Signal : An Expanded Semiotics of Periodicity ( Part II )

In this extended essay I revise the semiotic concept of Signal, updating it in relation to post-phenomenological perspectives on the technical extension of human perception by mediation. I define signal as periodicity and trace the structure of “regular recurrence” from wavelength to percept to memory. The discussion is situated as an “expansion” of semiotics towards cognition, applied science, and post-phenomenology. Deleuzean and Peircean engagements are developed with some further comment on Ihde, Simondon, Massumi, Kant, and Heidegger in connection with the status of percept in relation to affect and concept. 11. nOtE On DElEuzE, SimOnDOn, anD ihDE The five modalities of signal (S1–S5) have been derived phenomenologically through reflection on my own experience “at the helm” of mediation technologies. This note is to address three other sets of terms that may prove fruitful for further elaboration, albeit at diagonals or tangents away from the focus on periodicity that I argue is the primary basis for a semiotics of signal. “Rhythms and rhythms alone become characters, become objects. Rhythms are the only characters, the only Figures.”1 This statement of Deleuze on Francis Bacon’s paintings may suggest that Deleuze’s thought of “rhythms” is germane to a discussion of signal. On the contrary, they are more conducive to noise (aperiodicity), for clearly Bacon painted what are better-termed noise images than signal images. The very vagueness of what Deleuze means by “rhythm” points in the direction of noise. To take a step back from the Deleuzian enthusiasm, let’s note what a rhythm “is” (Deleuze would no doubt criticize this as ontology stepping on his ontogenesis). Rhythm in its most basic definition2 is a composite of the following: Pulse: identical intervallic units of time, proceeding in a sequence of event densities (units within a given time) that constitutes tempo, which can be either heard or implied Meter: groupings of stressed and unstressed pulses, recurring in measures, which can be partially implied but needs to be at least partially heard Rhythm “proper”: building hierarchically on the organization of pulse, tempo, and meter, rhythm consists of the actual soundings either on (synchronization) or off (syncopation) the underlying intervallic (implied or heard) units Rhythm as signal (in reference to the framework developed here) would need to assemble these groupings of periodicities. Rhythm as Deleuze actually uses the term (in connection to Bacon, and forces in the universe) is aperiodicity, or properly speaking, a rhythm of noise. Deleuze defines the signaletic as follows: It is a plastic mass, an a-signifying and a-syntaxic material, a material not formed linguistically even though it is not amorphous and is formed semiotically, aesthetically and pragmatically.3 Visually the “plastic mass” that is “not amorphous” is enough to suggest that Deleuze is referring to aperiodicity, but what logically connects Deleuzian-Baconian rhythm to noise is this notion of the “a-syntaxic” which jettisons rhythm into free time, or at least free jazz, which is nicely illustrated in a YouTube clip of Peter Brotzmann performing with Michael Zerang4. Simondon’s signaletics is elaborated in a theoretical assemblage of individuation, autopoiesis, organism-inan-environment, and equilibrium that is redolent of first generation cybernetics. Like Deleuze, Simondon does not connect signal to periodicity but rather (according to a somewhat standard semiotic model) to a general “material basis” of signification, which I discussed earlier. According to the distinction between signals and signification, we will say that there is an individual when there is a process of real individuation, i.e. when significations appear: the individual is that by which and that in which significations appear, whereas between the individuals there are only signals.5 For Simondon, individuation occurs against the pre-individual (the non-organism) through an intermediary site Signal: An Expanded Semiotics of Periodicity (Part II)