempts to counteract this by using the subjective “I” to foreground the experience of a sound work as a writer-listener. Similarly, here I foreground my position as a listener-spectator and aim to evidence the criticality within the work by writing through my experience of attending thereby bringing out mood, texture, atmosphere to foreground how relations are built across space and between bodies.105+dB Invisible Flock January 2017, I arrive in Hull for Invisible Flock’s 105+dB programmed as part of Made in Hull, a series of cultural activities happening across the city. The piece takes place in Zebedee’s Yard, a pedestrianised area located between Princes Dock Street and Whitefriargate in the grounds of the former Trinity House School. From several streets, I can already hear a crowd. Sound, porous in its very nature, flows through the city expanding beyond its immediate geography bringing the notion of a fictional event into being. I look in pub windows to see which teams are playing, yet the visual clues defy what my ears tell me. Listening, as Labelle suggests is relational, it brings us into proximity with nearby occurrences, bodies and objects. Sound and in turn listening, by both an intended and unsuspecting public, lures bodies into proximity aurally bound by the promise of an event. The use of sound, combined with the physical sensation implied by the surrounding architecture serves to construct us as a group of attendees to a soccer match. This is evident as I continue my approach, passing through an archway with cobbled stones underfoot. The narrow entrance rapidly fills up with bodies and objects; push chairs, wheelchairs, umbrellas, and thick winter coats bringing us into close physical contact with one another. Individuals are reduced to a sea of heads bobbing towards the bright stadium lights now visible in the distance. The title 105+dB, refers to the volume at which the sound of an individual voice is lost amongst a crowd, accordingly my experience of being at the site of the piece further echoes this theme. The physical structure of the archway combined with the volume of bodies contributes to what Pallasmaa describes as “atmospheric perception” (231), a mode of attending to experience that engages all the senses as well as time, memory and imagination. Sound here contributes to the atmosphere provoking a shift in my listening. The importance of the listener-spectator experience is underscored by the absence of architectural structures habitually found in stadiums. The piece is staged using the bare minimum: four metal scaffolding structures on each side of the Yard support stadium lights and a high-visibility clad figure patrols the periphery. These trappings serve to evoke an essence of the original site of the recordings, the rest is furnished by the audio track played through 36 speakers situated at intervals around the space as well as the movement of other bodies. As Böhme notes: “Space is genuinely experienced by being in it, through physical presence” (179) similarly, here, it is necessary to be in the space, aurally immersed in sound and in physical proximity to other bodies moving across the Yard. Image 1: The piece is staged using the bare minimum, the rest is furnished by the audio track and movement of bodies. Image courtesy of the artists.The absence of visual clues draws attention to the importance of presence and mood, as Böhme claims: “By feeling our own presence, we feel the space in which we are present” (179). Listening-spectators actively contribute to the event-architecture as physical sensations build and are tangibly felt amongst those present, influenced by the dramaturgical structure of the audio recording. Sounds of jeering, applause and the referees’ whistle combine with occasional chants such as “come on city, come on city” marking a shared rhythm. Specific moments, such as the sound of a leather ball hitting a foot creates a sense of expectation amongst the crowd, and disappointed “ohhs” make a near-miss audibly palpable. Yet, more important than a singular sound event is the sustained sensation of being in a situation, a distinction Pallasmaa makes, foregrounding the “ephemeral and dynamic experiential fields” (235) offered by music, an argument I wish to consider in relation to this sound installation.The detail of the recording makes it possible to imagine, and almost accurately chart, the movement of the ball around the pitch. A “yeah” erupts, making it acoustically evident that a goal is scored as the sound of elation erupts through the speakers. In turn, this sensation much like Thibaud’s concept of intercorporeality, spreads amongst the bodies of the listening-spectators who fist bump, smile, clap, jeer and jump about sharing and occupying Zebedee’s Yard with physical manifestations of triumph. Through sound comes an invitation to be both physically and emotionally in the space, indicating the potential to understand, as Pallasmaa suggests, how “spaces and true architectural experiences are verbs” (231). By physically engaging with the peaks and troughs of the game, a temporary community of sorts forms. After twenty minutes, the main lights dim creating an amber glow in the space, sound is reduced to shuffling noises as the stadium fills up, or empties out (it is impossible to tell). Accordingly, Zebedee’s Yard also begins to empty. It is unclear if I am listening to the sounds in the space around me, or those on the recording as they overlap. People turn to leave, or stand and shuffle evidencing an attitude of receptiveness towards their surrounding environment and underscoring what Thibaud describes as “tuned ambiance” where a resemblance emerges “between what is felt and what is produced” (Three Dynamics 44). The piece, by replaying the crowd sounds of a soccer match across the space of Zebedee’s Yard, stages atmospheric perception. In the absence of further architectural structures, it is the sound of the crowd in the stadium and in turn an attention to our hearing and physical presence that constitutes the event. Bildraum Atelier BildraumAugust 2016, I am in Edinburgh to see Bildraum. The German word “bildraum” roughly translates as image room, and specifically relates to the part of the camera where the image is constructed. Bouckaert takes high definition images live onstage that project immediately onto the screen at the back of the space. The audience see the architectural model, the taking of the photograph, the projected image and hear both pre-recorded ambient sounds by Speakman, and live music played by Salembier generating the sensation that they are inhabiting a bildraum. Here I explore how both sound and image projection can encourage the listener-spectator to construct multiple narratives of possible events and engage their spatial imagination. Image 2: The audience see the architectural model, the taking of the photograph, the projected image and hear both live and pre-recorded sounds. Image courtesy of the artists.In Bildraum, the combination of elements (photographic, acoustic, architectural) serve to create provocative scenes which (quite literally) build multiple spaces for potential narratives. As Bouckaert asserts, “when we speak with people after the performance, they all have a different story”. The piece always begins with a scale model of the actual space. It then evolves to show other spaces such as a ‘social’ scene located in a restaurant, a ‘relaxation’ scene featuring sun loungers, an oversize palm tree and a pool as well as a ‘domestic’ scene with a staircase to another room. The use of architectural models makes the spaces presented appear as hom*ogenous, neutral containers yet layers of sound including footsteps, people chatting, doors opening and closing, objects dropping, and an eerie soundscape serve to expand and incite the construction of imaginative possibilities. In relation to spatial imagination, Pallasmaa discusses the novel and our ability, when reading, to build all the settings of the story, as though they already existed in pre-formed realities. These imagined scenes are not experienced in two dimensions, as pictures, but in three dimensions and include both atmosphere and a sense of spatiality (239). Here, the clean, slick lines of the rooms, devoid of colour and personal clutter become personalised, yet also troubled through the sounds and shadows which appear in the photographs, adding ambiance and serving to highlight the pluralisation of space. As the piece progresses, these neat lines suffer disruption giving insight into the relations between bodies and across space. As Martin Heidegger notes, space and our occupation of space are not mutually exclusive but intertwined. Pallasmaa further reminds us that when we enter a space, space enters us and the experience is a reciprocal exchange and fusion of both subject and object (232).One image shows a table with several chairs neatly arranged around the outside. The distance between the chairs and the table is sufficient to imagine the presence of several bodies. The first image, though visually devoid of any living presence is layered with chattering sounds suggesting the presence of bodies. In the following image, the chairs have shifted position and there is a light haze, I envisage familiar social scenes where conversations with friends last long into the night. In the next image, one chair appears on top of the table, another lies tilted on the floor with raucous noise to accompany the image. Despite the absence of bodies, the minimal audio-visual provocations activate my spatial imagination and serve to suggest a correlation between physical behaviour and ambiance in everyday settings. As discussed in the previous paragraph, this highlights how space is far from a disinterested, or separate container for physical relations, rather, it underscores how social energy, sound and mood can build a dynamic presence within the built environment, one that is not in isolation but indeed in dialogue with surrounding structures. In a further scene, the seemingly fixed, stable nature of the models undergoes a sudden influx of materials as a barrage of tiny polystyrene balls appears. The image, combined with the sound suggests a large-scale disaster, or freak weather incident. The ambiguity created by the combination of sound and image indicates a hidden mobility beneath what is seen. Sound here does not announce the presence of an object, or indicate the taking place of a specific event, instead it acts as an invitation, as Voegelin notes, “not to confirm and preserve actuality but to explore possibilities” (Sonic 13). The use of sound which accompanies the image helps to underscore an exchange between the material and immaterial elements occurring within everyday life, leaving a gap for the listener-spectator to build their own narrative whilst also indicating further on goings in the depth of the visual. Image 3: The minimal audio-visual provocations serve to activate my spatial imagination. Image courtesy of the artists.The piece advances at a slow pace as each model is adjusted while lighting and objects are arranged. The previous image lingers on the projector screen, animated by the sound track which uses simple but evocative chords. This lulls me into an attentive, almost meditative state as I tune into and construct my own memories prompted by the spaces shown. The pace and rhythm that this establishes in Summerhall’s Old Lab creates a productive imaginative space. Böhme argues that atmosphere is a combination of both subjective and objective perceptions of space (16). Here, stimulated by the shifting arrangements Bouckaert and Salembier propose, I create short-lived geographies charting my lived experience and memories across a plurality of possible environments. As listener-spectator I am individually implicated as the producer of a series of invisible maps. The invitation to engage with the process of the work over 40-minutes as the building and dismantling of models and objects takes place draws attention to the sensorial flows and what Voegelin denotes as a “semantic materiality” (Sonic 53), one that might penetrate our sensibility and accompany us beyond the immediate timeframe of the work itself. The timeframe and rhythm of the piece encourages me, as listener-spectator to focus on the ambient sound track, not just as sound, but to consider the material realities of the here and now, to attend to vibrational milieus which operate beyond the surface of the visible. In doing so, I become aware of constructed actualities and of sound as a medium to get me beyond what is merely presented. ConclusionThe dynamic experiential potential of sound installations discussed from the perspective of a listener-spectator indicate how emotion is a key composite of spatial construction. Beyond the closed acoustic environments of audio-based performance works, aural space, physical proximity, and the importance of ambiance are foregrounded. Such intangible, ephemeral experiences can benefit from a writing practice that attends to these aesthetic concerns. By writing through both case studies from the position of listener-spectator, my lived experience of each work, manifested through attention to sensorial experience, have indicated how relations are built between bodies and across space. In Invisible Flock´s 105+dB sound featured as a social material binding listener-spectators to each other and catalysing a fictional relation to space. Here, sound formed temporal communities bringing bodies into contact to share in constructing and further shaping the parameters of a fictional event.In Atelier Bildraum’s Bildraum the construction of architectural models combined with ambient and live sound indicated a depth of engagement to the visual, one not confined to how things might appear on the surface. The seemingly given, stable nature of familiar environments can be questioned hinting at the presence of further layers within the vibrational or atmospheric properties operating across space that might bring new or alternative realities to the forefront.In both, the correlation between the environment and emotional impressions of bodies that occupy it emerged as key in underscoring and engaging in a dialogue between ambiance and lived experience.ReferencesBildraum, Atelier. Bildraum. Old Lab, Summer Hall, Edinburgh. 18 Aug. 2016.Böhme, Gernot, and Jean-Paul Thibaud (eds.). The Aesthetics of Atmospheres. New York: Routledge, 2017.Cardiff, Janet. The Missing Case Study B. Art Angel, 1999.Home-Cook, George. Theatre and Aural Attention. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.Greenlaw, Lavinia. Audio Obscura. 2011.Bouckaert, Charlotte, and Steve Salembier. Bildraum. Brussels. 8 Oct. 2014. 18 Jan. 2017 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eueeAaIuMo0>.Daemen, Merel. “Steve Salembier & Charlotte Bouckaert.” 1 Jul. 2015. 18 Jan. 2017 <http://thissurroundingusall.com/post/122886489993/steve-salembier-charlotte-bouckaert-an-architect>. Haydon, Andrew. “Bildraum – Summerhall, Edinburgh.” Postcards from the Gods 20 Aug. 2016. 18 Jan. 2017 <http://postcardsgods.blogspot.co.uk/2016/08/bildraum-summerhall-edinburgh.html>. Heidegger, Martin. “Building, Dwelling, Thinking.” Basic Writings. Ed. David Farrell Krell. Oxford: Routledge, 1978. 239-57.Hutchins, Roy. 27 Aug. 2016. 18 Jan. 2017 <http://fringereview.co.uk/review/edinburgh-fringe/2016/bildraum/>.Invisible Flock. 105+dB. Zebedee’s Yard, Made in Hull. Hull. 7 Jan. 2017. Labelle, Brandon. “Acoustic Spatiality.” SIC – Journal of Literature, Culture and Literary Translation (2012). 18 Jan. 2017 <http://hrcak.srce.hr/file/127338>.———. “Other Acoustics” OASE: Immersed - Sound & Architecture 78 (2009): 14-24.———. “Sharing Architecture: Space, Time and the Aesthetics of Pressure.” Journal of Visual Culture 10.2 (2011): 177-89.Miller, Graeme. Linked. 2003.Myers, Misha. “Situations for Living: Performing Emplacement.” Research in Drama Education 13.2 (2008): 171-80.Pallasmaa, Juhani. “Space, Place and Atmosphere. Emotion and Peripheral Perception in Architectural Experience.” Lebenswelt 4.1 (2014): 230-45.Schafer, R. Murray. The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World. Vermont: Destiny Books, 1994.Schevers, Bas. Bildraum (trailer) by Charlotte Bouckaert and Steve Salembier. Dec. 2014. 18 Jan. 2017 <https://vimeo.com/126676951>.Taylor, N. “Made in Hull Artists: Invisible Flock.” 6 Jan. 2017. 9 Jan. 2017 <https://www.hull2017.co.uk/discover/article/made-hull-artists-invisible-flock/>. Thibaud, Jean-Paul. “The Three Dynamics of Urban Ambiances.” Sites of Sound: of Architecture and the Ear Vol. II. Eds. B. Labelle and C. Martinho. Berlin: Errant Bodies P, 2011. 45-53.———. “Urban Ambiances as Common Ground?” 4.1 (2014): 282-95.Voegelin, Salomé. Listening to Sound and Silence: Toward a Philosophy of Sound Art. New York: Continuum, 2010.———. Sonic Possible Worlds. London: Bloomsbury, 2014.Zumthor, Peter. Thinking Architecture. Basel: Birkhäuser, 1998.———. Atmosphere: Architectural Environments – Surrounding Objects. Basel: Birkhäuser, 2006.

Abstract:

‘Complex(ity)’ is currently fashionable in the humanities. Fashions come and go, but in this article I argue that the interest in complexity connects with something deeper, an intellectual revolution that began before complexity became trendy, and will continue after the spotlight passes on. Yet to make this case, and understand and advance this revolution, we need a better take on ‘complexity’. ‘Complex’ is of course complex. In common use it refers to something ‘composed of many interrelated parts’, or problems ‘so complicated or intricate as to be hard to deal with’. I will call this popular meaning, with its positive and negative values, complexity-1. In science it has a more negative sense, complexity-2, referring to the presenting complexity of problems, which science will strip down to underlying simplicity. But recently it has developed positive meanings in both science and humanities. Complexity-3 marks a revolutionarily more positive attitude to complexity in science that does seek to be reductive. Humanities-style complexity-4, which acknowledges and celebrates the inherent complexity of texts and meanings, is basic in contemporary Media and Cultural studies (MaC for short). The underlying root of complex is plico bend or fold, plus con- together, via complector grasp (something), encompass an idea, or person. The double of ‘complex’ is ‘simple’, from Latin simplex, which less obviously also comes from plico, plus semel once, at the same time. ‘Simple’ and ‘complex’ are closer than people think: only a fold or two apart. A key idea is that these elements are interdependent, parts of a single underlying form. ‘Simple(x)’ is another modality of ‘complex’, dialectically related, different in degree not kind, not absolutely opposite. The idea of ‘holding together’ is stronger in Latin complex, the idea of difficulty more prominent in modern usage, yet the term still includes both. The concept ‘complex’ is untenable apart from ‘simple’. This figure maps the basic structures in ‘complexity’. This complexity contains both positive and negative values, science and non-science, academic and popular meanings, with folds/differences and relationships so dynamically related that no aspect is totally independent. This complex field is the minimum context in which to explore claims about a ‘complexity revolution’. Complexity in Science and Humanities In spite of the apparent similarities between Complexity-3 (sciences) and 4 (humanities), in practice a gulf separates them, policed from both sides. If these sides do not talk to each other, as they often do not, the result is not a complex meaning for ‘complex’, but a semantic war-zone. These two forms of complexity connect and collide because they reach into a new space where discourses of science and non-science are interacting more than they have for many years. For many, in both academic communities, a strong, taken-for-granted mindset declares the difference between them is absolute. They assume that if ‘complexity’ exists in science, it must mean something completely different from what it means in humanities or everyday discourse, so different as to be incomprehensible or unusable by humanists. This terrified defence of the traditional gulf between sciences and humanities is not the clinching argument these critics think. On the contrary, it symptomises what needs to be challenged, via the concept complex. One influential critic of this split was Lord Snow, who talked of ‘two cultures’. Writing in class-conscious post-war Britain he regretted the ignorance of humanities-trained ruling elites about basic science, and scientists’ ignorance of humanities. No-one then or now doubts there is a problem. Most MaC students have a science-light education, and feel vulnerable to critiques which say they do not need to know any science or maths, including complexity science, and could not understand it anyway. To understand how this has happened I go back to the 17th century rise of ‘modern science’. The Royal Society then included the poet Dryden as well as the scientist Newton, but already the fissure between science and humanities was emerging in the elite, re-enforcing existing gaps between both these and technology. The three forms of knowledge and their communities continued to develop over the next 400 years, producing the education system which formed most of us, the structure of academic knowledges in which culture, technology and science form distinct fields. Complexity has been implicated in this three-way split. Influenced by Newton’s wonderful achievement, explaining so much (movements of earthly and heavenly bodies) with so little (three elegant laws of motion, one brief formula), science defined itself as a reductive practice, in which complexity was a challenge. Simplicity was the sign of a successful solution, altering the older reciprocity between simplicity and complexity. The paradox was ignored that proof involved highly complex mathematics, as anyone who reads Newton knows. What science held onto was the outcome, a simplicity then retrospectively attributed to the universe itself, as its true nature. Simplicity became a core quality in the ontology of science, with complexity-2 the imperfection which challenged and provoked science to eliminate it. Humanities remained a refuge for a complexity ontology, in which both problems and solutions were irreducibly complex. Because of the dominance of science as a form of knowing, the social sciences developed a reductivist approach opposing traditional humanities. They also waged bitter struggles against anti-reductionists who emerged in what was called ‘social theory’. Complexity-4 in humanities is often associated with ‘post-structuralism’, as in Derrida, who emphasises the irreducible complexity of every text and process of meaning, or ‘postmodernism’, as in Lyotard’s controversial, influential polemic. Lyotard attempted to take the pulse of contemporary Western thought. Among trends he noted were new forms of science, new relationships between science and humanities, and a new kind of logic pervading all branches of knowledge. Not all Lyotard’s claims have worn well, but his claim that something really important is happening in the relationship between kinds and institutions of knowledge, especially between sciences and humanities, is worth serious attention. Even classic sociologists like Durkheim recognised that the modern world is highly complex. Contemporary sociologists agree that ‘globalisation’ introduces new levels of complexity in its root sense, interconnections on a scale never seen before. Urry argues that the hyper-complexity of the global world requires a complexity approach, combining complexity-3 and 4. Lyotard’s ‘postmodernism’ has too much baggage, including dogmatic hostility to science. Humanities complexity-4 has lost touch with the sceptical side of popular complexity-1, and lacks a dialectic relationship with simplicity. ‘Complexity’, incorporating Complexity-1 and 3, popular and scientific, made more complex by incorporating humanities complexity-4, may prove a better concept for thinking creatively and productively about these momentous changes. Only complex complexity in the approach, flexible and interdisciplinary, can comprehend these highly complex new objects of knowledge. Complexity and the New Condition of Science Some important changes in the way science is done are driven not from above, by new theories or discoveries, but by new developments in social contexts. Gibbons and Nowottny identify new forms of knowledge and practice, which they call ‘mode-2 knowledge’, emerging alongside older forms. Mode-1 is traditional academic knowledge, based in universities, organised in disciplines, relating to real-life problems at one remove, as experts to clients or consultants to employers. Mode-2 is orientated to real life problems, interdisciplinary and collaborative, producing provisional, emergent knowledge. Gibbons and Nowottny do not reference postmodernism but are looking at Lyotard’s trends as they were emerging in practice 10 years later. They do not emphasise complexity, but the new objects of knowledge they address are fluid, dynamic and highly complex. They emphasise a new scale of interdisciplinarity, in collaborations between academics across all disciplines, in science, technology, social sciences and humanities, though they do not see a strong role for humanities. This approach confronts and welcomes irreducible complexity in object and methods. It takes for granted that real-life problems will always be too complex (with too many factors, interrelated in too many ways) to be reduced to the sort of problem that isolated disciplines could handle. The complexity of objects requires equivalent complexity in responses; teamwork, using networks, drawing on relevant knowledge wherever it is to be found. Lyotard famously and foolishly predicted the death of the ‘grand narrative’ of science, but Gibbons and Nowottny offer a more complex picture in which modes-1 and 2 will continue alongside each other in productive dialectic. The linear form of science Lyotard attacked is stronger than ever in some ways, as ‘Big Science’, which delivers wealth and prestige to disciplinary scientists, accessing huge funds to solve highly complex problems with a reductionist mindset. But governments also like the idea of mode-2 knowledge, under whatever name, and try to fund it despite resistance from powerful mode-1 academics. Moreover, non-reductionist science in practice has always been more common than the dominant ideology allowed, whether or not its exponents, some of them eminent scientists, chose to call it ‘complexity’ science. Quantum physics, called ‘the new physics’, consciously departed from the linear, reductionist assumptions of Newtonian physics to project an irreducibly complex picture of the quantum world. Different movements, labelled ‘catastrophe theory’, ‘chaos theory’ and ‘complexity science’, emerged, not a single coherent movement replacing the older reductionist model, but loosely linked by new attitudes to complexity. Instead of seeing chaos and complexity as problems to be removed by analysis, chaos and complexity play a more ambiguous role, as ontologically primary. Disorder and complexity are not later regrettable lapses from underlying essential simplicity and order, but potentially creative resources, to be understood and harnessed, not feared, controlled, eliminated. As a taste of exciting ideas on complexity, barred from humanities MaC students by the general prohibition on ‘consorting with the enemy’ (science), I will outline three ideas, originally developed in complexity-3, which can be described in ways requiring no specialist knowledge or vocabulary, beyond a Mode-2 openness to dynamic, interdisciplinary engagement. Fractals, a term coined by mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot, are so popular as striking shapes produced by computer-graphics, circulated on T-shirts, that they may seem superficial, unscientific, trendy. They exist at an intersection between science, media and culture, and their complexity includes transactions across that folded space. The name comes from Latin fractus, broken: irregular shapes like broken shards, which however have their own pattern. Mandelbrot claims that in nature, many such patterns partly repeat on different scales. When this happens, he says, objects on any one scale will have equivalent complexity. Part of this idea is contained in Blake’s famous line: ‘To see the world in a grain of sand’. The importance of the principle is that it fundamentally challenges reductiveness. Nor is it as unscientific as it may sound. Geologists indeed see grains of sand under a microscope as highly complex. In sociology, instead of individuals (literal meaning ‘cannot be divided’) being the minimally simple unit of analysis, individuals can be understood to be as complex (e.g. with multiple identities, linked with many other social beings) as groups, classes or nations. There is no level where complexity disappears. A second concept is ‘fuzzy logic’, invented by an engineer, Zadeh. The basic idea is not unlike the literary critic Empson’s ‘ambiguity’, the sometimes inexhaustible complexity of meanings in great literature. Zadeh’s contribution was to praise the inherent ambiguity and ambiguity of natural languages as a resource for scientists and engineers, making them better, not worse, for programming control systems. Across this apparently simple bridge have flowed many fuzzy machines, more effective than their over-precise brothers. Zadeh crystallised this wisdom in his ‘Principle of incompatibility’: As the complexity of a system increases, our ability to make precise and yet significant statements about its behaviour decreases until a threshold is reached beyond which precision and significance (or relevance) become almost mutually exclusive characteristics (28) Something along these lines is common wisdom in complexity-1. For instance, under the headline “Law is too complex for juries to understand, says judge” (Dick 4), the Chief Justice of Australia, Murray Gleeson, noted a paradox of complexity, that attempts to improve a system by increasing its complexity make it worse (meaningless or irrelevant, as Zadeh said). The system loses its complexity in another sense, that it no longer holds together. My third concept is the ‘Butterfly Effect’, a name coined by Lorenz. The butterfly was this scientist’s poetic fantasy, an imagined butterfly that flaps its wings somewhere on the Andes, and introduces a small change in the weather system that triggers a hurricane in Montana, or Beijing. This idea is another riff on the idea that complex situations are not reducible to component elements. Every cause is so complex that we can never know in advance just what factor will operate in a given situation, or what its effects might be across a highly complex system. Travels in Complexity I will now explore these issues with reference to a single example, or rather, a nested set of examples, each (as in fractal theory) equivalently complex, yet none identical at any scale. I was travelling in a train from Penrith to Sydney in New South Wales in early 2006 when I read a publicity text from NSW State Rail which asked me: ‘Did you know that delays at Sydenham affect trains to Parramatta? Or that a sick passenger on a train at Berowra can affect trains to Penrith?’ No, I did not know that. As a typical commuter I was impressed, and even more so as an untypical commuter who knows about complexity science. Without ostentatious reference to sources in popular science, NSW Rail was illustrating Lorenz’s ‘butterfly effect’. A sick passenger is prosaic, a realistic illustration of the basic point, that in a highly complex system, a small change in one part, so small that no-one could predict it would matter, can produce a massive, apparently unrelated change in another part. This text was part of a publicity campaign with a scientific complexity-3 subtext, which ran in a variety of forms, in their website, in notices in carriages, on the back of tickets. I will use a complexity framework to suggest different kinds of analysis and project which might interest MaC students, applicable to objects that may not refer to be complexity-3. The text does two distinct things. It describes a planning process, and is part of a publicity program. The first, simplifying movement of Mode-1 analysis would see this difference as projecting two separate objects for two different specialists: a transport expert for the planning, a MaC analyst for the publicity, including the image. Unfortunately, as Zadeh warned, in complex conditions simplification carries an explanatory cost, producing descriptions that are meaningless or irrelevant, even though common sense (complexity-1) says otherwise. What do MaC specialists know about rail systems? What do engineers know about publicity? But collaboration in a mode-2 framework does not need extensive specialist knowledge, only enough to communicate with others. MaC specialists have a fuzzy knowledge of their own and other areas of knowledge, attuned by Humanities complexity-4 to tolerate uncertainty. According to the butterfly principle it would be foolish to wish our University education had equipped us with the necessary other knowledges. We could never predict what precise items of knowledge would be handy from our formal and informal education. The complexity of most mode-2 problems is so great that we cannot predict in advance what we will need to know. MaC is already a complex field, in which ‘Media’ and ‘Culture’ are fuzzy terms which interact in different ways. Media and other organisations we might work with are often imbued with linear forms of thought (complexity-2), and want simple answers to simple questions about complex systems. For instance, MaC researchers might be asked as consultants to determine the effect of this message on typical commuters. That form of analysis is no longer respectable in complexity-4 MaC studies. Old-style (complexity-2) effects-research modelled Senders, Messages and Receivers to measure effects. Standard research methods of complexity-2 social sciences might test effects of the message by a survey instrument, with a large sample to allow statistically significant results. Using this, researchers could claim to know whether the publicity campaign had its desired effect on its targeted demographic: presumably inspiring confidence in NSW Rail. However, each of these elements is complex, and interactions between them, and others that don’t enter into the analysis, create further levels of complexity. To manage this complexity, MaC analysts often draw on Foucault’s authority to use ‘discourse’ to simplify analysis. This does not betray the principle of complexity. Complexity-4 needs a simplicity-complexity dialectic. In this case I propose a ‘complexity discourse’ to encapsulate the complex relations between Senders, Receivers and Messages into a single word, which can then be related to other such elements (e.g. ‘publicity discourse’). In this case complexity-3 can also be produced by attending to details of elements in the S-M-R chain, combining Derridean ‘deconstruction’ with expert knowledge of the situation. This Sender may be some combination of engineers and planners, managers who commissioned the advertisem*nt, media professionals who carried it out. The message likewise loses its unity as its different parts decompose into separate messages, leaving the transaction a fraught, unpredictable encounter between multiple messages and many kinds of reader and sender. Alongside its celebration of complexity-3, this short text runs another message: ‘untangling our complex rail network’. This is complexity-2 from science and engineering, where complexity is only a problem to be removed. A fuller text on the web-site expands this second strand, using bullet points and other signals of a linear approach. In this text, there are 5 uses of ‘reliable’, 6 uses of words for problems of complexity (‘bottlenecks’, ‘delays’, ‘congestion’), and 6 uses of words for the new system (‘simpler’, ‘independent’). ‘Complex’ is used twice, both times negatively. In spite of the impression given by references to complexity-3, this text mostly has a reductionist attitude to complexity. Complexity is the enemy. Then there is the image. Each line is a different colour, and they loop in an attractive way, seeming to celebrate graceful complexity-2. Yet this part of the image is what is going to be eliminated by the new program’s complexity-2. The interesting complexity of the upper part of the image is what the text declares is the problem. What are commuters meant to think? And Railcorp? This media analysis identifies a fissure in the message, which reflects a fissure in the Sender-complex. It also throws up a problem in the culture that produced such interesting allusions to complexity science, but has linear, reductionist attitudes to complexity in its practice. We can ask: where does this cultural problem go, in the organisation, in the interconnected system and bureaucracy it manages? Is this culture implicated in the problems the program is meant to address? These questions are more productive if asked in a collaborative mode-2 framework, with an organisation open to such questions, with complex researchers able to move between different identities, as media analyst, cultural analyst, and commuter, interested in issues of organisation and logistics, engaged with complexity in all senses. I will continue my imaginary mode-2 collaboration with Railcorp by offering them another example of fractal analysis, looking at another instant, captured in a brief media text. On Wednesday 14 March, 2007, two weeks before a State government election, a very small cause triggered a systems failure in the Sydney network. A small carbon strip worth $44 which was not properly attached properly threw Sydney’s transport network into chaos on Wednesday night, causing thousands of commuters to be trapped in trains for hours. (Baker and Davies 7) This is an excellent example of a butterfly effect, but it is not labelled as such, nor regarded positively in this complexity-1 framework. ‘Chaos’ signifies something no-one wants in a transport system. This is popular not scientific reductionism. The article goes on to tell the story of one passenger, Mark MacCauley, a quadriplegic left without power or electricity in a train because the lift was not working. He rang City Rail, and was told that “someone would be in touch in 3 to 5 days” (Baker and Davies 7). He then rang emergency OOO, and was finally rescued by contractors “who happened to be installing a lift at North Sydney” (Baker and Davies 7). My new friends at NSW Rail would be very unhappy with this story. It would not help much to tell them that this is a standard ‘human interest’ article, nor that it is more complex than it looks. For instance, MacCauley is not typical of standard passengers who usually concern complexity-2 planners of rail networks. He is another butterfly, whose specific needs would be hard to predict or cater for. His rescue is similarly unpredictable. Who would have predicted that these contractors, with their specialist equipment, would be in the right place at the right time to rescue him? Complexity provided both problem and solution. The media’s double attitude to complexity, positive and negative, complexity-1 with a touch of complexity-3, is a resource which NSW Rail might learn to use, even though it is presented with such hostility here. One lesson of the complexity is that a tight, linear framing of systems and problems creates or exacerbates problems, and closes off possible solutions. In the problem, different systems didn’t connect: social and material systems, road and rail, which are all ‘media’ in McLuhan’s highly fuzzy sense. NSW Rail communication systems were cumbrously linear, slow (3 to 5 days) and narrow. In the solution, communication cut across institutional divisions, mediated by responsive, fuzzy complex humans. If the problem came from a highly complex system, the solution is a complex response on many fronts: planning, engineering, social and communication systems open to unpredictable input from other surrounding systems. As NSW Rail would have been well aware, the story responded to another context. The page was headed ‘Battle for NSW’, referring to an election in 2 weeks, in which this newspaper editorialised that the incumbent government should be thrown out. This political context is clearly part of the complexity of the newspaper message, which tries to link not just the carbon strip and ‘chaos’, but science and politics, this strip and the government’s credibility. Yet the government was returned with a substantial though reduced majority, not the swingeing defeat that might have been predicted by linear logic (rail chaos = electoral defeat) or by some interpretations of the butterfly effect. But complexity-3 does not say that every small cause produces catastrophic effects. On the contrary, it says that causal situations can be so complex that we can never be entirely sure what effects will follow from any given case. The political situation in all its complexity is an inseparable part of the minimal complex situation which NSW Rail must take into account as it considers how to reform its operations. It must make complexity in all its senses a friend and ally, not just a source of nasty surprises. My relationship with NSW Rail at the moment is purely imaginary, but illustrates positive and negative aspects of complexity as an organising principle for MaC researchers today. The unlimited complexity of Humanities’ complexity-4, Derridean and Foucauldian, can be liberating alongside the sometimes excessive scepticism of Complexity-2, but needs to keep in touch with the ambivalence of popular complexity-1. Complexity-3 connects with complexity-2 and 4 to hold the bundle together, in a more complex, cohesive, yet still unstable dynamic structure. It is this total sprawling, inchoate, contradictory (‘complex’) brand of complexity that I believe will play a key role in the up-coming intellectual revolution. But only time will tell. References Baker, Jordan, and Anne Davies. “Carbon Strip Caused Train Chaos.” Sydney Morning Herald 17 Mar. 2007: 7. Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1976. Dick, Tim. “Law Is Now Too Complex for Juries to Understand, Says Judge.” Sydney Morning Herald 26 Mar. 2007: 4. Empson, William. Seven Types of Ambiguity. London: Chatto and Windus, 1930. Foucault, Michel. “The Order of Discourse.” In Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A.M Sheridan Smith. London: Tavistock, 1972. Gibbons, Michael. The New Production of Knowledge. London: Sage, 1994. Lorenz, Edward. The Essence of Chaos. London: University College, 1993. Lyotard, Jean-Francois. The Postmodern Condition. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1984. McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media. London: Routledge, 1964. Mandelbrot, Benoit. “The Fractal Geometry of Nature.” In Nina Hall, ed. The New Scientist Guide to Chaos. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963. Nowottny, Henry. Rethinking Science. London: Polity, 2001. Snow, Charles Percy. The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution. London: Faber 1959. Urry, John. Global Complexity. London: Sage, 2003. Zadeh, Lotfi Asker. “Outline of a New Approach to the Analysis of Complex Systems and Decision Processes.” ILEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics 3.1 (1973): 28-44. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Hodge, Bob. "The Complexity Revolution." M/C Journal 10.3 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0706/01-hodge.php>. APA Style Hodge, B. (Jun. 2007) "The Complexity Revolution," M/C Journal, 10(3). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0706/01-hodge.php>.

Abstract:

In 1988, historian Nadia Wheatley and indigenous artist Donna Rawlins published their award-winning picture book, My Place, a reinterpretation of Australian national identity and sovereignty prompted by the bicentennial of white settlement. Twenty years later, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) commissioned Penny Chapman’s multi-platform project based on this book. The 13 episodes of the television series begin in 2008, each telling the story of a child at a different point in history, and are accompanied by substantial interactive online content. Issues as diverse as religious difference and immigration, wartime conscription and trauma, and the experiences of Aboriginal Australians are canvassed. The program itself, which has a second series currently in production, introduces child audiences to—and implicates them in—a rich ideological fabric of deeply politicised issues that directly engage with vexed questions of Australian nationhood. The series offers a subversive view of Australian history and society, and it is the child—whether protagonist on the screen or the viewer/user of the content—who is left to discover, negotiate and move beyond often problematic societal norms. As one of the public broadcaster’s keystone projects, My Place signifies important developments in ABC’s construction of multicultural child citizenship. The digitisation of Australian television has facilitated a wave of multi-channel and new media innovation. Though the development of a multi-channel ecology has occurred significantly later in Australia than in the US or Europe, in part due to genre restrictions on broadcasters, all major Australian networks now have at least one additional free-to-air channel, make some of their content available online, and utilise various forms of social media to engage their audiences. The ABC has been in the vanguard of new media innovation, leveraging the industry dominance of ABC Online and its cross-platform radio networks for the repurposing of news, together with the additional funding for digital renewal, new Australian content, and a digital children’s channel in the 2006 and 2009 federal budgets. In line with “market failure” models of broadcasting (Born, Debrett), the ABC was once the most important producer-broadcaster for child viewers. With the recent allocation for the establishment of ABC3, it is now the catalyst for a significant revitalisation of the Australian children’s television industry. The ABC Charter requires it to broadcast programs that “contribute to a sense of national identity” and that “reflect the cultural diversity of the Australian community” (ABC Documents). Through its digital children’s channel (ABC3) and its multi-platform content, child viewers are not only exposed to a much more diverse range of local content, but also politicised by an intricate network of online texts connected to the TV programs. The representation of diasporic communities through and within multi-platformed spaces forms a crucial part of the way(s) in which collective identities are now being negotiated in children’s texts. An analysis of one of the ABC’s My Place “projects” and its associated multi-platformed content reveals an intricate relationship between postcolonial concerns and the construction of child citizenship. Multicultural Places, Multi-Platformed Spaces: New Media Innovation at the ABC The 2007 restructure at the ABC has transformed commissioning practices along the lines noted by James Bennett and Niki Strange of the BBC—a shift of focus from “programs” to multi-platform “projects,” with the latter consisting of a complex network of textual production. These “second shift media practices” (Caldwell) involve the tactical management of “user flows structured into and across the textual terrain that serve to promote a multifaceted and prolonged experience of the project” (Bennett and Strange 115). ABC Managing Director Mark Scott’s polemic deployment of the “digital commons” trope (Murdock, From) differs from that of his opposite number at the BBC, Mark Thompson, in its emphasis on the glocalised openness of the Australian “town square”—at once distinct from, and an integral part of, larger conversations. As announced at the beginning of the ABC’s 2009 annual report, the ABC is redefining the town square as a world of greater opportunities: a world where Australians can engage with one another and explore the ideas and events that are shaping our communities, our nation and beyond … where people can come to speak and be heard, to listen and learn from each other. (ABC ii)The broad emphasis on engagement characterises ABC3’s positioning of children in multi-platformed projects. As the Executive Producer of the ABC’s Children’s Television Multi-platform division comments, “participation is very much the mantra of the new channel” (Glen). The concept of “participation” is integral to what has been described elsewhere as “rehearsals in citizenship” (Northam). Writing of contemporary youth, David Buckingham notes that “‘political thinking’ is not merely an intellectual or developmental achievement, but an interpersonal process which is part of the construction of a collective, social identity” (179). Recent domestically produced children’s programs and their associated multimedia applications have significant potential to contribute to this interpersonal, “participatory” process. Through multi-platform experiences, children are (apparently) invited to construct narratives of their own. Dan Harries coined the term “viewser” to highlight the tension between watching and interacting, and the increased sense of agency on the part of audiences (171–82). Various online texts hosted by the ABC offer engagement with extra content relating to programs, with themed websites serving as “branches” of the overarching ABC3 metasite. The main site—strongly branded as the place for its targeted demographic—combines conventional television guide/program details with “Watch Now!,” a customised iView application within ABC3’s own themed interface; youth-oriented news; online gaming; and avenues for viewsers to create digital art and video, or interact with the community of “Club3” and associated message boards. The profiles created by members of Club3 are moderated and proscribe any personal information, resulting in an (understandably) restricted form of “networked publics” (boyd 124–5). Viewser profiles comprise only a username (which, the website stresses, should not be one’s real name) and an “avatar” (a customisable animated face). As in other social media sites, comments posted are accompanied by the viewser’s “name” and “face,” reinforcing the notion of individuality within the common group. The tool allows users to choose from various skin colours, emphasising the multicultural nature of the ABC3 community. Other customisable elements, including the ability to choose between dozens of pre-designed ABC3 assets and feeds, stress the audience’s “ownership” of the site. The Help instructions for the Club3 site stress the notion of “participation” directly: “Here at ABC3, we don’t want to tell you what your site should look like! We think that you should be able to choose for yourself.” Multi-platformed texts also provide viewsers with opportunities to interact with many of the characters (human actors and animated) from the television texts and share further aspects of their lives and fictional worlds. One example, linked to the representation of diasporic communities, is the Abatti Pizza Game, in which the player must “save the day” by battling obstacles to fulfil a pizza order. The game’s prefacing directions makes clear the ethnicity of the Abatti family, who are also visually distinctive. The dialogue also registers cultural markers: “Poor Nona, whatsa she gonna do? Now it’s up to you to help Johnny and his friends make four pizzas.” The game was acquired from the Canadian-animated franchise, Angela Anaconda; nonetheless, the Abatti family, the pizza store they operate and the dilemma they face translates easily to the Australian context. Dramatisations of diasporic contributions to national youth identities in postcolonial or settler societies—the UK (My Life as a Popat, CITV) and Canada (How to Be Indie)—also contribute to the diversity of ABC3’s television offerings and the positioning of its multi-platform community. The negotiation of diasporic and postcolonial politics is even clearer in the public broadcaster’s commitment to My Place. The project’s multifaceted construction of “places,” the ethical positioning of the child both as an individual and a member of (multicultural) communities, and the significant acknowledgement of ongoing conflict and discrimination, articulate a cultural commons that is more open-ended and challenging than the Eurocentric metaphor, the “town square,” suggests. Diversity, Discrimination and Diasporas: Positioning the Viewser of My Place Throughout the first series of My Place, the experiences of children within different diasporic communities are the focal point of five of the initial six episodes, the plots of which revolve around children with Lebanese, Vietnamese, Greek, and Irish backgrounds. This article focuses on an early episode of the series, “1988,” which explicitly confronts the cultural frictions between dominant Anglocentric Australian and diasporic communities. “1988” centres on the reaction of young Lily to the arrival of her cousin, Phuong, from Vietnam. Lily is a member of a diasporic community, but one who strongly identifies as “an Australian,” allowing a nuanced exploration of the ideological conflicts surrounding the issue of so-called “boat people.” The protagonist’s voice-over narration at the beginning of the episode foregrounds her desire to win Australia’s first Olympic gold medal in gymnastics, thus mobilising nationally identified hierarchies of value. Tensions between diasporic and settler cultures are frequently depicted. One potentially reactionary sequence portrays the recurring character of Michaelis complaining about having to use chopsticks in the Vietnamese restaurant; however, this comment is contextualised several episodes later, when a much younger Michaelis, as protagonist of the episode “1958,” is himself discriminated against, due to his Greek background. The political irony of “1988” pivots on Lily’s assumption that her cousin “won’t know Australian.” There is a patronising tone in her warning to Phuong not to speak Vietnamese for fear of schoolyard bullying: “The kids at school give you heaps if you talk funny. But it’s okay, I can talk for you!” This encourages child viewers to distance themselves from this fictional parallel to the frequent absence of representation of asylum seekers in contemporary debates. Lily’s assumptions and attitudes are treated with a degree of scepticism, particularly when she assures her friends that the silent Phuong will “get normal soon,” before objectifying her cousin for classroom “show and tell.” A close-up camera shot settles on Phuong’s unease while the children around her gossip about her status as a “boat person,” further encouraging the audience to empathise with the bullied character. However, Phuong turns the tables on those around her when she reveals she can competently speak English, is able to perform gymnastics and other feats beyond Lily’s ability, and even invents a story of being attacked by “pirates” in order to silence her gossiping peers. By the end of the narrative, Lily has redeemed herself and shares a close friendship with Phuong. My Place’s structured child “participation” plays a key role in developing the postcolonial perspective required by this episode and the project more broadly. Indeed, despite the record project budget, a second series was commissioned, at least partly on the basis of the overwhelmingly positive reception of viewsers on the ABC website forums (Buckland). The intricate My Place website, accessible through the ABC3 metasite, generates transmedia intertextuality interlocking with, and extending the diegesis of, the televised texts. A hyperlinked timeline leads to collections of personal artefacts “owned” by each protagonist, such as journals, toys, and clothing. Clicking on a gold medal marked “History” in Lily’s collection activates scrolling text describing the political acceptance of the phrase “multiculturalism” and the “Family Reunion” policy, which assisted the arrival of 100,000 Vietnamese immigrants. The viewser is reminded that some people were “not very welcoming” of diasporic groups via an explicit reference to Mrs Benson’s discriminatory attitudes in the series. Viewsers can “visit” virtual representations of the program’s sets. In the bedroom, kitchen, living room and/or backyard of each protagonist can be discovered familiar and additional details of the characters’ lives. The artefacts that can be “played” with in the multimedia applications often imply the enthusiastic (and apparently desirable) adoption of “Australianness” by immigrant children. Lily’s toys (her doll, hair accessories, roller skates, and glass marbles) invoke various aspects of western children’s culture, while her “journal entry” about Phuong states that she is “new to Australia but with her sense of humour she has fitted in really well.” At the same time, the interactive elements within Lily’s kitchen, including a bowl of rice and other Asian food ingredients, emphasise cultural continuity. The description of incense in another room of Lily’s house as a “common link” that is “used in many different cultures and religions for similar purposes” clearly normalises a glocalised world-view. Artefacts inside the restaurant operated by Lily’s mother link to information ranging from the ingredients and (flexible) instructions for how to make rice paper rolls (“Lily and Phuong used these fillings but you can use whatever you like!”) to a brief interactive puzzle game requiring the arrangement of several peppers in order from least hot to most hot. A selectable picture frame downloads a text box labelled “Images of Home.” Combined with a slideshow of static, hand-drawn images of traditional Vietnamese life, the text can be read as symbolic of the multiplicity of My Place’s target audience(s): “These images would have reminded the family of their homeland and also given restaurant customers a sense of Vietnamese culture.” The social-developmental, postcolonial agenda of My Place is registered in both “conventional” ancillary texts, such as the series’ “making of” publication (Wheatley), and the elaborate pedagogical website for teachers developed by the ACTF and Educational Services Australia (http://www.myplace.edu.au/). The politicising function of the latter is encoded in the various summaries of each decade’s historical, political, social, cultural, and technological highlights, often associated with the plot of the relevant episode. The page titled “Multiculturalism” reports on the positive amendments to the Commonwealth’s Migration Act 1958 and provides links to photographs of Vietnamese migrants in 1982, exemplifying the values of equality and cultural diversity through Lily and Phuong’s story. The detailed “Teaching Activities” documents available for each episode serve a similar purpose, providing, for example, the suggestion that teachers “ask students to discuss the importance to a new immigrant of retaining links to family, culture and tradition.” The empathetic positioning of Phuong’s situation is further mirrored in the interactive map available for teacher use that enables children to navigate a boat from Vietnam to the Australian coast, encouraging a perspective that is rarely put forward in Australia’s mass media. This is not to suggest that the My Place project is entirely unproblematic. In her postcolonial analysis of Aboriginal children’s literature, Clare Bradford argues that “it’s all too possible for ‘similarities’ to erase difference and the political significances of [a] text” (188). Lily’s schoolteacher’s lesson in the episode “reminds us that boat people have been coming to Australia for a very long time.” However, the implied connection between convicts and asylum seekers triggered by Phuong’s (mis)understanding awkwardly appropriates a mythologised Australian history. Similarly in the “1998” episode, the Muslim character Mohammad’s use of Ramadan for personal strength in order to emulate the iconic Australian cricketer Shane Warne threatens to subsume the “difference” of the diasporic community. Nonetheless, alongside the similarities between individuals and the various ethnic groups that make up the My Place community, important distinctions remain. Each episode begins and/or ends with the child protagonist(s) playing on or around the central motif of the series—a large fig tree—with the characters declaring that the tree is “my place.” While emphasising the importance of individuality in the project’s construction of child citizens, the cumulative effect of these “my place” sentiments, felt over time by characters from different socio-economic, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds, builds a multifaceted conception of Australian identity that consists of numerous (and complementary) “branches.” The project’s multi-platformed content further emphasises this, with the website containing an image of the prominent (literal and figurative) “Community Tree,” through which the viewser can interact with the generations of characters and families from the series (http://www.abc.net.au/abc3/myplace/). The significant role of the ABC’s My Place project showcases the ABC’s remit as a public broadcaster in the digital era. As Tim Brooke-Hunt, the Executive Head of Children’s Content, explains, if the ABC didn’t do it, no other broadcaster was going to come near it. ... I don’t expect My Place to be a humungous commercial or ratings success, but I firmly believe ... that it will be something that will exist for many years and will have a very special place. Conclusion The reversion to iconic aspects of mainstream Anglo-Australian culture is perhaps unsurprising—and certainly telling—when reflecting on the network of local, national, and global forces impacting on the development of a cultural commons. However, this does not detract from the value of the public broadcaster’s construction of child citizens within a clearly self-conscious discourse of “multiculturalism.” The transmedia intertextuality at work across ABC3 projects and platforms serves an important politicising function, offering positive representations of diasporic communities to counter the negative depictions children are exposed to elsewhere, and positioning child viewsers to “participate” in “working through” fraught issues of Australia’s past that still remain starkly relevant today.References ABC. Redefining the Town Square. ABC Annual Report. Sydney: ABC, 2009. Bennett, James, and Niki Strange. “The BBC’s Second-Shift Aesthetics: Interactive Television, Multi-Platform Projects and Public Service Content for a Digital Era.” Media International Australia: Incorporating Culture and Policy 126 (2008): 106-19. Born, Georgina. Uncertain Vision: Birt, Dyke and the Reinvention of the BBC. London: Vintage, 2004. boyd, danah. “Why Youth ♥ Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life.” Youth, Identity, and Digital Media. Ed. David Buckingham. Cambridge: MIT, 2008. 119-42. Bradford, Clare. Reading Race: Aboriginality in Australian Children’s Literature. Carlton: Melbourne UP, 2001. Brooke-Hunt, Tim. Executive Head of Children’s Content, ABC TV. Interviewed by Dr Leonie Rutherford, ABC Ultimo Center, 16 Mar. 2010. Buckingham, David. After the Death of Childhood: Growing Up in the Age of Electronic Media. Cambridge: Polity, 2000. Buckland, Jenny. Chief Executive Officer, Australian Children’s Television Foundation. Interviewed by Dr Leonie Rutherford and Dr Nina Weerakkody, ACTF, 2 June 2010. Caldwell, John T. “Second Shift Media Aesthetics: Programming, Interactivity and User Flows.” New Media: Theories and Practices of Digitextuality. Eds. John T. Caldwell and Anna Everett. London: Routledge, 2003. 127-44. Debrett, Mary. “Riding the Wave: Public Service Television in the Multiplatform Era.” Media, Culture & Society 31.5 (2009): 807-27. From, Unni. “Domestically Produced TV-Drama and Cultural Commons.” Cultural Dilemmas in Public Service Broadcasting. Eds. Gregory Ferrell Lowe and Per Jauert. Göteborg: Nordicom, 2005. 163-77. Glen, David. Executive Producer, ABC Multiplatform. Interviewed by Dr Leonie Rutherford, ABC Elsternwick, 6 July 2010. Harries, Dan. “Watching the Internet.” The New Media Book. Ed. Dan Harries. London: BFI, 2002. 171-82. Murdock, Graham. “Building the Digital Commons: Public Broadcasting in the Age of the Internet.” Cultural Dilemmas in Public Service Broadcasting. Ed. Gregory Ferrell Lowe and Per Jauert. Göteborg: Nordicom, 2005. 213–30. My Place, Volumes 1 & 2: 2008–1888. DVD. ABC, 2009. Northam, Jean A. “Rehearsals in Citizenship: BBC Stop-Motion Animation Programmes for Young Children.” Journal for Cultural Research 9.3 (2005): 245-63. Wheatley, Nadia. Making My Place. Sydney and Auckland: HarperCollins, 2010. ———, and Donna Rawlins. My Place, South Melbourne: Longman, 1988.

Abstract:

In a 1999 interview with the online magazine The AV Club, a subsidiary of satirical news website, The Onion, Bret Easton Ellis claimed: “I’ve never written a single scene that I can say took place, I’ve never written a line of dialogue that I’ve heard someone say or that I have said” (qtd. in Klein). Ten years later, in the same magazine, Ellis was reminded of this quote and asked why most of his novels have been perceived as veiled autobiographies. Ellis responded:Well, they are autobiographical in the sense that they reflect who I was at a particular moment in my life. There was talk of a memoir, and I realized why I couldn’t write a memoir, because the books are the memoir—they completely sum up how I was feeling, what I was thinking about, what my obsessions were, what I was fantasizing about, who I was, in a fictional context over the last 25 years or so (qtd. in Tobias).Despite any protestations to the contrary, Bret Easton Ellis’s novels have included various intentional and unintentional disclosures which reflect the author’s personal experiences. This pattern of self-disclosure became most overt in his most recent novel, Lunar Park (2005), in which the narrator shares a name, vocation and many aspects of his personal history with Ellis himself. After two decades and many assumptions made about Ellis’s personal life in the public media, it seems on the surface as if this novel uses disclosure as the site of closure for several rumours and relationships which have haunted his career. It is possible to see how this fictional text transgresses the boundaries between fiction and fact in an attempt to sever the feedback loop between the media’s representation of Ellis and the interpretation of his fictional texts. Yet it is important to note that with Ellis, there is always more beneath the surface. This is evident after only one chapter of Lunar Park when the novel changes form from an autobiography into a fictional ghost story, both of which are told by Bret Easton Ellis, a man who simultaneously reflects and refracts aspects of the real life author.Before analysing Lunar Park, it is helpful to consider the career trajectory which led to its creation. Bret Easton Ellis made his early fame writing semi-fictional accounts of rich, beautiful, young, yet ambitionless members of generation-X, growing up in the 1980s in America. His first novel, Less Than Zero (1985), chronicled the exploits of his protagonists as they drifted from party to party, from one meaningless sexual encounter to another; all while anesthetised on a co*cktail of Valium, Prozac, Percocet and various illegal drugs. The brutal realism of his narrative, coupled with the structure—short vignettes like snapshots and short chapters told in simplistic style—led the text to be hailed as the first “MTV Novel” (Annesley 90; see also: Freese).It is not difficult to discover the many similarities that exist between the creator of Less Than Zero and his fictional creation, Clay, the novel’s narrator-protagonist. Both grew up in Los Angeles and headed east to attend a small liberal-arts college. Both Ellis’s and Clay’s parents were divorced and both young men grew up living in a house with their mother and their two sisters. Ellis’s relationship with his father was, by all accounts, as strained as what is represented in the few meetings Clay has with his own father in Less Than Zero. In these scenes, Clay describes a brief, perfunctory lunch meeting in an expensive restaurant in which Clay’s father is too preoccupied by work to acknowledge his son’s presence.Ellis’s second novel, The Rules of Attraction (1987), is set at Camden College, the same college that Clay attends in Less Than Zero. At one point, Clay even guest-narrates a chapter of The Rules of Attraction; the phrase, “people are afraid to walk across campus after midnight” (205) recalls the opening line of Less Than Zero, “people are afraid to merge on highways in Los Angeles” (5). Camden bears quite a few similarities with Bennington College, the college which Ellis himself was attending when Less Than Zero was published and Ellis was catapulted into the limelight. Even Ellis himself has admitted that the book is, “a completely fictionalized portrait of a group of people, all summations of friends I knew” (qtd. in Tobias).The authenticity of Ellis’s narrative voice was considered as an insight which came from participation (A Conversation with Bret Easton Ellis). The depiction of disenfranchised youth in the Reagan era in America was so compelling because Ellis seemed to personify and even embody the malaise and listlessness of his narrators in his public performances and interviews. In the minds of many readers and critics, Ellis’s narrators were a fictional extrapolation of Ellis himself. The association of Ellis to his fictional narrators backfired when Ellis’s third novel, American Psycho (1991), was published. The novel was criticised for its detached depiction of Patrick Bateman, who narrates in minute detail his daily routine which includes an extensive beauty regime, lunchtimes and dinnertimes spent in extravagant New York restaurants, a relationship with a fiancée and a mistress, a job on Wall Street in which he seems to do no real “work,” and his night-time hobby where brutally murders women, homeless men, gay men and even a small child. Bateman’s choice of victims can be interpreted as unconsciously aimed at anyone why may threaten his dominant position as a wealthy, white, heterosexual male. While Bateman kills as many men as he does women, his male victims are killed quickly in sudden bursts of violence. Bateman’s female victims are the subject of brutal torture, prolonged violent sexualized attacks, and in many cases inhumane post-mortem disfigurement and dismemberment.The public reception of American Psycho has been analysed as much as the text itself, (see: Murphet; Brien). Because American Psycho is narrated in the first-person voice of Bateman, there is no escape from his subjectivity. Many, including the National Organization of Women, interpreted this lack of authorial comment as Ellis’s tacit agreement and acceptance of Bateman’s behaviour. Another similar interpretation was made by Roger Rosenblatt in his pre-publication review of American Psycho in which he forthrightly encourages readers to “Snuff this Book” (Rosenblatt). Rosenblatt finds no ironic critique in Ellis’s representation of Bateman, instead finding himself at a loss to understand Ellis’s intention in writing American Psycho, saying “one only assumes, Mr. Ellis disapproves. It's a bit hard to tell what Mr. Ellis intends exactly, because he languishes so comfortably in the swamp he purports to condemn” (n.p.).In much the same way as Ellis’s previous narrators had reflected his experience and opinions, Ellis was considered as accepting and even glorifying the actions of a misogynistic serial killer. Ellis himself has commented on the popularised “misreading” of his novel: “Because I never step in anywhere and say, ‘Hey, this is all wrong,’ people get upset. That’s outrageous to me! Who’s going to say that serial killing is wrong?! Isn’t that a given? There’s no need to say that” (qtd. in. Klein)Ellis himself was treated as if he had committed the actual crimes that Patrick Bateman describes. The irony being that, as I have argued elsewhere (Phillips), there are numerous signs within the text which point to the possibility that Patrick Bateman did not commit the crimes as he claims: he can be interpreted as an unreliable narrator. Although the unreliability is Bateman’s narration doesn’t remove the effect which the reader experiences, it does indicate a distance between the author and the narrator. This distance was overlooked by many critics who interpreted Ellis as agreeing and condoning Bateman’s views and actions.When Ellis’s fourth novel, Glamorama was published, the decadent lifestyle represented in the text was again considered to be a reflection of Ellis’s personal experience. The star-studded parties and glamorous night clubs seemed to be lifted straight out of Ellis’s experience (although, no-one would ever claim that Ellis was a fashion-model-turned-international-terrorist like his narrator, Victor). One reviewer notes that “even when Bret Easton Ellis writes about killer yuppies and terrorist fashion models, a lot of people still think he's writing about himself” (Waldren).With the critical tendency to read an autobiographical confession out of Ellis’s fictional works firmly in place, it is not hard to see why Ellis decided to make the narrator of his fifth novel, Lunar Park, none other than Bret Easton Ellis himself. It is my contention that Lunar Park is the site of disclosures based on the real life of Bret Easton Ellis. I believe that Ellis chose the form of a mock-autobiography-turned-ghost-story as the site of exorcism for the many ghosts which have haunted his career, namely, his public persona and the publication of American Psycho. Ultimately, it is the exorcism of a more personal ghost, namely his father Robert Martin Ellis which provides the most private disclosure in the text and therefore the most touching, truthful and abiding site of closure for the entire novel and for Ellis himself. For ease, I will refer to the narrator of Lunar Park as Bret and the author of Lunar Park as Ellis.On the surface, it appears that Lunar Park is an autobiographical memoir. In one of the many mixed reviews of the novel (see: Murray; "Behind Bret's Mask"; Hand), Steve Almond’s title describes how Ellis masquerading as Ellis “is not a pretty sight” (Almond). The opening chapter is told in autobiographical style and charts Bret’s meteoric rise from college student to member of the literary brat pack (alongside Jay McInerney and Tama Jancowitz), to reviled author of American Psycho (1991) reaching his washed-up, drug-addled and near-death nadir during the Glamorama (1998) book tour. However, careful reading of this chapter reveals that the real-life Ellis is obscuring as much about himself as he appears to be revealing. Although it takes the form of a candid disclosure of his personal life, there are elements of the narrator’s story which do not agree with the public record of the author Ellis.The fictional Bret claims to have attended Camden College, and that his manuscript for Less Than Zero was a college project, discovered by his professor. While the plot of this story does reflect Ellis’s actual experience, he has set Bret’s story at Camden College, the fictional setting of The Rules of Attraction. By adding an element of fiction into the autobiographical account, Ellis is indicating that he is not identical to his narrating counterpart. It also signifies the Bret that exists in the fictional space whereas Ellis resides in the “real world.”In Lunar Park, Bret also talks about his relationship with Jayne Dennis. Jayne is described as a model-turned-actress, an up and coming Hollywood superstar who in the 1980s performed in films alongside Keanu Reeves. Jayne is one of the truly fictional characters in Lunar Park. She doesn’t exist outside of the text, except in two websites which were established to promote the publication of Lunar Park in 2005 (www.jaynedennis.com and www.jayne-dennis.com). While Bret and Jayne are dating, Jayne falls pregnant. Bret begs her to have an abortion. When Jayne decides to keep the child, her relationship with Bret falls apart. Bret meets his son Robby only twice from birth until the age of 10. The relationship between the fictional Bret and the fictional Jayne creates Robby, a fictional offspring who shares a name with Robert Martin Ellis (Bret and Ellis’s father).Many have been tempted to participate in Ellis’s game, to sift fact from fiction in the opening chapter of Lunar Park. Holt and Abbot published a two page point-by-point analysis of where the real-life Ellis diverged from the fictional Bret. The promotional website established by Ellis’s publisher was named www.twobrets.com to invite such a comparison. Although this game is invited by Ellis, he has also publicly stated that there is more to Lunar Park than the comparison between himself and his fictional counterpart:My worry is that people will want to know what’s true and what’s not […] All the things that are in the book—my quote-unquote autobiography—I just don’t want to answer any of those questions. I don’t like demystifying the text (qtd. in Wyatt n.p.)Although Ellis refuses to demystify the text, one of the purposes of inserting himself into the text is to trap readers in this very game, and to confuse fact with fiction. Although the text opens with a chapter which reads like Ellis’s autobiography, careful reading of the textual Bret against the extra-textual Ellis reveals that this chapter contains almost as much fiction as the “ghost story” which fills the remaining 400-odd pages. This ghost story could have been told by any first-person narrator. By writing himself into the text, Ellis is writing his public persona into the fictional character of Bret. One of the effects of blurring the lines between public and private, reality and fiction is that Ellis’s real-life disclosures invite the reader to read the fictional text against their extra-textual knowledge of Ellis himself. In this way, Ellis is able to address the many ghosts which have haunted his career—most importantly the public reception of American Psycho and his public persona. A more personal ghost is the ghost of Ellis’s father who has been written into the text, literally haunting Bret’s home with messages from beyond the grave. Closure occurs when these ghosts have been exorcised. The question is: is Lunar Park Ellis’s attempt to close down the public debates, or to add more fuel to the fire?One of the areas in which Ellis seeks to find closure is in the controversy surrounding American Psycho. Ellis uses his fictional voice to re-write the discourse surrounding the creation and reception of the text. There are deliberate contradictions in Bret’s version of writing American Psycho. In Lunar Park, Bret describes the writing process of American Psycho. In an oddly ornate passage for Ellis (who seldom uses adverbs), Bret describes how he would “fearfully watch my hands as the pen swept across the yellow legal pads” (19) blaming the “spirit” of Patrick Bateman for visiting and causing the book to be written. When it was finished, the “spirit” was “disgustingly satisfied” and stopped “gleefully haunting” Bret’s dreams. This shift in writing style may be an indication of a shift from reality into a fictionalised account of the writing of American Psycho. Much of the plot of Lunar Park is taken up with the consequences of American Psycho, when a madman starts replicating crimes exactly as they appear in the novel. It is almost as if Patrick Bateman is haunting Bret and his family. When informed that his fictional violence has disrupted his quiet suburban existence, Bret laments, “this was the moment that detractors of the book had warned me about: if anything happened to anyone as a result of the publication of this novel, Bret Easton Ellis was to blame” (181-2). By the end of Lunar Park Bret decides to “kill” Patrick Bateman once and for all, by writing an epilogue in which Bateman is burnt alive.On the surface, it appears that Lunar Park is the site of an apology about American Psycho. However, this is not entirely the case. Much of Bret’s description of writing American Psycho is contradictory to Ellis’s personal accounts where he consciously researched the gruesome details of Bateman’s crimes using an FBI training manual (Rose). Although Patrick Bateman is destroyed by the end of Lunar Park, extra-textually, neither Bret nor Ellis is not entirely apologetic for his creation. Bret argues that American Psycho was “about society and manners and mores, and not about cutting up women. How could anyone who read the book not see this?” (182). Extra-textually, in an interview Ellis admitted that when he re-read “the violence sequences I was incredibly upset and shocked […] I can't believe that I wrote that. Looking back, I realize, God, you really sort of stepped over a line there” (qtd. in Wyatt n.p.). However, in that same interview, Ellis admits to lying to reporters if he feels that the reporter is “out to get” him. Therefore, Ellis’s apology may not actually be an apology at all.Lunar Park presents an explanation about how and why American Psycho was written. This explanation is much akin to claiming that “the devil made me do it”, by arguing that Bret was possessed by “the spirit of this madman” (18). While it may seem that this explanation is an attempt to close the vast amount of discussion surrounding why American Psycho was written, Ellis is actually using his fictional persona to address the public outcry about his most controversial novel, providing an apology for a text, which is really no apology at all. Ultimately, the reliability of Bret’s account depends on the reader’s knowledge of Ellis’s public persona. This interplay between the fictional Bret and the real-life Ellis can be seen in Lunar Park’s account of the Glamorama publicity tour. In Lunar Park, Bret describes his own version of the Glamorama book tour. For Bret, this tour functions as his personal nadir, the point in his life where he hits rock bottom and looks to Jayne Dennis as his saviour. Throughout the tour, Bret describes taking all manner of drugs. At one point, threatened by his erratic behaviour, Bret’s publishers asked a personal minder to join the book tour, reporting back on Bret’s actions which include picking at nonexistent scabs, sobbing at his appearance in a hotel mirror and locking himself in a bookstore bathroom for over an hour before emerging and claiming that he had a snake living in his mouth (32-33).The reality of the Glamorama book tour is not anywhere near as wild as that described by Bret in Lunar Park. In reviews and articles addressing the real-life Glamorama book tour, there are no descriptions of these events. One article, from the The Observer (Macdonald), does describe a meeting over lunch where Ellis admits to drinking way too much the night before and then having to deal with phone calls from fans he can’t remember giving his phone-number to. However, as previously mentioned, in that same article a friend of Ellis’s is quoted as saying that Ellis frequently lies to reporters. Bret’s fictional actions seem to confirm Ellis’s real life “party boy” persona. For Moran, “the name of the author [him]self can become merely an image, either used to market a literary product directly or as a kind of free floating signifier within contemporary culture” (61). Lunar Park is about all of the connotations of the name Bret Easton Ellis. It is also a subversion of those expectations. The fictional Glamorama book tour shows Ellis’s media persona taken to an extreme until it becomes a self-embodying parody. In Lunar Park, Ellis is deliberately amplifying his public persona, accepting that no amount of truthful disclosure will erase the image of Bret-the-party-boy. However, the remainder of the novel turns this image on its head by removing Bret from New York and placing him in middle-American suburbia, married, and with two children in tow.Ultimately, although the novel appears as a transgression of fact and fiction, Bret may be the most fictional of all of Ellis’s narrators (with the exception of Patrick Bateman). Bret is married where Ellis is single. Bret is heterosexual whereas Ellis is hom*osexual, and used the site of Lunar Park to confirm his hom*osexuality. Bret has children whereas Ellis is childless. Bret has settled down into the heartland of American suburbia, a wife and two children in tow whereas Ellis has made it clear that this lifestyle is not one he is seeking. The novel is presented as the site of Ellis’s personal disclosure, and yet only creates more fictional fodder for the public image of Ellis, there are elements of true and personal disclosures from Ellis life, which he is using the text as the site for his own brand of closure. The most genuine and heartfelt closure is achieved through Ellis’s disclosure of his relationship with his father.The death of Ellis’s father, Robert Martin Ellis has an impact on both the textual and extra-textual levels of Lunar Park. Textually, the novel takes the form of a ghost story, and it is Robert himself who is haunting Bret. These spectral disturbances manifest themselves in Bret’s house which slowly transforms into a representation of his childhood home. Bret also receives nightly e-mails from the bank in which his father’s ashes have been stored in a safe-deposit box. These e-mails contain an attached video file showing the last few moments of Robert Martin Ellis’s life. Bret never finds out who filmed the video. Extra-textually, the death of Robert Martin Ellis is clearly signified in the fact that Lunar Park is dedicated to him as well as Michael Wade Kaplan, two men close to Ellis who have died. The trope of fathers haunting their sons is further highlighted by Ellis’s inter-textual references to Shakespeare’s Hamlet including a quote in the epigraph: “From the table of my memory / I’ll wipe away all trivial fond records, / all saws of books, all forms, all pressures past / that youth and observation copied there” (1.5.98-101). The names of various geographical locations in Bret’s neighbourhood: Bret and Jayne live on Elsinore Lane, named for Elsinore castle, Bret also visits Fortinbras Mall, Osric hotel and Ophelia Boulevard. In Hamlet, the son is called upon by the ghost of his father to avenge his death. In Lunar Park, Bret is called upon to avenge himself against the wrongs inflicted upon him by his own father.The ambiguity of the relationships between fathers and sons is summarised in the closing passage of the novel. So, if you should see my son, tell him I say hello, be good, that I am thinking of him and that I know he’s watching over me somewhere, and not to worry: that he can always find me here, whenever he wants, right here, my arms held out and waiting, in the pages, behind the covers, at the end of Lunar Park (453).Although Bret earlier signals the reader to interpret this passage as a message from Bret to his son Robby (45), it is also possible to interpret is as a message from the fictional Robert Martin Ellis to the fictional Bret. In this reading, Lunar Park is not just a novel, a game or a post-modern deconstruction of the fact and fiction binary, it instead becomes an exorcism for the author. The process of writing Lunar Park to casts the spectre of the real-life Robert Martin Ellis out of his life to a place where Bret (and Ellis) can always find him. This relationship is the site not only of disclosure – reflecting Ellis’s own personal angst with his late father – but of closure, where Ellis has channelled his relationship and indeed exorcised his father into the text.Lunar Park contains several forms of disclosures, most of which transgress the line between fiction and fact. Lunar Park does not provide a closure from the tendency to read autobiography into Ellis’s texts, instead, chapter one provides as much fiction as fact, as evident in the discussions of American Psycho and the Glamorama book tour. Although chapter one presents in an autobiographical form, the remainder of the text reveals how fictional “Bret Easton Ellis” really is. Much of Lunar Park can be interpreted as a puzzle whose answer depends on the reader’s knowledge and understanding of the public perception, persona and profile of Bret Easton Ellis himself. Although seeming to provide closure on the surface, by playing with fiction and fact, Lunar Park only opens up more ground for discussion of Ellis, his novels, his persona and his fictional worlds. These are discussions I look forward to participating in, particularly as 2010 will see the publication of Ellis’s sixth novel (and sequel to Less Than Zero), Imperial Bedrooms.Although much of Ellis’s game in Lunar Park is to tease the reader by failing to provide true disclosures or meaningful and finite closure, the ending of the Lunar Park indicates the most honest, heartfelt and abiding closure for the text and for Ellis himself. Devoid of games and extra-textual riddles, the end of the novel is a message from a father to his son. By disclosing details of his troubled relationship with his father, both Ellis and his fictional counterpart Bret are able to exorcise the ghost of Robert Martin Ellis. As the novel closes, the ghost who haunts the text has indeed been exorcised and is now standing, with “arms held out and waiting, in the pages, behind the covers, at the end of Lunar Park” (453). ReferencesAlmond, Steve. "Ellis Masquerades as Ellis, and It Is Not a Pretty Sight." Boston Globe 14 Aug. 2005.Annesley, James. Blank Fictions: Consumerism, Culture and the Contemporary American Novel. London: Pluto Press, 1998."Behind Bret's Mask." Manchester Evening News 10 Oct. 2005.Brien, Donna Lee. "The Real Filth in American Psycho: A Critical Reassessment." M/C Journal 9.5 (2006). 30 Nov. 2009 < http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0610/01-brien.php >.Ellis, Bret Easton. Less than Zero. London: Vintage, 1985.–––. The Rules of Attraction. London: Vintage, 1987.–––. American Psycho. London: Picador, 1991.–––. Glamorama. New York: Knopf, 1998.–––. Lunar Park. New York: Knopf, 2005.Freese, Peter. "Bret Easton Ellis, Less than Zero; Entropy in the 'Mtv Novel'?" Modes of Narrative: Approaches to American, Canadian and British Fiction. Eds. Reingard Nishik and Barbara Korts. Wurzburg: Konighausen and Naumann, 1990. 68–87. Hand, Elizabeth. "House of Horrors; Bret Easton Ellis, the Author of 'American Psycho,' Rips into His Most Frightening Subject Yet—Himself." The Washington Post 21 Aug. 2005.Klein, Joshua. "Interview with Bret Easton Ellis." The Onion AV Club 17 Mar.(1999). 5 Sep. 2009 < http://www.avclub.com/articles/bret-easton-ellis,13586/ >.Macdonald, Marianna. “Interview—Bret Easton Ellis—All Cut Up.” The Observer 28 June 1998.Moran, Joe. Star Authors. London: Pluto Press, 2000.Murphet, Julian. Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho: A Reader's Guide. New York: Continuum, 2002.Murray, Noel. "Lunar Park [Review]." The Onion AV Club 2 Aug. 2005. 1 Nov. 2009 < http://www.avclub.com/articles/lunar-park,4393/ >.Phillips, Jennifer. "Unreliable Narration in Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho: Interaction between Narrative Form and Thematic Content." Current Narratives 1.1 (2009): 60–68.Rose, Charlie. “A Conversation with Bret Easton Ellis”. The Charlie Rose Show. Prod. Charlie Rose and Yvette Vega. PBS. 7 Sep. 1994. Rosenblatt, Roger. "Snuff This Book! Will Bret Easton Ellis Get Away with Murder?" The New York Times 16 Dec. 1990: Arts.Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Ed. Graham Holderness and Bryan Loughrey. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992.Tobias, Scott. "Bret Easton Ellis (Interview)". The Onion AV Club 22 Apr. 2009. 31 Aug. 2009 < http://www.avclub.com/articles/bret-easton-ellis%2C26988/1/ >.Wyatt, Edward. "Bret Easton Ellis: The Man in the Mirror." The New York Times 7 Aug. 2005: Arts.

Abstract:

In the contemporary urban environment of mass transit, it falls to a small group of public officers to keep large number of travellers safe. The small size of their force and the often limited powers they exert mean that these public safety ‘transit officers’ must project more authority and control than they really have. It is this ambience of authority and control which, in most situations they encounter and seek to influence, is enough to keep the public safe. This paper examines the ambience of a group of transit officers working on the railway lines of an Australian capital city. We seek to show how transit officers are both influenced by, and seek to influence, the ambience of their workplace and the public spaces they inhabit whilst on duty, and here we take ambience to apply to the surrounding atmosphere, the aura, and the emotional environment of a place or situation: the setting, tone, or mood. For these transit officers to keep the public safe, they must themselves remain safe. A transit officer who is disabled in a confrontation with a violent offender is unable to provide protection to his or her passengers. Thus, in the culture of the transit officers, their own workplace safety takes on a higher significance. It affects not just themselves. The ambience exuded by transit officers, and how transit officers see their relationship with the travelling public, their management and other organisational work groups, is an important determinant of their work group’s safety culture. Researching the Working Lives of Transit Officers in Perth Our discussion draws on an ethnographic study of the working lives and communication cultures of transit officers (TOs) employed by the Public Transport Authority (PTA) of Western Australia (WA). Transit officers have argued that to understand fully the challenges of their work it is necessary to spend time with them as they undertake their daily duties: roster in, roster out. To this end, the research team and the employer organisation secured an ARC Linkage Grant in partnership with the PTA to fund doctoral candidate and ethnographer Christine Teague to research the workers’ point of view, and the workers’ experiences within the organisation. The two-hundred TOs are unique in the PTA. Neither of the other groups who ride with them on the trains, the drivers and revenue protection staff (whose sole job is to sell and check tickets), experiences the combination of intense contact with passengers, danger of physical injury or group morale. The TOs of the PTA in Perth operate from a central location at the main train station and the end stations on each line. Here there are change lockers where they can lock up their uniforms and equipment such as handcuffs and batons when not on duty, an equipment room where they sign out their radios, and ticket-checking machines. At the main train station there is also a gym, a canteen and holding cells for offenders they detain. From these end stations and central location, the TOs fan out across the network to all suburbs where they either operate from stations or onboard the trains. The TOs also do ‘delta van’ duty providing rapid, mobile back-up support for their colleagues on stations or trains, and providing transport for arrested persons to the holding cell or police lock up. TOs are on duty whenever the trains are running–but the evenings and nights are when they are mainly rostered on. This is when trouble mostly occurs. The TOs’ work ends only after the final train has completed its run and all offenders who may require detaining and charging have been transferred into police custody. While the public perceive that security is the TOs’ most frequent role, much of the work involves non-confrontational activity such as assisting passengers, checking tickets and providing a reassuring presence. One way to deal with an ambiguous role is to claim an ambience of power and authority regardless. Various aspects of the TO role permit and hinder this, and the paper goes on to consider aspects of ambience in terms of fear and force, order and safety, and role confusion. An Ambience of Fear and Force The TOs are responsible for front-line security in WA’s urban railway network. Their role is to offer a feeling of security for passengers using the rail network after the bustle of the work day finishes, and is replaced by the mainly recreational travels of the after hours public. This is the time when some passengers find the prospect of evening travel on the public transport rail network unsettling–so unsettling that it was a 2001 WA government election promise (WA Legislative Council) that every train leaving the city centre after 7pm would have two TOs riding on it. Interestingly, recruitment levels have never been high enough for this promise to be fully kept. The working conditions of the TOs reflect the perception, and to an extent, the reality that some late night travel on public transport involves negotiating an edgy ambience with an element of risk, rubbing shoulders with people who may be loud, rowdy, travelling in a group, and or drug and alcohol affected. As Fred (all TO names are pseudonyms) comments: You’re not dealing with rational people, you’re not dealing with ‘people’: most of the people you’re dealing with are either drunk or under the influence of drugs, so they’re not rational, they don’t hear you, they don’t understand what you’re saying, they just have no sense of what’s right or wrong, you know? Especially being under the influence, so I mean, you can talk till you’re blue in the face with somebody who’s drunk or on drugs, I mean, all you have to say is one thing. ‘Oh, can I see your ticket please’, ‘oh, why do I need a f*cking ticket’, you know? They just don’t get simple everyday messages. Dealing with violence and making arrest is a normal part of this job. Jo described an early experience in her working life as a TO:Within the first week of coming out of course I got smacked on the side of the head, but this lady had actually been certified, like, she was nuts. She was completely mental and we were just standing on the train talking and I’ve turned around to say something to my partner and she was fine, she was as calm as, and I turned around and talked to my partner and the next thing I know I ended up with her fist to the side of my head. And I went ‘what the hell was that’? And she went off, she went absolutely ballistic. I ended up arresting her because it was assault on an officer whether she was mental or not so I ended up arresting her.Although Jo here is describing how she experienced an unprovoked assault in the early days of her career as a TO, one of the most frequent precursors to a TO injury occurs when the TO is required to make an arrest. The injury may occur when the passenger to be arrested resists or flees, and the TO gives chase in dark or treacherous circ*mstances such as railway reserves and tunnels, or when other passengers, maybe friends or family of the original person of concern, involve themselves in an affray around the precipitating action of the arrest. In circ*mstances where capsicum spray is the primary way of enforcing compliance, with batons used as a defence tool, group members may feel that they can take on the two TOs with impunity, certainly in the first instance. Even though there are security cameras on trains and in stations, and these can be cued to cover the threatening or difficult situations confronting TOs, the conflict is located in the here-and-now of the exchanges between TOs and the travelling public. This means the longer term consequence of trouble in the future may hold less sway with unruly travellers than the temptation to try to escape from trouble in the present. In discussing the impact of remote communications, Rubert Murdoch commented that these technologies are “a powerful influence for civilised behaviour. If you are arranging a massacre, it will be useless to shoot the cameraman who has so inconveniently appeared on the scene. His picture will already be safe in the studio five thousand miles away and his final image may hang you” (Shawcross 242). Unfortunately, whether public aggression in these circ*mstances is useless or not, the daily experience of TOs is that the presence of closed circuit television (CCTV) does not prevent attacks upon them: nor is it a guarantee of ‘civilised behaviour’. This is possibly because many of the more argumentative and angry members of the public are dis-inhibited by alcohol or other drugs. Police officers can employ the threat or actual application of stun guns to control situations in which they are outnumbered, but in the case of TOs they can remain outnumbered and vulnerable until reinforcements arrive. Such reinforcements are available, but the situation has to be managed through the communication of authority until the point where the train arrives at a ‘manned’ station, or the staff on the delta vehicle are able to support their colleagues. An Ambience of Order and Safety Some public transport organisations take this responsibility to sustain an ambience of order more seriously than others. The TO ethnographer, Christine Teague, visited public transport organisations in the UK, USA and Canada which are recognised as setting world-class standards for injury rates of their staff. In the USA particularly, there is a commitment to what is called ‘the broken windows’ theory, where a train is withdrawn from service promptly if it is damaged or defaced (Kelling and Coles; Maple and Mitchell). According to Henry (117): The ‘Broken Windows’ theory suggests that there is both a high correlation and a causal link between community disorder and more serious crime: when community disorder is permitted to flourish or when disorderly conditions or problems are left untended, they actually cause more serious crime. ‘Broken windows’ are a metaphor for community disorder which, as Wilson and Kelling (1982) use the term, includes the violation of informal social norms for public behaviour as well as quality of life offenses such as littering, graffiti, playing loud radios, aggressive panhandling, and vandalism.This theory implies that the physical ambience of the train, and by extension the station, may be highly influential in terms of creating a safe working environment. In this case of ‘no broken window’ organisations, the TO role is to maintain a high ‘quality of life’ rather than being a role predominantly about restraining and bringing to justice those whose behaviour is offensive, dangerous or illegal. The TOs in Perth achieve this through personal means such as taking pride in their uniforms, presenting a good-natured demeanour to passengers and assisting in maintaining the high standard of train interiors. Such a priority, and its link to reduced workforce injury, suggests that a perception of order impacts upon safety. It has long been argued that the safety culture of an organisation affects the safety performance of that organisation (Pidgeon; Leplat); but it has been more recently established that different cultural groupings in an organisation conceive and construct their safety culture differently (Leith). The research on ‘safety culture’ raises a problematic which is rarely addressed in practice. That problematic is this: managers frequently engage with safety at the level of instituting systems, while workers engage with safety in terms of behaviour. When Glendon and Litherland comment that, contrary to expectations, they could find no relationship between safety culture and safety performance, they were drawing attention to the fact that much managerial safety culture is premised upon systems involving tick boxes and the filling in of report forms. The broken window approach combines the managerial tick box with managerial behaviour: a dis-ordered train is removed from service. To some extent a general lack of fit between safety culture and safety performance endorses Everett’s view that it is conceptually inadequate to conceive organisations as cultures: “the conceptual inadequacy stems from the failure to distinguish between culture and behavioural features of organizational life” (238). The general focus upon safety culture as a way of promoting improvements in safety performance assumes that compliance with a range of safety systems will guarantee a safe workplace. Such an assumption, however, risks positioning the injured worker as responsible for his or her own predicament and sets up an environment in which some management officials are wont to seek ways in which that injured worker’s behaviour failed to conform with safety rules or safety processes. Yet there are roles which place workers in harm’s way, including military duties, law enforcement and some emergency services. Here, the work becomes dangerous as it becomes disorderly. An Ambience of Roles and Confusion As the research reported here progressed, it became clear that the ambience around the presentation of the self in the role of a TO (Goffman) was an important part of how ‘safety’ was promoted and enacted in their work upon the PTA (WA) trains, face to face with the travelling public. Goffman’s view of all people, not specifically TOs, is that: Regardless of the particular objective which the individual has in mind and of his motive for having this objective, it will be in his interests to control the conduct of the others, especially their responsive treatment of him. This will largely be through influencing the perception and definition that others will come to formulate of him. He will influence them by expressing himself in such a way that the kind of impression given off will lead them to act voluntarily in accordance with his own plan. (3)This ‘influencing of perception’ is an important element of performing the role of a TO. This task of the TOs is made all the more difficult because of confusions about their role in relation to two other officers: police (who have more power to act in situations of public safety) and revenue project officers (who have less), as we now discuss. The aura of the TO role borrows somewhat from those quintessential law and order officers: the police. TOs work in pairs, like many police, to support each other. They have a range of legal powers including the power of arrest, and they carry handcuffs, a baton and capsicum spray as a means of helping ensure their safety and effectiveness in circ*mstances where they might be outnumbered. The tools of their trade are accessibly displayed on heavy leather belts around their waists and their uniforms have similarities with police uniforms. However, in some ways these similarities are problematic, because TOs are not afforded the same respect as police. This situation underlines of the ambiguities negotiated within the ambience of what it is to be a TO, and how it is to conduct oneself in that role. Notwithstanding the TOs’ law and order responsibilities, public perceptions of the role and some of the public’s responses to the officers can position these workers as “plastic cops” (Teague and Leith). The penultimate deterrent of police officers, the stun gun (Taser), is not available to TOs who are expected to control all incidents arising on duty through the fact that they operate in pairs, with capsicum spray available and, as a last resort, are authorised to use their batons in self defence. Furthermore, although TOs are the key security and enforcement staff in the PTA workforce, and are managed separately from related staff roles, they believe that the clarity of this distinction is compromised because of similarities in the look of Revenue Protection Officers (RPOs). RPOs work on the trains to check that passengers have tickets and have paid the correct fares, and obtain names and addresses to issue infringement notices when required. They are not PTA employees, but contracted staff from an outside company. They also work in pairs. Significantly, the RPO uniform is in many respects identical to that of the TO, and this appears to be a deliberate management choice to make the number of TOs seem greater than it is: extending the TO ambience through to the activities of the RPOs. However, in the event of a disturbance, TOs are required and trained to act, while RPOs are instructed not to get involved; even though the RPOs appear to the travelling public to be operating in the role of a law-and-order-keeper, RPOs are specifically instructed not to get involved in breaches of the peace or disruptive passenger behaviour. From the point of view of the travelling public, who observe the RPO waiting for TOs to arrive, it may seems as if a TO is passively standing by while a chaotic situation unravels. As Angus commented: I’ve spoken to quite a few members of public and received complaints from them about transit officers and talking more about the incident have found out that it was actually [RPOs] that are dealing with it. So it’s creating a bad image for us …. It’s Transits that are copping all the flak for it … It is dangerous for us and it’s a lot of bad publicity for us. It’s hard enough, the job that we do and the lack of respect that we do get from people, we don’t need other people adding to it and making it harder. Indeed, it is not only the travelling public who can mistake the two uniforms. Mike tells of an “incident where an officer [TO] has called for backup on a train and the guys have got off [the train at the next station] and just stood there, and he didn’t realise that they are actually [revenue protection] officers, so he effectively had no backup. He thought he did, but he didn’t.” The RPO uniform may confer an ambience of power borrowed from TOs and communicated visually, but the impact is to compromise the authority of the TO role. Unfortunately, what could be a complementary role to the TOs becomes one which, in the minds of the TO workforce, serves to undermine their presence. This effect of this role confusion is to dilute the aura of authority of the TOs. At one end of a power continuum the TO role is minimised by those who see it as a second-rate ‘Wannabe cop’ (Teague and Leith 2008), while its impact is diluted at the other end by an apparently deliberate confusion between the TO broader ‘law and order’ role, and the more limited RPO revenue collection activities. Postlude To the passengers of the PTA in Perth, the presence and actions of transit officers appear as unremarkable as the daily commute. In this ethnographic study of their workplace culture, however, the transit officers have revealed ways in which they influence the ambience of the workplace and the public spaces they inhabit whilst on duty, and how they are influenced by it. While this ambient inter-relationship is not documented in the organisation’s occupational safety and health management system, the TOs are aware that it is a factor in their level at safety at work, both positively and negatively. Clearly, an ethnography study is conducted at a certain point in time and place, and culture is a living and changing expression of human interaction. The Public Transport Authority of Western Australia is committed to continuous improvement in safety and to the investigation of all ways and means in which to support TOs in their daily activities. This is evident not only in their support of the research and their welcoming of the ethnographer into the workforce and onto the tracks, but also in their robust commitment to change as the findings of the research have progressed. In particular, changes in the ambient TO culture and in the training and daily practices of TOs have already resulted from this research or are under active consideration. Nonetheless, this project is a cogent indicator of the fact that a safety culture is critically dependent upon intangible but nonetheless important factors such as the ambience of the workplace and the way in which officers are able to communicate their authority to others. References Everett, James. “Organizational Culture and Ethnoecology in Public Relations Theory and Practice.” Public Relations Research Annual. Vol. 2. Eds. Larissa Grunig and James Grunig. Hillsdale, NJ, 1990. 235-251. Glendon, Ian, and Debbie Litherland. “Safety Climate Factors, Group Differences and Safety Behaviour in Road Construction.” Safety Science 39.3 (2001): 157-188. Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life. London: Penguin, 1959. Henry, Vincent. The Comstat Paradigm: Management Accountability in Policing, Business and the Public Sector. New York: Looseleaf Law Publications, 2003. Kelling, George, and Catherine Coles. Fixing Broken Windows: Restoring Order and Reducing Crime in Our Communities. New York: Touchstone, 1996. Leith, David. Workplace Culture and Accidents: How Management Can Communicate to Prevent Injuries. Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag, 2008. Leplat, Jacques. “About Implementation of Safety Rules.” Safety Science 29.3 (1998): 189-204. Maple, Jack, and Chris Mitchell. The Crime Fighter: How You Can Make Your Community Crime-Free. New York: Broadway Books, 1999. Pidgeon, Nick. “Safety Culture and Risk Management in Organizations.” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 22.1 (1991): 129-140. Shawcross, William. Rupert Murdoch. London: Chatto & Windus, 1992. Teague, Christine, and David Leith. “Men of Steel or Plastic Cops? The Use of Ethnography as a Transformative Agent.” Transforming Information and Learning Conference Transformers: People, Technologies and Spaces, Edith Cowan University, Perth, WA, 2008. ‹http://conferences.scis.ecu.edu.au/TILC2008/documents/2008/teague_and_leith-men_of_steel_or_plastic_cops.pdf›. Wilson, James, and George Kelling. “Broken Windows.” The Atlantic Monthly (Mar. 1982): 29-38. WA Legislative Council. “Metropolitan Railway – Transit Guards 273 [Hon Ed Dermer to Minister of Transport Hon. Simon O’Brien].” Hansard 19 Mar. 2009: 2145b.

Abstract:

In January of this year, artist Christian Marclay’s 24-hour video installation The Clock came to Melbourne. As Ben Lerner explains in 10:04, the autofictional novel Lerner published in 2014, The Clock by Christian Marclay “is a clock: it is a twenty-four hour montage of thousands of scenes from movies and a few from TV edited together so as to be shown in real time; each scene indicates the time with a shot of a timepiece or its mention in dialogue, time in and outside of the film is synchronized” (52). I went to see The Clock at ACMI several times, with friends and alone, in the early morning and late at night. Each time I sank back into the comfortable chairs and settled into the communal experience of watching time pass on a screen in a dark room. I found myself sucked into the enforced narrative of time, the way in which the viewer – in this case myself, and those sharing the experience with me – sought to impose a sort of meaning on the arguably meaningless passing of the hours. In this essay, I will explore how we can expand our thinking of the idea of autofiction, as a genre, to include contemporary forms of digital media such as social media or activity trackers, as the authors of these new forms of digital media act as author-characters by playing with the divide between fact and fiction, and requiring their readers to ascertain meaning by interpreting the clues layered within. I will analyse the ways in which the meaning of autofictional texts—such as Lerner’s 10:04, but also including social media feeds, blogs and activity trackers—shifts depending on their audience. I consider that as technology develops, we increasingly use data to contextualise ourselves within a broader narrative – health data, media, journalistic data. As the sociologist John B. Thompson writes, “The development of the media not only enriches and transforms the process of self-formation, it also produces a new kind of intimacy which did not exist before … individuals can create and establish a form of intimacy which is essentially non-reciprocal” (208). New media and technologies have emerged to assist in this process of self-formation through the collection and publication of data. This essay is interested in analysing this process of self-formation, and its relationship to the genre of autofiction.Contemporary Digital Media as AutofictionWhile humans have always recorded themselves throughout history, with the rise of new technologies the instinct to record the self is increasingly becoming an automatic one; an instinct we can tie to what media theorist Nick Couldry terms as “presencing”: an “emerging requirement in everyday life to have a public presence beyond one’s bodily presence, to construct an objectification of oneself” (50). We are required to participate in ‘presencing’ by opting-in to new media; it is now uncommon – even unfavourable – for someone not to engage in any forms of social media or self-monitoring. We are now encouraged to participate in ‘presencing’ through the recording and online publication of data that would have once been considered private, such as employment histories and activity histories. Every Instagram photo, Snapchat or TikTok video contributes to an accumulating digital presence, an emerging narrative of the self. Couldry notes that presencing “is not the same as calling up a few friends to tell them some news; nor, although the audience is unspecific, is it like putting up something on a noticeboard. That is because presencing is oriented to a permanent site in public space that is distinctively marked by the producer for displaying that producer’s self” (50).In this way, we can see that in effect we are all becoming increasingly positioned to become autofiction authors. As an experimental form of literature, autofiction has been around for a long time, the term having first been introduced in the 1970s, and with Serge Doubrovsky widely credited with having introduced the genre with the publication of his 1977 novel Fils (Browning 49). In the most basic terms, autofiction is simply a work of fiction featuring a protagonist who can be interpreted as a stand-in for its author. And while autofiction is also confused with or used interchangeably with other genres such as metafiction or memoir, the difference between autofiction and other genres, writes Arnaud Schmitt, is that autoficton “relies on fiction—runs on fiction, to be exact” (141). Usually the reader can pick up on the fact that a novel is an autofictional one by noting that the protagonist and the author share a name, or key autobiographical details, but it is debatable as to whether the reader in fact needs to know that the work is autofictional in the first place in order to properly engage with it as a literary text.The same ideas can be applied to the application of digital media today. Kylie Cardell notes that “personal autobiographical but specifically diaristic (confessional, serial, quotidian) disclosure is increasingly positioned as a symptomatic feature of online life” (507). This ties in with Couldry’s idea of ‘presencing’; confession is increasingly a requirement when it comes to participation in digital media. As technology advances, the ways in which we can present and record the self evolve, and the narrative we can produce of the self expands alongside our understanding of the relationship between fact and fiction. Though of course we have always fabricated different narratives of the self, whether it be through diary entries or letter-writing, ‘presencing’ occurs when we literally present these edited versions of ourselves to an online audience. Lines become blurred between fiction and non-fiction, and the ability to distinguish between ‘fake’ and ‘real’ becomes almost impossible.Increasingly, such a distinction fails to seem important, and in some cases, this blurred line becomes the point, or a punchline; we can see this most clearly in TikTok videos, wherein people (specifically, or at least most typically, young people—Generation Z) play with ideas of truth and unreality ironically. When a teenager posts a video of themselves on TikTok dancing in their school cafeteria with the caption, “I got suspended for this, don’t let this flop”, the savvy viewer understands without it needing to be said that the student was not actually suspended – and also understands that even less outlandish or unbelievable digital content is unreliable by nature, and simply the narrative the author or producer wishes to convey; just like the savvy reader of an autofiction novel understands, without it actually being said, that the novel is in part autobiographical, even when the author and protagonist do not share a name or other easily identifiable markers.This is the nature of autofiction; it signals to the reader its status as a work of autofiction by littering intertextual clues throughout. Readers familiar with the author’s biography or body of work will pick up on these clues, creating a sense of uneasiness in the reader as they work to discern what is fact and what is not.Indeed, in 10:04, Lerner flags the text as a work of autofiction by sketching a fictional-not-fictional image of himself as an author of a story, ‘The Golden Vanity’ published in The New Yorker, that earned him a book deal—a story the ‘real’ Ben Lerner did in fact publish, two years before the publication of 10:04: “a few months before, the agent had e-mailed me that she believed I could get a “strong six-figure” advance based on a story of mine that had appeared in The New Yorker” (Lerner 4).In a review of 10:04 for the Sydney Review of Books, Stephanie Bishop writes:we learn that he did indeed write a proposal, that there was a competitive auction … What had just happened? Where are we in time? Was the celebratory meal fictional or real? Can we (and should we) seek to distinguish these categories?Here Lerner is ‘presencing’, crafting a multilayered version of himself across media by assuming that the reader of his work is also a reader of The New Yorker (an easy assumption to make given that his work often appears in, and is reviewed in, The New Yorker). Of course, this leads to the question: what becomes of autofiction when it is consumed by someone who is unable to pick up on the many metareferences layered within its narrative? In this case, the work itself becomes a joke that doesn’t land – much like a social media feed being consumed by someone who is not its intended audience.The savvy media consumer also understands that even the most meaningless or obtuse of media is all part of the overarching narrative. Lerner highlights the way we try and impose meaning onto (arguably) meaningless media when he describes his experience of watching time pass in Marclay’s The Clock:Big Ben, which I would come to learn appears frequently in the video, exploded, and people in the audience applauded… But then, a minute later, a young girl awakes from a nightmare and, as she’s comforted by her father (Clark Gable as Rhett Butler), you see Big Ben ticking away again outside their window, no sign of damage. The entire preceding twenty-four hours might have been the child’s dream, a storm that never happened, just one of many ways The Clock can be integrated into an overarching narrative. Indeed it was a greater challenge for me to resist the will to integration. (Lerner 52-53)This desire to impose an overarching narrative that Lerner speaks of – and which I also experienced when watching The Clock, as detailed in the introduction to this essay – is what the recording of the self both aims to achieve and achieves by default; it is the point and also the by-product. The Self as DataThe week my grandmother died, in 2017, my father bought me an Apple Watch. I had recently started running and—perhaps as an outlet for my grief—was looking to take my running further. I wanted a smart watch to help me record my runs; to turn the act of running into data that I could quantify and thus understand. This, in turn, would help me understand something about myself. Deborah Lupton explains my impulse here when she writes, “the body/self is portrayed as a conglomerate of quantifiable data that can be revealed using digital devices” (65). I wanted to reveal my ‘self’ by recording it, similar to the way the data accumulated in a diary, when reflected upon, helps a diarist understand their life more broadly. "Is a Fitbit a diary?”, asks Kylie Cardell. “The diary in the twenty-first century is already vastly different from many of its formal historical counterparts, yet there are discursive resonances. The Fitbit is a diary if we think of diary as a chronological record of data, which it can be” (348). The diary, as with the Apple Watch or Fitbit, is simply just a record of the self moving through time.Thus I submitted myself to the task of turning as much of myself into digital data as was possible to do so. Every walk, swim, meditation, burst of productivity, lapse in productivity, and beat of my heart became quantified, as Cardell might say, diarised. There is a very simple sort of pleasure in watching the red, green and blue rings spin round as you stand more, move more, run more. There is something soothing in knowing that at any given moment in time, you can press a button and see exactly what your heart is doing; even more soothing is knowing that at any given time, you can open up an app and see what your heart has been doing today, yesterday, this month, this year. It made sense to me that this data was being collected via my timepiece; it was simply the accumulation of my ‘self,’ as viewed through the lens of time.The Apple Watch was just the latest in a series of ways I have tasked technology with the act of quantifying myself; with my iPhone I track my periods with the Clue app. I measure my mental health with apps such as Shine, and my daily habits with Habitica. I have tried journaling apps such as Reflectly and Day One. While I have never actively tracked my food intake, or weight, or sex life, I know if I wanted to I could do this, too. And long before the Apple Watch, and long before my iPhone, too, I measured myself. In the late 2000s, I kept an online blog. Rebecca Blood notes that the development of blogging technology allowed blogging to become about “whatever came to mind. Walking to work. Last night’s party. Lunch” (54). Browning expands on this, noting that bloggingemerged as a mode of publication in the late ’90s, expressly smudging the boundaries of public and private. A diaristic mode, the blog nonetheless addresses (a) potential reader(s), often with great intimacy — and in its transition to print, as a boundary-shifting form with ill-defined goals regarding its readership. (49)(It is worth noting here that while of course many different forms of blogging exist and have always existed, this essay is only concerned with the diaristic blog that Blood and Browning speak of – arguably the most popular, and at least the most well known, form of blog.)My blog was also ostensibly about my own life, but really it was a work of autofiction, in the same way that my Apple Watch data, when shared, became a work of autofiction – which is to say that I became the central character, the author-character, whose narrative I was shaping with each post, using time as the setting. Jenny Davis writes:if self-quantifiers are seeking self-knowledge through numbers, then narratives and subjective interpretations are the mechanisms by which data morphs into selves. Self-quantifiers don’t just use data to learn about themselves, but rather, use data to construct the stories that they tell themselves about themselves.Over time, I became addicted to the blogging platform’s inbuilt metrics. I would watch with interest as certain posts performed better than others, and eventually the inevitable happened: I began – mostly unconsciously – to try and mould the content of my blogs to achieve certain outcomes – similar to the way that now, in 2019, it is hard to say whether I use an app to assist myself to meditate/journal/learn/etc, or whether I meditate/journal/learn/etc in order to record myself having done so.David Sedaris notes how the collection of data subconsciously, automatically leads to its manipulation in his essay collection, Calypso:for reasons I cannot determine my Fitbit died. I was devastated when I tapped the broadest part of it and the little dots failed to appear. Then I felt a great sense of freedom. It seemed that my life was now my own again. But was it? Walking twenty-five miles, or even running up the stairs and back, suddenly seemed pointless, since, without the steps being counted and registered, what use were they? (Sedaris, 49)In this way, the data we collect on and produce about ourselves, be it fitness metrics, blog posts, Instagram stories or works of literature or art, allows us to control and shape our own narrative, and so we do, creating what Kylie Cardell describes as “an autobiographical representation of self that is coherent and linear, “excavated” from a mass of personal data” (502).Of course, as foregrounded earlier, it is important to highlight the way ideas of privacy and audience shift in accordance with the type of media being consumed or created. Within different media, different author-characters emerge, and the author is required to participate in ‘presencing’ in different ways. For instance, data that exists only for the user does not require the user, or author, to participate in the act of ‘presencing’ at all – an example of this might be the Clue app, which records menstruation history. This information is only of interest to myself, and is not published or shared anywhere, with anyone. However even data intended for a limited audience still requires participation in ‘presencing’. While I only ‘share’ my Apple Watch’s activity with a few people, even just the act of sharing this activity influences the activity itself, creating an affect in which the fact of the content’s consumption shapes the creation of the content itself. Through consumption of Apple Watch data alone, a narrative can be built in which I am lazy, or dedicated, an early riser or a late sleeper, the kind of person who prefers setting their own goals, or the kind of person who enjoys group activities – and knowing that this narrative is being built requires me to act, consciously, in the experience of building it, which leads to the creation of something unreal or fictional interspersed with factual data. (All of which is to admit that sometimes I go on a run not because I want to go on a run, but because I want to be the sort of person who has gone on a run, and be seen as such: in this way I am ‘presencing’.)Similarly, the ephemeral versus permanent nature of data shared through media like Snapchat or Instagram dictates its status as a work of autofiction. When a piece of data – for instance, a photograph on Instagram – is published permanently, it contributes to an evolving autofictional narrative. The ‘Instagrammed’ self is both real and unreal, both fictional and non-fictional. The consumer of this data can explore an author’s social media feed dating back years and consume this data in exactly the way the author intends. However, the ‘stories’ function on Instagram, for instance, allows the consumption of this data to change again. Content is published for a limited amount of time—usually 24 hours—then disappears, and is able to be shared with either the author’s entire group of followers, or a select audience, allowing an author more creative freedom to choose how their data is consumed.Anxiety and AutofictionWhy do I feel the need to record all this data about myself? Obviously, this information is, to an extent, useful. If you are a person who menstruates, knowing exactly when your last period was, how long it lasted and how heavy it was is useful information to have, medically and logistically. If you run regularly, tracking your runs can be helpful in improving your time or routine. Similarly, recording the self in this way can be useful in keeping track of your moods, your habits, and your relationships.Of course, as previously noted, humans have always recorded ourselves. Cardell notes that “although the forms, conditions, and technology for diary keeping have changed, a motivation for recording, documenting, and accounting for the experience of the self over time has endured” (349). Still, it is hard to ignore the fact that ultimately, we seem to be entering some sort of age of digital information hoarding, and harder still to ignore the sneaking suspicion that this all seems to speak to a growing anxiety – and specifically, an anxiety of the self.Gayle Greene writes that “all writers are concerned with memory, since all writing is a remembrance of things past; all writers draw on the past, mine it as a quarry. Memory is especially important to anyone who cares about change, for forgetting dooms us to repetition” (291). If all writers are concerned with memory, as Greene posits, then perhaps we can draw the conclusion that autofiction writers are concerned with an anxiety of forgetting, or of being forgotten. We are self-conscious as authors of autofictional media; concerned with how our work is and will continue to be perceived – and whether it is perceived at all. Marjorie Worthington believes that that the rise in self-conscious fiction has resulted in an anxiety of obsolescence; that this anxiety in autofiction occurs “when a cultural trope (such as 'the author' is deemed to be in danger of becoming obsolete (or 'dying')” (27). However, it is worth considering the opposite – that an anxiety of obsolescence has resulted in a rise of self-conscious fiction, or autofiction.This fear of obsolescence is pervasive in new digital media – Instagram stories and Snapchats, which once disappeared forever into a digital void, are now able to be saved and stored. The fifteen minutes of fame has morphed into fifteen seconds: in this way, time works both for and against the anxious author of digital autofiction. Technologies evolve quicker than we can keep up, with popular platforms becoming obsolete at a rapid pace. This results in what Kylie Cardell sees as an “anxiety around the traces of lives accumulating online and the consequences of 'accidental autobiography,' as well as the desire to have a 'tidy,' representable, and 'storied' life” (503).This same desire can be seen at the root of autofiction. The media theorist José van Dijck notes thatwith the advent of photography, and later film and television, writing tacitly transformed into an interior means of consciousness and remembrance, whereupon electronic forms of media received the artificiality label…writing gained status as a more authentic container of past recollection. (15)Autofiction, however, disrupts this tacit transformation. It is a co-mingling of a desire to record the self, as well as a desire to control one’s own narrative. The drive to represent oneself in a specific way, with consideration to one’s audience and self-brand, has become the root of social media, but is so pervasive now that it is often an unexamined, subconscious one. In autofiction, this drive is not subconscious, it is self-conscious.ConclusionAs technology has developed, new ways to record, present and evaluate the self have emerged. While an impulse to self-monitor has always existed within society, with the rise of ‘presencing’ through social media this impulse has been made public. In this way, we can see presencing, or the public practice of self-performing through media, as an inherently autofictional practice. We can understand that the act of presencing stems from a place of anxiety and self-consciousness, and understand that is in fact impossible to create autofiction without self-consciousness. As we begin to understand that all digital media is becoming inherently autofictional in nature, we’re increasingly required to force to draw our own conclusions about the media we consume—just like the author-character of 10:04 is forced to draw his own conclusions about the passing of time, as represented by Big Ben, when interacting with Marclay’s The Clock. By analysing and comparing the ways in which the emerging digital landscape and autofiction both share a common goal of recording and preserving an interpretation of the ‘self’, we can then understand a deeper understanding of the purpose that autofiction serves. ReferencesBishop, Stephanie. “The Same but Different: 10:04 by Ben Lerner.” Sydney Review of Books 6 Feb. 2015. <https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/10-04-ben-lerner/>.Blood, Rebecca. "How Blogging Software Reshapes the Online Community." Communications of the ACM 47.12 (2004): 53-55.Browning, Barbara. "The Performative Novel." TDR: The Drama Review 62.2 (2018): 43-58. Davis, Jenny. “The Qualified Self.” Cyborgology 13 Mar. 2013. <http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2013/03/13/the-qualified-self/>.Cardell, Kylie. “The Future of Autobiography Studies: The Diary.” a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 32.2 (2017): 347-350.Cardell, Kylie. “Modern Memory-Making: Marie Kondo, Online Journaling, and the Excavation, Curation, and Control of Personal Digital Data.” a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 32.3 (2017): 499-517.Couldry, Nick. Media, Society, World: Social Theory and Digital Media Practice. Great Britain: Polity Press, 2012.Greene, Gayle. “Feminist Fiction and the Uses of Memory.” Signs 16.2 (1991): 290-321.Lerner, Ben. 10:04. London: Faber and Faber, 2014.Lerner, Ben. “The Golden Vanity.” The New Yorker 11 June 2012. <https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/06/18/the-golden-vanity>.Lupton, Deborah. “You Are Your Data: Self-Tracking Practices and Concepts of Data.” Lifelogging. Ed. Stefan Selke. Wiesbaden: Springer, 2016. 61-79.Schmitt, Arnaud. “David Shields's Lyrical Essay: The Dream of a Genre-Free Memoir, or beyond the Paradox.” a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 31.1 (2016): 133-146.Sedaris, David. Calypso. United States: Little Brown, 2018.Thompson, John B. The Media and Modernity: A Social Theory of the Media. California: Stanford University Press, 1995.Van Dijck, José. Mediated Memories in the Digital Age. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2007.Worthington, Marjorie. The Story of "Me": Contemporary American Autofiction. Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 2018.

Abstract:

Unlike some current discourse on automediality, this essay eschews most of the analysis concerning the adoption or modification of avatars to deliberately enhance, extend or distort the self. Rather than the automedial enabling of alternative, virtual selves modified by playful, confronting or disarming avatars we concentrate instead on emerging efforts to present the self in hyper-realist, interactive modes. In doing so we ask, what is the relationship between traumatic forms of automediation and the affective impact on and response of the audience? We argue that, while on the one hand there are promising avenues for valuable individual and social engagements with traumatic forms of automediation, there is an overwhelming predominance of suffering as a theme in such virtual depictions, comingled with uncritically asserted promises of empathy, which are problematic as the technology assumes greater mainstream uptake.As Smith and Watson note, embodiment is always a “translation” where the body is “dematerialized” in virtual representation (“Virtually” 78). Past scholarship has analysed the capacity of immersive realms, such as Second Life or online games, to highlight how users can modify their avatars in often spectacular, non-human forms. Critics of this mode of automediality note that users can adopt virtually any persona they like (racial, religious, gendered and sexual, human, animal or hybrid, and of any age), behaving as “identity tourists” while occupying virtual space or inhabiting online communities (Nakamura). Furthermore, recent work by Jaron Lanier, a key figure from the 1980s period of early Virtual Reality (VR) technology, has also explored so-called “homuncular flexibility” which describes the capacity for humans to seemingly adapt automatically to the control mechanisms of an avatar with multiple legs, other non-human appendages, or for two users to work in tandem to control a single avatar (Won et. al.). But this article is concerned less with these single or multi-player online environments and the associated concerns over modifying interactive identities. We are principally interested in other automedial modes where the “auto” of autobiography is automated via Artificial Intelligences (AIs) to convincingly mimic human discourse as narrated life-histories.We draw from case studies promoted by the 2017 season of ABC television’s flagship science program, Catalyst, which opened with semi-regular host and biological engineer Dr Jordan Nguyen, proclaiming in earnest, almost religious fervour: “I want to do something that has long been a dream. I want to create a copy of a human. An avatar. And it will have a life of its own in virtual reality.” As the camera followed Nguyen’s rapid pacing across real space he extolled: “Virtual reality, virtual human, they push the limits of the imagination and help us explore the impossible […] I want to create a virtual copy of a person. A digital addition to the family, using technology we have now.”The troubling implications of such rhetoric were stark and the next third of the program did little to allay such techno-scientific misgivings. Directed and produced by David Symonds, with Nguyen credited as co-developer and presenter, the episode “Meet the Avatars” immediately introduced scenarios where “volunteers” entered a pop-up inner city virtual lab, to experience VR for the first time. The volunteers were shown on screen subjected to a range of experimental VR environments designed to elicit fear and/or adverse and disorienting responses such as vertigo, while the presenter and researchers from Sydney University constantly smirked and laughed at their participants’ discomfort. We can only wonder what the ethics process was for both the ABC and university researchers involved in these broadcast experiments. There is little doubt that the participant/s experienced discomfort, if not distress, and that was televised to a national audience. Presenter Nguyen was also shown misleading volunteers on their way to the VR lab, when one asked “You’re not going to chuck us out of a virtual plane are you?” to which Nguyen replied “I don't know what we’re going to do yet,” when it was next shown that they immediately underwent pre-programmed VR exposure scenarios, including a fear of falling exercise from atop a city skyscraper.The sweat-inducing and heart rate-racing exposures to virtual plank walks high above a cityscape, or seeing subjects haptically viewing spiders crawl across their outstretched virtual hands, all elicited predictable responses, showcased as carnivalesque entertainment for the viewing audience. As we will see, this kind of trivialising of a virtual environment’s capacity for immersion belies the serious use of the technology in a range of treatments for posttraumatic stress disorder (see Rizzo and Koenig; Rothbaum, Rizzo and Difede).Figure 1: Nguyen and researchers enjoying themselves as their volunteers undergo VR exposure Defining AutomedialityIn their pioneering 2008 work, Automedialität: Subjektkonstitution in Schrift, Bild und neuen Medien, Jörg Dünne and Christian Moser coined the term “automediality” to problematise the production, application and distribution of autobiographic modes across various media and genres—from literary texts to audiovisual media and from traditional expression to inter/transmedia and remediated formats. The concept of automediality was deployed to counter the conventional critical exclusion of analysis of the materiality/technology used for an autobiographical purpose (Gernalzick). Dünne and Moser proffered a concept of automediality that rejects the binary division of (a) self-expression determining the mediated form or (b) (self)subjectivity being solely produced through the mediating technology. Hence, automediality has been traditionally applied to literary constructs such as autobiography and life-writing, but is now expanding into the digital domain and other “paratextual sites” (Maguire).As Nadja Gernalzick suggests, automediality should “encourage and demand not only a systematics and taxonomy of the constitution of the self in respectively genre-specific ways, but particularly also in medium-specific ways” (227). Emma Maguire has offered a succinct working definition that builds on this requirement to signal the automedial universally, noting it operates asa way of studying auto/biographical texts (of a variety of forms) that take into account how the effects of media shape the kinds of selves that can be represented, and which understands the self not as a preexisting subject that might be distilled into story form but as an entity that is brought into being through the processes of mediation.Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson point to automediality as a methodology, and in doing so emphasize how the telling or mediation of a life actually shapes the kind of story that can be told autobiographically. They state “media cannot simply be conceptualized as ‘tools’ for presenting a preexisting, essential self […] Media technologies do not just transparently present the self. They constitute and expand it” (Smith and Watson “Virtually Me” 77).This distinction is vital for understanding how automediality might be applied to self-expression in virtual domains, including the holographic avatar dreams of Nguyen throughout Catalyst. Although addressing this distinction in relation to online websites, following P. David Marshall’s description of “the proliferation of the public self”, Maguire notes:The same integration of digital spaces and platforms into daily life that is prompting the development of new tools in autobiography studies […] has also given rise to the field of persona studies, which addresses the ways in which individuals engage in practices of self-presentation in order to form commoditised identities that circulate in affective communities.For Maguire, these automedial works operate textually “to construct the authorial self or persona”.An extension to this digital, authorial construction is apparent in the exponential uptake of screen mediated prosumer generated content, whether online or theatrical (Miller). According to Gernalzick, unlike fictional drama films, screen autobiographies more directly enable “experiential temporalities”. Based on Mary Anne Doane’s promotion of the “indexicality” of film/screen representations to connote the real, Gernalzick suggests that despite semiotic theories of the index problematising realism as an index as representation, the film medium is still commonly comprehended as the “imprint of time itself”:Film and the spectator of film are said to be in a continuous present. Because the viewer is aware, however, that the images experienced in or even as presence have been made in the past, the temporality of the so-called filmic present is always ambiguous” (230).When expressed as indexical, automedial works, the intrinsic audio-visual capacities of film and video (as media) far surpass the temporal limitations of print and writing (Gernalzick, 228). One extreme example can be found in an emergent trend of “performance crime” murder and torture videos live-streamed or broadcast after the fact using mobile phone cameras and FaceBook (Bender). In essence, the political economy of the automedial ecology is important to understand in the overall context of self expression and the governance of content exhibition, access, distribution and—where relevant—interaction.So what are the implications for automedial works that employ virtual interfaces and how does this evolving medium inform both the expressive autobiographical mode and audiences subjectivities?Case StudyThe Catalyst program described above strove to shed new light on the potential for emerging technology to capture and create virtual avatars from living participants who (self-)generate autobiographical narratives interactively. Once past the initial gee-wiz journalistic evangelism of VR, the episode turned towards host Nguyen’s stated goal—using contemporary technology to create an autonomous virtual human clone. Nguyen laments that if he could create only one such avatar, his primary choice would be that of his grandfather who died when Nguyen was two years old—a desire rendered impossible. The awkward humour of the plank walk scenario sequence soon gives way as the enthusiastic Nguyen is surprised by his family’s discomfort with the idea of digitally recreating his grandfather.Nguyen next visits a Southern California digital media lab to experience the process by which 3D virtual human avatars are created. Inside a domed array of lights and cameras, in less than one second a life-size 3D avatar is recorded via 6,000 LEDs illuminating his face in 20 different combinations, with eight cameras capturing the exposures from multiple angles, all in ultra high definition. Called the Light Stage (Debevec), it is the same technology used to create a life size, virtual holocaust survivor, Pinchas Gutter (Ziv).We see Nguyen encountering a life-size, high-resolution 2D screen version of Gutter’s avatar. Standing before a microphone, Nguyen asks a series of questions about Gutter’s wartime experiences and life in the concentration camps. The responses are naturalistic and authentic, as are the pauses between questions. The high definition 4K screen is photo-realist but much more convincing in-situ (as an artifact of the Catalyst video camera recording, in some close-ups horizontal lines of transmission appear). According to the project’s curator, David Traum, the real Pinchas Gutter was recorded in 3D as a virtual holograph. He spent 25 hours providing 1,600 responses to a broad range of questions that the curator maintained covered “a lot of what people want to say” (Catalyst).Figure 2: The Museum of Jewish Heritage in Manhattan presented an installation of New Dimensions in Testimony, featuring Pinchas Gutter and Eva SchlossIt is here that the intersection between VR and auto/biography hybridise in complex and potentially difficult ways. It is where the concept of automediality may offer insight into this rapidly emerging phenomenon of creating interactive, hyperreal versions of our selves using VR. These hyperreal VR personae can be questioned and respond in real-time, where interrogators interact either as casual conversers or determined interrogators.The impact on visitors is sobering and palpable. As Nguyen relates at the end of his session, “I just want to give him a hug”. The demonstrable capacity for this avatar to engender a high degree of empathy from its automedial testimony is clear, although as we indicate below, it could simply indicate increased levels of emotion.Regardless, an ongoing concern amongst witnesses, scholars and cultural curators of memorials and museums dedicated to preserving the history of mass violence, and its associated trauma, is that once the lived experience and testimony of survivors passes with that generation the impact of the testimony diminishes (Broderick). New media modes of preserving and promulgating such knowledge in perpetuity are certainly worthy of embracing. As Stephen Smith, the executive director of the USC Shoah Foundation suggests, the technology could extendto people who have survived cancer or catastrophic hurricanes […] from the experiences of soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder or survivors of sexual abuse, to those of presidents or great teachers. Imagine if a slave could have told her story to her grandchildren? (Ziv)Yet questions remain as to the veracity of these recorded personae. The avatars are created according to a specific agenda and the autobiographical content controlled for explicit editorial purposes. It is unclear what and why material has been excluded. If, for example, during the recorded questioning, the virtual holocaust survivor became mute at recollecting a traumatic memory, cried or sobbed uncontrollably—all natural, understandable and authentic responses given the nature of the testimony—should these genuine and spontaneous emotions be included along with various behavioural ticks such as scratching, shifting about in the seat and other naturalistic movements, to engender a more profound realism?The generation of the photorealist, mimetic avatar—remaining as an interactive persona long after the corporeal, authorial being is gone—reinforces Baudrillard’s concept of simulacra, where a clone exists devoid of its original entity and unable to challenge its automedial discourse. And what if some unscrupulous hacker managed to corrupt and subvert Gutter’s AI so that it responded antithetically to its purpose, by denying the holocaust ever happened? The ethical dilemmas of such a paradigm were explored in the dystopian 2013 film, The Congress, where Robyn Wright plays herself (and her avatar), as an out of work actor who sells off the rights to her digital self. A movie studio exploits her screen persona in perpetuity, enabling audiences to “become” and inhabit her avatar in virtual space while she is limited in the real world from undertaking certain actions due to copyright infringement. The inability of Wright to control her mimetic avatar’s discourse or action means the assumed automedial agency of her virtual self as an immortal, interactive being remains ontologically perplexing.Figure 3: Robyn Wright undergoing a full body photogrammetry to create her VR avatar in The Congress (2013)The various virtual exposures/experiences paraded throughout Catalyst’s “Meet the Avatars” paradoxically recorded and broadcast a range of troubling emotional responses to such immersion. Many participant responses suggest great caution and sensitivity be undertaken before plunging headlong into the new gold rush mentality of virtual reality, augmented reality, and AI affordances. Catalyst depicted their program subjects often responding in discomfort and distress, with some visibly overwhelmed by their encounters and left crying. There is some irony that presenter Ngyuen was himself relying on the conventions of 2D linear television journalism throughout, adopting face-to-camera address in (unconscious) automedial style to excitedly promote the assumed socio-cultural boon such automedial VR avatars will generate.Challenging AuthenticityThere are numerous ethical considerations surrounding the potential for AIs to expand beyond automedial (self-)expression towards photorealist avatars interacting outside of their pre-recorded content. When such systems evolve it may be neigh impossible to discern on screen whether the person you are conversing with is authentic or an indistinguishable, virtual doppelganger. In the future, a variant on the Turning Test may be needed to challenge and identify such hyperreal simulacra. We may be witnessing the precursor to such a dilemma playing out in the arena of audio-only podcasts, with some public intellectuals such as Sam Harris already discussing the legal and ethical problems from technology that can create audio from typed text that convincingly replicate the actual voice of a person by sampling approximately 30 minutes of their original speech (Harris). Such audio manipulation technology will soon be available to anybody with the motivation and relatively minor level of technological ability in order to assume an identity and masquerade as automediated dialogue. However, for the moment, the ability to convincingly alter a real-time computer generated video image of a person remains at the level of scientific innovation.Also of significance is the extent to which the audience reactions to such automediated expressions are indeed empathetic or simply part of the broader range of affective responses that also include direct sympathy as well as emotions such as admiration, surprise, pity, disgust and contempt (see Plantinga). There remains much rhetorical hype surrounding VR as the “ultimate empathy machine” (Milk). Yet the current use of the term “empathy” in VR, AI and automedial forms of communication seems to be principally focused on the capacity for the user-viewer to ameliorate negatively perceived emotions and experiences, whether traumatic or phobic.When considering comments about authenticity here, it is important to be aware of the occasional slippage of technological terminology into the mainstream. For example, the psychological literature does emphasise that patients respond strongly to virtual scenarios, events, and details that appear to be “authentic” (Pertaub, Slater, and Barker). Authentic in this instance implies a resemblance to a corresponding scenario/activity in the real world. This is not simply another word for photorealism, but rather it describes for instance the experimental design of one study in which virtual (AI) audience members in a virtual seminar room designed to treat public speaking anxiety were designed to exhibit “random autonomous behaviours in real-time, such as twitches, blinks, and nods, designed to encourage the illusion of life” (Kwon, Powell and Chalmers 980). The virtual humans in this study are regarded as having greater authenticity than an earlier project on social anxiety (North, North, and Coble) which did not have much visual complexity but did incorporate researcher-triggered audio clips of audience members “laughing, making comments, encouraging the speaker to speak louder or more clearly” (Kwon, Powell, and Chalmers 980). The small movements, randomly cued rather than according to a recognisable pattern, are described by the researchers as creating a sense of authenticity in the VR environment as they seem to correspond to the sorts of random minor movements that actual human audiences in a seminar can be expected to make.Nonetheless, nobody should regard an interaction with these AIs, or the avatar of Gutter, as in any way an encounter with a real person. Rather, the characteristics above function to create a disarming effect and enable the real person-viewer to willingly suspend their disbelief and enter into a pseudo-relationship with the AI; not as if it is an actual relationship, but as if it is a simulation of an actual relationship (USC). Lucy Suchman and colleagues invoke these ideas in an analysis of a YouTube video of some apparently humiliating human interactions with the MIT created AI-robot Mertz. Their analysis contends that, while it may appear on first glance that the humans’ mocking exchange with Mertz are mean-spirited, there is clearly a playfulness and willingness to engage with a form of AI that is essentially continuous with “long-standing assumptions about communication as information processing, and in the robot’s performance evidence for the limits to the mechanical reproduction of interaction as we know it through computational processes” (Suchman, Roberts, and Hird).Thus, it will be important for future work in the area of automediated testimony to consider the extent to which audiences are willing to suspend disbelief and treat the recounted traumatic experience with appropriate gravitas. These questions deserve attention, and not the kind of hype displayed by the current iteration of techno-evangelism. Indeed, some of this resurgent hype has come under scrutiny. From the perspective of VR-based tourism, Janna Thompson has recently argued that “it will never be a substitute for encounters with the real thing” (Thompson). Alyssa K. Loh, for instance, also argues that many of the negatively themed virtual experiences—such as those that drop the viewer into a scene of domestic violence or the location of a terrorist bomb attack—function not to put you in the position of the actual victim but in the position of the general category of domestic violence victim, or bomb attack victim, thus “deindividuating trauma” (Loh).Future work in this area should consider actual audience responses and rely upon mixed-methods research approaches to audience analysis. 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Abstract:

Wandering the aisles of my local Woolworths in April this year, I noticed a large number of chocolate bilbies replacing chocolate rabbits. In these harsh economic times it seems that even the Easter bunny is in danger of losing his Easter job. While the changing shape of Easter chocolate may seem to be a harmless affair, the expulsion of the rabbit from Easter celebrations has a darker side. In this paper I look at the campaign to replace the Easter bunny with the Easter bilby, and the implications this mediated conservation move has for living rabbits in the Australian ecosystem. Essential to this discussion is the premise that studies of ecology must take into account the impact of media and culture on environmental issues. Of particular interest is the role of narrative, and the way the stories we tell about rabbits determine how they are treated in real life. While I recognise that the Australian bilby’s struggle for survival is a tale which should be told, I also argue that the vilification of the European-Australian rabbit is part of the native/invasive dualism which has ceased to be helpful, and has instead become a motivator of unproductive violence. In place of this simplified dichotomous narrative, I propose an ethic of "ecological remembrance" to combat the totalising eradication of the European rabbit from the Australian environment and culture. The Bilby vs the Bunny: A Case Study in "Media Selection" Easter Bunny says, ‘Bilby, I want you to have my job.You know about sharing and taking care.I think Australia should have an Easter Bilby.We rabbits have become too greedy and careless.Rabbits must learn from bilbies and other bush creatures’. The lines above are taken from Ali Garnett and Kaye Kessing’s children’s story, Easter Bilby, co-published by the Australian Anti-Rabbit Research Foundation as part of the campaign to replace the Easter bunny with the eco-politically correct Easter bilby. The first chocolate bilbies were made in 1982, but the concept really took off when major chocolate retailer Darrell Lea became involved in 2002. Since this time Haigh’s chocolate, Cadbury, and Pink Lady have also released delicious cocoa natives for consumption, and both Darrell Lea and Haigh’s use their profits to support bilby assistance programs, creating the “pleasant Easter sensation” that “eating a chocolate bilby is helping save the real thing” (Phillips). The Easter bilby campaign is a highly mediated approach to conservation which demonstrates the new biological principle Phil Bagust has recognised as “media selection.” Bagust observes that in our “hybridised global society” it is impossible to separate “the world of genetic selection from the world of human symbolic and material diversity as if they exist in different universes” (8). The Australian rabbit thrives in “natural selection,” having adapted to the Australian environment so successfully it threatens native species and the economic productivity of farmers. But the rabbit loses out in “cultural selection” where it is vilified in the media for its role in environmental degradation. The campaign to conserve the bilby depends, in a large part, on the rabbit’s failures in “media selection”. On Good Friday 2012 Sky News Australia quoted Mike Drinkwater of Wild Life Sydney’s support of the Easter bilby campaign: Look, the reason that we want to highlight the bilby as an iconic Easter animal is, number one, rabbits are a pest in Australia. Secondly, the bilby has these lovely endearing rabbit-like qualities. And thirdly, the bilby is a beautiful, iconic, native animal that is struggling. It is endangered so it’s important that we do all we can to support that. Drinkwater’s appeal to the bilby’s “endearing rabbit-like qualities” demonstrates that it is not the Australian rabbit’s individual embodiment which detracts from its charisma in Australian society. In this paper I will argue that the stories we tell about the European-Australian rabbit’s alienation from Indigenous country diminish the species cultural appeal. These stories are told with passionate conviction to save and protect native flora and fauna, but, too often, this promotion of the native relies on the devaluation of non-native life, to the point where individual rabbits are no longer morally considerable. Such a hierarchical approach to conservation is not only ethically problematic, but can also be ineffective because the native/invasive approach to ecology is overly simplistic. A History of Rabbit Stories In the Easter Bilby children’s book the illustrated rabbit offers to make itself disappear from the “Easter job.” The reason for this act of self-destruction is a despairing recognition of its “greedy and careless” nature, and at the same time, its selfless offer to be replaced by the ecologically conscious Bilby. In this sacrificial gesture is the implicit offering of all rabbit life for the salvation of native ecosystems and animal life. This plot line slots into a much larger series of stories we have been telling about the Australian environment. Libby Robin has observed that settler Australians have always had a love-hate relationship with the native flora and fauna of the continent (6), either devaluing native plants, animals, and ecosystems, or launching into an “overcompensating patriotic strut about the Australian biota” (Robin 9). The colonising dynamic of early Australian society was built on the devaluation of animals such as the bilby. This was reflected in the introduction of feral animals by “acclimatisation societies” and the privileging of “pets” such as cats and dogs over native animals (Plumwood). Alfred Crosby has made the persuasive argument that the invasion of Australia, and other “neo-European” countries, was, necessarily, more-than-human. In his work, Ecological Imperialism, Crosby charts the historical partnership between human European colonisers in Indigenous lands and the “grunting, lowing, neighing, crowing, chirping, snarling, buzzing, self-replicating and world-altering avalanche” (194) of introduced life that they brought with them. In response to this “guilt by association” Australians have reversed the values in the dichotomous colonial dynamic to devalue the introduced and so “empower” the colonised native. In this new “anti-colonial” story, rabbits signify a wound of colonisation which has spread across and infected indigenous country. J. M. Arthur’s (130) analysis of language in relation to colonisation highlights some of the important lexical characteristics in the rabbit stories we now tell. He observes that the rabbits’ impact on the county is described using a vocabulary of contamination: “It is a ‘menace’, a ‘problem’, an ‘infestation’, a ‘nuisance’, a ‘plague’” (170). This narrative of disease encourages a redemptive violence against living rabbits to “cure” the rabbit problem in order to atone for human mistakes in a colonial past. Redemptive Violence in Action Rabbits in Australia have been subject to a wide range of eradication measures over the past century including shooting, the destruction of burrows, poisoning, ferreting, trapping, and the well-known rabbit proof fence in Western Australia. Particularly noteworthy in this slaughter has been the introduction of biological control measures with the release of the savage and painful disease Myxomatosis in late December 1950, followed by the release of the Calicivirus (Rabbit Haemorrhage Disease, or RHD) in 1996. As recently as March 2012 the New South Wales Department of Primary Industries announced a 1.5 million dollar program called “RHD Boost” which is attempting to develop a more effective biological control agent for rabbits who have become immune to the Calicivirus. In this perverse narrative, disease becomes a cure for the rabbit’s contamination of Australian environments. Calicivirus is highly infectious, spreads rapidly, and kills rabbits en masse. Following the release of Calicivirus in 1995 it killed 10 million rabbits in eight weeks (Ponsonby Veterinary Centre). While Calicivirus appears to be more humane than the earlier biological control, Myxomatosis, there are indications that it causes rabbits pain and stress. Victims are described as becoming very quiet, refusing to eat, straining for breath, losing coordination, becoming feverish, and excreting bloody nasal discharge (Heishman, 2011). Post-mortem dissection generally reveals a “pale and mottled liver, many small streaks or blotches on the lungs and an enlarged spleen... small thrombi or blood clots” (Coman 173). Public criticism of the cruel methods involved in killing rabbits is often assuaged with appeals to the greater good of the ecosystem. The Anti-Rabbit research foundation state on their Website, Rabbit-Free Australia, that: though killing rabbits may sound inhumane, wild rabbits are affecting the survival of native Australian plants and animals. It is our responsibility to control them. We brought the European rabbit here in the first place — they are an invasive pest. This assumption of personal and communal responsibility for the rabbit “problem” has a fundamental blind-spot. Arthur (130) observes that the progress of rabbits across the continent is often described as though they form a coordinated army: The rabbit extends its ‘dominion’, ‘dispossesses’ the indigenous bilby, causes sheep runs to be ‘abandoned’ and country ‘forfeited’, leaving the land in ‘ecological tatters’. While this language of battle pervades rabbit stories, humans rarely refer to themselves as invaders into Aboriginal lands. Arthur notes that, by taking responsibility for the rabbit’s introduction and eradication, the coloniser assumes an indigenous status as they defend the country against the exotic invader (134). The apprehension of moral responsibility can, in this sense, be understood as the assumption of settler indigeneity. This does not negate the fact that assuming human responsibility for the native environment can be an act of genuine care. In a country scarred by a history of ecocide, movements like the Easter Bilby campaign seek to rectify the negligent mistakes of the past. The problem is that reactive responses to the colonial devaluation of native life can be unproductive because they preserve the basic structure of the native/invasive dichotomy by simplistically reversing its values, and fail to respond to more complex ecological contexts and requirements (Plumwood). This is also socially problematic because the native/invasive divide of nonhuman life overlays more complex human politics of colonisation in Australia. The Native/Invasive Dualism The bilby is currently listed as an “endangered” species in Queensland and as “vulnerable” nationally. Bilbies once inhabited 70% of the Australian landscape, but now inhabit less than 15% of the country (Save the Bilby Fund). This dramatic reduction in bilby numbers has multiple causes, but the European rabbit has played a significant role in threatening the bilby species by competing for burrows and food. Other threats come from the predation of introduced species, such as feral cats and foxes, and the impact of farmed introduced species, such as sheep and cattle, which also destroy bilby habitats. Because the rabbit directly competes with the bilby for food and shelter in the Australian environment, the bilby can be classed as the underdog native, appealing to that larger Australian story about “the fair go”. It seems that the Easter bilby campaign is intended to level out the threat posed by the highly successful and adaptive rabbit through promoting the bilby in the “cultural selection” stakes. This involves encouraging bilby-love, while actively discouraging love and care for the introduced rabbits which threaten the bilby’s survival. On the Rabbit Free Australia Website, the campaign rationale to replace the Easter bunny with the Easter bilby claims that: Very young children are indoctrinated with the concept that bunnies are nice soft fluffy creatures whereas in reality they are Australia’s greatest environmental feral pest and cause enormous damage to the arid zone. In this statement the lived corporeal presence of individual rabbits is denied as the “soft, fluffy” body disappears behind the environmentally problematic species’ behaviour. The assertion that children are “indoctrinated” to find rabbits love-able, and that this conflicts with the “reality” of the rabbit as environmentally destructive, denies the complexity of the living animal and the multiple possible responses to it. That children find rabbits “fluffy” is not the result of pro-rabbit propaganda, but because rabbits are fluffy! That Rabbit Free Australia could construe this to be some kind of elaborate falsehood demonstrates the disappearance of the individual rabbit in the native/invasive tale of colonisation. Rabbit-Free Australia seeks to eradicate the animal not only from Australian ecosystems, but from the hearts and minds of children who are told to replace the rabbit with the more fitting native bilby. There is no acceptance here of the rabbit as a complex animal that evokes ambivalent responses, being both worthy of moral consideration, care and love, and also an introduced and environmentally destructive species. The native/invasive dualism is a subject of sustained critique in environmental philosophy because it depends on a disjunctive temporal division drawn at the point of European settlement—1788. Environmental philosopher Thom van Dooren points out that the divide between animals who belong and animals who should be eradicated is “fundamentally premised on the reification of a specific historical moment that ignores the changing and dynamic nature of ecologies” (11). Mark Davis et al. explain that the practical value of the native/invasive dichotomy in conservation programs is seriously diminished and in some cases is becoming counterproductive (153). They note that “classifying biota according to their adherence to cultural standards of belonging, citizenship, fair play and morality does not advance our understanding of ecology” (153). Instead, they promote a more inclusive approach to conservation which accepts non-native species as part of Australia’s “new nature” (Low). Recent research into wildlife conservation indicates a striking lack of evidence for the case that pest control protects native diversity (see Bergstromn et al., Davis et al., Ewel & Putz, Reddiex & Forsyth). The problematic justification of “killing for conservation” becomes untenable when conservation outcomes are fundamentally uncertain. The mass slaughter which rabbits have been subjected to in Australia has been enacted with the goal of fostering life. This pursuit of creation through destruction, of re-birth through violent death, enacts a disturbing twist where death comes to signal the presence of life. This means, perversely, that a rabbit’s dead body becomes a valuable sign of environmental health. Conservation researchers Ben Reddiex and David M. Forsyth observe that this leads to a situation where environmental managers are “more interested in estimating how many pests they killed rather than the status of biodiversity they claimed to be able to protect” (715). What Other Stories Can We Tell about the Rabbit? With an ecological narrative that is failing, producing damage and death instead of fostering love and life, we are left with the question—what other stories can we tell about the place of the European rabbit in the Australian environment? How can the meaning ecologies of media and culture work in harmony with an ecological consciousness that promotes compassion for nonhuman life? Ignoring the native/invasive distinction entirely is deeply problematic because it registers the ecological history of Australia as continuity, and fails to acknowledge the colonising impact of European settlement on the environment. At the same time, continually reinforcing that divide through pro-invasive or pro-native stories drastically simplifies complex and interconnected ecological systems. Instead of the unproductive native/invasive dualism, ecologists and philosophers alike are suggesting “reconciliatory” approaches to the inhabitants of our shared environments which emphasise ecology as relational rather than classificatory. Evolutionary ecologist Scott P. Carroll uses the term “conciliation biology” as an alternative to invasion biology which focuses on the eradication of invasive species. “Conciliation biology recognises that many non-native species are permanent, that outcomes of native-nonnative interactions will vary depending on the scale of assessment and the values assigned to the biotic system, and that many non-native species will perform positive functions in one or more contexts” (186). This hospitable approach aligns with what Michael Rosensweig has termed “reconciliation ecology”—the modification and diversification of anthropogenic habitats to harbour a wider variety of species (201). Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Mark Bekoff encourages a “compassionate conservation” which avoids the “numbers game” of species thinking where certain taxonomies are valued above others and promotes approaches which “respect all life; treat individuals with respect and dignity; and tread lightly when stepping into the lives of animals”(24). In a similar vein environmental philosopher Deborah Bird Rose offers the term “Eco-reconciliation”, to describe a mode of “living generously with others, singing up relationships so that we all flourish” (Wild Dog 59). It may be that the rabbit cannot live in harmony with the bilby, and in this situation I am unsure of what a conciliation approach to ecology might look like in terms of managing both of these competing species. But I am sure what it should not look like if we are to promote approaches to ecology and conservation which avoid the simplistic dualism of native/invasive. The devaluation of rabbit life to the point of moral inconsiderability is fundamentally unethical. By classifying certain lives as “inappropriate,” and therefore expendable, the process of rabbit slaughter is simply too easy. The idea that the rabbit should disappear is disturbing in its abstract approach to these living, sentient creatures who share with us both place and history. A dynamic understanding of ecology dissipates the notion of a whole or static “nature.” This means that there can be no simple or comprehensive directives for how humans should interact with their environments. One of the most insidious aspects of the native/invasive divide is the way it makes violent death appear inevitable, as though rabbits must be culled. This obscures the many complex and contingent choices which determine the fate of nonhuman life. Understanding the dynamism of ecology requires an acceptance that nature does not provide simple prescriptive responses to problems, and instead “people are forced to choose the kind of environment they want” (189) and then take actions to engender it. This involves difficult decisions, one of which is culling to maintain rabbit numbers and facilitate environmental resilience. Living within a world of “discordant harmonies”, as Daniel Botkin evocatively describes it, environmental decisions are necessarily complex. The entanglement of ecological systems demands that we reject simplistic dualisms which offer illusory absolution from the consequences of the difficult choices humans make about life, ecologies, and how to manage them. Ecological Remembrance The vision of a rabbit-free Australia is unrealistic. As organisation like the Anti-Rabbit Research Foundation pursue this future ideal, they eradicate rabbits from the present, and seek to remove them from the past by replacing them culturally with the more suitable bilby. Culled rabbits lie rotting en masse in fields, food for no one, and even their cultural impact in human society is sought to be annihilated and replaced with more appropriate native creatures. The rabbits’ deaths do not turn back to life in transformative and regenerative processes that are ecological and cultural, but rather that death becomes “an event with no future” (Rose, Wild Dog 25). This is true oblivion, as the rabbit is entirely removed from the world. In this paper I have made a case for the importance of stories in ecology. I have argued that the kinds of stories we tell about rabbits determines how we treat them, and so have positioned stories as an essential part of an ecological system which takes “cultural selection” seriously. In keeping with this emphasis on story I offer to the conciliation push in ecological thinking the term “ecological remembrance” to capture an ethic of sharing time while sharing space. This spatio-temporal hospitality is focused on maintaining heterogeneous memories and histories of all beings who have impacted on the environment. In Deborah Bird Rose’s terms this is a “recuperative work” which commits to direct dialogical engagement with the past that is embedded in the present (Wild Country 23). In this sense it is a form of recuperation that promotes temporal and ecological continuity. Eco-remembrance aligns with dynamic understandings of ecology because it is counter-linear. Instead of approaching the past as a static idyll, preserved and archived, ecological remembrance celebrates the past as an ongoing, affective presence which is lived and performed. Ecological remembrance, applied to the European rabbit in Australia, would involve rejecting attempts to extricate the rabbit from Australian environments and cultures. It would seek acceptance of the rabbit as part of Australia’s “new nature” (Low), and aim for recognition of the rabbit’s impact on human society as part of dynamic multi-species ecologies. In this sense ecological remembrance of the rabbit directly opposes the goal of the Foundation for Rabbit Free Australia to eradicate the European rabbit from Australian environment and culture. On the Rabbit Free Australia website, the section on biological controls states that “the point is not how many rabbits are killed, but how many are left behind”. The implication is that the millions upon millions of rabbit lives extinguished have vanished from the earth, and need not be remembered or considered. However, as Deborah Rose argues, “all deaths matter” (Wild Dog 21) and “no death is a mere death” (Wild Dog 22). Every single rabbit is an individual being with its own unique life. To deny this is tantamount to claiming that each rabbit that dies from shooting or poisoning is the same rabbit dying again and again. Rose has written that “death makes claims upon all of us” (Wild Dog 19). These are claims of ethics and compassion, a claim that “we look into the eyes of the dying and not flinch, that we reach out to hold and to help” (Wild Dog 20). This claim is a duty of remembrance, a duty to “bear witness” (Wiesel 160) to life and death. The Nobel Peace Prize winning author, Elie Wiesel, argued that memory is a reconciliatory force that creates bonds as mass annihilation seeks to destroy them. Memory ensures that no life becomes truly life-less as it wrests the victims of mass slaughter from “oblivion” and allows the dead to “vanquish death” (21). In a continent inhabited by dead rabbits—a community of the dead—remembering these lost individuals and their lost lives is an important task for making sure that no death is a mere death. An ethic of ecological remembrance follows this recuperative aim. References Arthur, Jay M. The Default Country: A Lexical Cartography of Twentieth-Century Australia. Sydney: UNSW Press, 2003. Bagust, Phil. “Cuddly Koalas, Beautiful Brumbies, Exotic Olives: Fighting for Media Selection in the Attention Economy.” “Imaging Natures”: University of Tasmania Conference Proceedings (2004). 25 April 2012 ‹www.utas.edu.au/arts/imaging/bagust.pdf› Bekoff, Marc. “First Do No Harm.” New Scientist (28 August 2010): 24 – 25. Bergstrom, Dana M., Arko Lucieer, Kate Kiefer, Jane Wasley, Lee Belbin, Tore K. Pederson, and Steven L. Chown. “Indirect Effects of Invasive Species Removal Devastate World Heritage Island.” Journal of Applied Ecology 46 (2009): 73– 81. Botkin, Daniel. B. Discordant Harmonies: A New Ecology for the Twenty-first Century. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990. Carroll, Scott. P. “Conciliation Biology: The Eco-Evolutionary Management of Permanently Invaded Biotic Systems.” Evolutionary Applications 4.2 (2011): 184 – 99. Coman, Brian. Tooth and Nail: The Story of the Rabbit in Australia. Melbourne: The Text Publishing Company, 1999. Crosby, Alfred W. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900 – 1900. Second Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Davis, Mark., Matthew Chew, Richard Hobbs, Ariel Lugo, John Ewel, Geerat Vermeij, James Brown, Michael Rosenzweig, Mark Gardener, Scott Carroll, Ken Thompson, Steward Pickett, Juliet Stromberg, Peter Del Tredici, Katharine Suding, Joan Ehrenfield, J. Philip Grime, Joseph Mascaro and John Briggs. “Don’t Judge Species on their Origins.” Nature 474 (2011): 152 – 54. Ewel, John J. and Francis E. Putz. “A Place for Alien Species in Ecosystem Restoration.” Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 2.7 (2004): 354-60. Forsyth, David M. and Ben Reddiex. “Control of Pest Mammals for Biodiversity Protection in Australia.” Wildlife Research 33 (2006): 711–17. Garnett, Ali, and Kaye Kessing. Easter Bilby. Department of Environment and Heritage: Kaye Kessing Productions, 2006. Heishman, Darice. “VHD Factsheet.” House Rabbit Network (2011). 15 June 2012 ‹http://www.rabbitnetwork.org/articles/vhd.shtml› Low, Tim. New Nature: Winners and Losers in Wild Australia. Melbourne: Penguin, 2002. Phillips, Sara. “How Eating Easter Chocolate Can Save Endangered Animals.” ABC Environment (1 April 2010). 15 June 2011 ‹http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2010/04/01/2862039.htm› Plumwood, Val. “Decolonising Australian Gardens: Gardening and the Ethics of Place.” Australian Humanities Review 36 (2005). 15 June 2012 ‹http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-July-2005/09Plumwood.html› Ponsonby Veterinary Centre. “Rabbit Viral Hemorrhagic Disease (VHD).” Small Pets. 26 May 2012 ‹http://www.petvet.co.nz/small_pets.cfm?content_id=85› Robin, Libby. How a Continent Created a Nation. Sydney: UNSW Press, 2007. Rose, Deborah Bird. Reports From a Wild Country: Ethics for Decolonisation. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2004. ——-. Wild Dog Dreaming: Love and Extinction. Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 2011. Rosenzweig, Michael. L. “Reconciliation Ecology and the Future of Species Diversity.” Oryx 37.2 (2003): 194 – 205. Save the Bilby Fund. “Bilby Fact Sheet.” Easterbilby.com.au (2003). 26 May 2012 ‹http://www.easterbilby.com.au/Project_material/factsheet.asp› Van Dooren, Thom. “Invasive Species in Penguin Worlds: An Ethical Taxonomy of Killing for Conservation.” Conservation and Society 9.4 (2011): 286 – 98. Wiesel, Elie. From the Kingdom of Memory. New York: Summit Books, 1990.

Abstract:

IntroductionThe walking tour is an enduring feature of cities. Fuelled by a desire to learn more about the hidden and unknown spaces of the city, the walking tour has moved beyond its historical role as tourist attraction to play a key role in the transformation of urban space through gentrification. Conversely, the walking tour has a counter-history as part of a critical urban praxis. This article reflects on historical examples, as well as our own experience of conducting Field Trip, a critical geographical walking tour through an industrial precinct in Marrickville, a suburb of Sydney that is set to undergo rapid change as a result of high-rise residential apartment construction (Gibson et al.). This precinct, known as Carrington Road, is located on the unceded land of the Cadigal and Wangal people of the Eora nation who call the area Bulanaming.Drawing on a long history of philosophical walking, many contemporary writers (Solnit; Gros; Bendiner-Viani) have described walking as a practice that can open different ways of thinking, observing and being in the world. Some have focused on the value of walking to the study of place (Hall; Philips; Heddon), and have underscored its relationship to established research methods, such as sensory ethnography (Springgay and Truman). The work of Michel de Certeau pays particular attention to the relationship between walking and the city. In particular, the concepts of tactics and strategy have been applied in a variety of ways across cultural studies, cultural geography, and urban studies (Morris). In line with de Certeau’s thinking, we view walking as an example of a tactic – a routine and often unconscious practice that can become a form of creative resistance.In this sense, walking can be a way to engage in and design the city by opposing its structures, or strategies. For example, walking in a city such as Sydney that is designed for cars requires choosing alternative paths, redirecting flows of people and traffic, and creating custom shortcuts. Choosing pedestrianism in Sydney can certainly feel like a form of resistance, and we make the argument that Field Trip – and walking tours more generally – can be a way of doing this collectively, firstly by moving in opposite directions, and secondly, at incongruent speeds to those for whom the scale and style of strategic urban development is inevitable. How such tactical walking relates to the design of cities, however, is less clear. Walking is a generally described in the literature as an individual act, while the design of cities is, at its best participatory, and always involving multiple stakeholders. This reveals a tension between the practice of walking as a détournement or appropriation of urban space, and its relationship to existing built form. Field Trip, as an example of collective walking, is one such appropriation of urban space – one designed to lead to more democratic decision making around the planning and design of cities. Given the anti-democratic, “post-political” nature of contemporary “consultation” processes, this is a seemingly huge task (Legacy et al.; Ruming). We make the argument that Field Trip – and walking tours more generally – can be a form of collective resistance to top-down urban planning.By using an open-source wiki in combination with the Internet Archive, Field Trip also seeks to collectively document and make public the local knowledge generated by walking at the frontier of gentrification. We discuss these digital choices as oppositional practice, and consider the idea of tactical media (Lovink and Garcia; Raley) in order to connect knowledge sharing with the practice of walking.This article is structured in four parts. Firstly, we provide a historical introduction to the relationship between walking tours and gentrification of global cities. Secondly, we examine the significance of walking tours in Sydney and then specifically within Marrickville. Thirdly, we discuss the Field Trip project as a citizen-led walking tour and, finally, elaborate on its role as tactical media project and offer some conclusions.The Walking Tour and Gentrification From the outset, people have been walking the city in their own ways and creating their own systems of navigation, often in spite of the plans of officialdom. The rapid expansion of cities following the Industrial Revolution led to the emergence of “imaginative geographies”, where mediated representations of different urban conditions became a stand-in for lived experience (Steinbrink 219). The urban walking tour as mediated political tactic was utilised as far back as Victorian England, for reasons including the celebration of public works like the sewer system (Garrett), and the “othering” of the working class through upper- and middle-class “slum tourism” in London’s East End (Steinbrink 220). The influence of the Situationist theory of dérive has been immense upon those interested in walking the city, and we borrow from the dérive a desire to report on the under-reported spaces of the city, and to articulate alternative voices within the city in this project. It should be noted, however, that as Field Trip was developed for general public participation, and was organised with institutional support, some aspects of the dérive – particularly its disregard for formal structure – were unable to be incorporated into the project. Our responsibility to the participants of Field Trip, moreover, required the imposition of structure and timetable upon the walk. However, our individual and collective preparation for Field Trip, as well as our collective understanding of the area to be examined, has been heavily informed by psychogeographic methods that focus on quotidian and informal urban practices (Crosby and Searle; Iveson et al).In post-war American cities, walking tours were utilised in the service of gentrification. Many tours were organised by real estate agents with the express purpose of selling devalorised inner-city real estate to urban “pioneers” for renovation, including in Boston’s South End (Tissot) and Brooklyn’s Park Slope, among others (Lees et al 25). These tours focused on a symbolic revalorisation of “slum neighbourhoods” through a focus on “high culture”, with architectural and design heritage featuring prominently. At the same time, urban socio-economic and cultural issues – poverty, homelessness, income disparity, displacement – were downplayed or overlooked. These tours contributed to a climate in which property speculation and displacement through gentrification practices were normalised. To this day, “ghetto tours” operate in minority neighbourhoods in Brooklyn, serving as a beachhead for gentrification.Elsewhere in the world, walking tours are often voyeuristic, featuring “locals” guiding well-meaning tourists through the neighbourhoods of some of the world’s most impoverished communities. Examples include the long runningKlong Toei Private Tour, through “Bangkok’s oldest and largest slum”, or the now-ceased Jakarta Hidden Tours, which took tourists to the riverbanks of Jakarta to see the city’s poorest before they were displaced by gentrification.More recently, all over the world activists have engaged in walking tours to provide their own perspective on urban change, attempting to direct the gentrifier’s gaze inward. Whilst the most confrontational of these might be the Yuppie Gazing Tour of Vancouver’s historically marginalised Downtown Eastside, other tours have highlighted the deleterious effects of gentrification in Williamsburg, San Francisco, Oakland, and Surabaya, among others. In smaller towns, walking tours have been utilised to highlight the erasure of marginalised scenes and subcultures, including underground creative spaces, migrant enclaves, alternative and queer spaces. Walking Sydney, Walking Marrickville In many cities, there are now both walking tours that intend to scaffold urban renewal, and those that resist gentrification with alternative narratives. There are also some that unwittingly do both simultaneously. Marrickville is a historically working-class and migrant suburb with sizeable populations of Greek and Vietnamese migrants (Graham and Connell), as well as a strong history of manufacturing (Castles et al.), which has been undergoing gentrification for some time, with the arts playing an often contradictory role in its transformation (Gibson and Homan). More recently, as the suburb experiences rampant, financialised property development driven by global flows of capital, property developers have organised their own self-guided walking tours, deployed to facilitate the familiarisation of potential purchasers of dwellings with local amenities and ‘character’ in precincts where redevelopment is set to occur. Mirvac, Marrickville’s most active developer, has designed its own self-guided walking tour Hit the Marrickville Pavement to “explore what’s on offer” and “chat to locals”: just 7km from the CBD, Marrickville is fast becoming one of Sydney’s most iconic suburbs – a melting pot of cuisines, creative arts and characters founded on a rich multicultural heritage.The perfect introduction, this self-guided walking tour explores Marrickville’s historical architecture at a leisurely pace, finishing up at the pub.So, strap on your walking shoes; you're in for a treat.Other walking tours in the area seek to highlight political, ecological, and architectural dimension of Marrickville. For example, Marrickville Maps: Tropical Imaginaries of Abundance provides a series of plant-led walks in the suburb; The Warren Walk is a tour organised by local Australian Labor Party MP Anthony Albanese highlighting “the influence of early settlers such as the Schwebel family on the area’s history” whilst presenting a “political snapshot” of ALP history in the area. The Australian Ugliness, in contrast, was a walking tour organised by Thomas Lee in 2016 that offered an insight into the relationships between the visual amenity of the streetscape, aesthetic judgments of an ambiguous nature, and the discursive and archival potentialities afforded by camera-equipped smartphones and photo-sharing services like Instagram. Figure 1: Thomas Lee points out canals under the street of Marrickville during The Australian Ugliness, 2016.Sydney is a city adept at erasing its past through poorly designed mega-projects like freeways and office towers, and memorialisation of lost landscapes has tended towards the literary (Berry; Mudie). Resistance to redevelopment, however, has often taken the form of spectacular public intervention, in which public knowledge sharing was a key goal. The Green Bans of the 1970s were partially spurred by redevelopment plans for places like the Rocks and Woolloomooloo (Cook; Iveson), while the remaking of Sydney around the 2000 Olympics led to anti-gentrification actions such as SquatSpace and the Tour of Beauty, an “aesthetic activist” tour of sites in the suburbs of Redfern and Waterloo threatened with “revitalisation.” Figure 2: "Tour of Beauty", Redfern-Waterloo 2016. What marks the Tour of Beauty as significant in this context is the participatory nature of knowledge production: participants in the tours were addressed by representatives of the local community – the Aboriginal Housing Company, the local Indigenous Women’s Centre, REDWatch activist group, architects, designers and more. Each speaker presented their perspective on the rapidly gentrifying suburb, demonstrating how urban space is made an remade through processes of contestation. This differentiation is particularly relevant when considering the basis for Sydney-centric walking tours. Mirvac’s self-guided tour focuses on the easy-to-see historical “high culture” of Marrickville, and encourages participants to “chat to locals” at the pub. It is a highly filtered approach that does not consider broader relations of class, race and gender that constitute Marrickville. A more intense exploration of the social fabric of the city – providing a glimpse of the hidden or unknown spaces – uncovers the layers of social, cultural, and economic history that produce urban space, and fosters a deeper engagement with questions of urban socio-spatial justice.Solnit argues that walking can allow us to encounter “new thoughts and possibilities.” To walk, she writes, is to take a “subversive detour… the scenic route through a half-abandoned landscape of ideas and experiences” (13). In this way, tactical activist walking tours aim to make visible what cannot be seen, in a way that considers the polysemic nature of place, and in doing so, they make visible the hidden relations of power that produce the contemporary city. In contrast, developer-led walking tours are singularly focussed, seeking to attract inflows of capital to neighbourhoods undergoing “renewal.” These tours encourage participants to adopt the position of urban voyeur, whilst activist-led walking tours encourage collaboration and participation in urban struggles to protect and preserve the contested spaces of the city. It is in this context that we sought to devise our own walking tour – Field Trip – to encourage active participation in issues of urban renewal.In organising this walking tour, however, we acknowledge our own entanglements within processes of gentrification. As designers, musicians, writers, academics, researchers, venue managers, artists, and activists, in organising Field Trip, we could easily be identified as “creatives”, implicated in Marrickville’s ongoing transformation. All of us have ongoing and deep-rooted connections to various Sydney subcultures – the same subcultures so routinely splashed across developer advertising material. This project was borne out of Frontyard – a community not-just-art space, and has been supported by the local Inner West Council. As such, Field Trip cannot be divorced from the highly contentious processes of redevelopment and gentrification that are always simmering in the background of discussions about Marrickville. We hope, however, that in this project we have started to highlight alternative voices in those redevelopment processes – and that this may contribute towards a “method of equality” for an ongoing democratisation of those processes (Davidson and Iveson).Field Trip: Urban Geographical Enquiry as Activism Given this context, Field Trip was designed as a public knowledge project that would connect local residents, workers, researchers, and decision-makers to share their experiences living and working in various parts of Sydney that are undergoing rapid change. The site of our project – Carrington Road, Marrickville in Sydney’s inner-west – has been earmarked for major redevelopment in coming years and is quickly becoming a flashpoint for the debates that permeate throughout the whole of Sydney: housing affordability, employment accessibility, gentrification and displacement. To date, public engagement and consultation regarding proposed development at Carrington Road has been limited. A major landholder in the area has engaged a consultancy firm to establish a community reference group (CRG) the help guide the project. The CRG arose after public outcry at an original $1.3 billion proposal to build 2,616 units in twenty towers of up to 105m in height (up to thirty-five storeys) in a predominantly low-rise residential suburb. Save Marrickville, a community group created in response to the proposal, has representatives on this reference group, and has endeavoured to make this process public. Ruming (181) has described these forms of consultation as “post-political,” stating thatin a universe of consensual decision-making among diverse interests, spaces for democratic contest and antagonistic politics are downplayed and technocratic policy development is deployed to support market and development outcomes.Given the notable deficit of spaces for democratic contest, Field Trip was devised as a way to reframe the debate outside of State- and developer-led consultation regimes that guide participants towards accepting the supposed inevitability of redevelopment. We invited a number of people affected by the proposed plans to speak during the walking tour at a location of their choosing, to discuss the work they do, the effect that redevelopment would have on their work, and their hopes and plans for the future. The walking tour was advertised publicly and the talks were recorded, edited and released as freely available podcasts. The proposed redevelopment of Carrington Road provided us with a unique opportunity to develop and operate our own walking tour. The linear street created an obvious “circuit” to the tour – up one side of the road, and down the other. We selected speakers based on pre-existing relationships, some formed during prior rounds of research (Gibson et al.). Speakers included a local Aboriginal elder, a representative from the Marrickville Historical Society, two workers (who also gave tours of their workplaces), the Lead Heritage Adviser at Sydney Water, who gave us a tour of the Carrington Road pumping station, and a representative from the Save Marrickville residents’ group. Whilst this provided a number of perspectives on the day, regrettably some groups were unrepresented, most notably the perspective of migrant groups who have a long-standing association with industrial precincts in Marrickville. It is hoped that further community input and collaboration in future iterations of Field Trip will address these issues of representation in community-led walking tours.A number of new understandings became apparent during the walking tour. For instance, the heritage-listed Carrington Road sewage pumping station, which is of “historic and aesthetic significance”, is unable to cope with the proposed level of residential development. According to Philip Bennett, Lead Heritage Adviser at Sydney Water, the best way to maintain this piece of heritage infrastructure is to keep it running. While this issue had been discussed in private meetings between Sydney Water and the developer, there is no formal mechanism to make this expert knowledge public or accessible. Similarly, through the Acknowledgement of Country for Field Trip, undertaken by Donna Ingram, Cultural Representative and a member of the Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council, it became clear that the local Indigenous community had not been consulted in the development proposals for Carrington Road. This information, while not necessary secret, had also not been made public. Finally, the inclusion of knowledgeable local workers whose businesses are located on Carrington Road provided an insight into the “everyday.” They talked of community and collaboration, of site-specificity, the importance of clustering within their niche industries, and their fears for of displacement should redevelopment proceed.Via a community-led, participatory walking tour like Field Trip, threads of knowledge and new information are uncovered. These help create new spatial stories and readings of the landscape, broadening the scope of possibility for democratic participation in cities. Figure 3: Donna Ingram at Field Trip 2018.Tactical Walking, Tactical Media Stories connected to walking provide an opportunity for people to read the landscape differently (Mitchell). One of the goals of Field Trip was to begin a public knowledge exchange about Carrington Road so that spatial stories could be shared, and new readings of urban development could spread beyond the confines of the self-contained tour. Once shared, this knowledge becomes a story, and once remixed into existing stories and integrated into the way we understand the neighbourhood, a collective spatial practice is generated. “Every story is a travel story – a spatial practice”, says de Certeau in “Spatial Stories”. “In reality, they organise walks” (72). As well as taking a tactical approach to walking, we took a tactical approach to the mediation of the knowledge, by recording and broadcasting the voices on the walk and feeding information to a publicly accessible wiki. The term “tactical media” is an extension of de Certeau’s concept of tactics. David Garcia and Geert Lovink applied de Certeau’s concept of tactics to the field of media activism in their manifesto of tactical media, identifying a class of producers who amplify temporary reversals in the flow of power by exploiting the spaces, channels and platforms necessary for their practices. Tactical media has been used since the late nineties to help explain a range of open-source practices that appropriate technological tools for political purposes. While pointing out the many material distinctions between different types of tactical media projects within the arts, Rita Raley describes them as “forms of critical intervention, dissent and resistance” (6). The term has also been adopted by media activists engaged in a range of practices all over the world, including the Tactical Technology Collective. For Field Trip, tactical media is a way of creating representations that help navigate neighbourhoods as well as alternative political processes that shape them. In this sense, tactical representations do not “offer the omniscient point of view we associate with Cartesian cartographic practice” (Raley 2). Rather these representations are politically subjective systems of navigation that make visible hidden information and connect people to the decisions affecting their lives. Conclusion We have shown that the walking tour can be a tourist attraction, a catalyst to the transformation of urban space through gentrification, and an activist intervention into processes of urban renewal that exclude people and alternative ways of being in the city. This article presents practice-led research through the design of Field Trip. By walking collectively, we have focused on tactical ways of opening up participation in the future of neighbourhoods, and more broadly in designing the city. 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