[in progress 2/3/23

In keeping with the emergence of objects from Forms, so chora is where meaning emerges - where semiosis occurs. It is also creating the scene for further semiosis.

Something scenic. The plane tree of The Phaedrus is typical - and so the plane trees along Sutherland Ave in Maida Vale can inherit the potential. Derrida’s non-built park, so that the space in Regents Park where the last scene is staged in The Magus. Proust’s bedroom, as a stage where the rest of the scene can occur: not the moment or place where he tastes the madeleine and lemon tea but the bedroom, where the invention occurs. Scene as in the Burkean sense of scene. Place, agent, agency, moment, duration.

A dance floor is another typical (type-ic) scene. A choric dance floor is not just a space that data moves through but a choreographic space that is used as a semiotic space where patterns and so meaning can emerge. the dance (https://digitalkeywords.weebly.com/chora.html) and https://thechoricarcade.wordpress.com/2013/01/02/3/.

Chora is often characterized (Kristiva, Ulmer, Sylvia, Kymalainen) as where signification (choose a verb w/care)

• starts
• occurs
• takes place
• is generated
• is manifested
• is manifest
• comes into being
• has a dance
• still looking for a verbal

Semiosis is a mental move, but it is *an embodied* mental move, and Kristiva, at least, would place the mental move in a physical space. A similar occurrence appear in Kress, where the sign maker is always *located*: the child's room, the museum, a waiting room chair, motivated by an image from Cosmo. The place and physicality mediate semiosis even as they facilitate it.

#derrida #kristeva #ulmer

• Where and when an agent experiences signification occurring, or yields to it, or creates it mentally. This includes a *when*: a moment when the constant chain of semiosis is stopped and considered by the sign-maker, and the state of knowledge of affordances. That moment is be materially placed.

• The where and when the sign-maker is, physically: what's there, what's happening, materially, are significant …

• the places where signifier and signified become sign conceptually in the brain. Where the brain is located. We might also think of it as what's happening externally when we experience it happening in material space. Sitting in a waiting room chair browsing a year-old Cosmo will create a different semiosis than skimming the same number of Cosmo on a iPhone in a long line at a train station.

• Whether we bring *place* and *occasion* down to measuring visual saccades, eye movement, will a matter of the moment. Does spotting that cherry red button on a grey ground begin signification? Not my question, but it might be one for a web designer. (It's the wrong question, but let's leave that.)

• The specifics of where and when can be conceptualized as a problem-space: the physical when and where and what, but also the knowledge that's being drawn on - both physically and mentally - for affordances. Again, Kress uses his observations of children drawing on material situations in their semiotic creations: adult prompts, mummy cases, …

In a broad stroke, Kress' analysis of semiotic moments describe *chora*: sieves, dance floors, parks, …

start with notes on Kymalainen, Chora in Geographical Thought, and a choric project Or with chora as a signifying system

Where: This is an interesting aspect. We can't “see” signification occurring - and it's not for want of trying. Measuring blood-voltage change in areas of the brain with fMRI doesn't show it occurring any more than the Vulcan mind-meld.

More on where: x-devonthink-item:61263CAE-3497-4B60-82EC-685D4DB3E318