STREET SCHEMA (8)
By:
April 10, 2024
One in a miniseries of posts — within SCHEMATIZING — via which Josh Glenn will share photos of manhole covers, the diagrammatic design of which he sometimes finds useful to his thinking — in his role as a consulting semiotician — about how to diagram a “semiosphere.” (Here’s an example of Josh’s proprietary “G-schema”; it appeared in his 2021 book The Adventurer’s Glossary, from McGill-Queen’s University Press). Josh is grateful to Rob Walker’s Art of Noticing provocations.
A semiosphere’s internal sections may not be entirely arbitrary, but they are certainly imposed by the schematizer — who may then forget that they weren’t always there. Which can be problematic. So how to prevent such reification?
Perhaps one solution would be to suggest — by adroitly deploying negative space — the existence of a semiosphere’s internal sections. Rather than boldly delimiting these sections, which are after all imaginary.
Bonus: Wouldn’t doing so also serve to make the interpenetration of these sections more apparent? If there are no bold lines delimiting them?
MORE FURSHLUGGINER THEORIES BY JOSH GLENN: SCHEMATIZING | IN CAHOOTS | JOSH’S MIDJOURNEY | POPSZTÁR SAMIZDAT | VIRUS VIGILANTE | TAKING THE MICKEY | WE ARE IRON MAN | AND WE LIVED BENEATH THE WAVES | IS IT A CHAMBER POT? | I’D LIKE TO FORCE THE WORLD TO SING | THE ARGONAUT FOLLY | THE PERFECT FLANEUR | THE TWENTIETH DAY OF JANUARY | THE REAL THING | THE YHWH VIRUS | THE SWEETEST HANGOVER | THE ORIGINAL STOOGE | BACK TO UTOPIA | FAKE AUTHENTICITY | CAMP, KITSCH & CHEESE | THE UNCLE HYPOTHESIS | MEET THE SEMIONAUTS | THE ABDUCTIVE METHOD | ORIGIN OF THE POGO | THE BLACK IRON PRISON | BLUE KRISHMA | BIG MAL LIVES | SCHMOOZITSU | YOU DOWN WITH VCP? | CALVIN PEEING MEME | DANIEL CLOWES: AGAINST GROOVY | DEBATING IN A VACUUM | PLUPERFECT PDA | SHOCKING BLOCKING.