Wake Up and Taste the Pie

The film Michael, by Nora Ephron, is a relay evoking the avatar function (The angel Michael plays Daimon to Frank Quinlan [William Hurt] and/or Dorothy Winters [Andie MacDowell]).  The wisdom of the Measure is simple, commonplace, and profound:  embodiment gives humans the capacity to be affected through sensory perception.  Embodiment is undergone through virtuous or vicious "descent" (avatar) in the tradition.  Such is the dimension ontologized in image metaphysics of electracy.  That you may taste pie is metaphysical, forming the order of well-being (or not).  The goal of konsult is to design and test a practice (ubimage) that maps the network relating micro- and macro- cosms, between individual sensory experience and institutional augmentation (between bodies with and without organs).

Socrates Relay

 The admonishment of Basho (adopted as motto of heuretics) is: not to follow in the footsteps of the masters, but to seek what they sought.  Concept Avatar is not dialogue or dialectic, but uses those as relay for the tale of our own CATTt, used to generate an electrate equivalent, to do for EmerAgency what dialogue did for Plato's Academy.  Our genre is not dialogue, but konsult.  The capacity to be addressed, supported, augmented, is not reason (logic), but affect, sensory perception (aesthetics).  The medium (equipment) is not alphabetic writing, but ubiquitous computing (pervasive computing:  mobile devices in smart environments):  ubimage in short.

Euthyphro in the midst of a situation encountered in the streets of a Polis (Athens) the gadfly Socrates.  Egent (intern of EmerAgency) consulting (testifying) on public policy encounters, via smart device in an intelligent environmnet, avatar.  Who is addressee of konsult?  First, it is the egent and her network. That is the frame of konsult.  What is the obscenario?  The genre features within konsult of conceptual persona for avatar need to be unpacked further.  In AE, Ulmer gives several examples.  A primary instance is his encounter with Franz Kafka's Diaries, and also with Thoreau's Walden, appropriated as relays to show himself to himself (to map his own position relative to a tradition/archive)

Scenario

Instant Policy

The relationship between the policy of brinksmanship and the film Rebel Without A Cause noted by Bertrand Russell in his essay proposing the variation on Prisoner's Dilemma known as "Chicken," recalls a more general observation made by Richard Slotkin.  Slotkin observed that US policy planners and Hollywood scriptwriters drew upon the same "mythologies" in the formulation of their scenarios.

Rio Grande thus appears to be in some sort of dialogue with history.  Film and event "speak" to each other--event lending political resonance to the fiction, the fiction providing mythological justification for particular scenarios of real-world action.  They did so in the first instance (1950) not because one necessarily caused or influenced the other, but because the conceptual categories which shaped the scenarios developed by both movie-makers and policy-makers were drawn from the same cultural lexicon, the same set of mythological models.  But once the "cult of the cavalry" was established as a major division of American mythic space and was seen to be responsive to the course of political events, its fictive rationales and heroic styles of action (especially as embodied in the symbolic persona of John Wayne) became functional terms in public discourse and symbols of the correct or heroic response to the challenges of the Cold War (Slotkin, Gunfighter Nation).

Slotkin adds that an entire complex history is condensed into an emblem consisting of John Wayne in his cowboy persona associated with a motto (the right man with a gun).  The emblem communicates in a flash (flash reason) US counterinsurgency strategy from Vietnam to the present. The fact of this conjunction suggests a heuristic device:  to use popular narratives as probes to locate the fundamental values (the common scenarios) motivating decision-making in individual and collective situations.   The instruction is to explore such a connection with our Target disaster, keeping in mind that we are documenting an aspect of Contrast.

Smoke Without Mirrors

Sapeck's "Mona Lisa with a Pipe" (1887) is emblematic of the attitude that is the "Spirit of Montmartre."  The attitude is fumisme, used to name the mocking humor that characterized the cabaret scene of bohemian Paris.  The anchoring term is the verb fumer (to smoke), but with a usage in agriculture, "to manure."  A fumiste is chimney sweep, with slang extension to name a joker, crackpot, fraud.  A "wit" is different from a fumiste, a distinction used to clarify the intent of Sapeck's illustrations.

Whereas the former made fun of idiots in terms that they were not always able to understand, the fumiste accepts the ideas of the idiot and expresses their quintessence. . . . The fumiste avoids discussions of ideas, he does not set up a specific target, he adopts a posture of withdrawal that makes all distinctions hazy, and he internalizes Universal Stupidity by postulating the illusory nature of values and of the Beautiful, whence his denial of the established order and of official hierarchies.  From this point of view, which is that of the sage, the dandy, the observer, and the skeptic, everything has the same value, everything is one and the same thing (Daniel Grojnowski, in The Spirit of Montmartre:  Cabarets, Humor, and the Avant-Garde, 1875-1905).

 This particular image helps specify the context of Routine as a concept formed to function within the apparatus of electracy.  Our argument is that Paris is to electracy what Athens was to literacy (in general).  The cabaret is the "Academy" of electracy, and this analogy between cabaret and academy may be developed extensively to define a template for an image metaphysics (the analogy guiding this project).  Cabaret entertainment institutionalizes and provides material support in the new conditions of "Street" for the invention of a new seat (see) of culture.  The equivalent for literacy is the attitude of questioning, of materialist mathematics, that evolved into the scientific method and the whole Gestell of utilitarian techno-science over the historical life of literacy.

An immediate point of interest is the background that Sapeck's Mona Lisa provides for Duchamp's more famous readymade (the mustachioed Mona Lisa), composed much later.  The curious might wonder about the choice of iconic image to profane, and one latent connection is indexed in the term fumisme.  The hazy smoke associated with this attitude resonates with one of the important terms used to identify Leonardo's style:  sfumato.

Sfumato is a term coined by Leonardo da Vinci to refer to a painting technique which overlays translucent layers of color to create perceptions of depth, volume and form. In particular, it refers to the blending of colors or tones, so subtly that there is no perceptible transition. In Italian sfumato means "blended" with connotations of "smoky" and is derived from the Italian word fumo meaning 'smoke'. Leonardo described sfumato as 'without lines or borders, in the manner of smoke'.One of the best examples of a sfumato painting is the Mona Lisa

Some other associations to be developed further:  That the emergence of cabaret arts in late-nineteenth-century Paris was done explicitly in opposition to the official "Academy" of art.  A question:  is the fumiste pose a dramatization intended to bury the Cartesian version of selfhood and subject, whose conceptual persona is the idiot (as D&G explain)?

Conceptual Stand-Up

The function of tale is as vehicle for the CATTt inventories.  Users encounter the emergent poetics of the invention through some form that partly demonstrates and partly explains the new method (or concept).  Plato introduced his new concept of "method" in the form of "dialogue."  Commentators remind us that Plato invented this form, but we recognize the heuretic practice in it:  the scene of Socrates conversing with interlocutors is an interface, embedding the encounter with dialectic in a familiar situation.  Dialectic (method) is a core practice of literacy, unfamiliar in the oral culture of Athens, transitioning from orality to literacy.  In the terms of our Theory (D&G), "Socrates" is Plato's Conceptual Persona.  Part of the nature and purpose of "method" (the concept) is communicated by the aura associated with Socrates as an iconic type:  the gadfly.  The image of thought associated with this icon is complex, including the representation of Socrates as a sophist in Aristophanes's The Clouds.  D&G provide many examples of this holistic effect of the Conceptual Persona portraying the image of thought.

Kierkegaard's "knight of the faith," he who makes the leap, or Pascal's gambler, he who throws the dice, are men of a transcendence or a faith.  But they constantly recharge immanence: they are philosophers or, rather, intercessors, conceptual personae who stand in for these two philosophers and who are concerned no longer with the transcendent existence of God but only with the infinite immanent possibilities brought by the one who believes that God exists (WiP?, 74).

Here is the first dimension through which we understand Routine as our concept:  the image of thought evoked by the figure of a stand-up comic.  "Stand-up comic" is for us what "gambler" was for Pascal's thought:  a vehicle evoking the tenor that is Routine.  The image of thought shows the attitude that frames thinking through Routine.  "Attitude" concerns the state of mind within which the thought happens, concerning belief or desire (for example) directed towards our Target (the problem in the world, the disaster).  Taken as a whole, or as a position of enunciation within the culture, comedy implies a certain attitude towards reality, which is the answer Routine gives to a fundamental question of philosophy -- the transcendental question (where are we when we think?).  Alenka Zupancic offers an insightful description of the comedic stand, relevant to Routine.

There is something very real in comedy's supposedly unrealistic insistence on the indestructible, on something that persists, keeps reasserting itself and won't go away, like a tic that goes on even though its "owner" is already dead. In this respect, one could say that the flaws, extravagances, excesses, and so-called human weaknesses of comic characters are precisely what account for their not being "only human."  More precisely, they show us that what is "human" exists only in this kind of excess over itself" (Zupancic, The Odd One In, 49).

Persona as Corporate Mask

Marshall McLuhan's comments on Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp "mask" are relevant to our CATTt, providing a relay for synthesizing Event (as subject position), Conceptual Persona, Appropriation, Cliche.

The character in a mask is "putting on the audience" rather than expressing his personal feelings. Thus Charlie Chaplin did not spend his life expressing his personal feelings. Like any artist, he selected from the environment of his audience the equipment he needed. Chaplin chose only a small group of items: the costume of the middle-class nobody, the hidden gestures of the music-hall entertainer, the romantic outlook of Cyrano, the unlovable lover, and the foot positions of classical ballet. It was this latter inspiration that gave the bizarre highbrow aura to Chaplin's mask. To get into a role as opposed to merely having a job, is to put on the corporate social power of one's culture. In our still very literate society many people continue to seek corporate power by matching appearances. This has exactly the opposite effect from what is desired. It dilutes rather than enriches the experience, just as competition encourages people to resemble one another. The genuine role-player, on the other hand, doesn't have any competition whatever, since the items he selects from the environment from which to create his image are of the utmost inclusiveness. (McLuhan, From Cliche to Archetype).

In our case, however, there is no need to choose between "mask" and "expression," in the context of electrate identity formation, experienced as "extimacy" (the outside is inside).  The construction of our persona works through the middle voice:  We experience our collective subject position of event by means of the appropriated bits selected and combined into routine.

Nom de Guerre

A negative example for creating a conceptual persona is "Jihad Jane." 

Colleen LaRose spent long days caring for her boyfriend's father in a second-floor apartment in Pennsburg, a small town north of Philadelphia.  But online, federal authorities say, the devoted caretaker developed a daring alter ego, refashioning herself as "Jihad Jane" while helping recruit and finance Muslim terrorists -- and eventually moving overseas to kill an artist she perceived as an enemy of Islam" (Associated Press).

The story demonstrates the potential functionality of a persona as an interface for new alliances, rhizomes, possibilities for taking action on behalf of one's policy problem.  As Virno observed, virtue and (vice) draw upon the same resources. 

Creating a Brand Persona

Creating a Brand Persona

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Here is some context for creating our conceptual personae, placing our construction in relation to branding and brand identity.  Brand is a strong contender for the site of subject position in electracy.  Our project appropriates this evolution of identity invention, reframing it within the process of apparatus invention.  Brand in this frame is subordinated to the larger emergence of avatar.

Conceptual Persona

Continuing concept

4. Conceptual Persona
The first two components of concept set up the core program of philosophical practice: to take a stand on the transcendental problem, by answering the question, "what is the relationship of thinking to world?" The genre of concept construction includes a third feature: a persona that dramatizes in a vital anecdote how the proposed thought mediates the relation of a person to the environment. Instruction: personify the thought proposed by the concept in an appropriate character type or role, enacting the attitude and orientation of the thought.

The examples of conceptual personae provided by D&G in several different books, include Socrates, Diogenes, and Empedocles. The anecdote(s) reported in each case allegorize or figuratively enact a mode of reasoning.
Socrates: allegory of the cave. The way of the heavens. Conversion = movement through the inference procedures: abduction, deduction, induction.
Diogenes: lived in a barrel on the public square, performed all his intimate functions in full view of the citizens. The way of the surface. Perversion = dramatize the metaphor in the idea.
Empedocles: threw himself into Mt. Etna, but his (bronze?) sandel floating to the surface betrayed his action. The way of the depths. Subversion = transgression and destruction of forms (madness).

Turning
The vital anecdote illustrates the particular way the concept is oriented on the plane of immanence, its peculiar movement or path. The etymology of verse or vert + prefix indicates the possibilities, as observed in the descriptors con-version, per-version, sub-version.