This third reflection paper will focus on the “object as archive,” which our central concepts define as “embodied patterns of signification” (central concepts). An archive is no longer just a location to store documents. Whether its writing with a pencil, flicking a touchscreen, holding a book and scanning words, riding the bus or metro, or greeting a friend or stranger (and an infinite number of other examples), our bodies—encoded through media, technology, and object use—are the archive of culture.

Choose a media object that has encoded your body with certain patterns. Reflect on the level of micro-actions/signifiers of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. What happens to your body with this object and what happens to your body without this object? You do not have to simply answer these questions, but should reflect on how our bodies store the codes of culture as an archive.

Here are two ways to think about this reflection process:

First, Latour’s theory of immutable mobiles reveals that the closer we come to the present (notice I don't use "modern"), the more we make inscriptions. That is to say, our bodies are increasingly inscribed with micro-rituals of media and technology. We are “hyper-aware” and need to increasingly control ever-finer eye movements, facial expressions, gestures, as well as sounds, smells, and tastes. This micro-rituals, however, have increasingly greater effects. This leads to a certain amount of stress as we discipline and control our bodies to adapt to our media and technology.

Second, we can see that the epistolary novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther, which begins the “Sturm und Drang” (Storm and Stress/Pressure) period of Romanticism, focuses on the “stress/pressure” [Drang] of media adaptation in the late 18^th century. The fictional editor states as much in the opening lines to the reader, “And you, good soul, that feels the same pressures as he [Werther], take comfort from his sufferings and let this little book be your friend, if through fate or your own fault you can find no closer one.”