Journal articles: 'Posters, Israeli' – Grafiati (2024)

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"This article deals with symbolic goods in posters in Israel from the period before the establishment of the state to the present day. The poster and the symbolic goods that appear in it, serve as an agent of ideological companies. In this study, I will examine the nature of the relationship between the symbolic goods and the Zionist-Israeli ideology, by comparing the symbolic goods represented in them over time and space. The questions the research asks are: What are the contribution and importance of symbolic goods as an ideological tool in Israeli posters? Has the world of symbolic goods that served Zionist ideology origin or been borrowed from other ideologies? The methodology is Qualitative research by: study case, Visual – genealogical. The conclusions of the study indicate the importance of the symbolic goods in the foundation of the State of Israel by posters and other media. The symbolic goods that characterize the posters in Israel, consist in part of content related to Jewish tradition and religion (Bible stories and myths) and its other part is influenced by the symbolic goods appropriated from ideologies around the globe. Keywords: Symbolic Goods, Posters, Marketing, Ideology, Zionist Movement, Israel. "

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This paper argues that images, and specifically agricultural images, play a significant role in the imaginings of the Israeli and Palestinian communities. Agriculture has symbolic and material value among Palestinians and Israelis, and contributes to identities and land claims made by Zionist and Palestinian organizations. Anderson’s discussion of nation building emphasizes the primacy of print in the imagination of a community; this paper highlights non-textual elements of nation building via case studies of the creation and dissemination of propaganda posters by the Jewish National Fund and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. A survey of propagandistic agricultural images reveals the shared symbols used by Palestinians and Israelis in forging identities and exclusive claims to land. Despite being common symbols from a shared past, agricultural images are crucial in creating and perpetuating a divide between Israelis and Palestinians, and in arguing for organic links between each group and the land of Palestine-Israel.

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This poster paper presents first the a tsunami modelling investigation using the state of the art, open source tsunami model (GeoClaw), its adaptation to investigate the impact of tsunami wave generation, propagation and inundation at the Mediterranean coast of Israel using high resolution bathymetric and topographic grid , aided by additional tsunami generation modelling tools simulating the initial stages of tsunami generation by earthquake induced tectonic plates rupture and movement or by landslide on the coastal shelf, as well as visualization tools, adapted by the first author under LINUX operating system as an integral modelling package.

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Scholars have only recently begun to take interest in ilanot (kabbalistic trees), a genre of kabbalistic creativity ignored by Gershom Scholem, the preeminent scholar of Jewish mysticism. Given that Scholem was intimately familiar with manuscripts the world over, his lack of attention to this genre in his innumerable writings must be considered an anomaly in need of explanation. Yet Scholem created ilanot of his own: a series of colorful, poster-size kabbalistic diagrams now held in the Scholem Archives at the National Library of Israel. These were produced to Scholem’s precise specifications for his teaching at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. My discussion of their production and analysis of their semiotics will range from the personal - including Scholem’s relationship to the graduate students who made these posters for their advisor - to the professional questions of how these images visualize particular kabbalistic ideas. I conclude with an examination of how “Scholem’s ilanot” compare to those crafted by historical kabbalists over the centuries.

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Zusammenfassung Ziel Kürzlich wurde ein neues Instrument zur Entfernung des Hornhautepithels vor Excimer-Laser Surface Ablation oder kollagener Quervernetzung (CXL) vorgestellt, das Epi-Clear™-Keratom (Orca Surgical, Kiryat-Shmona, Israel). Wir wollten die Literatur bez. klinischer Ergebnisse und Vor- und Nachteilen im Vergleich zu anderen Methoden der Epithelabrasio analysieren. Methode In PubMed wurden zuletzt am 09. 11. 2016 folgende Stichwörter zur Literatursuche eingegeben: „Epi-Bowman Keratectomy“, „Epi-clear“, „Epikeratome“. Weiterhin wurde online bei internationalen augenärztlichen Kongressen (European Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgeons [ESCRS] und American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery [ASCRS]) nach Postern und Präsentationen gesucht sowie beim Hersteller nach Veröffentlichungen angefragt. Die Literatursuche ergab 1 Peer-Review-Publikation, 1 Non-Peer-Review-Veröffentlichung, 18 themenrelevante Poster und Präsentationen über den refraktiven Einsatz des Epi-Clear-Keratoms, 2 Poster für die Anwendung vor CXL und 1 Präsentation zur experimentellen Nutzung des Epi-Clear-Keratoms zur Entfernung eines Pterygiums. Ergebnisse Im Vergleich mit anderen bekannten Methoden der Surface Ablation, z. B. alkoholassistierte PRK oder PRK mittels Hornhautschaber, scheint die Epi-Bowman-Keratektomie™ (EBK™) mindestens gleiche, teils auch bessere Ergebnisse zu liefern. So wird nach EBK u. a. von geringeren Schmerzen, geringerer Haze-Bildung und einer kürzeren Heilungszeit berichtet. Auch sei die Erholung der Sehleistung schneller als mit anderen Methoden. Auch im Rahmen einer CXL wurde eine signifikant kürzere Heilungszeit im direkten Vergleich zur Epithelabrasio mittels Hornhautschaber und ein geringeres Schmerzempfinden der Patienten beschrieben. Schlussfolgerung Zusammenfassend scheint das Epi-Clear-Keratom ein vielversprechendes Instrument zur Epithelabrasio vor refraktiver Laserablation zu sein. Allerdings fehlt noch eine überzeugende Erklärung zum prinzipiellen Vorteil. Außerdem scheint das Epi-Clear-Keratom besonders bei CXL Vorteile zu bieten, da hier die Bowman-Membran dauerhaft geschont wird. Dennoch sind für eine abschließende Beurteilung weitere Studien mit höherer Belastbarkeit (kontrolliert, randomisiert und in ausreichender Fallzahl) nötig.

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Abstract The religious Linguistic Landscape of the town of Safed in the Upper Galilee in Israel was studied to determine the features, properties, and boundaries signifying the spectrum of belief in the Jewish Orthodox world. In Israel, where much of everyday life is defined within a religious context, signs, posters, stickers, flags, and graffiti are a common sight and express an ongoing dynamic in the Linguistic Landscape by referencing other dimensions expressed in dress, music, and dance as well as the Internet. Expanding on the initial study is a discussion as to whether the Linguistic Landscape is utilized to express the expectation of messianic redemption through the repetition of the images of spiritual leaders and the visual representations of a religious mantra.

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Posters With Fellows is an opportunity to interact with some of the best scholars the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society has to offer in a low-key, intellectual setting. Fellows will present posters describing cutting-edge research from their current work, retrospectives of important work they have conducted over their careers, and descriptions of challenging new frontiers they think need to be addressed. This is a unique opportunity for students and professionals alike to talk one on one with the thought leaders of our profession on the important research issues of our time. Participants: Thomas J. Armstrong, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Deborah A. Boehm-Davis, George Mason University Gloria L. Calhoun, U.S. Air Force Stanley H. Caplan, Usability Associates Nancy J. Cooke, Arizona State University Kermit G. Davis, University of Cincinnati Valerie J. Gawron, MITRE Corp. Douglas J. Gillan, North Carolina State University Wayne D. Gray, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Joel S. Greenstein, Clemson University M. Susan Hallbeck, Mayo Clinic Peter A. Hanco*ck, University of Central Florida Robert Hoffman, Institute for Human & Machine Cognition Edmond W. Israelski, Abbvie Brian M. Kleiner, Virginia Tech Arnold M. Lund, Amazon Lab126 Thomas B. Malone, Carlow International Inc. Kathleen L. Mosier, San Francisco State University Robert W. Proctor, Purdue University Ronald G. Shapiro Matthew B. Weinger, Vanderbilt University Christopher D. Wickens, Alion Science & Technology

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The short communication presents the results of the 17th School on Ocean Acoustics known as “L.M. Brekhovskikh School-Seminar” held online from October 19 to 23, 2020. The conference was combined with the XXXIII session of the Russian Acoustic Society. The conference was attended by 138 researchers from 25 research institutes form Russia, Abkhazia, Israel, USA, and Taiwan. Leading scientists gave 6 lectures. 59 oral and poster presentations were presented focusing on topical scientific and technical subjects: acoustic oceanology, sound propagation in the ocean, sound scattering and reflection, engineering, and signal processing, as well as bio-, geo- and atmospheric acoustics.

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From 10 to 12 September the 3rd IPLASS Meeting: toward clinical application of endometrial and placental stem cells took place in Granada (Spain). The organizer of the symposium was the International Placenta Stem Cell Society (IPLASS) headed by President Dr. Ornella Parolini (Italy). There were presented 29 oral reports and 25 poster presentations. Scientific and clinical institutions in Italy, United States, Australia, Austria, Netherlands, Sweden, Israel, India, Portugal, Spain, France, Argentina, Brazil, Japan, China, Chile, and Germany are engaged in research of characteristics of stem cells derived from the placenta. Scientists from Ukraine (Institute of Cell Therapy, Kyiv) presented three reports, which scientific value was awarded with a diploma and a prize.

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This article traces the transformations in Hizbullah’s media discourse from its formative years in the mid- 1980s until the 2006 war with Israel. It focuses on a specific outlet of self-promotion and public mediation—that of political posters—to unpack their discursive, semiotic and aesthetic changes at decisive moments in the group’s history. The analysis relates the transformations to paradigmatic changes in Hizbullah’s politics; its growth as a Lebanese political party and military organization with transnational impetus; and the ensuing wider publics it attempts to reach, and, conversely, to the hostile imaginaries and exclusionary politics the group struggles with. The article observes how the Party of God increasingly attempts to negotiate its self-image outside a Shii-Islamic subjectivity and how it particularly strives to broaden its reach among the Lebanese public. It argues that the group’s media transformations have entailed, since the early 1990s, not only an accommodation of the party’s discourse of resistance within a nationalist framework, but also the inscription of its media image, rhetoric and aesthetics within a Lebanese social context.

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The POLYCHAR 16: World Forum on Advanced Materials, organized by the University of Lucknow, was held from 17 to 21 February 2008 in the capital of the state of Uttar Pradesh, India. The annual POLYCHAR conferences have been sponsored by IUPAC for several years and are known for combining the broad field of materials sciences with a clear focus on polymeric materials (the name "POLYCHAR" is derived from the term "polymer characterization"). POLYCHAR 16 was supported by many scientific associations and industries such as IUPAC, Abdus Salam International Center for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) (Trieste, Italy), Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), Department of Biotechnology (DBT) (India), Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) (India), Reliance Industries Ltd. (India), Department of Science and Technology (India), Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR), Indian National Science Academy (INSA), Uttar Pradesh Council of Science and Technology (UPCST) (India), Lucknow Chapter, Materials Research Society of India (MRSI), and University of Lucknow.As in past years, POLYCHAR puts emphasis on the quality of research presented - in contrast to maximizing the number of participants. The areas covered include nanomaterials and smart materials; natural and biodegradable materials and recycling; materials synthesis; polymers for energy; rheology, solutions, and processing; mechanical properties and performance; characterization and structure-property relationships; biomaterials and tissue engineering; dielectric and electrical properties; surfaces, interfaces, and tribology; and predictive methods. Symptomatically, the number of papers on "green" science was higher than at POLYCHAR 15 last year in Búzios, Rio de Janeiro.There were a total of 292 registered participants from 35 countries (Austria, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, China, Colombia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Egypt, Fiji, UK, France, Germany, India, Iran, Israel, Japan, Korea, Kuwait, Mauritius, Malaysia, Mexico, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Sri Lanka, Slovakia, South Africa, Ukraine, USA, Uzbekistan, and Venezuela). This reflects the philosophy of POLYCHAR to provide an international forum to encourage young scientists and advanced students to present their scientific work and give them the opportunity to meet with colleagues and well-known scientists to discuss their results, exchange experiences, and make new contacts, in particular, international ones. Many industrial contacts and much international cooperation with exchange of students and scientists have resulted from this and earlier POLYCHAR meetings.This conference volume represents only a small fraction of the multitude of contributions from different parts of materials science - 48 oral contributions and 170 posters. Many of the contributions have review character, some represent excellent original contributions. Only a small number could be selected for this volume because of the limited space that is available. All this was possible with the sponsorship of IUPAC. Highlights of the conference were the Paul J. Flory Research Award (ex aequo) to Prof. Jiasong He, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China; the International Materials Research Award to Dr. Rameshvar Adhikari, Tribhuvan University, Katmandu, Nepal; and numerous awards for young scientists and students, including the IUPAC Poster Award. Special Prof. Brar's 60th Birthday Celebration Awards were given to IUPAC poster prize winners.The next POLYCHAR will be hosted by Jean-Marc Saiter, University of Rouen, Rouen, France in April 2009.Poonam TandonConference Executive Secretary and Co-editor

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Abstract The present paper focuses on the symbolic meanings of metaphors and their potential social effects. Specifically, it examines the case of the Jewish Ultra-Orthodox “Ḥardakim” poster campaign distributed throughout Ultra-Orthodox communities in Israel in 2013. Following social group theory, the paper interprets the symbolic meanings of the main metaphors in the campaign in order to reconstruct the lifeworld of this religious group. On that basis, it offers a discussion of how metaphors were strategically utilized in order to draw social boundaries, uphold social norms and sanction group members who deviate from those. The paper’s empirical contribution is a case study of how symbolic meanings of metaphors as a part of propagandistic discourse targets and exploits social identities in order to mobilize collective emotions thereby provoking certain actions. It contributes theoretically by arguing that deeming norm-deviant group members internal threats is an efficient propaganda tool for maintaining intragroup behavioral codes.

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The 12th International Conference on Polymers and Organic Chemistry (POC'06) was held in Okazaki, Japan, from 2-7 July 2006 and was attended by nearly 200 participants from 20 different countries. This was the second time that POC was held in Japan, the first time was in 1990 (1982, Lyon, France; 1984, Lancaster, UK; 1986, Jerusalem, Israel; 1988, Barcelona, Spain; 1990, Kyoto, Japan; 1994, Venice, Italy; 1996, Wroclaw, Poland; 1998, Maa'ale Hachamisha, Israel; 2000, Tianjin, China; 2002, San Diego, USA; 2004, Prague, Czech Republic).The aim of this series of symposia is to bring together chemists from different chemical fields to define and discuss the most recent developments in the areas of polymer-supported reagents, polymeric catalysts, polymers in medicine and biochemistry, polymers for separations, electro- and light-sensitive functional polymers, polymers for environmental protection, processes within functional polymers, and so on. Plenary lectures were provided by Profs. Yoshio Okamoto (Nagoya University, Japan) and Jean M. J. Fréchet (University of California, Berkeley, USA). Along with the plenary lectures, nine invited lectures featured recent advances in the field of polymer-based chemistry in organic synthesis by David E. Bergbreiter, Kuiling Ding, Shu Kobayashi, Yoon-Sik Lee, Helma Wennemers, Pradeep K. Dhal, Toshihide Inoue, Eiji Yashima, and Peter A. G. Cormack. These lectures, as well as 27 oral presentations of the selected papers, exhibited the strength, diversity, and novelty with which this scientific field is being practiced. In addition, there were 55 poster presentations.Ten articles contributed by the lecturers and the conference chairs of POC'06 appear in this issue of Pure and Applied Chemistry in order to provide a summary of last summer's conference.Shinichi ItsunoPOC'06 Co-chairYasuhiro UozumiPOC'06 Co-chair and Conference Editor

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In keeping with the scholarly traditions of Vilnius University Kaunas Faculty, the 14th “Prof. Vladas Gronskas International Scientific Conference” was held in December 2019. This international conference is an arena for cooperation and scholarly fellowship, with young researchers, master and doctoral students from Lithuania as well as Latvia, Ukraine, India, Bulgaria, Hungary, Turkey, Russia, Israel, Nigeria participating in the different conference sections and poster session. The main goal of this scientific gathering has always been to contribute to the reliable, safe, effective and sustainable economy and business development. Thus, the organizing committee strives to create a suitable platform for well‐grounded and open discussion where young researchers have the opportunity to present and share their insights.Encouraging entrepreneurship is a crucial condition for economic growth and this puts forward a new approach to business, creativity, value creation, and the implementation of innovations. It is precisely in this context where business and science should interact. To reinforce this relevant bond, the guest speakers of the plenary session were selected amongst experienced practitioners and scholars. This conference encourages internationalization and a closer cooperation between science and business. In 2019, the conference is going to expand the range of themes and invite not only the young but also experienced scientists to present their scientific findings. Hopefully, there has been some useful take‐away for both academia and business conference participants: new insights and inspirations for further scientific research and possible solutions to boost Lithuanian economy. On behalf of the Scientific CommitteeAssoc. Prof. Dr Ingrida Šarkiūnaitė

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Abstract Abstract 3491 Poster Board III-428 Patients with severe factor XI deficiency (level ≤15U/dL) were recently found to be protected against ischemic stroke but not against myocardial infarction (Blood 2008, 111:4113). Regarding venous thrombosis, several clinical and experimental observations suggest that factor XI deficiency might confer protection. Thus, only 2 patients with severe factor XI deficiency have been reported with unprovoked venous thromboembolism, and protection against FeCl3 Cinduced thrombosis in the vena cava was observed in factor XI deficient mice (J Thromb Haemost 2006, 4:1982). Other studies established that an increased level of factor XI is associated with an increased risk of venous thromboembolism. In the present study, we investigated whether patients with severe factor XI deficiency are protected against venous thromboembolism. We interviewed 222 unrelated patients with severe FXI deficiency and reviewed their medical charts. In the cohort, there were 126 females and 96 males aged 20-94 years of whom 137 were 50 years or older. The expected incidence rates of venous thromboembolism in the general population for males and females at different age groups were extracted from a population-based study of venous thromboembolism (J Thromb Haemost 2007,5:692). The expected incidence rate of venous thromboembolism in the factor XI deficiency cohort was 4.67 (2.37 in females and 2.30 in males), while the observed incidence rate was 0/222. This difference was statistically significant taking into account age and sex by the Poisson test (p=0.036). The prevalence of the common inherited thrombophilias was examined in 194 of the 222 patients. Seven (3.6%) patients harbored factor V Leiden, and 17 (8.8%) harbored the prothrombin G20210A mutation; the corresponding proportions in the general Israeli population are 3.9% for factor V Leiden, and 5.4% for prothrombin G20210A mutation. Thus, there was no decreased prevalence of the common thrombophilias in the factor XI deficient cohort. Collectively, the data suggest that patients with severe factor XI deficiency are protected against venous thromboembolism. Disclosures: No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.

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IUPAC’s vision statement declares that the Union advances the worldwide role of chemistry for the benefit of Mankind. And one of its long-range goals states “IUPAC will utilize its global perspective and network to contribute to the enhancement of chemistry education, the career development of young chemical scientists, and the public appreciation of chemistry”. In pursuit of this spirit, the Union established in 2000 the IUPAC Prize for Young Chemists and has been honoring since then outstanding young research chemists at the beginning of their careers by making annual awards. The prizes are given for the most outstanding Ph.D. theses in the area of the chemical sciences, as described in 1000-word essays.As immediate Past President of IUPAC, I was honored to chair the prize selection committee of eminent chemists, who enjoyed reading essays of 41 applicants from 22 countries. After critical evaluation of the originality and excellence of the essays and research results, the committee decided unanimously to award 2012 Prizes for the following six essays:- “Study of the factors affecting the selectivity of catalytic ethylene oligomerization”, Khalid Albahily, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Canada (following earlier studies at King Saud University, Saudi Arabia and Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA)- “Nanowire nanoelectronics: Building interfaces with tissue and cells at the natural scale of biology”, Tzahi Cohen-Karni, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA (following earlier studies at Technion Israel Institute of Technology and Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel)- “Synthetic investigations featuring boron-rich and multidentate chalcoether-containing ligands”, Alexander Spokoyny, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, USA (following earlier studies at University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA)- “Quantification of virtual chemical properties: Strain, hyperconjugation, conjugation, and aromaticity”, Judy I-Chia Wu, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA (following earlier studies at Tung-Hai University, Taiwan)- “New materials for intermediate-temperature solid oxide fuel cells to be powered by carbon- and sulfur-containing fuels”, Lei Yang, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA (following earlier studies at Beihang University and Tsinghua University, China)- “Transition metal catalysis: Activation of CO2, C–H, and C–O bonds en route to carboxylic acids, biaryls, and N-containing heterocycles”, Charles Yeung, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada (following earlier studies at University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada)All the awardees were invited to present posters on their research at the 44th IUPAC World Chemistry Congress, Istanbul, Turkey, 11–16 August 2012. Upon IUPAC’s invitation, 4 of the 6 winners offered review papers on their research topics for consideration as publications in this issue of Pure and Applied Chemistry.Finally, it is an honor and a pleasure to congratulate each of the winners and their supervisors for winning the 2012 IUPAC Prize for Young Chemists. It is hoped that each of them will continue to contribute to a bright future for chemical sciences and technologies and to take active roles in IUPAC bodies in the future.Nicole MoreauIUPAC Immediate Past President and Chair of the IUPAC Prize Selection Committee

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This volume summarizes the present status of research in the field of organic and inorganic boron chemistry, presented by the invited speakers at the 12th International Meeting on Boron Chemistry (IMEBORON-XII), held in Sendai, Japan, 11-15 September 2005. IMEBORON-XII consisted of 1 plenary lecture, 22 invited lectures, 24 keynote lectures, 48 short oral presentations, and 99 poster presentations. In all, 280 chemists contributed to a truly international meeting, with participants representing China, Czech Republic, Germany, Israel, Japan, Mexico, Poland, Russia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States.The presentations at IMEBORON-XII covered all aspects of boron chemistry including theoretical studies, synthetic methods of organic and inorganic boron compounds, novel molecular structures, application of organic and inorganic boron compounds to organic synthesis as catalysts or as reagents, medicinal applications, and creation of new materials (liquid crystals, supramolecular clusters, nanocylinders, molecular electronic devices, nanomachines, ceramics, etc.). Not only the distinguished senior members of the boron community, but also young boron chemists took an active part in the conference. Not only traditional boron chemistry, but also new evolving research areas of boron chemistry were presented. Accordingly, I feel that a new generation of both researchers and research fields is coming in boron chemistry. A selection of the invited contributions to IMEBORON-XII is presented in the 14 papers in this issue.The importance of scientific exchange in this field was recognized during IMEBORON-XII. Therefore, the continuation of this series of conferences was discussed, and the venue for IMEBORON-XIII in 2008 will be organized by Prof. F. Teixidor at the Institut de Ciencia de Materials de Barcelona, C.S.I.S., Campus U.A.B., Ballaterra, Spain.Yoshinori YamamotoChairman of IMEBORON-XII

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The 17th International Conference on Physical Organic Chemistry (ICPOC-17) is the latest event in a regular IUPAC-sponsored series, and took place in Shanghai, China on 15ñ20 August 2004 under the local auspices of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Chemical Society.About 200 delegates attended ICPOC-17 from 21 countries, to participate in a scientific program comprising 14 plenary and 17 invited lectures, 41 contributed lectures, and 53 posters. The ongoing importance of the conference theme is reflected in a range of topics that serve to underpin fundamental principles of the subject, whilst also addressing new and evolving challenges posed by the growing interdisciplinary interfaces. This interdependence is exemplified by the centrality of mechanistic insight in modern synthesis, the interpretive and predictive power of theoretical studies, and the indispensable role of physical organic principles in studies of organized matter and biological systems, all of which featured prominently in the program.Proceedings of this series of conferences are traditionally published in Pure and Applied Chemistry, and it is pleasing to introduce a representative selection of outstanding works based upon plenary lectures delivered at ICPOC-17. Mechanistic studies form the subject of papers by H. Mayr (Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich, Germany), V. D. Parker (Utah State University, Logan, UT, USA), and M. Eckert-Maksic (Rudjer Boskovic Institute, Zagreb, Croatia), whilst those of F. Diederich (ETH, Zurich, Switzerland) and C. J. Easton (Australian National University, Canberra, Australia) address fundamental aspects of materials sciences. Biological themes feature in works by F. M. Menger (Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA), Zhong-Li Liu (Lanzhou University, China), and A. Pross (Ben Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel).Collectively, these papers exemplify the vigor and topicality of the overall scientific proceedings of ICPOC-17, and convey something of the diversity of themes that characterize current and future challenges in physical organic chemistry. This important forum will reconvene in Warsaw on 20ñ25 August 2006 for the 18th International Conference on Physical Organic Chemistry (ICPOC-18), and it is confidently expected that this record will serve the needs of practicing scientists, and offer inspiration and insight for future advances that may be reported on that occasion.Min-Bo ChenConference Editor

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Abstract Abstract 3280 Poster Board III-1 Background: Imatinib mesylate (IM) 400 mg once daily (OD) is the current standard first-line therapy for CML. Several biological and clinical observations suggest that combining IM with interferon alpha (IFNa) may improve the outcome of treatment. Aim: To compare the effects of standard-dose IM to combination of IM and IFNa in newly diagnosed chronic phase CML patients with an intermediate or low Sokal risk score. The primary end point was to compare the major molecular response (MMR) rate after 12 months between the treatment arms (intention-to-treat analysis). Patients and therapies: In a Nordic CML Study Group (NMCLSG: Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden) and Israel multicenter study we randomized 114 newly diagnosed CML patients in complete hematological remission following 3 months of IM 400 mg OD induction therapy. The study arms were IM (Glivec, Novartis) and the combination of IM and IFNa 2b (PegIntron, Schering-Plough). IM dose was fixed at 400 mg OD. IFNa was started at 30 μg/week but could be escalated to 50 μg/week or reduced down to 15 μg/week depending on tolerability. Molecular response was evaluated by blood RQ-PCR for BCR-ABL1 and was expressed on the international scale (IS). Results: As of August 17, 2009, 79 patients were evaluable for primary endpoint and 47 of these were in MMR (59%) The rate of complete cytogenetic response (CCgR) was 68/79 (86%). Nineteen patients (17%) were considered as treatment failures (grade 4 nonhematological adverse event, refusal, loss of CCgR, progression to advanced phase, protocol violation or other reason). Conclusions: A final analysis will be performed when we have complete data on all randomized patients. The comparison by treatment arm on molecular and cytogenetic responses as well as other relevant data (treatment failures, patients off-treatment for protocol violations, refusal or toxicity) will be presented on site. Supported by European LeukemiaNet, WP 4. Disclosures: Simonsson: Novartis: Consultancy, Honoraria, Research Funding; BMS: Consultancy, Honoraria, Research Funding. BjÖreman:BMS: Consultancy, Honoraria. Mustjoki:BMS: Honoraria. StrÖmberg:Novartis: Honoraria; BMS: Honoraria. Weiss Bjerrum:Novartis: Consultancy, Honoraria; BMS: Consultancy, Honoraria. Gruber:Novartis: Research Funding. Nagler:Novartis: Consultancy. Porkka:Novartis: Consultancy, Honoraria, Research Funding; BMS: Consultancy, Honoraria, Research Funding.

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The 18th International Conference on Physical Organic Chemistry (ICPOC-18) took place at the Gromada Hotel in Warsaw, Poland on 20-25 August 2006 under the local auspices of Warsaw University and the Polish Chemical Society. It was organized by a local Organizing Committee from the Department of Chemistry of Warsaw University led by Prof. Tadeusz M. Krygowski.Although physical organic chemistry began in the 1930s and at the beginning was concerned mostly with the mechanisms and kinetics of organic reactions and their dependence on structural and medium effects, a great extension of the field toward bioorganic, organic, organometallic, theoretical, catalytic, supramolecular, and photochemistry has been observed for decades now. Representative topics for modern physical organic chemistry include: reaction mechanisms; reactive intermediates; bioprocesses; novel structures; reactivity relationships; solvent, substituent, isotope, and solid-state effects; long-lived charges; sextet or open-shell species; magnetic, nonlinear optical, and conducting molecules; and molecular recognition. Contributions from all of these fields were presented.About 220 researchers, representing 31 countries, participated in the conference. The following eight plenary lectures were presented:R. Huber (Nobel laureate, Germany): "Molecular machines in biology"A. Yonath (Israel): "The spectacular ribosomal architecture: Nascent proteins voyage towards folding via antibiotics binding-pockets"P. Coppens (USA): "Time-resolved diffraction studies of molecular excited states and beyond"K. S. Kim (South Korea): "De novo design based on nano-recognition: Functional molecules/materials and nanosensors/nanodevices"I. P. Beletskaya (Russia): "Mechanistic aspects and synthetic application of carbon-carbon and carbon-heteroatom bonds formation in substitution and addition reactions catalyzed by transition-metal complexes"S. f*ckuzumi (Japan): "New development of electron-transfer catalytic systems"D. Braga (Italy): "Making crystals from crystals: A green route to crystal engineering and polymorphism"L. Latos-Grażyński (Poland): "Carbaporphyrinoids: Exploring metal ion-arene interaction in a macrocyclic environment"Additionally, 17 invited talks and, during two parallel sessions, 51 oral communications were presented. There were more than 100 poster presentations.I am pleased to introduce a representative selection of outstanding papers based on plenary and invited lectures delivered at ICPOC-18. In addition to the contributions mentioned above, this volume contains: a discussion of modern understanding of aromaticity (P. Fowler, UK); fascinating studies of new mechanisms focused on reactive intermediates (R. Moss, USA); interpretation of acidity, basicity, and hydride affinity by the trichotomy paradigm (Z. Maksić, Croatia); a quantum approach to proton transfer across hydrogen bond (F. Fillaux, France); a discussion of self-assembly of nickel(II) pseudorotaxene nanostructures on Au surface (R. Bilewicz, Poland); a discussion of synthesis and properties of macrocyclic receptors for anions (J. Jurczak, Poland); a description of novel organic-inorganic frameworks (J. Klinowski, UK); an application of microemulsions as microreactors (J. R. Leis, Spain); a discussion of silicon rehybridization and molecular rearrangements in hypercoordinate silicon dichelates (D. Kost, Israel); and a description of solvation in pure and mixed solvents (O. El Seoud, Brazil). All of these papers exemplify the broad range and diversity of interests of the participants and characterize the present and future challenges in physical organic chemistry.The social program of the conference included: a welcome reception; a Chopin music concert organized in cooperation with the Frederic Chopin Society; conference excursions, including Warsaw Old Town and Żelazowa Wola, the house where Chopin was born; the Warsaw Uprising (1944) Museum and the Heroes of Ghetto Memorial; and folk music dances during the conference dinner.Because ICPOC-18 was attended by quite a number of young chemists from all over the world, it can be expected that the next conference in this series, ICPOC-19, which will be held in July 2008 and is being organized by Profs. J. Ramon Leis from the University of Santiago de Compostela and A. Santaballa from the University of A Coruna (Spain), will not only reflect recent developments and the rich potential of physical organic chemistry, but will also demonstrate the aspirations of younger generations of scientists in this field.Krzysztof WoźniakConference Editor

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Since the apparition of the coming energy crises and increased awareness of climate change, various avenues are being explored to replace fossil fuels, with renewable energy from solar power and biomass sources as the most promising. In the last decade, the development of advanced molecular materials and nanotechnologies has initiated a new set of ideas that can dramatically improve energy conversion efficiency and reduce prices of alternative energy sources. It was therefore timely to launch a new initiative as the organization of the interdisciplinary International Conference "Molecular and Nanoscale Systems for Energy Conversion" (MEC-2007), devoted to new research trends in different areas of alternative energetic sources. This event was the first scientific meeting in Russia dealing with the general problems and future challenges in renewable energy conversion.The Conference was held on 1-3 October 2007 in Moscow at the Emanuel Institute of Biochemical Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences, under the sponsorship of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), the Russian Academy of Sciences, Lomonosov Moscow State University, and the Russian Foundation for Basic Research. The Conference featured 11 oral sessions and a general poster session, which was held throughout the entire duration of the event.Over 200 researchers from 11 countries, including 90 students, participated in the event. The presentations of the latest discoveries included 85 contributed papers and 12 plenary and 9 keynote lectures covering 4 topics: (i) advanced systems for photovoltaics, (ii) new types of fuel cells, (iii) biofuels, and (iv) molecular and nanoscale systems for energy conversion. All submitted abstracts were reviewed by the International Program Committee.In this issue of Pure and Applied Chemistry we introduce a selection of papers based on plenary and keynote lectures delivered at MEC-2007. This volume contains: a discussion of light intensity, asone of the most important factors influencing solar energy conversion (S. D. Varfolomeev, Russia); aviewpoint on future directions in photovoltaics as a new challenge for chemical physics (O. Shevaleevskiy, Russia); a description of new Cu(In,Ga)Se2 (CIGS) solar cells (B. T. Ahn, South Korea); a description of metal cluster-like materials for the molecular oxygen reduction reaction (N. Alonso-Vante, France); an application of biogas and microbial fuel cell technologies for anaerobicdigestion of wastes (S. V. Kalyuzhnyi, Russia); a description of light energy conversion mechanism indual fluorophoreñnitroxide molecules (G. I. Likhtenshtein, Israel); an overview of dangling-bond (DB)defect behavior in nanocrystalline silicon-based films for photovoltaics (K. S. Lim, South Korea); andan approach to the design of low-bandgap polymer solar cells (D. Yu. Paraschuk, Russia). All of thecontributions exemplify the participants' broad range of interests and characterize the new challengesin the area of renewable energy sources.Sergey Varfolomeev and Oleg ShevaleevskiyConference Editors

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Abstract Abstract 1144 Poster Board I-166 Allogeneic stem cell transplantation (SCT) is the only curative treatment for congenital hemoglobinopathies. To date, hundreds of patients (pts) were transplanted using different conditioning regimens and different sources of stem cells harvested from matched family donor (MFD), matched unrelated donor (MUD) and cord blood. The experience of a single center, the Rambam Medical Center, Haifa, Israel, performing 32 transplants in 31 pts with congenital hemoglobinopathies is presented herein. During the years 2000- 2008, 32 SCT were performed in 31 pts. Median age was 8 years (10 months-22 years). Median follow up was 5.5 years (7 months-9.5 years). Twenty seven pts were transplanted due to thalassemia major, 1 for sickle thalassemia (transplanted twice), 1 with chronic hemolysis, and 2 for sickle cell disease. Distribution of thalassemic pts (including sickle thalassemia) according to the Pesaro risk classification included: 7 in class I, 2 in class II and 20 in class III. There were 29 transplants from MFD while 3 transplants from MUD SCT. Twenty seven pts underwent first transplant while 5 pts received second transplant after rejecting the first one. One patient received 2 transplants in our center while the other 4 received their first transplant in another center. Different conditioning protocols, all based on busulfan (Bu) and cyclophosphamide (Cy), were used according to risk classifications, donor type, first or second transplant and type of disease. Pts with class I thalassemia who had MFD received Bu, Cy, fludarabine and ATG followed by moderate T cell depleted graft (Elhasid et al, 2007). Pts with class III thalassemia received protocol P26 including hydroxyurea, azathioprine, Bu, Cy, fludarabine (Sodani et al, 2004). Protocol P26.1, based on protocol P26 with the addition of thiotepa and ATG, was used for second transplant (Gaziev et al, 2008). Sickle cell disease pts received P26 based protocol. In order to prevent graft versus host disease (GvHD), moderate T cell depletion (TCD) (105/kg T cells) using positive selection of CD34 cells, was planned for all pts who had MFD. Since graft rejection occurred in 2 pts with class III thalassemia receiving protocol P26 and moderate TCD, an amendment modified use of this protocol only in class I thalassemia pts in the setting of MFD transplantation. Twenty eight out of 31 pts survived with overall survival (OS) of 90%. Three pts, all class III thalassemia, died. One patient died after first transplant due to severe hemorrhagic cystitis and multi-organ failure and 2 pts died after second transplant. Twenty six out of 27 pts who had only one transplant survived with OS of 96%. Four pts rejected the graft (12.9%); 1 with sickle cell disease, 2 with class III thalassemia and 1 with class I thalassemia after unrelated CBT. Twenty five out of 28 pts (89%) who survived are ex-thalassemic or sickle cell disease (table 1). No acute GvHD occurred in pts with class I thalassemia who received moderate TCD while the incidence of acute GvHD was 20% in the rest of the pts. Chronic GvHD occurred in 20% of pts regardless of TCD. Although most of our pts were classified as class III thalassemia, OS as well as disease free survival were 90% and 89%, respectively. No acute GvHD occurred in pts with class I thal major transplanted from MFD using moderate TCD. The efficacy and safety of this when used as a primary therapeutic modality is emphasized. Risk-adapted conditioning regimens, including novel ones that do not use post-transplant immunosuppression, improve transplant outcome in congenital hemoglobinopathies. Table 1 n TRM Overall survival Disease free survival All pts 31 3/31 (9.6%) 28/31 (90%) 25/28 (89%) Class I thalassemia Moderate TCD no GvHD prophylaxis 6 0/6 (0%) 6/6 (100%) 6/6 (100%) Disclosures Rowe: Teva Pharmaceuticals: Consultancy; EpiCept Corporation: Consultancy.

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Abstract Abstract 3344 Poster Board III-232 Background: Hepatic VOD is a life-threatening complication following SCT with a high incidence in children. Development of VOD is one of the most common causes of early death after SCT. Busulfan (BU), an alkylating agent with a very narrow therapeutic index is a commonly used conditioning agent in pediatric stem cell transplantation (SCT) with a strong correlation between AUC and both efficacy and toxicity. Oral BU (poBU) has significant age-related and interpatient pharmaco*kinetic differences and was linked with an increased risk for VOD. IV busulfan (ivBU) yielded promising results in some studies to be associated with low toxicity profile, especially with a reduced incidence of VOD. Methods: Patients <18 years with myeloablative SCT were included in a prospective multicenter phase II/III trial to evaluate the efficacy of Defibrotide (DF). Eligibility criteria included conditioning with BU (iv and po) and melphalan (MEL). Pts were prospectively randomized to the control arm or to receive DF. Primary endpoint was the incidence of hepatic VOD by D+30 using modified Seattle criteria (2 or more of the following: bilirubin > 2 mg/dL, hepatomegaly, ascites and/or unexplained weight gain > 5%). VOD was assessed by physical exam; hepatomegaly and ascites were confirmed by ultrasound. A blinded IRC of 3 expert hematologists confirmed the diagnosis of VOD. Although the study was not powered to assess mortality, a composite score was assessed as a secondary endpoint that incorporated VOD-associated toxicity (respiratory failure, renal failure, encephalopathy) and mortality. The additional analysis of the influence of BU on VOD was not planned and is therefore explorative. Results: 360 pts were enrolled between January 2006 and January 2009 by 28 centers in the EU and Israel. An Intent-to-Treat (ITT) analysis was performed on all pts who signed informed consent (n=356). 251 (71%) pts from the ITT population were conditioned with BU (64% ivBU; 36% poBU). 202 (55%) were treated with BU and Melphalan (MEL) (60% ivBU; 40% poBU). In 49 (14%) BU was used without MEL (80% ivBU; 20% poBU). In children <2yrs 44 (12%) were conditioned with BU/MEL (59% ivBU; 41% poBU) and 26 (7%) were conditioned without MEL (85% ivBU; 15% poBU). The median age of patients with iv BU was 3.65 yrs and 5,13 yrs with poBU; 28% infants, 50% children (ages 2-11 yrs) and 22% adolescents (evenly distributed). 45% female, 55% male (evenly distributed). Allo-SCT was performed in 69% with ivBU and 46% with poBU (remaining with auto-SCT). The diagnoses were evenly distributed between poBU and ivBU. Except in AML 18% were conditioned with ivBU and 32% with poBU. Preexisting liver disease was present in 23% ivBU and 9% poBU pts, of which 46% (17/37) ivBU and 37% (3/8) poBU had elevated transaminases. Overall VOD was experienced by 23% of the infants, 14% of the children and 13% of the adolescents. The overall incidence of VOD in pts treated with BU was 18%. VOD was diagnosed in 24% ivBU vs 8% poBU pts. In pts treated with BU/MEL VOD was diagnosed in 16%. VOD in ivBU/MEL was 21% (26) vs 8% (6) in poBU/MEL. In BU without MEL VOD was diagnosed in 27% (13/49). 31% (12/39) in ivBU pts and 10% (1/10) in poBU pts. In infants treated with BU/MEL the incidence of VOD in the ivBU group was 23% (6/26) and 11% (2/18) in poBU. In BU without MEL in infants the incidences were 41% (9/22) ivBU versus none (0/4) in poBU. The diagnosis of VOD independent of severity was associated with a higher mortality and equaled 24.6% (14/57) compared to 7% in pts without VOD (21/299). Respiratory failure was observed in 10% (16/161) of ivBU vs 2% (2/90) of poBU pts (9% (11/122) vs 1% (1/80) iv vs po BU/MEL); renal failure in 5% (8/161) ivBu vs 1% (1/90) poBU (5% (6/122) vs none in iv vs po BU/MEL). The incidence of multi-organ-failure (MOF) by day +100 was 12% (19/161) in ivBU vs 3% (3/90) in poBU (p=0.022). Compared to all other pts the risk to develop VOD in infants treated with allo-SCT and ivBU is 2.4 times higher (p=0.003). Conclusions: Although the scope of this trial was not to assess the influence of BU on the incidence of VOD and there was an imbalanced distribution of liver diseases and a potential bias for other risk factors the incidence of VOD in ivBU was unexpectedly high especially in infants. Inasmuch this is due to a high interpatient variability of the AUC should be explored prospectively. Disclosures: Corbacioglu: Gentium S.p.A.: Consultancy, Research Funding.

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This article looks at the Liberation Graphics Collection of Palestine Posters – a collection of 1600 ‘Palestine posters’ submitted to UNESCO’s Memory of the World programme during its 2014–2015 and 2016–2017 rounds. Despite receiving unanimous support for inscription, this nomination was effectively vetoed twice by UNESCO’s Director-General. The Collection frames the Palestine poster as ‘an essential medium through which Palestinians communicated their aspirations and international supporters expressed their solidarity’. Among these aspirations is a desire to identify and expose Israeli memoricide (‘the killing of memory’). Importantly, symbols like the house-key and olive tree transform otherwise mundane objects into potent signifiers calling attention to how memoricidal processes impacted spaces beyond the high-profile. Conversely, by drawing upon Zionist posters collected within the more expansive Palestine Poster Project Archives online, my analysis also explores the reconstructive side of memoricide. These materials simultaneously facilitate and obfuscate the killing of memory. Memoricide becomes normalised, a mundane (and thus invisible) facet of everyday life, practised by ordinary people.

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Usama Hamdan, since mid-2010 in charge of Hamas's international relations (in effect, its foreign minister), was born in al-Bureij refugee camp in the Gaza Strip in 1965. After earning his bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1986 from Jordan's Yarmouk University, where he was active in the Islamic Student Movement, he worked in private industry in Kuwait until the first Gulf war. Appointed Hamas representative to Iran in 1992, he held that post until 1998, when he was named Hamas representative to Lebanon. Since taking charge of the movement's foreign affairs portfolio, Hamdan commutes between Beirut and Damascus. Hamdan agreed to meet a small group from the Institute for Palestine Studies at his Beirut office, and when directions for reaching it became complicated, he offered to send a driver. How necessary this was became obvious as the car threaded its way through the narrow labyrinthine streets of Dahiya, the poor Shi'i suburb south of Beirut, festooned with banners and laundry and posters of Hizballah leader Shaykh Hasan Nasrallah. The building where Hamas had its offices was modest and nondescript, not unlike the other apartment buildings on the unpaved but clean street, quiet but for a group of children kicking a ball. The reception room where Hamdan met us was spare: a laminated coffee table, a couch, chairs lining the walls, a few small tables. Large black-and-white portraits of Shaykh Ahmad Yasin and Abdel Aziz Rantisi, killed in targeted Israeli airstrikes in Gaza in 2005 and 2006 respectively, adorned one wall. There were also large photographs of Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock and Haram al-Sharif, and a colored poster, almost like a chart, of Hamas leaders assassinated by Israel over the years. Hamdan, casually dressed and relaxed, served the coffee and tea himself, spooning the sugar while chatting in fluid English before the tape recorder was turned on. The interview, conducted jointly by the Journal of Palestine Studies (JPS) and the Majallat al-Dirasat al-Filastiniya (MDF), JPS's sister publication, took place on 13 December 2010. The following are excerpts of the two-hour interview.

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The Israel Society for Neuroscience (ISFN) was founded in 1993 by a group of Israeli leading scientists conducting research in the area of neurobiology. The primary goal of the society was to promote and disseminate the knowledge and understanding acquired by its members, and to strengthen interactions between them. Since then, the society holds its annual meeting every year in Eilat during the month of December. At these annual meetings the senior Israeli neurobiologists, their teams, and their graduate students, as well as foreign scientists and students, present their recent research findings in platform and poster presentations. The meeting also offers the opportunity for the researchers to exchange information with each other, often leading to the initiation of collaborative studies. Both the number of members of the society and of those participating in the annual meeting is constantly increasing, and it is anticipated that this year about 600 scientists will convene at the Princess Hotel in Eilat, Israel.

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The Israel Society for Neuroscience—ISFN—was founded in 1993 by a group of Israeli leading scientists conducting research in the area of neurobiology. The primary goal of the society was to promote and disseminate the knowledge and understanding acquired by its members, and to strengthen interactions between them. Since then, the society holds its annual meeting every year in Eilat usually during December. At this annual meetings, the senior Israeli neurobiologists, their teams, and their graduate students, as well as foreign scientists and students, present their recent research findings in platform and poster presentations, and the program of the meeting is mainly based on the 338 received abstracts which are published in this volume. The meeting also offers the opportunity for the researchers to exchange information with each other, often leading to the initiation of collaborative studies. Both the number of members of the society and those participating in the annual meeting is constantly increasing, and it is anticipated that this year about 600 scientists will convene at the Princess Hotel in Eilat, Israel.Further information concerning the Israel Society for Neuroscience can be found at http://www.isfn.org.il.

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Curating content is a key part of a social media user’s profile—and recent reports reveal an upward trend in the curating of video, image, and text based content (Meeker). Through “engagement”—in other words, posting content, liking, sharing, or commenting on another’s content—that content becomes part of the user’s profile and contributes to their “activity.” A user’s understanding of another user in the network depends on curation, on what another user posts and their engagement with the content. It is worth while studying content curation in terms of meaning, which involves clarifying how a user makes themselves meaningful depending on what they curate and their engagement with the curated content, and also how other users gain meaning from someone else’s curatorial work, determining how they position themselves in relation to others. This essay analyses the structure of meaning underpinning an individual’s act of curating content in social media, each time they publish content (“post”) or republish content (like, share, and/or comment) on their social media homepage. C.S. Peirce’s semiotics is the method for clarifying this structure. Based on an application of Peirce’s tripartite structure of semiosis, it becomes clear that curated content is a sign representative of the user who posted the content, the poster, and that, with the range of ways this representation takes place, it is possible to begin a classification of social media signs. Background: Meaning, Self-Documentation, Semiotics The study of meaning is a growing field in the research of social media. Lomborg makes a case for the importance of studying meaning due to social media’s “constant flux” and evolution as an object of study. In this context, structures of meaning are a stabilising component that provides “the key to explaining continuity and change in social media over time” (Lomborg 1). In her study of social media, Langlois defines meaning broadly as something we create and find. “Finding meaning” and “making sense” of the world, people, and objects involves the whole gamut of decoding meaning and applying social and cultural ideas as well as a more Deleuzian pedagogy of “real thinking” which involves creating new concepts (Deleuze Difference; Dillet). An analysis of the structure of meaning underpinning content curation extends existing research on self-documentation online, self-presentation, and personal media assemblages/personal media archives (see Doster; Good; Orkibi; Storsul). As noted by Langlois, “There has been a massive popularisation of self-documentation” (114) and it involves more than publishing reflections on blogging and microblogging platforms. It involves forms that focus on “self-presence” and “self-actualisation,” including sharing pictures, videos, and memes, writing comments, and “the use of buttons such as the Facebook ‘Like’ button” (117). Recent research discusses how Facebook profiles use the platform to collate content in a manner similar to that of diaries and scrapbooks. Good explains how social media users today and users in the print era use “tokens” to communicate taste and build cultural capital. An “interest token” is content that is shared: in the print era these are mainly clippings and in social media these are “digital articles” such as links to video clips as well as liking friends’ posts (568). Crucial to the content in both eras is the latent presence of the user. For example, in Victorian Britain contributors to confession books would hint at their desires through textual quotations. Good describes much the same structure of meaning underlying a user’s publishing of content on Facebook: “Tokens, when analysed as part of a broader media assemblage in a Facebook page or scrapbook page, can essentially speak volumes about a user’s cultural aspirations, dispositions and desires for social distinction” (568). Doster also reiterates this point about how digital technology enables users to associate themselves with digital content in order to represent themselves in complex ways. The structure of meaning analysed in this essay is found in the very phenomena identified above: when a user, by publishing content or republishing another’s content, is using their profile to curate content which is interpreted by other users to say something about them. As noted, current social media research discusses how, on platforms such as Facebook, users collate content as an important strategy of self-documentation and self-presentation. Other research examines in detail the conditions influencing the production of meaning (Langlois), identifying the software algorithms described by Chowdhry that decide what content social media users see on the platform, influencing what they curate in the first place—for example, when a user republishes, by liking, sharing, and/or commenting on, another friend’s post, a social organisation’s post, or even an advertisem*nt. This paper, however, analyses the structure of meaning specifically. Peirce’s semiotics is a conceptual framework that explains how this structure of meaning works. Semiotics has a fruitful history of explaining in detail the problem of meaning. Chuang and Huang are clear about the benefit of Peircian semiotics as a conceptual framework for systematically presenting and processing an object of analysis (341); Metro-Roland is also adamant about the value of Peirce’s theory for offering a “robust heuristic tool” (272); and Gilles Deleuze’s Cinema 2: The Time-Image famously praises Peirce’s Sign as an alternative to Ferdinand de Saussure’s more restrictive schema in semiology (Dawkins). Semiotics clarifies how an individual act of content curation is a triadic Sign (Representamen, Object, Interpretant). This triadic structure explains how posters are represented by content, and, in turn, how the content is interpreted to be representative of them. Following from semiotics, this paper seeks to “identify signs and describe their functioning” (Culler viii) and beyond its scope is an analysis of the conditions under which the Sign is produced. The Sign, According to C.S. Peirce Peirce’s semiotic, a branch of philosophy, is triadic. He proposes that we can think “only in terms of three”, and, from these “modes of valency,” and based also on his critique of Kant (Deledalle), he claims three phenomenological categories of being: Firstness and the state of possibility; Secondness and the state of existential relations; and Thirdness and the state of certainty, reasoning, and general rules. In relation to these three modes of being he claims that the way we make sense of the world—a process he names semiosis—also has three constituents. The three constituents of semiosis inform the three core elements of Peirce’s triadic Sign. There is the Sign itself, which Peirce calls the Representamen or Sign; there is the Object the Sign represents; and there is the resulting thought that follows, called the Interpretant (CP 1.541). (References to Peirce’s work are based on the customary practice of citing his collected works: CP, Collected Papers, with volume and page numbers.) Given that semiotics is triadic, Peirce defines three kinds of Representamen, three kinds of Object, and three kinds of Interpretant. For the sake of simplification this paper focuses on Peirce’s Object and Interpretant. They are briefly explained below and noted schematically in the appendix. In terms of Peirce’s Object, there are three kinds of Sign–Object relation. From the category of Thirdness, a Sign represents its Object according to an imagined idea. Peirce describes this relation with the Symbol. From the category of Secondness, a Sign represents its Object by being physically linked to its Object, and in this case it represents an actual object. Peirce describes this relation with the Index. From the category of Firstness, a Sign represents its Object based on qualitative resemblance, and in this case it represents a possible object. Peirce describes this relation with the Icon. In his explication of Peirce, Deledalle reminds us that “Nothing in itself is icon, index or Symbol” (20), meaning, for example, that what is an index in one semiosis could be a symbol in another. Deledalle discusses a symptom as a Sign of an illness, which is the Object, and an example is a symptom such as a person’s shivering. He writes: “If this symptom is referred to in a lecture on medicine as always characterising a certain illness, the symptom is a symbol. If the doctor encounters it while he is examining a patient, the symptom is the index of the illness” (19–20). Expanding Deledalle’s discussion, if the symptom were represented in a graphic of a shivering man, the symptom is an icon. Consider the three ways a Sign is interpreted. From Thirdness, the Sign is associated with the Object based on a conceptual connection imagined by the interpreter. This is an arbitrary connection based on convention. This kind of interpretation is called an Argument. In Secondness, Sign and Object are interpreted to form a physical pair and the interpreting mind simply remarks on this connection. “The Index asserts nothing,” writes Peirce, “it only says ‘There!’” (CP 3.361). This kind of Interpretant is called a Dicent. In Firstness, the qualities of the Sign are interpreted to resemble a possible Object, and those qualities “excite analogous sensations in the mind for which it is a likeness” (CP 2.299). This kind of Interpretant is called a Rhema. The three kinds of Representamen, three kinds of Sign–Object relation and three kinds of Interpretant together create 10 principal classes of Sign. It is worth noting that Peirce originally envisaged five categories of being, which would produce further classes of Signs; moreover, in his cinema books Deleuze develops an even more expansive taxonomy of Signs from Peirce’s theoretical framework, and this is based on his subdivision of Peirce’s categories. Crucial is how semiosis depends upon “the set of knowledge and beliefs that will be brought to bear” (Metro-Rowland 274), or what Peirce calls collateral experience. Comedian Jerry Seinfeld’s first appearance on The Tonight Show explains the importance of collateral experience for meaningfulness (Goldenberg). Seinfeld says he loves a particular sign he saw on the freeway—which is unique to New York—that reads “Left turn OK.” When pronouncing the text on the sign he intentionally adds a pause, so it sounds more like, “Left turn... Okay.” Seinfeld explains that the structure of the text adds a more personal and human tone than is typical of street signs (a tone Seinfeld makes perfectly obvious through his exaggerated pronunciation), and the use of the colloquial and friendly “okay” also contributes to this personal touch. Seinfeld explains how a driver can’t help but to interpret the sign as being more like a piece of advice they could take or leave. Similar, he says, would be signs like “U-turn: enjoy it” and “Right turn: why not?” Seinfeld is making clear that the humour of the example lies with the fact that a driver’s initial response to such as sign is to take it as an instruction; in other words, the driver’s collateral experience tells them that the object of the sign is an instruction. Towards a Classification of Social Media Signs It is fair to say that how one is perceived online is influenced by the content they curate. For example, Storsul cites the following comment from a teenager: “On Facebook, you judge each other’s lives. That’s what you do. I look at pictures, how they are, and I look at interests if we share some interests. If you visit my profile you can find out everything about me” (24). In her discussion of interest tokens, Good makes clear how content online means more than what the content itself is about—it’s also used to portray a person’s cultural aspirations, social capital, and even sexual desire. Similarly, Barash et al. identifies the importance to a user’s social media post of their image projected, noting how these are typically characterised according to scales such as cool–uncool, entertaining–boring, and uplifting–depressing (209). Peirce’s tripartite structure of the Sign is a useful tool for comprehending the relationship between users and content. Consider the following hypothetical example, indicative of a typical example of curated content: a poster publishing on Facebook their holiday photos, together with a brief introductory comment. Using Peirce, this is an individual act of semiosis that can be analysed according to the following general structure: the Sign is made up of the images and the poster’s text; the Object is the poster herself; and the Interpretant is the resulting thought(s) of another user looking at this Sign. The curated content is a Sign of the poster no matter what, and that is because the poster has published this content themselves and it is literally attributed to them, through their name and profile image. But of course the meaningfulness created from this structure also depends on the user’s collateral experience of the poster. The poster of curated content is always present as the Object of the Sign and, insofar as this presence is based on their publication (and/or republication) of content to the platform, the Sign–Object relation is principally indexical. However, and as will become apparent below, there is scope in the structure of meaning for this physical “presence” of the poster to appear otherwise. The poster’s indexical presence is ostensibly more complex as they can also be absently present—for example, if they post without commenting, or simply “Listen to…” or share content. More complex still is how a share involves a different kind of presence to posting and “liking.” It is reasonable to say that each kind of presence has a different effect on the meaningfulness of the Sign. Also, consider the effect of the poster’s comment, should they choose to leave one. Based on Peirce’s phenomenology, a poster could write a comment that makes some conceptual claim (Thirdness); or that simply points to the content, similar to the function of a demonstrative pronoun (Secondness); or that is designed to excite sensations in the mind (Firstness)—for example, poetic text in the manner of a haiku. Analysing another hypothetical example will help clarify the semiotic mixes potential to content curation. Imagine a close-up image of a steak, posted in Facebook. Accompanying the image is the linguistic text “Lunch with the work crew.” The Sign is the image plus the text; the Object is the poster (in this case, “Clinton”); and the Interpretant is the idea created in the mind of the user, scrolling the feed of content on their home page, who perceives this Sign. The most obvious and salient way this Sign works is as a statement of actual fact; that is, the comment states an activity and, in terms of its relation to the image, only has a “pointing” function and provides information about its Object of actual fact only. From Peirce, this class of Sign is (IV), a Dicent Indexical Sinsign. There is also the potential, however, for this particular Sign to motivate a more conceptual or generalised interpretation of the poster. The use of slang in the text would resonate with a certain group and result in a more generalised interpretation of Clinton—for example, “Just smashed this steak after some fun runners down south.” In this text, a certain group would understand “runners” as waves at the beach, and therefore this Sign is representative of its Object as a surfer, and, more complex still, perhaps as a privileged surfer since Clinton clearly enjoys surfing on a weekday—in other words, he’s not a “weekend warrior.” From Peirce, this class of Sign is (X), an Argument Symbolic Legisign. But another user may interpret this Sign in a slightly less complex way, equally valid and important. Perhaps they don’t “get” the surfing slang in Clinton’s comment, but they understand a surfing reference has been made nonetheless. In this case a user might interpret the Sign in the following way: “He’s making some comment about surfing, but I don’t understand it.” From Peirce, this class of Sign is (VII), a Dicent Indexical Legisign. But what if Clinton simply posted this image of the steak with no text? In this case the user interpreting the Sign is directed to the Object (“Clinton”: the profile that posted the content), but the Sign does not describe anything about the Object. Instead, “The sign deals with possible evidence that some relations have been connected, and thus indicates some previous state of affairs” (Chuang and Huang 347). From Peirce, this class of Sign is (III), a Rhematic Indexical Sinsign. As a final example (which by no means concludes the analysis of this Sign), what if Clinton posted this image by way of a like only? The effect of the like is to determine the poster as less “present” than they would be had they only posted the content, or shared it, or left a comment on it. Despite the fact that the like still shows the poster as curator—and, ostensibly, publisher—of the content, determining their indexical presence, the like also allows for an iconic Sign–Object relation. As was mentioned earlier, “Nothing in itself is icon, index or symbol” (Deledalle 20). Given the poster’s iconic representation by the Sign, the poster is interpreted as a possible Object. What happens is that the qualities of the content would be interpreted to resemble some possibility of a person/Object. The user has a vague sense of somebody, but that somebody is present more as a pattern, diagram, or scheme. From Peirce, this class of Sign is (II), a Rhematic Iconic Sinsign. Conclusion This paper aims to identify and describe the structure of meaning underlying the proposition, “We are what we curate online.” Using Peirce’s tripartite Sign, it is clear that the content a user curates is representative of them; in terms of the different ways users engage with content, it is possible to begin to classify curated content into different kinds of Signs. What needs to be emphasised, and what becomes apparent from the preliminary classification undertaken here, is that another user’s interpretation of these Signs—and any Signs, for that matter—depends on the knowledge they bring to semiosis. Finally, while this paper has chosen deliberately to engage with the structure of meaning underpinning an individual act of curation and has made inroads into a classification of Signs produced from this structure, further semiotic research could take into consideration the conditions under which the Signs are created, in terms of software’s role influencing the creation of Signs and a user’s collateral knowledge. Appendix Given the breadth of Peirce’s work and the multiple and often varied definitions of his concepts, it is reasonable to consult a respected secondary synthesis of Peirce’s semiotic. The following tables are from Deledalle (19). Table 1: The Three Trichotomies of Signs 1 2 3 Representamen Object Interpretant Qualisign Icon Rhema Sinsign Index Dicisign Legisign Symbol Argument Table 2: The 10 Classes of Sign “All expressions such as R1, O2, I3, should be read according to Peirce in the following way: a Representamen ‘which is’ a First, an Object ‘which is’ a Second, an Interpretant ‘which is’ a Third (8.353)” (Deledalle 19). R O I I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X R1 R2 R2 R2 R3 R3 R3 R3 R3 R3 O1 O1 O2 02 01 02 02 03 03 03 I1 I1 I1 I2 I1 I1 I2 I1 I2 I3 Rhematic Iconic Qualisign Rhematic Iconic Sinsign Rhematic Indexical Sinsign Dicent Indexical Sinsign Rhematic Iconic Legisign Rhematic Indexical Legisign Dicent Indexical Legisign Rhematic Symbolic Legisign Dicent Symbolic Legisign Argument Symbolic Legisign References Barash, Vladamir, Nicolas duch*eneaut, Ellen Isaacs, and Victoria Bellotti. “Faceplant: Impression (Mis)management in Facebook Status Updates.” Proceedings of the Fourth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media. May 2015 ‹http://www.aaai.org/›. Chowdhry, Amit. “Facebook Changes Newsfeed Algorithm to Prioritise Content from Friends Over Pages.” Forbes 23 Mar. 2015. 18 June 2015 ‹http://www.forbes.com/sites/amitchowdhry/2015/04/23/facebook-changes-news-feed-algorithm-to-prioritize-content-from-friends-over-pages/›. Chuang, Tyng-Ruey, and Andrea Wei-Ching Huang. “Social Tagging, Online Communication, and Peircian Semiotics: A Conceptual Framework.” Journal of Information Science 35.3 (2009): 340–357. Culler, Jonathan. The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction. London: Routledge, 1981. Dawkins, Roger. “The Problem of a Material Element in the Sign: Deleuze, Metz, Peirce.” Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities. 8.3 (2003): 155–67. Dillet, Benoit. “What Is Called Thinking?: When Deleuze Walks along Heideggerian Paths.” Deleuze Studies 7.2 (2013): 250–74. Deledalle, Gerard. Charles S. Peirce’s Philosophy of Signs: Essays in Comparative Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana, 2000. Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 2: The Time-Image. 1985. Trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Robert Galeta. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1989. ———. Difference and Repetition. Trans. Paul Patton. NY: Columbia UP, 1995. Doster, Leigh. “Millenial Teens Design and Redesign Themselves in Online Social Networks.” Journal of Consumer Behaviour 12 (2013): 267–79. Goldenberg, Max. Once Upon a Time Seinfeld Was a Little Boy. 19 Mar. 2007. Web video. 5 Apr. 2015 ‹https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYJxcFaRpMU›. Good, Katie Day. “From Scrapbook to Facebook: A History of Personal Media Assemblages and Archives.” New Media & Society 15.4 (2012): 559–73. Langlois, Ganaele. Meaning in the Age of Social Media. NY: Palgrave, 2014. Lomborg, Stine. “'Meaning' in Social Media.” Social Media + Society 1.1 (Apr.–June 2015): 1–2. Meeker, Mary. “Internet Trends 2015 – Code Conference.” 2015. 10 Jun. 2015 ‹http://www.slideshare.net/kleinerperkins/internet-trends-v1›. Metro-Rowland, Michelle. “Interpreting Meaning: An Application of Peircian Semiotics to Tourism.” Tourism Geographies: An International Journal of Tourism Space, Place and Environment 11.2 (2009): 270–79. Orkibi, Eithan. “‘New Politics,’ New Media – New Political Language? A Rhetorical Perspective on Candidates’ Self-Presentation in Electronic Campaigns in the 2013 Israel Elections.” Israeli Affairs 21.2 (2015): 277–92. Peirce, Charles Sanders. Collected Papers. Eds. Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss. Vols. 1–6. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1932. Storsul, Tanja. “Deliberation or Self-Presentation: Young People, Politics and Social Media.” Nordicom Review 35.2 (2014): 17–28.

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Amongst the hundreds of emails that made their way to error@media-culture.org.au over the last ten months, I received the following correspondence: Failure noticeHi. This is the qmail-send program at sv01.wadax.ne.jp.I’m afraid I wasn’t able to deliver your message to the following addresses.This is a permanent error; I’ve given up. Sorry it didn’t work out.namewithheld@s.vodafone.ne.jp>:210.169.171.135 does not like recipient.Remote host said: 550 Invalid recipient:namewithheld@s.vodafone.ne.jp>Giving up on 210.169.171.135. Email of this sort marks a moment that is paradoxically odd and all too familiar in the digital exchanges of everyday life. The failure message arrives to tell me something “didn’t work out.” This message shows up in my email account looking no different from any other correspondence—only this one hails from the system itself, signalling a failure to communicate. Email from the “mailer-daemon” calls attention to both the logic of the post that governs email (a “letter” sent to an intended address at the intention of some source) and the otherwise invisible logic of informatic protocols, made visible in the system failure of a “permanent error.” In this particular instance, however, the failure notice is itself a kind of error. I never emailed namewithheld@s.vodafone.ne.jp—and by the mailer-daemon’s account, such a person does not exist. It seems that a spammer has exploited an email protocol as a way of covering his tracks: when a deliver-to path fails, the failure notice bounces to a third site. The failure notice marks the successful execution of a qmail protocol, but its arrival at our account is still a species of error. In most circ*mstances, error yields an invalid result. In calculation, error marks a kind of misstep that not only corrupts the end result, but all steps following the error. One error begets others. But as with the failure notice, error often marks not only the misdirections of a system, but also the system’s internal logic. The failure notice corresponds to a specific category of error—a potential error that the system must predict before it has actually occurred. While the notice signals failure (permanent error), it does so within the successful, efficient operation of a communicative system. What is at issue, then, is less a matter of whether or not error occurs than a system’s ability to handle error as it arises. Control systems attempt to close themselves off to error’s misdirections. If error signals a system failure, the “failure notice” of error foregrounds the degree to which in “societies of control” every error is a fatal error in that Baudrillardian sense—a failure that is subsumed in the operational logic of the system itself (40). Increasingly, the networks of a global marketplace require a rationalisation of processes and an introduction of informatic control systems to minimise wastage and optimise output. An informatic monoculture expresses itself through operational parameters that define communication according to principles of maximum transmission. In effect, in the growing dominance of a network society, we are witnessing the transcendence of a social and cultural system that must suppress at all costs the failure to communicate. This global communication system straddles a paradoxical moment of maximum exchange and maximum control. With growing frequency, social and commercial processes are governed by principles of quality assurance, what Lyotard defined nearly thirty years ago as a “logic of maximum performance” (xxiv). As Six Sigma standards migrate from the world of manufacturing to a wide range of institutions, we find a standard of maximum predictability and minimum error as the latest coin of the realm. Utopia is now an error-free world of 100% efficiency, accuracy, and predictability. This lure of an informatic “monoculture” reduces communication to a Maxwell’s demon for capturing transmission and excluding failure. Such a communicative system establishes a regime of signs that thrives upon the drift and flow of a network of signifiers, but that affirms its power as a system in its voracious incorporation of signs within a chain of signification (Deleuze and Guattari 111-117). Error is cast out as abject, the scapegoat “condemned as that which exceeds the signifying regime’s power of deterritorialization” (Deleuze and Guattari 117). Deleuze and Guattari describe this self-cycling apparatus of capture as “a funeral world of terror,” the terror of a black-hole regime that ultimately depends upon a return of the same and insures that everything that circulates communicates…or is cast off as abject (113). This terror marks a relation of control, one that depends upon a circulation of signs but that also insists all flows fall within its signifying regime. To speak of the “terror of information” is more than metaphorical to the extent that this forced binary (terror of signal/error of noise) imposes a kind of violence that demands a rationalisation of all singularities of expression into the functionalities of a quantifiable system. To the extent that systems of information imply systems of control, the violence of information is less metaphor than metonym, as it calls into high relief the scapegoat error—the abject remainder whose silenced line of flight marks the trajectory of the unclean. This cybernetic logic of maximum performance demands that error is either contained within the predictable deviations of a system’s performance, or nullified as outlying and asignifying. Statistics tells us that we are best off ignoring the outlier. This logic of the normal suggests that something very risky occurs when an event or an instance falls outside the scope of predicable variance. In the ascendancy of information, error, deviance, and outlying results cast a long shadow. In Norbert Wiener’s account of informatic entropy, this drift from systematic control marked a form of evil—not a Manichean evil of bad actors, but rather an Augustinian evil: a falling away from the perfection of order (34-36). Information utopia banishes error as a kind of evil—an aberration that is decidedly off the path of order and control. This cybernetic logic functions at all levels, from social systems theory to molecular biology. Our diseases are now described as errors in coding, transcription, or transmission—genetic anomalies, cancerous loop scripts, and neurochemical noise. Mutation figures as an error in reproduction—a straying from faithful replication and a falling away from the Good of order and control. But we should keep in mind that when we speak of “evil” in the context of this cybernetic logic, that evil takes on a specific form. It is the evil of the errant. Or to put it another way: it is the evil of the Sesame Street Muppet, Bert. In 2001, a U.S. high school student named Dino Ignacio created a graphic of the Muppet, Bert, with Osama bin Laden—part of his humorous Website project, “Bert is Evil.” A Pakistani-based publisher scanning the Web for images of bin Laden came across Ignacio’s image and, apparently not recognising the Sesame Street character, incorporated it into a series of anti-American posters. According to Henry Jenkins’s account of the events, in the weeks that followed, “CNN reporters recorded the unlikely sight of a mob of angry protestors marching through the streets chanting anti-American slogans and waving signs depicting Bert and bin Laden” (1-2). As the story of the Bert-sighting spread, new “Bert is evil” Websites sprang up, and Ignacio found himself the unwitting centre of a full-blown Internet phenomenon. Jenkins finds in this story a fascinating example of what he calls convergence culture, the blurring of the line between consumer and producer (3). From a somewhat different critical perspective, Mark Poster reads this moment of misappropriation and misreading as emblematic of global networked culture, in which “as never before, we must begin to interpret culture as multiple cacophonies of inscribed meanings as each cultural object moves across cultural differences” (11). But there is another moral to this story as well, to the extent that the convergence and cacophony described here occur in a moment of error, an errant slippage in which signification escapes its own regime of signs. The informatic (Augustinian) evil of Bert the Muppet showing up at an anti-American rally in Pakistan marks an event-scene in which an “error” not only signifies, but in its cognitive resonance, begins to amplify and replicate. At such moments, the “failure notice” of error signals a creative potential in its own right—a communicative context that escapes systemic control. The error of “evil Bert” introduces noise into this communicative system. It is abject information that marks an aberration within an otherwise orderly system of communication, an error of sorts marking an errant line of flight. But in contrast to the trance-like lure of 100% efficiency and maximum performance, is there not something seductive in these instances of error, as it draws us off our path of intention, leading us astray, pulling us toward the unintended and unforeseen? In its breach of predictable variance, error gives expression to the erratic. As such, “noise” marks a species of error (abject information) that, by failing to signify within a system, simultaneously marks an opening, a poiesis. This asignifying poetics of “noise,” marked by these moments of errant information, simultaneously refuses and exceeds the cybernetic imperative to communicate. This poetics of noise is somewhat reminiscent of Umberto Eco’s discussion of Claude Shannon’s information theory in The Open Work. For Shannon, the gap between signal and selection marks a space of “equivocation,” what Warren Weaver calls “an undesirable … uncertainty about what the message was” (Shannon and Weaver 21). Eco is intrigued by Shannon’s insight that communication is always haunted by equivocation, the uncertainty that the message received was the signal sent (57-58). Roland Barthes also picks up on this idea in S/Z, as N. Katherine Hayles notes in her discussion of information theory and post-structuralism (46). For these writers, equivocation suggests a creative potential in entropy, in that noise is, in Weaver’s words, “spurious information” (Shannon and Weaver 19). Eco elaborates on Shannon and Weaver’s information theory by distinguishing between actual communication (the message sent) and its virtuality (the possible messages received). Eco argues, in effect, that communication reduces information in its desire to actualise signal at the expense of noise. In contrast, poetics generates information by sustaining the equivocation of the text (66-68). It is in this tension between capture and escape marked by the scapegoats of error and noise that I find a potential for a contemporary poetics within a global network society. Error reveals the degree to which everyday life plays itself out within this space of equivocation. As Stuart Moulthrop addressed nearly ten years ago, our frequent encounters with “Error 404” on the Web calls attention to “the importance of not-finding”: that error marks a path in its own right, and not merely a misstep. Without question, this poetics of noise runs contrary to a dominant, cybernetic ideology of efficiency and control. By paying attention to drift and lines of flight, such erratic behaviour finds little favour in a world increasingly defined by protocol and predictable results. But note how in its attempt to capture error within its regime of signs, the logic of maximum performance is not above recuperating the Augustinian evil of error as a form of “fortunate fall.” Even in the Six Sigma world of 100% efficiency, does not corporate R & D mythologise the creative moment that allows error to turn a profit? Post-It Notes® and Silly Putty® present two classic instances in which happenstance, mistake, and error mark a moment in which “thinking outside of the box” saves the day. Error marks a kind of deviation from—and within—this system: a “failure” that at the same time marks a potential, a virtuality. Error calls attention to its etymological roots, a going astray, a wandering from intended destinations. Error, as errant heading, suggests ways in which failure, mutation, spurious information, and unintended results provide creative openings and lines of flight that allow for a reconceptualisation of what can (or cannot) be realised within social and cultural forms. While noise marks a rupture of signification, it also operates within the framework of a cybernetic imperative that constantly attempts to capture the flows that threaten to escape its operational parameters. As networks become increasingly social, this logic of rationalisation and abstraction serves as a dialectical enclosure for an information-based culture industry. But error also suggests a strategy of misdirection, getting a result back other than what one expected, and in doing so turns the cybernetic imperative against itself. “Google-bombing,” for example, creates an informatic structure that plays off of the creative potential of equivocation. Here, error of a Manichean sort introduces noise into an information system to produce unexpected results. Until recently, typing the word “failure” into the search engine Google produced as a top response George Bush’s Webpage at www.whitehouse.gov. By building Webpages in which the text “failure” links to the U.S. President’s page, users “hack” Google’s search algorithm to produce an errant heading. The cybernetic imperative is turned against itself; this strategy of misdirection enacts a “fatal error” that evokes the logic of a system to create an opening for poeisis, play, and the unintended. Information networks, no longer secondary to higher order social and cultural formations, now define the function and logic of social space itself. This culture of circulation creates equivalences by way of a common currency of “information,” such that “viral” distribution defines a social event in its own right, regardless of the content of transmission. While a decade earlier theorists speculated on the emergence of a collective intelligence via global networks, the culture of circulation that has developed online would seem to indicate that “emergence” and circulation are self-justifying events. In the moment of equivocation—not so much beyond good and evil, but rather in the spaces between signal and noise—slippage, error, and misdirection suggest a moment of opening in contrast to the black hole closures of the cybernetic imperative. The violence of an informatic monoculture expresses itself in this moment of insistence that whatever circulates signifies, and that which cannot communicate must be silenced. In such an environment, we would do well to examine these failures to communicate, as well as the ways in which error and noise seduce us off course. In contrast to the terror of an eternal return of the actual, a poetics of noise suggests a virtuality of the network, an opening of the possible in an increasingly networked society. The articles in this issue of M/C Journal approach error from a range of critical and social perspectives. Essays address the ways in which error marks both a misstep and an opening. Throughout this issue, the authors address error as both abject and privileged instance in a society increasingly defined by information networks and systems of control. In our feature article, “Revealing Errors,” Benjamin Mako Hill explores how media theorists would benefit from closer attention to errors as “under-appreciated and under-utilised in their ability to reveal technology around us.” By allowing errors to communicate, he argues, we gain a perspective that makes invisible technologies all the more visible. As such, error provides a productive moment for both interpretive and critical interventions. Two essays in this issue look at the place of error and noise within the work of art. Rather than foregrounding a concept of “medium” that emphasises clear, unimpeded transmission, these authors explore the ways in which the errant and unintended provide for a productive aesthetic in its own right. Using Shannon’s information theory, and in particular his concept of equivocation, Su Ballard’s essay, “Information, Noise, and et al.’s ‘maintenance of social solidarity-instance 5,” explores the productive error of noise in the digital installation art of a New Zealand artists’ collective. Rather than carefully controlling the viewer’s experience, et al.’s installation places the viewer within a field of equivocation, in effect encouraging misreadings and unintended insertions. In a similar vein, Tim Barker’s essay, “Error, the Unforeseen, and the Emergent: The Error of Interactive Media Art” examines the productive error of digital art, both as an expression of artistic intent and as an emergent expression within the digital medium. This “glitch aesthetic” foregrounds the errant and uncontrollable in any work of art. In doing so, Barker argues, error also serves as a measure of the virtual—a field of potential that gestures toward the “unforeseen.” The virtuality of error provides a framework of sorts for two additional essays that, while separated considerably in subject matter, share similar theoretical concerns. Taking up the concept of an asignifying poetics of noise, Christopher Grant Ward’s essay, “Stock Images, Filler Content, and the Ambiguous Corporate Message” explores how the stock image industry presents a kind of culture of noise in its attempt to encourage equivocation rather than control semiotic signal. By producing images that are more virtual than actual, visual filler provides an all-too-familiar instance of equivocation as a field of potential and a Derridean citation of undecidibility. Adi Kuntsman takes a similar theoretic tack in “‘Error: No Such Entry’: Haunted Ethnographies of Online Archives.” Using a database retrieval error message, “no such entry,” Kuntsman reflects upon her ethnographic study of an online community of Russian-Israeli queer immigrants. Error messages, she argues, serve as informatic “hauntings”—erasures that speak of an online community’s complex relation to the construction and archiving of a collective history. In the case of a database retrieval error—as in the mailer-daemon’s notice of the “550” error—the failure of an address to respond to its hailing calls attention to a gap between query and expected response. This slippage in control is, as discussed above, and instance of an Augustinian error. But what of the Manichean—the intentional engagement in strategies of misdirection? In Kimberly Gregson’s “Bad Avatar! Griefing in Virtual Worlds,” she provides a taxonomy of aberrant behaviour in online gaming, in which players distort or subvert orderly play through acts that violate protocol. From the perspective of many a gamer, griefing serves no purpose other than annoyance, since it exploits the rules of play to disrupt play itself. Yet in “Amazon Noir: Piracy, Distribution, Control,” Michael Dieter calls attention to “how the forces confined as exterior to control (virality, piracy, noncommunication) regularly operate as points of distinction to generate change and innovation.” The Amazon Noir project exploited vulnerabilities in Amazon.com’s Search Inside!™ feature to redistribute thousands of electronic texts for free through peer-to-peer networks. Dieter demonstrates how this “tactical media performance” challenged a cybernetic system of control by opening it up to new and ambiguous creative processes. Two of this issue’s pieces explore a specific error at the nexus of media and culture, and in keeping with Hill’s concept of “revealing errors,” use this “glitch” to lay bare dominant ideologies of media use. In her essay, “Artificial Intelligence: Media Illiteracy and the SonicJihad Debacle in Congress,” Elizabeth Losh focuses on a highly public misreading of a Battlefield 2 fan video by experts from the Science Applications International Corporation in their testimony before Congress on digital terrorism. Losh argues that Congress’s willingness to give audience to this misreading is a revealing error in its own right, as it calls attention to the anxiety of experts and power brokers over the control and distribution of information. In a similar vein, in Yasmin Ibrahim’s essay, “The Emergence of Audience as Victims: The Issue of Trust in an Era of Phone Scandals,” explores the revealing error of interactive television gone wrong. Through an examination of recent BBC phone-in scandals, Ibrahim explores how failures—both technical and ethical—challenge an increasingly interactive audience’s sense of trust in the “reality” of mass media. Our final essay takes up the theme of mutation as genetic error. Martin Mantle’s essay, “‘Have You Tried Not Being a Mutant?’: Genetic Mutation and the Acquisition of Extra-ordinary Ability,” explores “normal” and “deviant” bodies as depicted in recent Hollywood retellings of comic book superhero tales. Error, he argues, while signalling the birth of superheroic abilities, marks a site of genetic anxiety in an informatic culture. Mutation as “error” marks the body as scapegoat, signalling all that exceeds normative control. In each of these essays, error, noise, deviation, and failure provide a context for analysis. In suggesting the potential for alternate, unintended outcomes, error marks a systematic misgiving of sorts—a creative potential with unpredictable consequences. As such, error—when given its space—provides an opening for artistic and critical interventions. References “Art Fry, Inventor of Post-It® Notes: ‘One Man’s Mistake is Another’s Inspiration.” InventHelp. 2004. 14 Oct. 2007 http://www.inventhelp.com/articles-for-inventors-art-fry.asp>. Barthes, Roland. S/Z. Trans. Richard Miller. New York: Hill and Wang, 1974. Baudrillard, Jean. The Transparency of Evil. Trans. James Benedict. New York: Verso, 1993. Deleuze, Gilles. “Postscript on the Societies of Control.” October 59 (Winter 1992): 3-7. Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus. Trans. Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: U Minnesota P, 1987. Eco, Umberto. The Open Work. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1989. “Googlebombing ‘Failure.’” Official Google Blog. 16 Sep. 2005. 14 Oct. 2007 http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/09/googlebombing-failure.html>. Hayles, N. Katherine. How We Became Posthuman. Chicago: U Chicago P, 1999. Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture. New York: NYU Press, 2006. Lyotard, Jean-Francois. The Postmodern Condition. Trans. Geoffrey Bennington and Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: Minnesota UP, 1984. Moulthrop, Stuart. “Error 404: Doubting the Web.” 2000. 14 Oct. 2007 http://iat.ubalt.edu/moulthrop/essays/404.html>. Poster, Mark. Information Please. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2006. Shannon, Claude, and Warren Weaver. The Mathematical Theory of Communication. Urbana: U Illinois P, 1949. “Silly Putty®.” Inventor of the Week. 3 Mar. 2003. 14 Oct. 2007 http://web.mit.edu/Invent/iow/sillyputty.html>. Wiener, Norbert. The Human Use of Human Beings. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, 1988. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Nunes, Mark. "Failure Notice." M/C Journal 10.5 (2007). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0710/00-editorial.php>. APA Style Nunes, M. (Oct. 2007) "Failure Notice," M/C Journal, 10(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0710/00-editorial.php>.

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Abstract:

The return of Jesus Christ, the end of the world, war, devastating earthquakes, invading space ships, asteroid strikes, the Y2K bug, what do they all have in common? Little if anything really, except that they have all been associated with the coming of the year 2000. To many in Australia the year 2000 may well be an end, if not the End. To some of those, however, it may also be the beginning of something else most significant. That expectation will now be examined. You will have a conducted tour through war and peace, demonic activity, and aeroplanes crashing and people flying. The subject is how a significant number of Australian Christians understand the end of the world ("The End Times"), most particularly the return of Jesus Christ. Those who hold this view we will call "EndTimers". That Jesus Christ will return has been the expectation of the church from its conception. The day of Pentecost is usually regarded as the birthday of the church, and a few days before that Jesus ascended into heaven and the astonished disciples who witnessed it were told by two angels that Jesus would return (Acts 1:9-11). An expectation of the literal return of Jesus Christ has been with the church ever since. It being commonly featured in its creeds both ancient and modern. However, some individual Christians do not hold to a literal, physical return, though they would be in the minority. But amongst those who do expect a literal return, there has not always been agreement about its nature. EndTimers are one group among many, but scattered throughout the Protestant churches. They predict that Jesus Christ will return very soon, indeed, he will return in "this generation". This phrase and many of the ideas commonly associated with it are to be found in the Gospel of Matthew chapter 24. In this chapter Jesus predicts some cataclysmic events, and towards the end of his address, in verse 34, says that they will happen in "this generation". The most natural understanding of this phrase in context is that those events would happen in the life time of his hearers. Indeed, events very much like those described by Jesus did happen in the Fall of Jerusalem about forty years later. Such are the similarities between the two, many Christians with a more liberal view of the Bible see Christ's words as a later construct of the church placed on his lips, and thus as prophecy after the event. For reasons that are more complex than logical EndTimers regard the phrase "this generation" as referring to the generation beginning at the founding of the modern state of Israel in 1948. From that, the events predicted by Jesus are regarded not specifically about a fall of Jerusalem, but about his return and the end of the world. Therefore those who hold this view believe that the End Times will begin within a generation of 1948. If these EndTimers, then, believe that Jesus Christ will return within a generation of 1948, the first question one has to ask is, "How long is a generation?" In the 1960s and 1970s, even into the 1980s, the common answer to that was "Forty years!". Consequently, a glut of books and videos appeared predicting that the End would begin in the 1980s, and they included such titles as: Will Christ Return by 1988: 101 Reasons Why; 88 Reasons Why Christ Will Return in 1988; and Decade of the 80's: A World in Spasm. But the most prominent and influential of them was Hal Lindsey's Late Great Planet Earth, published in 1970. That book is said to be the third largest selling Christian book of all time, with over 20 million copies in print (weep your heart out Bryce Courtney). Most books of this type have been published in America, but were frequently available in Australia. Though this system of belief seems to have had its origins in nineteenth century Britain, American fundamentalists have been its main advocates and developers. As so often happens with American ideas and practices, many Australians have enthusiastically adopted it. In Australia one of the leading teachers in the EndTimers' camp is Brisbane's Ray Yerbury, though New Zealander Barry Smith through lecture tours and books has probably had more influence here. The books of Hal Lindsey, Ray Yerbury, Barry Smith and a few other sources will now be used to detail the beliefs of these Australian EndTimers. Lindsey is included because though he is American, Late Great Planet Earth has been a major, perhaps the major, factor in many Australian Christians adopting these beliefs. The starting point must be the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948. To EndTimers this is fulfilment of biblical prophecy. Lindsey says that the "paramount prophetic sign" concerning the return of Jesus Christ is that "Israel had to be a nation again in the land of its forefathers". As has already been noted, within this scheme the return of Christ must happen within a generation of that occurrence. Lindsey writing in 1970 was bold enough to say a generation was "something like forty years" (Late, 43, 54), and is said to believe that Christ will definitely return before the year 2000. Yerbury, writing twenty years later, had to have other options, and he stated that a generation could be either 40, 70-80, 100 or 120 years (Vital, 11). Now 1988 is well in the past, many EndTimers seem to expect Christ's return in or around the year 2000. However, this belief is not usually held with great dogmatism or precision. Indeed, End Times expectations in Australia have been quieter in 1999 than many would have expected. There has been little banner-waving or overt demonstration. In addition the sale of books about the End Times through Australian Christian bookshops has also been slower this year than expected. EndTimers commonly believe that further "signs" of Jesus Christ's return include widespread wars, earthquakes and famines. This is based on a particular understanding of Matthew chapter 24. In addition, a decline in Christian moral values (2 Timothy 3:1-4) and a worldwide control of the money markets (Revelation 13:11-18) are also seen as signs that Christ's return is not far away. To what level wars, earthquakes and famines have to rise or moral values decline before they can be considered authentic signs is not usually discussed, but is clearly a difficulty. Another "sign" of the approaching End is the emergence of a demonic political leader, the Antichrist, also known as "the Beast" (Revelation 13:1-18). With the time scale involved it is necessary to believe that this man, and it always seems to be a man, is alive today, so Antichrist candidates have included the present Pope, the President of a rapidly emerging United States of Europe, Bill Gates, and Prince Charles. Australian leaders do not seem to be considered sufficiently important or frightening to feature as Anichrist candidates. The Bible gives the identification of this "Beast": the number 666. Barry Smith, with neat numerics (a = 6, b = 12, etc.), favoured Henry Kissinger for this role, his surname totalling 666 on Smith's method. Yerbury, with characteristic caution, says that we cannot know his identity at this stage. Another figure that must appear is the Antichrist's henchman, "the False Prophet", a religious leader (Smith, Warning, 22-56; Second Warning, 57-66; better, 170-173; Yerbury, Ultimate, 99-112; Vital, 53-4). Central to EndTimers' beliefs is the Great Tribulation, a time of terrible war and suffering. The duration of this cataclysm is variously described as being seven years (Lindsey, Late, 42, 137-8; Yerbury, Vital, 42-4) or three and a half years (Smith, Warning, 102-112). Where does the return of Jesus Christ fit into this? Commonly EndTimers believe that he will return twice, the first time will be immediately prior to the Great Tribulation, the second time will be seven years later. This first return is for a particular purpose: to remove all the "true" Christians from Earth and take them to heaven, in what is usually known as "the Rapture". This is sometimes referred to as "His coming for the saints". On this occasion he does not actually visit Earth; he only appears above it, and "the saints" will literally rise up to meet him in the sky (Matthew 24:37-41; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18). But for those remaining on Earth this will all be hidden, that is they will know that their Christian friends and neighbours have disappeared, but will have no idea where they have gone or what has happened (Lindsey, Late, 135-142; Smith, Warning, 150-157; Yerbury, Ultimate, 119-122; Vital, 33-6). This belief conjures up some extraordinary expectations. A Christian doctor operating on a patient will be whisked away, mid operation. Car drivers will disappear, causing their vehicles to crash. Airline pilots will suddenly vanish with terrible consequences. Indeed, it is rumoured that some American airlines do not allow Christians to be both pilot and co-pilot of the one aircraft. Christians must be teamed with non-Christians, in case the Christian is suddenly "raptured". Though this specific belief may not have as much significance in Australia as it does in America, there is no doubt that it is still held tenaciously by its Australian advocates. After the Great Tribulation Jesus Christ will return once more, this time actually to Earth. This return is sometimes referred to as Christ's coming "with the saints", for he will bring back the previously taken Christians with him. This will be followed by the fearsome battle of Armageddon, which Christ will win. He will then establish his reign over the whole world, ruling from Jerusalem, in peace, with equity. This reign will last for 1000 years, the millennium of chapter 20 of the book of Revelation. It is normal for EndTimers to perceive this as literally 1000 years, whereas many other Christians, often with very different understandings of End Times events, would see it as symbolic for a long period (Lindsey, Late, 169-178; Smith, Warning, 158-160; Yerbury, Ultimate, 137-149; Vital, 78-101). Following the Millennium there will be a Satan-led rebellion, but this will be short lived, possibly once more of a seven year duration (Lindsey, 178; Yerbury, Vital, 105-7). God, however, will then triumph over Satan, and wrap up the events of this world and this age, judge its inhabitants, and create a new Heaven and a new Earth, upon which the saved will live with Christ forever (Lindsey, 178; Yerbury, Ultimate, 150-154; Vital, 108-117). Who in Australia holds the views outlined above? They are held by most Australian Christian fundamentalists and some Christian evangelicals. Who are these fundamentalists and evangelicals and what else do they believe? Both groups hold to the core traditional Protestant beliefs (the deity of Jesus Christ, the Trinity, etc), and are to be found in most, if not all, Protestant denominations in Australia, from the Anglican Church to the more recently formed charismatic churches. Fundamentalists and evangelicals are not always clearly distinguishable from each other, for there is much overlapping in beliefs between them. But there are, however, some basic differences between the two. Fundamentalists have a very strong emphasis on a literal interpretation of the Bible, frequently interpreting in an unnatural way, often taking metaphors, symbols, and other figures literally. They are also frequently anti-intellectual. Evangelicals, on the other hand, would take a more rational approach to the Bible, giving due regard to the form of the specific writing, and are usually prepared to engage in intellectual debate. Both groups believe that Jesus Christ will literally return, though there is disagreement about the details between and within the two groups. How many evangelical and fundamentalist Christians are there in Australia? A survey published in 1994 was conducted amongst the attenders of numerous Protestant congregations, and discovered that 48% of those people believed that "the Bible is the Word of God which needs to be read in the context of the times". These, most of them at any rate, would be what have here been termed "evangelicals". Another 21% believed that "the Bible is the Word of God, to be taken literally word for word", and thus would be "fundamentalists" (Kaldor, 45-7). If the survey was anything like accurate, approaching 70% of those attending Australian Protestant churches are either evangelicals or fundamentalists. As it would also seem that there are over 1 million attenders at Protestant churches in Australia (Kaldor, 344), it is probable that there are more than seven hundred thousand evangelical and fundamentalist Christians in Australia. The specific beliefs outlined in this article are widespread amongst fundamentalist Christians, but also seem to be held by some evangelicals. These Christians can be found in probably all Protestant denominations, though are much more common in charismatic and Baptist churches than in, say, Anglican and Uniting churches. These beliefs are also found in some of the sects outside the mainstream Christian church. The number of EndTimers in Australia is almost certainly well in excess of one hundred thousand, and may be above two hundred thousand. How do these beliefs manifest themselves in current Australian life? First, one would expect EndTimers to be less concerned about certain issues of social concern than other Christians, and this often seems to be the case. For example, one does not often find them championing the protection of the environment. If Christ's Kingdom on Earth is not many years away, then why worry about such things now? They can be attended to when Christ returns. The important issue is to prepare people for that return. Another manifestation is the setting of dates for that return, which is probably more common than many realise. Those writers consulted for this study do not predict exact dates for these events. They rely on the more elastic concept of the "this generation" idea. But other people do predict precise dates and times. It is not uncommon to hear individuals, and it is usually individuals rather than movements, predicting that Christ will return on this date or another. They each have their own schemes of interpreting the numerics of such biblical books as Daniel and Revelation. One of the most famous of these predictions was in 1992 when posters began appearing in various Australian towns declaring: THE FINAL WARNING OF GOD JESUS is COMING IN 1am 29th OCT 1992 IN THE AIR (It's the Rapture) Remember the days of Noah and Lot Reject the 666 of computer bar code Repent your sins to God Ready the 7 years Great Tribulation This particular prediction originated in a movement in Korea, and, indeed, its leader in Australia was a Korean on temporary residence here. Several of the teachings discussed in this article are indicated in the poster, with the addition of a very precise prediction of Jesus Christ's return. When the day approached, the leader of the Australian wing of the movement was interviewed in newspapers and on TV, and he politely but boldly confirmed his conviction to the Australian public. The Current Affair interview with him the day after the prediction was proved false was especially touching. He apologised with great sincerity to those he had misled, and soon after returned to his homeland. Ironically, the organisation of which this man was part seems to have left open the possibility of future predictions. It is one of the astonishing facts of this type of endeavour throughout history, that those who predict the end of the world are not discouraged by failure. They just try again. Why? The answers may vary, but central is a strong belief in the certainty of biblical prophecy and the confidence that some have that they know best how to interpret it. It would seem that it would take more than failure to dent that confidence. References Kaldor, Peter (ed.) Winds of Change: The Experience of Church in a Changing Australia. Sydney: Anzea, 1994. Lindsey, Hal. The Late Great Planet Earth. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1970. Smith, Barry R. "... better than Nostradamus." Marlborough: Smith Family, 1996. ---. Second Warning. New Zealand: Smith Family, 1985. ---. Warning. New Zealand: Smith Family, 1980. Yerbury, Ray W. The Ultimate Event. Brisbane: Cross, 1988. ---. Vital Signs of Christ's Coming. Brisbane: Cross, 1990. Citation reference for this article MLA style: David Bennett. "That Year 2000: The End or a Beginning?." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.8 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/end.php>. Chicago style: David Bennett, "That Year 2000: The End or a Beginning?," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 8 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/end.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: David Bennett. (1999) That year 2000: the end or a beginning?. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(8). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9912/end.php> ([your date of access]).

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Abstract:

IntroductionIf human beings have become a geophysical force, capable of impacting the very crust and atmosphere of the planet, and if geophysical forces become objects of study, presences able to be charted over millions of years—one of our many problems is a 'naming' problem. - Bethany NowviskieThe anthropocene "denotes the present time interval, in which many geologically significant conditions and processes are profoundly altered by human activities" (S.Q.S.). Although the narrative and terminology of the anthropocene has not been officially legitimized by the scientific community as a whole, it has been adopted worldwide by a plethora of social and cultural studies. The challenges of the anthropocene demand interdisciplinary efforts and actions. New contexts, situations and environments call for original naming propositions: new terminologies are always illegitimate at the moment of their first appearance in the world.Against the background of the naming challenges of the anthropocene, we will map the emergence and tell the story of a tiny world within the world of media studies: the world of the term 'nanomedia' and its hyphenated sister 'nano-media'. While we tell the story of the uses of this term, its various meanings and applications, we will provide yet another possible interpretation and application to the term, one that we believe might be helpful to interdisciplinary media studies in the context of the anthropocene. Contemporary media terminologies are usually born out of fortuitous exchanges between communication technologies and their various social appropriations: hypodermic media, interactive media, social media, and so on and so forth. These terminologies are either recognised as the offspring of legitimate scientific endeavours by the media theory community, or are widely discredited and therefore rendered illegitimate. Scientific legitimacy comes from the broad recognition and embrace of a certain term and its inclusion in the canon of an epistemology. Illegitimate processes of theoretical enquiry and the study of the kinds of deviations that might deem a theory unacceptable have been scarcely addressed (Delborne). Rejected terminologies and theories are marginalised and gain the status of bastard epistemologies of media, considered irrelevant and unworthy of mention and recognition. Within these margins, however, different streams of media theories which involve conceptual hybridizations can be found: creole encounters between high culture and low culture (James), McLuhan's hybrid that comes from the 'meeting of two media' (McLuhan 55), or even 'bastard spaces' of cultural production (Bourdieu). Once in a while a new media epistemology arises that is categorised as a bastard not because of plain rejection or criticism, but because of its alien origins, formations and shape. New theories are currently emerging out of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary thinking which are, in many ways, bearers of strange features and characteristics that might render its meaning elusive and obscure to a monodisciplinary perspective. Radical transdisciplinary thinking is often alien and alienated. It results from unconventional excursions into uncharted territories of enquiry: bastard epistemologies arise from such exchanges. Being itself a product of a mestizo process of thinking, this article takes a look into the term nanomedia (or nano-media): a marginal terminology within media theory. This term is not to be confounded with the term biomedia, coined by Eugene Thacker (2004). (The theory of biomedia has acquired a great level of scientific legitimacy, however it refers to the moist realities of the human body, and is more concerned with cyborg and post-human epistemologies. The term nanomedia, on the contrary, is currently being used according to multiple interpretations which are mostly marginal, and we argue, in this paper, that such uses might be considered illegitimate). ’Nanomedia’ was coined outside the communications area. It was first used by scientific researchers in the field of optics and physics (Rand et al), in relation to flows of media via nanoparticles and optical properties of nanomaterials. This term would only be used in media studies a couple of years later, with a completely different meaning, without any acknowledgment of its scientific origins and context. The structure of this narrative is thus illegitimate, and as such does not fit into traditional modalities of written expression: there are bits and pieces of information and epistemologies glued together as a collage of nano fragments which combine philology, scientific literature, digital ethnography and technology reviews. Transgressions Illegitimate theories might be understood in terms of hybrid epistemologies that intertwine disciplines and perspectives, rendering its outcomes inter or transdisciplinary, and therefore prone to being considered marginal by disciplinary communities. Such theories might also be considered illegitimate due to social and political power struggles which aim to maintain territory by reproducing specific epistemologies within a certain field. Scientific legitimacy is a social and political process, which has been widely addressed. Pierre Bourdieu, in particular, has dedicated most of his work to deciphering the intricacies of academic wars around the legitimacy or illegitimacy of theories and terminologies. Legitimacy also plays a role in determining the degree to which a certain theory will be regarded as relevant or irrelevant:Researchers’ tendency to concentrate on those problems regarded as the most important ones (e.g. because they have been constituted as such by producers endowed with a high degree of legitimacy) is explained by the fact that a contribution or discovery relating to those questions will tend to yield greater symbolic profit (Bourdieu 22).Exploring areas of enquiry which are outside the boundaries of mainstream scientific discourses is a dangerous affair. Mixing different epistemologies in the search for transversal grounds of knowledge might result in unrecognisable theories, which are born out of a combination of various processes of hybridisation: social, technological, cultural and material.Material mutations are happening that call for new epistemologies, due to the implications of current technological possibilities which might redefine our understanding of mediation, and expand it to include molecular forms of communication. A new terminology that takes into account the scientific and epistemological implications of nanotechnology applied to communication [and that also go beyond cyborg metaphors of a marriage between biology and cibernetics] is necessary. Nanomedia and nanomediations are the terminologies proposed in this article as conceptual tools to allow these further explorations. Nanomedia is here understood as the combination of different nanotechnological mediums of communication that are able to create and disseminate meaning via molecular exchange and/ or assembly. Nanomediation is here defined as the process of active transmission and reception of signs and meaning using nanotechnologies. These terminologies might help us in conducting interdisciplinary research and observations that go deeper into matter itself and take into account its molecular spaces of mediation - moving from metaphor into pragmatics. Nanomedia(s)Within the humanities, the term 'nano-media' was first proposed by Mojca Pajnik and John Downing, referring to small media interventions that communicate social meaning in independent ways. Their use of term 'nano-media' proposes to be a revised alternative to the plethora of terms that categorise such media actions, such as alternative media, community media, tactical media, participatory media, etc. The metaphor of smallness implied in the term nano-media is used to categorise the many fragments and complexities of political appropriations of independent media. Historical examples of the kind of 'nano' social interferences listed by Downing (2),include the flyers (Flugblätter) of the Protestant Reformation in Germany; the jokes, songs and ribaldry of François Rabelais’ marketplace ... the internet links of the global social justice (otromundialista) movement; the worldwide community radio movement; the political documentary movement in country after country.John Downing applies the meaning of the prefix nano (coming from the Greek word nanos - dwarf), to independent media interventions. His concept is rooted in an analysis of the social actions performed by local movements scattered around the world, politically engaged and tactically positioned. A similar, but still unique, proposition to the use of the term 'nano-media' appeared 2 years later in the work of Graham St John (442):If ‘mass media’ consists of regional and national print and television news, ‘niche media’ includes scene specific publications, and ‘micro media’ includes event flyers and album cover art (that which Eshun [1998] called ‘conceptechnics’), and ‘social media’ refers to virtual social networks, then the sampling of popular culture (e.g. cinema and documentary sources) using the medium of the programmed music itself might be considered nano-media.Nano-media, according to Graham St John, "involves the remediation of samples from popular sources (principally film) as part of the repertoire of electronic musicians in their efforts to create a distinct liminalized socio-aesthetic" (St John 445). While Downing proposes to use the term nano-media as a way to "shake people free of their obsession with the power of macro-media, once they consider the enormous impact of nano-technologies on our contemporary world" (Downing 1), Graham St John uses the term to categorise media practices specific to a subculture (psytrance). Since the use of the term 'nano-media' in relation to culture seems to be characterised by the study of marginalised social movements, portraying a hybrid remix of conceptual references that, if not completely illegitimate, would be located in the border of legitimacy within media theories, I am hereby proposing yet another bastard version of the concept of nanomedia (without a hyphen). Given that neither of the previous uses of the term 'nano-media' within the discipline of media studies take into account the technological use of the prefix nano, it is time to redefine the term in direct relation to nanotechnologies and communication devices. Let us start by taking a look at nanoradios. Nanoradios are carbon nanotubes connected in such a way that when electrodes flow through the nanotubes, various electrical signals recover the audio signals encoded by the radio wave being received (Service). Nanoradios are examples of the many ways in which nanotechnologies are converging with and transforming our present information and communication technologies. From molecular manufacturing (Drexler) to quantum computing (Deutsch), we now have a wide spectrum of emerging and converging technologies that can act as nanomedia - molecular structures built specifically to act as communication devices.NanomediationsBeyond literal attempts to replicate traditional media artifacts using nanotechnologies, we find deep processes of mediation which are being called nanocommunication (Hara et al.) - mediation that takes place through the exchange of signals between molecules: Nanocommunication networks (nanonetworks) can be used to coordinate tasks and realize them in a distributed manner, covering a greater area and reaching unprecedented locations. Molecular communication is a novel and promising way to achieve communication between nanodevices by encoding messages inside molecules. (Abadal & Akyildiz) Nature is nanotechnological. Living systems are precise mechanisms of physical engineering: our molecules obey our DNA and fall into place according to biological codes that are mysteriously written in our every cell. Bodies are perfectly mediated - biological systems of molecular communication and exchange. Humans have always tried to emulate or to replace natural processes by artificial ones. Nanotechnology is not an exception. Many nanotechnological applications try to replicate natural systems, for example: replicas of nanostructures found in lotus flowers are now being used in waterproof fabrics, nanocrystals, responsible for resistance of cobwebs, are being artificially replicated for use in resistant materials, and various proteins are being artificially replicated as well (NNI 05). In recent decades, the methods of manipulation and engineering of nano particles have been perfected by scientists, and hundreds of nanotechnological products are now being marketed. Such nano material levels are now accessible because our digital technologies were advanced enough to allow scientific visualization and manipulation at the atomic level. The Scanning Tunneling Microscopes (STMs), by Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer (1986), might be considered as the first kind of nanomedia devices ever built. STMs use quantum-mechanical principles to capture information about the surface of atoms and molecules, allowed digital imaging and visualization of atomic surfaces. Digital visualization of atomic surfaces led to the discovery of buckyballs and nanotubes (buckytubes), structures that are celebrated today and received their names in honor of Buckminster Fuller. Nanotechnologies were developed as a direct consequence of the advancement of digital technologies in the fields of scientific visualisation and imaging. Nonetheless, a direct causal relationship between nano and digital technologies is not the only correlation between these two fields. Much in the same manner in which digital technologies allow infinite manipulation and replication of data, nanotechnologies would allow infinite manipulation and replication of molecules. Nanocommunication could be as revolutionary as digital communication in regards to its possible outcomes concerning new media. Full implementation of the new possibilities of nanomedia would be equivalent or even more revolutionary than digital networks are today. Nanotechnology operates at an intermediate scale at which the laws of classical physics are mixed to the laws of quantum physics (Holister). The relationship between digital technologies and nanotechnologies is not just instrumental, it is also conceptual. We might compare the possibilities of nanotechnology to hypertext: in the same way that a word processor allows the expression of any type of textual structure, so nanotechnology could allow, in principle, for a sort of "3-D printing" of any material structure.Nanotechnologies are essentially media technologies. Nanomedia is now a reality because digital technologies made possible the visualization and computational simulation of the behavior of atomic particles at the nano level. Nanomachines that can build any type of molecular structure by atomic manufacturing could also build perfect replicas of themselves. Obviously, such a powerful technology offers medical and ecological dangers inherent to atomic manipulation. Although this type of concern has been present in the global debate about the social implications of nanotechnology, its full implications are yet not entirely understood. A general scientific consensus seems to exist, however, around the idea that molecules could become a new type of material alphabet, which, theoretically, would make possible the reconfiguration of the physical structures of any type of matter using molecular manufacturing. Matter becomes digital through molecular communication.Although the uses given to the term nano-media in the context of cultural and social studies are merely metaphorical - the prefix nano is used by humanists as an allegorical reference of a combination between 'small' and 'contemporary' - once the technological and scientifical realities of nanomedia present themselves as a new realm of mediation, populated with its own kind of molecular devices, it will not be possible to ignore its full range of implications anymore. A complexifying media ecosystem calls for a more nuanced and interdisciplinary approach to media studies.ConclusionThis article narrates the different uses of the term nanomedia as an illustration of the way in which disciplinarity determines the level of legitimacy or illegitimacy of an emerging term. We then presented another possible use of the term in the field of media studies, one that is more closely aligned with its scientific origins. The importance and relevance of this narrative is connected to the present challenges we face in the anthropocene. The reality of the anthropocene makes painfully evident the full extent of the impact our technologies have had in the present condition of our planet's ecosystems. For as long as we refuse to engage directly with the technologies themselves, trying to speak the language of science and technology in order to fully understand its wider consequences and implications, our theories will be reduced to fancy metaphors and aesthetic explorations which circulate around the critical issues of our times without penetrating them. The level of interdisciplinarity required by the challenges of the anthropocene has to go beyond anthropocentrism. Traditional theories of media are anthropocentric: we seem to be willing to engage only with that which we are able to recognise and relate to. Going beyond anthropocentrism requires that we become familiar with interdisciplinary discussions and perspectives around common terminologies so we might reach a consensus about the use of a shared term. For scientists, nanomedia is an information and communication technology which is simultaneously a tool for material engineering. For media artists and theorists, nano-media is a cultural practice of active social interference and artistic exploration. However, none of the two approaches is able to fully grasp the magnitude of such an inter and transdisciplinary encounter: when communication becomes molecular engineering, what are the legitimate boundaries of media theory? If matter becomes not only a medium, but also a language, what would be the conceptual tools needed to rethink our very understanding of mediation? Would this new media epistemology be considered legitimate or illegitimate? Be it legitimate or illegitimate, a new media theory must arise that challenges and overcomes the walls which separate science and culture, physics and semiotics, on the grounds that it is a transdisciplinary change on the inner workings of media itself which now becomes our vector of epistemological and empirical transformation. A new media theory which not only speaks the language of molecular technologies but that might be translated into material programming, is the only media theory equipped to handle the challenges of the anthropocene. ReferencesAbadal, Sergi, and Ian F. Akyildiz. "Bio-Inspired Synchronization for Nanocommunication Networks." Global Telecommunications Conference (GLOBECOM), 2011.Borisenko, V. E., and S. Ossicini. What Is What in the Nanoworld: A Handbook on Nanoscience and Nanotechnology. Weinheim: Wiley-VCH, 2005.Bourdieu, Pierre. "The Specificity of the Scientific Field and the Social Conditions of the Progress of Reason." Social Science Information 14 (Dec. 1975): 19-47.---. La Distinction: Critique Sociale du Jugement. Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1979. Delborne, Jason A. "Transgenes and Transgressions: Scientific Dissent as Heterogeneous Practice". Social Studies of Science 38 (2008): 509.Deutsch, David. The Beginning of Infinity. London: Penguin, 2011.Downing, John. 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Introduction In any list of dictators and antagonists of the West the name of Libya’s Colonel Muammar Qaddafi will always rank highly as one of the most memorable, colourful and mercurial. The roles he played to his fellow Libyans, to regional groupings, to revolutionaries and to the West were complex and nuanced. These various roles developed over time but were all grounded in his self-belief as a messianic revolutionary figure. More importantly, these roles and behaviours that stemmed from them were instrumental in preserving Qaddafi’s rule and thwarting challenges to it. These facets of Qaddafi’s public self accord with the model of “persona” described by Marshall. Whilst the nature of political persona and celebrity in the Western world has been explored by several scholars (for example Street; Wilson), little work has been conducted on the use of persona by non-democratic leaders. This paper examines the aspects of persona exhibited by Colonel Qaddafi and applied during his tenure. In constructing his role as a revolutionary leader, Qaddafi was engaging in a form of public performance aimed at delivering himself to a wider audience. Whether at home or abroad, this persona served the purpose of helping the Libyan leader consolidate his power, stymie political opposition and export his revolutionary ideals. The trajectory of his persona begins in the early days of his coming to power as a charismatic leader during a “time of distress” (Weber) and culminates in his bloody end next to a roadside drainage culvert. In between these points Qaddafi’s persona underwent refinement and reinvention. Coupled with the legacy he left on the Libyan political system, the journey of Muammar Qaddafi’s personas demonstrate how political personality can be the salvation or damnation of an entire state.Qaddafi: The Brotherly RevolutionaryCaptain Muammar Qaddafi came to power in Libya in 1969 at the age of just 27. He was the leader of a group of military officers who overthrew King Idris in a popular and relatively bloodless coup founded on an ideology of post-colonial Arab nationalism and a doing away with the endemic corruption and nepotism that were the hallmarks of the monarchy. With this revolutionary cause in mind and in an early indication that he recognised the power of political image, Qaddafi showed restraint in adopting the trappings of office. His modest promotion to the rank of Colonel was an obvious example of this, and despite the fact that in practical terms he was the supreme commander of Libya’s armed forces, he resisted the temptation to formally aggrandize himself with military titles for the ensuing 42 years of his rule.High military rank was in a way irrelevant to a man moving to change his persona from army officer to messianic national leader. Switching away from a reliance on military hierarchy as a basis for his authority allowed Qaddafi to re-cast himself as a leader with a broader mission. He began to utilise titles such as “Chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council” (RCC) and “Brotherly Leader and Guide of the Revolution.” The persona on display here was one of detached impartiality and almost reluctant leadership. There was the suggestion that Qaddafi was not really acting as a head of state, but merely an ordinary Libyan who, through popular acclaim, was being begged to lead his people. The attraction of this persona remained until the bitter end for Qaddafi, with his professed inability to step aside from a leadership role he insisted he did not formally occupy. This accords with the contention of Weber, who describes how an individual favoured with charisma can step forward at a time of crisis to complete a “mission.” Once in a position of authority, perpetuating that role of leadership and acclamation can become the mission itself:The holder, of charisma seizes the task that is adequate for him and demands obedience and a following by virtue of his mission. His success determines whether he finds them. His charismatic claim breaks down if his mission is not recognized by those to whom he feels he has been sent. If they recognize him, he is their master—so long as he knows how to maintain recognition through ‘proving’ himself. But he does not derive his ‘right’ from their will, in the manner of an election. Rather, the reverse holds: it is the duty of those to whom he addresses his mission to recognize him as their charismatically qualified leader. (Weber 266-7)As his rule extended across the decades, Qaddafi fostered his revolutionary credentials via a typical cult of personality approach. His image appeared on everything from postage stamps to watches, bags, posters and billboards. Quotations from the Brother Leader were set to music and broadcast as pop songs. “Spontaneous” rallies of support would occur when crowds of loyalists would congregate to hear the Brotherly Leader speak. Although Qaddafi publicly claimed he did not like this level of public adoration he accepted it because the people wanted to adore him. It was widely known however that many of these crowds were paid to attend these rallies (Blundy and Lycett 16).Qaddafi: The Philosopher In developing his persona as a guide and a man who was sharing his natural gifts with the people, Qaddafi developed a post-colonial philosophy he called “Third Universal Theory.” This was published in volumes collectively known as The Green Book. This was mandatory reading for every Libyan and contained a distillation of Qaddafi’s thoughts and opinions on everything from sports to politics to religion to the differences between men and women. Whilst it may be tempting for outsiders to dismiss these writings as the scribbling of a dictator, the legacy of Qaddafi’s persona as political philosopher is worthy of some examination. For in offering his revelations to the Libyan people, Qaddafi extended his mandate beyond leader of a revolution and into the territory of “messianic reformer of a nation.”The Green Book was a three-part series. The first instalment was written in 1975 and focuses on the “problem of democracy” where Qaddafi proposes direct democracy as the best option for a progressive nation. The second instalment, published in 1977, focuses on economics and expounds socialism as the solution to all fiscal woes. (Direct popular action here was evidenced in the RCC making rental of real estate illegal, meaning that all tenants in the country suddenly found themselves granted ownership of the property they were occupying!) The final chapter, published in 1981, proposes the Third Universal Theory where Qaddafi outlines his unique solution for implementing direct democracy and socialism. Qaddafi coined a new term for his Islamically-inspired socialist utopia: Jamahiriya. This was defined as being a “state of the masses” and formed the blueprint for Libyan society which Qaddafi subsequently imposed.This model of direct democracy was part of the charismatic conceit Qaddafi cultivated: that the Libyan people were their own leaders and his role was merely as a benevolent agent acceding to their wishes. However the implementation of the Jamahiriya was anything but benevolent and its legacy has crippled post-Qaddafi Libya. Under this system, Libyans did have some control over their affairs at a very local level. Beyond this, an increasingly complex series of committees and regional groupings, over which the RCC had the right of veto, diluted the participation of ordinary citizens and their ability to coalesce around any individual leader. The banning of standard avenues of political organisation, such as parties and unions, coupled with a ruthless police state that detained and executed anyone offering even a hint of political dissent served to snuff out any opposition before it had a chance to gather pace. The result was that there were no Libyans with enough leadership experience or public profile to take over when Qaddafi was ousted in 2011.Qaddafi: The Liberator In a further plank of his revolutionary persona Qaddafi turned to the world beyond Libya to offer his brotherly guidance. This saw him champion any cause that claimed to be a liberation or resistance movement struggling against the shackles of colonialism. He tended to favour groups that had ideologies aligned with his own, namely Arab unity and the elimination of Israel, but ultimately was not consistent in this regard. Aside from Palestinian nationalists, financial support was offered to groups such as the Provisional Irish Republican Army, the Moro National Liberation Front (Philippines), Umkhonto we Sizwe (South Africa), ETA (Spain), the Polisario Front (Western Sahara), and even separatist indigenous Australians. This policy of backing revolutionary groups was certainly a projection of his persona as a charismatic enabler of the revolutionary mission. However, the reception of this mission in the wider world formed the basis for the image that Qaddafi most commonly occupied in Western eyes.In 1979 the ongoing Libyan support for groups pursuing violent action against Israel and the West saw the country designated a State-Sponsor of Terror by the US Department of State. Diplomatic relations between the two nations were severed and did not resume until 2004. At this point Qaddafi seemed to adopt a persona of “opponent of the West,” ostensibly on behalf of the world’s downtrodden colonial peoples. The support for revolutionary groups was changing to a more active use of them to strike at Western interests. At the same time Qaddafi stepped up his rhetoric against America and Britain, positioning himself as a champion of the Arab world, as the one leader who had the courage of his convictions and the only one who was squarely on the side of the ordinary citizenry (in contrast to other, more compliant Arab rulers). Here again there is evidence of the charismatic revolutionary persona, reluctantly taking up the burden of leadership on behalf of his brothers.Whatever his ideals, the result was that Qaddafi and his state became the focus of increasing Western ire. A series of incidents between the US and Libya in international waters added to the friction, as did Libyan orchestrated terror attacks in Berlin, Rome and Vienna. At the height of this tension in 1986, American aircraft bombed targets in Libya, narrowly missing Qaddafi himself. This role as public enemy of America led to Qaddafi being characterised by President Ronald Reagan (no stranger to the use of persona himself) as the “mad dog of the Middle East” and a “squalid criminal.” The enmity of the West made life difficult for ordinary Libyans dealing with crippling sanctions, but for Qaddafi, it helped bolster his persona as a committed revolutionary.Qaddafi: Leader of the Arab and African Worlds Related to his early revolutionary ideologies were Qaddafi’s aspirations as a pan-national leader. Inspired by Egypt’s Gamel Abdul Nasser from a young age, the ideals of pan-Arab unity were always a cornerstone of Qaddafi’s beliefs. It is not therefore surprising that he developed ambitions of being the person to bring about and “guide” that unity. Once again the Weberian description of the charismatic leader is relevant, particularly the notion that such leadership does not respect conventional boundaries of functional jurisdictions or local bailiwicks; in this case, state boundaries.During the 1970s Qaddafi was involved in numerous attempts to broker Arab unions between Libya and states such as Egypt, Syria and Tunisia. All of these failed to materialise once the exact details of the mergers began to be discussed, in particular who would assume the mantle of leadership in these super-states. In line with his persona as the rightly-guided revolutionary, Qaddafi consistently blamed the failure of these unions on the other parties, souring his relationship with his fellow Arab leaders. His hardline stance on Israel also put him at odds with those peers more determined to find a compromise. Following the assassination of Egypt’s Anwar Sadat in 1981 Qaddafi praised the act as justified because of Sadat’s signing of the Camp David Accords with Israel.Having given up on the hope of achieving pan-Arab Unity, Qaddafi sought to position himself as a leader of the African bloc. In 2009 he became Chairperson of the African Union and took to having himself introduced as “The King of Kings of Africa.” The level of dysfunction of the African Union was no less than that of the Arab League and Qaddafi’s grandiose plans for becoming the President of the United States of Africa failed to materialise.In both his pan-Arab and pan-Africa ambitions, we see a persona of Qaddafi that aims at leadership beyond his own state. Whilst there may be delusions of grandeur apparent in the practicalities of these goals, this image was nevertheless something that Qaddafi used to leverage the next phase of his political transformation.Qaddafi: The Post-9/11 Statesman However much he might be seen as erratic, Qaddafi’s innate intelligence could result in a political astuteness lacking in many of his Arab peers. Following the events of 11 September 2001, Qaddafi was the first international leader to condemn the attacks on America and pledge support in the War on Terror and the extermination of al-Qaeda. Despite his history as a supporter of terrorism overseas, Qaddafi had a long history of repressing it at home, just as with any other form of political opposition. The pan-Islamism of al-Qaeda was anathema to his key ideologies of direct democracy (guided by himself). This meant the United States and Libya were now finally on the same team. As part of this post-9/11 sniffing of the wind, Qaddafi abandoned his fledgling Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) program and finally agreed to pay reparations to the families of the victims of the Pan Am 107 flight downed over Lockerbie in 1987.This shift in Qaddafi’s policy did not altogether dispel his persona of brotherly leadership amongst African nations. As a bloc leader and an example of the possibility of ‘coming in from the cold’, Qaddafi and Libya were reintegrated into the world community. This included giving a speech at the United Nations in 2009. This event did little to add to his reputation as a statesman in the West. Given a 15-minute slot, the Libyan leader delivered a rambling address over 90 minutes long, which included him tearing up a copy of the UN Charter and turning his back to the audience whilst continuing to speak.Qaddafi: The Clown From the Western point of view, performances like this painted Qaddafi’s behaviour as increasingly bizarre. Particularly after Libya’s rapprochement with the West, the label of threatening terrorist supporter faded and was replaced with something along the lines of a harmless clown prince. Tales of the Libyan leader’s coterie of virgin female bodyguards were the subject of ridicule, as was his ardour for US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Perhaps this behaviour was indicative of a leader increasingly divorced from reality. Surrounded by sycophants dependent on his regard for their tenure or physical survival, as well as Western leaders eager to contrast his amiability with that of Saddam Hussein, nobody was prepared to draw attention to the emperor’s new clothes.Indeed, elaborate and outlandish clothing played an increasing role in Qaddafi’s persona as the decades went on. His simple revolutionary fatigues of the early years were superseded by a vast array of military uniforms heavily decorated with medals and emblems; traditional African, Arab or Bedouin robes depending on the occasion; and in later years a penchant for outfits that included images of the African continent or pictures of dead martyrs. (In 2009 Vanity Fair did a tongue-in-cheek article on the fashion of Colonel Qaddafi entitled Dictator Chic: Colonel Qaddafi—A Life in Fashion. This spawned a number of similar features including one in TIME Magazine entitled Gaddafi Fashion: The Emperor Had Some Crazy Clothes.)The Bedouin theme was an aspect of persona that Qaddafi cultivated as an ascetic “man of the people” throughout his leadership. Despite having many palaces available he habitually slept in an elaborate tent, according once again with Weber’s description of the charismatic leader as one who eschews methodical material gain. This predisposition served him well in the 1986 United States bombing, when his residence in a military barracks was demolished, but Qaddafi escaped unscathed as he was in his tent at the time. He regularly entertained foreign dignitaries in tents when they visited Libya and he took one when travelling abroad, including pitching it in the gardens of a Parisian hotel during a state visit in 2007. (A request to camp in New York’s Central Park for his UN visit in 2009 was denied; “Inside the Tents of Muammar Gaddafi”).The role of such a clown was unlikely to have been an aim for Qaddafi, but was instead the product of his own increasing isolation. It will likely be his most enduring character in the Western memory of his rule. It should be noted though that clowns and fools do not maintain an iron grip on power for over 40 years.The Legacy of Qaddafi’s Many Personas Colonel Muammar Qaddafi was a clever and complex leader who exhibited many variations of persona during his four decades of rule. These personas were generally facets of the same core self-belief of a charismatic leader, but could be conflicting, and often confusing, to observers. His eccentricities often hid a layer of deeper cunning and ambition, but ultimately led to his marginalisation and an impression by world leaders that he was untrustworthy.His erratic performance at the UN in 2009 perhaps typifies the end stages of Qaddafi’s leadership: a man increasingly disconnected from his people and the realities of what was going on around him. His insistence that the 2011 Libyan revolution was variously a colonial or terrorist inspired piece of theatre belied the deep resentment of his rule. His role as opponent of the Western and Arab worlds alike meant that he was unsupported in his attempts to deal with the uprising. Indeed, the West’s rapid willingness to use their airpower was instrumental in speeding on the rebel forces.What cannot be disputed is the chaotic legacy this charismatic figure left for his country. Since the uprising climaxed in his on-camera lynching in October 2011, Libya has been plunged in to turmoil and shows no signs of this abating. One of the central reasons for this chaos is that Qaddafi’s supremacy, his political philosophies, and his use of messianic persona left Libya completely unprepared for rule by any other party.This ensuing chaos has been a cruel, if ironic, proof of Qaddafi’s own conceit: Libya could not survive without him.References Al-Gathafi, Muammar. The Green Book: The Solution to the Problem of Democracy; The Solution to the Economic Problem; The Social Basis of the Third Universal Theory. UK: Ithaca Press, 2005.Blundy, David, and Andrew Lycett. Qaddafi and the Libyan Revolution. Boston and Toronto: Little Brown & Co, 1987.Marshall, P. David. “Persona Studies: Mapping the Proliferation of the Public Self”. Journalism 15.2 (2014): 153-170.Qaddafi, Muammar. Speech at the United Nations 2009. ‹http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKMyY2V0J0Y›. Street, John. “Celebrity Politicians: Popular Culture and Political Representation.” British Journal of Politics and International Relations 6 (2004): 435-52.Street, John. “Do Celebrity Politics and Celebrity Politicians Matter?” The British Journal of Politics & International Relations 14.3 (2012): 346-356.TIME Magazine. “Gaddafi Fashion: The Emperor Had Some Crazy Clothes.” ‹http://content.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,2055860,00.html›.TIME Magazine. “Inside the Tents of Muammar Gaddafi.” ‹http://content.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,2058074,00.html›.Totman, Sally, and Mat Hardy. “In the Green Zone: 40 years with Colonel Qaddafi.” Ed. Geoffrey Hawker. APSA 2009: Proceedings of the APSA Annual Conference 2009. Sydney: Macquarie University, 2009. 1-19.Totman, Sally, and Mat Hardy. “The Rise and Decline of Libya as a Rogue State.” OCIS 2008: Oceanic Conference on International Studies. Brisbane: University of Queensland, 2008. 1-25.Vanity Fair. “Dictator Chic: Colonel Qaddafi—A Life in Fashion.” ‹http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/08/qaddafi-slideshow200908›.Weber, Max, Hans Heinrich Gerth, and C. Wright Mills. From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. London: Routledge, 2009.Wilson, J. “Kevin Rudd, Celebrity and Audience Democracy in Australia.” Journalism 15.2 (2013): 202-217.

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Abstract:

For seven months in 1999/2000, six-year old Cuban Elián González was embroiled in a family feud plotted along rival national and ideological lines, and relayed televisually as soap opera across the planet. In Miami, apparitions of the Virgin Mary were reported after Elián’s arrival; adherents of Afro-Cuban santería similarly regarded Elián as divinely touched. In Cuba, Elián’s “kidnapping” briefly reinvigorated a torpid revolutionary project. He was hailed by Fidel Castro as the symbolic descendant of José Martí and Che Guevara, and of the patriotic rigour they embodied. Cubans massed to demand his return. In the U.S.A., Elián’s case was arbitrated at every level of the juridical system. The “Save Elián” campaign generated widespread debate about godless versus godly family values, the contours of the American Dream, and consumerist excess. By the end of 2000 Elián had generated the second largest volume of TV news coverage to that date in U.S. history, surpassed only by the O. J. Simpson case (Fasulo). After Fidel Castro, and perhaps the geriatric music ensemble manufactured by Ry Cooder, the Buena Vista Social Club, Elián became the most famous Cuban of our era. Elián also emerged as the unlikeliest of popular-cultural icons, the focus and subject of cyber-sites, books, films, talk-back radio programs, art exhibits, murals, statues, documentaries, a South Park episode, poetry, songs, t-shirts, posters, newspaper editorials in dozens of languages, demonstrations, speeches, political cartoons, letters, legal writs, U.S. Congress records, opinion polls, prayers, and, on both sides of the Florida Strait, museums consecrated in his memory. Confronted by Elián’s extraordinary renown and historical impact, John Carlos Rowe suggests that the Elián story confirms the need for a post-national and transdisciplinary American Studies, one whose practitioners “will have to be attentive to the strange intersections of politics, law, mass media, popular folklore, literary rhetoric, history, and economics that allow such events to be understood.” (204). I share Rowe’s reading of Elián’s story and the clear challenges it presents to analysis of “America,” to which I would add “Cuba” as well. But Elián’s story is also significant for the ways it challenges critical understandings of fame and its construction. No longer, to paraphrase Leo Braudy (566), definable as an accidental hostage of the mass-mediated eye, Elián’s fame has no certain relation to the child at its discursive centre. Elián’s story is not about an individuated, conscious, performing, desiring, and ambivalently rewarded ego. Elián was never what P. David Marshall calls “part of the public sphere, essentially an actor or, … a player” in it (19). The living/breathing Elián is absent from what I call the virtualizing drives that famously reproduced him. As a result of this virtualization, while one Elián now attends school in Cuba, many other Eliáns continue to populate myriad popular-cultural texts and to proliferate away from the states that tried to contain him. According to Jerry Everard, “States are above all cultural artefacts” that emerge, virtually, “as information produced by and through practices of signification,” as bits, bites, networks, and flows (7). All of us, he claims, reside in “virtual states,” in “legal fictions” based on the elusive and contested capacity to generate national identities in an imaginary bounded space (152). Cuba, the origin of Elián, is a virtual case in point. To augment Nicole Stenger’s definition of cyberspace, Cuba, like “Cyberspace, is like Oz — it is, we get there, but it has no location” (53). As a no-place, Cuba emerges in signifying terms as an illusion with the potential to produce and host Cubanness, as well as rival ideals of nation that can be accessed intact, at will, and ready for ideological deployment. Crude dichotomies of antagonism — Cuba/U.S.A., home/exile, democracy/communism, freedom/tyranny, North/South, godlessness/blessedness, consumption/want — characterize the hegemonic struggle over the Cuban nowhere. Split and splintered, hypersensitive and labyrinthine, guarded and hysterical, and always active elsewhere, the Cuban cultural artefact — an “atmospheric depression in history” (Stenger 56) — very much conforms to the logics that guide the appeal, and danger, of cyberspace. Cuba occupies an inexhaustible “ontological time … that can be reintegrated at any time” (Stenger 55), but it is always haunted by the prospect of ontological stalling and proliferation. The cyber-like struggle over reintegration, of course, evokes the Elián González affair, which began on 25 November 1999, when five-year old Elián set foot on U.S. soil, and ended on 28 June 2000, when Elián, age six, returned to Cuba with his father. Elián left one Cuba and found himself in another Cuba, in the U.S.A., each national claimant asserting virtuously that its other was a no-place and therefore illegitimate. For many exiles, Elián’s arrival in Miami confirmed that Castro’s Cuba is on the point of collapse and hence on the virtual verge of reintegration into the democratic fold as determined by the true upholders of the nation, the exile community. It was also argued that Elián’s biological father could never be the boy’s true father because he was a mere emasculated puppet of Castro himself. The Cuban state, then, had forfeited its claims to generate and host Cubanness. Succoured by this logic, the “Save Elián” campaign began, with organizations like the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF) bankrolling protests, leaflet and poster production, and official “Elián” websites, providing financial assistance to and arranging employment for some of Elián’s Miami relatives, lobbying the U.S. Congress and the Florida legislature, and contributing funds to the legal challenges on behalf of Elián at state and federal levels. (Founded in 1981, the CANF is the largest and most powerful Cuban exile organization, and one that regards itself as the virtual government-in-waiting. CANF emerged with the backing of the Reagan administration and the C.I.A. as a “private sector initiative” to support U.S. efforts against its long-time ideological adversary across the Florida Strait [Arboleya 224-5].) While the “Save Elián” campaign failed, the result of a Cuban American misreading of public opinion and overestimation of the community’s lobbying power with the Clinton administration, the struggle continues in cyberspace. CANF.net.org registers its central role in this intense period with silence; but many of the “Save Elián” websites constructed after November 1999 continue to function as sad memento moris of Elián’s shipwreck in U.S. virtual space. (The CANF website does provide links to articles and opinion pieces about Elián from the U.S. media, but its own editorializing on the Elián affair has disappeared. Two keys to this silence were the election of George W. Bush, and the events of 11 Sep. 2001, which have enabled a revision of the Elián saga as a mere temporary setback on the Cuban-exile historical horizon. Indeed, since 9/11, the CANF website has altered the terms of its campaign against Castro, posting photos of Castro with Arab leaders and implicating him in a world-wide web of terrorism. Elián’s return to Cuba may thus be viewed retrospectively as an act that galvanized Cuban-exile support for the Republican Party and their disdain for the Democratic rival, and this support became pivotal in the Republican electoral victory in Florida and in the U.S.A. as a whole.) For many months after Elián’s return to Cuba, the official Liberty for Elián site, established in April 2000, was urging visitors to make a donation, volunteer for the Save Elián taskforce, send email petitions, and “invite a friend to help Elián.” (Since I last accessed “Liberty for Elián” in March 2004 it has become a gambling site.) Another site, Elian’s Home Page, still implores visitors to pray for Elián. Some of the links no longer function, and imperatives to “Click here” lead to that dead zone called “URL not found on this server.” A similar stalling of the exile aspirations invested in Elián is evident on most remaining Elián websites, official and unofficial, the latter including The Sad Saga of Elian Gonzalez, which exhorts “Cuban Exiles! Now You Can Save Elián!” In these sites, a U.S. resident Elián lives on as an archival curiosity, a sign of pathos, and a reminder of what was, for a time, a Cuban-exile PR disaster. If such cybersites confirm the shipwrecked coordinates of Elián’s fame, the “Save Elián” campaign also provided a focus for unrestrained criticism of the Cuban exile community’s imbrication in U.S. foreign policy initiatives and its embrace of American Dream logics. Within weeks of Elián’s arrival in Florida, cyberspace was hosting myriad Eliáns on sites unbeholden to Cuban-U.S. antagonisms, thus consolidating Elián’s function as a disputed icon of virtualized celebrity and focus for parody. A sense of this carnivalesque proliferation can be gained from the many doctored versions of the now iconic photograph of Elián’s seizure by the INS. Still posted, the jpegs and flashes — Elián and Michael Jackson, Elián and Homer Simpson, Elián and Darth Vader, among others (these and other doctored versions are archived on Hypercenter.com) — confirm the extraordinary domestication of Elián in local pop-cultural terms that also resonate as parodies of U.S. consumerist and voyeuristic excess. Indeed, the parodic responses to Elián’s fame set the virtual tone in cyberspace where ostensibly serious sites can themselves be approached as send ups. One example is Lois Rodden’s Astrodatabank, which, since early 2000, has asked visitors to assist in interpreting Elián’s astrological chart in order to confirm whether or not he will remain in the U.S.A. To this end the site provides Elián’s astro-biography and birth chart — a Sagittarius with a Virgo moon, Elián’s planetary alignments form a bucket — and conveys such information as “To the people of Little Havana [Miami], Elian has achieved mystical status as a ‘miracle child.’” (An aside: Elián and I share the same birthday.) Elián’s virtual reputation for divinely sanctioned “blessedness” within a Cuban exile-meets-American Dream typology provided Tom Tomorrow with the target in his 31 January 2000, cartoon, This Modern World, on Salon.com. Here, six-year old Arkansas resident Allen Consalis loses his mother on the New York subway. His relatives decide to take care of him since “New York has much more to offer him than Arkansas! I mean get real!” A custody battle ensues in which Allan’s heavily Arkansas-accented father requires translation, and the case inspires heated debate: “can we really condemn him to a life in Arkansas?” The cartoon ends with the relatives tempting Allan with the delights offered by the Disney Store, a sign of Elián’s contested insertion into an American Dreamscape that not only promises an endless supply of consumer goods but provides a purportedly safe venue for the alternative Cuban nation. The illusory virtuality of that nation also animates a futuristic scenario, written in Spanish by Camilo Hernández, and circulated via email in May 2000. In this text, Elián sparks a corporate battle between Firestone and Goodyear to claim credit for his inner-tubed survival. Cuban Americans regard Elián as the Messiah come to lead them to the promised land. His ability to walk on water is scientifically tested: he sinks and has to be rescued again. In the ensuing custody battle, Cuban state-run demonstrations allow mothers of lesbians and of children who fail maths to have their say on Elián. Andrew Lloyd Weber wins awards for “Elián the Musical,” and for the film version, Madonna plays the role of the dolphin that saved Elián. Laws are enacted to punish people who mispronounce “Elián” but these do not help Elián’s family. All legal avenues exhausted, the entire exile community moves to Canada, and then to North Dakota where a full-scale replica of Cuba has been built. Visa problems spark another migration; the exiles are welcomed by Israel, thus inspiring a new Intifada that impels their return to the U.S.A. Things settle down by 2014, when Elián, his wife and daughter celebrate his 21st birthday as guests of the Kennedys. The text ends in 2062, when the great-great-grandson of Ry Cooder encounters an elderly Elián in Wyoming, thus providing Elián with his second fifteen minutes of fame. Hernández’s text confirms the impatience with which the Cuban-exile community was regarded by other U.S. Latino sectors, and exemplifies the loss of control over Elián experienced by both sides in the righteous Cuban “moral crusade” to save or repatriate Elián (Fernández xv). (Many Chicanos, for example, were angered at Cuban-exile arguments that Elián should remain in the U.S.A. when, in 1999 alone, 8,000 Mexican children were repatriated to Mexico (Ramos 126), statistical confirmation of the favored status that Cubans enjoy, and Mexicans do not, vis-à-vis U.S. immigration policy. Tom Tomorrow’s cartoon and Camilo Hernández’s email text are part of what I call the “What-if?” sub-genre of Elián representations. Another example is “If Elián Gonzalez was Jewish,” archived on Lori’s Mishmash Humor page, in which Eliat Ginsburg is rescued after floating on a giant matzoh in the Florida Strait, and his Florida relatives fight to prevent his return to Israel, where “he had no freedom, no rights, no tennis lessons”.) Nonetheless, that “moral crusade” has continued in the Cuban state. During the custody battle, Elián was virtualized into a hero of national sovereignty, an embodied fix for a revolutionary project in strain due to the U.S. embargo, the collapse of Soviet socialism, and the symbolic threat posed by the virtual Cuban nation-in-waiting in Florida. Indeed, for the Castro regime, the exile wing of the national family is virtual precisely because it conveniently overlooks two facts: the continued survival of the Cuban state itself; and the exile community’s forty-plus-year slide into permanent U.S. residency as one migrant sector among many. Such rhetoric has not faded since Elián’s return. On December 5, 2003, Castro visited Cárdenas for Elián’s tenth birthday celebration and a quick tour of the Museo a la batalla de ideas (Museum for the Battle of Ideas), the museum dedicated to Elián’s “victory” over U.S. imperialism and opened by Castro on July 14, 2001. At Elián’s school Castro gave a speech in which he recalled the struggle to save “that little boy, whose absence caused everyone, and the whole people of Cuba, so much sorrow and such determination to struggle.” The conflation of Cuban state rhetoric and an Elián mnemonic in Cárdenas is repeated in Havana’s “Plaza de Elián,” or more formally Tribuna Anti-imperialista José Martí, where a statue of José Martí, the nineteenth-century Cuban nationalist, holds Elián in his arms while pointing to Florida. Meanwhile, in Little Havana, Miami, a sun-faded set of photographs and hand-painted signs, which insist God will save Elián yet, hang along the front fence of the house — now also a museum and site of pilgrimage — where Elián once lived in a state of siege. While Elián’s centrality in a struggle between virtuality and virtue continues on both sides of the Florida Strait, the Cuban nowhere could not contain Elián. During his U.S. sojourn many commentators noted that his travails were relayed in serial fashion to an international audience that also claimed intimate knowledge of the boy. Coming after the O.J. Simpson saga and the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, the Elián story confirmed journalist Rick Kushman’s identification of a ceaseless, restless U.S. media attention shift from one story to the next, generating an “übercoverage” that engulfs the country “in mini-hysteria” (Calvert 107). But In Elián’s case, the voyeuristic media-machine attained unprecedented intensity because it met and worked with the virtualities of the Cuban nowhere, part of it in the U.S.A. Thus, a transnational surfeit of Elián-narrative options was guaranteed for participants, audiences and commentators alike, wherever they resided. In Cuba, Elián was hailed as the child-hero of the Revolution. In Miami he was a savior sent by God, the proof supplied by the dolphins that saved him from sharks, and the Virgins who appeared in Little Havana after his arrival (De La Torre 3-5). Along the U.S.A.-Mexico border in 2000, Elián’s name was given to hundreds of Mexican babies whose parents thought the gesture would guarantee their sons a U.S. future. Day by day, Elián’s story was propelled across the globe by melodramatic plot devices familiar to viewers of soap opera: doubtful paternities; familial crimes; identity secrets and their revelation; conflicts of good over evil; the reuniting of long-lost relatives; and the operations of chance and its attendant “hand of Destiny, arcane and vaguely supernatural, transcending probability of doubt” (Welsh 22). Those devices were also favored by the amateur author, whose narratives confirm that the delirious parameters of cyberspace are easily matched in the worldly text. In Michael John’s self-published “history,” Betrayal of Elian Gonzalez, Elián is cast as the victim of a conspiracy traceable back to the hydra-headed monster of Castro-Clinton and the world media: “Elian’s case was MANIPULATED to achieve THEIR OVER-ALL AGENDA. Only time will bear that out” (143). His book is now out of print, and the last time I looked (August 2004) one copy was being offered on Amazon.com for US$186.30 (original price, $9.95). Guyana-born, Canadian-resident Frank Senauth’s eccentric novel, A Cry for Help: The Fantastic Adventures of Elian Gonzalez, joins his other ventures into vanity publishing: To Save the Titanic from Disaster I and II; To Save Flight 608 From Disaster; A Wish to Die – A Will to Live; A Time to Live, A Time to Die; and A Day of Terror: The Sagas of 11th September, 2001. In A Cry for Help, Rachel, a white witch and student of writing, travels back in time in order to save Elián’s mother and her fellow travelers from drowning in the Florida Strait. As Senauth says, “I was only able to write this dramatic story because of my gift for seeing things as they really are and sharing my mystic imagination with you the public” (25). As such texts confirm, Elián González is an aberrant addition to the traditional U.S.-sponsored celebrity roll-call. He had no ontological capacity to take advantage of, intervene in, comment on, or be known outside, the parallel narrative universe into which he was cast and remade. He was cast adrift as a mere proper name that impelled numerous authors to supply the boy with the biography he purportedly lacked. Resident of an “atmospheric depression in history” (Stenger 56), Elián was battled over by virtualized national rivals, mass-mediated, and laid bare for endless signification. Even before his return to Cuba, one commentator noted that Elián had been consumed, denied corporeality, and condemned to “live out his life in hyper-space” (Buzachero). That space includes the infamous episode of South Park from May 2000, in which Kenny, simulating Elián, is killed off as per the show’s episodic protocols. Symptomatic of Elián’s narrative dispersal, the Kenny-Elián simulation keeps on living and dying whenever the episode is re-broadcast on TV sets across the world. Appropriated and relocated to strange and estranging narrative terrain, one Elián now lives out his multiple existences in the Cuban-U.S. “atmosphere in history,” and the Elián icon continues to proliferate virtually anywhere. References Arboleya, Jesús. The Cuban Counter-Revolution. Trans. Rafael Betancourt. Research in International Studies, Latin America Series no. 33. Athens, OH: Ohio Center for International Studies, 2000. Braudy, Leo. The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and Its History. New York and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1986. Buzachero, Chris. “Elian Gonzalez in Hyper-Space.” Ctheory.net 24 May 2000. 19 Aug. 2004: http://www.ctheory.net/text_file.asp?pick=222>. Calvert, Clay. Voyeur Nation: Media, Privacy, and Peering in Modern Culture. Boulder: Westview, 2000. 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Victoria, Canada: Trafford, 2000. Stenger, Nicole. “Mind Is a Leaking Rainbow.” Cyberspace: First Steps. Ed. Michael Benedikt. Cambridge, MA: MIT P, 1991. 49-58. Welsh, Alexander. George Eliot and Blackmail. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1985. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Allatson, Paul. "The Virtualization of Elián González." M/C Journal 7.5 (2004). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0411/16-allatson.php>. APA Style Allatson, P. (Nov. 2004) "The Virtualization of Elián González," M/C Journal, 7(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0411/16-allatson.php>.