Stratification

"This body without organs is permeated by unformed, unstable matters, by flows in all directions, by free intensities or nomadic singularities, by mad or transitory particles. … there simultaneously occurs upon the [BwO] a very important, inevitable phenomenon that is beneficial in many respects and unfortunate in many others: stratification. Strata are Layers, Belts. They consist of giving form to matters, of imprisoning intensities or locking singularities into systems of resonance and redundancy, of producing upon the body of the earth molecules large and small and organizing them into molar aggregates" (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 40).

"The first articulation chooses or deducts, from unstable particle-flows, metastable molecular or quasi-molecular units (substances) upon which it imposes a statistical order of connections and successions (forms). The second articulation establishes functional, compact, stable structures (forms), and constructs the molar compounds in which these structures are simultaneously actualized (substances)" (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 40-41).

"It is clear that the distinction between the two articulations is not between substances and forms. Substances are nothing other than formed matters. Forms imply a code, modes of coding and decoding. Substances as formed matters refer to territorialities and degrees of territorialization and deterritorialization. But each articulation has a code and a territoriality; therefore each possesses both form and substance" (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 41).

"if 'visible light' is a metaphor combining wavelength and the electromagnetic spectrum, it can only be represented as such by virtue of another analogy (as above) combining the photonic emissions entering the eye and their transforming into neural energy via the optic nerve" (Wagner 2019, 92).

"Propositions cannot represent logical form: it is mirrored in them. What finds its reflection in language, language cannot represent. What expresses itself in language, we cannot express by means of language. Propositions show the logical form of reality. They display it" (Wittgenstein 2001 [1921], 31).

PECE is designed to record, arrange, store, and express data in a way that both demonstrates and emphasizes what Deleuze and Guattari (and Hjelmslev before them) have called double articulation: how every form is an expression of content (i.e. the result of a coded expression that forms substance) and every substance is the content of an expression (i.e. the result of a substance whose form codes expression). That is, PECE supports experimentation at both levels of articulation, at the level of content and expression. First, by enabling the the selection and ordering of analog data (as content) into digital substances (i.e. artifacts/memos/fieldnotes/etc.) formed as quasi-molecular units. These formed substances, then, can also be organized into more “structured” forms of expression (i.e. photo/PECE/Timeline essays) for various purposes, including publication, teaching, or for further and expanded collaborative analysis.

Beyond the essay, the PECE collection, whose unity is provided by a key analytic category or conceptual theme, initiates a secondary set of selective forces that enable the development of parastrata––or new layers stratification, one upon another––where the unifying theme is "not a simple structure but a structuration, the constitution of an associated milieu" (1987, 51). And, more than mere metaphor, PECE collections truly are milieus, or three dimensional modes of relationality between the collections of stratified planes of content. That is, opening up the possibility for aggregating molar aggregates (i.e. essays nested within essays) provides PECE with a new third-dimensional axis for experimental arrangements; it gives the data a sense of depth as opposed to the planar surface (length-plus-width) of the singular PECE essay. And just as the "animal milieu, such as the spider web, is no less 'morphogenetic' than the form of the organism" (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 51), the curated sequence of these stratified planes can be arranged to make an argument befitting, yet indelibly distinct from the content being displayed. That is, much like Wittgenstein says of propositions, the arrangement of nested essays and artifacts within collections organize our interpretation of that content. They should, accordingly, be conceived of as part of the meaning of the collection, as part of its theoretical argument; the forms of expression that characterize collections "show the logical form of reality. They display it" (2001, 31).  

For all its capacity to layer strata upon strata upon strata, thereby "imprisoning intensities or locking singularities into systems of resonance and redundancy" (Deleuze and Guattari 1987 40), this design logic also produces a proclivity for producing monsters. "It is not everywhere on a stratum that materials reach the degree at which they form a given aggregate" (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 46). Indeed, without a planned workflow, it is all to easy to produce stranded contents with no code to interpret them, unfinished or half-formed formations, or contents whose form are ill fitted to the surrounding forms of expression. This is indicative of the fact that PECE was designed to function with a high level of entropy, imitating the same body without organs, that it was designed to tame and make sense of. That is, PECE is also "permeated by unformed, unstable matters, by flows in all directions, by free intensities or nomadic singularities, by mad or transitory particles" (Deleuze and Guattari 1987, 40). And thus, PECE itself, must be stratified to become useful.

Style guides, then, are one means by which users can begin to stratify PECE itself, in order to make specific uses of its more general functionality. The Style Guides proceed through the layers of stratifications for a given PECE project, answering these two questions at each layer:

First articulations: What forms of content should we create? Forms that can be treated as basic units, which are intended to be re/combined into various, more stable forms of expression.

Second articulations: What forms of expression should be established for combining formed contents? 

In addition to style guides, creating modular content for general use (i.e. glossaries of concept artifacts or indexes of ethnographic examples), as well as structured forms of expression (i.e. essay templates) within PECE are another way to make PECE more "user friendly," reducing its range of motion, if you will. But it should be recognized that, generating these sorts of predetermined articulations simultaneously delimits PECE's post-structural design features, as each layer of strata leads to the next, meaning one strata's forms of expression serve as “selective criteria” for the next strata’s formation of content. Tellingly, these sorts of PECE archive design decisions, with the inherent double-bind of structure and play, are analogous to the same sorts of problems embedded in ethnographic research design as well. This is no happenstance. It is indicative of the ethnogrpahic data ideologies (and their associated anthropological arguments) that PECE was designed to perform.

In short, PECE is, itself, doubly articulated: it is, on the one hand, a chaotic and unweildy body without organs, but one that contains within itself mechanisms of selection, formation, and expression, with which users may endlessly de- and re-stratify both PECE itself and the world it contains. And this is, indeed, part and parcel of the theoretical argument of PECE: in that this design is how the platform mirrors the logic of reality that it contains. It's designed to bolster and provoke styles of research and publication that induce higher levels of attention and intention to the way the chaos of the world is both represented and engendered through the way it is punctuated, stratified, and expressed.