Spatial concepts

                                                      ''My discovery was the hole and that’s it.'' (Lucio Fontana, 1968)

Concetto-spaziale-Attese-1965-no9

It would probably be more apt to say that painting did not simply disappear in Lucio Fontana's "discovery" of the hole, but that it was "absorbed" by its true medium (1), which is "space" itself. In other words, in his quest to incorporate space and time into the art form, Fontana broke down ''the distinction between the art object and the space around it" and opened up a radical moment of abstraction.

It is true that the buchi and the tagli which have become the main signature of his oeuvre can also be seen to be emphasizing the material substrate that supports the art object, dissolving all illusionist or ''retinal'' tendencies in art. The veil has been ripped open (or slashed), the fourth wall has been broken (or punctured), and "behind" or ''under'' it there is not more of Matter, or more of the Real. (Analogously, when we trace a line on the page, is that a fullness we see, or is it the dark crevice of infinite space? It is interesting to note that making ''holes'' was part of old forms of writing. The Greek word graphein even carried the idea of  ''scratching and scraping'' in its etymology.)

However, let us go one step further: there are actually only more holes, and perhaps only holes, nothing more. To add a hole in any material is arguably a ridiculous idea, given the fact that, microscopically, we know ''things'' are by nature full of empty spaces. This is why we need to underline the fact that Fontana only ''discovered'' the hole: he did not create it. No one creates what is already there to start with, and the art+object arrives only as a kind of ''differential conjuring'' of an event that cannot be created because it is already everywhere.

To bring together a claim of presence (''there are'') and a nominal category designating an absence (''holes'') may sound like an abuse of language dipping into nonsense. Yet, it is probably not more or less than catachretic to speak of concetto spaziale (''spatial concepts'') where the abstract and the concrete collide, mix, and interchange values. (We will cut off any foray into lexical histories by simply saying that the apparent opposition between concrete and abstract often neglects the fact that even the word ''concrete'' itself is as abstract as any other term.) In other words, the ''hole'' and the ''object'' are limit concepts without intrinsic value or form on their own. They can only exist as extensions of each other, never ceasing to revert into the other in order to open up the spaces of ''expectation'' (2).

What is hence ''demonstrated'' by Fontana's work is the paradoxical medium that merges or blurs the polar notions of Something and Nothing, Presence and Absence, Fullness and Emptiness (3). His work, which ''(breaks) down the distinction between the art object and the space around it," can be best described less as matter with holes than as holes with matter, bringing us closer, by a sort of retrospective foreshadowing, to ideas in contemporary quantum theory where nuclear particles are only excited states of the vacuum.

It is an almost impossible object, existing only as pure abstraction since, for Fontana, ''No form can be spatial.''  It is as if the artist were merely the continuation of Time itself. By raising abstraction (''drawing away,'' ''extraction,'' ''removal'') into a purely semiotic or symbolic gesture with no real metaphysical or demiurgic value, Fontana does nothing but resume the auto-generation of a primeval cosmic motion where the artist (4) is just another dynamic link or moment in the Void:

''Now in space there is no longer any measurement. Now you see infinity … in the Milky Way, now there are billions and billions … The sense of measurement and of time no longer exists, and so, here is the void, man is reduced to nothing … And my art too is all based on this  purity, on this philosophy of nothing, which is not a destructive nothing, but a creative nothing …  And the slash, and the holes, the first holes, were not the destruction of the painting… it was a dimension beyond the painting, the freedom to conceive art through any means, through any form'' (italics added).

All in all, this reminded me of  Maurice Blanchot's ''dead time'' and the space of writing. What interested me in Fontana is the way both the Mirror and the Window give way to the Medium, which is not an opacity blocking perception. The Medium, in fact, is everything, without measure or limit or end. It is what is more invisible than visible, like Frenhofer's canvas of the ''Unknown Masterpiece'' whose only actual reality resides simply on the fact of having been named in language.


1. ''Fontana’s painting represents neither destruction nor a reduction of painting. On the contrary, it is an eloquent visual argument for a radical expansion of the medium'' (italics added).  Anthony White, http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/essay/no-form-can-be-spatial-the-origins-of-lucio-fontanas-spatial-concept-2/. Some quotes above were from White's essay.

2. Attese, ''expectation'' or ''waiting'' seems like an intriguing title, with all its nuance of delay, postponement, hoped for arrival, suspension, in short between being there and not being there, an imperfect absence or presence.
3. See, for example, Fontana's turn to ovoid formats, provocatively titled "La fine di Dio" (1964). It is perhaps an illustration of another critique of a plenitude at the center of the Egg, figural image of primordial creation.
4. ‘’The artist must have the courage to stop idolizing himself, to stop seeing himself as the centre of the earth and of all things.’’ An analogue, no doubt, of the death of the author in literature.

A Magic Staff

     I finally said yes to an old invitation on the day it was about to expire. Suddenly, I was floating away, and a musical wooden staff or a meter-long twig was in the background. I was carried away with it towards some location that I somehow knew to be hidden but familiar. (All the staffs in this dream were rough twigs, as if they were just torn off a tree.) I could sense how the whole world had transformed. Everything on Earth became brittle. Fresh leaves would crumble down to white ash when touched, as if the world--the air, the soil, even Time itself--were made of a very thin and fragile material.

     I arrived in a big house with all the candidates. The next scene involved some tests. We were supposed to find something somewhere "underneath." When I tried looking under the carpet or the flooring, instead of uncovering the ground itself, I would just peel off one layer after another, as if the ground were an infinite series of crusts made of foam or mattresses.

     Then I remembered a previous message that came with the invitation. I had a kind of puck or token in my pocket and so I threw it in the air. It floated away and stopped spinning over some hidden entry point for an underground bunker or garage. I lifted it with the help of two or three candidates who I felt were close associates. Below were four or five pairs of old, really run-down, classy leather shoes, all ankle-cut high, in different styles, all colors faded brown or tanned. I picked up the pair with a greenish hue and let the others choose from the rest. There was a hint that these shoes had some magical import.

     After that, there was a set of combat tests. The last one had me facing a powerful female magician. I simply said it would be futile to fight her because I would just certainly lose. Because I declined to challenge her, she revealed that she has now become my ally and mentor.

     In the last scene, while I and my mentor were walking together, an old man who seemed vaguely familiar suddenly appeared out of nowhere and he stabbed her with another wooden staff. I thought she was going to die, but eventually her wound started healing up. The old man left the scene casually, and even hinted that he did it to protect me, although I wasn't convinced, and I felt that there was yet another undisclosed reason for his actions.

The metaplasmic machine

     But there is a point where the authority of final jurisdiction is neither rhetorical nor linguistic, nor even discursive. The notion of trace or of text is introduced to mark the limits of the linguistic turn. This is one more reason why I prefer to speak of 'mark' rather than of language. In the first place the mark is not anthropological; it is prelinguistic; it is the possibility of language, and it is every where there is a relation to another thing or relation to an other. For such relations, the mark has no need of language. (Jacques Derrida, 1976)

-Can we start from a rudimentary superficial scratch? No arché or telos, not the mirror of nature nor the expression of an interior subjectivity, no transcendental force governing its permutations, no triadic fantasy of meaning: inner, outer, medium. an unknown marking means, we don't know what it means. it is what cannot be referred to, pointed out. it is neither meaningful nor meaningless. a medium that is not a medium, since it does not have anywhere to go. it is not in between anything. a charming chain that is almost like ''mojibake.''

-Now, this is not a call to anarchy. what replaces anarchy is a minimal locally-determined order that is temporary in duration, whose territory can be large or small, but always multiple. what replaces an idealized, imagined anarchy is another imaginary normalizing space, the fantasy of a provisional one-second rule in continuous mutation.

-Everything enacts a rule. they are not rules that are followed, but rules that follow, that happen. the minimum requirement of an event is a rule, a trivial fantasy. it can be a mania governing a whole set of untameable and innumerable elements, or the fantasy of an extended action echoing nothing, a materialist event, or more “intelligently,” a process, like text production, or making marks. in a non-symbolic gesture, the marks don’t acquire a thicker semantic dimension than the fact that they are being produced.

-A material mark is the vague metaplasmic space between sign and nonsign, and following which rule? it’s anybody’s guess. ideally, it should not refer, because the introduction of a second element is the beginning of allegory. what speaks should not be another. this is unavoidable, the doppelgänger is always waiting. the essential factor is that it keeps moving. even the attempt to contradict is the beginning of a dialogue. is the mark then a monologue? an impossible meaning or concept. any logos is already a dialogue, any mark is already a coinage.

-There are ways a mark stays a mark in a metaplasm that has no known meaning. it stays as a jumble of letters or glyphs, and "reroutes semantics." the doppelgänger hovers but does not land. it remains indefinite. it can be a case of production and variation, with some minimal order, without it creating a dialogical or allegorical pair. the mark is not meaningless, but it isn't meaningful either. there is only mutational play and that's it. what is mutating is nothing but mutation itself, like a slot machine infinitely rolling.

Looking for signs

Looking for signs, Fisher King, signs in old literature etc. The signs of the times, the end etc. The sign of impending doom or catastrophe. Anything gets caught up in the whirlwind of becoming-sign. The sign is a mysterious object that can take any form, like a goddess whose shape is unpredictable, and yet producing history and events.

Metasigns that postulate signhood, caught in a cat-tail chase. Both are mutually self-constitutive. Again, neither have any real value. It is the tension they create that produces the vibration of meaningfulness.

Alien language of unknown format, in an unknown material or medium etc. what if the mind can only see a limited number of kinds of patterns, like with the visible or audible spectrum?

What have been communicated: soul material, world material,  then just language material, and finally just material with a pareidolic resemblance to languageness.

Kervinen, machinic language. Evil machine like HAL.

Any object, animal, creation or invention that displaces human beings as the center and governor of meaning automatically gets coded as malevolent. Today, more than ever, we are no longer the center of meaning. Destiny marches along not according to our hymns. It is no wonder super intelligences in fiction immediately initiate the process of our elimination and extinction. It is an instant toss between new gods and homo sapiens. History cannot serve two masters at the same time.

In many sci-fi works, the usurpation of human agency as the dominant center of meaning by super intelligent machines has often been portrayed as evil. Logically, it would entail the eradication of the human species in history. The whole plot then revolves around the recuperation of human subjectivity as an essential requirement in the fulfillment of the narrative.

for s_p_e:  I find it hard to discuss all the semantics for this piece since there is really no more valid semantics to begin with. what we are dealing with, beside the incredible phenomena of constructed language explosion, is the retreat of hypothetical  ideas about languageness. what we are left with today are simulations, fractured tribal-speak, fleeting meme-like partial semiotic "trendings," viral spin-offs of media-borne semiotic packages that come and go like fashion fevers or fads. A holistic, all-encompassing language doesn't exist. there are only packets of sign-strings making rounds, virtual memories of languageness as fleeting as a bout of laughter. The only encounter and practice left is with packaged media rotating virally and fading off. It would be more fitting to speak of pieces with titles. In general, signs are play things, like clay, made and remade for immediate sensations and networking, tied to statistics that determine their value and meaning.

With this explosion, there is the disappearance of Language and the proliferation of gestures of languageness.

We thought that if we created more signs we would have more understanding. Today, we use more signs to understand other signs, and more signs to understand the signs that were created to read other signs.

A dog can think that its bark is all there is, but we know that apart from that there are so many other kinds of signs, in different planes and spectrum, often untranslatable into each other.

Cybernetics is a way "matter" is finally becoming manipulable on the level of electrons. With quantum computing, even the very spins of sub-atomic particles become pliable through programmable technology. The output may always coincide with global objectives, but the point is that we have created machines that can finally give commands to matter.

To speak to matter, there are several levels of linguistic transition or translation. Programming languages borrow from natural languages as well as from logical and mathematical syntax. This will then be "read" into binary codes by circuit boards to activate or execute the commands thus encoded. The output would be the objective products: words, image, object, action, or event.

If cyberspace has become a realm where materiality/immateriality is seen to be indistinguishable, it is because of its ability to produce a dimension that serves as a prosthetic extension of human sense and thinking that is resistant to simple codification along the material/immaterial or things/signs axes. we are dealing with a new matter no longer linked by signification but by hypermediation where truthfulness and meaningfulness are functions of intensity, repetition, enlargement, contiguity, advertising, accumulation, manipulability, ratings, survey, trending, viral spin-offs...

(The CLICK is our new center. It is the immediate but micro-temporal plenitude of meaning encased in a tiny gesture assuming all ostensive and indicative functions. The new metaphyclick.)

A messy house

The world of cartoons is often a messy one, and we wonder why kids find so much amusement in it.

How does it usually start?

1. There is a sort of Equilibrium. For example, a cat is given charge of a house.
2, An agent of Chaos enters, like a mouse, and disrupts the Peace (like the Parasite).
3. The Agon begins. The conflict of two orders leads to the disturbance of the household peace. Usually an object like a piece of chicken or cheese becomes the centerpiece of the conflict. Now Comedy starts as the house goes into disarray.
4. Conflict is resolved when the house owner arrives: resolution by a Third party, as if by deus ex machina.

Ironically, this conflict or intersection of two paradigms or wills drives the energy of the Narrative or Story. Here, we see a very basic formalism, which portrays the Narrative as the tale of this dynamic shifting from Equilibrium to Disequilibrium to another (temporary) Equilibrium.

(In the film "Oblivion," Jack Harper lives in a peaceful narrative housing. Enter Malcolm Beech. The next events spin a new narrative, in conflict with the first. Only the narrative bias--the "Alien" vs. the "Human"--prevents us from overruling the veracity of the second narrative, but this insertion suffices to open up the first one and lead it into a crisis.)

Two people talking. One tells a joke that involves a distortion of language, like a pun. Instead of a puzzled look, there is a burst of laughter. Someone clueless wonders what's so funny; he does not "get it." Someone asks, "What do you mean by that? Oh, I see, so by saying that you mean to say this, and not that meaning which I would have taken you to be saying."

Each language event is a potential renegotiation. New fleeting houses keep forming.

How are the rules of meaning negotiated when the borders of linguistic rules seem to overflow? There must be, in this flow from a peaceful state of language to a moment where the borders are readjusted to take account of a comic moment, a dynamic similar to the messy world of kiddie cartoons.

Chomsky: didn't he want to establish the Eternal Peace of the house of language? Didn't this attempt actually fuel all the more the conflicts after?

A global peace in the house of language is a great hope. However, everyday, what we hear more often is a comic narrative. The stability of meaning is a temporary, localized phenomenon, a short-lived peace that dissipates in the next round of negotiations. There are always borders, sites of renegotiation. Each creates a ripple, a pocket of chaos that reinvigorates the narrative of language.

Again, somewhere, a house goes into disarray, and a comic moment resurges.

The sonic continuum

The sonic continuum, spliced into a syllabicated universe.

The sound continuum before sense.

Pursch's texts, an example that recreates this continuum by making us hear it as if it were a foreign language whose phonic/morphemic divisions are unknown to us. It becomes a pure stream of sounds.

Composition in this Noise, in the pre-word.

The non-word is the unheard part of this continuum, just like in a Gestalt picture we don't see both figures: rabbit or old woman, optical illusion.

Perception is selective. A sign is a selected entity, carved out or abstracted from a continuum, from a spectrum, just like the way the colors get divided by different languages. Mass nouns and count nouns.

In some of Pursch and Beamer's work, a previous text is is transformed to make the continuum resonate, making us hear the other sounds or read the other particles of the same field of language. The Virtual and the Actual regain the ability to exchange places.

Where does language end anyway to begin?

This continuum is the virtual field of Noise, not the opposite of any sign or information, but what is simply not selected. When the selected and unselected start again to trade places back and forth, the boundaries are redrawn, the Asemic resurges as a fleeting, uncodifiable difference.

Here or there where the codes break apart, the boundaries swerve and reshuffle.

The death of Sherlock Holmes (2012)

"You need me, or you're nothing." (Moriarty)

    It amazes me how Sherlock Holmes is able to tie up the detective narrative so well from end to end. Not only does he play the role of a character sleuth, but also functions as the intersection of the narrative events and, ultimately, their revelatory meaning. In another television series like CSI, it is certainly not science that ends up solving the crime: it is the narrative itself that does. Like any good crime mystery, the whole goal of a detective story is the resolution of the puzzle by the narrative through the simulation of a "suspenseful" process of rationalization.

    In this world, Sherlock Holmes is simply the other name of a super-machine of interpretation. In his eyes, all details converge to reconstitute the narrative of events that take place outside of his perceptional space. It is like having an infinite number of CCTV cameras mounted everywhere in London, recording every minute detail and happening, and binding them all within the logic of the narrative of causes and effects.

    It is only proper that behind it all the narrative must postulate a master mind, an evil genius that generates the crime event in secret designs. The super villain is necessary because s/he verifies or confirms the existence and order of the design, making it fully objective and not the subjective fantasy of the detective. As with all good detective stories following the rules of the genre, nothing is left to chance, to the natural, or to the supernatural (Deus ex machina). A crime is a human designed event, and thus requires the exposition of this secular design, however obscure or exotic it may be.

    In superhero comics like The Batman, the super villain is not allowed simply to shoot down the superhero in cold blood. The best villains must contrive a complicated and often ostentatious machinery to show the whole world that it was they who were the unambiguous cause of the hero's death or downfall. Less talented villains don't have this obsession, and are just happy to credit the gun manufacturer and the statistical meeting of the bullet and the target in the hero's demise. Thus, in any kind of detective story where evil and good characters collide, the great hero or sleuth is always caught up in a criminal world designed by an arch villain.

    As a super-machine of detection, the sleuth becomes the central processing unit of the narrative, weaving people, events and objects into an interpretative journey whose goal is the exposition of the crime. In this scenario, it is only fitting that the detective should be armed with an exceptional talent of interpretation and memory, able to link up seemingly insignificant data into a twisted pattern of design and discovery. Here, innocent objects or remarks are seized up by the hero to become shining links in a chain of criminal revelation. Everything is measured and scrutinized, nothing is left to chance, so that the innocence of words, objects, and events, formerly belonging to a different order of reality, is snatched away to perform a more signifying designation.

    Without the eye of Sherlock Holmes able to oversee even beyond the grave, reality would never have the same exciting narrative journey toward discovery and design. Everything would become chance, or inscrutable and unknowable natural or supernatural design.

Ganick's metaplasms

-Just reposting a part of Peter Ganick's recent March 2, 2014 four-letter metaplasms from http://ex-ex-lit.blogspot.com/ :


fnof nfiw nfwo ofwi nofa ngei sinf nfix vlis vnid nive engi naos neil snna nieo nfue nisk kdsk deks fldo nosd noak ials kirs alks ilki eads glim niek nals innt nisl nlak unde ikls nfie nais alsi ngee gtuu snuf tirt akls fgro lipr ossl nspk slkd ikls sfdd nskl kfsd sdki sfda ipsf aior wirg priw fisl rwip gilk nslk jikl idkf lskr sdkl ilsk jsid nilk snif lfoo llea niei ilsd feof dlks sdlk slkd sdil nlsdi oeuu onur mmis lsid nois lsid oiko nosf sdkl lskf lsfk sklk islk sidl jips pkls sdkf fdsl ikdr fskl lffs sfol lsfi...


-A lot can be said depending on one's declinations, but I myself would stay on the minimum side, which, again, is subject to interpretation. Anyway, just to make it more interesting following the post-language bias of this blog, allow me to cite another post- from Ganick from the same URL on Feb. 24, 2014:

new work.............................................

part fifty-three.

...

densest threefold trepidation ininin taunt relay occasion genetic ursatz eloge standpoint triplicated surmise dgga genie acss enos feint gadfly outring seimp asutt lotto islet jointed discourde oliphant nibblet ansonic edenslauf möebius trandiose tremulous exactitude fremd gego hurdle ampphitheathrre litera slough connive emptor sip zot narrow lacu sitten reconvista mercifuls emptor wave rawhide surplus evaluator non nearly echt tisne als ninet imiatrinbe

ontolocyst gonrrredle anemiac luge aeloinian zettel.

thou noeaso nfeou ngeie alsil nur anoas iititiesa.

geen solfeggisto preamble otherwave collapse.

dictatorial plateau mollify edifice aologirithm.

cadging current mise en scene soluble treadmill oeeans.

iota los empirical flooast mirror caisson tentative.

weigh august sole reptilar congerie sift edam.

mbobilitize emplot feisty garage xmidi crenulate ogre totem juttys foible accurate elliptic vanishing persist lisperado gnossienne eggo itierate sloka veranda mend illbient corrective loathe commonality presume lief gadflower echo tarry moitie avail snowfall return irascible florin acip hiccup thrieadtens efectual moins quatorze eleganza mortising edicts mellow frame callipse vertigo laser battlelflorida introtuctor which rears up.

-The collision between recognizable word and metaplasmic compound appears like the clashing of two opposing armies, but in fact illustrates a core semiotic dynamo, like the one churning way below the Earth's mantle.

p

=Where is the boundary between sign and noise? 

The 3 concepts here (boundary, sign, noise) form

the triangle where fictions are made from.  

-07/2013

                                      

p    r        o       t  e    r     m   i  a   b l     e    n d      e      a    r       k          e   n     i         g  n  i  t        r   o s  p     e     c  u   r       s u       r         r    e            v e     r            s i     m  i            l

V    a     g   r  i        s    m     a n     t  r       c     h a      n    c    e l       l     a  t      t i        c   r a         c           y

c   a       m     o u f      l  i    m    i       n i      a  t     u r      a   l      g     a  l   a        c       i         d  i   t t    h e r a      m  b i       g         t    y

o   n        e         i    r       o       m    b i     l     i         c  i      r  c    u    m  l    e  t     t     r        o    a     m  i  n        d       l e         s         o          u  n               d     e       r           s   t          a       t

q      u  e       s      s     e n       t   i    m            e         n     t            e   l         l        e t         c   e     e r   a  d   i     i   a          t                e n           d   i      n

c        e   r        t           e     r       r    e        s     t         i   m              a   t         e  r   i    a          l e  a      t     o      g          e  s         t       a   r          t              f   i     a c       t       i     v           a  c          c   i     n  a    e  s           c      a         p          e            l   a        t           i        s  u        e        d             e         s  c       r   

f   a          n        t     i            s        t        i          m      u     l            t         e    r    i     g  e       n     e      t   h      n       g        r                 p       h         e             n           o         m     e       s     n      o       m       e     a       s    l     i     t        e      r     e  c          i     l            s     e  

r   u        m         a    g      n      o        s     i      m             e     r        i   z       o t      o         p          i  c            t       o      r        e    n   t      r    e     m               o      d        e       l     i    n       k     a              t   h            a    r        t     e            s    a    n        a   b    b     o    l       i           m       p   l          c             y

o         p    o     s  i         t      u         a   l   i            z           a    r       d  u          a      l    g         a           t     o    r       m     u    l      a          t      i            c     r        o   m   o            s  a          p  e      n          d            u   r            a      n       c           s     h       p              e    n   

E   l        e    c         n  t      r        p    e        l           a    n          t   h    e        r     a        p      i         e    c     d    e        r  e   s           e     l          u   s   o   n      s      c         r      i         b         o         n        p          p    r  

(2012)

Practical jokes

I recall practical jokes, like those made up scenes on the streets. There is laughter about them. Why so? What produces this meaning-event?

The joke is a sounding board, a test of sorts, that foregrounds the elements of meaning in their social, linguistic, semiotic, moral, and ethical dimensions. The encounter plays out the elements, the set-up, wherein the boundaries of meaning--ethical, social, or linguistic--are remapped.

This is the exact moment of their incarnation, in this very space where they seem to be questioned: the practical joke. It recreates the meanings of actions and events as a pure theater of signs.

Since the practical joke foregrounds an economy of meaning that plays out well only by the revelation of the absence of the basis of that meaning (Ah! I mistook it for real! Or: Ah, I over-reacted!), it takes the ground off the polarized signs that have been produced and leaves them fluttering in mid-air.

That is, the signs produce an effect in us, but do not go beyond that to affirm anything metaphysical or absolutely real ontologically or epistemologically.

The laughter is both the recognition of this semantic economy and its limits. Here, laughter is a reactive mechanism in the face of a grave semiotic malfunction. In short, laughter is the dissipation of a solipsistic act, the after-taste of sign-effects that disappear into thin air.

Take a "Madonna & Child" example. In the park, a "mom" makes her "baby" in a walker smoke a cigarette. This alarms the people around them. Two basic norms are being violated. First, a "good" mother won't give something harmful to her baby. Second, there is a certain social or legal age requirement for smokers.

A knowledge of the harmful substances known to be present in cigarettes adds another semantic or scientific dimension. The fact that the mother smokes beside her baby in a park already creates an additional social and ethical faux pas.

All these elements are being played out in a game of deception. It provokes all the expected look of shock, disapproval, and reprimand from bystanders or passersby. Of course, they discover later on that there is no baby, so the whole scenario instantly falls apart.

The whole act has generated reactions that turned out to have no real basis. It was an act of meaning without substance.

This is the version of "semiotic contract" today, a whole series of practical jokes. We are taken on a ride by all sorts of signs, and we all go through the motions.

Meaning via the mise en scène of oppositional markers: Norm vs. Violation; Good vs. Evil; Right vs. Wrong; Permitted vs. Prohibited; Real vs. Unreal. The joke is in the discovery of the absence of any basis for this ethico-semantic event.

But all the signs have been deployed, just for laughs.

***P.S. My imaginary map is less moral philosophy than post-literate and post-semiotic tactics. This is what the blog has been all along.

     What I find interesting in the practical joke is that it recreates the meanings of actions and events as a pure theater of signs. That is, this is where significations arise as they collide, intersect, as a field of differences (bad vs, good, allowed vs. prohibited, etc.).

     Post-literate "texts" are few steps further. Since the joke foregrounds an economy of meaning that plays out well only by the revelation of the absence of the basis of that meaning (Ah! I mistook it for real!), it takes the ground off the signs that have been produced and leaves them fluttering in mid-air.

     That is, the signs produce an effect in us, but do not go beyond that to affirm anything metaphysical or absolutely real ontologically or epistemologically.

     (In other types of comic events, like children's cartoons, the humor often arises from a world drawn into a topsy-turvy state: the order of things falling apart, blowing up, not working well; also mistaken identities, misinterpretations, words making unintended meanings, etc.).

     Here, laughter is a psycho-reactive mechanism in the face of a grave semiotic malfunction. In short, laughter is the dissipation of a solipsistic act, the after-taste of sign-effects that disappear into thin air.

     From that dissipation comes post-literate "writing," You can foreground this through style effects to say that the semiotic or semantic whole is lost, or unknown, and so you become reluctant to treat sign-effects to form a local or global system (sentence, line, oeuvre, story, etc.).