Lain: Notes on the Technospectacle and Semiotics

Written by: Golan

Introductory genealogy of the sign[ifier] and of media

At [[PRESENT DAY; PRESENT TIME]], I do not know how much of this post will actually be about Lain. Nevertheless, I found it relevant for my own thoughts on semiotics and the technospectacle.

The sign is understood, according to the Saussurean algorithm (S/s), as the assemblage of the signifier (the linguistic, representational element) and the signified (the conceptual, imagistic, experimental element). The signified (s) is an image, a sensory experience, mediated by and inseparable from the signifier (S) within the conscious. Even with this, the signifier is not some abstract thing floating in the aether, but rather it is inscribed on a material surface. The first such surfaces predate humanity, emerging within genetic codes, cellular mechanisms and chemical signals. These existed without conscious, sentient experience, but rather within a kind of non-sentient immanent experience that almost immediately translated into mechanical-biological action.

With the development of complex nervous systems and sensory organs, a new surface emerged: the cerebral cortex. Within the larger Kingdom of Animalia, rudimentary semiotic systems started developing. With the emergence of humanity, semiotic systems started developing in much more complex ways, even triggering a runaway process of subjectification. This process is a feedback loop where not only does the signifier mediate human experience, but it also goes beyond into altering the structure of the brain and of the larger body. Coupled with the development of certain dexterities (like for the usage of tools), man now had more than his own body, voice and gestures. Man could now imprint the signifier from his symbolic language onto other physical surfaces (stone, initially, followed by materials similar to paper like papyrus), first in the form of images and then in the form of elaborate semiotic chains of written text. External man-made storage, referred to now as media, are surfaces on which signifiers are projected. They are textual, as opposed to optical, mirrors.

Media open new dimensions of social memory. Furthermore, the physical and material nature of media might even start influencing the kind of projection that is possible and the evolution of the signifier-chain. The material conditions of each social body influence the kind of media that are possible, thus impacting all connected phenomena. In pre-modern times, media consisted primarily of written text that was seldom accessible to common people. Because of the scarcity of such materials, the people who had access to these media were usually of higher ranking, such as nobles, bureaucrats and clerics. The invention of the printing press was a revolution in this regard, allowing for the mass production and distribution of written material like books or newspapers.

With the emergence of the capitalist mode of production and its specific industries and social relations, the nature of media was transformed in the image and likeness of the commodity. The experience of the commodity form is already obscuring of the true social relations behind it, and paves the way for what Debord would call the spectacle as capitalist mode of consumption. The spectacle implies the colonization of social life by images and representations. Mind you, this capture by images and representations happens both in the form of alienated commodities as well as in the form of actual broadcast images that created certain appearances in society, and seek to create a certain impression of social reality and to build the identities of contemporary subjects.

Technospectacle Experiments Lain

Chiaki J. Konaka's Serial Experiments Lain presents us the story of Lain Iwakura, a seemingly introverted 14 year old Japanese girl who goes down the rabbit holes of the Wired and encounters problems of reality, identity, divinity and other such conceptual fields.

The way her experience is framed cinematographically is very weird. It often feels like she is disconnected from the outside world, as if she spawned yesterday in this world (and we later find out that she did, in fact, spawn yesterday). Her esoteric experience is framed immanently, getting a visual and auditory sense of the intensities traversing her body and her brain in serial experimentation. Within the series, there are at least three Lains:

[[]] Physical Lain: the regular introverted girl from the real world
[[]] Lain of the Wired: Lain as she interacts with the Wired, keeping the same personality as Physical Lain but having a much bolder behavior
[[]] Evil Lain: the version of Lain used by the Knights of the Eastern Calculus to advance their goals; Physical Lain's shadow-double

The exact ontological relationship between the three is left up to interpretation. She is essentially the individual incarnation of the collective unconscious and a conduit for the plans of Masami Eiri and of the Knights of the Eastern Calculus, namely the actualization of the collective mind by its merging with the Wired.

The Wired is the series' equivalent of the Internet. Its dramatic treatment is immersive, depicting it as a virtual space or even a superior layer to reality. The Wired is a virus from outer space, instrumentalized by mankind. This new channel could facilitate accelerated exchange of signifiers, and could even function as an upgrade for the spectacle mode of consumption, as this new medium increased interactivity (even higher than its real life analog). It is here that Lain encounters the digitalized Masami Eiri, as a god-like/demiurge figure. The goal of IPv7 (upon which the Wired operates) is to enable Eiri's plan of merging human reality and the network, the protocol itself serving its semiotic function as stratifier of conduct, flows and actions. This protocol enabled Eiri's digitalization, acting as his throne, as the divine Name of the Father driving the Wired-as-Semiosphere and also carefully structuring it. Here we can see a developing schema of the proliferation of hyperreal experience, of the accelerating confusion of real and non-real, of signifier and signified within postmodern subjectivity, which is indeed a reduction of experience to its representations and the vanishing of reality (whatever that is anyway).

This allows me to discuss in detail the concept of the technospectacle, a concept I have mentioned in a previous post indirectly, as a derived adjective. The technospectacle is a particular tool for understanding the mode of consumption built upon contemporary technocapital. It is a social relation mediated by interactive images and acceleratingly invasive technocapital. Particularly this interactivity allows it to proliferate hyperreality. We see it in the rise of corporate algorithmic platforms on the internet, that employ financial flows within themselves and reward systems, effectively sustaining what experts have called an economy of attention. It is only certain cosmetized, intense images that will draw this kind of attention, and they become the most socially influential ones. These representations are seldom not treated as reality by the human brain, and thus the subject will come to further disseminate these impressions in society. Much like the already existing spectacle, the technospectacle too works like a mirror, building postmodern subjectivity through misrecognition and self-alienation. In the realm of politics, the technospectacle led to this pervasive feeling that the partisan sides live in separate realities. This development was enabled by the widespread use of technology throughout various areas of activity.

Lain managed to dramatize and critique technospectacular experience even before its maturation. The girl finds a more desirable experience outside of Eiri's propositions. Much like how the signifier does not float in the aether, so too the Wired has real material basis and is immanent as opposed to transcendent. In one last act of desperation, Eiri attempts to materialize but ends up in a pathetic mass of flesh and electronics. Lain decides to erase herself from that world and becomes an unbound immanent agency that could seemingly travel through time and space. At the end of the series, there are as many Lains as people who have watched the series.