Serial Pinboarding in Contemporary Television 3030352714, 9783030352714

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Serial Pinboarding in Contemporary Television Anne Ganzert

Serial Pinboarding in Contemporary Television

Anne Ganzert

Serial Pinboarding in Contemporary Television

Anne Ganzert University of Konstanz Konstanz, Germany

ISBN 978-3-030-35271-4    ISBN 978-3-030-35272-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35272-1 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Patti McConville / Stockimo / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Preface

This book started life as a doctoral thesis written and researched at the University of Konstanz, Germany. During my dissertation in Media Studies I developed the concept of Serial Pinboarding, which is at the core of this book, aided by the input of wonderful colleagues in my department of Literature-Arts-Media and from all over the world. The idea came from a place of wonder, and a passion for TV series. Unable to explain why we as viewers intuitively seem to understand the language of large cork walls filled with pictures, pins, and crossing thread, and how these walls were involved in series and stories, I set out to find answers. My search led me from TV studies to Art Theory, to ideas about diagrams, serial storytelling, audience research, and many other fields. And over the four years of reading, watching, and writing, I collected bits and pieces from every research area I went to. Like a good pinboard, this book thus puts together seemingly unrelated academic artifacts and generates an entirely new, interdisciplinary idea from it. It is meant for all media students, researchers from the humanities and beyond, fans and television enthusiasts, and also producers, and aspires to solve your case and questions regarding the pinboards, corkboards, or blackboards, that you may have seen in any TV Show or movie too. It is my pleasure to thank those who made this book possible. Firstly, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Beate Ochsner for her continuous support and guidance. And to Jennifer Gillan, who graciously agreed to be my advisor from across the pond; Steffen Bogen for getting me interested in Diagrammatics; and to Isabell Otto, for giving me an v

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academic home again in the ‘Media and Participation’ research unit (DFG/FOR 2252). My gratitude also goes to the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom, which awarded me with a three-year scholarship, and the ‘Cultural Foundations of Social Integration’ Center of Excellence at the University of Konstanz for supporting this book. I want to wholeheartedly thank my friends, for feedback, patience, fun times, input, and eager eyes looking for new cases of serial pinboarding—I am glad to have changed the way you watch TV. I am forever grateful to my parents, who have supported all my endeavors and especially this one, and a big thank you to my entire family for their ceaseless love and support. And to Tobi, my love. Thank you for everything. Konstanz, Germany

Anne Ganzert

Contents

1 Introduction  1 The Age of Pinboarding   3 Castle’s Pinboarding (A Preview)   7 Structure  10 References  14 2 Serial Pinboarding 17 TV’s Pinboards  25 Criminals, Investigators, Stalkers: Genres of Pinboarding  26 Art, Media Theory, and Seriality  28 Pinboards as Images and Media  32 Excurse to the Dispositive  38 Four Cases of Serial Pinboarding  41 FlashForward: The Mosaic Investigation Wall  41 Homeland: Carrie Mathison’s Living Room Wall  45 Heroes: Maps of the Earth and Webs of Time  51 Castle: His and Hers Murder Boards  57 Pinboarding as Serial Practice  61 Pinboarding Semiotics  63 References  69

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3 Pinning Evidence 79 Markers’ Pinboarding Properties  83 Faces, Time, and a ‘Baby Doll Photograph’  88 Evidence Bags  97 References 105 4 Pinning Place and Time107 Blueprints 114 Pinning Time 119 Pinning the Past 123 Pinning the Present 126 Pinning the Future 130 Pinning Futures 133 References 137 5 Pinning Knowledge141 Epistemic Expectation 142 Pins 146 Threads and Gaps 155 A Pinboarding Point of View 177 Weaving Categories 178 References 183 6 Pinboarding Spin-Offs187 Remakes and End 187 Acceptable Solutions 188 Lasers and Bullets 189 Rips and Tears 191 Cutting All Ties 193 At the End of the Rope 195 Wandering Narratives and Transmedia Pinboarding 196 Fans as Pinboarders 206 Becoming a Trope 210 References 216 7 Conclusion223 References 229 Index231

List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Murder-of-the-week whiteboard, Screenshot from Castle S05E07 (ABC 2012), TC 00:16:18 8 Fig. 1.2 Kate in front of her private murder board, Screenshot from Castle S03E13 (ABC 2011), TC 00:18:31 8 Fig. 2.1 Mosaic Investigation Wall as seen in Mark’s Vision, Screenshot from FlashForward S01E01 (ABC 2009), TC 00:25:58– 00:26:5643 Fig. 2.2 Carrie’s living room wall. Configuration (1a), Screenshot from Homeland S01E01 (Showtime 2011), TC 00:03:33 46 Fig. 2.3 Future Hiro’s time net, Screenshot from Heroes Vol01E17 (NBC 2007), TC 00:39:30f 53 Fig. 2.4 Richard’s case of ‘Who hired the sniper?’, Screenshot from Castle S04E01 (ABC 2011), TC 00:41:25 58 Fig. 3.1 The manifestation of the ‘Baby Doll Photograph’, screenshots from FlashForward S01E01 (ABC 2009), TC 00:37:13 and S01E02 (ABC 2009) TC 00:32:11, TC 00:32:10, TC 00:34:51. (top left to bottom right) 95 Fig. 4.1 Hole left by pin close to ‘New York’, Screenshot from Heroes Vol01E08 (NBC 2006), TC 00:08:57 111 Fig. 4.2 The finished color-coded time table. Configuration (2) of Carrie’s living room pin board, screenshot from Homeland S01E11 (Showtime 2011), TC 00:35:52 127 Fig. 4.3 ‘Oct 4th’ knot in Hiro’s time net, Detail from Heroes Vol1Ch20 (NBC 2006) 134 Fig. 5.1 ‘Blue Hand’ cluster on the MIW, screenshot from FlashForward S01E06 (ABC 2009), TC 00:12:16 149

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Fig. 5.2 Gabriel rearranges and Mark solves the MIW, screenshots from FlashForward S01E20 (ABC 2009), TC 00:06:58, TC 00:10:52; S01E22 (ABC 2010), TC 00:28:29–00:29:08. (top left to bottom right) Fig. 5.3 Burt Macklin’s ‘pie chart’, detail from Parks and Recreation S04E21 (NBC 2012) Fig. 5.4 Dyson Frost’s garden of forking paths, screenshot from FlashForward S01E17 (ABC 2010), TC 00:12:37 Fig. 5.5 Linchpin Spiderweb, screenshot from Castle S04E16 (ABC 2012), TC 00:18:52 Fig. 6.1 Mark’s makeshift investigation wall, detail from FlashForward S01E11 (ABC 2010), TC 00:15:51

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Big and small screen characters have long used pegboards, blackboards, and whiteboards to gather information. Movie audiences have seen heists being planned from Ronin (Frankenheimer 1998) to Ocean’s Eleven (Soderbergh 2001) to The Wedding Ringer (Garelick 2015). They have put together the pinboard clues at the end of The Usual Suspects (Singer 1996) and learned to read the temporal clues on the Polaroid-filled wall in Memento (Nolan 2000). And (by now) they know that some walls with newspaper clippings, scribbled notes, and crisscrossing thread hint toward the genius of A Beautiful Mind (Howard 2001) or Temple Grandin (Jackson 2010), while others externalize a Conspiracy Theory (Donner 1997) or the obsessions of One Hour Photo clerk Seymour “Sy” Parrish (Romanek 2002). With the upswing in police procedural1 television viewers have seen countless investigative teams employ pinboards as means of communication and deduction. Various versions can be found in shows from many other genres, too, from The X-Files (Carter 1997–2003) to Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Whedon 1997–2003) to Pretty Little Liars (King 2010–2017). However, in some shows, the pinboards’ applications go beyond just a prop or storytelling device when they co-facilitate serial structures. They can establish an aesthetic or semiotic system,2 function as a guide through temporal confusion, and are a central element of a show’s

© The Author(s) 2020 A. Ganzert, Serial Pinboarding in Contemporary Television, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35272-1_1

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diegesis. All of these unique functions and features inspired this book, which has the goal to investigate the co-constitutive relation of pinboards and televisual seriality. In this understanding, pinboards are not mere visualizations or narrative devices but can determine what may become part of a series’ storyline, how it has to be filmed in order to make its way onto the board, and in which order it has to be presented. Pinboards constitute the characters’ actions and form a space that is deeply ingrained in, and simultaneously meta-reflexive of, seriality. The intertwined dynamics that are observable because of the pinboards will be the focal point of the following chapters in order to approach the central research question: how do pinboards, if pinboards and series in fact create and condition each other reciprocally, become dispositives of televisual seriality? I use the term and concept of ‘dispositive’ to grasp the structure or framework, made up by various elements, within which the serial narrative, the series’ images, the characters’ actions, and dialogues, and the audience’s reception take place. To gain a command of the coincident relation between pinboards and seriality I suggest the concept of ‘serial pinboarding’, which encompasses the practices involved in the board’s creation, such as the handling of the objects on or in front of a board by the characters of TV shows, and the staging and framing of these objects, actions, and discourses. Analyzing serial pinboarding, therefore, includes the material creation as well as the filmic fabrication of a pinboard. Serial pinboarding also covers the visualization of the fictional characters’ cognitive processes, which are often also connected to specific sounds or music,3 and the triggering of visual associations or conclusions from the viewer’s standpoint. Consequently, in order to convey or trigger anything, pinboarding also refers to the camera shots and framing, the set-making and lighting, the special effects and computer animations. Pinboarding in TV series is a multifaceted phenomenon that requires a multi-perspective and interdisciplinary approach, reaching from the narrative to the production to the reception, and even beyond that, into the realms of fan practices. Before going deeper into the analysis, I want to explore the ‘age of pinboarding’ and introduce a first example of serial pinboarding, which already demonstrates the complexity of the topic and the various modes of pinboarding that we as an audience have become familiarized with.

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The Age of Pinboarding A general trend toward pinboarding as a cultural practice can be made out not just in television series, but in print media (Burda 2009), the design of web 2.0 front ends (see Chap. 6), presentation templates, and even in problem solving  and team-building practices in companies, universities, and so on. Vision boards and collages are staple creative techniques from kindergarten to the office. Flowcharts have long been used in businesses to track and plan the movement of goods, and have a fixed dia-grammar of five typical symbols (Dommann 2011, 90). Current trends like the ‘bullet journal’ (invented by Ryder Carroll) play into this, as well as recurrent hashtags like #WhiteboardWednesday on Twitter, under which users tweet charts, drawings, and even music sessions in which song lyrics are illustrated on whiteboards. Many of these instances fall under the larger buzzword of “design thinking” (Plattner et al.2010): a trend in business and education alike, and an approach that connects analysis and creative production that has an output often visually related to pinboarding. More recently, infographics have even become entertaining, such as those found on dailyinfographic.com, and visual note-taking has become an anti-trend to typed note-taking in classes or conferences, while essay writing gets support from drawing (Gröppel-Wegener 2016). All of these practices, media, and techniques share traits characteristic of serial pinboarding: by visualizing anything in the mode of pinboarding, spatial, causal, and temporal relations are created, which in turn shape the perception of the items, their connections, and the topics they represent. Using them, reading them, and understanding them hence share similar cognitive processes, which viewers are well versed in, precisely because we do live in an ‘age of pinboarding’. One of the most striking examples for everyday pinboarding is probably Pinterest (www.pinterest.com), which is used for private collections on countless topics, mostly by women (Cf. Ottoni et al. 2013), as well as for professional marketing purposes (Hayden 2012), and of course ‘social curation’ (Hall and Zarro 2012). Yet the majority of the published work on platforms like Pinterest or flickr focuses on collective digital practices, user curation, or social media aspects, while the pinning as a visual, aesthetic, and epistemic practice is discussed less. In the context of data visualization, a lot of academic and corporate debate occurs, as the so-called big data and its visualization are understood as a contemporary challenge (Beer 2016b; Mayer-Schönberger and

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Cukier 2013). Here too, it proves useful to thoroughly understand pinboarding as a serial practice that allows users to make visual statements, which follow an instinctively understandable visual grammar and which have been practiced on all levels—outfitted with a credibility of data, the power of numbers, or Metric Power (Beer 2016a). Users, employers, managers, marketers, and so on are encouraged to ‘tell stories with data’ (Cf. Knaflic 2015; Ali et  al. 2016; Kirk 2016; Segel and Heer 2010) while simultaneously the idea prevails that as long as data remains manageable, things are under control. For example, enterprise applications provide managers with access to ‘executive dashboards’ interfaces, that look like a cross between an airplane’s cockpit and a mind-map (Cf. Beverungen 2019) and make the stock market ‘tameable’ through visualization, while any influencer can access a multitude of analytical apps, that give them personalized graphs, statistics, and recommendations for their social media followers and interactions. Such apps or online applications that allow users to explore pre-visualized data play into our collective ‘will to order things’, and function as a (pop-)cultural reassurance that even in times of accelerated communication and huge amounts of data, human users can still access, sort, and manage data. Pinboards as they appear in this book and TV shows comparatively are relatively small sets of data, they are easy to use, restricted in their content, and we get to watch characters successfully use them, deal with problems, and manage the items and data. They could hence be read as a form of data fiction (Cf. Bieger 2017), and maybe this also explains the significant increase of televised pinboards simultaneous to the development of the web 2.0, starting in the early 2000s. Through time and the different realms of pinboarding, data visualization, and the accompanying data imaginations, modes of reading these images or visual constructs have become subconscious knowledge, and through the appearance of media artifacts as discussed in this book, they become palpable. This is why pinboarding trends clearly also factor into the aesthetic matter-of-factness with which, for example, crime authors are portrayed in front of their plot webs, like author Beukes and the “web of string, photos and objects above her desk”(Cheshire 2013, n.p.). Interestingly, in the advertising images for her book The Shining Girls (2013) Beukes is shown holding a red string in mid-air, which emphasizes the processual character of pinboarding even if it is staged for the photo. The caption Beukes uses for this photo on her personal homepage is also a very telling one. She first writes, that she “looks like a crazy person” (Beukes 2013, n.p.), directly

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referencing the associations with psychological or mental issues related to pinboarding (see section “Four Cases of Serial Pinboarding”), and then turns to her readers and fans: “The image on their [Wired Magazine’s] site is pretty big, if you want to zoom in for detail. SPOILER ALERT, obviously, and this was also one version back before the final draft, which means a couple of the notecards in the middle section, which is the book’s timeline, may be ever so slightly off, if you’re geeky like that” (ibid.). Beukes clearly references the way in which she knows fans to engage with boards like hers and explicitly invites such behavior while simultaneously stating that board and book are not entirely congruent. Not only has Beukes used pinboarding to manage her storytelling and to market her book, she implicitly understands the images as part of a series of perceptions on the reader’s or viewer’s part and inserts this singular image of a singular pinboard in a series of pinboarding practices. Such instances are just one of many examples, in which the characteristics and categories of serial pinboarding, as they are developed over the course of this book, will be fruitful. Pinboarding is a practice that evolves and continues on and off screen. Starting in schools and offices, pinboarding can be easily practiced in everyday life with everyday items. It is a practice that is easily explained and tried out for teams or classes, and often proves very useful for (academic) writing, project planning, family organization, and other situations. Additionally, many homepages and apps have adopted a pinboarding aesthetic even if they do not necessarily deal with large amounts of data, such as Trello (2011), and hence should be questioned for their relation to the cultural technique of pinboarding. Especially when they allow for collaborative work and the movement of items without explanatory dialogue: when co-worker A moves a project item from one section to another, the movement alone signifies meaning, and does not need additional written or spoken text. Pinboarding can hence be an abbreviation, a short cut that quickly and easily explains what would otherwise take up additional time and effort. This may also be why countless games employ pinboarding as a planning or summarizing visualization of the in-game narrative, which the player/avatar can (serially) revisit. Some examples are Grand Theft Auto 5, Dishonored 2, and Assassin’s Creed Unity, and they can be studied in depth using serial pinboarding as a methodology, asking how they facilitate the players’ and the non-player characters’ interaction with the pinboard. Studying the historic development of pinboarding as a cultural practice

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necessarily leads to the infographics in television news (Cf. Adelmann 2006) and other informative, factual programs. Visualizing for TV, and then explaining something with these visualizations, is common in sports coverage, for example, where cognitive operations similar to those of pinboarding are applied when analyzing a team’s line-up or a player’s movements. Even the weather forecast could be considered representative of the pinboarding operations of showing, pointing, explaining, decoding, and sharing. Much like in print journalism, these techniques have not gone over without critique (Bucher 2002), yet to Caldwell these effects are an integral part of ‘televisuality’ (1995). Another non-fictional example is the ‘Wall of Discovery’ at John Hopkins University. It is a large wall of screens with eye tracking and research modalities. It is an interesting computer/human interface, “[f]or while you are studying the Wall, the Wall is studying you” (Edelson 2013). It allows users to zoom into details through gesture and gives them access to scans of fragile materials like old manuscripts. “The Brody Active Learning and Usability Research Wall” could be interesting for a neuro-­ scientific approach to pinboarding, as it seems that “there are some forms of data sifting at which humans are superior. Take visual recognition: for researchers studying pictures of the cosmos, a freshman with a sharp eye may spot a galaxy better than your average Dual-6 core Intel Xeon processor” (ibid.). Using fictional and artificial examples like the ones in this study could create a useful experimental situation. Could the human capability to see relations and understand dia-grammar be an effect of lifelong pinboarding? The encoding that happens with serial pinboards, which are also charged with the actors’ dialogue and the cameras’ framing, and so on, could also further enlighten questions regarding the cognitive processes of tele-viewing and diagrammatic thinking in general. Insights like these could then be applied in forthcoming productions in order to guide attention, sell products, or entice viewers to swap to the second screen. As pinboarding can cross the boundaries of genres and age groups, this supposedly automatic process can be applied in most media and products and supports the idea of ‘an age of pinboarding’ in which pinboarding has become a daily possibility and occurrence. Similarly, seriality is a principle of our everyday lives—in products, transport, clothes, music, and so forth. Because of that, Faulstich regards seriality as humanity’s structuring cognitive principle, which we, if it is missing, invent or at least project. Connecting a singular event to a series and creating relations is what makes sense to us, what creates familiarity and a coordinate system for our lives

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(1994, 51). One way to do that, at least for fictional characters, is through pinboarding. Their anticipation to solve problems with the help of pinboarding is symptomatic not only for the increase in pinboards in television series but also for the need to visualize everything from calorie intake to people reached with a Facebook post to a company’s (big) data. The trend for pinboarding might thus only blatantly show itself in the shows discussed in this book’s chapters, despite having stabilized as a cultural practice long before that. Specifically, the televised pinboard has recently gone through another stabilizing development: It is becoming a trope or stylistic device, less used to drive and reflect the storytelling and much rather as an attribute for a sleuthing character or as a parody (see section “Becoming a Trope”). In the age of pinboarding, while it seems there are pinboards everywhere, it is even more necessary to reflect upon automatized perception and visualization strategies. Serial pinboarding, as analyzed in this book, is both simply understood and complex in its application, which the following short example shows.

Castle’s Pinboarding (A Preview) A good example which combines different aspects of pinboards is ABC’s Castle (Marlowe 2009–2016). Lead character Kate Beckett repeatedly relies on a whiteboard to lay out the murder-of-the-week in her work as a detective (see Fig. 1.1). She is an absolute expert at visually structuring a case with images of the victim(s), possible suspects, timelines with legends ranging from minutes to days, and different colored lines and arrows connecting it all. In this form, pinboarding (or rather whiteboarding) is used to solve one small and thus solvable problem during one episode, two at the most. Yet Castle introduces another murder board, which will be of special interest for serial pinboarding. On this particular board, Kate investigates her mother’s murder over the course of the first six seasons (see Fig.  1.2). This extremely long time period means that the information accumulates very slowly and also changes over time, when new findings shed a different light on previously discovered information. Additionally, the serial pinboarding in this case, and in many other examples, has a prognostic function, so that future events or encounters are perceived with heightened senses both by the characters and by the viewers when they are compared to the constellation of the pinboard.

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Fig. 1.1  Murder-of-the-week whiteboard, Screenshot from Castle S05E07 (ABC 2012), TC 00:16:18

Fig. 1.2  Kate in front of her private murder board, Screenshot from Castle S03E13 (ABC 2011), TC 00:18:31

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This effect of retrospective explanation or prognostic imagery is used similarly in movies like The Sixth Sense (Shyamalan 1999), which have been described as mind-game (Elsaesser 2009) or puzzle films (Buckland 2009). Even though the ‘mind-game series’ is not (yet) an established term, many of the more complex television series can, similarly to mind-­ game films, “withhold[] plot and character information from audiences for weeks or even months at a time, slowly doling out pieces to a puzzle that grows larger with each episode” (McLean 1998, 6). Due to their structure, with sometimes more than 20 episodes in one season, television series become intricately developed “network narratives” (Bordwell 1985, 53), “highlighting several protagonists inhabiting distinct, but intermingling, story lines” (Bordwell 2019). TV series can intensify their immanent myths and draw out their resolution much longer, as their seriality allows them to be complex without necessarily being complicated. According to media scholar Klein, this balance can be achieved by explaining a little piece of the puzzle in each episode that was not understandable in the previous episode (2012, 228). This also keeps the viewers motivated to solve the riddle over the course of the broadcast (or their individual time of viewing), aided along the way by the show itself (Cf. Booth 2011, 373). Apart from narrative and dialogue, this aid can include all sorts of hints, like those known as Easter eggs, or ‘lookeys’. Director Lars von Trier explains: “‘For the casual observer, it’s just a glitch or a mistake,’ […]. ‘For the initiated, it’s a riddle to be solved. All lookeys can be decoded by a system that is unique.’” (Brown 2006) In turn, lookeys can be easily incorporated into pinboarding structures and are often the subject of discussion in online fan spaces. As a consequence, these elements have been employed as ‘migratory cues’ (Ruppel 2009, 62) to a show’s transmedia extension, especially in more recent productions. Transmedia television series, which “are constructed, marketed, and used by fans not as ‘texts’ to be ‘read’ but as cosmologies to be entered, experienced and imaginatively interacted with” (Jones 1994, 122), have been of heightened interest for media scholars and widen the realm of television series even further (see section “Wandering Narratives and Transmedia Pinboarding”). For pinboarding, both the network-initiated transmedia storytelling and the fan practices dealing with the shows—especially their boards—are pertinent. Both the hints and lookeys and the collective act of solving a case or riddle will be central in this book’s course.

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Structure This book will consider the questions raised so far and start with a ‘pilot’ chapter on serial pinboarding as a concept. Chapter 2 will also introduce the main examples FlashForward (Braga and Goyer 2009), Castle, Homeland (Gordon and Gansa 2011–), and Heroes (Kring 2006–2010), and their main pinboards. To begin with I describe the basic configuration of many pinboards and their production, by TV producers and fictional characters, how this extends to viewing practices, and discuss how serial pinboarding goes beyond a mere description of a storytelling device. How can pinboards exhibit or constitute layers of archaeological depth? How does their materiality affect the practices of using them? What is the relation between the television surface and the pinboards’ surfaces? Can a pinboard even be described as ‘one image’ or is it rather a hyper-image, a changing collage of images? A first subchapter will give a brief history of pinboards (section “TV’s Pinboards”) before turning to the diegetic contexts of pinboarding, also showing the development of aesthetic standards and typical or iconic aspects of serial pinboarding. In this context, the history, genres, and typical narratives of serial pinboarding are discussed, and the characters who typically employ pinboards introduced, from time-travelers to criminals, detectives, and conspiracy theorists. It is important to understand how the pinboards are established as significant and semiotic spaces before any artifact can develop meaning or a relation to other artifacts in/on them, and this goes for all pinboards, not just those on television. This is why a second subchapter (section “Art, Media Theory, and Seriality”) turns to Art and Media Theory, to base the findings on solid, theoretic ground. The first area of interest here is art theory, through which the pinboards are discussed as images. Additionally, aspects of design and data visualization influence the use of diagrammatic theory in this context. Media Theory and TV Studies inform the debate about seriality necessary for serial pinboarding. Here, the concept of the dispositive, which is at the base of the book’s hypothesis, is introduced and critically explored. I then clarify the connection to the concept of seriality (televisual and otherwise) and discuss how pinboarding fits into the ­discourse about increased complexity and ‘quality TV’, especially in a changing media and television environment regarding distribution, ­syndication, and hence serial storytelling.

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The third section of the second chapter turns its attention fully to this book’s main examples and their specific serial pinboarding (section “Four Cases of Serial Pinboarding”). The pinboards’ surfaces will be thoroughly examined as they are quite literally the base for what follows. They are conditional for any pinboarding, as they determine the materials that can be used, how they are mounted, and which actions they require and facilitate. Each example was chosen because it shines a light on a specific aspect: FlashForward’s ‘Mosaic Investigation Wall’ explores questions of pinboards as images and spaces of meaning, while Homeland takes a more psychoanalytical approach that reflects upon the seeing of pinboards and series, through the protagonist’s mental state. Heroes continues its pinboarding throughout all iterations and creates defined spaces of knowledge, like maps, and time-webs. And Castle emphasizes the importance of the surfaces’ materiality with ‘his and hers’ murder boards, one analog, one digital. The last two sections  examine ‘Pinboarding as Serial Practice’ and the matter of the potential semiotics of pinboarding. The artifacts or pinboarding items, as well as the televisual and televised practices they condition, are essential to serial pinboarding and provide a framing structure to the following chapters. The third  chapter begins by exploring how diegetic or extra-diegetic meaning is attached to a specific object through pinboarding. Regardless of their individual fictional context, the objects of pinboarding are, in fact, all evidence of something. ‘Pinning Evidence’ is, therefore, an important chapter (Chap. 3) that examines especially written notes and text documents, photographs as visual evidence, and lastly turns to the particular case of evidence bags that contain other items. It will become clear that the objects, as well as their layering, speak a specific visual language that TV series utilize for their storytelling and that characters and fans can discover together. Maps and blueprints and calendars and timelines, as explored in ‘Pinning Place and Time’ (Chap. 4) for example can provide or withhold crucial information about place, time, and spatial relation. Chapter 4 also follows the etymological roots of dispositive and understands pinboarding as a specific mode of disposing things in different places and arrangements that can change over time. This chapter accounts for the fact that pinboarding, in its capacity to visualize for example the chronology of events or depict repetitive temporal patterns, can often be found in fictional worlds with temporal turmoil. In addition to addressing examples from various TV

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shows and movies, four main categories of pinning time are explored: ‘Pinning the Past’ (Castle), ‘Pinning the Present’ (Homeland), ‘Pinning the Future’ (FlashForward), or ‘Pinning Futures’ (Heroes). ‘Pinning Knowledge’ (Chap. 5) considers the epistemic potential inherent to pinboards in general and the specific ‘epistemic expectation’, which has arisen for the serial pinboards, basically assuming that any riddle or case can and will be solved as soon as an appropriate pinboard is put up. It also addresses how pinboarding differs from mere visualization of information, and how, between the objects and items, knowledge can emerge. The eponymic pins, the connecting threads, and the inherently movable post-it notes are described in their pinboarding functionality, as they facilitate a visual grammar of pinboarding and are essential for both epistemic pinboarding in general and televisual serial pinboarding. This section focuses on ‘connecting the dots’ and on red string as a leitmotif of pinboarding. It also regards pinboarding under rhizomatic aspects. String, lines, and arrows have to be stretched between distinct points in order to connect two or more elements on the board and to illustrate and actualize the relation between them. This relation can be spatial, temporal, or causal, or any combination of the three. It could connect pegs on a map representing a pattern of crimes (spatial), connect a CCTV image with a timeline of events (temporal), or connect two elements representing the cause and effect of something (causal). It could also connect a map with a time-stamped photograph of a crime scene and a witness’ written statement or any other combination—but there will be plenty of examples, each with interesting combinations. Chapter 6 goes beyond the series’ main pinboards and firstly considers in-show remakes of pinboards and then turns the attention to the endings and continuations of pinboarding, which further illuminate visualized seriality. The book’s four main examples, in fact, do not only have one pinboard but they all somehow repeat and/or remake them. They also offer at least seven possible ways to end pinboarding. The end of a pinboard does not mean the end of a series though, nor does it mean the end of pinboarding as a cultural practice, as an externalization of a character’s thoughts or feelings, as a network of meaning, a map of clues, or a representation of narrative structures. These multiplied versions of the serial pinboards connect closely to transmedia storytelling and fan practices in the following subchapters. Section “Remakes and End” stresses the importance of ‘acceptable solution’ regarding the pinboarding, meaning that any conclusion drawn from a board must be traceable and comprehensible before it gets dissolved or continued elsewhere.

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Cross- or transmedia extensions of the pinboards both during the broadcast, on parallel second screens in streaming, or after a show’s end are the focal points of section  “Wandering Narratives and Transmedia Pinboarding”. It considers topics of transmedia (and collaborative) puzzle solving, and remakes, remodels, and re-mediations. The subchapter considers ‘re’-pinboarding and takes the changes into consideration, which inevitably occur due to crossovers into other media contexts or paratexts. Viewing and fan practices are strongly shaped by TV series, as they create objects like the pinboards that can make a show ‘drillable’ and pinboarding ‘spreadable’. When the boards circulate in and between fandoms (as dissected objects of research, as remade fan-art, or as entirely new entities) they can also visualize a fandom as such or a person’s engagement with their show, genre, or transmedia universe, contribution to a pinboarding culture, which reciprocally informs contemporary design and storytelling. The transformation of pinboarding into a trope via sleuthing and parody, and through audience engagement, is at the core of this last section in Chap. 6. As serial pinboarding has developed into a concept applicable to many series on TV and it also develops from a neologism that attempts to grasp character actions, mental deduction, and montage of and with TV’s pinboards, to a sound theoretic approach, it is in itself transportable to other areas. In the conclusion, I summarize the book’s insights and give an outlook into further research as well as pointing toward upcoming developments of the phenomenon of serial pinboarding.

Notes 1. Understood as part of detective fiction, mostly concerned with ‘how do the investigators get the perpetrator’ instead of ‘who did it?’ (cf. Mittell 2004, especially chapter 5). 2. My understanding of a semiotic system is, in this case, that the elements of the pinboard are transformed or connoted as signs, which are handled, interpreted, and spread within the diegesis of the series, as well as extra-­ diegetically by/through the audience. The book at hand thus focuses on the practices rather than analyzing each TV show’s semiotic systems in depth. 3. The acoustic aspects of pinboarding are beyond the scope of this study, but deserve attention in further research. Especially fruitful will be cases like Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events (Hudis and Sonnenfeld 2017–2019) for example, where the introductory credits consist of a song and pinboarding, which both change every two episodes.

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References Adelmann, Ralf. 2006. Ästhetiken Der Re-Visualisierung. Zur Selbststilisierung Des Fernsehens. In Philosophie Des Fernsehens, ed. Lorenz Engell and Oliver Fahle, 55–76. München: Wilhelm Fink. Ali, Syed Mohd, Noopur Gupta, Gopal Krishna Nayak, and Rakesh Kumar Lenka. 2016. Big Data Visualization: Tools and Challenges. In 2016 2nd International Conference on Contemporary Computing and Informatics (IC3I), 656–660. Piscataway: IEEE. https://doi.org/10.1109/IC3I.2016.7918044. Beer, David. 2016a. Metric Power. London/New York: Palgrave Macmillan. https://www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9781137556486 ———. 2016b. How Should We Do the History of Big Data? Big Data & Society 3 (1). https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951716646135. Beukes, Lauren. 2013. String Theory and Murder Walls. Lauren Beukes, July 5. http://laurenbeukes.com/string-theory-and-murder-walls/ Beverungen, Armin. 2019. Das “Executive Dashboard”: Managerielle Entscheidung Und Kontrolle Zwischen Echtzeit Und Zukunftsprojektion. In Zeitlichkeit des Interface. Siegen. Bieger, Laura. 2017. The Wire, Big Data, and the Specter of Naturalism. Studies in American Naturalism 12 (1): 127–139. https://doi.org/10.1353/ san.2017.0007. Booth, Paul. 2011. Memories, Temporalities, Fictions: Temporal Displacement in Contemporary Television. Television & New Media 12 (4): 370–388. https:// doi.org/10.1177/1527476410392806. Bordwell, David. 1985. Narration in the Fiction Film. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. ———. 2019. An Appetite for Artifice. Observations on Film Art. http://www. davidbor dwell.net/blog/2006/12/25/an-appetite-for-ar tifice/. Accessed 22 Apr. Braga, Brannon, and David S. Goyer. 2009. FlashForward. New York City: ABC. Brown, Mark. 2006. Lookey Here: Lars von Trier Is at It Again. The Guardian, December 8. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/dec/08/ filmnews.film Bucher, Hans-Jürgen. 2002. Visualisierungen  – das Ende der journalistischen Schriftkultur? In Die Kultur der Medien. Untersuchungen zum Rollen und Funktionswandel des Kulturjournalismus in der Mediengesellschaft, ed. Michael Haller, vol. 36. Münster/Hamburg/London: LIT. Buckland, Warren. 2009. “Introduction: Puzzle Plots.” In Puzzle-Films. Complex Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema, Warren Buckland, 1–12. Oxford: Wiley-­ Blackwell. doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444305708.ch1. Burda, Hubert. 2009. Info-Grafik  – Wie die FOCUS-Ikonologie entstand.In Mediale Wunderkammern, eds. Peter Sloterdijk and Wolfgang Ullrich, 21–28.

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Paderborn: Fink. https://petersloterdijk.net/werk/herausgeberschaften/hfgschriftenreihe/mediale-wunderkammern/, https://petersloterdijk.net/werk/ herausgeberschaften/hfg-schriftenreihe/mediale-wunderkammern/ Caldwell, John T. 1995. Televisuality: Style, Crisis, and Authority in American Television. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Carter, Chris. 1997. The X-Files. Burbank: The WB/UPN. Cheshire, Tom. 2013. String Theory: Lauren Beukes Plots Her Time-Travel Murder-Mystery. Wired UK, May. Dommann, Monika. 2011. Handling, Flowcharts, Logistik. Zur Wissensgeschichte Und Materialkultur von Warenflüssen. Nach Feierabend, Zürcher Jahrbuch Für Wissensgeschichte 7: 75–103. Donner, Richard. 1997. Conspiracy Theory. Los Angeles: Warner Bros. Pictures. Edelson, Matt. 2013. Wall of Discovery. John Hopkins Engineering, Winter. http://eng.jhu.edu/wse/magazine-winter-13/item/wall-of-discovery Elsaesser, Thomas. 2009. The Mind-Game Film. In Puzzle-Films. Complex Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema, ed. Warren Buckland, 13–41. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444305708.ch1. Faulstich, Werner. 1994. Serialität Aus Kulturwissenschaftlicher Sicht. In Endlose Geschichten. Serialität in Den Medien, ed. Günter Giesenfeld, 46–54. Hildesheim: Olms-Weidmann. Frankenheimer, John. 1998. Ronin. Beverly Hills: MGM. Garelick, Jeremy. 2015. The Wedding Ringer. Los Angeles: Miramax. Gordon, Howard, and Alex Gansa. 2011. Homeland. New York City: Showtime. Gröppel-Wegener, Alke. 2016. Writing Essays by Pictures: A Workbook. Huddersfield: Innovative Libraries. Hall, Catherine, and Michael Zarro. 2012. Social Curation on the Website Pinterest.Com. Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 49 (1): 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1002/meet.14504901189. Hayden, Beth. 2012. Pinfluence: The Complete Guide to Marketing Your Business with Pinterest. Montreal: Wiley. Howard, Ron. 2001. A Beautiful Mind. Universal City: Universal Pictures. Hudis, Mark, and Barry Sonnenfeld. 2017. Lemony Snicket’s a Series of Unfortunate Events. Los Gatos: Netflix. Jackson, Mike. 2010. Temple Grandin. New York City: HBO Movies. Jones, Steve. 1994. Hyper-Punk: Cyberpunk and Information Technology. The Journal of Popular Culture 28 (2): 81–92. King, Marlene I. 2010. Pretty Little Liars. New York City: ABC. Kirk, Andy. 2016. Data Visualisation: A Handbook for Data Driven Design. Thousand Oaks: SAGE. Klein, Thomas. 2012. Diskurs Und Spiel. Überlegungen Zu Einer Medienwissenschaftlichen Theorie Serieller Komplexität. In Populäre Serialität: Narration  – Evolution  – Distinktion. Zum Seriellen Erzählen Seit Dem 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Frank Kelleter, 225–239. Bielefeld: Transcript.

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Knaflic, Cole Nussbaumer. 2015. Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals. Hoboken: Wiley. Kring, Tim. 2006. Heroes. New York City: NBC. Marlowe, Andrew W. 2009. Castle. New York City: ABC. Mayer-Schönberger, Viktor, and Kenneth Cukier. 2013. Big Data: A Revolution that Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think. Boston: Eamon Dolan/ Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. McLean, Adrienne L. 1998. Media Effects: Marshall McLuhan, Television Culture, and ‘The X-Files’. Film Quarterly 51 (4): 2–11. https://doi.org/10.2307/ 1213239. Mittell, Jason. 2004. Genre and Television: From Cop Shows to Cartoons in American Culture. New York: Routledge. Nolan, Christopher. 2000. Memento. Los Angeles: Newmarket Films. Ottoni, Raphael, João Paulo Pesce, Diego Las Casas, Geraldo Franciscani Jr, Wagner Meira Jr, Ponnurangam Kumaraguru, and VirgilioAlmeida. 2013. Ladies First: Analyzing Gender Roles and Behaviors in Pinterest. In Seventh International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media. https://www. aaai.org/ocs/index.php/ICWSM/ICWSM13/paper/view/6133 Plattner, Hasso, Christoph Meinel, and Larry Leifer. 2010. Design Thinking: Understand – Improve – Apply. Berlin: Springer. Romanek, Mark. 2002. One Hour Photo. Los Angeles: FOX Searchlight Pictures. Ruppel, Marc Nathaniel. 2009. Visualizing Transmedia Networks: Links, Paths and Peripheries. Dissertation, University of Maryland, Maryland. Segel, E., and J. Heer. 2010. Narrative Visualization: Telling Stories with Data. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics 16 (6): 1139–1148. https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2010.179. Shyamalan, M. Night. 1999. The Sixth Sense. Burbank: Hollywood Pictures. Singer, Brian. 1996. The Usual Suspects. Beverly Hills: MGM. Soderbergh, Steven. 2001. Ocean’s Eleven. Los Angeles: Warner Bros. Pictures. Trello, Inc. 2011. Trello. New York City: Fog Creek Software. Whedon, Joss. 1997. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Burbank: The WB.

CHAPTER 2

Serial Pinboarding

Pinboarding—what does this neologism mean? Is it a simple verb, or an entire cultural practice? Who and what is involved in pinboarding? How and where do we see it? These are some of the questions that need to be answered before the examples and their close reading can make the term and concept of serial pinboarding more tangible. I understand pinboarding as a verb that describes an action, a practice, or occurrence. To be more precise: it is a verb that encompasses a number of actions. This means that the various ways of handling pinboarding objects as well as the cognitive processes of creating and seeing/reading pinboards have to be part of this new term’s definition. What I am seeking to specify with the term ‘serial pinboarding’ is a distinctly televisual and serial use of pinboard structures that visualize diegetic content and condition the seriality of a TV show as such. Serial pinboarding is a term to describe the connection between a television series and its pinboard and especially applies to shows that heavily depend on pinboarding: as a summary of previous episodes and a simultaneous forecast of the series’ future; as a character attribute or a space of shared information. It defines the characters’ actions, the scene’s camera angles, and the viewer’s viewing experience. The term also closes a methodological gap, where the analysis of static images and serial progression concur but neither theoretical approach could so far grasp the phenomenon as a whole. Serial pinboarding fabricates and is fabricated over time, when the visual archive of a pinboarding © The Author(s) 2020 A. Ganzert, Serial Pinboarding in Contemporary Television, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35272-1_2

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construction simultaneously spawns new knowledge and, because of its televisual and serial context, this parallel process becomes visible and narrative. This process is edited and not coincidental, which is why the staging of serial pinboarding has particular effects for the diegesis. The facets of this definition will be the concern of the following chapter. In order to sharpen the term, I will contemplate the status of the serial pinboard not only as a dispositive of seriality but also as elaborate set design, as an image, as an epistemic object, and as a medium. Serial pinboarding is also a practice that is serial in itself and occurs in all TV genres. As a cultural practice, it occurs so widely that it seems we live in the ‘age of pins’. Fictional televisual pinboarding, as it is of concern here, adds another layer of complication to defining the term. Even more than with factual television, the montage techniques, framing, camera movement, and lighting that mediate pinboarding to the television audience have to be taken into consideration. They need to be acknowledged as part of a narrative entity1 that defines what the audience gets to see and how it is shown. Does the pinboarding only happen in a character’s mind, like in Psych (Franks 2006–2014), where protagonist Shawn Spencer connects clues at crime scenes with his extraordinary attention to detail? Even though there is no board in sight, stylistic devices of pinboarding can be made out here, too: close-ups of objects emphasized by special effects and a specific sound effect, as used in Psych with a yellow glow and a distinct noise, are contingent on the framing, and are essential to televisual pinboarding in general. Fast camera pans from one object to another visualize the movement of thought and give it a direction. A great, if over the top, example of this can be seen in Psych’s promotion for their play-along case (Hashtag Killer Promotion 2011), where the editing is very much on the nose regarding the way of thinking with pinboarding. A similar thing happens when the camera takes a character’s point of view in front of a pinboard, pointing to artifacts on the board and filming the space between them. Depending on the required mood, these movements can be fast or slow, thus becoming a filmic rendition of the time of thought, as well as allowing the audience to follow this thought process without needing lengthy dialogue to explain it. These scenes might occasionally fall back on an enunciator (Ernst and Paul 2015, 18) but mostly convey the intended atmosphere by mediating it with televisual means. This results in a variety of questions: How do contemporary TV shows, and especially those chosen for this study, play with difference and repetition? How do they deal with their potential endlessness? Do they reflect upon their own narrative and medial modes?

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How do they sync themselves to the everyday lives and times of their audiences? Are series in fact a “functional equivalent to a theory of memory” (Engell 2011, 116 my translation)? Even if pinboards and seriality co-­ facilitate each other, it remains an open and interesting question whether they also hide or cover up certain aspects of seriality. Pinboarding and Seriality Serial pinboarding lends itself to reflect upon, and simultaneously co-­ create, aspects of televisual seriality, thus turning seriality as an internal organizing principle outward and promoting, fabricating, and stabilizing it to a dominant aesthetic expression. Precisely the modes of negotiating seriality with and by the pinboards, and how each kind of object particularly relates to one or more aspects of seriality, are of interest here. These relations remain necessarily flexible, as “[i]t appears that the notion of seriality remains hard to define and involves different characteristics according to different authors” (Bourdaa 2011, 26). As seriality detaches itself from the narrative and becomes its own aesthetic form, series and episodes have to be looked at on multiple levels of textuality and (non-)knowledge, semiotics and iconography (Fahle 2012, 171, my translation). Through elements like serial pinboarding, shows can visualize their own seriality and narrative; a great example of this can be drawn from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (Berman and Piller 1993). In the 13th episode in season six “Far Beyond the Stars” (original air date: February 11, 1998), Captain Benjamin Sisko fades in and out of a very long vision of himself on earth: He sees himself as Benny Russel, a science fiction writer for a magazine in the 1950s. Cuts between Benjamin and his crew on the spaceship and Benny and his colleagues at the magazine emphasize that the people surrounding him are the same in both worlds: they show similar character traits in the twentieth and the twenty-fourth centuries, have similar names, and are played by the same actors. Inspired by a drawing of a spaceship, Benny comes up with a story about the African-American captain of the ‘Deep Space Nine’. But due to 1950s racial discrimination, it does not get published until he changes the story into a mere dream. The double reflection of present and past, vision and dream further intertwines the storyline. When the magazine is canceled and he is blamed for it, Benny has a nervous breakdown and shouts forebodingly: “You cannot destroy an idea. That future, I created it, and

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it’s real. Don’t you understand? It is real! I created it and it is real!” Shortly after, Benjamin returns to his reality and his presence  in the twenty-­ fourth century. In the following season’s episode “Shadows and Symbols” (Kroeker 1998), Benjamin has another 1950s vision during a crucial moment in his storyline: He walks through a desert searching for the ‘Orb of the Emissary’ in order to reopen a closed wormhole and consequently end an entire war. On his way, he begins to hear voices calling for a doctor’s help with a patient. When he reaches the orb, Benjamin suddenly finds himself as Benny standing in his room at a mental hospital. Most of the walls have been filled with tiny writing in pencil: the story of Deep Space Nine. Intercuts and dialogue clarify that Benny has just been writing the moments the audience has just seen, leading up to Benjamin opening the box. Benny’s doctor asks him to stop this arguably manic behavior and paint over his writing. Unable to delete his own story, Benny knocks out the doctor and writes “opens it” on the wall. A cut back to Benjamin shows that he can now open the orb and avert the catastrophe. On a first level, this short excursion into Deep Space Nine shows the interlacing of a meta-story with its story-within-a-story: two distinct times, two discernible characters, parallel issues, and intertwined storylines. On a second level, the set design and dialogue reflect upon the necessity of serial continuation: the story has to go on, even if obstacles present themselves. This is particularly clear as the visions are actively sent to Benjamin in order to distract him from his task and lock him into the mental hospital in his mind. On a third level, graphomania as the externalization of thought is a trope closely linked to pinboarding. And on a metafictional level, Benny is repeatedly presented as the mastermind behind the show, even in following seasons. According to the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion (Erdmann and Block 2000), the producers even contemplated ending the entire series with a shot of Benny Russell reading a script for Deep Space Nine outside a television sound stage. It is obvious that this example could be discussed on many levels, even though it is only a small part in the massive narrative that is Star Trek. Specific episodes or story arcs like this one can be meta-reflections that question a TV show’s medial conditions, and pinboards can have the same effect, reflecting on the shows’ narrative and serial structure by presenting them in a different, more visually obvious form.

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Producing Serial Pinboarding Even though pinboarding is most often diegetically tied to a specific character, the extra-diegetic intention for conveying said diegesis in a certain way is the prevalent factor in the production of serial pinboards. Many elements contribute to the pinboard’s look, staging, and use and to the mediation of the pinboarding process in the way that scriptwriters and developers intend. John T. Caldwell was among the first researchers to focus on the visual aspects of television or the look of a specific show. In his book Televisuality, published in 1995, he focuses on means of visualization which are not a “neutral vehicle” (Caldwell 1995, 76) but a TV-specific potentiality that is/has to be utilized. Caldwell aims at grasping televisuality as the operative communication mode of TV.  Starting with the 1980s, Caldwell’s study shows how all sorts of program segments have their own style and how the look of a specific channel can be coded. “In short, style, long seen as a mere signifier and vessel for content, issues, and ideas, has now itself become one of television’s most privileged and showcased signifieds” (ibid., 5). Similarly, the look or style of a show’s pinboard is realized through the mise-en-scène, lighting, montage, typography, animation, set, and so on. Sometimes the producers have to budget for an elaborate set design that has to then be executed with great attention to detail. The stationery, for example, has to be planned carefully. “If he or she has lo-fi tastes, hasn’t been to art school or whatever, they’ll make certain choices. They might be the sort of person who would go to Staples and buy whatever’s cheap. If I was making a wall for that person, then I would do that, too. For Primeval, I studied pictures of 19th-century asylums and psychiatric wards, and rooms that people with psychological complexes had covered in amazing materials; for police dramas, you might have to design and print your own stationery. For Happy Valley, I designed a police crest.” [says designer Rob Treen, who made the walls for Primeval, Spooks, and Happy Valley]. (Benson 2015)

This quote is of interest for two reasons: Firstly, it brings the set designer’s work to the fore. It is they who materially create a wall, going off ideas directors and showrunners might have had on how they want a pinboard to look before it becomes part of further filmic fabrication. It could be argued though, that the more successful a set design is, the further it steps back as an artificial design, which is why researchers and

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a­ udiences oftentimes do not comment on the subject. Curious viewers can find interviews with production designers as an additional feature on a show’s DVD or on the networks’ web pages, which give some acknowledgment for the design as the visually most prominent part of the narrative entity. If the designers finish a wall or pinboard, it has to be shot with a special focus on meticulous continuity. If a character moves one of the elements in a scene, that has to be shot multiple times, and the exact position needs to be reproducible. Continuity is much more easily achieved if the pinboard in a series is made out to be in constant use by the characters, but seldom shown in close-up: this allows, or even demands, frequent changes on the board. An assumption of ongoing pinboarding means that objects have to be added or taken away—or at least be moved in a visible/detectable manner. The fact that there is some sort of change then also becomes narrative, telling a story of pinboarding in the ellipsis. Consequently, if the question is what a pinboard design ‘tells us’, we can only refer to a visual language, “a language which appeals to the viewer’s unconscious psychological and/or emotional response as well as to the intellect”  (O’Connor 1990, 4). In that, there is a lot that can be described as the atmosphere and that is difficult to put into words—that even loses its horror or aura when put into words. The filming can support this: Depending on the camera angle, different perspectives on a board can be taken. An overview and a frontal shot convey, for example, an entirely different mood than a frantically moving point-of-view camera. This is precisely the filmic fabrication of serial pinboarding that is paramount to its analysis and that always has to consider serial sequentiality. For example, the lighting can change what had been for several episodes a creepy shrine pinboard into a clinically blue, brightly illuminated Crime Scene Investigations (CSI) (Zuiker 2000–2015) workspace, with one switch, in one scene. These characterizing elements are stylistic choices, especially deployed when the pinboard is an attribute of its fictional creator. Both the set design and the filming are influenced differently depending on whether a very structured investigator or a fanatical stalker is to be characterized through the pinboards. Analyzing serial pinboarding always has to consider the board and its creator(s): Both the diegetic pinboarder and the extra-diegetic producers are powers at play in a series’ dispositive and thus its pinboarding. A great example of the fabrication of a character by means of staging and by showing pinboarding operations can be found in Se7en (Fincher 1995, TC 01:13:40f). Even though this example is from a movie and also

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is more like ‘scrapbooking’ than pinboarding, the similarities are evident and I will roll out the conclusions drawn from this iconic example onto serial pinboards in the following. When detectives William Somerset and David Mills search John Doe’s apartment they find tools, crosses, drugs, a human hand in formaldehyde, creepy photos in a darkroom, and shelves filled with “2000 notebooks” with about 250 pages each. Every page is filled with handwriting, photos, and drawings. What makes them uncomfortable to look at though is not their content but the work of the designers (Ibid., blue-ray special “the Notebooks”): tape that has gone yellow, withered paper, re-sewn bindings, semitransparent overlays of photos from autopsies, malformations, and torture, and distinctive tiny handwriting certainly do their part in generating John Doe’s state of mind. This ties in with the second important aspect of the quote by set designer Rob Treen, which supports the notion that storyline, purpose, and character personality influence the design of the pinboards, notebooks, or walls. So even if the basic materials appear to be the same, the execution and look of a board seem to be something individual to a character. The character traits inform the designers so that the audience can understand things about the character who is supposedly the creator of the board by the way a board is staged. This mutual influence is additionally emphasized by the fact that Se7en’s famous title sequence is entirely made up of shots of John Doe’s scrapbooking. In this title sequence, the actions that are made out to be the actions of a religiously motivated serial killer merge with the prominently featured actions of the designers. It is the camera’s consequent framing, which focuses exclusively on the hands, that allows this ambiguity. The (male) hands are cutting, taping, drawing, sewing, writing, and crossing out—all of which are also part of the practices of pinboarding. The Se7en title sequence also “wears its construction proudly on its sleeve” (Radatz 2012, n.p.) and alludes to practices of moviemaking, when film strips are cut up, details are sliced from images, text pieces are glued together, and so forth. This meta-reflexive tendency described for Se7en is, in fact, another common aspect for serial pinboarding: Many pinboards draw parallels between the show’s production, the broadcast, the seriality of the narrative, and the structure of the board. This will be exemplified further with this study’s four examples, such as in FlashForward (Braga and Goyer 2009–2010), where especially the timing of episodes is closely tied to the board’s pinning of time (see Chap. 4). Some boards even reference the so-called storyboards, which are used for the development of storylines or

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arranging production sequences. “Storyboards are visual organizers, ­typically a series of illustrations displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-­visualizing a video” or movie (Culatta 2013), but for TV series, especially complex ones, they have become crucial, too. They are most common in ‘writers’ rooms’, where different script authors collaborate on writing an episode, often supporting a show’s creator, for example in dialogue writing. To visualize the written script and to plan scenes and camera angles, writer’s rooms use storyboards and other kinds of boards to merge their respective contributions, map out seasons to come, or collect information on characters. In a talk show, aptly named The Writers’ Room (2013), acclaimed screenwriter Jim Rash talked to popular shows’ writing teams, developers, and lead actors about the writing process.2 And he put a special emphasis on the fact that the viewers are involved in a process of encoding and decoding, similar to the process Stuart Hall (1994) describes. Hall writes from the viewpoint of communication studies and as a reaction to the critiques of the linear sender/message/receiver communication model. He marked four distinct moments in the communication process: “Production, circulation, distribution/consumption, reproduction” (Hall 1994, 117), which are each connected to distinctive practices. In the production moment, the meaning or message that the producers want to convey has to be transformed into the “discursive form”, or “sign-vehicle” (ibid.), in which it can then be circulated. Only in this form can it then be distributed to audiences, before being transformed again when each viewer decodes their own version of the message. Neither of the four moments can guarantee the next, which is why the meaning in the encoding phase and the meaning in the decoding phase are not necessarily congruent. This is partly because the television sign is always polysemic: it is iconic, as it resembles what it (re-)presents and it is both visual and aural.3 Even though the producers have to account for the polysemy, Hall emphasizes that there is always a ‘preferred reading’, which is deliberately encoded by the producers (Hall 1994, 105). The montage of the designing hands in Se7en, for example, can trigger various associations for different viewers. But the overall impression of John Doe’s mental state is a preferred reading that is hard to misunderstand. So even though Hall describes the processes of encoding and decoding on a broader level of dominance, power, and meaning in society, primarily regarding questions of gender, class, or race, the production of serial pinboarding also occurs within these larger circumstances. The production of pinboarding is an act

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of encoding some sort of preferred meaning. Once the elements have been transformed into their ‘discursive form’, they can circulate via the framing/montage and be distributed to the viewer, who can then decode it. In their ‘discursive form’ the elements are then part of the pinboard’s discursive form as an image—in the sense of a collage or assemblage of interpretable signs, and as an image in the sense of a televised image on the screen’s surface.

TV’s Pinboards It is no coincidence that author and journalist Richard Benson very fittingly labeled a whole sub-genre of television shows the “Post-It Procedurals” (2015). I can also agree with him that this label fits best with respect to more recent productions: While 1960s and ‘70s movies and TV shows were the heydays for conspiracy and spy narratives, pinboards, or crazy walls were rare “and those that did appear tended to be meagre affairs” (ibid., n.p.). In the following decades, however, pinboards became more noticeable and more important for storytelling and aesthetics of movies especially. Around the millennium, different developments led to a rise in pop cultural and televisual pinboarding. On the one hand, technological developments in both hardware and software opened up countless possibilities utilizing the internet and its hypertextual properties. Recent formats like YouTube series, web-docs, and transmedia narratives rely on their online presence and changing audience practices, like TV-show-­ themed Pinterest boards and wikis. Visualized data have exceeded business or college presentations and made their way into pop culture with books like Film in Five Seconds (Milesi and Civaschi 2013) and have become their own art form as infographics (Cf. Tufte 1991), both referring to similar viewing practices as to looking at a pinboard. Another development facilitates an increase in serial pinboarding: Legal and illegal streaming portals and mobile devices allow the consumption of TV series almost anywhere. With that, movies and series involving time travel or memory loss came back into fashion, perhaps, as media and cinema studies Professor Paul Booth notices, because of “a growing concern of audiences with the immateriality and timelessness of interactive online digital technologies” (Booth 2011, 373). Since 2000, this has resulted in “a surge in the number and type of television narratives that have focused on the aesthetics of temporal distortion” (ibid., 371), which often requires some sort of notation to construct a ‘calming’ linear order. According to

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Booth, media and entertainment can therefore help audiences and users to cope with various distortions. This effect is also the reason why serious contemporary events, such as terrorist attacks, warfare, and increased surveillance measures, find their way into books, movies, series, and games so they can then be solved, sorted, and put back in order—preferably by means of pinboarding. However, pinboarding as a televisual and cultural practice has spread to many TV series in which some sort of problem has to be solved, be it criminal, paranormal, romantic, medical, or scientific. Therefore, to have a workable body of examples, the scope of this study was narrowed down to contemporary North American shows,4 even though pinboarding as a cultural practice and as a storytelling device can basically be found in any country’s TV productions. It usually appears in similar contexts. Criminals, Investigators, Stalkers: Genres of Pinboarding Typical film or television series genres in which pinboarding appears are investigative shows of all kinds (crime, medical, or forensics). Investigators or criminal suspects are the typical pinboarders we get to watch. Stalkers form a specific subcategory of the latter, as pinboarded shrines can also be benign and merely a place of worship without criminal intent. With stalker walls, or ‘crazy walls’ as they are sometimes called, the intention is more on conveying an extraordinary state of mind than visualizing a complex issue or a multitude of facts. This is why this category of personal boards can also be used as an attribute for a genius or someone on the line between brilliance and madness. The idea of reconstruction of a lost memory is often also realized through a pinboard, most prominently surely in Memento (C. Nolan 2000). Externalized craziness on a pinboarding wall can be found in movies like Twelve Monkeys (Gilliam 1995), Ex Machina (Garland 2014), Saw (Wan 2004), and many others. From an intra-­ diegetic point of view, the boards can therefore function for the individual creator or for group communication. From an extra-diegetic point of view, all boards discussed in the context of this book are of course first and foremost means by which the series communicates something with the viewer. And viewers are well accustomed to reading the boards. It is pretty difficult to say when and where pinboarding was first used in a movie or TV show. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (Hopcraft 1979) certainly uses a kind pinboarding for heist planning, which is a context in which it appears quite often. Vaults, air conditioning shaft, escape cars,

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and criminals as moving items on a board or a table can be seen all over from Ronin (Frankenheimer 1998) to Younger (Star 2015–) to The Wedding Ringer (Garelick 2015). Because of pinboarding’s distinct possibilities to simulate a plan, move all involved parties around like on a playing field, talk through the options, and find timing issues, pinboarding actually might be most realistic in these instances of heist planning. Computer and video games have used pinboards in exactly the same way to lead players through the necessary preparation for a bank robbery for example. In fact, all strategic planning can be undertaken and/or visualized like this, from sports tactics to combat.5 In cases when a narrative literally ‘flips the script’ and an investigator finds a board made by a criminal or stalker, this process becomes the story. In these cases, as seen in Castle (Marlowe 2009–2016), Heroes (Kring 2006–2010), or Law & Order (Wolf 1990–2010), the investigators enter the pinboarder’s place and, in finding the pinboarding construction, get a glimpse into their mind. They then have to work backward and try to understand the pinboarding practices that were used, and through the visual grammar and content understand the intent of the board and maybe the perpetrator’s next move. Of course, many a TV detective, doctor, or lawyer has used pinboarding to investigate their case. It is absolutely impossible to name all instances of such pinboarding, especially because some characters only use it once, while others regularly work with pinboarding. The latter are who are of interest in this book because their pinboarding itself becomes a serial practice. So much so, that pinboarding has become a trope that can be used in comedy and parodies, as section “Becoming a Trope” will show. Most importantly, pinboards are now a prop that can attribute a specific mode of thinking to a character, be it either inquisitive or unsettling. Fictional investigators can get pretty obsessed, so the line between the neurotic stalker and the rational collector of evidence gets blurry sometimes. Homeland (Gordon and Gansa 2011–) is, of course, a very prominent example for this, but we can also find this in shows like Dollhouse (Whedon 2009–2010) or The X-Files (“Grotesque” S02E14, Manners 1996). The spread of pinboarding throughout many TV series, formats, and genres also causes various serial pinboards to have diverse narrative and dispositive functions. They often appear when time travelers have to keep track of their journeys, when scientists develop new theories, basically whenever a character faces a complex situation or has created an overly complex situation in their mind. This is why I decided against focusing on

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just one pinboard, agreeing with Juretzka that series are not looked at as isolated entities, nor can they be (1992, 43f). Only by comparing different shows can their similarities and differences be identified. Hoping that the analysis and results of this book will be applicable beyond the chosen examples, the selection excludes many TV series and their pinboards as well as other interesting cases of serial pinboarding, for example, The Wire (Simon 2002–2008). Yet televisual pinboards can be conversation pieces that introduce transmedia extensions; mixed-media art or ‘genre-typical object diagrammatics’.6 Analyzing them therefore also demands an approach that applies a methodological mix, one which considers the various levels as shown at the beginning of this chapter in the Sisko/ Russel example.

Art, Media Theory, and Seriality Denson states, that this new research [on seriality] is conducted in interdisciplinary settings, where exchanges amongst various perspectives and paradigms are facilitated by the fact that the shared object of study – not just series but forms of seriality and serialization – itself calls for methods that are inherently comparative and that alternate between the ‘close-up’ view of empirical and formal analyses on the one hand and ‘wide-angle’ theorizations of cultural, historical, and media-technical developments on the other. (2011)

In compiling the necessary interdisciplinary methodological approach for serial pinboarding, Television Studies certainly offers many productive concepts for the study at hand. TV series had a major upswing in production and in research7 as well as in Europe. For a long time, TV had been regarded as an extension of the cinema into people’s homes, and its storytelling was sometimes described as ‘less than’ cinema or less than literature. Some earlier approaches treated cinema and television similarly (Hickethier 1994, 10), even though early TV studies quickly began to theorize it as non-cinema. Even more so in the last two decades, with the development of DVD boxes, video on demand, and streaming platforms, media culture researchers have begun to stress the importance of taking TV seriously in its own right. While many studies include textual approaches or audience research, “[t]he visual style, the ‘look’, of TV drama texts has become another key aspect, besides narrative form and other principles of

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composition, to invite analysis” (Nelson 2007, 11). Additionally, the ­priority is on what has been termed the entertainment-focused “TVIII” (Rogers et  al. 2002)8 or what Ellis has called television in “the era of plenty” (2007, 162f). Especially ‘quality TV’ and its increased ‘complexity’ have been celebrated for quite some time in academic writing (Feuer et al. 1984; Thompson 1997; Blanchet 2011; Mittell 2015) as well as in on- and offline publications. Ernst and Paul, for example, describe how TV has been ‘ennobled’ by using the term ‘quality TV’ (2015, introduction) and Stollfuß accounts for the development of the term into an “inadequate academic label” and a marketing term used by the TV industry well into this decade (2012, 90). In the context of this study, both quality TV and popular TV, and the shows that carry these labels, may include serial pinboarding, which in turn adds to the general diagnosis of a stronger reflexive component to contemporary TV series—whether popularly received or by a smaller ‘cult’ audience. In fact, associating quality TV with smaller, selective viewerships, as Thompson did when he first defined quality TV in 1997, lost some of its validity with the increase in shows that displayed these markers and with the upswing of successful shows that “aggressively resist the category of ‘quality TV’” (Thompson 1997; Thompson in McCabe and Akass 2007, xx). I would agree with Dasgupta in arguing that the formerly antithetical positions of popular TV and quality TV have been outdated for a while (2012). Therefore, the fact that serial pinboarding can be read as a sign of narrative complexity employed to visual relations, cases, or structures, real or claimed, is of more importance than the question in which genre or category this might play out in. And looking at this study’s main examples allows no inclusion or exclusion either way: Castle for example is rather popular television, while Homeland has been critically acclaimed. Heroes was an audience and critics’ favorite, Heroes Reborn certainly was not, and FlashForward had and has a very small, cultish fandom but not much else going for it. The examples of serial pinboarding hence show the limitation of these terms’ use in this context. Similarly, approaching the complexity that is staged with the pinboards can only to an extent be done with narratology, simply because: “Most of the categories and concepts which have been developed in the various branches of narratology were designed primarily for the analysis of written narratives” (Allrath and Gymnich 2005, 1). Intertextuality, in its basic understanding of creating a relationship between texts is certainly one way to look at pinboarding as a trope and in a distinct setting. In this context, pinboarding would most certainly be described as ‘obligatory

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intertextuality’, calling upon a specific knowledge and understanding of the viewer to achieve a deeper understanding of the board. The same can be said about the characters through which the practice of intertextual reference is often acted out for us to watch. Yet each case of serial pinboarding should be regarded individually concerning its mode of referencing, and certainly a taxonomy of intertextuality like in classical poetry for example would go too far (Miola 2004). As elaborated in section “Becoming a Trope”, many instances of serial pinboarding in which the relation with pinboarding as a concept is parodic while the aspect of other pinboards is called upon as a collage or sorts, a pastiche “which aims at similarity” (Hutcheon 2000, 39). There I also argue that serial pinboarding has developed into a general trope, rather than a direct intertextual reference. Even though “[t]elevision aesthetics involve the textures of the imagery and sound and the play between them” (Nelson 1997, 19), acoustic seriality only plays a minor role in this study. The focus clearly lies on the imagery, both in the sets and in the montages presenting the pinboards in specific ways. This also explains why different approaches from Visual (Culture) Studies and Image Studies are important. As there is no singular discipline in the humanities concerned with visual representation, visualization, depiction, and illustration, there can only ever be talk of Visual Culture Studies in the plural. Work that is being done on data or knowledge visualization also influences the theory of serial pinboarding, as it is of course central how things are visualized (Boehnert 2016; Grant 2018) and how creators can tell a story through data visualization (Yau 2011). One of the differences is that TV’s pinboards do not always only contain useful items and quite frequently break the design rule “if it looks significant, it should be, otherwise you are either misleading or creating unnecessary obstacles for your if you viewer”  (Kirk 2016, 37). Yet the basic assumption, that is so easily understandable and useful, because “[h]uman brains are wired for seeing patterns and differences, and for understanding spatial relationships from this” (Grant 2018, chap. 1) most definitely holds true for serial pinboarding. In an age of big data, it is no surprise that characters like Carrie Mathison in Homeland can be read as overwhelmed by data (Coley 2017, n.p.). Yet it is very interesting that today, when even if the humanities have been digitized, and law enforcement certainly has as well, many TV series chose paper and string over computer screens and software to “facilitate understanding” when visualizing their pinboarding data (Kirk 2016, 19).

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A similar reservation has to be expressed when turning to image theory or diagrammatic approaches, none of which were conceived with television in mind, therefore neither taking moving images nor visible changes to the objects into account. Though in the context of this study the pinboards’ diagrammatic potential (term and application will be explained in the following chapters; for a general introduction see Bauer and Ernst 2010) and thus their reference to processes of visualizing (serial) knowledge, the serialization of events, or the notorious fragmentation of series into smaller elements will be of interest. While as visual culture vanguard Mirzoeff puts it, “‘the world-as-a-text’ has been replaced by the ‘world-as-a-picture’” (Mirzoeff 1999, 7), TV series could not really be described by either. Fahle noted that, in general, visual studies have not yet commented much on television (2011, 113), even though (Pop-)Cultural Studies have, and many chapters of this book will draw on this. Contrary to this study “however, cultural studies was less interested in the seriality of popular forms than in the popularity of serial forms; that is, the largely formal matter of seriality was treated as more or less incidental” (Denson 2011, n.p.). Both TV and Cultural Studies necessarily consider their audiences, but depending on the perspective, the idea of the audience changes, from the implied audience as recipients of the narrative, to the commercially interesting “fans and anti-­ fans” (Gray 2003), “televiewers” (Abelman and Atkin 2011), and “prosumers” (Blättel-Mink and Hellmann 2010). From Nielsen ratings to cult followings, “the television audience becomes an object of discourse whose status is analogous to that of ‘population’, ‘nation’ or ‘the masses’. […] ‘television audience’ only exists as an imaginary entity, an abstraction constructed from the vantage point of the institutions” (Ang 1991, 2). The imagined audience entity of this study is somewhat of an implied reader in Iser’s sense, willing to engage with the series, to fill the gaps intentionally left by it (Cf. Iser 1978), and to retrace the operations of pinboarding. This audience is also clearly understood as ‘actively’ watching television, or rather as consciously televiewing—contemporary television “requires the generation and application of critical thinking to guide program selection, inform appreciation, generate greater pleasure, and inspire dialogue after consumption. Televiewing is an art and a science” (Abelman and Atkin 2011, XI). Because of this implied audience, this book does not conduct quantitative or qualitative research in the methodological sense of a sociological study. The following chapters will focus on the shows and their pinboarding, performing a discourse analysis that draws upon various

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theoretic frameworks, rather than viewer interviews. Therefore the argumentation will lean on the pinboarding images and narratives presented by the chosen TV series, presenting close readings of the material. It could be argued that not all viewers have the same viewing experience, especially with the pinboards, and that this approach might therefore be considered a preferred reading (Cf. Hall 1994). But even though actual viewers might indeed focus on something other than the elements relevant to the context of pinboarding, the potential that they could see those elements warrants a close analysis. In point of fact, contemporary TV practices like the global distribution of shows as well as recent developments like social media spoilers actually enhance the chances of audiences being attentive to details or phenomena like pinboarding. Current technology, from the mobile phone to the smartwatch, facilitate a different kind of tele-viewing, and DVD box sets, streaming, and digital recorders allow rewinding of any scene, or freezing a frame for a closer look or to take a screenshot.9 The mere option to pause a show mid-broadcast means that TV images have to be taken even more seriously as images, and their mediality also has to be considered. Many researchers have turned their attention to the economic implications, from piracy to changing advertisement modalities in TV on demand (Cf. Brown and Barkhuus 2006; Kompare 2006). When the streaming service Netflix successfully produced its first in-house productions and released the whole seasons at once, ‘binge-watching’ (Jenner 2017) became relevant for research outside media-education studies. With these changes in distribution and reception practices came changes in production practices as well as in the narratives, raising questions about contemporary seriality. TV series’ pinboards can be considered symptomatic of these changes: they can visualize complex narratives in one glance or guide viewers through more complex re-views; they can function as integrated archives, replacing or adding to the previously on, or be compact cliffhangers and part of the to be continued; and they can be media of communication. They clearly accommodate seriality as a core element while simultaneously being accommodated by the serial structure. Pinboards as Images and Media Pinboards are images that always show something else at the same moment as they show themselves. Following art theorist Boehm’s thesis, this is precisely the nature of any image (2007, 19) and hence also of pinboards.

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With the serial televisual pinboards there are even more layers to this: an image pinned to the board shows something as well as showing itself as an image; the pinboard as an image shows its elements as well as its status as an image; and the television image shows the pinboard. All of these images reciprocally condition and are enclosed in one another. In doing so, the TV image steps back behind the images it mediates. Alexander Galloway writes: “the more intuitive a device becomes, the more it risks falling out of media altogether, becoming as naturalized as air or as common as dirt” (Galloway 2012, 25). TV as entirely intuitive often conceals its own technical and aesthetic conditions, or both simulates and dissimulates its technical and medial conditions. If we consider a pinboard as a medium, it most likely is also a dissimulation, meaning that media at least in part disguise or conceal themselves (Cf. Schade et al. 1999). They are different from their representations—the medium coincides neither with itself nor with its content. Tholen emphasizes that the dissimulation is continued on the user surface and in its possible iconography. Televisual pinboards facilitate an image of the series and seriality by presenting other images and only partly revealing their own medial status. What may be the advantage of considering the pinboards under the theoretical implications of image theory? There are many definitions of what constitutes an image, so diverse that there is “no way to summarize contemporary theories of the image” (Elkins 2011, 1). It is not the aim of this study to add to this multifaceted discourse, but rather to apply the mostly helpful approaches in order to get a better grasp of serial pinboards, such as Fahle’s differentiation between image and the visible; he describes the image as a framed and composed visual that has a definable historic and medial place. It is a concentration of the visible, condensed in a document, a representation (2011, 188–99). Much like the sayable in a discourse (Arnheim 1969, 1974), the visible has a counterpart in the (currently) invisible, or rather the visible is the pool of possibilities from which the images emerge and to which they might return (Fahle 2011, 188–99). To Fahle the image and the visible thus never achieve the status of being, but rather of becoming (ibid., 112). A TV series’ pinboard can be seen in/as many images. It is a different image each time it is made visible, or rather, different pinboard images emerge from the pool of potential visibility. Parallel to images’ processual character, pinboards are always becoming. A scene with a pinboard might show a specific, temporally stabilized arrangement of the board, one of the potential images of the pinboard.

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For serial pinboarding though, this momentary image always carries the potential of change with it and implies previous and follow states. The arrangement of the elements is frozen so that they can be examined and described, but only for a brief time period. Thus, pinboarding is always ongoing or at least meta-stable, even when a pinboard does not change and no detectable pinboarding takes place. A singular pinboard can hence be a stabilized image, a fictional case can be finished through pinboarding—the second a solved case’s board is shown, though, viewers and characters instantly perform practices of reading the pinboarding again. Because of this seriality, this temporal knot of repetition, practices, and media, serial pinboarding can only be understood as a process. This is why epistemologically, pinboarding can only be a verb in the ‘present progressive’ or, as it is also called, ‘present continuous’. It is ongoing, inconclusive, or rather not yet concluded. The subject to this verb, the pinboarder, is involved in creating the pinboard and showing this pinboard to others. Other producing operations of pinboarding are “homogenizing, arranging and rearranging, comparing [and] recognizing patterns”, which Krämer (2013, n.p.) sees as the four kinds of activities that use the potential of a surface as a figurative epistemology. The pinboard in its dispositive capacity facilitates those practices or operations while hindering others. It is the technical condition of all pinboarding operations and hence all potential actions of the pinboarder. The subject of the pinboarder is at least twofold (or threefold if we consider fans, as in Chap. 6 section “Fans as Pinboarders”): It refers to a character who is pinboarding in relation to the characters surrounding him or her. It also refers to the series, which is pinboarding (producing and showing) in relation to its viewers. In any case, deictic operations need to be employed. Pinboards primarily ‘confront’ the onlooker with something, they present or show it (Cf. Wiesing 2013). Pinboarders certainly can point to something when they want to show something specific to someone. To describe a character’s ‘showing’, their body language, gestures, glances, and speech can be taken into consideration. To analyze the camera and montage’s showing in regard to pinboarding, different markers should be noted. Firstly, stills or close-up shots of a specific item or long shots of a section of pinboard direct the focus. A more dynamic approach of showing is a zoom or pan on an item to televisually simulate a deictic gesture. This can be used in combination with a character’s pointing glance, as if the camera follows their pointing in order to point s­omething out to the

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viewer. These deictic levels certainly also intertwine with sound or further image editing and Computer Generated Imagery, depending on how much emphasis is put on showing an item or relation in pinboarding. Notably, most of the pinboarding operations described so far start with perceptual processes, seeing, or cognition, that at least since Arnheim have been inseparable from art as well as from notions of deduction and visual thinking (Cf. Piecha 2004). Some of them are tactile, some of them are televisual, which means they require a distinct visual literacy that is shaped by everyday pinboarding (see above) and serial pinboarding in particular. Some of the pinboarding operations are mainly cognitive and address a specific visual intelligence. Barry explains how visual literacy and visual intelligence differ: While visual literacy might increase our ability to “quickly read[] the effective and cognitive aspects of these [visual] messages” that are coming into being, “[v]isual intelligence […] may be described as a quality of mind developed to the point of critical perceptual awareness in visual communication” (1997, 6). Both are essential for pinboarding and can lead to more enjoyment of and/or knowledge about the narrative and hence “an understanding of how the elements that compose meaning in images can be manipulated to distort reality, to the utilization of the visual in abstract thought” (ibid.). While elaborating on the discourse on visual problem-solving and the like would go far beyond the scope of this book, it appears that the reception and production of a modifiable pinboard, “which allows us to consciously combine different elements in new and surprising ways” (ibid., 8), makes the serial pinboard potentially a visually epistemic object or an epistemic image. This idea of epistemic images is nothing new. Krämer traces it back to ancient Greece: Plato’s Menon shows that visualization leads to knowledge, even if it is ‘just’ about your own mistakes (2013, n.p.). Knowledge that is made visible can become recognizable and usable. Adding to that, I want to argue that pinboards are images and technical objects as well as epistemic objects. Rheinberger classified technical objects as being “defined in a characteristic manner”  (2011b, 312), while the epistemic objects are objects with which or about which we aim to gain knowledge (Cf. Rheinberger 2001). In almost all cases of serial pinboarding, the boards are objects either with which knowledge is supposed to be gained or about which knowledge has to be acquired through working with the pinboard. Additionally, epistemic objects can only be described in a specific moment or realization. As shown above, a pinboard is also a specific

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moment or realization of the processual pinboarding. The epistemic pinboard hence allows a broader look at the phenomenon of pinboarding. To get a well-rounded definition, an epistemic arrangement with different epistemic objects is needed. In this context, this means drawing examples and insight from the different manifestations of serial pinboarding but also abstracting from them. In this abstraction process, it makes no difference if we are talking about pinboarding in investigation walls, a stalker’s wall, blackboards, whiteboards, conspiracy walls, or an evidence wall. They all require and fabricate pinboarding on an intra-diegetic level, on the side of production and filming, and on the part of the viewers. And they visualize, or rather visually fabricate, what both a show’s characters and its viewers know already. At the same time, they also carry the potential that one and/or the other might learn more from the visualization and elements and their arrangement on the pinboards. Pinboards as epistemic objects become a shared communicative space between the characters and between series and viewers, a layer between diegesis and reality. In fulfilling this function, they transform from an instrument to a medium. According to Vogl, this transformation includes at least five distinct steps (2001). Firstly, the technology evolves, which then creates new insights via new experimental practices. These lead to new knowledge, which has to be stored physically, which consequently leads to new modes of notation or visualization. Vogl’s main example is the telescope, which undeniably changed ‘seeing’ as such by changing the idea of seeing, creating a self-referentiality and an anesthetic field of the new visible. With serial pinboards, a mode of cognition appeared in TV series that made previously non-visible and non-detectable relations visible, which in turn added to the perceptibility of serial continuations and connections, mediated them, and thus made seriality self-reflexive by pinboarding. In pinboarding, the parallel processes of creating a visual system to store and archive information in order to gain new knowledge, and that of eventually sharing this knowledge visually, are combined. Televisual pinboarding mediates and produces these processes on a narrative fictional level as well as simultaneously producing it for the viewer. A serial pinboard fabricates pinboarding and is fabricated by the seriality of pinboarding. In this process the pinboards become mediated media; they are heterogenous elements, composite images, and epistemic objects that include technical machinery as well as symbolism, institutionalized ­practices, and modalities of knowledge (ibid., 121). Without seriality, this

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process could not take effect and vice versa: without processes like pinboarding, seriality would not exist. Summing up the contemplation of the status of pinboards, I want to describe them as epistemic media that present operative pictoriality through which non-visual relations can be visualized. Krämer specifies six aspects that factor into operative pictoriality, a term she coined: (1) planarity, (2) directedness, (3) graphism, (4) syntaxity, (5) referentiality, and (6) operativity. All of these aspects are also conditions for televisual pinboarding: (1) Planarity, which will be important in the next chapter on the surfaces of pinboards, allows the eye to perceive many things simultaneously. (2) Pinboards are directed, through the position of the camera-eye in relation to the board, camera movements, or reading conventions. (3) The graphism, meaning ways of inscription or carving into a surface, culminates in many of the pinboarding objects, especially in the red thread. (4) The syntax of pinboarding evolves between the objects, the different signs, and the different camera shots—all of which are (made) readable as much as they have to be read. (5) According to Krämer, operative images need an external point of reference, but this reference can be fictional, as it is the case for the pinboarding this study concerns itself with. (6) If all these parameters are provided, images can develop their operativity, by becoming a space of experimentation and reflection. I argue that many serial pinboards constitute spaces of selection and experimenting within the diegesis as well as for a show’s serial narrative. These selections and experiments play out over the course of episodes and seasons, which is why seriality is an additional factor for pinboards to be operative in Krämer’s sense. Seriality and serialized narration factor into the pinboard as a medium on at least two levels. Firstly, there is a certain seriality inherent in any step-­ by-­step problem-solving, already described by Descartes (Krämer 2013, n.p.). Secondly, the boards appear and reappear over the course of multiple episodes or even seasons, which makes them multiple images, serialized images. Though these temporary arrangements may be presented in an a-chronological narrative, the viewer’s experience of the narrative is nonetheless linear (Booth 2012, 312). Even then, viewers are able to sort the board’s serialized images according to the intra-diegetic ‘regular time’. Pinboards thus can become a series within a TV series, presenting a sub-­ seriality that is both intertwined with and independent from the seriality of the show’s narrative and the show’s form. They are a serialized object of television so that the practice of televisual pinboarding is a series in

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itself, running transversely through shows, channels, and genres. The always-progressive forms of pinboarding can, but do not have to, be performed with actual pinboards, walls, altars, windows, or screens. Pinboarding that is prominently featured in a TV show inevitably also stages the operations of pinboarding and is intertwined with the objects involved in these operations. Any definition of serial pinboarding can therefore only ever be a developing one. If we understand this as a productive conceptual instability, the terminological mutability of the term pinboarding is therefore also its strength: It allows theoretical reflection and growth in meaning while forcing us to constantly stay on our toes and integrate new stagings of pinboarding into the discourse, ones that use different materials, different logic, different kinds of data and communication. Or even different kinds of surfaces. Excurse to the Dispositive The term ‘dispositive’ will allow a grasp of the manifold elements involved, even though its origin is more philosophic than the ‘mundane’ television series. Foucault was one of the first theoreticians to contemplate le dispositif, even though the only definition he ever gave was at a round-table talk in 1977, in an often-quoted statement: What I’m seeking to characterize with this name is, first of all, an absolutely heterogeneous assembly which involves discourses, institutions, architectural structures, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific enunciations, philosophical, moral, and philanthropic propositions; in short: as much the said as the un-said, these are the elements of the dispositive. The dispositive is the network which is arranged between these elements. (Agamben 2005, 3–4 quoting Foucault)

What Foucault wanted to “identify in this apparatus [was] precisely the nature of the connection that can exist between these heterogeneous elements” (Foucault 1980, 194). The terms dispositive and apparatus (Baudry 2003) are closely related and often overlap, both in use and in meaning. Often the dispositive is understood as a more abstract version of the rather material apparatus, the latter being especially ideologically charged, but the expressions are inherently connected. In this context, dispositive is preferred, because it alludes to the disposal and arrangement

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of items on a pinboard. Foucault used the term mostly to describe the power structures in societies and political contexts. However, “[h]e is interested less in specific edifices or designated sources and emphasizes instead a network, arrangement, or configuration” (Bussolini 2010, 91). Deleuze later elaborated on Foucault’s concept and read it as a “multilinear ensemble” (ibid., 100), in which “each line is broken and subject to changes in direction, bifurcating and forked and subject to drifting” (Deleuze 1992, 159).10 Especially Deleuze’s focus on relations and their qualities instead of singular entities or items can be applied to the pinboards of concern here. Both French academics naturally used the French word dispositif. As an English-language legal term, the dispositive is an order or regulation; technologically it is a facility, gadget, or experimental set up; the military associates it with strategic planning (Albera and Tortajada 2015, 11). This is probably why many translations into English render dispositif into apparatus11 (alternatively: mechanism, deployment, or arrangement). For its closer relation to the French original, dispositive will nonetheless be used throughout this book, even though dispositive and apparatus both seem to be applicable to the televisual pinboards. Apparatus is however different from the dispositive: to Foucault it is something much smaller than the dispositive, and Giorgio Agamben defines the apparatus as “literally anything that has in some way the capacity to capture, orient, determine, intercept, model, control, or secure the gestures, behaviors, opinions, or discourses of living beings” (Agamben 2009, 14). Bussolini’s etymological analysis of the Italian, French, and Latin roots of the terms leads him to the summarization: “Apparatus might be said to be the instruments or discrete sets of instruments themselves – the implements or equipment. Dispositive, on the other hand, may denote more the arrangement […] of the implements in a dynamic function” (2010, 96). In order to make any statement about pinboards as dispositives of seriality, I will analyze the elements they contain and are maintained by reciprocally. The artifacts on the pinboards, their practices, and their televisual montage can be considered the “discrete set of instruments” that are part of the larger arrangement that is the pinboard, implementing its dispositive function. Especially in more recent studies, art and media scholars have adopted the rather technical use of the dispositive to describe actual settings of cultural practices, such as the photographic or graphic dispositive. In regard to television, Hickethier thoroughly analyzed TV’s ­reception dispositive, in which the viewer is mobile, more relaxed toward

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the TV, and has been subjectified by the power to change channels. Viewers are thus more of an influence on the ‘human-device-arrangement’ (2009), mostly in comparison to the well-defined technical dispositive of cinema (Rosen 1986, pt. 3: Apparatus). Baudry, who took the research of the cinematic dispositive in a different direction, described the apparatus of cinema as an invisible machine that evades the viewer’s attention so that they can be immersed in the illusion of the cinema (Cf. Baudry 2003). This rather pragmatic use of the socio-philosophical concept can be criticized (Wimmer 2013, 1), but I have chosen the term precisely for its ambiguity around describable technical conditions and abstract reflections of power structures. Pinboarding practices play out in the TV series and from this display emerge the power structures at play in particular moments in time. The power structure can, for example, become apparent in the asymmetric distribution of information regarding the audience, the characters, and the serial narrative. Serial pinboarding as a dispositive practice thus pertains to each series’ specific fictional narrative as well as to contemporary televisual seriality in general. This does not mean that pinboarding is an all-encompassing mode— there are certainly aspects and entities of power and seriality that resist pinboarding, that evade visualization. In fact, this strengthens the understanding of pinboards as dispositives, which include the ‘pinned’ and the ‘un-pinned’. The analysis consequently also has to consider the pinboards’ conditioning of the “un-said” (Foucault 2002, 31f), as they contain and produce unavailable knowledge and information that evade discovery— for example through the disguise or exclusion of objects or secrets that cannot (yet) be known. This can change over the course of the series, as dispositives and pinboards alike undergo changes and are necessarily flexible. “We will here consider the ‘dispositive’ as a methodologically constructed object allowing the conceptual questioning of an effective as well as discursive [seriality/] reality” (Albera and Tortajada 2015, 33). Therefore, the items and clusters of pinboarding are understood as the “discourses, institutions, architectural structures, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific enunciations, philosophical, moral, and philanthropic propositions” (Bussolini 2010, 91) between which the dispositive arranges itself and is arranged. Following Foucault, a combination of “material, sensorial, spatiotemporal and semiotic aspects” exercises power within the dispositive, in which “all kinds of sign systems and also specific media productions and works of art must be seen as parts

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of a very wide field” (Elleström 2010, 4). Additionally, pinboards staged less prominently than the four main examples further contribute to the discourse of serial pinboarding. After all, they are also part of ‘the said’ or ‘the written’ about the topic, or rather ‘the shown’. Furthermore, because they are part of an audiovisual medium—television—with “lines of visibility and enunciation” (Deleuze 1992, 162), Adelmann’s concept of “viscourse”, the visual discourse that “establishes an order of visibility and produces visually a specific knowledge about events” (2007, 36), applies. The following chapters will continuously consider the pinboards as sign systems on an intra- and extra-diegetic level, viscourses12 on a medium-­ specific level as well as dispositives on a meta-level, regarding seriality. But before they can do that, let me introduce the main examples of this book.

Four Cases of Serial Pinboarding Starting at the ground emphasizes that the surfaces on which pinboarding takes place determine the materials that can be used, how they are mounted, and which actions they require and facilitate. They are not just superficial appearance, image carrier, or face of a pinboard but displays, image-space, and spaces of meaning. In order to make these claims clearer, each of the main examples was chosen because it presents a different facet of pinboarding: FlashForward further explores questions of pinboards as images and spaces of meaning, while Homeland takes a more psychoanalytical approach that reflects on how pinboards and series are seen. Heroes continues its pinboarding throughout all iterations and creates defined spaces of knowledge. And Castle emphasizes the importance of the surfaces’ materiality and how this conditions pinboarding. FlashForward: The Mosaic Investigation Wall The title of FlashForward is a speaking one, as it indicates the central event of the series’ storyline: On October 6, 2009, the whole world loses consciousness for two minutes and seventeen seconds. During this time, people experience visions of themselves and it becomes clear afterward that people’s consciousnesses jumped ahead in time. They have seen their individual futures of April 29, 2010. Some of these visions seem to be more probable than others and so speculation about the validity of the visions begins. The audience also gets to see select parts of some characters’ visions. Keeping in the stylistic frame of filmic flash forwards, the series

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“inscribes a complex series of images, sounds, and music to indicate to the audience that what they are watching takes place in the future: swirling images, flashing faster than the human eye can decipher, obfuscation of the screen” (Booth 2011, 279). Paul Booth aptly describes the start of the visions that begin with a morphing effect of a fast swirling tunnel of images, suggesting a traveling movement forward more than a sudden, flash-like jump. Some images in these tunnels are clearly visible, others are distorted or gone too quickly to make out (ibid.). Over the course of the season it becomes apparent that each time-tunnel is different for each character, just like every flash forward is individual. The pilot episode “No more good days” starts with a man waking up in a crashed car. He is hurt but gets out and finds himself surrounded by chaos: people calling for help, burning cars, and screams of confusion. He calls for ‘Demetri’ a few times before, after 50 seconds, the show’s title sequence interrupts the scene. White on black words then inform the viewers that the narrative is going back to “four hours earlier”: Los Angeles is waking up to a regular day and the morning radio promises “another beautiful day” (Goyer 2009 TC 00:01:22ff.). The man, who is assumedly the protagonist, opens a safe and finds a yellow post-it note. The words “You are a crappy husband. I hate you” are written on it, which makes him smile before he sticks it onto a black-and-white photo on the wardrobe door. This seemingly marginal scene actually already installs the idea of pinboarding actions for the show and especially the connection of pinboarding and the male lead role: he sees something, grasps its wider meaning—it is apparently an inside joke between the couple—and then moves the sticky note to its new place, on top of another image that is somehow connected to the love message (or at least is now). He then takes a handgun out of the safe and kisses his sleeping wife goodbye (“I hate you, too”), makes breakfast for his daughter, chats with the gardener and the babysitter Nicole before heading to work—everything is strikingly all right. In the next scene, the wife calls someone named Bryce, a colleague of hers. While she is telling Bryce’s answering machine that she is worried about him, the picture already jumps to a man standing on a pier. He watches the sunrise before he checks his phone and sees three missed calls from Dr. Olivia Benford. To eliminate any doubt that this man is Bryce, he also pulls out his wallet and the audience gets to see a close-up of his ID— and his gun. The narrative then jumps to a group meeting that the protagonist is attending, listening to a man speak about his daughter’s death in the US

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army, before showing this man and the protagonist talk. This man, Aaron, is the protagonist’s sponsor in Alcoholics Anonymous. Meanwhile, the Benfords’ babysitter Nicole is making out with her boyfriend on the couch while their daughter Charlie is sleeping in her room upstairs. Another scene jump takes the audience to the main character and his colleague at a stake-out, taking pictures of a suspect meeting someone. They talk about personal stuff and exchange some friendly banter. At this point, all the scenes seen before are shown in a quick montage: Nicole on the couch, Aaron working at the top of an electric overhead wire pole, Olivia scrubbing down for surgery, the suspect getting out of her meeting. Then the FBI team gets into motion, and a car chase begins. All the characters who have been introduced so far are close to their climax—the babysitter most literally. But so are the doctor, the suicidal colleague, and the FBI agents still in their dangerous car chase—when suddenly the previously mentioned tunnel effect image appears before Mark’s eyes and the viewers are shown the first vision. Drinking from a flask, Mark paces through an office, looking at a large cork board that covers an entire wall. It is covered with notes, drawings, evidence bags, maps, photos, and documents. Red thread connects some of the artifacts with each other (see Fig. 2.1). He seems distressed, pulls his hair, and touches and points at some objects, giving the impression of desperation. Some of the artifacts on the

Fig. 2.1  Mosaic Investigation Wall as seen in Mark’s Vision, Screenshot from FlashForward S01E01 (ABC 2009), TC 00:25:58–00:26:56

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pinboard are shown very prominently, but have no meaning to the viewer at this point. Mark then takes the page of April 29, 2010, from his desktop calendar and writes “Who else knows?” on it with a marker. One moment later he notices target lasers coming from the other end of the room and has to hide from at least two masked intruders with guns. A few more things on the wall are shown, then the tunnel of light that led into the vision leads out of it. Mark awakes in his car and the series continued where it started at the very beginning of the pilot episode. It turns out that the whole world experienced the phenomenon that from then on is called the “Global Blackout” (GBO). The GBO had catastrophic consequences for the world’s population, but due to differing time zones some countries did not suffer as many casualties as the US. Mark and his colleagues form an inter-agency task force called Mosaic Investigation, with the objective of finding out what happened. Apart from collecting people’s visions on a web page and trying to connect them, they base a lot of their investigation on the notes and images Mark remembers from his vision. This unusual approach is frequently questioned, especially in the first few episodes, for example when Mark’s partner Demetri Noh poignantly asks: “This is kind of insane, we are running point on this because he had a vision of us running point on this?” (ibid., TC 00:25:58–00:26:56). But after a few of the things Mark remembers prove to be relevant, the skepticism about a potential self-fulfilling prophecy evaporates and the team starts working on the Mosaic Investigation Wall (MIW). The viewer never sees how or when one of the walls in Mark’s office was covered with large cork sheets, but when the task force starts reviewing the information from his vision, the sheets are there (ibid., TC 00:27:03–00:29:36). Eight calendar sheets run horizontally along the top of the wall and a few empty thumbtacks are pushed into the cork. This is the first time the board is shown after the vision and it represents the blank slate of the MIW. In this first phase, it is clearly discernible that the pinboard is made up of three large sheets of cork with clearly visible vertical seams. The cork is set into the office wall and framed by light boxes from above and on either side. This setting emphasizes the borders of the MIW and defines it as a fixed entity. The framing clearly marks an inside and an outside and therefore creates an inner and an outer realm. Hessler and Mersch emphasize the importance of such a set frame: a clearly defined inner space of meaning allows image-objects to be identified as such (2009, 19). The framing is a deliberate creation of difference, excluding in both

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directions the framed and the non-framed. The objects that are put onto the board and therefore into the space of meaning are often first presented outside of it, when the FBI agents bring them into the office or when Mark looks at something on his desk. At this point they are still outside the image-space MIW and are not yet able to develop a meaning through their presence on the pinboard. Only the things that are in the image can be recognized as part of it. A defined image-space is thus essential for anything shown. It also constitutes a specific time interval—a before, now, and after—that is implemented by the image-space. In showing an image-object, the image-space always shows its own presence simultaneously: “Images show and show themselves in showing, which is why emergence and meaning fall into one” (ibid., my translation). Because the pinboard in FlashForward carries objects on it from the start, it not only constitutes a background but rather emphasizes its condition as an image-space. The artifacts not only depend on the cork boards to hold them up but also on the image-meaning-space that is the MIW to allow them to unfold their meaning.13 The cork sheets as a background present the objects on them, while simultaneously presenting the wall as a larger entity of which they are a part, and this relation is what constitutes the MIW as whole. Nonetheless this relation is not entirely balanced: While the items are dependent on a surface like the cork sheets in order to have any spatial potential between them, the surface could function as a ground even in the absence of items. After all, a cork surface that is untouched or full of holes from pins is still a surface. FlashForward brings up the functions of pinboards as images with spatiotemporal meaning very early on. How the specific artifacts condition that space and contribute to the MIW becoming a visualization of seriality will be elaborated later, but first I want to turn the attention to another case of intense televisual pinboarding. Homeland: Carrie Mathison’s Living Room Wall Homeland revolves around the CIA’s investigation into international terror.14 The time setting of the first season’s narrative, as well as the show’s broadcast, is around ten years after 9/11, and thus reflects the US’ ongoing ‘war on terror’.15 In the first few minutes of the pilot, Agent Carrie Mathison is shown doing fieldwork in the Middle East. One of her assets has been imprisoned and sentenced to death, but she is determined to talk to him one last time. He tells her that an “American prisoner of war has

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been turned”, a statement that will end up driving the narrative of the show’s first three seasons. A caption tells the viewer that the storyline then jumps ahead ten months and to Washington. Carrie’s house is introduced in long, resting shots: kitchen, bedroom, a jazz poster, and a photo of a man playing the trumpet. In a panning shot, the camera angle moves from the couch to one wall of her home’s living room. Three and a half minutes into the pilot episode, the audience gets a first glance at the wall behind her desk. The frame slowly moves closer, first giving an establishing shot in which only the bigger items, such as the two maps, one on each side of the wall, are visible, while the other elements are images of people, places, and documents. The next shot is a frontal view of the board, the framing is tighter, so that distinct elements can be made out, mostly photographic images and some written documents. Ten of these images are arranged on a large gray page in a manner that resembles a family tree or organization structure. After that we are shown extreme close-ups of some of the board’s other images: aerial or satellite images of a group of buildings in Afghanistan, men in camouflage clothes and turbans on their knees as if in prayer (see Fig. 2.2).

Fig. 2.2  Carrie’s living room wall. Configuration (1a), Screenshot from Homeland S01E01 (Showtime 2011), TC 00:03:33

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Some of the images look like screen grabs from a video, and a series of six of them seems to show an execution. This impression of video stills is supported by the camera’s slow movement from left to right as if to read and animate the oversized filmstrip. Then the camera’s focus turns to the tree of images again. Now the captions giving the men’s names are legible. At the end of a slow upward movement, the camera comes to a halt on a black-and-white image at the top of the tree, titled ‘Abu Nazir’. It is surrounded by other photos showing the same person. The setting of the board, clustering more information here, in the center of the wall, in cooperation with the almost four-second-long close-up on the photo of Abu Nazir, strongly emphasizes the importance of this character for the narrative, without explaining it any further at this point. Later, Nazir turns out to be Carrie’s nemesis, and the pinboard and the organigram to be different duplications that mirror the narrative, like a mise-en-abyme. “[T]he fact that the thing thus contained resembled that which contained it, and more importantly that this resemblance in some way informed the viewer or reader about the form or meaning of the whole” (Whatling 2009, n.p.) is characteristic for a mise-en-abyme (or the so-called Droste effect). In retrospect, this tree can be recognized as a layout of the series’ increase in intensity: Portraits lower in the tree will be steps for the CIA to get to Nazir, much as their storylines are steps for the show’s narrative toward its climax or finale. This rather objective function of the pinboard is supported by the fact that the first look at it happens without a character acting as an interpreter, enunciator, or explaining creator. This is unusual, as in other series the camera angle invites the audience to either contemplate a board with the characters (with an over-the-shoulder or point-of-view shot) or contemplate the characters’ relation to the pinboard (wide shots of the person in front of a pinboard as in FlashForward). In some cases, the audience can also be shut out of the pinboarding process, for example when the shot is through a glass surface. This is mostly a stylistic device to show a genius at work, as for example in Numb3rs (Falacci and Heuton 2005–2010), where the mathematical formulas would look incredibly complicated either way, but the fact that the camera is positioned behind the glass puts the focus on the facial expression of the mathematician.16 Characters’ cognitive operations that would remain invisible even when retracing a board are rendered visible through the televisual framing. In the first few minutes of Homeland the camera neither films someone looking at the board nor imitates a person’s point of view. The audience

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has arrived in front of the wall before Carrie gets home, and has had time to intimately look at the artifacts, as if to make up their own mind. They receive a head start into Carrie’s head, in which all this information has already formed into knowledge. The pinboard in combination with the camera gives an organizing overview and allows the viewer to virtually ‘be in the picture’. While the board remains still, the camera’s movements and framing position the onlooker in relation to the board. The unusual introduction of the wall at such a prominent point in the pilot emphasizes the importance of pinboarding for the show and also invites the viewers to pay special attention to the corresponding images. Over time, the living room board goes through many transformations, the arrangement of items always displaying the current developments of the narrative. Additionally, it soon becomes clear that the pinboard is also a reflection of the protagonist’s state of mind—the elements’ flexibility is established very early and can be understood as an image or at least a visual display of Carrie’s (necessarily) flexible beliefs and loyalties. Still in the pilot, Sergeant Nicholas Brody is brought home from imprisonment in Afghanistan. Carrie suspects him to be the turned prisoner of war she was informed about and investigates him.17 Even when her superiors do not believe in her hunch, she sets up unauthorized surveillance in Brody’s house and becomes determined to prove him guilty of planning terror attacks against the US. By the fourth episode, as her conviction has grown stronger and her focus on Brody has become more intense, her board has also changed significantly: The image tree has been moved, now covering the map of Iraq on the left side of the wall, to make room for at least 23 mostly black-and-white images of Brody. I will call this configuration (1b) as the basic elements are still the same as in (1a) which is shown first. Overall, four main configurations of Carrie’s living room wall can be identified. (1a) and (1b) are concerned with people, namely Nazir and Brody. Configuration (2) is a timeline that will be discussed further in the following chapters. The third configuration is a map that could be titled “Where is Brody?” The three big stages of the board also touch upon a central principal of image seriality, that “every painting has a predecessor and a successor in an inconclusive process of production” (Beil et al. 2012, 11, my translation). Like the TV show’s episodes, the phases of the board can be sorted into a chronological, successive timeline, which sorts every image into a past, present, and future structure. In Homeland the narrative allows for this to become very clear: In episode five, Carrie’s investigations of Nicholas Brody come to a standstill.

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Angrily she starts rearranging the images but eventually resigns and starts taking down everything that was pinned to her wall. The last image she takes down is one of the few color photos of Brody, showing him driving his car. When she turns around to put it into a box the empty wall remains, prominently directing the eye to the 72 small, square cork panels it is covered with. Like the Mosaic Investigation Wall, Carrie’s wall is clearly framed, becoming an image-space and, like in FlashForward, the audience never gets the information about how the cork panels came to be in Carrie’s living room. At this point it has already become palpable that Carrie is rather obsessed with Brody and tries to capture his presence through images. This becomes even more evident when Carrie’s emotions toward Brody get more complicated, bringing a romantic and sexual connotation with them. Her emotional state then affects how the board is perceived: Is it a legitimate tool for her investigative work or is it some sort of stalker wall, through which she tries to get close to the subject of desire using pinboarding methods? Psychoanalytical approaches have considered the erotic activity of collecting as a surrogate for sexual desire (Pearce 1995, 7), or have looked at mediated ‘affective storage’, through which the individual can externalize and archive affective states and make them analyzable—for themselves, therapists, or as in this case, viewers (Elliott and Urry 2010, 39f). Additionally, boards with an obsessive creator often feature the surface analogy of skin and thus a closer connection to art theory than to television studies. Many artists have pondered the parallels between the canvas and skin. Especially Christ’s wounds or those of saints and martyrs have provoked reflections about the surface qualities of paintings (Brendel 2006). Unlike canvas, TV devices may have a touchable surface, but the television medium remains untouchable. Still, harming the surface of a TV device would significantly disturb the medium. The pinboards, however, can take being cut, shot at, painted with blood, and otherwise be a substitute for the aggression their creators want to direct at someone else but let out on them, without losing their medial capabilities. This potentiality is one of the motivators for TV shows to continuously fall back on materials that seem slightly old school in an age of digital media and screens. The paper objects, the pins, and the touchable surfaces evoke a haptic visuality, specific to televisual pinboarding. Similar to touch, pinboards can be the substitute for a lecherous or obsessive gaze directed at an object or subject of desire. The power of the gaze and its regime has been of great interest in the context of gender,

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media, and cultural studies. Especially the role of the camera in the objectification of women in film (Mulvey 1975) could be an interesting structural parallel to pinboarding, when the gaze of the camera and thus the audience looks inquiringly at the board, lingers at certain points, and is clearly in a dominant position facing the passive board. Unlike the male gaze, the pinboarding gaze is incomparably less heteronormative (though not entirely free from heteronormativity) and the pinboards cannot become aware that they are an object that can be gazed upon (Cf. Lacan 1991). If pinboards are read as a character’s externalized mind though, examining a board with the camera’s eye can evoke an impression of intrusion. This can be harmless and benevolent or violent and prying—depending on the atmosphere needed for a scene, the staging of pinboards is essentially different. Even though this study will mainly focus on the processes of visualization and the dispositive conditioning of seriality, the concept of the gaze is nonetheless of great interest because it makes an image apparent as such, and because it makes something visible. To that end, Trinks differentiates sight from seeing (2000, 87–88). Sight as part of everyday life is the mere looking at the world and is entirely different from actually seeing something. Seeing retrieves the seen from its context and distinguishes it in a new way. Trinks emphasizes that what catches the eye is at the same time determined by the eye or gaze that sees it. But once we understand the relation between seeing and what is seen, we free the gaze from its directionality. It no longer sees the seen, but the possibilities of seeing. Through design, exhibition, arrangement, deformation (ibid.)—or pinboarding— the process of becoming visible or seeable is addressed. Namely by putting something into an entirely new context where it stands out, becomes more clear-cut, and can be regarded under a different light. Trinks writes that good images, whether they are paintings or photographs, can do this and have the potential to stimulate seeing and thinking (ibid.). I argue that pinboards have the same capacity, they may be even more prone to it: an element that has been taken from its context and rearranged on a new surface reveals its possibilities of seeing. By entering the image-space of the pinboard as the visible dispositive, the item enters into a relation with an investigative gaze that wants to understand its meaning. If a configuration proves to not deliver the expected information or insight, a character can change the position or the position of certain objects on the board. In contrast, the audience cannot: their position in relation to the board is given and fixed as it is a mediated position. The camera might be able to

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move, but the viewer’s view of a pinboard depends on the camera, and on the series script’s pinboarding intentions. Homeland’s introduction of the board is in fact an excellent example of the effects of this mediation of pinboards: The sequence in the pilot episode, when the viewer is alone with the pinboard and the camera, almost feels intimate, the movements are slow and gentle, entirely different from the fast and distorted first look at the Mosaic Investigation Wall. In FlashForward, the viewer witnesses Mark Benford looking at the surface of his wall. In Homeland, the first images of the wall seem independent from Carrie Mathison. Even though it turns out to be the opposite: Carrie’s wall is closely linked to her personal mental state, while Mark’s wall is a collaborative effort of the Mosaic Investigation task force. This nonetheless has the long-term effect that even when her psychological state gets worse and her pinboarding becomes manic, the audience can remember the pinboard as a space of logic and meaning. It is the surface on which Carrie can project the chaos in her head, where it will either make sense for the first time or make sense again. It is almost as if Carrie’s character has as many facets as her wall has cork panels, which supports the notion of the pinboards as external storage, a visualization of thoughts, created in close relation to its creator. This is only enhanced by letting the audience enter the three-dimensional room that is her mind in season five. How much the result of this pinboarding, which is only possible when she has given into her bipolar disorder, revolves around her is made visually evident in the scene “Superpowers” (S05E03, original air date: October 18, 2015) that shows her sitting in a circle of portraits. She is the center of pinboarding, the central pinboarder, even if she has help. This time, through special effect, the images rush toward her while she tries to figure out who might be trying to kill her. Homeland’s pinboarding surfaces and processes, including the psychoanalytical motivations mentioned, are why the majority of pinboarding in Homeland is Carrie’s doing. This is in contrast to the next example, where many characters are involved pinboarders, collaborating on and duplicating each other’s boards. Heroes: Maps of the Earth and Webs of Time Heroes tells the dispersed but connected stories of regular people who each discover some superhuman skill when an eclipse occurs on October 1, 2006. The show is one of the main examples in this book, firstly because

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almost every season has its own pinboards that stand for the progression of the narrative, both in a metaphorical way as well as a dispositive way. Secondly, there are at least two exceptional kinds of pinboarding structures that contribute to the more general observations of this dissertation. Many pinboarding moments occur, throughout all volumes,18 some stronger and more obvious than others, but at all times a pinboarding way of seeing is maintained. These different pinboarding moments take place for both the heroes and those who want to find them. Halfway through the first season, for example, the audience gets to meet Molly, a little girl with the skill to track people merely by thinking about them. During this mostly cognitive process she pushes a pin into a map at their location. From the beginning, clairvoyant artist Isaac Mendez paints the future. On many occasions he or other characters need to arrange his paintings in the correct temporal order, to interpret them, make sense of them as a narrative timeline, and deduce their next steps from them. This temporal rearrangement is congruent with the audience’s experience, because Heroes does not stick to chronological storytelling and instead frequently jumps through diegetic time. Even though the origin story for most characters is the day of the eclipse, previous events in their lives have led them to become the eponymous heroes they are today. The audience has to sort the scenes and events from the past and future into this hero’s timeline. A second group of characters are those who research the evolution of the heroes’ skills and/or want to capture the people who have them. Especially Mohinder Suresh, who follows the work of his deceased father Chandra Suresh, is occupied with finding them. The geneticist can look back on decades of research and trace the evolution on a world map with pins, threads, and images of the people with skills. In the first 19 episodes, this map or rather at least three versions of it are essentially representing the multiple story arcs of the many heroes. The audience gets to know them and their struggles, skills, and plans bit by bit, with the narrative jumping from one to the other. While as a consequence each character has only little screen time per episode, most of them are represented in form of photographs and colorful string on the geneticist’s map. Here the surface is a cork wall covered with a paper map, a classic combination. But Heroes has other arrangements that are a lot less ‘classic’, even though they are motivated by a classic pinboarding figure: the time traveler. Hiro Nakamura can “bend the space-time-continuum”, which means he can stop time and jump through time and to places at will. With this comes a certain amount of temporal freedom for the storytelling, resulting in

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e­pisodes like “Six Months Earlier” (Vol1Ch10) or “Five Years Gone” (Vol1Ch20). In the first season, the different heroes that have insight into the future—either through clairvoyance, prophetic dreams, or time traveling—all see a catastrophic event happening in New  York City. Some of them decide to take steps to avoid this future, including ‘Future Hiro’, a much darker and more solemn version of the happy sci-fi nerd from Tokyo. On their mission to stop New York City (NYC) from exploding, Hiro and his sidekick Ando jump to the future and to Isaac Mendez’s apartment in chapter 19 “.07%”. They find themselves in a room full of string (see Fig. 2.3). In the next episode “Five years gone” Future Hiro explains to Ando and his younger self that he tried to build a timeline of the events leading to the catastrophe. He has pinned images to the strings, clipped newspaper articles onto them, and created knots. Some of the newspaper articles clipped to the string report events from past episodes, reducing the complexity of the events that lead to them and culminating in one legible headline or photo. It becomes clear through montage and dialogue that each color and material represents one of the main heroes. Red string is for Hiro himself, black is for the antagonist Sylar, yellow ribbon is assigned to cheerleader Claire Bennet, rope to her father Noah, blue ribbon is for Nathan Petrelli, and white yarn for his brother Peter. The main characters’

Fig. 2.3  Future Hiro’s time net, Screenshot from Heroes Vol01E17 (NBC 2007), TC 00:39:30f

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strings cross and are knotted together whenever they have met. Future Hiro explains that he is looking for the point in time and place to jump to in order to prevent the catastrophe. One post-it has “Oct 4th, N.Y. Subway” written on it, and the viewers know that he has in fact already jumped to this point, to tell Peter Petrelli to “Save the cheerleader, save the world”— the driving notion of the first nine episodes. The decision to create this net of time in a room and not on a flat surface might be due to its complexity. It also results in much more lively camera angles and framing, as the people looking at the strings can walk in the web and can follow a string physically through the space of the room (Fig. 2.3). Strictly speaking, this web does not have a surface but it has a defined space. It calls attention to the spatiality of the room and of the net of knowledge within it. Rheinberger might count Hiro’s string room as a “knowledge space” (Cf. Rheinberger 2011a) in which the spatial is recovered as a “principle of order for our symbolic world and our fields of knowledge” (Krämer 2009, 96, my translation). In the knowledge space, the spatial itself becomes a medium and a potential for representation. The whole room is consequently a pinboarding space in the extended sense that it generates visual knowledge. There are other examples of serial pinboarding without an actual surface, for example in Sherlock (Gatiss and Moffat 2010–2017), Psych, or Touch (Kring 2012–2013), where the protagonists’ inner views of the world are digitally animated or created with filmic tricks or special effects. The visualization of their thought processes is made to appear before their eyes or in thin air (Wentz 2017), whereby the employed special effects usually create an idea of pinboarding. But in the case of Future Hiro’s timeline, the room is his space for thought. It is spatialized time with some areas being the past and some the future if regarded from an intra-diegetic “now”. Its edges are invisible, hinting at time’s supposed endless continuity and at the openness of the serial storytelling. But the viewers can safely assume that the threads have an end, even though they do not see all the borders of the web. As the threads are timelines for characters, they have to precede and supersede the storytelling. The room is therefore a visualization of the show’s meta-structure and seriality, which in return become the organizational principle both of the narrative and of the pinboarding structure. They are series with various entry points and open ends, aesthetically serializing the whole narrative. The pinboarding in Heroes certainly is such an aesthetic series, evident in all seasons and even in the transmedia concept of the show (see below).

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In “Butterfly Effect” (Vol03Ch02),19 a future version of Peter Petrelli builds a similar web to Hiro’s big one, but his is a hybrid of a map and Hiro’s web, anchoring the string construction back to a surface, while the origin, the other end, often remains off the shot. When he talks to his mother Angela amidst the thread, it almost seems as if the threads, and especially the thickest, red one, emerge from the camera, or rather the TV screen’s ‘other side’. Peter’s hybrid connects the viewing surface with the map surface, while the thread bridges the distance, evoking a sense of spatial depth. It clearly marks the TV screen as a surface of pinboarding; the thread undoubtedly connects the ‘inside’ of the screen with the map, while simultaneously alluding to the camera as the technical condition for this configuration. Yet here again the pinboarding space is inaccessible for the viewers, who can only watch the actors who stand amidst the objects of pinboarding, talking face to face as Future Peter ties a blue string connected to a place or person in India to the red string leading to NYC.20 In this arrangement the thread-map combination becomes teleological. The threads culminate in a point on the map that is also a climactic point in the narrative, thus visualizing the serial progression toward this point. Compared to Hiro’s web, Peter’s hybrid also uses string as character timelines, but does not present an endless continuation of time. Instead, this pinboarding construction alludes to a fatalist and teleological process— less serial/endless progression and more season finale. In Volume 4 ‘Fugitives’, the heroes are hunted like criminals. A government task force has its headquarters in ‘Building 26’, where an agent named Danko is in charge of the operation to find and contain them. Portraits of the skilled people are hung up on a movable glass surface, each outfitted with a barcode. During his hunt for them, this board reflects the priorities, putting the main target on top of the tree structure. While not much pinboarding activities are shown in regard to this board, it does reflect the show’s seriality, keeping track of the storyline and shifting urgencies as the current main target is moved to the top of the board accordingly. In Volume 5—the second half of season four—two of the main characters are actively pinboarding again. Peter Petrelli is struggling with his path in life and tries to give back through his job as a paramedic (Vol5Ch2, original air date: September 28, 2009, TC 00:37:45). He collects newspaper articles about his good deeds on a wall in his apartment. Apart from this wall his place has been reduced to the bare necessities, as a visual manifestation of his dedication. In chapter 8, “Shadowboxing” (Vol5Ch8,

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original air date: November 9, 2009, TC 00:29:34), Noah Bennet starts to put things on one of the walls in his place. He is investigating a mysterious carnival and its leader Samuel, who has destroyed an entire town by making it disappear into a sinkhole. But the carnival turns out to be a non-­ place. It is mysteriously hiding from view and cannot be found with such mundane means as Bennet’s pinboard. With one swift move of the camera and a fade, the attention moves from Noah putting up the first article on his wall to Peter taking his collection of articles down. Noah’s wall then gets added to and used in the familiar fashion as an investigative pinboard. The short sequence showing one of them starting and the other one finishing their current pinboarding process emphasizes the importance of pinboarding for Heroes. It is quite obviously the visualization of a story arc coming to an end, while another just begins. All of Heroes’ pinboards and surfaces described up to this point can be understood as representations of the show’s serial narration. Where the first season’s map is all about finding, and getting to know the people with skills, the time web is about a diegetic catastrophe that has to be avoided. The meticulous boards of the task force in Volume 3 represent the imminent threat to the heroes. Each board was outfitted differently21 and evokes a different association for the viewers, through the set, style, and filming. In their continuation over many episodes each board has its own story arc, and in their diversion over the seasons, serial pinboarding is an aesthetic series of its own. Like in Homeland, it is part of the series’ brand, and each iteration alludes to the aesthetic series of pinboarding. Unfortunately, Heroes’ creativity with the different modes of pinboarding did not carry over to its sequel Heroes Reborn. In the 2015 continuation, narrative pinboarding seems to take less of a prominent role, as the only recurring board is one in a vigilante’s cellar about corrupt cops who chase the “Evos”. But pinboarding has been central to the original series’ transmedia storytelling (Ganzert 2015) and was very present in the mini-­ series Dark Matters (2015), in which a desperate brother’s conspiracy wall takes over his entire apartment. Serial pinboards, especially when they appear in a variety like in Heroes, are part of TV’s “picture effect”. The picture effect, which was described by Adelmann and Stauff (2006), is an aesthetic effect that television produces when it not only shows images but the visualization processes in surface structures, changeable screens, and aesthetic forms. This is where TV’s materiality, spatiality, and subtle distinctions can be found, aspects that are often denied for television, and have been denied even before

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today’s changing TV devices, even though it is common for “screens [to] overlap and move into the depth of the image-space; semi-transparent captions are faded over other images; color surfaces glimmer metallically, etc. These are not aesthetic gimmicks, but essential hinging points of medial circulation processes” (ibid., 100, my translation). Television series can increase the picture effect by serializing visualizations and making them part of the narrative—which is also what happens in Castle. Castle: His and Hers Murder Boards Castle’s protagonists Richard Castle and Kate Beckett each take their investigation into the murder of Kate’s mother Johanna home with them and build individual ‘murder boards’. As mentioned in the introduction, this large case stretches over the first six seasons. However, each season essentially only has two or three episodes that actually focus on the “Beckett Conspiracy”, as fans have dubbed it in the ‘Castle Wiki’. Nonetheless, most episodes show Detective Beckett using the whiteboard at her precinct, sharing the intel on a case with her colleagues, and clearing the board when a killer has been caught. Kate’s private murder board is more unusual. Here the case files, photos, note cards, and many sticky notes are attached to the inside of window shutters and the window between them. As a prop, this means that Kate can close the board and only show it to people she chooses. In “Knockdown” (S03E13), she shows her board to Richard Castle, but has to open it first (see Fig. 1.2). She presents him with something, that so far has been kept hidden (also from the viewers) and closed, that shines a light when opened. The movements of opening and closing the shutters visually allude to understanding the board as a shrine or triptych. The shape with a large middle panel and two hinged panels at the sides, the fact that the outside is plain and the inside bears the images of more relevance are also comparable. The fact that Kate is often found staring at the board, as if in contemplation, and her willingness to die for the truth could also be regarded through a religious lens. At some points in the narrative, Kate’s behavior becomes more intense, but she actually performs very few pinboarding operations with actual artifacts on her window-shutter board. She tells Richard she started it over the summer (also referencing the show’s hiatus and the viewers’ world), and then explains the order of events in the case and the connections between the relevant people orally (S03E13, original

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air date: January 24, 2011, TC 00:18:29). The camera supports her verbal explanation with very steady, slow close-ups of the section on the board her speech is currently referring to. Her notes are clearly legible, the people in the photos recognizable. Especially when Kate gets shot by a sniper in the finale of season three, Richard Castle’s efforts to solve the “Beckett Conspiracy” grow stronger. In the first episode of season four, he first scribbles a mind map of the case on a notepad. Just ten minutes later, he switches on the large TV screen in his private office, which shows the program he usually uses to develop plots for his crime novels, only now there is a large image of Kate in the middle. When he taps on the screen (Fig. 2.4), other images and information seem to emit from her image, forming a circle around it. From this moment on, they both have a board, one revolving around Johanna Beckett, the other around her daughter Kate. Both boards present much of the same information and are concerned with the same people, but aside from that they are very different. Reflective of their different personalities and financial situations, Richard’s board is a huge flat screen television that displays the information he has gathered, sortable with an icon bar on the right and easily expanded or collapsed with files and images.

Fig. 2.4  Richard’s case of ‘Who hired the sniper?’, Screenshot from Castle S04E01 (ABC 2011), TC 00:41:25

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This board version, and pinboarding surfaces in general, could be considered under the keyword of the display, the interface, the seriality of visibility, the claim of depth, or questions of transparency or opacity. These questions would have to be considered for each specific case. What can be experienced with almost all pinboarding is Galloway’s “interface effect” (2012). Galloway asks whether all screens are interfaces, and if interfaces are the same as media. He comes to the definition that [t]he interface is this state of ‘being on the boundary.’ It is that moment where one significant material is understood as distinct from another significant material. In other words, an interface is not a thing, an interface is always an effect. It is always a process or a translation. (ibid., 33)

Pinboarding similarly is a process that not only is a translation, but also a process of ‘interfacing’ with viewers or “users, time and techniques” (Otto 2015, 100). Pinboards can therefore be windows, monitors, and screens, with pinboarding practices, interface effects, and interfacing processes. As mentioned above, some pinboarding happens on glass surfaces, mostly with markers and tape or as computer screens, which emphasize their own status as a second level of surface in relation to the TV screen. As they (dis-)simulate other media they evade attention to their own medial status and provoke attention to the material and medial status of the TV image, of which they in turn are part. Screens also evoke, unlike other pinboarding surfaces, the idea of something being ‘behind them’. They are, even more than a cork wall, a surface on which the elements of pinboarding ‘appear’, coming up from the behind or underneath them. The depth-impression or nesting-doll effect of screens showing screens showing screens demonstrates that while the screen the audience is looking at will always remain a mere surface, the space ‘behind’ it can be perceived as multi-layered. The ‘classic’ pinboard does not function as a window—it is an impermeable surface. It cannot show anything that lies ‘within’ or ‘underneath’ the surface. It can only support the things attached to it. The objects can appear on it, be presented by it, and enter spatial relations with each other in the image-­ meaning-­space it constitutes. Screens, on the other hand, can at least simulate extensions of space, and ‘multiscreens’, used in interviews, for example, automatically evoke a sense of liveness. The viewer associates this with the windows or screens belonging to the same temporality, a conclusion that fictional shows like 24 (Surnow and Cochran 2001–2010, 2014)

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utilize with their split screens. For pinboarding, this has the effect that the elements that have been entered into or onto the spatial surface of a pinboard have also entered its temporality. Even objects that are of older origin share the same present as newer objects, simply because they share the same surface.22 The items’ individual temporalities fade in importance and only come to the forefront when needed. If that happens, their temporality often triggers the pinboarding operations of rearranging and aligning items in a temporal manner, which is precisely what Kate does for her mother’s murder case. Kate’s board is analogue and includes her personal handwriting, which in comparison renders it more authentic than his23—despite the fact that both boards are identically presented as part of the TV image. Kate’s board has photos of victims and perpetrators; some of them have red stamps with the word “deceased” on them. His board has many of the same photos, some with a digital stamp, but without the same materiality. They must have been scanned to become digital data displayable on the screen—an operation never shown in the series. Kate’s analogue board with all original items again seems to be more authentic. Both boards are private, kept at their creators’ respective homes. They function as externalized thought spaces for their creators. Apparently having the analogue board in this juxtaposition also makes Kate more prone to a more manic mode of pinboarding than Richard. Or this relation is the other way around, and manic pinboarders tend to use analogue materials. This is again suggested by the show, when Richard tells her: “I didn’t mean for you to go all Beautiful Mind on me” because Kate has spent the night in front of the precinct whiteboard (S01E10, original air date: May 11, 2009, TC 00:34: 15). In season four a very slow cross fade takes the viewer from Richard staring at his screen, to Kate staring at the precinct whiteboard, which is at this point a third surface for the Beckett conspiracy (S04E23, original air date: May 7, 2012, TC 00:08:20.). Both main characters are shown contemplating boards, equally stuck, and equally concentrated and sane. But later in the same episode, Kate is staring at her private murder board and a rapid and distorted montage of images supposedly illustrates her train of thought. The close-ups of pinboarding elements show that her notes have become more expressive, with multiple underlinings, and the image editing enhances this impression. When Richard steps between Kate and her board, the montage stops. He has inserted himself as a separating layer between her and the surface she has been metaphorically falling into.

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A standstill in the investigation, or rather the temporary lack of insight brought upon by pinboarding, is thus shown in Castle either by a character’s blank stare at the pinboarding surface or by an aimless montage that imitates the character glancing at the elements over and over again, scanning the surface for a point to latch onto. In both instances, the board rejects entrance into the knowledge ‘behind’ its surface, it pushes the onlooker away and seals itself off from them, closing the surface, and stopping itself from being a space of meaning. In such scenes, pinboards become superficial image-spaces, degraded to a prop, a development that will be further elaborated at the end of this study. By season five, Kate’s murder board has become her background (story). Up until then, Kate and Richard seem more concerned with collecting the facts in the form of pinboarding artifacts than into epistemic pinboarding. Neither moves the artifacts to create new spatial relations between the elements, even though the screen version especially would allow that. Still, both boards have haptic moments, when they are touched, or rather a certain element on them is touched. It is important that Richard’s digital pinboard is displayed on a touch screen, allowing for a reaction between him and the surface, between skin and screen. This enables him to gently touch a photo of Kate. All things considered, Castle is a great example of not using the full potential of pinboarding. But the clearly stated relation between the digital and the analogue pinboards on the same topic brings heightened attention to the materiality, the media qualities of the objects, that will be of concern throughout the following chapters. It again emphasizes the fact that objects are different, or at least applied differently, depending on the pinboarding surface.

Pinboarding as Serial Practice Seeing anything ‘in’ something else requires two steps, in no particular order, according to British philosopher Richard Wollheim: seeing the image surface and seeing the depicted objects (1968). Following this relation emphasizes the difference between the surfaces which are the background for the objects and the pinboarding surface itself. As objects of serial pinboarding, all of the depicted objects appear on the TV surface and develop their status in the context of a television series. The audience needs to engage with the fictional world if they are to see anything within it. In this context, there clearly “is something distinct about the objects in and of themselves that make them key to knowledge development and

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innovation” (Ewenstein and Whyte 2009, 9), which is why in this chapter the objects on the pinboards are considered on in their functions of ‘pinning evidence’, ‘pinning places and spaces’, ‘pinning time’, and ‘pinning knowledge’. Most pinboards are composed of different objects with different materialities, even if one kind predominates. They often represent something to the diegetic pinboarder and something similar, but different, to the viewer. They are signs, which means they stand for something else, represent it, and refer to something other than themselves. These signs can be (mis-)read and their meaning (mis-)understood. Some of the objects are interchangeable in their signification; others are entirely arbitrary, even random. As signs, the pinboarding objects are subdued under the rules of discourse regulated by the dispositive. The pinboard is that dispositive, which is mediated by the show, which is mediated by television, circulates its signs while itself being in between them and being part of their arrangement and relations. Every item, and thus every sign, has a material quality to it. It is crucial that signs are based on a physicality that gives any meaning a shape and a place, without which there could be no recognition or communication. But because the materiality often withdraws from perception and recedes behind the meaning, it is easily overlooked. Yet with pinboarding, the objects’ materiality cannot be ignored, as it is often very important to both narrative and aesthetics. The objects’ materiality conditions the connection they enter into with the characters, the camera, and the viewers. Within these different levels of connection, the objects can be described as polysemic signs which have various effects under different circumstances and have heterogeneous addressees. Each object category is peculiar regarding the practices of pinboarding that can be acted out with them and regarding the encoding and decoding potential. An interesting example for such a polysemic sign can be found in a photo of a black swan on the MIW in FlashForward: Alda Herzog, the woman Mark Benford and his partner were investigating right before the Global Blackout, tells them that a black swan is a metaphor for something that overturns human expectations, like a break with the assumption that all swans are white. Alda’s explanation to Mark takes place in episode four, which is also called “Black Swan” (original air date: October 15, 2009). The photo on the pinboard therefore refers to the dialogue between Alda and Mark for the audience who saw that scene. It also refers to the black swan theory (Cf. Taleb 2010) for those who (now) know about it. And it

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refers to an entire episode, but only for the episode’s viewers. The picture’s meaning or function as a sign therefore gains new levels of reference, depending on the addressee. Additionally, the black swan can be understood as one of a few intertextual references to another TV series: FlashForward makes some obvious references to its much more successful (Picarelli 2015) predecessor Lost (Abrams et al. 2004–2010), referring to its cult following and mysterious reputation. There is, for example, an “Oceanic Atlantic” billboard and even an advertisement for the TV show “Lost” placed on a crashed bus in the pilot episode. TV-literate viewers may also remember that a black swan is the symbol for one of the stations of the ominous “DHARMA initiative”.24 Therefore, the different levels of meaning—differing signification— depend very much on the viewers as addressees. Not all levels necessarily have to be understood by an individual viewer, but the signs carry the potential for all meanings and references. Or to put it differently: The objects on the pinboard carry the potential to be different signs in the context of their respective televisual diegesis. Pinboarding Semiotics In the rather controversial discourse of pictorial semiotics, Nöth (2005) has explained why images are signs in the first place and why they consequently need specific models for their analysis. Sachs-Hombach (2003) suggested applying semiotic categories to images and their analysis: image syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Image syntax is concerned with the characteristics of signs as well as the relations between signs in a sign system (ibid., 103). Image semantics focus on the “descriptive” meanings of images, or the pictorial narrative. Image pragmatics studies the use of images in communicative contexts (ibid., 156). In order to grasp pinboards as images, elements from all these perspectives must be applied: the pinboard as sign system and the objects as signs in it, the meaning or narrative, and the use in the TV show as the communicative context. More detailed categories than this rarely apply, and barely further the understanding of pinboards. Many different understandings of pictorial signs are based on the terms and definitions for the classes of signs established by Charles S.  Peirce (Atkin 2006; Engelet al. 2012; Pietarinen 2014). In terminological sets of three, Peirce differentiates sign, object, and interpretant as the basic triad. The typology of icon, index, and symbol then describes a sign’s relation to

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its object. It is important to note that Peirce’s signs are understood as processes, as Hanks clearly states: “none of these is a thing […] All of them are relations – between parts of a sign, types of signs, and other elements on the semiotic process” (Hanks 1996, 39). Cassirer’s understanding of the symbol can help with this slight ambiguity. Cassirer published his ‘Philosophy of Symbolic Forms’ (1955) as a study of art historian Aby Warburg’s work.25 His basic assumption is that humans are “symbolic animals”, who transform a sign to a symbol by assigning meaning to it (Cassirer 1972, 25f). Every sign is an a priori symbolic form: it has the potential to become a symbol. Following this, the objects of pinboarding can be understood as such signs that carry the potential to become symbols and can fulfill expressive, representative, and significant functions. Which is why “[w]e could go so far as to say that all signs are simultaneously of several kinds” (Hanks 1996, 40), a proclamation that perfectly describes the sign status of pinboarding objects. In some TV series the objects further conform to a (possibly entirely fictional) code, which is a “rule-governed system of signs, whose rules and conventions are shared amongst members of a [fan or audience] culture, and which is used to generate and circulate meaning in and for that culture” (Fiske 2011, 4). According to Fiske, many aspects contribute to a TV show’s code: from camera work, lighting, editing, music, and costumes, to the action and dialogue, even the humor (ibid., 7–13). Eco confirms the polysemy of the objects/signs that build the code: “The existence of various codes and sub-codes, […] result[s] in […] a network of different messages depending on different codes and working at different levels of signification” (1984, 5). Elaborate viewing and fan practices can spring from a lack of understanding a code, as explored in section “Fans as Pinboarders”. Yet the meaning that pinboarding objects transport can be established through the narrative, through an intertextual reference, through everyday symbolism, and be transported on the board from wherever. The objects of pinboarding are the pieces of the overall image, through which the meaning, of both the image and the series, can be understood, over time: TV series accumulate meaning, knowledge, and significance for their objects from episode to episode and season to season. Klein emphasizes that this accumulated system of signs and significations establishes interrelations directly because of the seriality and that TV series display the process of knowledge production through audiovisual means (2012, 232). Only then is a “sophisticated, visually literate audience able to read complex visual statements in a context of intertextual, even metafictional, awareness” (Nelson 1997, 27–28).

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The serial narrative clearly informs materiality and mediality of a show’s board: Does it need to be digital so it can be shared with people in another country or on another space ship? Is the board more private but a long-­ term companion to a character, does it need to have sort of a skin? Does it have to be provisional and easily destroyed or should it stand the test of time and be passed down through generations? These questions are important for a show’s seriality: If a case finds its way onto the whiteboard, where it is shared with a team and open to all viewers, but both the story and the whiteboard are wiped clean each week, then the medial (dis-) simulation, material fabrication, and narrative presentation are entangled. If a series requires the board to be hidden, the pinboarding surfaces often get more creative, like Kate’s window shutters: Chuck (Schwartz and Fedak 2007–2012) uses the back of his ‘Tron’ poster to keep track of the connections of the NSA, the CIA, and Fulcrum with the Intersect project, and Susan Gray in Bletchley Circle (Burt 2012–2014) uses the back of her dressing table mirror to collect newspaper articles for example. Cork, paper, whiteboard, glass, and screens allow different materials to be used and create the media condition for the related operations: stick, pin, click, touch, move, rip. The surface also creates space, a physical space that can also be multidimensional, that fulfills different functions. Yet, like a photo album that holds the artifacts without giving up its own identity (Cf. Liska 2009), both TV and pinboard remain distinct from the objects they contain or present. As distinct media they can more easily reflect their own processuality, which is the reason why the visualization of seriality is also always a serialization of visuality—a correlation most evident when contemplating the surfaces of serial pinboarding.

Notes 1. The narrative entity is a conglomerate of people and techniques that distinctly shape the storytelling. There can be a narrator’s voiceover in play, but there are many more elements that convey the story. So some scholars refer to it as “camera” (Cf. Schlickers 2009); others distinguish between filmic, visual, and auditive narrator (Cf. Verstraten 2009). 2. In season one, the set of the talk show was plastered with whiteboards and colorful post-its, alluring to the complex storylines, mixed-up character arcs, and cliffhangers of the discussed shows. There were also cork boards with photos, arrows connecting it all, and series posters. Often talking points concerned the series’ successes and failures, where many of the ‘mistakes’ mentioned occurred when the writers’ intention was not ideally conveyed to the viewers.

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3. Peirce described a similar process, but from a philosophical and semiotic standpoint: the interpretant of a sign is created when the sign addresses someone and “creates in the mind of that person an equivalent sign, or perhaps a more developed sign” (Peirce 1955, 99). The interpretant can be simple or a whole other discourse. It “may derive from the original sign plus other knowledge or experience that the addressee has at her disposal” (Hanks 1996, 42–43). 4. Even though this perpetuates a perceived North American monopoly on TV productions, that sell well internationally (Bielby and Harrington 2008, 40), the selection also means that the examples are widely known by international viewers and readers. 5. To consider pinboards as playing fields with the accompanying theoretic reflection on imaginative practices (Dünne 2012; Aydin et al. 2018) is very rewarding. Much like in a board game playing changes, depending on previous information, or as classical game theory would measure it of “common knowledge” (Fudenberg and Tirole 1991, 541). Knowing the rules, the items, previous moves, and opponents or teammates is essential to playing with pinboards. 6. I want to thank the late Jörg Lillich for suggesting this phrase. My friend, am forever grateful for your feedback. 7. The historic development of US networks and why the production of quality TV is a well discussed topic in the US and UK (Thompson 1997; Corner 1999; Miller 2002; Allen and Hill 2004 etc.), the German discourse (Adelmann 2006; Trinks 2000 etc. Dreher 2010; Beil et al. 2012 etc.), and many other countries. 8. Rogers; Reeves, and Epstein were first to establish three main phases of television, aptly named TV I, TV II, and TV III. TV I (mid-1960s to early 1980s) is dominated by three major networks, while TV II is the era of channel/network expansion, the beginning of quality TV and network branding (early 1980s to late 1990s). The third phase is still going on (or, according to other authors (Cf. Jenner 2016), has come to an end) and is shaped by digital distribution and audience fragmentation on different platforms. 9. Which is not a new thing as such, as Telotte (1995, 162) showed with the photos taken of the VHS screenings of Twin Peaks, but it has certainly become a lot easier, with contemporary technology. 10. Bussolini chooses a different translation of the same quote: “each line is broken, submitted to variations of direction, changing tack and slipping, submitted to derivations” (Bussolini 2010, 100). 11. Agamben gave a lecture proposing “dispository” as a more adequate translation, as he was “not satisfied with the current English translation of the term dispositif as ‘procedure’ or ‘apparatus’” (2005, n.p.).

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12. Knorr-Cetina’s approach to the viscourse in physics is not entirely unrelated either, as it grasps the experimental capacity of diagrams or visualization (or pinboards). She also describes the fact that the discourse always includes previous, current, and future visualizations (1999, 249), already implying a certain seriality within the concept. 13. The so-called figure-ground-relation has been discussed in both Gestalt psychology and art theory, and is essential for pinboarding. The surface often only appears as a surface when used as such, for instance, when a formerly empty whiteboard is written upon and the figure or object is only demarcated as such in relation to the ground it is positioned upon. Boehm chose Giorgione’s “La Vecchia” (1500) as an example for his musings on that relation (2007). He shows that light figure and black ground come to present simultaneously. 14. Pears examines Homeland and its depiction of (counter-)terrorism and the broader effects on the audience’s perception of the CIA: “Television is an everyday and mundane activity, and, as argued by popular culture and world politics scholars, television is a place where security stories are told and thus where norms, discourses, and common sense are made. Television is how security is brought into our living rooms, our day-to-day, and our ‘private’ spaces” (2016, 81). Others think that the 9/11 Commissions Report demanded other modes of thinking, pattern recognition, and investigation, such as shown in Homeland.(Coley 2017, n.p.). 15. Many long-running dramas referred to the attacks of 9/11, so did comedy shows. Third Watch’s (Wells and Bernero 1999–2005) third season was dominated by 9/11 and the days that followed. It mainly took the perspective of the first responders. The season premiere entitled “In Their Own Words” additionally broke the fourth wall and featured statements by real-­ life first responders (original air date: October 15, 2001). In Arrested Deveolpment’s (Hurwitz 2003–2006; 2013–) S01E19 “Best Man for the Gob” (original air date: April 6, 2007), Michael sarcastically asks Tobias why his marriage is suffering. Tobias responds: “Well, I don’t want to blame it all on 9/11, but it certainly didn’t help”. In “It Takes a Village Idiot, and I Married One” (S05E17, original air date: May 13, 2007), Lois Griffin in Family Guy (MacFarlane 1999–) repeatedly chants “Nineeleven” to gain voters in her mayoral campaign. In S10E05 (original air date: November 13, 2011), Stewie and Brian travel “Back to the Pilot” which took place on January 31, 1999. In this past, Brian informs his younger self about 9/11. While this prevents the catastrophe from happening it also causes them to land in the middle of a second civil war when they travel back to their present. Homeland and Person of Interest (J. Nolan 2011–2016) are most prominently concerned with the topic of (counter-) terrorism, and in both we find the main characters involved in elaborate

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pinboarding, trying to make sense of what has happened or even predict what will happen. 16. This can also go wrong, as, for example, in Mysteries of Laura, when a makeshift map is illegible because the glass wall it is drawn upon is placed in front of a wall that is covered with other things. During the ‘behindglass’ shots of the investigators work, the glass board proves its impracticality and is emphasized in the dialogues. (Rake 2014 especially S01E21 “The Mystery of the Deceased Documentarian”, original air date: May 13, 2015.) 17. The audience does not get to see any visual proof that would support her instinct until the end of the second episode “Grace” (original air date: October 9, 2011). Brody walks out of Carrie’s CCTV camera’s reach, into the garage, where only the TV audience can see him performing wudu, the ritual washing before Islamic prayer. 18. Heroes is structured in volumes and chapters. Chapters are episodes but volumes are not coherent seasons. To avoid confusion, as Volumes 3 and 4 are both part of season three, I will use the volumes to quote specific episodes. 19. The second season/volume does not exhibit any relevant pinboarding. This might be due to the writer’s strike of 2007, which resulted in a shorter and less thought-out season. 20. Interestingly, user willowpolson sold little bottles containing pieces of the threads from Peter’s map on Etsy, which she claimed to be props from the original set. 21. In the audio commentary for “Godsend” (Vol1Ch12), Sendhil Ramamurthy (Mohinder Suresh) said that many of the images on the board were pictures of crew members. 22. Shows with decidedly ancient objects, like Grimm (Carpenter and Greenwalt 2008–2017) or Bitten (Fryklind 2014–2015) therefore use pinboarding to bring old knowledge into their protagonists’ present, as if they are updating the information through pinboarding. 23. In S02E05 “A chill goes through her veins” (original air date: April 6, 2009) Kate visits Castle’s apartment, which she had previously compared to the bat cave, for the first time. She sees his screen with the mind map of the novel he is currently developing on it. When she touches one of the icons, more information unfolds and she says: “Looks like a murder board.” Richard replies: “Yeah, except mine is fake” (TC 00:25:07ff). 24. ‘The Swan’ is the name of a ‘hatch’ first seen in S02E01 “Man of Science, Man of Faith”, original air date: September 21, 2005. Lost’s third alternate-­ reality game, the “Dharma Initiative Recruiting Project”, also included a character with the nickname Black Swan (Dharma Initiative Recruiting Project 2008).

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25. Warburg was an avid pinboarder himself. Two years before his death, art historian Warburg started to assemble his picture atlas ‘Mnemosyne’: Wooden panels with images clipped and pinned to them were supposed to visually elaborate on topics like ‘memory’ or ‘emotions in art’. Not only would the atlas itself be very interesting for a study of pinboarding, but also the mediated pinboarding. Cornell University’s homepage offers high-­quality images of the atlas as well as a “Guided Pathway” function that suggests an order of reading to the page visitor and explains it in text. Cf. http://warburg.library.cornell.edu (Mai 2, 2019).

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CHAPTER 3

Pinning Evidence

Because most boards appear in some sort of investigative context, many items are supposed to be evidence of something else. This chapter looks at written documents, photos, and evidence bags in particular, and carves out their specific pinboarding attribute, starting with paper documents, which almost every serial pinboard contains. Each kind of paper item has a different allure to it: The redacted government documents in Homeland (Gordon and Gansa 2011–) are entirely different from the personal files found in FlashForward (Braga and Goyer 2009–2010). In Heroes (Kring 2006–2010), we see newspaper articles in the pinboarding structures, roughly torn or neatly cut out, depending on the pinboarder. The many sticky notes used in Castle (Marlowe 2009–2016) will be considered below, but of course they are first and foremost also handwritten items. Many of the written pinboarding objects can be described as hybrids, in which letters, numbers, and pictures cannot be strictly separated. Despite that, Currie’s differentiation between the visual and the pictorial still rings true for the objects of pinboarding: “All pictorial representation is visual, but not all visual representation is pictorial” (1995, 7). This means, that the visual representation of a word might give the viewer pictorial information about the narrative, a simple yet fundamental statement for pinboarding. The index or note cards pinned to the Mosaic Investigation Wall (MIW) in FlashForward will illuminate this issue further.

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Index cards are among the first things added to the basic configuration of the wall. Five index cards are very prominently featured both in Mark’s vision and in the first scenes showing him and his partner Demetri Noh working on the wall. They seem to be pretty standard stationery: rectangular, lined, yellow. In the montage of Mark’s vision, they are highlighted with light effects, attracting a visual focus to them. Writing and pinning the cards is one of the first direct interactions with the board the audience gets to see in the pilot. Mark discusses the text for the cards with Demetri. He remembers them to have “D. Gibbons”, “Blue Hand”, “Friendship Bracelet”, and “Baby Doll Photograph” written on them. The absurdity of this working process becomes very clear when Demetri asks: “What does that mean?” and Mark answers: “I have no idea, just put it up” (S01E01, original air date: September 24, 2009, TC 00:27:03-00:29:36). This verbal exchange also emphasizes that the buildup of the pinboard at this point of the story is solely based upon Mark’s memories of his vision. Demetri and the other agents only see the slow fabrication of the Mosaic Investigation Wall, whereas Mark (and with him the viewers) has seen what the configuration of the pinboard will be on April 29. The pinboard in this instance is a medium, allowing Mark to communicate mental images to others. Through active processes of remembering, supported for the audience by the series’ cut and montage, he remembers visual impressions and tries to recreate them. But it is also a medium for him to explain his vision to himself—Mark has to work on the wall to understand what the objects should or will mean to him. Especially in the early stages the MIW can be compared with a ‘mood board’, or as it is also called, a “concept, inspiration, image, [or] style board” (Holert 2008, 38: my translation). If used as a “technique of brainstorming” (ibid.), they lend themselves to teamwork, as seen in FlashForward, where certain scenes illustrate that Mark needs the individual perspectives of his colleagues too, when they are able to deduct something from the wall that he did not see or could not connect. Sometimes they add objects he sent them to find. Or, as Latour might write, Mark sends them to find “things”, that also have to be able to withstand the return trip without withering away. Further requirements: the ‘things’ you gathered and displaced have to be presentable all at once to those you want to convince and who did not go there. In sum, you have to invent objects which have the properties of being mobile but also immutable, presentable, readable and combinable with one another. (1986, 7)

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The process of building the wall and the translation of his memory into the externalized construct essentially relies on the objects, or immutable mobiles, being brought into and arranged on the surface. Holert elaborates, that building pinboard constructions “involves four steps: a. sourcing, b. grouping, c. editing and d. validation and sampling” (2008, 28). Remembering Rheinberger’s distinction, it can be said that the investigators firstly create a technical object, when they collect or create the items (a), before they start using the pinboard as an epistemic medium with which they aim to gain knowledge (2001, 61). In Holert’s model, the index cards are a good example of sourcing and also for grouping, because little by little elements that relate to the words on the index cards are clustered around them (b). The editing (c) is mostly adjustments in appearance and position of elements so that they match Mark’s vision as closely as possible. This is supported by the characters’ actions, like Mark moving something a little to one side on the thumbtack that holds the card to the cork sheets. The last step of validating is the work of the FBI agents. The Mosaic Investigation Wall as a mood board is the preliminary stage for it to become an epistemic medium.1 Nevertheless, the objects and their genesis are also epistemic due to the temporal structure of the show’s narrative. The reversed finding process, of writing a word on a note card and pinning it to a pinboard and only then having to find out what it could mean, increases the relevance of the cards for the show’s seriality. It is noteworthy how the production and perception of the MIW are collective processes in the diegesis, aimed at realizing Mark’s mental image or maybe actualizing his memories with the pinboard. This is exemplified by the index cards. His partner has no choice but to rely on his statements and follow his instructions regarding design and form of the objects. But Demetri especially struggles with the issues of a self-fulfilling prophecy, because he himself had no vision and has come to the conclusion that he will no longer be alive on April 29. While that does not stop him from executing Mark’s vision of the board, he is also concerned with avoiding his demise. In fact, there are many occasions where the series allows the characters to experience the changes in present and future that are caused by unusual or unexpected behavior. Nonetheless the question remains whether they will avoid or provoke the results they are trying to change. This touches upon time travel paradigms such as the grandfather paradox, which are popular tropes in literature, film, and TV (Cf. Jones and Ormrod 2015). Interestingly enough, these efforts to change the future do not extend to the Mosaic Investigation Wall: Neither Demetri nor any other

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colleague probes what would change if one of the pinboarding objects were to be changed or moved. In fact, even when someone tries to steal one of the objects, the series narrative ensures that it is not really gone. The images of the Mosaic Investigation Wall that Mark and the viewers saw during the Global Blackout (GBO) are defended vigorously.2 The index cards prove to be no different: Demetri’s involvement with building the pinboard has to have been part of Mark’s vision, because it is Demetri’s handwriting on the index cards. The flashbacks to the flash forward confirm that, as Demetri writes down what Mark remembers and dictates to him. When Mark and Demetri write on the cards, corresponding images from Mark’s vision are shown again, making evident to the viewer that it is not about what this creates on the pinboard—we have already seen what the Mosaic Investigation Wall will look like when finished (see Fig. 2.1). It is much more interesting how the pinboard comes together and is realized, because this is the part not even Mark has seen. Mark and the viewers know that the index cards will function as topics for clusters of artifacts, which will be gathered and sorted around them, which makes them structural elements of the Mosaic Investigation Wall. Through the case of the index cards, different things become apparent: Within the diegesis, they emphasize the function of the board as a visualization of memories and as a collective thinking space for the FBI agents and the audience. For the narrative, they accentuate the need for a precise reconstruction of Mark’s memories regarding the form and position of the artifacts in the image-space. For the pinboard as a dispositive of seriality, the index cards stand for a conscious reflection on the status of signs by the series. When Demetri leaves Mark’s office after writing the first four cards, Mark remembers something else and writes, or rather draws, three stars in a row on a fifth card. This is the first time that pictographic signs get onto the board. They are not arbitrary like the written words, but could be described as iconic. The difference between the different signification levels of signs is additionally emphasized by the use of two different marker colors. The black words and the red stars stand out as different, even to a viewer who is not focusing on different sign functions of pinboarding objects. Generally speaking, writing utensils are easily overlooked, but felt-tip markers, chalk, sharpies, neon, or whiteboard pens are basic utensils in most offices—and therefore are also available in TV characters’ work spaces and homes. The same goes for sticky notes, commonly called post-­ its, which are very handy stationery, available in different shapes, colors,

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and sizes that are used for to-do lists, ‘be right back’ notes, office decoration—and pinboarding. They can actually also be useful for crime scene investigators: Post-It notes: May be quickly used to collect perishable trace hairs and fibers. Mark the Post-It note with the collection information and then use the adhesive strip to collect the evidence. The note may then be folded over onto itself to protect the trace evidence, and then placed in an envelope or other suitable container. (Maloney and Housman 2014, 220)

Two things become clear from this quote. Firstly, that sticky notes are fundamentally temporary and a very practical, but nonetheless improvised, solution until the more ‘suitable’ evidence bag is at hand on the crime scene. On pinboards, sticky notes are less volatile but a certain air of fleetingness still surrounds them. The second aspect illuminated by the quote above is that additional information has to be written on the notes. They need to be ‘marked’ if they are to properly transport information about a crime scene. Without a marker or some other writing utensil they are incomplete.

Markers’ Pinboarding Properties Markers and post-its are hardly unusual materials and neither are the practices connected to them. They can, however, be important for a series’ pinboarding and be a scene or episode’s focal point. For Homeland’s second configuration, for example, different colored markers are crucial: In “The Vest” (S01E11, original air date: December 11, 2011), Carrie Mathison goes through a manic phase before frantically coloring various documents: red, orange, yellow, blue, purple, and green. She insists: “Green is important, Green is necessary. It doesn’t make sense if it isn’t green. And it’s really not an unreasonable request” (ibid., TC 00:06:08f). Markers are often used to communicate one character’s idea or finding to other characters and via mediation of the camera-montage-TV dispositive to the viewer, by either drawing with the marker while other characters and the camera are watching or writing letters, numbers, or other standardized signs like arrows that make a board ‘readable’ for others even when the creator is absent. The ‘readability’ of a pinboard, or the lack thereof, on the other hand can be a central motif of storytelling, when the process of decoding the signs takes up a lot of the narration. It is precisely

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this (attempted) communication between Carrie and the outside world or other agents that is the problem with her board’s second configuration. Carrie prepares the documents’ color code with her markers but the actual pinboarding can only take place after Saul decodes her color scheme (see Chap. 4). The colorful and translucent markers are not used to write but to highlight things that were already written, emphasizing some sections of the printed texts or images and bringing these sections forward into the viewer’s attention. Black markers can also circle and thus highlight sections of texts or images, but they can also cover printed text and hide sections from the onlooker’s eyes, blocking their view and legibility. Bars of black marker can erase and are excellent visualizations of censorship, conspiracy theories, and mysteries. In Heroes, for example, where the various pinboards are mostly void of markers and post-its, many of the Primatech files on the evolved humans have been redacted. As the viewer, or player of the alternate reality game (ARG), is subjected to the creators’ release of information, a black marker can become a symbol for a gap in information caused by a gap in power. A TV series might resort to black marker and redacted files either to add to the atmosphere or to pace the storytelling: filling the information gaps in a document can create a longer story arc.3 The varying relation between a marker, its color, and letters/signs/ drawings points toward the fact that pinboarding markers as such do not ‘do’ anything—they depend on a carrier medium and on the user. They are a tool that can be part of a medium. In a television series, they add to the narrated temporality: markers are either present as a placeholder for potential future writing or they can be seen in a character’s hand and in the process of being used. Alternately, if only their mark, trace, or inscription on the carrier medium is shown, indicating the markers’ use ‘before’. Furthermore, the combination of markers, sticky notes, and pinboarding surfaces, like whiteboards or glass, allows for dynamic scenes in otherwise static settings. When the camera, for example, captures the purposeful crossing out of a suspect’s name, the drawing of a timeline, or the slow writing of a big question mark, the camera movement animates the scene and emphasizes the process of inscription. In North American productions, camera shifts, text direction, and writing movement usually go from left to right and top to bottom, as it is customary in western culture. Variations of this then can be deployed to generate thrill, suspense, or to emanate a character’s mental state, when for example a point-of-view shot simulates a character’s gaze that jumps around on the board, urgently looking for something.

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Richard Castle, Kate Beckett, and her colleagues often discuss the episode’s case in front of the precinct’s whiteboard. Once the case has been solved, the dry-erase markers can be erased from the board without a trace. For an almost classical murder-of-the-week show like Castle, the marker and matching eraser sponge are metaphorical: the board gets a clean surface and the characters a clean slate each week. Usually this happens ‘off camera’, but when the chief orders Kate to erase one of her boards in “Dial M for Mayor” (S04E12, original air date: January 16, 2012), the scene’s focus turns to the markers and their ability to be wiped off (ibid., TC 00:40:09f). Maybe the cleanability of the whiteboard explains why most of the long arc pinboards are made of different materials. In order for a pinboard to be the dispositive for seriality, the pinboarding objects have to permanently ‘stick’, both on the board and in the viewers’ memory. Having them be easily erasable makes a board seem volatile and unstable. Nonetheless, seeing a character using a marker to circle a suspicious detail in a photo or wiping out a false lead visualizes information and aids cognitive processes—both the narrated and displayed cognitive processes and those that are intended to happen with the viewers. The markers and their motion of drawing play to a strength of television, that is the ability to convey content visually by moving images. Hattop suspected a growing verbalization of television because of its increasing serialization and the need for dialogue. He suggested turning off the sound of a show you are familiar with and see how much of the content or the storyline still comes across (Cf. 1992). He, of course, predicted that it would be hard to understand a storyline purely relying on the images, and for many shows of the late 1980s and early 1990s he was probably correct. But TV series over the last two decades seem to have rediscovered their visual potential and have developed their own look, style, and aesthetic. So rather than declaring complexity or quality as a marker for the TV shows of the recent past, maybe the turn to their own tele-visuality can be illuminating. And serial pinboarding cannot be dismissed in this return to tele-visuality. Visually impacting actions, like with the markers, can convey different things. Like gestures, mimicry, and intonation, markers are used to highlight, show, point, and emphasize. And to make visual arguments, or at least to visualize a verbal argument—they are a deictic tool of pinboarding. Markers can be used when ‘x marks the spot’ or to show characters literally ‘drawing a conclusion’. While the former saying refers to communicating a location, the latter refers to the deduction of something from something else. Drawing a conclusion is a cognitive process that describes

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having an idea after a person has studied something or thought about it. Furthermore, the process of drawing itself is also part of the practice of pinboarding. Dry-erase markers especially have become tightly connected to visually explaining or showing things. So much so that they have evolved into their own genre of short whiteboard animation videos explaining almost anything from politics to biology. The manual filling and wiping of the board, the limited range of colors, and even the squeaking sound of the felt-tip on a surface are defining properties of the markers’ use in analogue pinboarding. Their basic deictic function can also be simulated if the pinboard in question is digital. Because digital pinboarding usually appears on a screen or as a projection, markers are unusable, but they resort to common gestures which the audience is familiar with. Richard Castle’s touchscreen, for example, and his use of it, are by no means foreign to a western audience, neither are the movements of enlarging a picture, a file being dragged-­ and-­dropped to a new location, or even his digital trash can. A pointing hand, a marker circling an important detail, and the zoom into a digital picture are all instances where the camera and montage show the viewer someone who is showing something to someone else with a deictic marker. In FlashForward, the audience is shown Mark, who has been shown the Mosaic Investigation Wall in the future and who is showing his partner what goes where on the pinboard. Mark uses markers mainly to write on the yellow note cards and there are a lot of post-its on the calendar pages. In fact, the series’ first post-it/black-marker combination is introduced only 75 seconds into the pilot, even though not on a pinboard (see Chap. 2). Not much later, during Mark’s vision, we see him write: “who else knows?” with a black felt-tip on the calendar page for April 29. Though many objects and minor items on the MIW are connected to markers, Mark never really ‘draws a conclusion’ with them, meaning they never become part of his epistemic process. On the other end of the spectrum, Mark’s adversary Dyson Frost, who by episode 17 has created a massive chalk board of possible events and futures, uses his writing utensil with a different purpose. In his ‘Garden of Forking Paths’ (see Chap. 5) Frost has marked down all the paths known or imaginable to him and found that either he or Demetri will survive. As a logical result of his pinboarding, he literally draws his conclusion that he has to kill Demetri. To get to this result, the writing utensil is less relevant than the process of drawing. Yet, the chalk lines are what turn the wall into a pinboarding surface. In other series,

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markers can have the same function: marker lines on a sheet of glass instantaneously turn a window into a pinboarding surface. Or to put it differently: the use of markers can be the media condition for pinboarding, reciprocally conditioned by and with the surface. Dyson Frost and Mark seemingly use their writing utensils differently. One uses marker, the other chalk; one writes on paper, the other on the wall; one adds many other objects to his wall, the other mostly writes and only adds a few pictures. Here these contrasts support the antagonistic relationship between the two pinboarders, and emphasizes that any analysis of serial pinboarding has to consider not only the written objects but also the scenes of writing them. Reaching for a writing utensil can, for example, be an impulsive act within a scene, and this spontaneous need to write something down, like Russel Crowe’s interpretation of John Forbes Nash in A Beautiful Mind (Howard 2001), can have different purposes: Either it is for the character’s own cognitive aid, to remember, calculate, or contemplate, or the written information is meant to be shared with others.4 This sharing is at the core of all pinboarding narratives—from one investigator to another, from the montage to the audience, from the character to the viewer. For these deictic functions it does not matter what the content and information value are. Even though writing with markers often aims to convey inspiration or a genius at work (like so often seen in Numb3rs (Falacci and Heuton 2005–2010)) or to symbolize how complicated a problem is, it is important to remember what Detective Diamond told her assistant: “Just because you write something in dry wipe marker doesn’t make it true” (Rake 2014, S02E02, original air date: September 30, 2015). If the writing utensil is used directly on the often unwieldy pinboarding surface, the marker traces become stationary stationery. But when the marker is used on paper, what is written/drawn becomes mobile. Only then can the information be physically moved by the characters, the post-it be taken off the board and put somewhere else, the notecard be handed to another person, and the sticky note/marker combinations be clustered in one. Through their mobility, sticky notes and markers allow change, ­reinvention, repetition, and deduction and therefore support serial, as in repetitive, continuous, and changing, pinboarding. Another type of media that is mobile yet serial are photos, and almost every pinboard has some. Some boards, like the one in Romanek’s One Hour Photo (2002), consist entirely of photos. Photographs in pinboarding series usually show crime scenes and suspects, people, objects, and

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buildings, and can be part of almost any pinboarding structure. It is neither my aim to name all the occurrences and uses of photographs in TV series and on pinboards, nor to repeat the history of photography as a medium. Rather, the focus will be on the connection between photos and pinboards as the dispositives of seriality. Photos are rarely alone on a pinboard. Surrounding text often explains the photo, for example when the photo is part of a newspaper article, like the many about Brody that Carrie has put up in the fourth phase of her living room board, when she tracks sightings of Brody all over the world. Pinboarding photos mostly appear in the material form of paper, meaning as developed pictures or prints, and rarely reflect upon their analogue or digital creation. By focusing on photos as props, the photographic qualities of television in general are blurred, but some aspects of photography are brought to the fore, such as the difference between photographic image and printed photo, the assumed depiction of reality, and the temporal structure inherent in photography’s own medial dispositive.

Faces, Time, and a ‘Baby Doll Photograph’ Many pinboarding photos show people. Some pinboards are made up entirely of portraits, like in Quantico (Safran 2015–2018) where rows of portrait photos are hung on an indoor window (ibid., S01E01, original air date: September 27, 2015, TC 00:15:04). Few of the faces mean anything to the viewers in the beginning. But it is clear that the faces mean a lot to the characters—a gap of knowledge that is closed episode by episode. The ability to compare physiognomic features in a photo with those of an actor or actress is central to the pinboarding in Quantico. This ability is presumed to be so fundamental that the fact that viewers are actually comparing the facial features in one image (the photo) with the features in another image (the TV series) is ignored. Both photo and filmic image are similarly related to their motif and both can be easily altered. A narrative can contemplate questions about image manipulation, but most series will do their very best to move CGI or production aspects as far to the b ­ ackground of the viewers’ attention as possible. TV series can use the connection that is ascribed to photos and their motif for their narrative in many ways, twisting this causality to a specific form of Coleridge’s “willing suspension of disbelief” (Cf. 1907): Viewers can consider a photo of a monster to be diegetically correct, while knowing its motif is a fictional creature. Additionally, storytelling can charge photos of a monster or a person with

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intra-diegetic information as well as some sort of emotional reaction, like trust or dislike. Pictures of actors’ faces can relate to their fictional characters and simultaneously push back the relation to the person, a shift that could characterize anything that appears on a photo in a series—its meaning for the characters and the narrative is related to and independent of any extra-diegetic reference. In Homeland’s fifth season’s episode “Superpowers”, the photos of former targets seemingly attack Carrie as she is shown to be bombarded with large portraits and overwhelmed by voices (S05E03, original air date: October 18, 2015). The quick cuts and overlays enforce the severe effect for her psyche. Besides that, this pinboarding scene again refers to the larger serial structures, because some of the pictures were part of previous pinboarding configurations, such as those of Abu Nazir and Haissam Haqqani, while some only remind viewers of previous scenes in previous seasons. Other pictures must be portraits of people Carrie met, killed, or betrayed off-screen, before and after the narrative framing. Their references are vaguer from the viewer’s standpoint, but still definitely intra-­ diegetically relatable. A similar effect can be noted in Castle where Kate’s murder board has portraits of victims and suspects on it, plus some close-up photos of the crime scene and her mother’s wounds (see Fig. 1.2). The portraits of people unknown to the audience in the beginning change in relevance and connotation as the storyline progresses. Locating the images’ time of origin on the diegetic timeline is made possible through the material attributes of the aging developed photographs: the older a photo is, the more pale and yellow it has become. In the beginning of the series, images of Kate’s mother are placed on the glass window, allowing for the light to shine through, and somehow these pictures have become translucent. Portraits of the killer’s other victims are taped to the right window shutter, but no light can shine through the wood. It seems as if the pictures on the shutter were developed on opaque paper so that the material quality of the photos directly influences their appearance in the pinboard, or seem less old as the pictures on the glass, too. Another motif-related reason for the opaqueness may be that they do not show any traces of violence and hence do not have to be ‘softened’. With new findings in the course of the show’s seasons, new photos of suspects and victims are added, which are opaque even though they are placed on the glass. Maybe because they are newer and the past cannot (yet) shine through them, though they are placed in the same image-space as the crime scene photos from 1999.

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With these descriptions, the pinboarding photos slowly emerge as temporal paradoxes. As physical items, they have an age, a half-life, a history, and even this is produced by set design. As photos of people, they can summon the faces of the dead and the living alike. And as signs on the pinboard, they are part of the same (non-)time. German media scholar Großklaus poignantly explains the connection between photography and time using the example of a family photo album (1997, chap. XIV). He distinguishes between three separate temporalities. First is the present when the photograph is taken, which can be sorted by the onlooker’s knowledge about the context in which the photo was shot. Secondly, there is the time of the material: we can deduct the time of origin from differences in reproduction that are the result of technical developments. And thirdly, Großklaus mentions the time of the image itself. For photos, this time is the same as the exposure time or, put differently, the time that passes during the taking of the image and thus inscribes itself into it. All three temporalities can be applied to the photos on Kate’s murder board or any other pinboard that is part of this study. On the Mosaic Investigation Wall, for example, many of the photos are of similar sizes and most are in color, which minimizes material indications. Nonetheless, some photos are in a sepia tone, which hints at an older date of origin than others on the pinboard. Because of their supposed older age, these sepia images have to be the result of research while the contemporary, probably digitally taken, images can be actively created and the audience gets to see the process of making them. But because the sepia photos have the same paper qualities as the rest, they lead to the assumption that they were scanned, found online or in a database, and were then printed on the same printer as the rest. This simultaneous age and youth is one of the reasons why photos might be the pinboarding objects that raise the most questions about time, temporality, and seriality, besides the calendar pages: “The photographic image, unlike the filmic image, does not easily show the passage of time, but it does show us that time has passed” (Dant and Gilloch 2002, 6). Viewers know from private experience that a photo taken in the present can ‘capture the moment’, meaning capturing a present that when the photo is taken instantly becomes a past moment. The photographic image can then help us remember a special moment or a person when we look at it: “It shows the moment of the image’s origin that is always in the past to the moment in which it is viewed” (ibid., 5). But the repetition that is the repeated look at the photo cannot be congruent with the moment’s occurrence or even

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with earlier looks. The photo both fabricates and actualizes our memory through repetition, yet what “the photograph reproduces to infinity has occurred only once: the photograph mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially” (Barthes 1981, 134). Looking at the same image again and again becomes a series in itself, a serialization of both the photograph as an object and the photograph as an image, and a practice that can be directly applied to fan viewing practices (see Chap. 6, section “Fans as Pinboarders”). Another temporal feature of photos is that they are present while the motive or model is absent. This structure is the same no matter what a photo shows. Even if the objects, landscapes, or faces are digitally rendered, the relationship remains an entanglement of absences and presences and everything in between. For a photo to reference any absentee, it is also not important which medium presents the photo: a computer screen, a wall with old newspaper images, or rows of neatly printed or developed portraits. Their dissimulative relation to their content stays the same no matter where or how they are shown. Analogue pinboards do not pretend to be photographs, they contain them, and photos on analog pinboards remain photographic images printed on paper. This distinction gets blurry with digital pinboarding, where photographic images are not developed or printed. But for the analog board the photo’s materiality is crucial, to show or simulate age, or play with translucency. A digital photo printed out on an office printer can become just such an analog pinboarding object, but it nonetheless has a different materiality, and with that another narrative connotation, then a Polaroid picture, an old ‘wanted’ poster, or a photo from a newspaper. When considering any of the pinboarding photos, the materiality and medial condition of the images’ haptic visuality should always also be considered along with their (narrative) motif and motivation. The difference between the photo as an image and the photo as a paper object should be kept distinct if possible. The fact that both haptics and aesthetics are also always mediated and staged by/in the TV series is also to be considered. These blending aspects of pinboarding photos can be cleared up with an example. Analyzing the pictures of Sergeant Brody that Carrie has pinned in configuration (1b) highlights three aspects. Firstly, the photos belong to the ‘genre’ of surveillance pictures, where the photographer hides, uses a telephoto lens, or where the photo is taken by automated surveillance cameras and later a still was pulled from that footage. This is mostly evoked through camera angles, for example from a room’s top corner,

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and aesthetics, such as a grainy resolution. Secondly, they are all developed or printed in large formats. Maybe this was a set design decision, so that the film camera can still capture them even from a distance, or they were made like that so Carrie can almost see ‘eye-to-eye’ with a large black-and-white portrait of Brody. In her tender touches of the paper and the long glances, her developing obsession with him becomes visible. Thirdly, the images were mostly taken since Brody has returned to the US, but despite Carrie’s suspicions the photos do not show him displaying any suspicious behavior. Not even Carrie’s repeated contemplation of her wall of photos can bring anything to light. In the narrative, this means that she temporarily has to stop her investigation altogether. Because the photos do not prove her suspicions right, her superiors (and she herself) assume that she is wrong about Brody  — and hence rely on a photographic claim to represent reality and truth. The audience however knows she is right and may understand that photos are not that reliable after all, especially when they only show a fragment of Brody’s day. In such a way, photos display their own compressions: time can be condensed into a photograph, or rather the onlooker can condense time by remembering and actualizing (with) the photo (Cf. Großklaus 1997, 136f.). But photos also condense a spatial situation at a certain point in time: how objects and/or humans relate to each other spatially can be photographed, how this reaction might have changed moments later could also be photographed, and the two images can be compared. No other group of objects shares this many parallels with the larger structure of the pinboard than the photos. Both visualize the temporal folding within spatial dimensions. Both aim at making “the temporal visible, to visualize the time or rather to temporize the image and the images” (ibid., 15: my translation). As explored before, making time visible is also the declared function of Hiro’s string room. While the string web puts things ‘into their place’ — no matter if they are pinned, glued, pinched, nailed, folded, or put up any other way — the many photos and other items reciprocally add content and meaning to the thread of each character. But the threads also dissolve the photos’ assumed temporal identity: As mentioned above, the time of the photography is the this-has-been, but the time-traveler’s pinboarding structure is a simultaneous web of past, present, and future as explained before. This means that the photos on the threads both must have happened, are happening right now, and will happen. This pinboarding structure is thus a suspension of the photos’ temporal properties. For example,

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Claire Bennet’s yellow ribbon has a high school photo of her pinned to it. The image shows her in the familiar cheerleading outfit and references images the viewers have seen of Claire in past episodes, while the photo itself does not raise any questions about its time and place of origin. This is very different for the photos that are part of newspaper articles. The newspaper clippings report events that have ‘not yet’ happened if we assume the time from where Hiro and Ando came as the narrative present. The picture of one article shows Nathan Petrelli and is accompanied by a text that describes him as the leader during “dark times”. The title of the other article informs us that the photo shows NYC after the looming catastrophe has happened. Either photo without text would not have been able to convey this information nor would they have had that certain ‘after-the-fact’ quality with which the newspaper context endows them. But this does not solve the issue of their temporality: Both the newspaper’s aura of reporting facts and the ‘has been there’ aspect of the photos are indicators that Hiro’s apocalyptic fears will come true unless he stops it. From Future Hiro’s viewpoint in time, the articles and photos have happened and their moments of creation have already gone. From the viewer’s and Hiro’s point of view, both in the ‘present’ of the narrative and of the series progression, the photos are foreshadowing their own creation.5 Once again, pinboarding and seriality are interwoven and reciprocally dependent of each other. Their connectedness becomes apparent in the analysis of specific objects or object categories. Here, as in most TV series, the photos have two kinds of addressees— the characters and the audience. From this seemingly simple difference countless other narratives have sprung up that involve photos: photos that the audience has seen being taken; photos that are explained to the viewers via dialogue and those that speak for themselves; photos that are from the past or the future; photos that are impossible; photos that replace short-­ term memory, and so on. On a TV series’ pinboard, these photos can show pretty much anything, but no matter what their motif may be, they tend to claim a (past) visual truth. A claim they transfer to the pinboard as soon as they are added into it. This claim has produced its own long-running discourse, which is highly motivated by the photographic dispositive: The steadfast causal relation between motif and image is mediated by the photographic apparatus, usually the camera. While some argue that there might indeed be changes or processes that occur when a picture is taken, the generalized assumption is that photographs have an inherent connection to ‘the real

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world’. As Barthes writes, “the image is not the reality, but at least it is its perfect analogon, and it is exactly this analogical perfection which, to common sense, defines the photograph” (1987, 17). Peirce writes that photography is first and foremost dependent on the lighting conditions, meaning the arrangement of dark and light is tied to the (formerly) present object. In his sign system, this makes a photo an index, as physical traces of an objective source are what inform the sign; the object and its reaction to light is what has been engraved in the light-­ sensitive layer of the film. At the same time, the index does not know anything about the object except that it ‘was there’. But the picture also refers to the object via the similarity between the light-dark configuration on the photo with the light-dark configuration when looking at the photographed object (Cf. Engell 2012, 246). Hence, photos are also iconic signs, as they work via structural similarities between signifier and signified, or in this case picture and object. Engell finds this conjunction to be inherently serial: The photo becomes an index and returns to being an icon that is based on an index, a loop of serial references between primary and secondary sign (ibid., 249). Photos on pinboards can additionally be tertiary signs, meaning symbols that Peirce describes as allowing abstraction but not necessarily the gaining of new knowledge. As symbols, photos can be understood and interpreted by the addressee. Though neither Aldous Huxley nor Peter Lester would have considered TV series and their visualization of knowledge, the so-called Huxley-Lester model indeed affirms what the pinboards and the photos have in common: ‘the more you know, the more you see.’ The serial narrative is the dispositive that distributes that knowledge and that hence influences what and how much the viewers see. This knowledge-power dispositive is visually translated into a pinboard, which relates its objects to each other, including the photos. Through montage the series can either give explanatory overviews, successions of photos or clusters, or zooms and close-ups that can focus the viewers’ attention on a certain detail and purposefully (or powerfully) create visual meaning. One TV franchise that is known for its unique aesthetics and deliberate manipulation of images is CSI (Zuiker 2000–2015). Engell diagnoses for CSI that all causality becomes indexical construction and all indexes are presented as images and sorted in series. These image series within the series are determined retrospectively, for instance in the frequent chains of images that

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show the shoot motif in bigger and bigger resolution, with changing angles, show it frame-by-frame or with more and more details on the investigators’ screens. (ibid., 255: my translation)

Though different in style, the same can be said for FlashForward. Different objects from the MIW are shown from changing perspectives and distances. Close-ups reveal details, some objects change position or are altered themselves. Some are never fully shown; others are part of many scenes. Some photos are acquired through research; others are taken during the investigation in the field and give insight into their genesis. The first photography that can be followed through its creation process on its way on the Mosaic Investigation Wall is that of a burned baby doll. Before this photo, there are only a couple of images visible on the left border of the Mosaic Investigation Wall, but these are never shown up close and are apparently of no relevance for the development of the storytelling. Following the doll image (see Fig. 3.1), the viewer is taken through the phases of production and can also now retrace which steps are necessary for Mark to rebuild his wall from his memories (S01E2, original air date: October 11, 2009).

Fig. 3.1  The manifestation of the ‘Baby Doll Photograph’, screenshots from FlashForward S01E01 (ABC 2009), TC 00:37:13 and S01E02 (ABC 2009) TC 00:32:11, TC 00:32:10, TC 00:34:51. (top left to bottom right)

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A chain of clues leads Mark to a suspect’s hiding place. When he sees the building of the “Divine Doll Company”, the viewers are shown a one-­ second flashback to his vision: a close-up of the yellow index card: “baby doll photograph”. A little later, the company building explodes, leaving both the viewers and the fictional FBI with burned dolls and doll parts on the floor of the factory. Shortly after the explosion, Mark asks a crime scene photographer: “Excuse me, can I take a look at the photo you just took?” The audience then shares Mark’s point of view looking down at the digital screen of the camera, before he moves the camera downward and out of sight, revealing the burned doll on the floor. This comparison of image and motif proves to him and the viewers that the photographic image matches the motif, and another flashback to Mark’s vision proves that the photo matches the printed photo Mark saw on the pinboard. The origin and authenticity of the photo are thus confirmed. FlashForward, like Homeland, reiterates the connection between photos and their motif in the storytelling, which in this case also means that every photo on the finished wall must have (had) a specific moment in which it was taken. Before this episode, the baby doll photograph was only part of the space-time constellation of Mark’s pinboard on April 29. Now its narrative and material genesis is attached to it. The baby doll photo can be taken as a representative example of how all of the objects find their way onto the board: The memory of images seen in a future version provokes the production of these images in the present, so they can become part of the Mosaic Investigation Wall. During their creation, they are constantly compared to the memories of the future and actualized by the series comparing the ‘narrative now’ and the ‘narrative later’ with images of the ‘serial then’. On their way onto the board, the objects have to be validated as both congruent with the memory and relevant for the storytelling, which could be demonstrated by comparing the photo and its motif. Once they are part of the pinboarding structure, they always evoke their own (hi-)story of origin while also striving toward their horizon of knowledge that is the board-object configuration on April 29. This also shows how a pinboard and its objects determine the course of the storytelling and how their presentation structures the series as a whole, strengthening the understanding of televisual pinboards as dispositives of seriality. Even though the example of the “baby doll photograph” gives some insight into how objects get onto the pinboard, another question remains, regarding the when. Because even if the artifacts carry their own story with them, one which still has to be told, the future pinboard that the audience

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and Mark have seen does not indicate the succession of the artifacts getting on the wall. Only the course of the series allows for step-by-step answers to these questions, so that on a superordinate level the artifacts also carry the memory of the episode in which they were featured. The pinboard conditions the series, while the objects condense the causal and temporal, the narrative and the serial structure in their presence, and their spatial relation on the pinboarding surface. Another subcategory of pinboarding objects, or rather the particular case of evidence bags that contain other items, does this a little differently, as described in the following.

Evidence Bags Objects that are related to a fictional crime scene are exposed to a multitude of actions performed by the characters: they are hidden and found, collected and ‘bagged’, interpreted and explained. Some are then also directly pinned to a pinboard and arranged, rearranged, or connected to items in other categories. But some objects that appear in serial pinboarding contexts cannot be pinned due to their materiality—neither a blood spatter pattern nor a bullet case can be pinned with a regular push pin. If this is the case, a pinboarding show can then choose either of two options. Either use some sort of translation-to-paper of the item—a picture, a sketch, a document with a list of chemical components, DNA traces, or the like. Or bag the object, preferably in a transparent plastic bag, with an optional red ‘evidence’ printed on it, so that the push pin can mount the bag and its contents to the board. Appropriate evidence bags should be used for the different types and sizes of evidence. […] Evidence to be recovered from the scene of the incident to the Forensic Laboratory must be properly packed, recorded, and labeled prior to dispatch. (Watson and Jones 2013, 247)

Guidelines like this are not just part of handbooks for crime scene investigation, but are also imprinted in the cultural consciousness, shaped by countless detective and police stories in all media. On TV, the crime show genre includes cop shows, detective shows, forensic shows, ‘cozies’6 and more, many of which incorporate their version of pinboarding. Whatever the investigators’ profession may be, most of them share the goal of finding evidence, ideally of the kind that will hold up in court, to convict criminals of their crimes. Objective, haptic evidence needs to be

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acquired, even if a confession has been made. Traces like fingerprints need to be secured by forensic means, and items need to be securely stored for both further examination and tangible proof. These ‘evidence practices’ are amongst the many that are part of narratives and TV series, and so the questions directed at the evidence bags in the context of this study are manifold: What kind of causal relation is assumed between a crime and an object in an evidence bag? What does the pairing of object and evidence bag make visible? What is the effect of an evidence bag on pinboarding? And how is finding the ‘bagged’ objects important for the sign system? To answer the last question, aspects from art theory can once again be of help. The found object, or objet trouvé, was central to the surrealist movement and readymade artists like Marcel Duchamp. Mitchell wrote that in works with objet trouvé “things” were stepping forward: “Trivial objects – slippers, pencils, gloves, teapots – no longer seem like innocent, passive entities”, but have “lives of their own”, with “stories to tell, and voices to tell them” (2005, 111). He continues that the found object, while obviously present in art, has not yet found itself a theory, but there seem to be some general criteria: Everyone knows that there are just two criteria for a found object: (1) it must be ordinary, unimportant, neglected, and (until its finding) overlooked; it cannot be beautiful, sublime, wonderful, astonishing, or remarkable in any obvious way, or it would have already been singled out, and therefore would not be a good candidate for “finding”; and (2) its finding must be accidental, not deliberate or planned. (ibid., 112)

While the evidence bags might indeed contain ordinary objects, only a few of them would actually count as found objects in Mitchell’s eyes, as he emphasizes that the sought object is not (the same) as the found object (ibid., 116) and the characters most certainly seek evidence. Still, one could argue that the characters usually search for evidence in a general sense, but not a specific object, so that in their nonetheless motivated search actually stumble upon the items they then deem evidence, like the artist who stumbles upon an object and declares it art. What does apply to both evidence bags and pinboarding objects in general is that “everything changes once they are found,” (ibid.) a process Pearce has elaborated on, regarding collections: “Once collected, natural-­ history specimens have become artefacts in the sense that the act of selection turns them into man-made products, for once they have entered our

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world, they become part of the relationships which we construct for them” (1995, 267). The pinboards are certainly a way to ‘construct relationships for artifacts’ but most pinboarding objects are obtained in a different way. Instead of stumbled upon, they are printed (and bought) maps, filed blueprints, generic calendar pages, and so on. Thus, it may not be surprising that pinboarding series rarely feature many evidence bags—three of this book’s four main examples do not pin evidence bags at all. This can have various reasons: Heroes, for example, does not tell the story of a police investigation, so forensic evidence is not part of the potential array of artifacts. Carrie’s boards in Homeland are not based on this kind of evidence either, she relies on already-mediated materials like developed surveillance images and intel reports from CIA analysts—there is nothing to ‘bag’. In Castle, the main murder board concerns a very old case for which the actual evidence was processed a long time ago, thus only written descriptions and reports are available. And even though the plastic bags and brown paper envelopes are present in the scene when Kate goes into the precinct’s evidence storage to recheck some of the evidence from her mother’s crime scene, they do not make it onto the board. The weekly boards in Castle do not often display evidence bags either, probably because realistic police procedures would require the secured items to ‘go to evidence’, meaning the forensic department or storage facility and not be lying around to be played or tampered with. This of course applies to many other shows, where an evidence bag might be in a scene for a brief moment before it is processed further and assumes a place out of the scene and thus off-screen. The evidence bags’ absence thus comments on their temporal properties: Their present presence is replaced by past presence once they are examined and translated into data or a photo. It is important to notice that even before the translation from object to image of evidence, another transition or rather a medialization has taken place: an ordinary object has been declared evidence. Maybe because the object has external traces on it, like blood; maybe because it was used by a perpetrator, like the infamous ‘blunt object’; maybe just because it is entirely out of place in the surroundings it is currently in. Something has been found and taken out of its past context to be—quite literally—present in another. Nichols describes how items and facts become evidence when they are integrated into a discourse while the discourse enforces its believability by externalizing evidence to a domain outside itself (Cf. 2006). This simple fact also constitutes the most fundamental difference

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between the evidence bags and the other artifacts on the wall: The bags contain objects that not only represent something else, something absent, or an arbitrary meaning, but equally first and foremost present themselves. Even more than the other items, the evidence bags and their content oscillate between their immanent qualities as an object, their ascribed meaning for the investigation, and their meaning within the pinboard. They are self-evident as well as evidence, which means they present and vouch for themselves while also referring to an undeniable relation between them and their reference. These objects are evidence of something that they do not show, but only refer to. FlashForward offers a great example of this special shifting of qualities and is an exception among the pinboarding case studies, as there are actually a few objects in plastic bags pinned to the Mosaic Investigation Wall. Or, to be more precise, only a few evidence bags are staged with their pinboarding practices, while in fact the pinboard in Mark’s vision has quite a few of the plastic bags (see Fig. 2.1). The first of these artifacts appears in the third episode “137 Seconds” (S01E03, original air date: October 8, 2009): When Mark steps in front of his board at the beginning of the episode, changes have been made since the last time the audience saw the cork wall. Two plastic bags have been pinned to the surface, one of which has been pinned right onto the December calendar page and clearly contains a chess piece. The other one is pinned close to the left edge of the wall and the viewers can only speculate what is in it and where it came from, as there is never a close-up of the bag. The chess piece is not explained right away either, and is thus one of the first pieces the audience did not see being put on the wall. But viewers had seen in the previous episode how the chess piece was found, and so all the steps before (origin, time, circumstance, meaning) are nonetheless stored within the piece. Or put differently, a chess piece anywhere else is a chess piece—this chess piece, singled out from another context and put in the evidence bag on the pinboard is both evidence in FlashForward’s investigation and proof of the story told in past episodes. It is re-contextualized within the pinboard and within the serial narrative. In addition to this particular sign status, evidence bags and the items they contain have a different spatial quality to them than most of the other objects: they are three dimensional and reach further into the space than the flat paper artifacts. Surely evidence bags can also hold especially fragile pieces of paper, or fragments, which makes them less different from the other objects. But the chess piece certainly adds another depth, or maybe height, to the pinboard. Because, as simple

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as it sounds: no matter the quality of the content, the bags also contain air. They are often sealed shut at the top, creating an encasing of time, a memory bubble. But they do not disturb the “progression of time, even though they introduce local regressions into it” (Deleuze 2013, 280), as the bagged chess piece does by triggering flashbacks to its finding—a characteristic which in Deleuze’s terms makes them mnemo-signs or recollection-­images. One of the most impressive examples of this characteristic of the evidence bag in pinboarding can be found in the movie Everything Is Illuminated (Schreiber 2005). Here, ’the collector’ gathers keepsakes during his search for the woman who saved his father. Any item he can get his hands on that relates to her or the people connected to ‘his case’ is carefully stored in zip-lock bags and put on a huge wall. Each of the trivial items, which would indeed qualify as objets trouvé, is labeled with a date and the plastic bags keep their time bubble intact. ‘The collector’ collects because he is afraid he might forget and the evidence bags help him remember. The object or mnemo-sign informs the present when it “seize[s] a former present in the past” (ibid.), a quality most of the objects on the Mosaic Investigation Wall also possess, when a close-up of one of the items triggers a flashback to Mark’s vision or to another episode. In FlashForward, the mnemo-sign or mnemo-object is part of the images of the present, the memory images, and the vision images. Or rather: the memory images of the future manifest in the present images in the form of the object. The evidence bags, apart from their exclusive temporal effects, emphasize the pinboards’ function as a collection. Collections reflect “a [certain] view of the truth of the world”, which Pearce finds to be true for the collections of zoologists, anthropologists, and other scientific collectors—as well as serial killers (1995, 264). The latter sometimes collect evidence of their victims, like hair or pictures, but are of lesser concern here, as their purpose is seldom empiric and more often of a much darker psychological variety. Scientific collectors, on the other hand, often have collections gathering specimen of nature in order to explain the development of the world or plants and animals. In anthropology, typological sequences are understood as the key to understanding foreign cultures (ibid., 265). In his dissertation, Baudrillard examined the life of signs in society and described the system of objects (2005 [1968]). While Baudrillard analyzed consumerism in times of mass media, the ‘objects as parts of sign systems’ can be implemented to collections and pinboarding, as he emphasized that objects as signs lose their singular status and are part of systems

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of signification that are relative to each other (ibid.)—similar to language, in which meaning only emerges from a network of relationships, and thus similar to pinboards and collections. Didi-Huberman contrasted two of the smaller kinds of collections against each other: the album and the atlas. His prominent examples are Warburg’s Mnemosyne project and Malraux’s musée imaginaire (Cf. 2009). To Didi-Huberman it is essential that the album is organic and flexible rather than a book’s fixed text. Much like with pinboarding, the motivation to start an album starts with the impulse ‘to get things in order’. The narrative then ensues between the elements. Both album and atlas are the carriers for their objects, while in both cases surface and object stay distinct from each other. While Didi-Huberman compares the two different forms to the book, a similar comparison can be drawn between the analogue and the digital pinboard: The objects on a cork board do not become part of their carrier, while the digital items are part of their surface; in fact, they have been transformed in order to become part of the digital screen. In the case of the evidence in plastic bags, this becomes both generally important and specifically obvious when Mark takes the chess piece out of its bag—only because the chess piece stayed distinguishable from the wall can he then destroy it and find a ring hidden inside it (S01E18, original air date: April 29, 2010. TC 00:28:15-00:39:10). Like in a nesting doll, the ring was on the pinboard all along, hidden in the chess piece that was sealed in the plastic bag. It was not present, but rather in limbo between absence and presence. After the figure is destroyed, the ring’s presence on the MIW is new information, hidden in already present information. It is a new element in the collection of the pinboard. The immanent hope is that the ring will help solve the puzzle, at the latest once all the other elements Mark saw in his vision are also ‘put in their place’. Pearce writes that the strict chronology and holistic idea implicit in many collections result in the idea that a collector can have a ‘complete’ collection, or needs to ‘fill in the gaps’ (Cf. 1995). A similar logic is implicit with pinboards, where the collection of the evidence promises that the solution or answer will ‘become evident’ once it is complete. And in many TV shows, this does indeed happen: A set number of clues and objects is collected and culminates in the pinboarding, which becomes obsolete once it ‘makes evident’ what the investigators are looking for. Of course, most objects the fictional investigators find actually help with their case— at least those the audience gets to see. It is an exception when objects end up in a series’ pinboard or evidence locker that do not help solve the case.

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The series’ writers determine what is investigated by the characters and consequentially needs to be pinned to the board. The board determines which objects can be pinned and therefore it conditions the potential objects’ materiality and forces some to be put into evidence bags. Through this, pinboarding shapes the serial narrative. Though evidence bags are not an omnipresent category of pinboarding objects, they emphasize these dispositive properties of pinboarding. Especially when objects start to overlap each other, those that are not flat stick out, in every sense of the word. On the MIW, for example, layers start to build up after episode four. The gradual process starts with slight overlaps of image corners or document edges, but soon some documents are no longer legible. Small edges and corners still need to peek out underneath in order for the layers to be seen. This is comparable to archaeological layers of rock and sediment. Both have inherent temporalities that can be dug into: The deeper one digs, the further one moves away from the surface level that is the present form of the pinboard. The older a layer is, the deeper it is buried under newer layers. Unlike rock layers, pinboard layers do not say anything about the actual age of the object, or in this case, of the fossil or artifact. They only allow conclusions about the time when they were added to the board. If they stay underneath other objects, their relevance also may have been overshadowed by newer discoveries. The visible surface is the layer which is of most importance. Nonetheless, the existence of lower levels makes the pinboard a layered object with multiple surfaces that can be added to or peeled away. When the objects merge into a new surface they form a new visual plane from which vertical movements can originate. Foucault’s method of discourse analysis, which at its core is described as peeling back archeological layers or digging specific holes through the layers of history’s sediments, can hence be found visually on pinboards. Pinboarding layers allow the characters and the viewers to study layers of the dispositive, layers that can lead into the depth of space and time, and trigger intra-diegetic actions or investigations. With transmedia storytelling as explored in section “Wandering Narratives and Transmedia Pinboarding” (see Chap. 6), the layering can also lead out of the diegesis and breach the surface of the screen. The objects and their accumulation; the time it takes to build a pinboard; the process of becoming a medium composed of many elements that have been or become signs and are mediating a signification themselves; the signs that have leveled into an image surface—these aspects describe the unique relationship between a pinboarding surface and the

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objects of pinboarding. The processes of pinboarding become visible through the seriality and the serial images of a TV show, while the seriality itself is made visible through pinboarding and its objects. The arrangement of pinboarding objects highlights how a board can be understood as a dispositive of seriality. The English verb ‘to dispose’ is related to both the dispositive and the Latin root ‘dispono’, that “concerns placing here and there, setting in different places, arranging, distributing (regularly), disposing; it also addresses specifically setting in order, arraying, or settling and determining (in military or legal senses)” (Bussolini 2010, 96). Pinboarding clearly is a specific mode of disposing things in different places and in different arrangements that can change over time, strengthening the idea of pinboards as dispositives of seriality. Schade et al. emphasized that dispositives need not only to be but to stay disposable (Cf. 1999). Additionally, any dispositive has an inherent time: it has to be described at a specific moment in history, and only in a defined space. This is where we find parallels to the basic narrative parameters of place and time that form the setting for any storytelling. Considering the basic parameters of pinboarding thus turns the attention to three categories of objects, which contribute to the space, place, and time of pinboards: maps, blueprints, and calendars and time lines, which will be more closely examined in the following chapters.

Notes 1. The mood board comparison can also be applied to the other three examples in this study—which means that the four steps suggested by Holert (2008) should be integrated into the analysis of any serial pinboard, but also that they need to be extended. 2. In close comparison of stills, slight changes to the strings and some of the objects can be detected. Especially the red string connecting October 6 and April 29 changes its form and slope a couple of times during the episodes. This could either be a sign that the pinboarding continues even when the audience cannot see or a continuity issue between the pilot episode, which is usually shot long before the rest of the season goes into production, and the subsequent episodes. 3. Redaction as such a storytelling device can even be transferred to sound and movie imagery, as seen in The Conspiracy (MacBride 2012): The title is redacted; in dialogue, names are bleeped and the characters’ lips are blurred; and at the ‘Tarsus Club’, all faces are blurred.

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4. It could be argued that ‘pointing something out to someone’ means that the marker enunciates the viewer as such. Althusser’s interpellation of the always already interpellated subject could become a “Hey, you there, [viewer]!” (Cf. 1971). 5. Other photos function as such omens as well. When, for instance, throughout Heroes’ second season Adam hunts for the first generation of evolved humans and leaves pieces of a torn-up group photo of them everywhere, on which he has drawn the helix symbol in red. The threatening effect of these photo pieces is supported by the analogy of person and photo explained above. 6. ‘Cozies’ are shows that are intentionally less violent or explicit than others. The narrative and investigating usually take place in a small-town setting, with a manageable number of suspects (Cf. Sabin et al. 2015).

References Althusser, Louis. 1971. Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, 121–176. New York: Monthly Review Press. Barthes, Roland. 1981. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. New  York City: Hill and Wang. ———. 1987. The Photographic Image. In Image, Music, Text, 15–31. London: Fontana Press. Baudrillard, Jean. 2005. Le Système Des Objets – The System of Objects. London: Verso. Braga, Brannon, and David S. Goyer. 2009. FlashForward. New York City: ABC. Bussolini, Jeffrey. 2010. What Is a Dispositive? Foucault Studies 10 (November): 85–107. https://doi.org/10.22439/fs.v0i10.3120. Coleridge, Samuel T. 1907. Biographia Literaria, vol. 2 (1817). Clarendon Press. http://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.47558 Currie, Gregory. 1995. Image and Mind: Film, Philosophy and Cognitive Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dant, Tim, and Graeme Gilloch. 2002. Pictures of the Past: Benjamin and Barthes on Photography and History. European Journal of Cultural Studies 5 (1): 5–23. https://doi.org/10.1177/1364942002005001153. Deleuze, Gilles. 2013. Cinema II: The Time-Image. London: Bloomsbury Academic. https://books.google.com/books/about/Cinema_II.html?hl=de &id=YSpMAQAAQBAJ Didi-Huberman, Georges. 2009. ALBUM vs. ATLAS (Malraux vc. Warburg). In Album. Organisationsform Narrativer Kohärenz, ed. Annegret Pelz and Anke Kramer, 59–73. Göttingen: Wallstein. Engell, Lorenz. 2012. Folgen Und Ursachen. Über Serialität Und Kausalität. In Populäre Serialität: Narration – Evolution – Distinktion. Zum Seriellen Erzählen Seit Dem 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Frank Kelleter, 241–258. Bielefeld: transcript.

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Falacci, Nicolas, and Cheryl Heuton. 2005. Numb3ers. New York City: CBS. Gordon, Howard, and Alex Gansa. 2011. Homeland. New York City: Showtime. Großklaus, Götz. 1997. Medien-Zeit, Medien-Raum: Zum Wandel der raumzeitlichen Wahrnehmung in der Moderne. 3rd ed. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Hattop, Hans. 1992. Der Einfluss serieller Fernsehproduktion auf den Gebrauch der Bilder. In Serie, Kunst im Alltag, ed. Friedrich Salow, 66–68. Berlin: Vistas. Holert, Tom. 2008. Regieren im Bildraum. Berlin: B-books. Howard, Ron. 2001. A Beautiful Mind. Universal City: Universal Pictures. Jones, Matthew, and Joan Ormrod, eds. 2015. Time Travel in Popular Media: Essays on Film, Television, Literature and Video Games. Jefferson: McFarland. Kring, Tim. 2006. Heroes. New York City: NBC. Latour, Bruno. 1986. Visualisation and Cognition: Drawing Things Together. Knowledge and Society Studies in the Sociology of Culture Past and Present 6: 1–40. MacBride, Christopher. 2012. The Conspiracy. Toronto: Resolute Films. Maloney, Michael S., and Donald Housman. 2014. Crime Scene Investigation Procedural Guide. Boca Raton/London/New York: CRC Press. Marlowe, Andrew W. 2009. Castle. New York City: ABC. Mitchell, W.J.T. 2005. What Do Pictures Want?: The Lives and Loves of Images. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press. Nichols, Bill. 2006. Evidence  – Fragen Nach Dem Beweis. In Die Listen Der Evidenz, ed. Michael Cuntz et al., 86–100. Köln: DuMont. Pearce, Susan Mary. 1995. On Collecting. An Investigation into Collecting in the European Tradition. London/New York: Routledge. Rake, Jeff. 2014. Mysteries of Laura. New York City: NBC. Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg. 2001. Experimentalsysteme und epistemische Dinge: eine Geschichte der Proteinsynthese im Reagenzglas. Frankfurt a.M: Suhrkamp. Romanek, Mark. 2002. One Hour Photo. Los Angeles: FOX Searchlight Pictures. Sabin, Roger, Ronald Wilson, Linda Speidel, Brian Faucette, and Ben Bethell. 2015. Cop Shows: A Critical History of Police Dramas on Television. Jefferson: McFarland & Company. Safran, Joshua. 2015. Quantico. New York City: ABC. Schade, Sigrid, Georg Christoph Tholen, and Heiko Idensen. 1999. Konfigurationen: Zwischen Kunst und Medien. München: Fink. Schreiber, Liev. 2005. Everything Is Illuminated. Burbank: Warner Independent Pictures. Watson, David, and Andrew Jones. 2013. Digital Forensics Processing and Procedures. Waltham: Elsevier. Zuiker, Anthony E. 2000. CSI: Crime Scene Investigations. New York City: CBS.

CHAPTER 4

Pinning Place and Time

Storytelling and maps have a long-standing connection. Stories of ancient oral history are often about travel, giving itineraries of distances and journeys, adventures, and paths. Many books include maps of real or fantasy lands; movies and TV series tell tales of maps with magical properties, or those on which an ‘X’ marks the proverbial spot. Maps can lead characters around the world or into disorientation. They are a narrative tool with one essential aspect: maps reference space and the movement through that space. Through montage or animation, a character’s journey can be visualized in film and television. A dotted line between two stops, a symbol for a plane or ship crossing distances on a map, are easily (and cheaply) made and understood. In television series, maps appear in montages, too, but even more often as props or accessories: as paper road maps, as an atlas, as a globe, on a screen, in a car’s navigation system, or wherever maps appear in the extra-diegetic reality, too. Some of these maps are hung on walls or mounted on pinboards, like the large maps of London in the most recent Sherlock Holmes adaptations—both the movie and the TV series. And sometime maps, and the pinboards they appear on, strongly contribute to a narrative’s cognitive map, that film and TV bring forth and that viewers can navigate (Cf. Currie 1995, 11). In both reality and fiction, maps and mapping applications are present everywhere, a development that has contributed to the ‘spatial turn’. Scholars from many disciplines, historians, software designers,

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and non-­fiction authors have concerned themselves with maps (Downs and Stea 1977; Günzel 2007; Okada et al. 2008; Wintle 2009; Garfield 2013). Research focuses on space not as a given and fixed entity but as emerging between the functions of culture and nature. In the context of pinboarding, spatiality does not primarily concern state borders, private and public life, or changing perceptions of landscapes. However, a topographic as well as a topological angle is necessary to grasp spatiality and pinboarding. The means of representation, for example, in the maps of pinboarding, and the analogies between elements and structures on the pinboards in general are of concern to comprehend them as dispositives. But what is a map? First of all, maps are famously ‘not the territory’.1 They are representations, simulations, or, as Baudrillard has specified, they visualize the spatial relations of representations. A map can spatialize many things, meaning a map can transform almost any relation into a spatial structure, thus also creating the space of representation. At the same time, the map only comes into being through the process of representing. Additionally, a pinboarding map is represented by the pinboard of which it is a part, so that the same process of translation is repeated in a larger context. Foucault referred to Saussure when he describes how elements appear in a discursive space and create spatial relations to others in the same system, much like the objects of pinboarding appear on the map-­ image-­space. Deleuze insisted that the subject is part of this system, while the system and the subject are in turn constantly in the process of changing. Both the fictional subjects and the audience subjects are part of the pinboarding system, either witnessing self-induced changes in the pinboarding space or experiencing changes in the cognition of the system. Derrida focused on the in-between as the space of meaning, a most important aspect that will be discussed in Chap. 5. Yet the fact that New  York is not Boston and that a visible, though arbitrary, distance between two dots representing the two cities is undisputedly essential for a map of the east coast of the US. Such a map then carries with it the cultural technique and practices that were necessary to create and are necessary to read it: Take for instance the distance between two cities. To measure the map distance with a ruler and figure out the real distance from the map’s scale is a typical map manipulation, depending on the fact that the map we imagine here is endowed with a metric topology. (Stjernfelt 2000, 374)

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This topology also works in more abstract maps, such as a subway map, where the distance between two symbols does not allow a deduction about the actual distance between two stations and the space the train travels between them. The distance between pinboarding objects usually is as arbitrary as this, but the presence of maps can evoke the impression that the pinboarding space also follows a defined scale. The pinboarding operation most common for a map is certainly the pushing of a pin through a map’s paper surface into the cork board or wall behind it. The purpose is often the same as with any real map: we “may 1) find a route between two localities, 2) determining a distance or an area, 3) recognize landscape forms – and so on” (ibid., 376). Maps in pinboards allow singular elements to be located and places to be marked via pinboarding operations. French philosopher Certeau distinctly separates space and place, a distinction that is of the utmost importance to pinboarding. Because even if the distances in the pinboard are arbitrary, objects can nonetheless have a defined place within the image space: At the outset, I shall make a distinction between space (espace) and place (lieu) that delimits a field. A place (lieu) is the order (of whatever kind) in accord with which elements are distributed in relationships of coexistence. It thus excludes the possibility of two things being in the same location (place). […] A space exists when one takes into consideration vectors of direction, velocities, and time variables. Thus space is composed of intersections of mobile elements. It is in a sense actuated by the ensemble of movements deployed within it. Space occurs as the effect produced by the operations that orient it, situate it, temporalize it, and make it function in a polyvalent unity of conflictual programs or contractual proximities. (Certeau 1984, 117)

For something to transform from an object in a certain place to part of an operation in space, stories can be told (ibid., 118). These stories are either maps that give descriptive statements like “[t]he girls’ room is next to the kitchen”, or tours, that describe a path, a movement in a certain vectorial direction, like “[y]ou turn right and come into the living room” (ibid., 119). TV and movie images are inherently tours, while dialogues can provide these verbal maps in storytelling. These narrative devices become operational when, for example, one of the younger Heroes’ (Kring 2006–2010) characters is introduced. Young Molly Walker has the gift of ‘locational clairvoyance’. Given input about a person, like a picture or name, and an atlas, she uses a pushpin to locate that person. Her gift

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proves useful on different occasions and drives the narrative. In regard to pinboarding, it emphasizes the fact that maps are tools that need additional elements to be utilized, either pins to mark a specific spot, or characters to point out specific routes or places on the map with their hand, other deictic tools, or via dialogue. In order for the latter to work, maps as “[l]ocation descriptions, therefore, depend upon a system of understanding that we must all agree upon in order to use” (Downs and Stea 1977, 45). Again, a parallel between maps and pinboarding becomes apparent: the boards also rely on a system of understanding that may be of varying complexity but to which the addressee necessarily has to be privy to. Establishing such a system of understanding requires various practices of translation. Generally speaking, a map has to reduce the complexity and size of that which it represents.2 A pinboard that functions as the dispositive of a television series has to do the same, highlighting the most important aspects while leaving out others. This leads to a parallel with contemporary TV series and their often-praised complexity. Klein understands serial complexity as the production and discussion of knowledge about different socio-historical discourses via coherent serial stories (2012, 231). Seriality provides the structure that allows layers and fragments to be added to discourses, so that a series can clearly reflect specific issues. Similarly, a map provides the structure that is the basic reference system for pinboarding; it is a layer in-between the material surface and the other objects of pinboarding. Their primary status as maps is hardly ever of concern; their representational qualities are utilized without a second thought. Just how much they are basic tools for pinboarding is exemplified in Heroes. Before his untimely death, Professor Suresh started a map of people with superhuman skills before he died, as mentioned previously. Four minutes into the pilot episode his son Mohinder goes to get his research in order to continue the search for ‘patient zero’. He finds files and recordings and a large world map in his father’s private office. Mohinder is in the process of taking down some of the paper clippings pinned to that map, when he hears someone’s phone ringing in the adjacent room. He quickly photographs the map and removes a white pin from the circle that represents New York City (Vol01Ch01; original air date: September 25, 2006, TC 00:06:28f). A close-up of the New  York area on the map is shown before he runs out of the room. While he probably intended to hide the fact that New York was marked on the map, a hole remains visible where the pin used to be, a fact that is repeated by a close-up of that hole several

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Fig. 4.1  Hole left by pin close to ‘New York’, Screenshot from Heroes Vol01E08 (NBC 2006), TC 00:08:57

episodes later, when the missing pin becomes relevant for the storytelling (Fig.  4.1). The pin leaves an absentee trace in the paper surface of the map, which is as visible as if the pin were still there, enhanced by the framing of the shot and the lingering hand of the actor. When Mohinder arrives at his father’s New York City apartment later in the episode, he finds that the place has also been searched and that a duplicate of the map on one of the walls there has been damaged. He goes through the files and starts rebuilding the map. An approximately one-­ minute long montage (ibid., TC 00:25:00f) shows him pinboarding: close-ups of thread tied around pins that connects the map’s representation of cities all over the world, cross-faded with documents, photos, and notes. Even the tools of pinboarding are explicitly shown here. Spools of thread, scissors, and a jar of pins are arranged on the table next to the map. This scene is one of the most pronounced pinboarding scenes in the show’s first season, and it is coincidentally not shown in the pilot. It draws attention to the map and to the importance of serial pinboarding in Heroes. Additionally, I argue that the scene evokes what can be called a diagrammatic way of seeing. Diagrams, derived from the Greek ‘diagramma’ which means geometric figure or shape, are, according to Peirce, able to “illustrate the general

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course of thought” (1906, 492). Diagrams have practical applications, such as one “might probably desire the maps to stick pins into” (ibid.). To Peirce, diagrams are icons. They resemble what they represent, not in external similarity, but in the relations between the parts of the thing represented. They are “autoicons” in that they neither refer to a reality, nor condition the communication about that reality, but rather are their own reference (Cf. Günzel 2007, 110). Therefore, maps are necessarily diagrams and they are notations of the world. If we follow the lines of the diagrammatic notation, they can guide our movements: But the map is neither an image of this movement nor the movement itself. It is the abstract machine that organizes and guides the actual moments in which it takes part and has control over. The lines of the diagram are hence abstractions of the specific movement they visualize. Following the movements of their lines means translating the diagram into the (image of the) movement. (Paech 2002, 143: my translation)

The large “Where is Brody?” map in Carrie’s third pinboard configuration is precisely that: a translation and abstraction of movement into the lines of a diagrammatic map. The world in its cartographic appearance on a pinboard reduces the intangible vastness of the earth to fit into her living room. This map allows Carrie to give into the illusion that she has ‘a close eye’ on Brody and that he is never really far away. The map gives structure to her chaotic situation and diagrammatic arrangement creates order through spatialization. Establishing this order always means a reduction in details and a necessary simplification (Cf. Schmidt-Burkhardt 2012, 30). The diagrammatic process thus is connected to serial pinboarding on at least three levels. As we have seen above, the series deconstructs discourses and narrates them through complexity. This complexity can depend on the dispositive of a pinboard. The process of abstraction is symbolized in the maps on said pinboard, while also triggering a diagrammatic way of seeing and thinking. These steps can, for example, be traced in FlashForward (Braga and Goyer 2009–2010), where a map of Baltimore is pinned to the cork wall in episode seven (original air date: November 12, 2019). This map is used only once as an actual map, as the topological representation of the topographic space that is Baltimore. The characters employ operations of looking at and getting information from the map that are in correspondence

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with the viewer’s everyday experiences. Instead of movement through the city space of Baltimore, the map triggers a mental movement for Mark in episode seven. Similar to a mnemonic technique, he undertakes an imagined stroll through the city space. Maps generally can be the objects with which memories are reactivated and they themselves can be updated with new information. Supported by the visual impressions of the map, Mark can certainly produce an idea of the actual space, but in order for the audience to be able to see this, the series has to offer actual images of this imaginary “tour”. Mark does the same for his colleagues by talking and pointing at the map so they can follow his train of thought. After this brief scene, the Baltimore map is transformed into a sign just like any other artifact on the board, with the only difference being that it remains a marker for the specific cultural viewing/seeing practices connected to maps. Later stages of the Mosaic Investigation Wall (MIW) show the map overlaid with other things, thumbtacks connecting other artifacts to spots on the map via red thread and sticky notes naming specific spots. The map merges into the board, becoming part of the image surface. If we do take maps as image spaces seriously, though cartographers may frown at that (Cf. Pápay 2009), maps are image-sign-spaces with three main aspects. According to Pápay, these are “1) extension of the singular signs or sign parts, 2) position of the signs or sign parts in relation to each other and 3) [absolute] position of the signs or sign parts in the image space” (ibid., 182: my translation). All three aspects can also be applied to the pinboards, where the artifacts’ appearance, their spatial relation to each other, and their absolute position in the space of the pinboard are significant attributes. Schulz proclaims that cartographers have had to recognize their roots in image theory (Cf. 2009). But their efforts to render the world on a plane surface, with artificial perspectives, triangulation, and employing color schemes for altitude continually work against the old logocentric idea that images are underdetermined and ambiguous simulacra or delusions (ibid., 13). Referring to the idiom ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’, Abel makes the statement that images are some sort of visual abbreviation (2005, 23). They can generate knowledge and actions and be part of arguments. The same can be said for maps as well as pinboards, which generate information and actions or summarize the effort of the characters. So maybe ‘a pinboard can be worth an entire season’.

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Blueprints Blueprints, plans, or schematic drawings are a second category of objects that can, like maps, refer to a space or place. Many movie heists rely on having the building plan to find the safe. The pinboarding and serial practices involved with plans and blueprints are also similar to those of pinboarding maps: abstraction, reduction, and organization on (usually) a piece of paper. While they are often architectural, blueprints can also be copies of the technical drawings from engineering or industry design, to the computer-animated superhero-robot Baymax (Hall 2014). The different kinds of drawings and the different orthographic projections, or multior exploded-view drawings, are also comparable to camera angles and framing. As Latour wrote: “Industrial drawing not only creates a paper world that can be manipulated as if in three dimensions. It also creates a common place for many other inscriptions to come together” (1986, 25). Blueprints are characteristically white lines on a blue background. This appearance was entirely due to the material properties of the blueprint, a subform of the contact print, where the drawing is made on translucent paper which is then placed on chemically sensitized paper. When exposed, the drawing appears as a negative image on a now blue background. Since its invention in 1842 by Sir John Herschel, blueprinting has made way for more modern methods of copying and printing of large plans. Nonetheless, the term is still used as an umbrella term for pretty much any plan that is drawn to scale. Blueprints relate information about size, dimension, material, and qualities with lines of different thickness, visible or dotted or hidden, with technical lettering and numbers giving sizes or distances. They are the basis for modern imaging methods in medicine, warfare, and surveillance, where computer software nowadays calculates similar information in so-called real time. These images also find their way into television series, as in almost any medical drama or in the images of the war drones Carrie Mathison is in charge of in Homeland’s (Gordon and Gansa 2011–) fourth season. In the context of serial pinboarding, the schematic or technical drawings usually reproduced on blueprints are most important and even more explicitly diagrams than maps are. Bogen and Thürlemann describe the process of creating a diagram as a compression (of information or of details) whereas the reader or recipient goes through a process in the opposite direction, of unfolding and expanding the diagram (2003, 8). Drafters certainly have to compress information visually, abstract from

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what they see, losing detail but gaining visual clarity through this translation process. So just like maps, blueprints show arbitrary signs and represent elements in their world of reference. Because of the necessary abstraction and even visual abbreviations, there is often a key that explains the symbols or gives the scale. What makes anything diagrammatic and thus exceed the supposed emblematic duality of picture and letters is the synthesis that happens between the different categories of signs. The diagram as a field of interest has seen an increase in recent years, especially in visual theory and image studies. Schmidt-Burkhardt describes the development starting with Goethe’s praise of charts and tables for learning purposes (2012, 11–15). Through a wave of turns toward the visual, with the imagic turn, the pictorial turn, and the iconic turn, text elements were increasingly neglected. In the early 1980s, Mitchell, coming from reading Wordsworth’s spatial poetry, encouraged the formation of diagrammatology, a “systematic study of the way that relationships among elements are represented and interpreted by graphic constructions” (1981, 623). The central question of diagrammatology is: “What is the information diagrams bring about, and how does it differ from what natural languages are capable of expressing?” (Pietarinen 2014, 166) Twenty years after Mitchell, Bogen and Thürlemann proclaimed the ‘diagrammatic turn’, motivated by a need for order in the mode of visuality and intensified by the increased visuality of contemporary everyday life (Cf. 2003). One routinely finds it asserted that a diagram is a geometric structure, usually realized as a two-dimensional representation on a sheet of paper or computer screen. Equally often diagrams are thought to be symbols and, in particular, visual symbols. Examples are endless: infograms, flowcharts and entity-relationship diagrams, mental models, blends, mind maps, automata, semantic nets, neural networks, Feynman diagrams, Penrose tilings, commutation diagrams, tableaux, distributive normal forms, and so forth. (Pietarinen 2014, 115)

Even though diagrams (or rather diagrammatic works) can be found in any medium and in many shapes, they are always “visual-graphic schemes” that arrange argumentations in the visual realm, with which one can deduct, prove, or falsify (Heßler and Mersch 2009, 31). Here what is depicting and what is depicted merges and oscillates again: Blueprints as visual-graphic schemes emphasize the diagrammatic dimension of the pinboards, which themselves certainly are visual-graphic schemes that ­visualize

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the relation between certain parts of their series and its narrative. Recognizing the various relations and the references means a necessary distinction between various levels of recognition. To recognize an object by seeing how it belongs to a group of tomatoes is one thing, but to recognize the tomato as belonging to Italy or even to a specific sort of regional tomato is recognition on a more refined level. (Riis 2002, 27)

These different recognitions have been exemplified with the black swan example previously, but basically apply to any pinboarding object as well as any of the signs on a blueprint. Reading a blueprint requires a specific visual literacy that can be learned and practiced (Cf. Abel 2005, 27). When blueprints appear on television shows, the audience is expected to know how to read them themselves. Or at least they are expected to understand which reading processes the characters might go through when looking at a blueprint. Reading a blueprint is a cultural practice of seeing, which is very similar no matter whether the blueprint is for a city, a building, a robot, or a pocket watch, or whether it appears in a computer game, a movie, a TV series, a pinboard, or in CGI. Looking at and understanding blueprints is so much a part of everyday life that it is of no surprise when young Kevin McCallister plans his defense against the burglars in Home Alone (Columbus 1990) with a crayon-drawn floor plan of his house. His ‘Battle Plan’ gives the location of the various painful traps the two crooks Harry and Marv will encounter. Drawings illustrate the words ‘glue’, ‘heavy cans,’ and the like, while arrows point from the words to the rooms where the traps are to be placed. Dissecting the (diagrammatic) processes of recognition in this rather simple example seems both impossible and pointless. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy how blueprints and maps shape our visual experience even in contexts like this. The blueprint with the most important role in a TV series’ narrative is probably the full body tattoo in Prison Break (Scheuring 2005–2009). The blueprints of the prison’s underground passageways are hidden between motifs of angels and demons on the chest of character Michael Scofield. Similar motifs hide a bird’s-eye view of the prison on his back. In itself, the floor plan and the tattoo steer the narrative and limit the writing, as writers cannot deviate too far from what the tattoo has shown since the pilot. Over the seasons, the smallest details are introduced to be relevant information, so that going closer to the tattoo allows the show to i­ ntroduce

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new things. Nonetheless, the blueprint tattoo influences the blueprint of the show’s narrative—at least for the first two seasons. In Blindspot (Gero 2015–), the storytelling is also driven by the protagonist’s completely tattooed body, only here the tattooing was involuntary and she finds out what her tattoos mean at the same time as the audience. Additionally, the ‘tattoo-of-the-week’ is often photographed and pinned to a team member’s living room wall, as they hope to decipher its meaning through close contemplation. In FlashForward, a different sort of blueprint plays an important role. On a large sheet, schematics of a circular, mechanical device are drawn from different perspectives. The blueprint is visible in Mark’s vision on his right-hand side and is added to the wall in the seventeenth episode (original air date: April 22, 2010). In the next episode, FBI agent Janis Hawk takes the print to an antiquities professor, who identifies the drawings as similar to the reconstructions of an ancient Greek device (S01E18, original air date: April 29, 2010). The ‘Antikythera mechanism’ was used to calculate astronomical positions and dates. The fictional expert in the show even has a computer program that translates the 2D blueprint into a 3D model of the device. Here, the blueprint’s reference is twofold: Firstly, the device is part of the intra-diegetically available knowledge bound to the person who can share it with other characters, so that viewers gather this information simultaneously with Hawk. Secondly, the actual artifact was recovered in 1901 from a shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera and is kept at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, Greece. Researchers have drawn schematics based on the archeological find, which must have inspired FlashForward’s writers and set designers. Viewers could therefore have known this before Janet’s visit to the expert, as the blueprint also refers to an extra-diegetic artifact. Even though the blueprint as such is not as relevant for the pinboarding narrative, it fulfills an important function as it refers to and simultaneously triggers visual or diagrammatic thinking that can then be applied to the pinboard which it is a part of. Especially in combination with a map, this is both an actual layer of pinboarding as well as a metaphorical basis for seeing and recognizing televisual pinboarding. When the blueprint is returned to the board it is placed symmetrically to the map in the right half of the Mosaic Investigation Wall (see Fig. 2.1). This juxtaposition has, according to Thürlemann, the effect of “pointing the recipient toward a dimension of meaning that is relevant for the reading of one or both of the pieces” (2004, 238: my translation). In his study of the “pendant system”,

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he states that the positioning of images in a space leads to an “implicit meta-discourse […] that affects each of the pieces integrated in it” (ibid., 234). How this could be helpful for pinboarding becomes apparent with FlashForward’s map and blueprint, which have such a relation that triggers a dynamic cognition of the space. This dynamic is conditional for allowing the viewer to be able to draw comparisons, to see similarities and differences, and to look for meta-messages. The space between the two objects is what allows them to be treated as related elements. The importance of symmetry—or the lack thereof—for visual recognition has also been used in deductive scenes in TV series. In the pilot for Elementary (Doherty 2012–) the modern-day Sherlock Holmes notices the extreme symmetry in a victim’s living room to the left and right of a fireplace. Sideboards, picture frames, and lamps match, but one thing is missing in this arrangement. This then drives the investigation. The camera in this moment shows Sherlock as a rear-figure, even though he is talking. The visual interest of actually showing the symmetry must thus be more important than seeing the protagonist’s face, while his arms deictically and physically relate to the two sections of the wall. The fact that the positioning of the objects creates closeness and distance is possibly the main argument to understand the Mosaic Investigation Wall or any other televisual pinboard as an image space endowing meaning. The relation can be visually emphasized by camera movement and framing, or panning shots from one to the other, thus visualizing the visual thinking that is either necessary for the narrative or actually part of it when the characters need to be presented as visual geniuses. Even though the specific animation or staging of their points of view can vary, the mental images shown for Sherlock Holmes3 or Psych’s Shawn Spencer (Franks 2006–2014) share that they change the ‘normal’ view on the world, represented by the camera, to an enhanced version. Usually with TV’s ‘visual thinking geniuses’, other people in the diegesis cannot see what they see, but recent productions have allowed the audience to see it, too. It might be because of easier and cheaper special effects or because of a general trend toward visualization in this ‘age of pinboarding’ (see Chap. 1), these shows develop a specific aesthetic style, a special effect ‘blueprint’, a norm stabilized through repetition. Deviation from such a norm, may it be narrative or deictic or something else, can only be detected if the recipient is aware of the norm (Cf. Telotte 1995, 165). Blueprints also have to apply the same measure to the elements they contain, and every

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element must work as part of the larger structure. The same is true for the pinboards and their parts as well as for the television series and their episodes. Blueprints, in themselves a result of contact copying—an inherently serial reproduction method—evoke a cultural practice of seeing by their mere presence on a pinboard and they also direct the onlooker’s attention to the diagrammatic structures of the pinboards. They are a reference to seriality as a broader concept, as both technical drawing and series oscillate between reproduction and experiment and visualize the fragmentation and relation between the parts to the whole. Their elements are related and sequenced but distinguishable, disposable. Blueprints and their functions, operations, and implications are thus crucial for the pinboard as a dispositive for seriality. They sometimes even function as a meta-­ visualization of the workings of TV series’ pinboards.

Pinning Time Deservedly, a great deal of philosophical and academic consideration has gone into the complicated triad of repetition, difference, and knowledge (Wood and Bernasconi 1988; Eriksen 2000; Rheinberger 2005; Gotved 2006; Gendron 2008) aspects of which have been applied in television studies, regarding the repeated watching of a show through reruns or on DVD or concerning how repetition establishes genres or formulaic shows (Winkler and Klippel 1994; Mittell 2004; Kompare 2006). Time as a narrative’s leitmotif can be discussed at length, as “the time of the simplest story also escapes the ordinary notion of time conceived of as a series of instants succeeding one another along an abstract line oriented in a single direction” (Ricoeur 2004, 331). Parts of this discourse are necessary for the analysis of pinboards, or rather the pinboards are where temporal implementations manifest within a TV series. It is thus not surprising that pinboarding in its capacity to visualize the chronology of events or depict repetitive temporal patterns, for example, can often be found in fictional worlds with temporal turmoil. In this chapter, four main categories of pinning time—a combination of narrative time and pinboarding—will be explored: pinning the past, pinning the present, pinning the future, and pinning futures, all of which explore the relation of pinboarding, time, and seriality. Seriality can be located in a cycle or a group of paintings, for mass produced goods, or daily news correspondence. But it is television broadcast

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where “narrative seriality assumes regular temporal structures” (Buonanno 2008, 120). In the temporal structures of series and serials, the narratives can present their “fictive temporal experience” (ibid., 121). These fictive temporal experiences mostly reference binary concepts of time that are common in the human history: From day and night to the Greek chronos and kairos, the human sensation of time and the wish to measure it have a vast story themselves. And pinboarding falls into this wish as well. Consequently, this pinning of time relies on conventions of visualizing time in movies and on TV, which are an extension of the conventions of time measuring and notation that were developed and established throughout human history. A thorough understanding of pinboards as dispositives of seriality has to consider how the boards condition time. How can time be inscribed? How do these inscriptions fabricate temporality? And are the pinboard’s time and the series’ time the same? To do so it is specifically noteworthy that the notations, the concepts, and many of the applications of measured time are intricately connected to space. Establishing Babylonian minutes and seconds, for example, led to measurable altitude and longitude and consequently to the development of a clock for the mapping of land and sea (Cf. Rossum 1996). Philosophers have always concerned themselves with time and space, from Fatalism to the conflict between philosophers, arguing whether there could be time without change, that is, can we imagine time as independent of events. New media conditions also demand philosophical reflection regarding time and especially with new communication devices, acceleration and globalization have been important topics (Cf. Nowotny 1994), even buzzwords, in many disciplines. Elleström claims that “we have at least three levels of temporality in media: time as a trait of the interface of the medium […], time as necessary condition of all perception and time as an interpretive aspect of what the medium represents” (2010, 21). These aspects have inspired many approaches to TV and time by various scholars, whether about live television or the audience’s time, with which a TV series is synchronized, for example, via seasonal storylines that match the air date, such as Christmas or Thanksgiving episodes (Cf. Roche 2003; Grampp and Ruchatz 2014). Even though broadcasting used to structure the audience’s day-to-day and the characters have developed parallel to viewers, Weiß states that more recent means of TV distribution have dissolved this temporal interdependency, as seasons no longer match and the Christmas episode can be watched at any time (2012, 120f.). For series with pinboarding, these

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changes are of importance when it comes to diversifying viewing practices. Screenshots, DVD boxes, and websites are new storage extensions to television, a medium that originally only had an operative memory. Engell elaborates that TV series are where the operative memory, which itself does not store anything and only decides whether to remember or forget, can be experimented with, and reflected on (Cf. 2011). He shows how different eras or genres of TV series have different temporal and thus memory structures and how especially shows that have storylines about the past or lost memory at their core reflect the televisual operative memory at work (ibid., 121f). But while Engell refers to FlashForward, the Mosaic Investigation Wall and other pinboards are not mentioned as part of the different levels of the operative memory of the characters, the episodes, the series, and the programming that Engell sees in fictional TV shows. Even though he mentions possible narrative or pictorial means by which a show can evoke familiarity or unfamiliarity, the pinboards are not mentioned as implementations to achieve this. However, pinboards have to be understood as media of memory, where something that was new information at one point can be stored and remembered by the characters, the episode, or the season—as well as the audience. But they can also be multi-temporal, when forthcoming times are inscribed and the board becomes the horizon (of expectation), which contains certain knowledge but always evades the present and hence automatically carries its own ‘to be continued’ with it. The board, before ever being a memory space, is also an experience space that intertwines past, contemporary, and future knowledge levels. And serial pinboarding has a specific temporality: While viewers might remember an object on the board, they can only treat seeing this object as a repetition if the item is shown again. It does not have to be an exact repetition of the image for a viewer to recognize that he or she has seen something before, meaning the camera images do not have to be identical in framing or lighting. But the object and its context have to be recognizable as ‘seen before’. As a matter of fact, viewers might in fact see something for the first time, though it was shown before: maybe they simply did not notice an object the first time it was visible; or have forgotten that they have seen it before, and therefore do not recognize a de facto repetition. The latter is often the trick in mind game movies or series, where the resolution shows the viewer what they could have seen before and repetitions of which they did not recognize.

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Whatever the case may be, the pinboard actualizes the information as current, as new in this moment, whether it is actually new, remembered, or forgotten. In a board’s current state, viewers and characters alike can see either familiar items in an unfamiliar arrangement or a familiar arrangement with new, unfamiliar elements—they can see that the pinboard has changed. But viewers can only recognize that something has changed on the pinboard over time. And this recognition requires memory, repetition and a ‘before state’ to which the current state can be compared. Television narratives can fulfill these requirements and have the advantage that framing, montage, deictics, and dialogue can emphasize such a change in a pinboard that viewers could notice and be reminded of past or future versions of the board by being shown the corresponding images. I want to suggest four main categories that prominently intertwine time and pinboarding and consider the diegetic circumstances under which the pinning of time takes place. First, there are narratives that focus on a specific moment or event that occurred in the past, and include shows where a long-standing issue is to be solved in the present by (1) pinning the past. Castle (Marlowe 2009–2016) is a great example of a present that keeps falling back onto a past moment and has contemporary events reconnect to that. The second category are stories that focus on a very teleological understanding of time, like Homeland, which rarely has flashbacks, and contains neither mysterious visions nor time travel. The narrative motivation of (2) pinning the present in such a linear timeline narrative is to look for suspected causal relations in time that inform a character’s present. The third category fits those narratives, where some knowledge about the future has become available to the people in the present, who try to understand or prevent future events. Prophecies and visions can be found in countless stories and across many genres, but visions and (3) pinning the future are probably most prominently connected in FlashForward. Also frequent are stories about physical travels through time (and space), whether with a machine or due to a superhuman power. Time travelers gather information at any place and any time that might relate to a bigger issue in the present or future which they aim to solve. The (4) pinning of futures is a core feature in Heroes. The four categories can additionally be mixed with other narrative devices or tropes that have developed in connection to time travel: characters need to set something right that went wrong; somebody gets trapped in the past, the future, or a loop (the most famous is probably Groundhog Day (Ramis 1993)); they realize some things are fate and cannot be

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changed, or that time as such is immutable. A general observation for these time travel narratives is that events in the future are only changeable if time is considered chronological and if the timeline can be used as a road map. Secondly, it is essential to note that though there may be a trend toward “temporal displacement” narratives (Booth 2011, 271), the perception of movie images and series episodes is still successive and chronological. And chronological, ordered, and measured time is stable. When disturbed or ruptured, aion—the time of discontinuous becoming and the ‘meanwhile’—comes to the forefront (Cf. Deleuze 1990). But Deleuze also clearly states that aion is impossible to be narrated, as telling such a story would automatically make the narrative of aion chronological again. An extreme diegetic disruption or temporal turbulence that avoids a direct filmic or narrative mediation is hence only possible to an extent. It could be explained as an abstract concept, but it cannot be shown. So, while TV series do echo aspects of “difference and repetition, open- and closedness, continuity and discontinuity, part and whole” (Fahle 2012, 178: my translation), they are innately chronological. Even if a viewer saw an episode that takes place later in the chronology of a season before an earlier episode, there would still be a successiveness in his or her reception. Even scenes that are shown in slow motion, backward, or fast-forwarded are viewed on the audiences’ clock time. A series’ fictional temporal turmoil is inevitably linearized through its mediation and reception. Through pinboarding, this linearization can be made visible. Fahle attributes a (post-) heterochrony to contemporary series, which means they might present different temporal vectors; however, these are not paradoxical but hermetic and logically connected to each other (ibid., 179). These temporal vectors can materialize on the pinboards, making them spatializations of time. But as the pinboard is a medium in the constant process of becoming, these spatializations are in themselves volatile: pinned time is unavoidably contemporary. Nonetheless ‘pinning time’ is a mode of sorting, memorizing, explaining, and connecting the temporal narrative and its possible tangles.

Pinning the Past The temporal structures of most police procedurals, whether they include pinboarding or not, are similar: the investigators become aware of a crime that has already happened. They now have to find out what happened before the actual felony in order to then arrest the perpetrator. So, from a

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moment in the past when the crime was committed, they investigate even further into the past. In other words, they reverse engineer the narrative of the crime and retrace the relevant steps toward a known zenith or end point. The temporal progression is usually simplified, so that minor details are left out, unless they turn out not to be minor after all. In a linear understanding of time, one could also say that the story is straightened in favor of a televisual telling of that story. When Kate Beckett and her team get a new case in an episode of Castle, they do the same, often with the support of their precinct’s whiteboard. The murder-of-the-week will then first be marked on the board with the information ‘time of death’. This first mark is a point in time that now gets assigned a place on the board. All the information gathered about what happened before and after the crime, alibis, and persons of interest will be arranged according to this key that has been established by the first mark. This means events that occurred longer before the crime will be notated further away from it than more recent ones. The chronological concept of time inherent in this is enhanced when the events are sorted on a timeline, each inscription on the line referring to something relevant for the narrative of the crime. In this relational, spatialized temporality the signs that are used to visualize time are arbitrary. It makes no difference whether the time of death is marked with a dot, a short line, a triangle, or any other shape, as long as the sign system is consistent within itself. But this kind of (white) board is mostly a duplicate of the episode’s narrative; it is a visual parallel, a put-into-pinboarding of what is also put-into-words. The pinning of the past relates to a recent past, with clues still available in the present. With the murder board in Kate Beckett’s living room, on the other hand, the pinned past is very different and the crime happened much longer ago. As mentioned before, its appearance reminds us of a window or even a triptych. When opened, a view of the past, specifically to Johanna Beckett’s murder, is possible. But instead of a timeline, the board discloses an event and is a representation of a moment in the past that it bears on the surface. Closing the window shutters interrupts the simulated glance into the past; it disconnects the imagined eye line between now and then, in which the window as a membrane has been intersected. If we imagine time as a ray of light4 with past events shining to the present, then Kate’s murder board is a canvas, a screen, on which an event is projected from behind and that is looked upon from the front. Closing the window shutters blocks the ray from illuminating the present while also sealing the items back into their

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moment. We see the idea of ‘folded time’ realized here quite literally, a rather abstract idea that was employed by Serres in an attempt to explain temporal continuity and discontinuity as not being mutually exclusive to Latour (Serres and Latour 1995). He suggested that we should not envision time as a rigid line, and instead think of it in a more flexible way. Serres marks the beginning of the ‘folding discourse’, to which he himself is kneaded into, in consent with Deleuze: “This is what the classical or baroque age discovered, […] from this moment and this philosophy on, everything is folding, as Gilles Deleuze [in The Fold] has rightly said of it” (1994, 49). Consequently, Serres employed the metaphor for time as a baker’s dough (Cf. 1991) that constantly spreads and regathers itself instead of stretching out linearly. In this kneaded dough, two points in time might spatially approach each other, while others that were neighboring are dispersed. Any folding movement can thus bring distant and seemingly unrelated points close to each other. Their changed proximity can be productive or their adjusted distance enlightening. Even though pinboards are not flexible dough, a specific moment in the past can unfold or be folded back in on itself and manifest, for example, on Kate’s murder board. The shutters on their own could only be opened and closed in eternal repetition, but when used as a pinboard the construction can irreversibly and infinitely keep folding. Over the course of six seasons, the folding of the pinboard continues and encloses further pieces of information with every fold. Until the end of the sixth season, the temporal dough of the specific moment when Kate’s mother was killed—the dough of January 9, 1999—includes (un)folded events from 1988 to 2014. The pinboarding dough has, in Serres’ words, grown “old without letting time escape; it garners age – the new emblems are caught up and subsumed by old ones; the baker molds memory” (ibid., 81). In her death, Kate’s mother does not age, she is anachronistically present—similar to the man who was preserved in a glacier for more than 50 years, only to then be buried by his aged sons, who have grown older than him (Serres and Latour 1995, 61). Serres’ parable for ‘the problem of time’ rests again on the idea of folding to describe temporal discontinuities. Johanna Beckett’s murder was an event that necessarily was incorporated into the process of folding, and pinboarding can only attempt to examine certain foldings and brinks during its own continuous folding process. Even though Deleuze and Serres’ philosophical writings about the fold can certainly not be described thoroughly here, I want to apply the idea of the fold to pinboards in general. In the context of this study, the idea of folding time of the fictional present

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(and the viewers’ present) with pinboards strengthens their dispositive function: In representing a historical configuration a board folds the past time into its present—it incorporates another temporal status into the current status of the dispositive by remediating it on the pinboard. Because of the double mediation of the pinboard with a TV series and the temporal entanglements, even in narratives with chronological continuums, pinboards introduce and visualize temporal operations of folding and unfolding that would otherwise have remained abstract ideas.

Pinning the Present Homeland, like Castle, advocates a chronological understanding of progressing time. Issues of time are usually less important in Carrie’s work than spatial information, so that the series’ pinboarding often includes time as secondary information, for example, in time codes on surveillance photos. But the second configuration, which is created in the eleventh episode of the first season (original air date: December 11, 2011) and is utterly concerned with pinning time. This pinboarding here is a cooperation between Carrie and her mentor Saul Berenson. During one of her manic spells, Carrie takes different colored markers and starts highlighting and marking files, first in the hospital and later on her living room floor. Saul comes to her house to watch over her at night. At first he only sees piles of paper with different color markings lying around on the floor. However, when he takes a closer look, he seems to notice something, a pattern in the colors. He starts to pin the pieces of paper that belong together according to their color on the empty cork board in Carrie’s living room. To enhance the importance of this scene for the series and for its pinboarding, drums start to play in the background the moment he has the realization that there is a pattern. Saul also literally highlights the board by turning the two desk lamps toward the cork wall, which actually blind the camera a little, before a cut turns the camera perspective around to the board and shows the first piece of paper, marked with purple. His pinboarding then is accelerated, and he moves more quickly and takes off his jacket. Both the speed of the music and the frequency of cuts increase noticeably. Saul even rips some of the paper apart, to get rid of the white part, leaving only highlighted orange sections. Then he mumbles “OK” and writes 2001 on an empty page, and 2007–2009 on another. Right after that, we see him standing in front of the couch looking at the wall,

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Fig. 4.2  The finished color-coded time table. Configuration (2) of Carrie’s living room pin board, screenshot from Homeland S01E11 (Showtime 2011), TC 00:35:52

which is behind the camera at this point. With a satisfied smile, Saul sits down, the music stops, and the camera angle turns again, showing the finished wall, the product of Carrie’s preparation and Saul’s pinboarding (Fig. 4.2). Rob Coley notes that Carrie has no need to sort this material into a visually coherent or linear form; indeed linearity impedes velocity, hindering her ability to intuit underlying patterns. Saul, by contrast, accustomed to the formal rationality of the CIA operations room and its bank of screens, needs the material to be arranged in the form of a conventional timeline, a crime board that will ensure Carrie’s findings are taken seriously.

When Carrie wakes up the next morning she is very pleased to see that Saul apparently gets the ‘method to her madness’, and she states, crying with relief: “You understand.” When Saul says: “It’s a timeline”, Carrie specifies “Yes, it’s Abu Nazir’s activities.” It most certainly is: In five columns, all titled with a year or time period, a multitude of documents is sorted by color. Each year has a correspondingly colored array of documents and notes sorted under it. Starting on the left, the red column contains the longest time period, from 1978 to 2001, neighbored by

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orange (2007–2009). The only four pieces of paper with yellow highlights are sorted under the sheet for the year 2009. The 2010 items are green and 2011 blue. The green and blue columns are also pretty full and the timeline concludes with the present, sorting a lot of notes under the purple “current” column. The use of the word ‘column’ already hints at the fact that the second configuration of the wall might more likely be a time table than a timeline. But the contents in the columns are only connected by the overall theme of “Nazir’s activities” and not by a spatial, horizontal relation. To be a usable table, this pinboard is too messy, and it is both unclear whether and unlikely that Saul has respected the chronology or causal relation between the documents within the respective time periods. Hence the pinboard can only safely be called a timeline at this point, or a board with piles and columns of time. It could nonetheless be considered a database that deals with large amounts of related data and creates systematics and comparability. Like a database, the present status of the board can be updated and it can be made available to others. And like a database, the data had to be collected, the board had to be filled with the data, and the content managed appropriately, processes that Carrie in this case was not able to complete. After stepping closer to the board, Carrie marvels at Saul’s successful pinboarding, the neat rainbow of documents she could not achieve or express in her psychological state, but that he—through pinboarding— sorted and brought order to. The two agents then notice the obvious difference between the yellow column and the others. To any onlooker this meaningful gap is noticeable at the first glance, “in the sense of videre” (Cf. Heßler and Mersch 2009, 29), conditioned by the pinboarding construction. Carrie and Saul then wonder why this difference exists. As the timeline accounts for the ventures of the terrorist leader Abu Nazir, his activities seem to have ceased in 2009 and Carrie wants to find out why. At no point do the agents question the completeness of their material, instead they directly start to speculate about reasons for the visible decrease in activities. Saul, who assumedly has had all night to ponder the gap, suggests an injury, while Carrie (miraculously) concludes, that Nazir must have been in mourning during that time. This is curious, because she is correct about something that at this point only the audience knows, and neither she nor the CIA have knowledge of. Flashbacks to Brody’s captivity have shown the viewers how he met and formed a close connection with Abu Nazir’s son, Issa, before the boy was killed when his school was

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bombed. Viewers can utilize their advance knowledge again, when Carrie claims next that the green phase has to be a revenge plan leading up to the current events, the final moves. Thanks to the multi-focal structure of the narrative, the audience knows about Nazir’s most recent plans and can compare this information to the predictions made in the board’s configuration (1a) and the deductions made by Carrie and Saul with configuration (2). In the purple ‘current’ column, show and board are most congruent: images and texts refer to terrorist activities that have been part of the show’s present in the first ten episodes. It is no coincidence that the first piece of paper Saul pins to the wall is a copy of a recent suspect’s driving license, her picture circled with purple marker. From this, Saul works his way ‘backwards’ in time or ‘from right to left’ on the board when sorting the papers by color. As mentioned before, the column headers are added last, and are what eventually clarify the structure and purpose of the board to the audience—neither Saul nor Carrie would probably have needed them. With details like these, the orientation toward the viewer of serial pinboarding is accentuated, which also brings pinboarding as a practice of visualization and televisuality back into focus. Because, with or without dates, the board’s second configuration spatializes time. In ever-folding time, the board is an edge on which these documents become visible and their spatial relation becomes meaningful. The folding serializes the events and the board multiplies their images. There are no obvious cause-and-­ effect relations between the items other than their attribution to a color group and thus a time span. Yet the board makes something invisible visible, which is, as mentioned before, a core trait of the diagram, even though the main deduction made from this diagram is from an empty column, and hence rather speculative. The timeline is so coherent and complete that a hole has to mean a disruption in the ‘normal course’ of events. Very different to police procedurals like Castle, this pinboard in Homeland leads to the question of what might have happened, when apparently nothing happened.5 Rather than working back from a singular event to what happened before that, the second configuration is about pinning a present. Through this pinboarding, time has become visible. What is missing is any evidence of action in one section of that visible time. The wish to even out the unbalanced pinboard motivates the subsequent storylines and the following episodes show the CIA’s efforts to fill in the gap in Nazir’s timeline.

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Pinning the Future The need to bring back order to temporal confusion is even bigger in FlashForward. The Global Blackout (GBO) has brought visions of the future to each person, which might not be physical time travel, but at least their minds traveled six months ahead. Though Mark Benford and his colleagues investigate a case of short chronological confusion, the timeline on the pinboard is clearly undisturbed. So is the chronology of the narrative, which includes some flashes backward and forward but still has a distinct present it always returns to. Not even the characters struggle to distinguish the two temporal experiences they had. They might contemplate changing their future, but no one confuses the clear structure of past, present, and future. The calendar sheets, which are already on the cork wall when Mark begins his work on the Mosaic Investigation Wall, corroborate this. Eight white, square sheets of paper, one for each month from September to April, run horizontally along the top of the board. Smaller empty squares are printed on them for each day of the month. On the pages, two dates are marked with light blue marker: October 6, the day of the Global Blackout, and April 29, the destination date of the flash forward. In the vision, the squares for the respective days were highlighted even more with additional crosses, yellow marker, and post-its. The notation system is familiar, though entirely arbitrary, and the marking of two dates in a calendar can be assumed to be part of the audience’s cultural practices. Nonetheless, seeing the calendar pages involves ‘seeing-an-item’ by recognizing its presence and materiality as well as simultaneously recognizing the item as a calendar page. It also involves ‘seeing-that’ there are six months between the two marked dates, a deduction enhanced by the string that Demetri immediately stretches between the two dates and the general diagrammatic arrangement of the pinboard. Peirce described diagrams as especially useful for narrowing the onlooker’s focus, because usually a lot of detail is left out and the mind can focus on the important aspects. By emphasizing the two dates with the blue marker, all others fade in comparison, and the importance of these dates is highlighted. They are important on an inter-diegetic level for the FBI’s investigation and on a meta-diegetic level for the run of the series’ season. The audience can expect to see the storyline progress at least until April 29. They also might notice the correlation with FlashForward’s original broadcast, which could also explain why there is also a calendar page for

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September on the wall, even though the storyline only spans the two dates in October and April: ABC’s broadcast of FlashForward started on September 24, 2009—12 days before the intra-diegetic ‘day of the blackout’. The calendar therefore not only shows the time span between fictive October 6, 2009, and April 29, 2010, but also between the time span of reception between September 24, 2009, to May 27, 2010—making the pinboard’s disposition of the show apparent. Unfortunately, there is no page for May, maybe because the show had a hiatus after episode 11. Had the show been broadcast without interruption, the season would have finished in April and the calendar sheets would have sufficed.6 Right before starting work on the MIW in the pilot episode, the FBI agents in FlashForward get a clear directive from Stanford Wedeck, Assistant Director of the Los Angeles FBI Field Office: “Priority Number 1: finding out what caused this. Priority Number 2: find out if it will happen again. You got it?” (TC 00:26:41f) Both have to happen between now and April 29, the day that the narrative is advancing toward and on which the characters’ visions might come true. This also means that the gathering of all the items for the Mosaic Investigation Wall has to be done by then, starting immediately after the ‘zero hour’ of the GBO. Similar to the Christian calendar, the GBO is treated like the year zero, meaning other dates are only identified in relation to the GBO. Captions like “Two days before the Blackout” or “Three Years before the Blackout” make this explicit. But “The Day of the Blackout” can only be called that after the fact, the name can only be given retrospectively and its importance and catastrophic impact are what afterward charge the name with specific meaning. October 6 is a rupture, a crisis from which ripple effects of dramatic consequences originate and are bound back to the past point of origin. Like a fracture such as a revolution from which a new era begins, the GBO becomes the point of departure for a new era. Two points in time, six months apart, overlap for 137 seconds before the ‘dough’ distances them again (Serres and Latour 1995, 76). The pinboard can then be understood as a visualization of the fold that allowed this approximation of time points. Mark and his colleagues provoke and witness items that emerge from the fold, bringing information with them. Neither the characters nor the audience know what exactly will become visible on this edge or come to the surface of the board from the in-­ between of the two points in time, only where it might be placed. The FBI team urgently wants to find out how it could come to such an ‘unnatural’ fold in time, while the audience watches the items come to light from the

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“shadow of [time’s] folding over” (Serres 1991, 81). The pinboard translates the folding of time into a visible structure, as the pinboarding “disassembles, sequentializes and separates the time into discrete units”, which means that “the time that is constituted in […] media of knowledge, transmission and storage has become a […] zero time and is strictly speaking a-chronological” (Vogl 1998, 44: my translation). Hence, it is more precise to regard the calendar pages as part of ‘mani-fold’ translation processes that visualize the folding of time on the Mosaic Investigation Wall. Additionally, the calendar sheets are crucial for the positioning of all the other items on the pinboard, as they essentially establish the reading direction that matches western reading conventions: from left to right and from top to bottom. Most of the items entering the image space of the board are placed below the calendar sheets and enter into a relation with them. The elements underneath a certain month can relate to it, and the horizontal timeline of the sheets creates vertical connections with the objects underneath. So even if the pinning of time seems similar in Homeland and FlashForward at first glance, the internal relations between the artifacts are very different. The Mosaic Investigation Wall makes much more use of diagrammatic thinking: In the complex image space the calendar sheets are the coordinate system in which Mark “actively molds and transforms his surroundings, in order to reach conclusions” (Bauer and Ernst 2010, 22: my translation). He remembers items he has seen on the future version of the board and now wants to collect them with the help of his team. The audience either also remembers seeing the items in the vision or they are shown them again in a flashback to the flash forward. These repeated cuts to the vision often reveal details that were not visible in the first appearance of the board. In fact, making out particular items in Mark’s vision is especially difficult, because it is altered with blurred outlines, overly bright lights, and delayed motion. The diegetic reasoning for this manipulation of the images is Mark’s alcoholism and the fact that we see him drinking in his vision. The logical flaw with this is that the board is not captured by a point-of-view camera, so there should be no relation between Mark’s drunken state and the camera images7 Nonetheless it is these distorted images that condition what can be remembered and thus neither the viewer nor Mark have a clear visual memory of the board. This proves very problematic at first, but it also drives the narrative, for example, when later in the season Mark gets medication that is supposed to help him clear up his memory. He does indeed remember details of his vision and the Mosaic Investigation Wall, images of which are in turn

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shown to the audience. With this scene, the series accentuates that Mark’s memory of the pinboard conditions the steps in the fictional investigation and the narrative. At the same time, the show’s visual storytelling ensures that not all the information is available to the viewers at once, which draws out the time of the pinboarding processes and slows down the narrative of the diagrammatic folding process. Had there been more episodes, the distortion and slow reveal would have also worked well as a diegetic explanation for continued unfolding, while the calendar pages could have been used as a diagram into which the newly accessed information could have been entered. Bogen and Thürlemann make the point that diagrams allow deduction because they slow down the thought process, or rather control it, and reveal it in doing so (2003, 10). Here this is enhanced by the slowed down reveal of FlashForward’s pinboard. Like a medieval diagram that shows the movement of the planets, the calendar pages slow down the folding of time and make it spatially visible. The spatialization of time is the main function of the calendar pages. Their position and early presence on the Mosaic Investigation wall both enable and visualize these processes of pinning time.

Pinning Futures It is no surprise that it is time traveler Hiro Nakamura, the nerdy ‘master of time and space’, who creates Heroes’ most elaborate time pinning construction. But it is a future version of the slightly naive time traveler who is responsible for creating the string room described previously (see Chap. 2), when Present Hiro takes his best friend Ando with him to the future and they meet a darker future version who explains the purpose of his string room. Yet, the knowledge he has acquired about the events he has marked on the string is not conveyed verbally and can only be extracted from the externalized storage that is the pinboarding construct. When eventually Future Hiro tells Hiro and Ando about having found the key moment to travel to (in Vol01Ch20, original air date: April 30, 2007, TC 00:05:50f), while the camera shows a close-up of a small section in the string web: At a crossing of Hiro’s red ribbon and Peter’s blue woolen string we see a paper clip that holds a picture8 of Hiro and Peter talking in the subway. A green post-it is attached to the photograph, specifying “Oct 4th. N.Y. subway” as the date and place of this meeting (Fig. 4.3). The Heroes audience has seen this scene when Future Hiro went to the diegetic

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Fig. 4.3  ‘Oct 4th’ knot in Hiro’s time net, Detail from Heroes Vol1Ch20 (NBC 2006)

present and he told Peter to “Save the Cheerleader” in order to save the world. In fact, Future Hiro has jumped to various points in time, both before and after the present that Hiro and Ando have arrived from, and used the string room as both an archive and a map of his travels. His travel destinations in the net are either where threads cross or where an object is hung from the thread. These crossings and items mark events or moments within this pinboarding structure. But because this net of time has no reference system, unlike FlashForward and its calendar sheets, the distances are vague and it cannot be used as a time traveler’s itinerary. Future Hiro can nonetheless show Hiro where his red string crosses a black one, indicating that he meets antagonist Sylar at some point. He can also tell his present self that he has to kill Sylar, before he explodes and destroys Manhattan, so that the future they both are currently standing in can be changed. Due to the possibility of time travel in Heroes, the events inscribed to the net do not really have a time. They are nonetheless interconnected and the string room visually displays their connections and genealogies. If the pinboarders want to achieve a different future for themselves, they have to make changes in their past or present and the string net has to be changed in accordance with these changes. This is maybe also why the room visual-

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izes individual paths, one string per character, and the milestones on these paths. Here, more than in any other pinboard, the items and events do not have a time of their own. Yet the room is a monument for chronology, as the events follow each other consecutively. It is interesting that neither Hiro nor Future Hiro ever doubt the concept of a continual, linear time, even though he/they can travel through time at will and change the outcome of events. The series never delves into that, either, or explains how Hiro’s gift works. We only ever see him screw up his face and disappear and then reappear somewhere else. Even when he ends up somewhere he did not want to go, it is because his superpower is corrupted and never because time as such would behave, or maybe ‘fold’, unexpectedly. Discontinuity can be simulated by TV series’ narratives, but the progression of the narrative is inevitably continuous. The pinboards can be used to search for a rupture, whether a crime, a GBO, or, in Hiro’s case, a way to stop Sylar. They are also made based on the assumption that they can lay out a more objective, chronological, less confusing order and hence resolve problems or confusions a pinboarder has, while being similar to an “orienting paratext” (Mittell 2015, 261f., see Chap. 6, section “Fans as Pinboarders”) that offers orientation regarding “time, events, characters, and space” (ibid., 263). But in order to find the relevant temporal moments via pinboarding, rules of chronology have to be artificially established. In doing so, the boards might contribute to the “ability of the audience to tolerate [the] temporal ambiguity”, that Booth diagnoses for contemporary times and that especially complex TV series might help the viewers to come to terms with (2011, 385). As we have seen, spatialized time on pinboards progressively brings order to what the characters and audiences may have thought of as confused or temporally distorted. Time’s folding processes are visually slowed down and temporarily presented, a process that TV series have the ability to manipulate and utilize for both their narrative and their serial pinboarding.

Notes 1. “The map is not the territory” was famously coined by Alfred Korzybski (1931). 2. Famously brought to a head in the one-paragraph short story “On Exactitude in Science” by Borges, where an empire’s striving for perfection in mapping leads to a 1:1 map—rendering the entire mapping effort useless. (1999).

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3. Wentz gives a very insightful analysis of the diagrammatics in Sherlock (2017, 212f). 4. The idea of time as a stream is widely spread through theory as well as fiction. A stream, a flowing body of water that flows in one direction (forward) and does not stop, that people can step into (but ‘never twice into the same river’) and be pulled along by. Heraclitus of Ephesus’ quote of “all things flows” or “Panta rhei”, noted in Plato’s Cratylus dialogues, is possibly the oldest reported source but is not limited to time. The stream analogy has appeared in fantasy and science fiction literature since at least the 1930s; in comics books (DC’s Waverider quite literally surfs on the time stream); and in many TV series and movies. 5. This also plays into the idea, that—had there been anything of importance— the US government would or should have known about it, and that especially a female investigator would find it (Joseph 2019). The image of an omniscient Homeland security has been reiterated or reinforced in many post 9/11 narratives, and certainly Homeland can and has been analyzed under that lens (Tasker 2012; Castonguay 2015), even though the blatant visibility of this assumption of US secret service abilities in the form of the board’s gap has not been discussed. 6. The intentionality of parallel broadcast and narrative also becomes apparent when considering that the novel by Robert S. Sawyer, on which the show was based, had a gap of 21 years between blackout and vision. No matter how large an office, a pinboard to visualize an investigation that started in 2009 with a flash forward which took people’s minds to 2030 would have to be completely differently structured, meaning either extreme reduction, that is, giving only a few items for each year, or an extreme number of (small) details and camera close-ups to film them properly. 7. This is not uncommon for TV series: “In several episodes of Twin Peaks, for instance, the viewers are shown Agent Cooper’s dreams, but they do not, strictly speaking, see through his eyes, because they see him as part of the dream world” (Allrath and Gymnich 2005, 22). This also underlines that Mark, as the narrative’s focal point, is somewhat of an unreliable narrator. His memory is conveyed to the audience as he remembers it, which is a common device used in Mind Game Movies. 8. To be more precise and to show how many narrative and temporal layers are interwoven in this one close-up: The picture is a photograph of a painting, recognizably in the style of precognitive painter Isaac Mendez, which means it in itself was a vision of a future event. The painting is mounted on a metal grid, which has been shown to be the storage system in Mr. Linderman’s art collection. This means the painting has already been sold to the collector when he was still alive, dating it even further back in the past.

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References Abel, Günther. 2005. Zeichen- Und Interpretationsphilosophie Der Bilder. In Bild-Zeichen, ed. Stefan Majetschak, 13–29. München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag. Allrath, Gaby, and Marion Gymnich, eds. 2005. Narrative Strategies in Television Series. Houndsmills/New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Bauer, Matthias, and Christoph Ernst. 2010. Diagrammatik: Einführung in ein kultur- und medienwissenschaftliches Forschungsfeld. Bielefeld: transcript. Bogen, Steffen, and Felix Thürlemann. 2003. Jenseits Der Opposition von Text Und Bild. In Die Bildwelt Der Diagramme Joachims von Fiore, ed. Alexander Patschovsky, 1–22. Ostfildern: Jan Thorbecke. https://d-nb.info/ 1099291364/34 Booth, Paul. 2011. Memories, Temporalities, Fictions: Temporal Displacement in Contemporary Television. Television & New Media 12 (4): 370–388. https:// doi.org/10.1177/1527476410392806. Borges, Jorge Luis. 1999. Collected Fictions. New York: Penguin Books. Braga, Brannon, and David S. Goyer. 2009. FlashForward. New York City: ABC. Buonanno, Milly. 2008. The Age of Television: Experiences and Theories. Bristol: Intellect Books. Castonguay, James. 2015. Fictions of Terror: Complexity, Complicity and Insecurity in Homeland. Cinema Journal 54 (4): 139–145. https://doi. org/10.1353/cj.2015.0045. Certeau, Michel de. 1984. The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press. Columbus, Chris. 1990. Home Alone. Los Angeles: 20th Century Fox. Currie, Gregory. 1995. Image and Mind: Film, Philosophy and Cognitive Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Deleuze, Gilles. 1990. Logique Du Sens. The Logic of Sense [1969]. New  York: Columbia University Press. Doherty, Robert. 2012. Elementary. New York City: CBS. Downs, Roger M., and David Stea. 1977. Maps in Minds: Reflections on Cognitive Mapping. New York: Harper & Row. Elleström, Lars. 2010. The Modalities of Media: A Model for Understanding Intermedial Relations. In Media Borders. Multimodality and Intermediality, ed. Lars Elleström, 11–47. Houndsmills/New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Engell, Lorenz. 2011. Erinnern/Vergessen: Serien Als Operatives Gedächtnis Des Fernsehens. In Serielle Formen: Von Den Frühen Film-Serials Zu Aktuellen Quality-TV- Und Onlineserien, ed. Robert Blanchet, Kristina Köhler, Tereza Smid, and Zutavern Julia, 115–132. Marburg: Schüren. Eriksen, Niels Nymann. 2000. Kierkegaard’s Category of Repetition: A Reconstruction. Berlin/New York: De Gruyter.

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Fahle, Oliver. 2012. Im Diesseits Der Narration. Zur Ästhetik Der Fernsehserie. In Populäre Serialität: Narration  – Evolution  – Distinktion. Zum Seriellen Erzählen Seit Dem 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Frank Kelleter, 169–181. Bielefeld: transcript. Franks, Steve. 2006. Psych. New York City: USA Network. Garfield, Simon. 2013. On the Map: A Mind-Expanding Exploration of the Way the World Looks. New York: Gotham Books. Gendron, Sarah. 2008. Repetition, Difference, and Knowledge in the Work of Samuel Beckett, Jacques Derrida, and Gilles Deleuze. New York: Peter Lang. Gero, Martin. 2015. Blindspot. New York City: NBC. Gordon, Howard, and Alex Gansa. 2011. Homeland. New York City: Showtime. Gotved, Stine. 2006. Time and Space in Cyber Social Reality. New Media & Society 8 (3): 467–486. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444806064484. Grampp, Sven, and Jens Ruchatz. 2014. Die Enden der Fernsehserien. Repositorium Medienkulturforschung 5. https://doi.org/10.7398/9783869380483. Günzel, Stephan. 2007. Raum  – Topographie  – Toplogie. In Topologie. Zur Raumbeschreibung in Den Kultur Und Medienwissenschaften, ed. Stephan Günzel, 13–29. Bielefeld: transcript. Hall, Don. 2014. Big Hero 6. Burbank: Walt Disney Pictures. Heßler, Martina, and Dieter Mersch, eds. 2009. Logik des Bildlichen: Zur Kritik der ikonischen Vernunft. Bielefeld: transcript. Joseph, Philip. 2019. The Intelligence of the Female Adventurer: Homeland as a Secret History of War. Genre 52 (1): 25–50. https://doi.org/10.1215/ 00166928-7501003. Klein, Thomas. 2012. Diskurs Und Spiel. Überlegungen Zu Einer Medienwissenschaftlichen Theorie Serieller Komplexität. In Populäre Serialität: Narration  – Evolution  – Distinktion. Zum Seriellen Erzählen Seit Dem 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Frank Kelleter, 225–239. Bielefeld: transcript. Kompare, Derek. 2006. Publishing Flow: DVD Box Sets and the Reconception of Television. Television & New Media 7 (4): 335–360. https://doi. org/10.1177/1527476404270609. Korzybski, Alfred. 1931. A Non-Aristotelian System and Its Necessity for Rigour in Mathematics and Physics. Paper presented before the American Mathematical Society, New Orleans. Kring, Tim. 2006. Heroes. New York City: NBC. Latour, Bruno. 1986. Visualisation and Cognition: Drawing Things Together. Knowledge and Society Studies in the Sociology of Culture Past and Present 6: 1–40. Marlowe, Andrew W. 2009. Castle. New York City: ABC. Mitchell, W.J.T. 1981. Diagrammatology. Critical Inquiry 7 (3): 622–633. Mittell, Jason. 2004. Genre and Television: From Cop Shows to Cartoons in American Culture. New York: Routledge. ———. 2015. Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. New York: NYU Press.

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Nowotny, Helga. 1994. Das Sichtbare Und Das Unsichtbare: Die Zeitdimension in Den Medien. In Zeit, Medien, Wahrnehmung, ed. Mike Sandbothe and Walter Ch. Zimmerli, 14–28. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Okada, Alexandra, Simon J.  Buckingham Shum, and Tony Sherborne. 2008. Knowledge Cartography: Software Tools and Mapping Techniques. London: Springer. Paech, Joachim. 2002. Der Bewegung Einer Linie Folgen…Notizen Zum Bewegungsbild. In Der Bewegung Einer Linie Folgen. Schriften Zum Film, ed. Joachim Paech, 133–161. Berlin: Vorwerk 8. Pápay, Gyula. 2009. Kartographie. In Raumwissenschaften, ed. Stephan Günzel, Originalausgabe ed., 175–190. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp Verlag. Peirce, Charles. 1906. Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmatism. The Monist 16 (4): 492–546. Pietarinen, Ahti-Veikko. 2014. Diagrams or Rubbish. In Charles Sanders Peirce in His Own Words. 100 Years of Semiotics, Communication and Cognition, ed. Torkild Thellefsen and Bent Sorensen, 115–120. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781614516415.115. Ramis, Harold. 1993. Groundhog Day. Los Angeles: Columbia Pictures. Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg. 2005. Iterationen. Berlin: Merve. Ricoeur, Paul. 2004. Narrative Time. In Narrative Theory – Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies, 327–347. Oxon: Routledge. Riis, Johannes. 2002. Is Realist Film Style Aimed at Providing an Illusion? In Realism and ‘Reality’ in Film and Media, ed. Anne Jerslev, 93–115. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press. Roche, Maurice. 2003. Mega-Events, Time and Modernity: On Time Structures in Global Society. Time & Society 12 (1): 99–126. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 0961463X03012001370. Rossum, Gerhard Dohrn-van. 1996. History of the Hour: Clocks and Modern Temporal Orders. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Scheuring, Paul. 2005. Prison Break. New York City: Fox. Schmidt-Burkhardt, Astrit. 2012. Die Kunst der Diagrammatik: Perspektiven eines neuen bildwissenschaftlichen Paradigmas. Bielefeld: transcript. Schulz, Martin. 2009. Ordnungen der Bilder: Eine Einführung in die Bildwissenschaft. München: Wilhelm Fink. Serres, Michel. 1991. Rome: The First Book of Foundations. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ———. 1994. Atlas. Paris: Éditions Julliard. Serres, Michel, and Bruno Latour. 1995. Conversations on Science, Culture, and Time. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Stjernfelt, Frederik. 2000. Diagrams as Centerpiece of a Peircean Epistemology. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 36 (3): 357–384.

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Tasker, Yvonne. 2012. Television Crime Drama and Homeland Security: From Law & Order to ‘Terror TV’. Cinema Journal 51 (4): 44–65. https://doi. org/10.1353/cj.2012.0085. Telotte, J.P. 1995. The Dis-Order of Things in Twin Peaks. In Full of Secrets: Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks, ed. David Lavery, 160–172. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Thürlemann, Felix. 2004. Vom Einzelbild Zum ‘Hyperimage’. In Les Herméneutiques Au Seuil Du XXIème Siècle – Evolution et Débat Actuel, ed. Ada Neschke-Hentsche, 223–247. Paris: Éditions Peeters. http://archiv. ub.uni-heidelberg.de/artdok/471/1/Thuerlemann_vom_einzelbild_zum_ hyperimage_2004.pdf Vogl, Joseph. 1998. Grinsen Ohne Katze. Vom Wissen Virtueller Objekte. In Ort DerKulturwissenschaften, ed. Hans-Christian von Herrmann and Matthias Middell, 41–53. Leipzig: Universitätsverlag. Weiß, Monika. 2012. Zur Wiederverwertbarkeit von Serien: Mit Marshall McLuhan über das Fernsehen zur DVD. In Im Bild bleiben: Perspektiven für eine moderne Medienwissenschaft, ed. Sven Stollfuss and Monika Weiß, 113–126. Büchner Medien. Darmstadt: Büchner-Verlag. Wentz, Daniela. 2017. Bilderfolgen: Diagrammatologie der Fernsehserie. Paderborn: Fink. Winkler, Hartmut, and Heike Klippel. 1994. ‘Gesund Ist, Was Sich Wiederholt’. Zur Rolle Der Redundanz Im Fernsehen. In Aspekte Der Fernsehanalyse: Methoden Und Modelle, ed. Knut Hickethier, 121–136. Münster: LIT. Wintle, Michael. 2009. The Image of Europe: Visualizing Europe in Cartography and Iconography throughout the Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wood, David, and Robert Bernasconi. 1988. Derrida and Différance. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

CHAPTER 5

Pinning Knowledge

As Latour wrote: “Diagrams, lists, formulae, archives, engineering drawings, files, equations, dictionaries, collections and so on, depending on the way they are put into focus, may explain almost everything or almost nothing” (1986, 4). This statement certainly also extends to pinboards, which are expected to be epistemic objects that collect and communicate information, but also generate knowledge. A certain epistemic expectation has arisen for serial pinboards, as if any riddle or case can and will be solved as soon as an appropriate pinboard is put up. In TV shows, this expectation is usually fulfilled: The objects that are needed are inevitably found by the characters. Due to their serial condition, the pinboards both perpetuate and tamper with the timing of epistemic progress for characters and audience: “they are the objects of inquiry and pursuit. Hence, they are characterized by lack and incompleteness” (Ewenstein and Whyte 2009, 9). It has become clear in previous chapters that the characters and the viewers apply pinboarding practices not (only) to make impressive constructions on office walls. They expect to understand something, to solve a problem, puzzle, or crime by means of the pinboard. I will hence now take a closer look at the epistemic expectations toward serial pinboarding and compare it to the different approaches of deduction, induction, and abduction.

© The Author(s) 2020 A. Ganzert, Serial Pinboarding in Contemporary Television, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35272-1_5

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Epistemic Expectation Epistemology as one of philosophy’s main disciplines is not often mentioned in relation to fictional TV series. Knowledge practices and belief systems certainly play an important role in debates about cult television, but mainstream TV might be slightly different: In popular TV forms, the combination of new technologies and semi-­ attentive mind of the audience facilitates a transition towards the condition of entertainment rather than instruction, to scopophilia, the pleasure of looking, rather than ‘epistephelia’, the love of knowing. (Nelson 1997, 17)

This statement from 1997 is certainly outdated regarding then-new technologies, and more recent TV series and technologies, and tends to appeal to epistephilia again (Mittell 2012; Jenner 2017). Or rather, they have established ‘episte-scopo-philia’. I argue that seeing a character come to understand something certainly can be described as pleasurable and pinboards are an excellent way to show the acquirement of knowledge. The satisfaction of solving something by means of pinboarding therefore is the result of an epistemic expectation; it is the delayed gratification of serial pinboarding. As discussed before, pinboards can indeed be described as epistemic images, in that they can be the aim of an experiment or a materialized research question. Scholz posed the question: “When can knowledge only be acquired in and with an image, so that it is no longer depicting, representing or illustrating, but works epistemically?” (2008, 3) My follow-up question is: are images not always epistemic? Or maybe: don’t the viewers, and the characters share an attitude toward the board that is an epistemological interest? In his work on the epistemic object, Rheinberger extended the understanding of knowledge representation from the mere depiction ‘on paper’ to include the concrete materials and practices through which the epistemic object is manipulated and evolved (Rheinberger 1997). Following this, television and its practices like the montage or framing would count as the material that fabricates the epistemic object. Televisual serial pinboards emphasize this extension even further: They not only represent the knowledge their creators have gathered but also allow for it to be manipulated, moved, layered, or connected. And they share these processes with the viewer in successive episodes. As we have seen, pinboarding objects situated within the larger structure of the board and of the television series fluctuate between visualization and transformation, between being con-

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crete objects and representing an abstract thing. FlashForward’s (Braga and Goyer 2009–2010) black swan as described before is a great example of this kind of oscillation, which creates the arrangement of relations from which the epistemic object emerges. The productive oscillation can also be considered the focal point for contemporary epistemology. Rheinberger defines epistemology as “reflecting on the historical conditions under which, and the means with which, things are made into objects of knowledge” (2010b, 2). In contrast to the classic philosophical “theory of knowledge”, epistemology at the turn of the twentieth century is no longer concerned with getting a clear picture of the research object but with the conditions that were or have to be created in order to transform ‘things’ to ‘objects of knowledge’. By examining epistemic objects, we can localize a historic space of representation and analyze the material device of the representation. If we consider the pinboards to be epistemic objects, we need to analyze the ‘historical’ situation or conditions under which they appear, which brings me back to the question of the dispositive. Albera and Tortajada describe Foucault’s two uses of the dispositif: one describes “viewing and listening dispositives” like the panopticon. The other one is better described as the dispositif-episteme and refers “to the schemas of relations between heterogeneous elements” (2015, 35–36). In this twofold use, pinboarding TV series would primarily fall under the first definition, and pinboards under the second. This also draws attention to the fact that to Foucault, episteme and dispositive are by no means synonymous. Foucault used the French épistème as a description of the historical a priori that is the base for all knowledge and discourse—it is the condition of knowledge within a particular time. Similar to the dispositif it is described as “the total set of relations that unite, at a given period, the discursive practices that give rise” (ibid.). Foucault further explains that simultaneous epistemes may co-exist and intersect, for example, in a larger power-knowledge system. Also, like the dispositif, “in any given culture and at any given moment, there is always only one episteme that defines the conditions of possibility of all knowledge, whether expressed in a theory or silently invested in a practice” (ibid.). But dispositif and episteme remain different and related: First, the episteme is a discursive dispositif, whereas dispositifs such as the disciplinary dispositif are at once discursive and non-discursive. Second, the episteme outlines the constitution of a body of knowledge, whereas the dispositif is entirely centered on power effects. And a body of knowledge is developed in relation to power. (ibid., 27)

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If we transfer the difference between the dispositif and the episteme onto the topic of this book, it could be argued that each of the described pinboards is its own dispositif “as a case of viewing and listening dispositives” for the series it appears in, while pinboarding is “referring to the schemas of relations between heterogeneous elements” (ibid.). Albera and Tortajada write: “The Panopticon is not by itself panopticism” (ibid.) and this study shows that ‘the pinboard is not by itself pinboarding.’ Because any description of serial pinboarding has to include an analysis of the time of production, the available means, tools, and the current aesthetic, paired with the diegesis, the fictional time period and circumstances, pinboards have to be considered experimental compounds in Rheinberger’s sense: they and their items have gone through multiple transformation processes and are a result of interventions and alignments resulting in the epistemic object (Rheinberger 2010a, 319). A pinboard is a compound that becomes a medium when an array of elements convenes, from technical apparatus to symbolism, practices, and specific forms of knowledge. The pinboards are condensates of knowledge, in the sense that they are not traces or notations of ‘evident’ information but abstractions showing structures within the coordinate system of the diagram. They are topological systems of information and rationalized factual relations that “open up a space for experiments with conceptual ideas” (Schmidt-Burkhardt 2012, 66), much like Bogen has described for the epistemic potential of diagrams, which too can be images of and for knowledge (2005). Serial pinboarding becomes epistemic pinboarding when the board emerges as an epistemic object and in turn generates knowledge from the set of relations between its items. Depending on the pinboarder and their inquisitive angle different questions can be asked with a pinboard, while vice versa different pinboarding constructions are brought forward when trying to address a specific issue: Who killed Johanna Beckett? How did the Global Blackout happen? When in the past can Hiro stop the catastrophe? How did Sergeant Brody make it back? What is his plan? Where is he now? In essence, the unifying assumption of all pinboarding series is that the board, its items, and some logical thinking performed by the characters can and will answer their questions. This epistemic expectation is only applicable if the pinboards are considered epistemic images ab initio and if at least one of the three methods of logical argument, abduction, induction, and deduction, is applied (Cf. Dipert 2004). The reasoning can be implemented either by the characters or by giving the viewers the option to do their own reasoning.

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Sherlock Holmes, for example, is widely known as the ‘Master of Deduction’. It is no surprise that most of the detective’s contemporary incarnations (in Ritchie 2009; Gatiss and Moffat 2010; Doherty 2012) are all avid pinboarders (Wentz 2017). But if we follow Peirce’s triad, Sherlock Holmes should actually be called a ‘Master of Induction’, and this makes a significant difference: A well-known example ascribed of a deductive argument is: ‘All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.’ Inductive reasoning is less conclusive and has to consider probabilities. If we changed the example to ‘Most men are mortal. Socrates is a man’ then the inference would be ‘Socrates is probably mortal’. Abduction calls for the most economical explanation given the gathered information or premises, but is hence never exclusive—it prefers the most probable out of the possible arguments: ‘Men have been seen to die. Socrates has been described as male. It is the most probable outcome that Socrates will die at some point.’ There are many layers to Peirce’s approach that go far beyond the scope of this study. Highly simplified, Peirce describes the methods and logics of ‘guessing’, ‘inferring’, and ‘proving’ both in actual legal systems and in fictional stories. Carrie, Mark, Kate, Hiro, and Mohinder are most certainly diligently involved with all three. From their hypotheses, they gather further proof and ideally unmistakably deduce something at the end of the episode or story arc, because “[i]f we were allowed to believe our guesses, we would stop the inquiry when we arrived at them, without any need for deductive or inductive work. But this is not the case, at least for Peirce” (Niño 2014, 356). This process of inquiring is what makes up most of the pinboarding narratives, again showing how a pinboard can be a series’ dispositive. First a hypothesis is abducted with the current constellation on the board. Further objects are added, validating and falsifying the theories and inducting new arguments until ideally the final construction of the board allows the deduction of the solution, the perpetrator, or the truth.1 Again, the processuality of pinboarding becomes apparent: a succession of activities makes the boards serial experiments, which includes many different practices such as simplifying, completing, combining, solving, selecting, discarding, abstracting, correcting, distinguishing, categorizing, generalizing, grasping the essential aspects, analyzing and synthesizing, comparing, connecting, and reshaping (Mellencamp 1990, 12). This impressive list, by Arnheim, of all the verbs that are involved in recognizing anything with the senses merges with Krämer’s five activities (homogenizing, arranging and rearranging, comparing, and recognizing patterns (2013)) and with Peirce’s modes of reasoning in serial pinboarding. All of

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these operations relate to pinboarding and the tools, items, and objects used to generate knowledge on and with the pinboards. Once a stasis is reached, a very specific object comes into play: pins.

Pins Pins are eponymous for pinboarding. In combination with a cork surface they compose the ‘classic’ pinboard. When TV shows implement serial pinboarding, the pins, tacks, fasteners, brads, and thumbtacks used are often the least noticeable items. Nonetheless, they are essential for both epistemic pinboarding in general and televisual serial pinboarding. Without pins or at least a derivation of the pinning functionality (clustering, structuring, collecting), pinboards could not become dispositives of seriality.2 This kind of attention to pins is unusual, as they tend to become invisible next to the item they attach. But Heroes (Kring 2006–2010) is a show where push pins get center stage for once—at least occasionally. One of these occasions happens in connection with a specific character and her superhuman ability: Molly Walker can locate anyone just by thinking about them, as explained before. To indicate and to communicate the spatial position of the sought person, she uses an atlas and a push pin. Her ability is literally pinpointing, and the pins and their functionality are paramount. A second scene that focuses on pushpins happens later in the show, when Heroes’ main boards are long gone but Peter Petrelli is once again pinboarding. As mentioned before, he uses a wall to collect newspaper clippings about his heroic actions, but in fact the pins appear most prominently outside of the pinboarding: in a close-up of Peter’s face (Vol5Ch4, original air date: October 12, 2009), next to a door frame, 18 push pins of different varieties form the shape of the ever-present helix symbol. But other than demonstrating the show’s abundant creativity to find ways to smuggle this symbol into scenes, this is not relevant. To put it differently, because the pins create an ‘easter egg’ separate from the pinboard, this further emphasizes how unnoticeable they are assumed to be. And in these scenes, even though highly (visually) present, they do not fulfill their ­primal function: attaching and putting things in their place on a (vertical) surface. Any variation can do that and can appear in pinboarding: classic short drawing pin with a cylindrical head; a long sewing pin with a round pinhead; a short, flat tack; or even a magnet of any shape. Clips or pegs also function as pins in an extended sense, so that even in pinboarding constructions like Hiro’s string room, items can be put in their place.

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Already it becomes clear that the materiality of the surface as well as the pinboarding object that has to go up on the wall condition the pin’s makeup. And vice versa, so that the pins always allude to the material condition of the pinboard they appear on. Classic push pins or thumb tacks especially also refer to the action of being pushed into the surface manually, specifically with the thumb, so that they also reference the pinboarders and their practices. This reference changes significantly in digital pinboards. Here, pinning appears as a function that is often tied to a symbol that references a pin. These pinning symbols appear frequently in the context of maps, marking a place such as a restaurant or a tourist attraction.3 Such digital pins of course also appear in TV series. In FlashForward’s Mosaic Investigation, digital pins on an online world map mark the places people saw themselves during their individual visions. Through a text field, additional information can be attached, similar to a pushpin pinning a paper note. Nonetheless, analogue boards can have a more manageable, almost comforting effect in comparison to large, seemingly endless digital boards (see Chap. 1). And non-digital push pins with a sharp metal tip are different to ‘digital pins’ in at least three ways: (1) they perforate the items and the surface and therefore (2) leave a hole when pulled out. And they (3) are tactile, three-dimensional objects themselves, which makes them literally stand out from the surface. This also enables them to be the anchor points for string: a trait that will be explored later. And while the pins’ sharpness and moment of penetration can and has been employed in fictional narratives,4 two different properties have to be considered more closely concerning serial pinboarding. Firstly, the pins’ capacity to cluster items. Secondly, their fundamental state of unrest, which facilitates the movability of objects and changes in the pinboard, so that they can fulfill epistemic expectations and become serial pinboards. The term ‘clustering’ sums up several pinboarding operations that are all geared toward accumulating objects that belong together or that are somehow connected. It also describes a cognitive effort to collect and gather related items to create some sort of structure or order within the pinboard. This order is entirely arbitrary and only has to work within itself, as it is the pinboarder who creates the systematic and the meaning they want to either grasp or convey. Pearce offers an example to illustrate these arbitrary systematics, of the “Milwaukee Museum early animal cases, showing together spotted and striped cats who may in human terms belong to the same group, but who have no connection with each other

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in the world where they live out their unregarded lives” (Pearce 1995, 268). Many deliberations about collection systematics have been concerned with how a specific structure allows for genealogies5 to appear and similarities and differences to come into sight. Collectors, and pinboarders, look for the item that is most representative to include it in their display. Once they have selected such an item, it can be integrated in the structure—in TV series this often happens on camera with a deliberate pinning. Schmidt-Burkhardt states that images of humanistic knowledge, like diagrams or tables, generally intend to collect facts and (re-)present their summary (2012, 31). To create internal order, a diagrammatic system either classifies by sorting objects or terms into different categories, or systematizes by relating the objects or terms to each other. The order in a diagram is spatial in any case and its logic is always simultaneously topological. Schmidt-Burkhardt summarizes that topological knowledge images have to be “spatial systematizations of information and rationalizations of objective relations” while structural knowledge images “open up an experimental space for conceptual mental constructs” (ibid., 66 my translation). Thinking with these categories, serial pinboards are topological and structural: The push pins localize the information in the form of the objects, while either the thread on the board or the camera movement and framing relates them to each other. In a second step, the camera movement or montage can also relate two clusters to each other, suggesting a connection to be found or a correlation to be deduced. The pins constitute the visible layout [that] presents the irreducible material evidence of the proposition of classification and relationship which for us constitutes understanding, and it does this by producing knowledge apparently made actual in physical assemblages which physically present the facts by placing one thing beside another in their correct and intelligible sequences. (Pearce 1995, 269)

This could not be displayed more accurately than in Homeland (Gordon and Gansa 2011–). Configuration (2) is ‘material evidence’ for the different classifications of periods in Abu Nazir’s activities and the color code is evidence for the relations that Carrie has understood first, and that Saul has now pinned to the board in order to create a systematic assemblage. During Saul’s pinboarding scene the interplay between cork surface, pieces of paper, marker color, and push pins is depicted vividly, emphasizing the

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interconnectivity of the elements necessary to all pinboarding operations. It also emphasizes a quality only pictorial presentations can possess, one that is easily missed: Pictorial representation, like a pinboard, can create internal order surprisingly easily. This allows the recipient to intuitively recognize different elements as a unit or relate them to each other and accordingly interpret them, whereas a spoken or written and logically explicit description would be exceedingly laborious (Sachs-Hombach and Rehkämper 2004, 121). To create this order, as Saul does in this scene, objects like the pins are essential. This is emphasized by the fact that scenes in which the characters sort objects on a table or the floor usually function differently than those where the pinboarding happens on a vertical surface. The horizontal sorting is often a preliminary, more chaotic stage, before a pinned order. Pinning the objects and the pushing of the pins are thus operationally constitutional for televisual pinboarding, even though the pins as such are often invisible. On the other hand, a clearly visible pin that is stuck in the middle of a group of objects can emphasize the clustering function even further. The ‘Blue Hand Cluster’ (see Fig.  5.1) is a good example of this on the Mosaic Investigation Wall (MIW). Between episodes one and six, several close-­ups of objects are shown that concern the connection between the

Fig. 5.1  ‘Blue Hand’ cluster on the MIW, screenshot from FlashForward S01E06 (ABC 2009), TC 00:12:16

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mysterious Blue Hand club and visions during the Global Blackout. These close-ups select a section of the board to show the viewers in order to help them focus on a specific cluster or object, or to help them understand network connections. Creating this visual focus is necessary. The pinboard and its filmic presentation are thus able to blank out excess visual input or information: A reduction Schmidt-Burkhardt describes as necessary for diagrammatic arrangements: the structure and the structural elements become clearer, the less pictographic the pinboarding arrangement is (2012, 31). From this, more abstract considerations about pinboarding clusters evolve, because detecting structural elements within a board is independent from a pinboard’s topic or content. In fact, the structures are inherent in the visual capacity or diagrammatic status of pinboarding. The clusters are bundles of visual information, fields that build up inwardly while demarcating the fluctuating outside border. These clusters’ boundaries shift and remain in the process of modulation, constantly negotiating the relation between inside and outside, a negotiation that is supported by the shows’ seriality, which is able to show the processual development of clusters from scene to scene or episode to episode. A cluster on a series’ board implies that it can grow or shrink, that the characters can add to or take away and rearrange. This potentiality is facilitated by pins and supports the idea of serial pinboarding. Pinboarding clusters store knowledge. Or, to be more precise, they are places of knowledge and each facet of knowledge is assigned a specific place that renders it identifiable and available as well as memorable. They are the archive or the library of the knowledge system that is the TV series and hence influence the interpretation of past, present, and future. Clusters that characters work on over multiple episodes can serve as an archive of the investigation’s results. The Blue Hand cluster is such an archive about the “Already Ghost” group, formed by people who did not have a flash-­ forward and now engage in fatalist behavior at the Blue Hand club. This storyline is pretty much concluded in episode six. From this point onward, a quick pan shot of the cluster is enough to remind viewers of past events. If this pan shot is set up as a character’s point-of-view shot, it also allows the assumption that the character is also remembering by looking at the cluster and its objects; if not, this ‘look back’ via the cluster is clearly for the audience’s benefit. Like archives, pinboards promise extension and productivity and to securely store complexity and memory. Zedelmaier analyzed various media

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of knowledge and described card index systems as the most modern, because the cards form a mobile system that allows for items to be taken out and placed elsewhere at any moment, even though the early creation phase is difficult and laborious (2002, 48). He could have reached a similar diagnosis for pinboards, where the early stages are tedious diligence work until a detectable system of clusters arises, and where push pins allow for items to be moved at any time and to any place within the structure. It is this potential for change and movement that pins bring to the pinboard more than any other method of attachment. Both change and spatial movements also have temporal aspects to them; neither motion nor modification exists without duration and without an idea of before and after. Television is able to show both and seriality allows for long-term narratives that are characterized by “[i]nterchangeability and the manifold combination of situations, characters, conflicts, etc., and the potentially infinite continuation of a ‘narrative’, that is hence not designed towards a dominating end by neither structure nor significance” (Trinks 2000, 29 my translation). The parallels between seriality and pinboards become especially apparent in the context of potentially infinite variation. Through variation the series continues, potentially endlessly, and perpetuates itself while the constant pinboarding implies change and variation. Basically, any detectable change is a variation of what was there before and serializes the pinboarding. Changes and alterations are also a good cue for dialogues and a show’s narrative. Even no detectable change can have narrative potential. Smith states, that “[n]ot all actions in a serial move the character forwards or backwards in their arc; in fact, we are shown some character behaviors precisely because they are actions without progress” (2006, 86). The same can be said for the pinboards: ‘no visible change’ is not synonymous with ‘no information’. Instead, for the storytelling, ‘no visible change’ can mean a stagnation in the problem the board aims to solve or that the nation’s focus is currently elsewhere. For epistemic pinboarding it can mean that the current configuration of the board is either very ­productive and does not need to change, or it is not productive at all and thus warrants further work, which has not yet happened. The push pins’ fundamental potential for spatial change therefore emphasizes the temporary nature of a pinboard’s current configuration, while at the same time the essence of the pinboard remains unchangeable. In these qualities, they resemble Latour’s ‘immutable mobiles’, which Krämer compared to the pinboard (2009). Latour emphasized that the ‘immutable mobiles’ are mobile as well as unchangeable (1986). They

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may be moved, clustered, or layered, but their inscriptions, pictoriality, and readability are constant. This interplay between immobility and dynamic is what makes them relevant for societies and cultures, and in Latour’s case, especially relevant for the rise of a western modernity. Similarly to the immutable mobile, a pinboard makes its inscriptions (images, notes, objects) movable and their internal positioning and configuration flexible. It holds a dynamic potential that makes the pinboard as a whole a mobile image. Even though different pinboarding objects support this mobilization, like for example sticky notes, push pins are the object category that supports the positioning and mobility of all the other kinds of pinboarding items. Simultaneously, the pinboard stabilizes the sometime and somewhere into the visible here and now, and it represents the currently surfacing brink of the fold. The push pins are imperative for the momentary clustering and attaching of objects on the surface and therefore also for the further processes of folding. They emerge as the facilitators of movement and change within the pinboard. With that, they also allow for internal experiments, for example, by changing the position of an item within the pinboard to try out which new relations arise. Similar to changing a parameter in any diagrammatic structure, different configurations can be played through and different outcomes can be compared to each other. Bauer and Ernst use a computer-generated model of an airplane as an example of this type of experiment (2010, 22): If one parameter in the basic configuration is changed, like the weight of a construction material, the diagram facilitates the calculation of the impact on the airplane’s structure. Accordingly, both the model and the actual plane can be changed or improved. This demonstrates that the configuration and re-configuration of the diagrammatic system are directly connected and that the option of flexible change has to be understood as heuristic. In serial pinboarding, these re-configurations can be shown through the actions of the characters and act as an analogue version of algorithmic calculations, assuring users with their reliability. Such a scene can also include demonstrative ‘thinking through doing’, or “manipulative abduction (or action-based abduction)”, a concept Magnani explained as ‘thinking through drawing’, for example, by “manipulating diagrams in [sic] the blackboard” (2013, 2). He elaborates that action can provide otherwise unavailable information that enables the agent to solve problems by starting and by performing a suitable abductive process of generation or selection of hypothesis. 1. The model (diagram) is external

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and the strategy that organizes the manipulations in unknown a priori. 2. The result achieved is new (if we, for instance, refer to the constructions of the first creators of geometry), and adds properties not contained before in the concept. (ibid., 305)

On a pinboard, this could translate to the random movement of objects facilitated by push pins, which coincidentally leads to new insights. Scenes where a character plays around randomly with the objects on their pinboard are nonetheless very rare. Much more frequent are scenes in which the physical board promotes thought experiments—the most important quality of diagrams (Stjernfelt 2000, 369)—when a character’s gaze figures something out that was not notable without the visualization. Visualizing thought processes is the most important application of televisual pinboards. As thinking surpasses the realm of the visible, a TV series employs pinboards (or filmic devices) to visualize a character’s thought process in a scene. Thinking with and about a pinboard means that the manipulations happen with the representation and shape the epistemic object. A trilogy of terms introduced by Bauer and Ernst will clarify the different facets of the changeable pinboard: “design, layout, and dis-play” (2010, 64f). Design describes the texture of the signs. The structure of the texture is the layout, as well as the relations within. The dis-play then is the ‘playing’ with the relations shown in the layout. During the dis-playing the relations change, and thus the design changes, too. This in turn means changes in the layout, which leads to new options for dis-playing. While this chain of changes might be reminiscent of the folding processes, it precisely describes both the physical and the mental interactions with a diagrammatic model like a pinboard while also taking the materiality into account. Because pinboards have these experimental capacities, they necessarily also have the capacity to fail. They can, for example visually falsify a hypothesis or at least show that an intended re-configuration is not possible. The latter is often used in crime shows when an alibi or circumstance ‘clears’ a subject from the board. The push pins’ potential for re-­ configuration also confirms the instability of the pinboard. The viewer knows that the board has changeable components and is merely a current configuration. Like in a TV series, the multiple trains of thought can develop in various directions, can bifurcate, retrace, or end. Which of these serial capacities is fulfilled, remains uncertain. This latent insecurity is nonetheless necessary if the serial pinboard is to be defined as a tool and instrument of thought.

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How far this insecurity can go becomes clear when we look at the Mosaic Investigation Wall once again. As it turns out, neither the current state of the board, nor the board from Mark’s vision can fulfill the investigators’ epistemic expectations. In the show’s twentieth episode (original air date: May 13. 2010), the pinboard remarkably evolves from a diagram and potential epistemic medium to a treasure map. This re-configuration process starts when an agent finds Gabriel McDow’s sketchbook. Gabriel is introduced as an autistic savant with photographic memory. He was abused in experiments in which he made countless mental jumps into the future. His sketchbook contains a detailed drawing of the Mosaic Investigation Wall, sketched in black on white paper, except for the bright red lines running zigzag across the wall like the threads. When Gabriel enters the FBI building, he insists that Mark’s board is not properly done and has to be corrected. When he finally has a moment alone in Mark’s office, he goes straight to work on the pinboard. His main focus is the pins and the threads, as those are not “in the right place”. This is the very first time the MIW gets a point-of-view camera angle: Red string runs across the field of vision while Gabriel is visible at eye level (see Fig. 5.2). Even though visually and acoustically dramatic, it turns out that the threads

Fig. 5.2  Gabriel rearranges and Mark solves the MIW, screenshots from FlashForward S01E20 (ABC 2009), TC 00:06:58, TC 00:10:52; S01E22 (ABC 2010), TC 00:28:29–00:29:08. (top left to bottom right)

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were not rearranged to trigger a new insight by pinboarding. Quite the contrary: When Mark notices the changes to his board in the last episode “Future Shock” (original air date: May 27. 2010), roughly 13 minutes before the series ends completely, all the functions of the pinboard as an epistemic diagram are negated (TC 00:27:50–00:28:56): Mark gets out Gabriel’s sketchbook and follows the trace of the thread, like a singular path that has to be taken in a certain order, contradicting any interpretative openness. Instead, the board has become a treasure map, where ‘X marks the spot’ and delivers answers. Seamlessly, Mark drops all habits of pinboarding that he has acquired and practiced, and simply solves the riddle. Gabriel has changed the position of the push pins holding the thread, and they are now pushed into, or next to, letters that Mark writes down in the order that the thread shows him. The solution is “T.E.N.F.O.U.R.T.E.E.N.P.M.” and Mark realizes that this has to be the time of the next Global Blackout, and that he only has 12 minutes left until then. This significantly shifts the epistemological register by using seemingly random signifiers that would never be connected and thus could not have been anticipated by neither Mark nor the viewers. Yet it is an acceptable solution (see Chap. 6, section “Remakes and End”), that to avid pinboarders might seem disappointing, as all the clues were there all along. And even this transformation of the pinboarding wall into a scavenger hunt is fundamentally conditioned by the push pins (in combination with the red thread) and their capability to attach, cluster, and most importantly move items on the cork surface. Theoretically, these traits could make a pinboard endlessly usable, with any sort of conclusion always withdrawing because the pins bring their potentiality into the structure. Continuation, seriality, and processuality are characteristics of serial pinboarding that are epitomized by the boards’ pins. Yet just like the ­television shows they are a part of, most serial pinboards find some form of an end (see Chap. 6).

Threads and Gaps If two pins, or the clusters they facilitate as explained above, are in any way related to each other, pinboarding characters and set designers may use some sort of thread to connect the pins. Like a beeline, these threads stretch over distances across the board and other objects. The majority of viewers can be assumed to have encountered thread in similar capacities: from the Bible (Gen 38, 27–30), where red thread marks a firstborn twin,

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to the east Asian akai ito, the red string of fate. From the mysterious Moirai, who spun every mortal’s thread of life (Steinbach 1931) to the Greek princess Ariadne, who gave a ball of thread (and a sword) to Theseus, so he could find his way out from the Minotaur’s labyrinth. Additionally, Ariadne’s story is also one of successful navigation through a labyrinth, which links the thread to orientation through space as well. Especially this legendary thread has been referenced in many movies and TV series, and is even the namesake of a modern algorithm used in logic and puzzle solving. Goethe is said to have coined thread as a metaphor for a leitmotiv or guideline in his book Elective Affinities, including the now typical red color, when he described how the royal navy marked all their ropes with thin red yarn running through (1900, 201). Nowadays, red thread, and the attached symbolism, is present in art,6 advertising, and of course TV. And, even though thread is not as much a standard office supply as post-its for example, it can be found on many pinboards. Especially police procedurals have utilized red thread to connect crime scenes on maps and sometimes the investigators find some relevant pattern by connecting pins with thread: they may form a number, a star sign, or any other shape. In these instances, the thread’s interpretation depends on the recognition of shapes, but thread can also support epistemic expectations in a more abstract way.7 The thread in serial pinboards fulfills multiple functions, the first of which is connecting at least two pinboarding objects with each other. Objects that have been pinned to a pinboarding surface enter a relation with each other because of their shared image space, as explained before. These relations can be made explicit by thread, which also means other relations lose importance because of the presence of the thread links. Thread creates a specific and visible relation between objects that can have different (narrative) connotations. This connotation depends entirely on the show creator’s application of pinboarding and on the (narrative or aesthetic) context of the thread’s use. It can appear in many different circumstances and create many different meanings, yet it is not one of the object categories that show something on their material surface, like photos or post-it notes. Thread as a medium is indifferent to the content of the pinboarding. It nonetheless conveys meaning, but it needs further factors. For example: a thread connects points A and B. It could be a timeline; or the thread could refer to a contentious issue or an object of arguments; it could represent a love story connecting two lovers’ images; it

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could indicate what the two points have in common et cetera. The thread as such will not be able to determine the kind of relation between the points it connects. This can only be determined by additional information and context. Even if multiple threads run across a more complicated pinboarding construction, they are still based on the seemingly simple principle of a line connecting two things. How (tele-)visually basic this can be is shown by a comedic example from Parks and Recreation (Daniels and Schur 2009–2015). In the still from the series (S04E21, original air date: May 3, 2012) we see a small cork surface, used as a pinboard. Picture A on the left shows a person (Leslie Knope) and picture B an object (cream pie); both are attached with clear pins (Fig.  5.3). The cork board is empty otherwise, except for a short red thread connecting pictures. In the foreground, character Andy Dwyer, as his alter ego FBI agent Burt Macklin, is shown from behind. His finger points to the left picture. Through dialogue the viewers are then privy to Burt’s intense, yet simple, thought experiments. But if we conduct our own thought experiments with this arrangement, this board exemplifies some general aspects of pinboarding. For example, if we imagine the position of the objects to change, for example the pie-­ picture moves upward to the edge of the board, we can fathom a notably

Fig. 5.3  Burt Macklin’s ‘pie chart’, detail from Parks and Recreation S04E21 (NBC 2012)

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changed syntax in this three-piece board. Or if we mentally remove the thread, the two pictures instantly become more equal. Or the pictures switch position, while the thread remains as is, and our reading of this board might be different. The arrangement instantly suggests that the pie has some kind of relation to the woman; picture B is an attribute of the picture A, which in turn is like the subject of the visual sentence and the pie its predicate, a piece of information secondary to the woman’s picture (viewers from cultural contexts with different reading directions than left-­ to-­right might react with an opposite reading). The thread, through its mere presence, represents some form of connection between the pictures, but without the narrative context this connection could be many things: did the woman bake the cake, did she eat it, is she allergic, is her name connected to the object?8 Even with this seemingly simple example, the array of indications possible for thread shines through. In serial pinboarding, thread can generally have many applications: to locate something spatially, to show causal relations, to visualize temporality, or to capture movement, meaning spatial change over time. Each of the boards described so far contains at least one of these uses and for each of these functions many other examples could be found. In Heroes, the Suresh map locates and tracks people with special skills. Colorful threads connect similar abilities or represent their movement between different cities. Visualizing this real-space movement on the map entails at least three abstractions. The thread does not indicate if a certain city was the point of departure or arrival for a character. The linear distance simplifies the actual movement via roads and vehicles that might have taken place into a direct and easy connection. Thread also does not disclose the time that it might have taken a character to travel, or the ­narration time it might have taken to narrate this journey. The journeys are transformed into a simultaneous presence of objects and thread on the pinboard. In Homeland, only the third board configuration uses thread: trying to track Sergeant Brody’s location and sightings of him, Carrie connects newspaper clippings and photos on the surface of a map of the earth. Again, the thread stands for physical movement through space but gives no inkling of the length of travel or stay. The thread evokes time but denies any spatial measurement of duration.9 Only in an imaginary stroll through a city or crime scene can the thread be connected to concrete increments of time measurement. As became apparent with maps, space is described along a (narrative) path, every ‘step’ leading to a new sight, as

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Greimas described: the movement, no matter if physical or mental, is what gives a dynamic perspective to a linear structure of elements. The complexity of space is transformed into a temporal succession—by chronological narrative movement (Wenz 2009, 212). In other words, a pinboarding thread that does not get linearized by the camera, the scene’s acting, or the dialogue cannot convey meaning. But this external linearization is also subject to potential meandering, when one part of a path is elongated or exaggerated while uneventful passages are skipped. Yet visually, all parts are equalized by thread. As the saying goes, the shortest way between two points is a straight line, which according to Thaliath is so fundamental that any student can instantly grasp this when seeing it on the classroom’s blackboard (2003, 33). Comparably, most pinboarding thread goes directly from pin to pin, even though a pinboard can also have curved connector lines, or lines that angle at various points. To the threads’ function, this makes little difference; they still form a connection, a relation, a path, even if they droop. Usually the material length is not of importance, as pinboarding threads are rarely part of a mathematical, Cartesian coordinate system that forces all elements into the same scale. For example, Hiro’s net of threads could refer to life spans, moments, or defined calendar periods, like years or weeks. But Hiro’s concept of time does not necessarily follow this scheme and neither do his threads. His map of time does not have a scale and the thread’s length is therefore ambiguous. Pinboarding threads’ length is typically as haphazard as the distance between stations on a subway map, which indicates connections but takes some diagrammatic and artistic liberty regarding direction, distance, and duration. Rather than “measure the map distance with a ruler and figure out the real distance from the map’s scale” (Stjernfelt 2000, 374), these threaded connections merely state that there is a connection between two points—and by claiming this connection they simultaneously create it. Krämer has given the “epistemology of the line” in diagrammatic contexts a lot of thought and showed the cognitive, cultural, and academic role of the line and its history (2010). To Krämer the line needs the in-between to appear on a surface. Once there is a line, there is also a trace of its creation, a memory of its drawing—or in the case of the thread a memory of its tautening. So, even if only retrospectively, the thread includes a temporality of its use and existence within the pinboard. The pinboard blurs temporalities and makes its artifacts synchronic in its space. Spanning thread or relations across this space is always a spatial and a temporal

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action. The thread’s time spans and the spanned time can include various kinds of temporal information from the duration of the spanning process to the signified temporal distance. Krämer also states that the line, no matter its material constitution, is a medium, a medial third, that connects, includes and excludes, structures and localizes, and crosses out—it is an in-between (ibid.). Saussure defined signs, such as a language’s, as part of a system in which the signs can only mean anything in link with each other. Based on that, Foucault described the discursive space as the space in which things can appear and gain meaning in relation to each other. If we take the pinboarding objects as signs within the discursive space of the pinboard, viewers as well as characters can localize their connections and effects in the gaps between them. The gaps become meaningful, when distance and proximity are part of a visual syntax. Positioning the artifacts on the pinboard is hence not just a narrative chronologization or actualization by means of a time bar, as images and pinboards are not linear but spatial. Heßler and Mersch specify that images in general are not extensions (extensum) but space (spatium), not because the marks of an extension or surface are traceable, but an in-betweenness that features form and topological structure within the image (2009, 26). The in-between allows for connections or patterns to be instantly detected without the didactic chain of textual arguments. Written words or letters (as in mechanical diagrams) therefore also gain a spatial meaning because of their position or directionality within the diagrammatic structure. Heßler and Mersch summarize this under their term “topological differenciality”: spatial order gives meaning to the arrangement as such and makes the emerging image space topologically meaningful (ibid., 27f my translation). Art theorist Hyon-Joo Yoo notes that the term “space” has lost its concrete and abstract relevance, and the in-between has gained in meaning, unlocking an even better understanding of the spaces it connects (2007, 161). To Yoo, the gaps in space are the place of self-reflection for the medium. On the pinboards these gaps are dependent on the position of the elements on the surface. The space stretches and spans between them and creates topological differenciality. This means that the spatial arrangement is the condition for the layout itself to evolve meaning and for the image space to become topologically relevant. Some of the gaps between artifacts are bridged by the threads, but these (red) threads de facto emphasize the gap by their necessary presence. Or to put it differently,

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pinboarding threads gaps and creates distance and thus underlines the separated connectedness of the objects and vice versa. The in-between can be the key to understanding the circumjacent spaces. The gaps hence bear the potential for understanding, partially fulfilling epistemic expectations. Connecting two items with thread for a thought experiment will either confirm the spanning of the thread or falsify it. In their presence threads realize the potential the pins have established and connect what used to be merely a potential connection. But as soon as the thread is taken off the board, the falsified result is also no longer present. The absence of thread can hence mean that there cannot be a connection, that there has been a connection that was erased, or that no one ever contemplated whether there could be a connection—while on the other hand, the thread’s presence indispensably confirms some sort of connection. Heßler and Mersch write that, that which is made visible automatically makes a statement. Under the terms of “non-negativity” and “non-­ hypotheticity”, they explain that it is impossible for an image to negate something (2009, 28). Or rather, a visual display may not show something, but it cannot show that something does not exist. As soon as an element such as the thread appears in the image space, it is. The visual presentation has no way to show a potentiality or a possibility—due to its pictoriality it always states facts. Nonetheless, I want to argue that serial pinboards specifically, mainly because of their existence within TV series, can present potentialities despite the undeniable presence of the pinboarding object—because an object’s position can potentially change in the serial progression of the storyline or the narrative. Serial pinboards are hypothetical, even though the thread in its presence is not. Furthermore, the gaps, threads, distances, and lines are and stay flexible, as the majority of pinboarding elements are mobile. This mobility, and the indefinite pinboard, is what makes pinboarding serial. This seriality allows for experiments with the spatial relation and object position, both imagined as in the beginning of this chapter and physically in the TV show. The experimental potential thus lies between the objects, in the gaps of the pinboard. Just as Krämer appoints this inter-spatiality to be the most important criterion that makes diagrams unique systems (Cf. 2009), the same can be said of serial pinboards. The gaps between the objects and the threads bridging these gaps allow diagrammatic thinking and bring forth the spatial structure. This structure can change throughout the series, and in order for board and series to remain linked, it has to change. The gaps of the pinboard can then be described as the space for

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the pinboards’ self-reflection (Yoo 2007, 161). They stimulate the intertextual relation of the objects’ meanings and narratives, while allowing their distinct description and the analysis of their relation from the in-between. An example of such a self-reflective thread can be found in FlashForward. The first red thread that is put on the Mosaic Investigation Wall spans between the two main dates of the investigation. Demetri Noh pushes two pins into the squares on the calendar and wraps red yarn around the ‘October 6’ pin. By moving the thread away from this date he creates distance within the pinboard that can be understood as a temporal distance because the thread is used in the context of the calendar pages. The thread bridges the gap between the two dates, when he wraps the end of the yarn around the second pin. But what does the thread connect in this instance? Two dates, one in the diegetic past, one simultaneously in the past and the future: April 29 is still approaching but the fictional world and the audience have already seen a glimpse of it when the two dates folded upon each other as described before. Now on the board, the two thumbtacks mark the distance between the two dates, both in the temporal dough and in the (board) space, while the red thread represents their ongoing connection to each other. Here the thread’s length relies proportionally on the size scheme of the board. In this image-meaning space, the length precisely shows the distance of the dates, relative to the size of the cork boards and the calendar pages. Outside of this space, the length would be totally meaningless. Without an interpretation key (in this case the horizontal axis of the timeline), it would not mean anything. This is again a strong support for understanding pinboards as diagrams, which are also highly reliant on their legends. Reading/understanding a diagram requires a “mimesis in perspective”, a possibility of retracing space and meaning of the element, which according to Bauer and Ernst is impossible without an interpretation key (2010, 122–28 my translation). Considering the calendar pages as such a key makes the thread a connection between two intra-­ diegetic dates that is visualized as a line in the system that is the MIW. This line is neither an arrow nor a vector with a direction, but made up of points that cannot be divided further and the two dates are such points. The events between the two points constitute the line in-between. Though the succession of daily squares on the calendar could have done the same thing sufficiently, the red thread is an explicit connection between two pins, a visual emphasis, and a reflection of the series’ essential narrative aspects.

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Other threads, which are added in FlashForward’s subsequent episodes, have different functions. They create relations between objects, of which most are causal, as in cause-and-effect relations or in reciprocal conditioning of the events. For example, one thread connects the “baby doll photograph” cluster with Dyson Frost’s fact sheet. When the audience is shown this connection, they are reminded of how the search for Frost actually led to the doll factory and thus the taking of the burned doll photograph (see above). This means that the threads themselves do not evoke past episodes but rather connect multiple signs and episodes with each other, visualizing larger serial connections. If viewers did not see the past episodes, the objects connected by the thread will not mean anything to them. Thread nonetheless indicates an existing connection as soon as it is part of the pinboard and claims relevance through the camera’s framing. In addition to the threads on a board, series often show scenes in which the audience sees the characters handle the thread. These scenes especially emphasize the thread’s haptic qualities and material status. Most pinboarding thread is tied around pins or needles and can be of any color and material. As described before, Hiro’s string web uses many different kinds of string, ribbon, yarn, and thread to symbolize each character’s path through time. Red thread is often used either for good color contrast, to be clearly visible in front of a mainly black-and-white or sepia collection of paper objects, or because it fits the mood of the set and the designers decided to go for the ‘classic’ red. Other times, different colors visualize different kinds of connections, like the activities of different people on a map. Also, the thread’s thickness can be important: Peter’s map and net hybrid presents one thread in the middle of the map, the room, and the TV screen, much thicker than the others. This red thread can be associated with the looming catastrophe and is clearly the most important, culminating centerpiece of the pinboarding construction. These associations of color or other material capacities happen subconsciously, and are based on visual tradition. Peirce described similar processes with the concept of type-reading: “When seeing a geometrical figure drawn on a blackboard, we immediately prescind from the stripe of chalk having any breadth, from the line’s vacillating deviation from linearity, from the drawing having any color, and so on” (Stjernfelt 2000, 366). While research on cognition and visual perception continues, an analysis of the boards and their threads has to assume a seeing viewer, who is willing to and capable of picking up on the connections and the visual grammar that pinboarding thread can convey.10

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These pinboarding practices of thread and its connecting function can be extended to the use of marker or chalk when a line is drawn between two items on a white or black board. And vice versa, writing utensils can extend the thread’s function, as they have the option of adding an arrowhead on one or both ends, so that the line gains a direction, like a vector, whereas the thread is usually non-directional. In digital contexts, the use of arrowheads is a standard, and a line’s extension between objects can also be animated and simulated. Schmidt-Burkhardt states that the use of arrows or other deictic elements encourages the “mental animation of graphic images” (2012, 28 my translation), but TV pinboards have the advantage that they can encourage or simply undertake this animation in the series’ images. Pinboarding threads can work quite similarly to (analogue or digital) arrows if staged appropriately. Additionally, threads can culminate in peaks, so that a push pin that is a junction for multiple threads becomes hierarchically more powerful than other pins. In Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes (2009) for example, a nail stuck in the picture of Holmes’ arch-­ enemy Moriarty is the peak point from or to which many threads connect. This can be understood as a concrete fabrication of a simile from the books, in which Moriarty is described as sitting “motionless, like a spider in the center of its web, but that web has a thousand radiations, and he knows well every quiver of each of them.” (Doyle 2001, 236) These points in which all strings come together can and have certainly been used for their narrative potential and visual strength. If the evidence indicates one suspect, visualized with threads running to one portrait, then the case seems to be closed. If all story arcs lead to one point, then the culminating pin might also represent the narrative climax of a TV series. Interestingly, this kind of accumulation at one pin is not oriented toward seriality and is hence atypical for shows with longer-lasting pinboarding concepts. On the contrary, the latter tend to either visualize an array of connections, making the pinboard very dense, or may use little to no thread and instead apply other forms of visual relation-making. Castle (Marlowe 2009–2016), for example, a series without thread or other linearizing objects on its longtime murder board, can always utilize the camera’s movement, framing, and image montage to create an invisible yet connecting and relating ‘thread’ between its pinboarding objects. A pan shot starting with a close-up of object A and ending on object B can have the same effect as a thread between the two would have: it suggests and creates a relation by movement. It is up to the onlooker, that is both intra-­

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diegetic characters and extra-diegetic viewer, to cognitively ‘connect the dots’ and ‘understand’ the relation between the items. In order for this process of connecting the dots and understanding the connection to work, the viewer has to be assumed as active.11 This can mean anything from reception theory stating that any text is text only when the reader cognitively completes it (Cf. Holub 2013, chap. 3), to a willingness to engage further with the content as an active audience (Cf. Ang 1991; Fiske 1992; Hayward 1997; Quintas-Froufe and González-­ Neira 2014), to textual poaching, as Jenkins (2013) called the circulation of meaning amongst audiences. Fittingly for this context, Rancière describes the “emancipated spectator”, who “will be shown a strange, unusual spectacle a mystery whose meaning he must seek out.” (2009, 4) The aim is to compel the audience “to exchange the position of passive spectator for that of scientific investigator or experimenter, who observes phenomena and searches for their causes” (ibid.). If the viewers agree to regard a TV series’ narrative as a mystery and the pinboarding objects as pieces to solve this puzzle, then the pinboard becomes the tool to solve the riddle. With this tool, the thinking and active viewer is then also able to recognize patterns: another operation that is a necessity in serial pinboarding. With the Mosaic Investigation Wall, for example, pattern recognition is particularly relevant, because the viewers are repeatedly shown the different phases of the pinboard. The finished and the current states of the pinboards are sometimes shown within moments of each other, so that a visual comparison is possible. The montage of FlashForward constantly allows and provokes such comparisons. Active viewers who are able to recognize patterns are important in order to substantiate a diagrammatic reading of the pinboards. In regard to diagrams, the onlooker only ever experiences a diagram in one state and changes can only be compared via memory. To do so, the viewer needs the scheme or pattern that allows a comparison on a structural level (e.g. through a coordinate system), as well as an idea of the temporality of ‘before’ and ‘after’. Both parameters are handed to the FlashForward viewers, who have seen the MIW’s final state which has established a clear ‘after’. The almost-empty pinboard in the pilot episode forms the ‘before’—everything in between can then be compared to this implicit timeline. The calendar pages form the coordinate system of the MIW and the different appearances of the board make the images of the MIW a series of comparable images. Like a red thread, running through the entire show.

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In addition to connecting pins or objects, threads that cross each other or even create a knot can be meaningful in a pinboard. In Hiro’s web, for instance, a knot means that two people have met/are meeting/will meet, just as their threads ‘meet’ within the pinboarding structure. On a plain board, threads are sometimes covered by other artifacts, but their linear continuation is not interrupted by the layer building. More often the threads run across and on top of the other items, which makes it hard to decide which items are part of the threads’ syntax, adding to it, and which objects just happen to be in its path. Intentionally placed or not, the thread and the objects it crosses can build a line of argument, starting from artifact A, crossing B, C, and D, and resulting in object Z. Like the structure of a sentence, the diagrammatic properties of the pinboard create ‘dia-­ grammar’, a structure of visual language and linear and temporal order in an a-chronological space. Many lines in classical diagrams have this structuring function, especially those that visualize mechanical or natural processes in a step-by-step analysis: In order for status A to become status B, the things along this path have to happen or move. The main examples in this study use this syntactic function of the thread differently. Hiro’s knots mean meetings, Mohinder’s thread crosses North American states like a traveling person, and Peter’s red thread overwrites all other possible outcomes. Carrie’s threads cross oceans and continents like the fugitive Brody, including stopping at points along the way. An example from the Mosaic Investigation Wall is the red thread that connects the “baby doll photograph” note card and Frost’s fact sheet. In its path, it crosses a map, an image of a black swan, and Alda Herzog’s written profile. All of these elements will be connected in the storyline at some point, so that the thread is either ­foreboding the narrative progression, if it is seen in Mark’s vision, or has been ‘filled in’ with past episodes’ content along the line, if it is seen in a later phase of the board. Unfortunately, such a clear path is an exception, as during the fast filling of the board many artifacts and threads are added that are not explained in the show. Yet the thread’s existence adds the above-mentioned authenticity and allows the assumption of an intention behind all the threads’ paths. This assumption is furthermore supported by visible ‘loose ends’ for some of the threads on the MIW: if a process of connection is not finished, short pieces of thread dangle from some of the pins. Loose ends re-emphasize the processual character of diagrammatic thinking as well as the materiality of the thread. The diagrammatic line becomes yarn again, which originally had none of the functions ascribed to it here,

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but because it is presented and used in the described manner, thread makes the pinboard legible as a diagrammatic construct, its connections interpretable as a visual grammar as it manifests the relations between the topologically placed objects. Because of the staging or artificiality of a TV series’ pinboard, loose ends are not coincidences but rather to be understood as another significant aspect of pinboarding. The dangling thread from any pinboard can therefore also be understood as an unfinished train of thought, an open investigation that needs more information in the form of pinboarding artifacts still to be continually added. In the context of a TV series, a loose end is also a promise of future revelations and a motivation for audiences to keep watching. The loose end is the pinboard’s serial cliffhanger, the “to be continued” of pinboarding. The presence of both connected thread and loose ends fabricates movement and stasis within the pinboard. Oltean described “the serial paradigm” as an alternation of movement and stasis, which is “media-centered and reader-oriented rather than author-centered” (1993, 13). “The paradigm implies audience participation, with intervals of gratification and interludes of anticipated gratification” (ibid.). The viewers are able to ‘connect the dots’ between the episodes, the narrative, and pinboarding. Moving the camera along the thread therefore can also be the ‘previously on’ of pinboarding, the clusters it crosses representing past episodes and the thread ending at the status quo of the storytelling. If adequately framed, pinboarding thread appeals to the viewer’s imagination to work with the seriality. Mittell states: Seriality itself encourages the inferred author function, making such inferences more prominent and vital. As discussed [before], serial form is defined by the gaps between installments, where viewers are forced to pause from the diegesis, and thus interrupting “downstream” immersion; such gaps are even more prominent in commercial television, where individual episodes are interrupted by commercial breaks. Studies of fan practices […] highlight how many viewers fill such story gaps with other ways of engaging with serialized narratives, often operating at both diegetic and meta-narrative levels of form and storytelling mechanics. (2015, 61)

From the standpoint of reception aesthetics, the gaps that are presented by series and by serial pinboarding, and their interruption or distortion through montage and cuts are thus highly suitable for this sort of viewer stimulation. So are incomplete pinboards or loose ends. A simultaneous attachment to and distance from the content and an almost scientific,

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analytic approach are furthermore both typical and necessary for contemporary TV audiences. Trinks is convinced that the contemporary viewer has practiced this way of watching television and that it has become a standard. This practice and familiarity also allow for new serial forms, where significant gaps or ellipses are left open for the viewer to fill, animating them to either research or produce the missing elements themselves. This kind of serial narrative is completed only through consumption, and producers cannot predict an outcome before the viewer has had a chance to ponder the product and the gaps and think about the loose ends (Cf. Trinks 2000). Perceiving, sensing, and understanding pinboarding can be summarized as the cognitive processes of pinboarding. Piecha writes, summarizing Arnheim’s understanding of cognition, that all perception shows characteristics of cognition while at the same time no real thinking would be possible without perception and sensual concepts (2004, 2). Thinking definitely includes objectives and abduction, but also subjective aspects of perception, association, and affect. A pinboard that aims to convey some sort of deductive result can never be fully planned, or rather pre-perceived, by its creators. Consequentially, not only images, dialogue, music, and framing have to be structured, but also the potential complex texts viewers navigate within. Producers must initiate these texts, make them twist, culminate, climax, trigger associations, meta-reflect on themselves or others, emphasize the memorable, and consider emotional and cognitive effects. The syntactic and preferred reading of a board is mostly supported by thread and lines within the pinboarding structure and by the camera’s framing and movement, imitating a character’s point of view of the board. In some cases, like Homeland’s first pinboarding scene, the camera obviously creates a visual, narrative succession of pinboarding images, directly conveying it to the viewer without even pretending to represent a character’s perception. When Boehm describes how a specific view presents itself to our sight, he explains how images in general are organized toward the eye and simultaneously look back at us (2007, 48). But his statement has to be multiplied when describing televised pinboards, which are images that are organized toward the eye and which are conveyed by TV images that are also organized toward the eye. When considering pinboards in TV series, the manner in which the pinboard is mediated to the viewer is essential, and the threads are often the pinboarding objects that emphasize the mediation process: What difference does it make whether the audience sees Peter, Mohinder, or Demetri tauten the thread or whether they watch

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the characters stumble into a room full of crossing threads like Hiro and Ando or Richard and Kate? In other words, are the viewers enabled to witness and follow the pinboarding practices? Can they understand the reasoning for the thread and comprehend the syntactic relations the lines relate to or are they thrown into an already interconnected system they will have to work hard to understand? Does the board relate to the viewers or is it a closed structure? In order to shed another light on this communication as well as the dots, the lines, and the gaps of pinboarding, I want to draw on Serres’ text The Communication Network: Penelope on pinboarding (2009).12 Serres describes a network with peaks, or hypotheses, which are arranged in no hierarchal structure and each have their own strength, that might vary over time. Between them run any number of paths, connecting two or more peaks with each other and transporting flows of determination, also changeable over time. The network thus creates its own interchangeable conditions, as peaks evolve only where paths cross but paths evolve only from peaks being relational. Similarities can be found within the Mosaic Investigation Wall. The peaks, in this case the pins, fulfill Serres’ criteria: none of them is more important than the others; at least a visually marked hierarchy is not detectable. If the peaks are understood as hypotheses, then the arguments for any hypothesis are clustered around it and realized and visualized in the form of the artifacts in close proximity to a pin. The objects as arguments quite figuratively ‘back up’ the hypothesis that is the peak. Serres writes that peaks and paths can have a big effect in certain areas, but a small effect in the larger context of the network. It can be argued however that this leads to some kind of hierarchy after all: If a peak can change in importance, depending whether it relates to itself, a partial locality, or the totality of the network (ibid.), then the smaller locality is part of the totality and thus secondary to it. For serial pinboarding this means that the idea of clusters that represent a specific episode can be supported by Serres’ idea of the partial locality, meaning the main element of an episode is the peak in a partial locality. It is prominently featured but surrounded by other elements that have been added in the same episode or that add to meaning of the peak artifact. The storyline is therefore directly represented—but spatially transformed and made visible on the pinboard. The space or partial space inhabited by the corresponding artifacts is the place in the visual dispositive of the series, visualizing its seriality on the surface. The images and thread belonging to

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the board’s ‘Blue Hand’ cluster would then be the partial locality ‘Blue Hand’. If this partial locality is no longer shown separately and becomes a part of the larger frame, its significance for the characters and the viewers has ended. It merges with the larger structure, where a thumbtack and a thread suffice to connect the area with the rest of the board, making it one of many peaks in the MIW. Serres emphasizes that every peak can be the starting point for multiple determinations, which can strongly differ in content and strength or may even be contradictory. For example, a criminal case board can show different scenarios that all start from the same peak/pin, even though they are contradictory to each other. Especially at the beginning of FlashForward’s narrative, neither the MIW’s peaks nor connections are conclusive and therefore leave room for interpretation. The threads are not directional arrows, the featured index cards are cryptic at best, and some of the elements seem incredibly random. Interestingly, this makes the MIW even more of a communication network in Serres’ sense, as he states that a classic communicational approach of sender and receiver, cause and effect does not work in his network. As the paths transport the determination potential between two peaks, even if one was the ‘causing’ peak and the other the ‘affected’ peak, the path runs both ways and would both change their determination: If the causal peak changes, the affected peak changes too. And because they are always reciprocally determined, the cause peak would simultaneously change in reaction to the changes of the affected peak. In televised serial pinboards, these constantly changing relations can be visualized by changes within the pinboarding structure. Adding objects to one cluster can shed an entirely new light on a connected cluster. These changes can of course be emphasized by the montage. Different shots of the pinboard in different states of densification reflect the progress of the board’s development as a communication network for the characters. Serres’ reflections on hypothesis points, densification, and local meanings seem especially plausible because he outlines them as spatial metaphors that allow for a spatial idea of the communication network to emerge in the reader’s imagination. The parallels to serial pinboarding are manifold and series like FlashForward are almost exemplary implementation of Serres’ thoughts. An additional theoretical approach that uses a spatial image of thought was conceived by Deleuze and Guattari, who in A Thousand Plateaus describe six principles of the rhizome (1987). Moving from fabled Penelope to a figure of thought drawn from botany, I want to

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explore whether these principles can help to describe the dispositive function of the pinboard. The first principle in the definition of the rhizome is connection, meaning that “any point of a rhizome can be connected to any other, and must be” (ibid., 7). The second principle is heterogeneity, meaning that these connections can be made between signs of different kinds. Both principles can certainly be attested to serial pinboarding. Connection in pinboards is either explicit though thread or lines or implicit through the pinboarding surface. How the items of a pinboard can be heterogenous has been shown in the previous chapters. Thirdly, the multiplicity principle describes one way of looking at a pinboard: as one substantive, as a whole structure, without a root, start, or focal point. There “are no points or positions in a rhizome, such as those found in a structure, tree, or root. There are only lines” (ibid., 8). This also means that multiplicities are flat and exist on a “plane of consistency” (ibid.), but “not in the sense of a homogeneity, but as a holding together of disparate elements” (ibid., X). Rhizomatic structures can also take any damage, tear, or stain, as they follow the fourth principle of the a-significant rupture. Some pinboards certainly follow this principle but most would suffer from destruction or tears, as the following chapter will show. The fifth and sixth principles concern cartography and decalcomania. The cartography principle advocates for making maps, rather than mere tracings (French: decalquer) that “copy something from a model” (ibid., XVI). To Deleuze and Guattari the map serves as an analogy for any rhizome: The map is open and connectable in all of its dimensions; it is detachable, reversible, susceptible to constant modification. It can be torn, reversed, adapted to any kind of mounting, reworked by an individual, group, or social formation. It can be drawn on a wall, conceived of as a work of art, constructed as a political action or as a meditation. (ibid., 12)

For pinboards in general, this image of thought is again applicable, even though this very flexible and open understanding of the map rhizome does not hold true for all televisual installations. Deleuze and Guattari’s description of the map rhizome is mostly concerned with its creation but also the reception of such a structure, characterized by endless possibilities to move around within the rhizome and the non-existence of dead ends. Interestingly, Rothemund has described comparable

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properties for Hiro Nakamura’s web (2013, 165). Murray inversely describes the rhizome with a verbal pinboarding metaphor: “Like a set of index cards, that have been scattered on the floor and then connected with multiple segments of tangled twine, they offer no end point and no way out” (1998, 132). Another example of a rhizomatic pinboard, that is a closed yet endless formation, can be found in FlashForward, and is intra-diegetically created by Mark’s antagonist Dyson Frost. As the leading scientist, responsible for the flash forwards, he has had a lot of insight into the future, which allows him to create an intricate board full of paths and bifurcations (see Fig. 5.4). Frost calls his board the “Garden of Forking Paths”, referencing a story of the same title by Argentinean writer Borges, one that can also shed a literary light on temporal pinboarding in general: A Chinese agent wants to deliver a message to the Germans during World War 1. He notices he is being followed by a British MI5 agent and takes a train to the countryside, where he wants to visit a sinologist. The sinologist is doing research on Ts’ui Pên, an ancestor of the Chinese agent, who wanted to write a vast and intricate novel and create a labyrinth equally as intricate and vast: “‘A labyrinth of symbols,’ he [the sinologist] corrected. ‘An invisible labyrinth of time’” (Borges 1962, 46). Through a letter fragment the sinologist

Fig. 5.4  Dyson Frost’s garden of forking paths, screenshot from FlashForward S01E17 (ABC 2010), TC 00:12:37

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understands that bifurcation does not happen in space but rather in time; even though the character for ‘time’ cannot be found written anywhere in the text it seems to be the answer to his question. The researcher explains: He [Ts’ui Pên] believed in an infinite series of times, in a growing, dizzying net of divergent, convergent and parallel times. This network of times which approached one another, forked, broke off, or were unaware of one another for centuries, embraces all possibilities of time. We do not exist in the majority of these times; in some you exist, and not I; in others I, and not you; in others, both of us. In the present one, which a favorable fate has granted me, you have arrived at my house; in another, while crossing the garden, you found me dead; in still another, I utter these same words, but I am a mistake, a ghost. (ibid., 49–50)

The parable’s foundational assumption that “each time a man is confronted with several alternatives, he chooses one and eliminates the others”  (ibid., 47), is comparable to the ‘many-worlds interpretation’ in quantum mechanics and Deleuze uses Borges’ story to illustrate the simultaneous existence of impossible worlds (2004, 111f). In mainstream media, the ‘parallel universe’ trope is present in fiction of all media: Digital texts can belong to the genre of ‘hypertext fiction’ and viewers can see the ‘alternate history’ concept rolled out in recent TV series like The Man in the High Castle (Spotnitz 2015–). FlashForward’s attempt, through the character of Dyson Frost, to visualize this concept by applying chalk and other pinboarding practices is nonetheless singular. Not even Hiro’s pinboarding shows this volume of potentialities. Despite the number of potentialities on Frost’s wall, he still manages to draw personal conclusions from his diagram. According to Schmidt-­ Burkhardt, all diagrams are open to interpretation and can be read from multiple angles. Similarly, pinboards offer various entry points and paths but no binding guide system. Instead, any conclusion is “a result of the reading. Each viewer choses their entry point and finds their own path” (Schmidt-Burkhardt 2012, 28 my translation). Even though televisual pinboards can have the same potential, they actually cannot, under any circumstances, be this open. There are at least four reasons for this. Firstly, the fictional characters as the primary creators and recipients of a series’ pinboard lack anything that could be considered free will. Secondly, television viewers are subordinate to the way the board is shown to them through the mise-en-scène, as well as the editing, which gives access to other perspectives with angles and framing. Therefore, the entry points as

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well as the paths though the diagrammatic pinboard are (pre-)determined for viewers. Thirdly, the designers and film crew’s choice of paths and entry points is determined by the storyline of a pinboarding series, created by writers and directors. Fourthly, the writers can only write about pinboarding paths that are narratively logical, technically doable, and follow the ‘rules of pinboarding’ as such. All of these aspects congregate in serial pinboarding and are especially prominent when considering threads and gaps. Also enlightening for this discourse and ‘tying in’ with the thread is the fact that texts and stories can be described as fabric, through which aspects of storytelling weave their thread, and in which each aspect is necessary to compose the finished fabric. Like Hiro, the viewer can, when aided by the camera, move into the fabric web of thread and explore different paths. Through the image of the woven net, pinboarding is again connected to transmedia storytelling, whose narratives have often been compared to intricately woven nets and even analyzed with network theory. Like a hyperlinked text, the viewer can jump between platforms, media, and content while continuously ‘reading’ the pinboard and moving along its threads. As mentioned before, Heroes is such a transmedia universe, in which pinboarding can be identified as a red thread weaving through many of the installations: Hiro’s net is also part of the graphic novels that also imitate the close-up shots of singular items in singular panels; Mohinder’s map was digitalized and accessible on NBC.com for viewers to research the characters’ background stories; the DVD commentary explains the set design, and in Dark Matter, Quentin creates an elaborate conspiracy theory with thread (which turns out to be accurate). The diegesis creates a widespread net in which pinboarding is a consistent factor and appears repeatedly and serially, just like a character or the diegesis’ basic myth. More generally speaking, pinboarding can be understood as a TV trope that appears across all genres, constantly perpetuating its own existence. It is its own widely spread net that studies like this can try to follow the thread into in order to actively understand it. This includes the consideration of the varying use of thread, not only as connectors on a plane pinboard but also instances in which thread is used to create spaces, which characters can walk into. One example of this kind of walk-in pinboard for the serial narrative can be found in Castle, even though none of the series’ three boards considered so far (precinct whiteboard, Kate Beckett’s murder board, and Richard Castle’s Beckett screen) use thread in a notable fashion. Yet there is a minor storyline in which a major thread construction appears.

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In season four, Kate and Richard are involved in an investigation that at first does not seem unusual for the homicide department. The story arc leading up to the pinboard of interest starts in the fifteenth episode, “Pandora”, and concludes in the next, “Linchpin” (S04E15, original air date: February 13, 2012; S04E16, original air date: February 20, 2012). It is explained through dialogue that a linchpin is an event that, if it comes to pass, triggers a series of other events. In this specific case the linchpin is a soon-to-be-dead informant, and the following events will plunge the US into World War III.  Later in the episode, Richard and Kate search the deceased’s apartment and look for “papers, computers, phone records, bills, anything that would help us figure out what he was up to” (S04E16, TC 00:17:52ff). When they find what they are looking for, it comes in an unexpected form: The walls of an entire room are covered with photos, newspaper clippings, documents, and post-its. Red, black, green, and blue thread runs from one point on the ceiling in all directions, creating something similar to a tent or a dome spider’s web. Paper is attached to the thread and objects are knotted into it. The tent-like shape allows Richard and Kate to easily walk into the pinboarding construction and take a closer look at the thread and the things it connects. The process of reading or understanding the room is cut in such a manner that the montage and the camera angles imitate a person moving through the net while the two characters are the stand-ins for the interpretation of the room’s meaning. Dramatic sound effects, quick cuts, and zooms support the images and Richard and Kate read some of the notes aloud to each other and hence the viewer, who is with them in the room and in the net thanks to the camera. The items pinned on the walls and to the thread refer to economic, political, historical, and scientific information that seems gloomy but does not necessarily make sense instantly, and Kate asks what “kind of an outcome was this linchpin supposed to create?” (ibid., TC 00:18:52ff) Thanks to the direction and structure of the thread, the results or conclusions the fictional creator of the web has drawn become clearly visible, first to Richard and then to Kate and the viewers: “WWIII.  August 2017  – U.S.  Surrenders” is written at the center of the densest section of the threads (Fig. 5.5). It seems that the set designers did not trust the visual impact and videre of their room, because they put a (rather unnecessary) post-it in the conclusion shot, that actually has “linchpin outcome” on it with two arrows pointing to the WWIII note, heavily emphasized by the camera’s zoom. It is possible that they were rushed to quickly bring their preferred reading

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Fig. 5.5  Linchpin Spiderweb, screenshot from Castle S04E16 (ABC 2012), TC 00:18:52

across, because the episode’s script has the room destroyed by a hand grenade only moments after Richard and Kate discover the conclusion. In fact, their entire scene in the room is only one and a half minutes long (ibid., TC 00:18:95–00:20:11). This extremely short appearance of such an elaborate pinboarding room and intricate net of thread seems extravagant if one imagines the amount of work that went into that room. Nonetheless the linchpin room is an excellent example: it is as if Kate and Richard step into the deceased’s mind and the thread represents his neuronal links and synapses that connect areas of the brain. Simultaneously, it is the classical conspiracy theory web, while narratively it is merely a clue that could have been delivered in any other form, such as a diary or a hard drive. But the character’s presence within the thread web creates a unique visual effect and meaning. And it shows that rooms filled with crisscrossing thread and ribbon can present not just temporal but also causal conglomerates.13 In this particular instance, though, the net seems gimmicky and the threads do not have the same sense of authenticity as in other examples, as countless intersections and threads could not be explored. As the series did not include the production process of this thread room, both its material status and its content seem less convincing. Still, examples like this

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accentuate possible variations of serial pinboarding, and the seemingly less important pinboarding scenes can illuminate central pinboarding practices. Once again, pinboarding and serial narrative are proven to go hand in hand, one being the cornerstone of the other. Without the series’ previous episodes, pinboarding could not have been established as a character trait of the protagonists. But in this case, by season four, Richard and Kate are well trained in epistemic pinboarding. They quickly understand the room with all its thread and connect the dots to their case.14 A Pinboarding Point of View At this point, a short tangent is necessary to explore an exemption from the serial pinboarding described until now. So far, the board, the objects, and serial pinboarding have been mainly described from the perspective of the onlooker, meaning the camera, the viewer, and the characters. From their perspective, lines and thread are the instruments to visualize deduction, the main tool of an externalized thought process, and the paths in the communication network. But what happens when the camera suddenly takes the wall’s point of view? In these scenes, the pinboarding person’s face is opposite the camera and they no longer function as placeholders for the viewers. Interestingly, the threads they are working with are often shown in the shot as well. In Gabriel’s rearrangement of the MIW, for example, the camera shows him holding the thread with his mouth before tautening another thread. The camera is positioned at a higher angle, filming him from above, a perspective never used when Mark or his colleagues worked on the board. From the wall’s point of view, he is a new pinboarder, but following this interpretation would mean anthropomorphizing the pinboard and there is no other inclination to do so. In Heroes, Mohinder decides to warn the evolved humans (found on his father’s map) of a serial killer in pursuit of them and their skills. In a shot that takes the map’s point of view he works with the post-its and threads run across his face (Vol01Ch11, original air date December 4, 2006, TC 00:14:26). The narrative significance of this shot could be that he has finally accepted his father’s work and is now part of the pinboard, or that he is now ‘roped’ into the conflicts and problems of the heroes. In Dark Matters, Quentin’s apartment gets overtaken by his conspiracy board, and so does the camera’s frame. Here, the connotation is clearly that of a spreading obsession, taking over his living space and his life, as well as the

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camera. When his ex-girlfriend comes over and finds him literally entangled in his pinboarding (Dark Matters 2015, chap. 5), most of their conversation is filmed from the point of view of Quentin’s board. The aesthetic effect of the thread crossing the camera’s frame and the characters’ faces and bodies is most easily created with three-dimensional walk-in structures, like Hiro’s web or the linchpin room described above. For plane pinboards to visually overlay with a character, a space in-between the thread and the pinboarding surface has to be simulated. Because this causes extra effort for the set designers, scenes that are filmed from the board’s point of view deserve special attention. These shots also separate the thread from other pinboarding objects: Filming through the thread means filming through a diffuse yet sheer layer—another in-between facilitated by pinboarding thread. The pinboarding point of view can also be used to withhold information from the viewers, when they do not see the exact changes on the board, and therefore is also a device to build suspense, especially stylistic devices of sharpness and blurring are also added. For the storytelling, too, the narrative motivations to create such an overlay are manifold. Hence it is exceptional scenes like these that allow a reflection on the rules of serial pinboarding. On the grounds of these exemptions and the previous considerations, and in conclusion of this chapter, the next section categorizes serial pinboarding into four general types.

Weaving Categories In an attempt to create a classification of pinboards regardless of the narrative use or depicted content, threads and lines can be a defining aspect. Depending on their presence, I want to distinguish the (1) pinboard collage, the (2) pinboard of linearity, the (3) bifurcating pinboard, and the (4) pinboarding web. The pinboard collage (1) is the assemblage of objects without a structuring thread or line. While the items can still be in meaningful spatial relations such as clusters or charts, the viewers’ eyes can roam freely. Understanding or visually deducing is usually harder here, as no thread creates a path through the pinned objects and information. Examples are Kate Beckett’s murder board, which is structured and linearized by the moving camera just like Carrie Mathison’s first board. Carrie’s second configuration is a good example of how the pinboarding elements them-

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selves can bring enough visual structure so that no thread or line is needed, by creating columns, for example. Pinboarding collages can also attribute mania or neurosis to their intra-diegetic creators, depending on how chaotic or organized a board appears. Linearity focused boards (2) are not as dependent on thread as they are on a linear directedness, on at least one vector or arrow pointing toward something. Commonly, the linear pinboard is usually concerned with time, though all pinboards have temporal aspects to them. Boards of this second category are often less about visual evidence than about creating order in the form of chronology or teleology. Collecting, archiving, sorting, and placing, and therefore grounding objects within the pinboarding meaning space, are their main functions. Considering the first two categories in their dispositive capacities suggests an allocation of the pinboard collage to series, while the board of linearity connects to serials. In this distinction, the former contains episodes that belong to the same diegesis, thus repeating places and characters, but lacks the progressive narrative of the latter.15 The serial’s longer story arcs also mean that pinboards of linearity can also include longer time spans. But this ascription is by no means binding and can easily be varied. The bifurcating pinboard (3) will typically visualize causal or hierarchic structures—from family trees to organization charts of criminal organizations. Parental elements spawning the next tier of items are usually connected by lines or thread and these pinboards depend heavily on them to convey relations. One of many examples can be found in Homeland’s very first configuration. Visual deduction here means following a step-by-step or layer-by-layer path through the tiers, paying varying attention to the levels crossed. The pinboarding web (4) is the pinboard category that is entirely dependent on thread or lines and, as the above examples might have suggested, also tends to be visually striking and confusing at the same time. The pinboarding web can be two- or three-dimensional as long as the visible lines branch and crisscross excessively. Following threads through the web is the method of deduction for this type of pinboard, certainly paying attention to crossings and intersections. Webs still have narrative and serial potential if the followed thread leads to nothing or only unsolvable knots. In order to apply these categories to an example, particular questions should be answered: What is the intra-diegetic frame of reference of the

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pinboard? What is its narrative function or mode of narration? How is its visual language or grammar presented to the viewer? How does the board become or represent the series’ dispositive? And lastly, how do these aspects become apparent and how do they mix or contradict each other? While the categories can answer these questions and describe different pinboards, it has to be stressed that none of the categories ever appear in pure form. Rather, they mix and add to each other, even though one might be a pinboard’s primary category. It could, for example, be argued that any thread that crosses another item on the board, whether it visualizes a bifurcation or a timeline, constitutes a net-like effect. As mentioned above, the crossings, knots, junctions, and points of contact between threads and with other objects add another level of information. Serres’ communication network or a ‘rhizomatic approach’ are certainly possible theoretical approaches, as they work very well with some pinboarding structures, especially those including threads. It has become clear that even thread-less pinboarding collages can have peaks in Serres’ sense, drawing invisible lines between objects. In an analysis of serial pinboarding, the boards’ structure and implicit grammar therefore demand attention, as well as the narrative connotations of objects, pinboarders, and pinboarding practices. Furthermore, an interpretation of camera work and montage is compulsory. Especially the staging of TV’s pinboarding thread could lead to understanding many other, less striking, scenes of serial pinboarding. To that end, research approaches of visual language studies, cognitive perception, or eye tracking would certainly be able to further examine the thread in pinboards and the pinboarding in television. Diagrammatic ­analysts could describe each board in more detail to explain the graphic and diagrammatic effects, as any “diagram [is] composed principally of spots and of lines connecting certain of the spots” (Peirce 1906, 504). Studying serial pinboarding seems almost as continuous as the research subject. Still, when the pinboarding characters have explored all relevant paths and threads, or when too many objects clutter the view of the pinboard, even the longest lasting board may be destroyed. The shows’ various modes of destroying serial pinboarding are one focal point of the next chapter, as are the instances of wandering narratives and transmedia pinboarding.

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Notes 1. Objects that do not fit onto the pinboard then cannot be considered: if they do not fit into the ‘big picture’ they are unnecessary information, if they do not ‘fit’ on the material surface, they cannot be part of the narrative. 2. It does not matter if the pins have a pointy end or are magnetic. Some of their functions can also be achieved by strips of tape, but tape clearly misses the aspect of penetrating the surface and the potential to be an anchor point for string. In Castle, the items are stuck with tape to the window (so that the surface again conditions the attaching material) or magnets hold objects to the precinct’s whiteboard. These pinning derivations also include digital or simulated pins in digital pinboards, where they become a symbol representing the pins’ functionality. As long as they can be moved, they provoke instability and the potential for change. 3. The ‘Google maps push pin’ is probably most recognizable in this field and has even been incorporated in art installations, as, for example, in Aram Bartholl: Map, 2006–2011, a public installation in various cities. 4. The possibility to enact violence on a person’s picture has been used, for instance, in One Hour Photo, where Sly scratches away the face of the father from all the family photos after he discovers his adultery. 5. Like in German art historian Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas, which clustered almost 1000 items on 40 panels, headlined “Vehicles of tradition” or “Irruption of antiquity”. Warburg’s hope was “that the beholder would respond with the same intensity to the images of passion or of suffering, of mental confusion or of serenity, as he had done in his work” (Gombrich 1986, 287). The full impact of this could only be achieved through the arrangement. 6. For example, in the works of Ariane Litman, Lucy McKenzie, or Chiharu Shiota. 7. Network theory, for example, as a method to study graphs and visualize relations, and the adjacent ‘link analysis’, are employed by various US government agencies, both real and fictional. But instead of a pinboard with thread, government institutions like the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC) access their database digitally and work discreetly. In contrast, fictional TV investigators like Carrie and the Mosaic Investigation team need to share their work with the camera and the viewers. 8. The ‘case’ is that a pie was thrown at Leslie at a political rally, which Andy/ Burt now enthusiastically investigates. He finds the perpetrator and his intended target (not Leslie). The board is here merely a visual gimmick or rather one of the many pinboarding parodies in Parks and Recreation, which will be elaborated in Chap. 7.

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9. Bergson, who famously developed a philosophical concept of duration (french: la durée), used the image of spots, lines, and tracks to explain his understanding of the term: “Instead, let us imagine an infinitely small piece of elastic, contracted, if that were possible, to a mathematical point. Let us draw it out gradually in such a way as to bring out of the point a line which will grow progressively longer. Let us fix our attention not on the line as line, but on the action which traces it. Let us consider that this action, in spite of its duration, is indivisible if one supposes that it goes on without stopping; that, if we intercalate a stop in it, we make two actions of it instead of one and that each of these actions will then be the indivisible of which we speak; that it is not the moving act itself which is never indivisible, but the motionless line it lays down beneath it like a track in space” (2007, 138). 10. It is noteworthy that this is not an ‘immediate’ impression. Immediacy is in this case a problematic term, as it etymologically refers to a non-mediated occurrence, which on theoretical principle is both unlikely and unacceptable to the author. Any image is mediated by its carrier material, be it a canvas or a screen or a cork board, and it could be argued that it only becomes an image when looked at, so that the mediating human senses or organs cannot be excluded either. This does not deny a potential instant visual impact, which to many viewers certainly includes an instantaneous ‘understanding’ of the image, or at least the spatial relations of the items and objects it shows. 11. I am convinced that the notion of a passive audience never applies, neither to TV audiences nor any other, but that there are degrees of activeness or involvement of audiences and media. 12. Very loosely based on Greek mythology, where Penelope is Odysseus’ wife, who waits 20 years for her husband’s return and delays all suitors by pretending to have to finish weaving a shroud. For three years, she undoes her work every night so that no other man can wed her. Eventually Odysseus returns and they are reunited. Penelope, according to Serres, weaves her own discourses and itinerary. 13. Another effect of this thread room is a commentary on the fictional creator’s state of mind: in Castle the room has a manic or crazy connotation while Heroes gives more of a reasoning for this kind of structure so that the room is created out of desperation and less out of obsession. 14. Investigators with a different work practice could have been shown to struggle a lot more with this kind of pinboarding. Just imagine Adrian Monk (Breckman and Hoberman 2002–2009) and how overwhelming this room might be for him. On the other hand, any team from the CSI franchise would probably just as naturally ‘read’ this pinboard and connect the dots to their case.

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15. Dolan (1995) distinguishes between the ‘episodic series’ and the ‘sequential series’ (individual stories per episode versus overarching storylines connecting multiple episodes) starting in the 1980s, which could also be matched to (1) and (2). Later, Hagedorn describes the series/serial hybrid which would probably be best associated with (3) (1996). The so-called complex TV (Cf. Mittell 2015) would then be ascribed to (4). Rothemund, for example, calls Hiro’s net an “installation”, “which symbolically emphasizes the maze-like structure of HEROES” (2013, 164–6).

References Albera, François, and Maria Tortajada. 2015. The Dispositive Does Not Exist! In Cine-Dispositives. Essays in Epistemology Across Media, ed. François Albera and Maria Tortajada, 21–44. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Ang, Ien. 1991. Desperately Seeking the Audience. New York: Routledge. Bauer, Matthias, and Christoph Ernst. 2010. Diagrammatik: Einführung in ein kultur- und medienwissenschaftliches Forschungsfeld. Bielefeld: Transcript. Bergson, Henri. 2007. The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics [1946]. Mineaola: Dover. Boehm, Gottfried. 2007. Wie Bilder Sinn Erzeugen. Die Macht Des Zeigens. Berlin: Berlin University Press. Bogen, Steffen. 2005. Schattenriss Und Sonnenuhr: Überlegungen Zu Einer Kunsthistorischen Diagrammatik. Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte 68 (2): 153–176. Borges, Jorge Luis. 1962. The Garden of Forking Paths. In Ficciones, ed. Jorge Luis Borges and Anthony Kerrigran, 39–51. New York: Grove Press. Braga, Brannon, and David S. Goyer. 2009. FlashForward. New York City: ABC. Breckman, Andy, and David Hoberman. 2002. Monk. New  York City: USA Network. Daniels, Greg, and Michael Schur. 2009. Parks & Recreations. New  York City: NBC. DarkMatters. 2015. IOS/Android. New York City: NBC Universal Media. Deleuze, Gilles. 2004. Difference and Repetition. London: A&C Black. Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Dipert, Randall. 2004. Peirce’s Deductive Logic: Its Development, Influence, and Philosophical Significance. In The Cambridge Companion to Peirce, ed. Cheryl Misak, 287–324. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Doherty, Robert. 2012. Elementary. New York City: CBS. Dolan, Marc. 1995. The Peaks and Valleys of Serial Creativity: What Happened to/on Twin Peaks. In Full of Secrets. Critical Approach to Twin Peaks, ed. David Lavery, 30–50. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. https://muse.jhu.edu/ chapter/247167

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Doyle, Arthurs Conan. 2001. The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. Florence/ Milan: Giunti. Ewenstein, Boris, and Jennifer Whyte. 2009. Knowledge Practices in Design: The Role of Visual Representations as ‘Epistemic Objects’. Organization Studies 30 (1): 7–30. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840608083014. Fiske, John. 1992. Audiencing: A Cultural Studies Approach to Watching Television. Poetics 21 (4): 345–359. https://doi.org/10.1016/0304422X(92)90013-S. Gatiss, Mark, and Steven Moffat. 2010. Sherlock. London: BBC. Gombrich, Ernst. 1986. Aby Warburg: An Intellectual Biography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Gordon, Howard, and Alex Gansa. 2011. Homeland. New York City: Showtime. Hagedorn, Roger. 1996. Doubtless to be Continued. A Brief History of Serial Narrative. In To Be Continued… Soap Operas Around the World, ed. Robert Clyde Allen, 27–48. London/New York: Routledge. Hayward, Jennifer. 1997. Consuming Pleasures: Active Audiences and Serial Fictions from Dickens to Soap Opera. Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky. Heßler, Martina, and Dieter Mersch, eds. 2009. Logik des Bildlichen: Zur Kritik der ikonischen Vernunft. Bielefeld: Transcript. Holub, Robert C. 2013. Reception Theory. New York: Routledge. Jenkins, Henry. 2013. Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. Updated 20th Anniversary ed. New York: Routledge. Jenner, Mareike. 2017. Binge-Watching: Video-on-Demand, Quality TV and Mainstreaming Fandom. International Journal of Cultural Studies 20 (3): 304–320. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367877915606485. Krämer, Sybille. 2009. Operative Bildlichkeit. Von der ‘Grammatologie’ zu einer ‘Diagrammatologie’? Reflexionen über erkennendes ‘Sehen’. In Logik des Bildlichen: Zur Kritik der ikonischen Vernunft, ed. Martina Heßler and Dieter Mersch, 94–122. Bielefeld: Transcript. ———. 2010. Epistemology of the Line. Reflections on the Diagrammatical Mind. In Studies in Diagrammatology and Diagram Praxis, ed. Olga Pombo and Alexander Gerner, 13–38. London: College Publications. ———. 2013. Simultaneität, Synchronizität, Serie. Über Die Diagrammatische Produktion Neuer Einsichten. Presented at Bis auf Weiteres. Pinnwand und Serie, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, November 28. Kring, Tim. 2006. Heroes. New York City: NBC. Latour, Bruno. 1986. Visualisation and Cognition: Drawing Things Together. Knowledge and Society Studies in the Sociology of Culture Past and Present 6: 1–40. Magnani, Lorenzo. 2013. Thinking Through Drawing. The Knowledge Engineering Review 28 (03): 303–326. https://doi.org/10.1017/S026988891300026X. Marlowe, Andrew W. 2009. Castle. New York City: ABC.

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Mellencamp, Patricia. 1990. Logics of Television: Essays in Cultural Criticism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Mittell, Jason. 2012. Forensic Fandom and the Drillable Text. Spreadable Media. http://spreadablemedia.org/essays/mittell/ ———. 2015. Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. New York: NYU Press. Murray, Janet H. 1998. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. Cambridge: MIT Press Ltd. Nelson, Robin. 1997. TV Drama in Transition: Forms, Values and Cultural Change. Houndsmill/New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Niño, Douglas. 2014. 56. Peirce’s Abduction. In Charles Sanders Peirce in His Own Words, ed. Torkild Thellefsen and Bent Sorensen, 353–357. Berlin/ Boston: De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781614516415.353. Oltean, Tudor. 1993. Series and Seriality in Media Culture. European Journal of Communication 8 (5): 5–31. Pearce, Susan Mary. 1995. On Collecting. An Investigation into Collecting in the European Tradition. London/New York: Routledge. Peirce, Charles. 1906. Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmatism. The Monist 16 (4): 492–546. Piecha, Alexander. 2004. Die Kunst Der Wahrnehmung. Die Wahrnehmung Der Kunst. In Rudolf Arnheim Oder Die Kunst Der Wahrnehmung, ed. Christian G. Allesch, 53–58. Wien: Maudrich. Quintas-Froufe, Natalia, and Ana González-Neira. 2014. Active Audiences: Social Audience Participation in Television. Comunicar 22 (43): 83–90. https://doi. org/10.3916/C43-2014-08. Rancière, Jacques. 2009. The Emancipated Spectator. London: Verso. Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg. 1997. Toward a History of Epistemic Things. Synthesizing Proteins in the Test Tube. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ———. 2010a. An Epistemology of the Concrete: Twentieth-Century Histories of Life. Durham/London: Duke University Press. ———. 2010b. On Historicizing Epistemology. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Ritchie, Guy. 2009. Sherlock Holmes. Los Angeles: Silver Pictures. Rothemund, Kathrin. 2013. Komplexe Welten: Narrative Strategien in US-Amerikanischen Fernsehserien. Berlin: Bertz + Fischer. Sachs-Hombach, Klaus, and Klaus Rehkämper. 2004. Bild – Bildwahrnehmung – Bildverarbeitung. Wiesbaden: Deutscher Universitäts Verlag. Schmidt-Burkhardt, Astrit. 2012. Die Kunst der Diagrammatik: Perspektiven eines neuen bildwissenschaftlichen Paradigmas. Bielefeld: Transcript. Scholz, Sebastian. 2008. Sichtbarkeit aus dem Labor: Mediengeschichtliche Anmerkungen zum epistemischen Bild. Presented at the GFM “Was wissen Medien?,” Bochum.

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Serres, Michel. 2009. The Communication Network: Penelope. Filozofia 64 (5): 474–480. Smith, Greg M. 2006. A Case of Cold Feet: Serial Narration and the Character Arc. Journal of British Cinema and Television 3 (1): 82–94. https://doi. org/10.3366/JBCTV.2006.3.1.82. Spotnitz, Frank. 2015. The Man in the High Castle. Santa Monica: Amazon Studios. Steinbach, Ernst. 1931. Der Faden der Schicksalsgottheiten. Dissertation, Mittweida. https://www.zvab.com/buch-suchen/titel/der-faden-der-schicksalsgottheiten/ Stjernfelt, Frederik. 2000. Diagrams as Centerpiece of a Peircean Epistemology. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 36 (3): 357–384. Thaliath, Babu. 2003. Visuelle Erkenntnis. Der Modus Geometrischer Erkenntnisse. Freiburg: Freiburg Universität. Trinks, Jürgen. 2000. Faszination Fernsehen: die Bedeutung des medialen Weltbezugs für den Menschen der Gegenwart. Frankfurt a.M: Peter Lang. von Goethe, Johann Wolfgang. 1900. Elective Affinities. A Novel. New York: Collier. Wentz, Daniela. 2017. Bilderfolgen: Diagrammatologie der Fernsehserie. Paderborn: Fink. Wenz, Karin. 2009. Linguistik/Semiotik. In Raumwissenschaften, ed. Originalausgabe Stephan Günzel, 208–224. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag. Yoo, Hyun-Joo. 2007. Text, Hypertext, Hypermedia: ästhetische Möglichkeiten der digitalen Literatur mittels Intertextualität, Interaktivität und Intermedialität. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. Zedelmaier, Helmut. 2002. Buch, Exzerpt, Zettelschrank, Zettelkasten. In Archivprozesse: Die Kommunikation Der Aufbewahrung, ed. Hedwig Pompe and Leander Scholz, 38–53. Köln: DuMont.

CHAPTER 6

Pinboarding Spin-Offs

Serial pinboarding as a processual practice can be continued in remakes, remodels, and re-mediations. Sometimes this means a board has to end first, before it can reappear somewhere else in the show or even outside of it. The following chapter will consider ‘re’-pinboarding from different angles and focus especially on the changes which inevitably occur. The “re-mediations” described hereafter deserve special attention, because they are rarely frictionless1 and because they significantly contribute to the understanding of pinboarding as inherently serial. Different endings, transmedia storytelling, fans and parodies each attribute different aspects to ‘Pinboarding Spin-Offs’.

Remakes and End Serial pinboarding as explored in and understood here ties pinboarding to seriality as much as the serial dispositive can be tied to pinboarding. Thinking about the end(s) of a pinboard hence also means thinking about the end(s) of (a) TV series. As a result, both the end of a show, whether planned or canceled, and the end of its pinboarding need to be regarded in close connection to each other. Some pinboards just vanish or do not reappear, but if a pinboard has been important to the diegesis and the storytelling, its destruction or dismantling can illuminate the seriality principles as well as contribute to the narrative.

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Televised pinboards are usually destroyed when they have fulfilled their epistemic function, after the ‘case is closed’ and the board is no longer needed. If they are disintegrated before that, the goal of the board might not have been reached and the narrative can keep going, revolving around the same problem, case, or riddle. In such a case, a remade pinboard can also be a narratively useful and analytically interesting option as explained in the following. Acceptable Solutions If the pinboard is concluded and the epistemic expectation has been fulfilled, the series need to present a scene of realization. This can be triggered by a final piece of evidence or maybe someone has an epiphany where the puzzle pieces suddenly all fall into place and the proverbial scales fall from their eyes. This kind of epiphany is famously staged in the Usual Suspects (Singer 1996), where the camera’s scan of the pinboard imitates the detective’s point of view in the moment of realization about the criminals’ elaborate lie. In scenes like this, the conclusiveness of the board is very important: There cannot be sudden changes in the board or logical flaws. Like in a mind game movie (Cf. Elsaesser 2009), the solution has to have been there all along, or viewers will be frustrated: “So rather than being predictable, a conclusion must be acceptable. Looking back from the conclusion to the episodes leading up to it, we have to be able to say that this ending required these sorts of events and this chain of actions” (Ricoeur 2004, 332). Films and series, like classical text, “must as Barthes shows, keep [their] enigmas alive until the end but in so doing attempt to ‘lie as little as possible’” (Branigan 1984, 180). Correspondingly, pinboards need to be just as acceptable in their solutions and the pinboarding has to be retraceable through the previous episodes. Contemporary means of TV series’ distribution and accessibility, and the trend toward ‘binge-­ watching’, also mean that the series’ (visual) statements must be steadfast even under the scrutiny of back-to-back episodes and rewinds, repetitions, and discussions. This necessary attention to detail and accuracy certainly extends from the series in general to pinboards. If they are visible and characters deduce something from them, the deduction has to actually be possible even if the deducing character is a Holmesian genius. The theories and forecasts developed during previous episodes need to at least be plausible. All pinboarding operations should be verifiable by interested viewers, who might

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choose to “drill” deep into the series of their interest (Cf. Mittell 2012). This means any deduction that might solve a show’s case or problem must be inherently present and epistemically achievable by pinboarding, including the ending. Eco explains: “The end of the text not only confirms or contradicts the last forecasts, but also authenticates or in-authenticates the whole system of long-distance hypotheses hazarded by the reader about the final state of the fabula” (1984, 32). Long-distance hypotheses and their confirmation and contradiction seem to be especially applicable to FlashForward (Braga and Goyer 2009–2010). Here the viewers’ forecasting is heavily encouraged and aided by the visions of the finished pinboard. In his vision, however, Mark also saw armed men sneaking into the FBI building. These men significantly relate to the series’ end and to the end of pinboarding. Lasers and Bullets FlashForward’s last episode “Future Shock” (S01E22, original air date: May 27, 2010) brings the storyline to April 29, the day foreseen in all visions. At the end of the episode, Mark’s vision of masked men and target lasers that cross the room like red thread comes true. In the pilot episode, this is where the vision ended, so that neither Mark nor the viewers could predict the total destruction of the Mosaic Investigation Wall (MIW) in the ensuing gunfight’s hail of bullets. In these last moments, the pinboard’s fundamental materiality appears clearer than ever before, when torn shreds of paper and bits of cork fly through the air in slow motion (ibid., TC 00:30:00f). In its destruction, the image-meaning system MIW dissolves into debris and the serial pinboarding stops. Any epistemic or diagrammatic processes of seeing and thinking are terminated both abruptly and irretrievably. Nothing could cement the idea that the pinboard is the dispositif of the series further: FlashForward and the MIW end/die at the same time, neither can exist without the other. The series has come to an end, the pinboard cannot become anything else, and no seriality can be visualized or created anymore as its spatial dispositive has ceased to exist. One series, 22 episodes, 6 months, 3 sheets of cork, countless objects, pins, and thread— annihilated simultaneously. The show’s one season started and ended with the existence of the Mosaic Investigation Wall, encouraging the understanding of the pinboard as the dispositive of the show’s serial structure. Intra-diegetically this destruction is irreversible, the only option for the

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epistemic work to continue would be through one of the remakes (see section “Remakes and End”). Extra-diegetically the end might be reversible, or rather postponed at the viewers’ discretion—for the viewer the board can be rebuilt anytime, if they re-watch previous episodes and thus jump back in story-time. The wall’s end can also be read as a parallel with Mark’s fate, who assumedly also died, though he manages to shoot the intruders and makes an attempt to get out of the FBI building. But then the building explodes, right before another tunnel of flashing images suggests that there has been a second flash forward, just as Gabriel’s scavenger hunt led Mark to discover. The acceleration of events has led to turbulence that has violently terminated the folded time that became visible on the pinboard. By denying the pinboard to continue its own folding process, its destruction also wiped out any thinkable end or conclusion. With Mark’s death, the MIW’s main pinboarder cannot continue his work with the board and also disappears. The same is true for other FlashForward characters and their boards: Dyson Frost and his chalk board also end almost simultaneously. Like the biblical ‘writing on the wall’, Frost’s notation of the future is concerned with his life expectancy; it is a prophecy manifested in chalk on a huge board. It is a visual metaphor for the characters’ storylines, and even seriality. Each episode results in bifurcations of possible next episodes, continuously perpetuating. When Frost dies, a mechanism is triggered that washes the wall clean of all chalk paths, also wiping out any further bifurcations. These examples from FlashForward do not mean that a pinboarder’s death also brings about the end of their board—even though this is an effective option for the storytelling. But other boards, like that in Grimm (Carpenter and Greenwalt 2008–2017), for example, survive their makers and are passed on to other characters, transporting their comprised information to different circumstances, places, and installments. Continuations or delayed ends can keep the serial pinboarding going, like a cliffhanger or an unfulfilled happy ending. Hiltunen explains in his book on TV dramaturgy that “only when the scene is over with a happy ending can they [the viewers] walk away from their television sets. But if you are the program maker, that is exactly what you do not want to happen” (2002, 85). A pinboard’s happy ending would mean the fulfillment of its epistemic expectations, a contradiction to the constant evolvement of pinboards as well as to seriality’s potential endlessness. This contradiction might be the reason why serial pinboards, unlike boards that illustrate the murder-of-­ the-week, are rarely really concluded. In fact, serial pinboards are

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­ articularly used to visualize and serialize, which means “to ensure that no p solution/ending will be expected or delivered, or if found will only lead to the discovery of a larger crime that subsumes the earlier solved mystery” (Hague 1995, 143). Seriality plays with instant gratification and long-­ term expectations by regulating “the pace of circulation and intensity of short-term gratifications” (Nelson 1997, 159). Pinboards as dispositives of serial constructs are part of that play and so are their endings. Violent destructions thus always mark meaningful moments in a TV series that demand close attention, whether the board is destroyed with lasers and bullets as seen in FlashForward, or with bare hands as will be described in the following. Rips and Tears Serializing through pinboards and the evasion of an end are principles at work in Homeland (Gordon and Gansa 2011–). Nonetheless the series provides different variations of ending pinboarding processes and/or destroying the pinboard itself. The first configuration of Carrie Mathison’s board ends when she takes down the images of Sergeant Brody. The scene is rather meditative; Carrie seems to be contemplating her investigation’s failure, the camera moves slowly and steadily while she reveals the empty surface underneath (S01E05, original air date: October 30, 2011, TC 00:48:00f). By the end of the scene, the pinboard is left bare and stays like this until Saul and Carrie’s collaborative pinboarding described before. As regards serial pinboarding, both instances are resets of the board and reemphasize the pinboard’s role as a medium of memory. The configurations will be remembered by the show and by the audience, even though the artifacts and their particular arrangement are gone. A pinboarding surface that is reset draws attention to its potentiality while its embeddedness in the series also suggests new possible directions in storytelling and plot development. Any new investigative approach seems to demand an abolishment of the previous configuration on the board. The board in turn then does not fulfill its epistemic potential but rather effectuates the continued pinboarding. In Homeland’s case it allows for the second configuration to be built and to be an entirely different arrangement. Not only is the timetable different to the first, photo-based board—its destruction is also very different and takes place only a few episodes after the first reset: Carrie’s boss David Estees barges into her home with a couple of men and orders them to

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“strip it” (S01E11, original air date: December 11, 2011, TC 00:52:41f). When Carrie runs in and sees what they are doing, she shouts in a panic how meaningful the board is and that she is “about to solve this”. Regardless, the agents violently strip the board of all the collected and colored documents and leave both Carrie and her pinboard shattered.2 The connection between Carrie’s board and her mental state and thought processes is again shown to be closely related. In addition to making space for new pinboarding by ending the old, a pinboarder’s misunderstood or unrecognized genius can also be the reason for destruction. In these instances, some kind of external force or power typically declares the pinboarder to be a fanatic and/or mentally ill. To be more precise, the destroying party then either understands the board and deems its creator dangerous or does not understand but fear the board’s potential. Either way, they conclude that the board needs to be taken down and the creator taken into custody or at least be stopped from reproducing the pinboard. Here, Carrie’s colleagues in the CIA decide to tame her work. But just as her medicine can only stabilize and not cure her bipolar disorder, her superiors can only contain her pinboarding and not end it. Dormant but still present, both work their way back to her mind’s ‘surface’ and therefore also to the TV series’ images. The end of pinboarding is an illusion, and Carrie’s storyline continues regardless. The ever-latent pinboarding might also be why, for the last configuration of Carrie’s living room board, neither beginning nor end is shown within the series. This last configuration, with the ‘Where is Brody?’ map, appears in season three’s first episode, as if it were assembled during the show’s hiatus. In the last episode, Carrie and the viewers witness Brody’s hanging in Iran. When the storytelling jumps ahead four months, Carrie’s living room has been cleared both of the map and of the cork boards that formed the base of Homeland’s pinboarding. It is painted and more black-­ and-­white decorative picture frames are in its place. Here it is not the pinboarder who dies, but their focus and main intent. With Brody’s death, any reason for her to keep pinboarding in the manner she has for three seasons dies, too. Homeland’s subsequent serial pinboarding is created and ended in a less prominent fashion. Often the pinboarding spaces, like season five’s wood cabin, are merely not revisited—indicating that Carrie’s pinboarding moves through all settings and seasons and can indefinitely resurface with her. Homeland uniquely balances the board’s beginnings and endings, serially maintaining itself and its pinboarding in mutual perpetuation.

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Cutting All Ties If in Homeland the same medium is used for various content, one only beginning after the other has ended (like TV series’ episodes) and the elements always being remixes of previous installments (like TV series), then how does a show like Heroes (Kring 2006–2010), with so many different pinboards, deal with endings and destruction? Hiro’s pinboarding work, like Carrie’s, is destroyed by government agents. In the diegesis’ dystopian future, Mohinder Suresh works as an advisor to President Nathan Petrelli, who is hunting down the evolved heroes. Mohinder analyzes Hiro’s net, explaining that Hiro was looking to change the past and searched for the exact moment to do so with his pinboarding. To prove his point and to demonstrate the interconnectedness of the character’s paths, Mohinder cuts the black string representing Sylar. Immediately most of the other strings and the attached objects fall to the ground. Unfortunately, cutting the strings has no consequences, even if it makes a strong visual statement. On the other hand, the swiftness of this destruction emphasizes the construct’s material-based fragility and allows the question whether the lack of a supporting pinboarding surface made Hiro’s net potentially more vulnerable. Peter Petrelli’s map and string construction is not shown to have a particular end. However, his later newspaper wall (Vol05Ch02-Vol05Ch08) is taken down while Noah Bennet is shown putting up a new wall, so that once again one board’s end means the start of a new one, and Heroes demonstrates the seriality of its pinboarding. Suresh’s map is yet another pinboarding entity with yet another kind of ending. Multiple versions of the map are made (see Chap. 2, Sect. “Heroes: Maps of the Earth and Webs of Time”), and frequently one material form has to end before the map appears in another installment. Like the circular rebirth of a series, the information and knowledge stay intact even though the medium of the current pinboard is destroyed. Heroes actually reflects on the different modes of destroying a pinboard, when Mohinder finds a version of the map and a room with graphomanic wall writing in Sylar’s place (Vol1Ch03, original air date: October 9, 2006, TC 00:21.20f). At the end of the episode, Mohinder wants to show police officers the evidence but the place has been cleared out entirely (ibid., TC 00:39:58f). While Mohinder is embarrassed and confused, this scene draws attention to the fact that erasing the two kinds of walls required different operations: while the printed map only needed to be taken off the wall, the written words needed to be painted over. Sylar’s obsession room

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cannot be reproduced and neither is it portable, but the map could have been unrolled and continued elsewhere, reemphasizing its function as a mobile base layer for pinboarding and a serial entity. Depending on their material state and the tools and actions of destruction, some boards are irrevocably destroyed while others persevere. A similarly ambiguous end is the deletion of Richard Castle’s digital board about Kate and her mother’s murder. In Castle’s (Marlowe 2009–2016) fourth season, he is disheartened and the investigation stuck, enough reason for Richard to move the “Beckett” file on his touch screen into the digital trash can. While the gesture is telegenic and the montage effective, the deletion of his board is not final: it can be assumed that audiences are aware of the possibility for digital files to be retrieved, so that the moment of destruction is also a moment of potential continuation—like in a TV series, where the episode or season’s end is always also potentially the starting point for perpetuation. Digital pinboarding would generally be hard to irretrievably destroy, as a broken screen is easily replaceable and data can be stored in ‘the cloud’, waiting to be opened another time and/ or place. In that, pinboards, and especially digital pinboards, are always also a promise “that pleasure does not have to end after the lights go up or the series finale airs, that limits can always be exceeded by what the immediate future will bring if only the viewer will return” (Klein and Palmer 2016, 6). Particularly the less violent pinboarding ends, which represent storage rather than destruction, therefore play into the dispositive relation between pinboard and seriality. Turning back to Heroes this becomes even more obvious: In the first volume’s eighth chapter (original air date: November 13, 2006), Mohinder returns to India for his father’s funeral. He contemplates giving up the work and takes the map off the wall, exposing it as just a large piece of paper when he crumbles it into a box, once again directing attention to the materiality of the pinboard in the moment of demolition. Many chapters later, Sylar starts cooperating with Mohinder under an alias and they go and meet people from the list of skilled people and the corresponding map. Unfortunately, as Sylar kills evolved humans to take their skills for himself, the map leads him right to them. In an attempt to stop the serial killing Mohinder knocks Sylar out, using his father’s map that, rather surprisingly, turns out to be pinned onto a pinboard on wheels (Vol1Ch19, original air date: April 23, 2007, TC 00:13:33). Sylar collapses and lands unconscious on top of the map, the threads are dangling down, and the map has ceased to be a pinboard. Again, the moment of destruction

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emphasizes the board’s materiality. In this case, the surface as such is not destroyed, but its spatial orientation is changed. The map is on the floor, the pinboard no longer vertically in front of the hero’s eyes but horizontally under the villain’s back. In this ‘position’ it can then move through the series and be re-erected elsewhere. In the process of becoming a pinboarding entity, the map temporarily stabilizes in different realizations, never fully done, always becoming, and thus never really ending. Just as Heroes as a multiplicity dispersed across textual boarders and medial forms, serial pinboarding can be dispersed across the narrative universe, continuing even further rather than ending. At the End of the Rope The four main examples already offer at least seven possible ways to end pinboarding: concluded dismantling, disappointed dismantling, authority dismantling, temporary stowage, resigned deletion, demonstrative destruction, and violent destruction. A broader approach will certainly add to these, such as comedic destruction, for example, when Sheldon Cooper throws his whiteboard out of the window to start a new one, instead of cleaning it (Lorre and Prady 2007 S3E14, original air date: February 1, 2010). Or defeated destruction when Philipp Anderson, the leader of the Sherlock Holmes ‘fan club’ in “The Empty Hearse”, realizes he might have been tricked and takes down his pinboarded investigation into Holmes’ faked death while crying and muttering (Gatiss and Moffat 2010–2017, S03E01, original air date: January 1, 2014). To all these actions of ending, the material status of the board is indispensably important, as it conditions the characters’ (inter-)actions with the board and its objects during the processes of dissipating. Just like a series, which is potentially endless, a pinboard could be continued forever. In actuality, however, both end. What runs through all media and stories are nonetheless seriality as a pinboarding principle and pinboarding as a serial practice. Seriality is positively enhanced when the pinboarding leads to new knowledge that propels the storytelling forward and negatively enhanced when the pinboard is destroyed before its purpose is reached, so that it has to be remade. If the board is destroyed in the peak moment of its epistemic function, it can be a climactic key moment of serial storytelling or mark a show’s or season’s end. If a serial pinboard is not shown being taken down or destroyed this also suggests an open-endedness of seriality, and it may become a wandering trope.

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Wandering Narratives and Transmedia Pinboarding This study’s four main examples in fact do not only have one pinboard or pinboarding style, but they all somehow repeat and/or remake them. These multiplied versions of serial pinboards are not as trivial as they might seem at first. At the very least, each version serves a different function, has a different effect for the narrative and the visual knowledge than its predecessors. In some cases, the remediated pinboard sheds an entirely new light on the storytelling as well as on pinboarding as such. For example: As mentioned before, the Homeland pinboard creates different uses for its cork surface; in Castle the murder board is digitally remade on a computer; and in Heroes we see multiple versions of the map. In FlashForward, the Wall is remade not only by one of the antagonists but also by Mark, who has to re-mediate his own board. Outside of the show, fan-made remakes (see below) are another version of a board’s remediation, but a remake with multiple authors could certainly also happen within a TV show’s narrative. The functions of intra- and extra-diegetic remakes are similar: to retrace and reenact the practices of pinboarding and therefore make the structure of the board more prominent and visible through repetition. Photography is the most common practice when fans or characters attempt a remake, at least as a first step. In the Heroes pilot, for example, Mohinder Suresh takes pictures of his father’s map with a small digital camera. He leaves the apartment in India and goes to the one in New York City, where his father had put up a duplicate of his Chennai map, presumably to work on it wherever he was. But Mohinder finds the NYC map damaged when he arrives. In episode three (original air date: October 9, 2006), Mohinder has rebuilt the map and moved into the apartment. He continues his father’s search and adds his own findings to the map: more portraits and names of evolved humans, with pins marking their location, and thread connecting them to each other. With the help of his neighbor Eden he picks up the trace of Sylar, the patient zero his father found and who Mohinder suspects killed him. Eden and Mohinder break into Sylar’s apartment (ibid., TC 00:21.20f) and find a hidden room, with a map that has “dozens more” strings on it than Mohinder’s and images of people unknown to him. This increase in pinboarded information is apparent in the amount of string and number of items on the map. Mohinder photographs everything before walking to an adjacent room. This one is empty but the walls have been written and smeared upon. “Forgive me” and “I

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have sinned” are clearly legible over and over again. Interestingly, this ‘room full of crazy’ is not merged with the map, suggesting two separate mind frames, and materiality. At this point, Mohinder has encountered three remakes of his map. He finds a fourth map at his father’s university office in India, but this one has been tampered with: upon closer inspection, he notices holes in the paper surface and deducts that there must have been pins there before (Vo l01Ch07, original air date: November 6, 2006). He now can attempt to fill this gap with information from the other renditions of the map. Without further listing all the map’s occurrences,3 its repetitive appearance and cyclic remaking and destroying run through all of Heroes’ seasons. By additionally implementing an interactive map into their award-winning “Heroes Evolutions” concept, producers enabled visitors to the NBC.com webpage to horizontally scroll across a map similar to the one Mohinder had in the TV show and click on post-its with names on them. Some of those names were familiar to viewers, others entirely new. Variations of pinboarding as part of transmedia storytelling or ‘second screen’ options lead back to considering the television surface, the screen as part of seriality, and as a surface for pinboarding. The map can be described as its own information parcel that moves through the series and the diegesis as its own serial entity, materializing in different settings. At no point are the characters irritated by the map and its pinboarded content, which is why the Heroes’ map, in Goodman’s sense, presents itself as a symbol system, rather than a notation system (1976, 154–57). It has a language with syntactic rules and semantic rules that can be passed on from person to person and that is self-explanatory. The remakes of the Heroes map emphasize its diagrammatic, rather than pictorial, properties, as the particular executions do not influence the syntax. ‘The map’ is an abstract entity and, other than its realized versions, is mobile, transferrable, and serial; it is hence never concluded, it keeps evolving and growing. Yet it has to have certain elements to be recognizable so that it is open to change but viscid and not fluid. It could be said that it percolates—a term Serres and Latour chose to describe the oozing of time, to paint a sort of fluctuating picture of relations and rapports – like the percolating basin of a glacial river, unceasingly changing its bed and showing an admirable network of forks, some of which freeze or silt up, while others open up – or like a cloud of angels that passes, or the list of prepositions, or the dance of flames. (1995, 104)

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Taking this idea further would allow one to think of the pinboarding examples as the frozen forks of the percolating serial pinboarding. The frozen forks in this case are photos, snapshots of a board’s status quo, documenting stages of the ‘becoming a medium’ and ‘being a medium’. The pinboarding as well as the permanent freezing and re-opening are part of the process and result in phases of non-existence and existence, change, oscillation, recognition, and mistakes. These phases happen between image series and intersect with other strategies of serialization. The example suggests that remade pinboards themselves become serial images. Like in art, where the so-called ‘ars multiplicata’ (many art works of the same kind) is contrasted to the artistic series, ensemble, or set (Sykora 1983, 4–6), the pinboards’ series are both: variations of a theme and a productive series that can be innovative. Art theory has had a long-­ standing discourse on seriality and whether it can produce anything apart from repetition. Modern artists especially, like Andy Warhol or Edward Hopper, have used series and somewhat cleared the negative image seriality used to have. Since then, serial processes are understood as open for possibilities and variation, and instead of creating a hierarchy between original reference and subsequent successor, the productive series are compared. In television studies as well as in film theory, repetition also has had a long history and an ambiguous image. It has been described as external repetition, like the multiple takes of a scene or the multiple viewings of a film, and internal repetition, like the styles of cuts being picked up (Cf. Bellour 1979). The remake, a movie being remade after at least one previous version existed, as well as the adaptation, either of a literary or of a filmic source of inspiration, has also long been practiced and discussed. Bellour describes repetitions in plot, such as an intact situation in the beginning being repeated through being reinstated in the end (ibid.). But with contemporary TV series and viewing practices, many other forms of external repetition need to be and have been added to the discourse.4 A reappearing version of a pinboard can also be understood as internal repetition. In their text on repetition, Klippel and Winkler focus “on the level of the singular images, visual schemata and aesthetic structural patterns” (1994, 127 my translation).They “assum[e] an apparatus [or dispositive] of patterns underneath the visible differences, a system of conventions and habits” (ibid., 129 my translation). Consequently, they look at the level on which television images generate signs and how the medium develops its

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own semiotic. But instead of looking at a code or a sign system being taught to a viewer, Klippel and Winkler describe a system of a sign’s immanent stabilization via its repetition. Through this process the sign dispatches from its original context of use/occurrence and gains a self-contained meaning (ibid., 130). I argue that this detachment through repetition also happens with pinboarding: When the pinboarder’s original set-up changes by remaking, the pinboard becomes its own repeatable symbol. Furthermore, remade pinboarding can be considered part of television’s self-reflective process when TV series address their own necessary ability to adapt to change in order to continue and create new episodes. These new episodes can only emerge either from old ones or from an unnamed and thus endless source outside of this series itself. Beil et al. ascribe the production of new episodes to this specific evolution of a series and thus the medium itself (2012, 220). Their thesis is that television, as any other medium, wants to find out how it works and how it can develop. The necessary experiments and explorations happen within TV series. The remaking of certain serial pinboards can be considered such an experiment that creates new serial images and experiments with what has been or can be seen.5 The experimental, remade pinboards can then move horizontally through series like FlashForward: While there is a clearly defined ‘original’ Mosaic Investigation Wall, there are two instances that I consider to be remakes that are experiments with the MIW as a serial entity. The tenth episode (original air date: December 3, 2009) takes the viewer and later Mark and Demetri to Hong Kong, following the trace of the mysterious Nhadra Udaya. The episode’s first sequence shows Nhadra in her glass-front office. An accumulation of images and documents is taped to the window and both the images and their position are similar to the MIW. Certain items are unique to her board, for example, an image of Mark’s partner Demetri with “A561984” written on a strip of paper stuck to it—which is the episode’s title and emphasizes the importance of the objects and the information they bring. Additionally, some of the dissimilar items are emphasized by close-ups. At first, it is unclear whether Nhadra’s glass investigation wall is a copy of Mark’s, which she has ­somehow spied upon. This would make her board a remake of his, with additional information, and it would be similar to Sylar’s version of the Suresh map. But it becomes more likely that she, like Mark, is rebuilding what she saw in her vision. Her version of the wall is hence not strictly a

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remake of Mark’s wall, yet it is a rendition of the wall as a principle. Because Nhadra is strictly neither an enemy nor an ally to Mark, she is looking for something different than the FBI agents and consequently sees something different. Pinboarding in its reappearance therefore also accentuates the fluidity of its content, context, understanding, and interpretation. Unfortunately, this remade board appears only in one episode, so that the changes in the dispositive cannot be explored further, neither by viewers nor by Mark, who are both left with Nhadra’s promise that “[o]ver the next few months everything will present itself”. An even more drastic change in the dispositive of the MIW occurs one episode later, when Mark is suspended from the FBI investigation. Before leaving the office, he takes pictures of the MIW in his office. Now stuck at home he uses an unhinged white door as the surface to hang the 21 photos of the wall (S01E11, original air date: Mach 18, 2010). He literally makes a mosaic (of the) investigation wall (Fig. 6.1), piecing the images together so that the position of the items in the photos resembles the original. This improvised pinboard emphasizes its makeshift set-up with the use of a handleless door and a thick rope going straight across, holding the door up on a shelf. All material properties that the pinboarding objects used to have are annihilated or at least are only present as weakened shad-

Fig. 6.1  Mark’s makeshift investigation wall, detail from FlashForward S01E11 (ABC 2010), TC 00:15:51

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ows. Despite these visible changes, FlashForward’s remade board clearly privileges the content over the medium: Mark’s investigation is hardly affected by the changed circumstances. The advantage of the photographed wall is certainly its additional movability—photos of pinboards can circulate much easier than the boards as such, which are often heavy and fragile at the same time, and would probably sustain losses when moved. The photographic remakes of pinboards also contribute to the potential serial renewal of the boards, allowing them to move through diegetic and serial space and time, like the Heroes map described earlier. Simultaneously, the photos of the MIW, for example, forfeit the archeological depth described earlier, because they compress all layers into one. The disadvantage is of course that only the obverse layer is captured in the photos, and that top layer is now all Mark can work with from home. The photos emphasize the impenetrable layer fabricated by the photographic dispositive. They stress that the audience and Mark are in a similar position. Neither can influence the board or look for layers; both are banned behind a medially conditioned surface with no access to the board. However, Mark is not hindered by this. He continues his investigation and expands his remake of the MIW with new and other strings and new note cards. The photos become the new surface for further pinboarding: a process that could be continued endlessly. This potential repeated compression of a pinboard into a photo suggests an open end for serial pinboarding. Even if the repeated compression leaves some elements illegible, the process could continue. Put differently, through every change in the structure the end of a serial pinboard can constantly draw out of reach, very similar to the potential open-endedness of serial narratives and TV series (Grampp and Ruchatz 2014). Through remakes within the TV series, this is reflected upon intra-diegetically. For example, Homeland’s poster for season two (published by Showtime in 2012) featured a portrait of Brody made out of paper fragments. This configuration of Carrie’s board never appeared in the TV series, even though she is present(ed) as the pinboarder and shown pushing a pin into Brody’s cheek. In this case, pinboarding as a serial principle extends to the show’s marketing. The potentially endless prolonging of serial p ­ inboarding thus applies to Homeland, even though the series strictly speaking does not remake any of the particular pinboard configurations. But it does rework the pinboarding, representing the changing motions of the narrative and the seriality of the show. At the point of writing this text, Homeland

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still does not have a structuring goal or end. But then again, according to Kelleter, there is rarely any closure with serial dynamics even if some episodes fulfill the desire for an end to some extent (2012, 12). He is of the opinion that serial dynamics are notoriously open-ended. Using Sherlock Holmes as an example, Kelleter states that “serial forms know about their own rules and regulation: just as each riddle demands a solution, each solution demands another riddle” (ibid.). Similarly, pinboards have to perpetuate themselves as soon as one problem has been solved or one question has been answered through pinboarding. The various configurations of Carrie’s cork board therefore are the epitome of the constant withdrawal of any ending, while the narrative “ensure[s] that no solution/ ending will be expected or delivered, or if found will only lead to the discovery of a larger ‘crime’ that subsumes the earlier solved mystery” (Hague 1995, 143). Remaking and remodeling of pinboards are hence similarly important for, and inherent to, pinboarding as a serial practice. The pinboards, their variations, and remakes reflect upon the reading of series as actors that recognize themselves and their seriality. “At the core of commercial serial narratives stand the reciprocal dependencies of schematization and differentiation, reducing and increasing complexity, somatization and reflexivity” (Kelleter 2012, 21 my translation). Remaking the pinboards can then be considered as the use of standardized elements as well as simultaneously producing something new—difference and repetition are essential to both the series and the pinboards, while the latter present themselves as objects of reflection on this precise matter. It can be deemed characteristic of TV series to observe themselves and use these self-observations to find out how to self-sustain. Continuous narratives perpetuate themselves by repeating, renewing, and branching out. Series self-serialize (ibid., 31) and the (potentially endless) pinboards are serialized entities aiding in precisely this process of serialization. This can also be enhanced through transmedia pinboarding. Variations of transmedia storytelling have many names, from “cross media” to “multimodality” (Gripsrud 2010, 16), from “multi-platform” to “enhanced storytelling” (Scolari 2009, 587) to Gillan’s “Must-Click TV”, a term she uses “to describe new media-influenced network programming, marketing, broadcasting, and distribution strategies and ­audience reception practices” (2011, 1). It is important to note that transmedia does not necessarily also consider fan-made content, like the wikis mentioned above, as part of the storytelling. Fan works can be understood as transforming the canon, by influencing the source text’s transtext (Cf.

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Derhy Kurtz and Bourdaa 2016), a term that accounts “for both the institutional (or industrial) contributions and user-made ones in relation to the cross-media expansions of a story universe” (Stein 2017, 5). Gillan explains that the conceptualization of a “new TV product” nowadays entails not only “a broadcast series with some ancillary web products, but a TV franchise, that ha[s] on-air, online, and on-mobile incarnations” (ibid., 3). She further differentiates between shows and sites aimed at regular viewers (the ‘casuals’) or at fans (‘the loyals’). For both groups, long arcs involving pinboarding can add to their viewing experience: As these series could become addictive and viewers would need to come back each week to get another detail about the mystery, programmers hoped that they would become ‘appointment television’ and blockbuster ratings-­ generators that would translate into blockbuster advertising rates. (ibid., 6)

If the shows were puzzling enough the fans could “carefully deconstruct these series and invest time in following their mysteries and searching for embedded clues to their solutions both in the on-air series and in their multiplatform extensions” (ibid., 7). TV series evoke doubt in their wholeness and concludedness (Ganzert 2020) and by that trigger a longing and/or the search for completion through paratextual elements. Here, the fragmentation, the transmedia extensions of a show, and its pinboarding can go hand in hand. Apart from classical transmedia storytelling, which has been discussed thoroughly in the humanities for a while (Ryan 1991; Jenkins and Deuze 2008; Dena 2009; Renner et  al. 2013; B.  W. L.  Derhy Kurtz 2014; Freeman and Gambarato 2018), each pinboard encourages a different kind of transmedia relation. These could be described as what Müller described as “formatted spaces of participation” (2009). He explains that for TV shows all options of participating are shaped for the viewers and their “routinized practices”, which co-create and shape the spaces of participation (ibid., 58). Pinboards as such spaces predetermine the interactions viewers might have with their content. They invoke intra-diegetic references, they spell out epistemic processes in which the audience can partake, and they may trigger investigations into the items or what they stand for. A core idea of this book is that serial pinboarding is a phenomenon, that it exceeds television series. In HBO’s True Detective (Pizzolatto 2014–), pinboarding is essential to the show and the investigative work of

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the characters. The episode summaries on the official homepage (darknessbecomesyou.com) were part of the show’s second screen strategy. Television viewers in today’s television industry are accustomed to hashtag suggestions or invitations to websites and app downloads appearing on their screens while watching shows (Ganzert 2013). Networks commonly use second screen options to increase the audience’s engagement with their programming and enhance their revenue opportunities. Interactive formats, variations of ‘push and pull’ marketing and storytelling, and different content relations have been both widely used by networks and explored by researchers (Cf. Blake 2016; Brown et al. 2019; Lohmüller and Wolff 2019). It is therefore common to find stills from the show, short videos, and additional information about a series on the network’s homepage or a specially created web page, like the one for True Detective. What is interesting about darknessbecomesyou.com in this framework is that the elements for each episode were arranged in an animated, digital chart similar to a pinboard. In the background, stills from the show were visible, including the series’ three-walled pinboarding. Each episode page had two to five panels on it, made of equally sized photos of the set, character portraits, and close-up images of details, framed by a dashed off-white line. Most images had captions, giving a character or location’s name, and a circled plus sign in the upper right corner, which indicates that further content can be accessed by clicking on the respective image. When opening an episode’s sub-page, another line appeared, connecting the images with each other and adding more information between them. Starting on the left side of the screen, it moves to the right and ends with a written link to the next episode’s page. This movement refers to the western reading direction from left to right. It also evokes the association of a progressing timeline, placing the episode’s sub-­ pages in a visual left-to-right relation, one succeeding the other and emphasizing the spatial qualities of progressing time. Unfortunately, there is no overall view after the last episode’s page that would allow users to see the whole season at a glance. Moreover, the homepage and the intra-diegetic pinboarding look strikingly different. Protagonist Rust Cohle investigates the show’s crimes with “three walls of chipboard, newspaper cuttings, ‘MISSING’ posters, vintage video equipment, notes, maps and photographs, all set off by satanic-ritual gear and lit by industrial arc lights” (Benson 2015, n.p.). The episode summaries are neatly sorted and clean. The borderlines around which the homepage presents pinboarding for the user and the reduction in detail illustrate its

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purpose: to give an overview without revealing too much, but at the same time allow a closer look at objects that could not be shown that way in the TV show. Leafing through a digital animation of Cohle’s sketchbook, for example, was a courtesy by HBO for the viewers, and an extension of the diegesis. It was also content that could not be otherwise accessed by invested viewers. According to Caldwell, television shows accomplish a functional transmedia world “through at least six on-line strategies: ‘characterized’ proliferations of the text; ‘narrativized’ elaborations of the text; ‘backstory’ augmentations; ‘meta-critical’ commentary; technological augmentations; and merchandizing augmentations” (Caldwell 2002, 258). These augmentations “are created simultaneously so that all the content remains consistent and contributes some layer of meaning to the story as a whole” (Gillan 2011, 3) and can be found in the ‘Heroes 360’ transmedia campaign. The Heroes transmedia universe has been explored at length (Cf. Giannini 2014; Dena 2009) and is repeatedly connected to pinboarding as a principle. As discussed elsewhere (Ganzert 2015), the business card Noah Bennet gives to Mohinder Suresh is a very striking point of connection to the transmedia world of Heroes. Interestingly, this primary migratory cue (Ruppel 2009, 62f) from the show to its transmedia offers was not part of a pinboarding construction at first. But because it is so important, it later finds its way back to the pinboarding in the show, when it can be seen hanging on one of the strings in Future-Hiro’s room and years later on in Quentin’s conspiracy board (Dark Matters 2015). The card has become a pinboarding object, and now functions as a sign for previous scenes and episodes as well as a reminder of the transmedia storytelling— two entirely different references combined in one object of pinboarding. Examples like this are indicators that pinboarding layers need to be carefully dug up and also always be considered in relation to a show’s paratext. The relation between ancillary and main text, between series and paratext, evolves in a circular motion. By the layers leading away from and back into the main surface of the narrative, the audience is kept interested in coming back to look for changes and developments. Like in a recursive loop that adds value, the understanding and/or pleasure in watching is increased while the pinboards and the series expose their processuality, their incompleteness. Each transmedia appearance of a pinboarding series hence connects like an object of the overarching board that is the show’s narrative, and the viewers are the pinboarders.

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Fans as Pinboarders It would be a futile endeavor to collect all fan practices attached to pinboarding, and that is not the goal here. But it is important to notice some of the practices that are connected to it, a lot of which are in fact shaped significantly by the shows themselves and their transmedia narration, while others are mainly triggered through the show’s ‘drillability’ (Mittell 2012). Viewers’ engagement with a pinboard can be encouraged through web content, or games, or competitions to solve riddles together (Ryan 2017, 537), which is why the following is very closely linked to the transmedia pinboarding explored before. But even when watching the actual episode, without leaving the TV or streaming device, fans are heavily involved with reading the code and with co-producing the semiotics that come with the boards’ objects, as explored in Chap. 3. When they feel the urge to engage in a more intense way with a pinboard, typical practices within many different fandoms are the taking and sharing of screenshots, the writing of hyperlinked articles in wikis or on comparable platforms, including source materials and the sharing, editing, and reviewing of the texts of others (Cf. Baym 2000; Gray 2003; Schäfer 2011). There are wikis for all the main examples of this book, each with a distinct section for the respective pinboard(s), which are spaces of participation and orientation alike (Mittell 2015, 277f).6 In collecting the information and images necessary to do so, fans become investigators themselves and recreate and duplicate the work of the characters, and additionally the work of the shows’ developers and set designers. Through pinboarding fans recreate the thought process and the work that went into it on a general level, not necessarily as a roleplay of characters but as a roleplay as a pinboarder. When viewers or fans find themselves lacking in understanding, cracking the code can become the main motivation to watch—and, as I argue, to join in the pinboarding. This kind of motivation then results in statements like: “I don’t care who killed Laura Palmer. I just love the puzzle” (Jenkins 1995, 56). This quote refers to Twin Peaks (Lynch and Frost 1990–1991, 2017), which is one of the most frequently quoted shows in television studies and which developed a distinct code of signs. It originally aired in 1990 but has been revived in 2017. The ‘Easter egg’ strategies of the 1990s show have especially proven to be groundbreaking. Decoding the aforementioned ‘lookeys’, as von Trier calls them, might require repeat viewings: “Twin Peaks was made to be read and reread, not

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only because it promised to reveal everything in the details, but because the details were made to absorb speculation without yielding a full-blown pattern: it is no accident that, as TV Guide reported, Twin Peaks was the most videotaped show ever on television” (Dienst 1994, 94f). The DVR, the TiVo, the computer, and the Internet were key elements necessary for a show like Twin Peaks and its younger progeny to evolve their cryptic codes. Easter eggs, which are often objects only visible in slow motion or in screenshots (Telotte 1995, 162), have become tokens of information that can be shared with others, via water-cooler conversations or online equivalents such as forums, wikis, threads, blogs, or chatrooms. The viewers involved contribute different things, such as detailed summaries for episode guides, re-dubbings, compendiums of articles from newspapers and blogs, information on actors and creators—in short: “an assortment of other events loosely related to the series” (Jenkins 1995, 54). Especially with newer productions these activities have evolved into standard audience and fan practices. While earlier shows provided the viewer with “training wheels”, these no longer seem to be needed, “because twenty-five years of increasingly complex television has honed their analytic skills” (Johnson 2005, 77). These skills and practices are often also applied to a series’ pinboarding. “In a world where almost anything can count as a clue, including both material explicitly presented within the aired episodes and information from one of the many ancillary texts surrounding the series ” (Jenkins 1995, 57), the fan-made Wikipedia for FlashForward, for example, necessarily contains a collection of the visible objects on the Mosaic Investigation Wall. They are listed with name, main episode, other appearances, trivia information, and their relation to and relevance for the storyline, as well as their relation to the series as a whole. As wiki articles, they are also part of a hypertext that connects objects that might also neighbor on a pinboard within the wiki. But the original reference system for these objects was established within the series itself, despite these fan-made, paratextual analyses. More so, because of the seriality of a TV show, the reference system can be established over a longer time period and without necessarily having to rely on external ­references (Cf. Nelson 1997, 73). This becomes particularly evident with the pinboards. What may also be described as a typical fan practice is the recreation of items like a board in remakes or in fan art. Blogger Oli Martin Cayless for example has remade the MIW and shared it with others (Cayless 2011), and within the fan communities, in-depth research

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about singular items is carried out, and the knowledge is gathered collectively. These fan-made paratextual analyses can be orienting plot recapitulations (Mittell 2015, 266f) or expansions, re-dedications (Cf. Trier-Bieniek 2015), re-­mediations, or resistant readings (Gray 2003) that circle around a show’s mystery or riddle and its “perpetuated hermeneutic” (Hills 2002, 108). As fans dissect the boards into their pieces, they may uncover new information or even find flaws in the design—which are of course readily discussed. Yet pinboards are rarely a point of critique; there may be some more outlandish interpretations of something, but not about the pinboards as such. And even if on some platforms the overused trope of the pinboard is mocked (see below), they are mostly taken seriously, and are ‘poached’ (Cf. Jenkins 2013) and detailed analyses of the meaning are circulated. Through that some people may emerge as V.I.F. (very important fans), who have a distinct position as experts within a specific fandom (Baym 1998; Annett 2014). Neither the collective work nor the V.I.F.s are exclusive to serial pinboarding. Research shows many examples of these processes at it has explored fan fiction, fan art, and fan cultures thoroughly and keeps doing so (Hellekson and Busse 2014; Linden and Linden 2017; Booth 2010; Jenkins 2006; Larsen 2015; Mittell 2012). Hills observed a “collapsed seriality” in these efforts, which “refers to fans’ tendency to convert temporally ‘unfolding texts’ into spatially organized or archival/encyclopedic forms of information (such as an ‘A-Z guide’ alphabetical listing all diegetic characters, planets, jargon etc.)” (2005, 195). He basically describes their efforts and activities in terms of pinboarding: unfold/dissect and arrange spatially, create chronological order in a temporal chaos, collect memorabilia of the object of your desire and display that accordingly, and so on. They are fan sleuths, and pinboarding is their practice. Mittell described fan’s general detective mentality in relation to the thoroughly researched Lost, a show which has in fact shaped many ways in which viewers engage with a puzzling show or intriguing visual clues: To be a Lost fan is to embrace a detective mentality, seeking out clues, charting patterns, and assembling evidence into narrative hypotheses and theories. This forensic engagement finds a natural home in online forums, where viewers gather to post theories and debate interpretations, and fan wikis like LostPedia.com. (2009, 128f)

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While Lost’s pinboarding is neither essential for the show nor this thesis, a pinboard like structure which maybe has triggered the most fan reactions and conspiracy theories online is from Lost nonetheless. In season two the viewers and character John Locke finally get a glimpse of the “invisible map”, an octagon drawn and scribbled on a blast door in the swan station. Even though it is only briefly visible, it is shot in a way that allows for a well-timed screen shot and an in-depth analysis of the content. Or as Mittell might say, it invites ‘forensic fandom’, as the fans were “attempting to understanding the embedded representations of a fictional storyworld” (2015, 272). The map has been transcribed, Latin phrases have been translated, and it has been recreated and used to develop countless theories within the Lost fandom. This engagement is certainly fueled by the map appearing in other settings, like the altered version in the game Via Domus. It was also later published as a high-resolution image in The Lost Encyclopedia (Terry and Bennett 2010, 54) and became a poster in Lost: The Official Magazine (“Map of the Problematique” 2007). It was featured in the season two DVD special “Secrets from the Hatch” (Naylor 2006) and appeared as a fluorescent image on four jigsaw puzzles that were sold as official merchandise. All of these appearances made sure that this map became a “magnet[…] for engagement, drawing viewers into story worlds and urging them to drill down to discover more” (Mittell 2012, n.p.). Collecting and gathering all the appearances of a fictional symbol is a fan practice that also relates to the pinboarding shows and to pinboarding as such. Fans of FlashForward have intensely discussed the show’s pinboarding objects, dissecting screen shots and researching intertextual connections to other shows, verifying and falsifying each other’s theories through research, deduction, and discussion. Most of their findings were shared on one of many pages dedicated to the show online, some of which are still accessible. Heroes fans can always be on the lookout for the ‘Helix Symbol’, which has been a connector from the first episode, a visual collectible. When it for example appears in Sylar’s Map of the evolved humans it closely ties viewing, pinboarding, and fan practices together. And ­staying with Kring’s slogan that ‘everything is connected’ (“9thwonders. Com – Heroes Wiki” 2007), it of course still appeared much later—on a pinboard. Like Heroes’ original transmedia campaign mentioned above, that even won the Creative Arts Emmy for Interactive Media Programming: Interactive Fiction in 2008 (Gillan 2011, 3), Dark Matters, the app and

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mini-series that was released to bridge the five-year gap between Heroes and Heroes Reborn. The mini-series addressed the temporal gap in both the narrative and the broadcast of five years. It is another fragment in the Heroes narrative universe, as I have also explored elsewhere (Ganzert 2020). What is interesting regarding the serial pinboarding and fandom is one of the characters who pretty much engages in a fan version of pinboarding. Quentin, one of the newly introduced characters, is looking into events that involved his sister Phoebe. He can very well be called a fan stand-in or back figure: he is very involved in the fictional online community “Hero_Truther” and he creates a board that summarizes key events and character connections from the original series. His enthusiasm verging on obsession is a cliché of a super fan, which is emphasized through the lack of understanding and even ridicule he receives from others. His pinboarding mannerisms very much pick up those of conspiracy theorists well known to the audience, and his research and exchange with others online pick up on audience practices. Dark Matters of course appears years after Heroes’ first important contributions to the trope of the pinboard that I have described in the previous chapters. Quentin’s depiction and practices in turn benefit from previous instances of pinboarding and from fandom’s dealing with the boards. It is as if Heroes’ pinboarding in the series and in the fandom come full circle, urging each other to continue. When Riverdale (Aguirre-Sacasa 2017–) first aired in 2017 the question of ‘who killed Jason Blossom?’ not only had a similar ring to it as ‘who killed Laura Palmer?’ (Cf. Jenkins 1995, 56), but it also kept fans on their toes and motivated to start, and share on social media, a plethora of pinboards. Nudged by the two intra-diegetic murder boards and The CW’s official tumblr for the show, that had an image for each character, styled with typical pinboarding iconography, the fans went on a sleuthing mission, adding their theories to the official ‘#murderboard’. Both the official page and the fans kept updating their boards with each episode with the newest information from the show, until the killer was finally revealed.

Becoming a Trope Serial pinboarding has been stabilized, most probably through excessive repetition. Instead of being a dynamic tool, necessarily flexible, pinboarding has been solidified. In addition to the typical (and weekly) investigator’s board, in many series the pinboard is now merely a prop. The glass

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boards that allow the camera to film the pinboarder through his writing is a prominent example of this. Narratively, pinboarding is also often referenced as an empty stylistic device—a visually striking attribute usable for anything from ‘genius mind at work’ to ‘very complicated situation’ or ‘crazy obsessed person’. Some recent examples in US television examples include: Cult (O’Bannon 2013), where very ominously stylized fans create a worship/memory board of their interactions with their favorite TV show; Younger (Star 2015–), where the protagonist’s plans to stay young(er) are drawn up with a pinboard by her and her best friend; iZombie (Thomas and Ruggiero-Wright 2015–), where the criminal zombie infestation is traced on a whiteboard organigram, Zoo (Appelbaum 2015–2017), where the scientists work on their theories with a large wall that seems mainly decorative; in The Whispers (Hugh 2015), all the kids who have met the ominous “Drill” are for one scene depicted on a pinboard, which is then instantly taken down; Perception (Biller and Sussman 2012–2015), which visualizes time as a psychological concept with a pinboard; or Wicked City (Baigelman 2015), which, as a police procedural set in the 1980s, most definitely needs cork boards and pictures on the wall. As this trope, serial pinboarding crosses genres. Where it used to be limited to heist planning in ‘gangster films’ or the efforts of investigators in pursuit of serial killers (see Chap. 1), pinboarding can now be found in biopics and movies for children, like Temple Grandin (Jackson 2010), Tinkerbell and the Legend of the Neverbeast (Loter 2015), or Megamind (McGrath 2010). Action movies like X-Men: First Class (Vaughn 2011) have pinboards just like homely Hallmark stories (i.e. Aurora Teagarden: A Bone to Pick (Wood 2015)) revolve around someone becoming a detective by circumstance and then applying their sleuthing skills, which have been significantly shaped through their consumption of books, shows, and films. Sleuthing itself is a trending practice in many narratives and media contexts, while the term basically describes to search for clues or investigate a case similar to (pop-culturally established) practices of detectives. Within contemporary narratives, scenes of sleuthing often involve some form of pinboard and invite the audience as ‘armchair detectives’ along on the ride. But sleuths are also often characterized as a bit quirky and their investigations as less effective and more amateurish than ‘proper’ pinboarding. To Detective Diamond (Rake 2014–2016), and to Sherlock (Gatiss and Moffat 2010–2017) for example, the respective sleuthing clubs are somewhat of a laughable hindrance. But sleuthing cannot just

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show (off) amateur investigators, it can also be an interactive marketing tool. The page joinkillclub.com, for example, was created as part of the advertising campaign for the 2014 movie Dark Places (Paquet-Brenner 2015) and appealed to people interested in solving crimes the police could not. TV fan sleuthing can be transmedial with thematic murder mysteries or escape rooms, and be motivated and guided by a show’s main pinboard. The connection between a (pinboarding) series and its invitations to interactive sleuthing are another aspect that could be explored in the future. While it seems as if pinboarding is spreading thinner and thinner and fading into a mere trope, at the same time these instances perpetuate the ‘myth of the pinboard’: putting all the available information on movable post-its and moving these around on a map crossed with red thread will always and almost automatically lead to an epiphany. And in these cases, of course, it does—after all, we are talking about fictional TV series. It is precisely this ‘myth of the pinboard’ that has been overly used in past years, and that is now consequently played for laughs. Many examples from much lighter genres than the ones originally described typical for serial pinboarding (such as Glee (Murphy et al. 2009–2015), Life in Pieces (Adler 2015–2019), and Cougar Town (Lawrence and Biegel 2009–2015)) prove that serial pinboarding has stabilized so much that it has found its way into comedy, and pinboarding has been successfully parodied. Like in comics or an ironic diagram that is actually able to make a joke (Schmidt-­ Burkhardt 2012, 184), comedic pinboarding highlights the banality of the overused pinboard: A diagram drawn into thin air is used to illustrate Barney Stinson’s absurd theories about women (Bays and Thomas 2005–2014, S0305 original air date: October 22, 2007), and a cork board is used to figure out which boy is dating which girl in Fresh off the Boat (Khan 2015–). In Brooklyn Nine-Nine (Goor and Schur 2013–), the practice of marking burglaries with a pin on a map only leads to a map completely covered in pins—serial pinboarding may not in itself be funny but here it certainly enables a visual and verbal joke about the city’s devastating crime statistics (S03E19, original air date: March 15, 2016). This is one of the rare scenes where pinboarding is criticized or at least ­demonstrated to not always work, even though sometimes the epistemic expectation is brought up by characters to mock others. Yet, most other parodies or appropriations use pinboarding in its epistemic capacity, perpetuating the problem-solving myth around pinboarding while poking fun at it.

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For example: in a classic sketch format, Anne Hathaway and the cast of Saturday Night Live (Michaels 1975–) parodied Homeland (Gordon and Gansa 2011–), or rather Carrie Mathison in 2012. As usual, parody, like caricature, tends to pick on a person’s most prominent or memorable features or habits. In this case, Carrie is imitated in hair, wardrobe, manner of speaking, and with her habitual, or serial, pinboarding. Because, as the Saul in this skit remarks: “She loves her cork boards” (ibid., S38E7, original air date: November 10, 2012). In the Sesame Street (Cooney and Morrisett 1969–) parody “Homelamb” (Sesame Workshop 2013), the pinboards in the sheep’s headquarters are only background, but still used to reference Homeland as the source of the material. And in many other spoofs of the show, Carrie’s pinboarding is referenced as well (Small 2013). Other series pick up pinboarding as both a trope and a meta-reference, for example when Dean and Sam Winchester in Supernatural (Kripke 2005–) need to figure out some forgotten events and start pinboarding after one of the brothers says: “Let’s memento this thing” (ibid., S06E13 original air date: February 11, 2011), of course referencing the iconic movie (Nolan 2000). The comedic trope of manic pinboarding by an obsessed person also inspired an advertisement for a hotel booking platform, which showed a man frantically searching for a way to redeem his hotel points by using classic pinboarding on his living room wall made of images, newspaper clipping, pins, and red thread. The punchline is ‘Captain Obvious’ telling him that “This seems crazy” (Hotels.com 2015). Reduced parodies of pinboarding can nonetheless reflect serial pinboarding as a practice and phenomenon, by, for example, only connecting the picture of a pie to the picture of a woman’s face in Parks and Recreation (Daniels and Schur 2009–2015). This show is a particularly self-reflexive mockumentary, with a protagonist that is predetermined for some obsessive behavior, which is why other pinboarding instances in Parks and Recreation also work as both a visual punchline and a contemplation of pinboarding. In the show’s last season, Leslie Nope wants to determine a timeline of cause and effect for her falling out with her boss and unwilling friend Ron Swanson. After seven seasons, she and the viewers have plenty of things that can go on the “Leslie Ron Timeline”, which is at first a very clear line on the office’s whiteboard (S07E04, original air date: January 20, 2015, TC 00:26:35f). Of course, when she is finished, the once clearly arranged board has been crammed with marker notes, post-its, and red arrows (ibid., TC 00:34:54f). This board serves multiple func-

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tions: firstly, it reiterates Leslie as a lover of organizing office supplies, bordering on crazy in her management and analytical practices. Secondly, it states that the myth of the pinboard is everywhere, as both Ron and the viewers fully expect a solution to come from the pinboarding. Thirdly, it frames Leslie as a genius, who, like so many that came before her (and were characterized by this trope of serial pinboarding), is capable of keeping perspective and deducing information amidst this pinboarding pandemonium. And lastly, this scene clearly connects the pinboarding to the series it appears in: The timeline stretches not just between the two characters, but also between the show and the viewer. A fan of the series could easily (more or less) have made a board with the same content. And while that would certainly look different to Leslie’s board, the serial narrative obviously conditioned the board and its elements. Parks and Recreation hence offers a striking example of the irrefutable, dispositive connectedness of board and series. All of these comedic examples show how serial pinboarding can be reduced to a trope that merely illustrates the serial narrative rather than conditions it. But they also continue to narrate pinboarding as a serial entity, which crosses all genre conventions and appears in all circumstances from funny to crazy, from illegal to investigative. It is up to either a series’ determination or a viewer’s deduction to determine which function a televisual pinboard fulfills. The frequency of its general use should nonetheless be balanced, between prop and tool, between background and dispositive. Otherwise it will be an empty stylistic device, devoid of any reflexive or dispositive potential. What the short examples in this chapter have shown is that serial pinboarding extends beyond the ‘parent product’ into a TV series’ transmedia universe, its merchandise and paratexts, and into fan-made extensions. I do not think that all fandoms are necessarily involved with a pinboard per se, but I would argue, that many fan practices allude to pinboarding practices and vice versa. And surely, not all fandoms are actively engaged in the development of conspiracies or interpretations and need to gather every piece of information as encyclopedic knowledge. Yet I am convinced, that especially serial pinboarding in all the facets explored in this book has the ability to trigger a specific kind of fan engagement and invites, or even urges, viewers to contemplate the boards’ content beyond the mere appearance in an episode. These ‘Pinboarding Spin-Offs’ should be included when analyzing serial pinboarding and specific case studies. And

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my suspicion that serial pinboarding is an ongoing process is enhanced by the fact that television, serial narration, and its viewers are all very much a part of the ‘Age of Pinboarding’, as explored at the beginning of this book.

Notes 1. The concept of remediation as described by Bolter and Grusin (1999) focuses on (digital) media’s ability to simulate other media, a discussion that could be extended to pinboards’ hypermedia or intermedia status. Here, the term is used with a focus on the translation processes when applicable. Many of the remade pinboards do not change in medial status though and are thus not re-mediations in a strict understanding of the term. 2. Though Saul knows Carrie’s findings to hold true and he even assembled the timeline himself, he does not oppose Estes when he says the pinboard was “a wall of garbage […] assembled by a crazy woman to a crazy collage”. 3. It appears in the past when Shandra works on it (Vol01Ch10, November 27, 2006); and when young Noah Bennet started his work (Vol05Ch17, February 1, 2010); it gets destroyed when Mohinder and Sylar fight; it reappears in the future on one of Mohinder’s university lecture slides (Vol01Ch01, September 24, 2007); Peter creates the already mentioned map/string hybrid (Vol03Ch02, September 22, 2008); Sylar moves apartments and creates a new map (Vol03Ch08, November 10, 2008); and Nathan hands a copy of the map to the president (Vol03Ch13, December 15, 2008). 4. The TV series, according to Winkler, is in-between a mechanical reproduction of the same and a circular motion of variating repetition, which is why the “rerun” as a structural repetition in television has implications for flow and industry. Repetition is a necessary part of the TV program, where a variation of content but repetition in style causes even new shows to be considered repetitions of sorts (Cf. Winkler and Klippel 1994). 5. Müller answers the question of how anything that the audience has seen multiple times can suddenly show something new by explaining that the onlookers themselves change what they see. The immanent iconic difference makes change possible. Iconic difference means the difference between the objects or signs’ materiality and what they display, a difference that leaves room for change and hence different perceptions, interpretations, or connotations (2005, 88). 6. Researching this retrospectively can strip the predictions fan forums or platforms have made about a possibility of its validity, as it is hard to reconstruct once a show proves or reveals a specific theory with the pinboard.

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Khan, Nahnatchka. 2015. Fresh of the Boat. New York City: ABC. Klein, Amanda Ann, and R. Barton Palmer, eds. 2016. Cycles, Sequels, Spin-Offs, Remakes, and Reboots: Multiplicities in Film and Television. Austin: University of Texas Press. Kring, Tim. 2006. Heroes. New York City: NBC. Kripke, Eric. 2005. Supernatural. Burbank: The WB. Larsen, Katherine. 2015. Taking Stock. Journal of Fandoms Studies 3 (2): 115–117. Lawrence, Bill, and Kevin Biegel. 2009. Cougar Town. New York City: ABC. Linden, Henrik, and Sara Linden. 2017. Fans and Fan Cultures. London/New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Lohmüller, Valentin, and Christian Wolff. 2019. Towards a Comprehensive Definition of Second Screen. In Proceedings of Mensch Und Computer 2019, 167–177. MuC’19. New  York: ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3340764. 3340781. Lorre, Chuck, and Bill Prady. 2007. The Big Bang Theory. New York City: CBS. Loter, Steve. 2015. Tinkerbell and the Legend of the Neverbeast. Burbank: DisneyToon. Lynch, David, and Mark Frost. 1990. Twin Peaks. New York City: ABC. Map of the Problematique. 2007. LOST: The Official Magazine, no. 10 April. Marlowe, Andrew W. 2009. Castle. New York City: ABC. McGrath, Tom. 2010. Megamind.X. Universal City: Dreamworks. Michaels, Lorne. 1975. Saturday Night Live. New York City: NBC. Mittell, Jason. 2009. Lost in a Great Story: Evaluation in Narrative Television (and Television Studies). In Reading LOST. Perspectives on a Hit Television Show, ed. Roberta Pearson, 119–138. New York: I.B. Tauris. ———. 2012. Forensic Fandom and the Drillable Text. Spreadable Media. http:// spreadablemedia.org/essays/mittell/ ———. 2015. Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. New York: NYU Press. Müller, Axel. 2005. Wie Bilder Sinn erzeugen. Plädoyer für eine andere Bildgeschichte. In Bild-Zeichen: Perspektiven einer Wissenschaft vom Bild, ed. Stefan Majetschak, 77–96. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag. Müller, Eggo. 2009. Formatted Spaces of Participation: Interactive Television and the Changing Relationship between Productions and Consumptions. In Digital Material. Tracing New Media in Everyday Life and Technology, ed. Marianne van den Boomen, Sybille Lammes, Ann-Sophie Lehmann, Joost Raessens, and Mirko Tobias Schäfer, 49–63. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Murphy, Brian, Brad Falchuck, and Ian Brennan. 2009. Glee. New York City: Fox. Naylor, David. 2006. Secrets from the Hatch. DVD.  Documentary. The DVD Group. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0887778/ Nelson, Robin. 1997. TV Drama in Transition: Forms, Values and Cultural Change. Houndsmill/New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Nolan, Christopher. 2000. Memento. Los Angeles: Newmarket Films. O’Bannon, Rockne S. 2013. Cult. Burbank: The CW. Paquet-Brenner, Gilles. 2015. Dark Places. Toronto/New York City: Entertainment One/A24. Pizzolatto, Nic. 2014. True Detective. New York City: HBO. Rake, Jeff. 2014. Mysteries of Laura. New York City: NBC. Renner, Karl Nikolaus, Dagmar Hoff, and Matthias Krings. 2013. Medien. Erzählen. Gesellschaft., Transmediales Erzählen im Zeitalter der Medienkonvergenz. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110264548. Ricoeur, Paul. 2004. Narrative Time. In Narrative Theory – Critical Concepts in Literary and Cultural Studies, 327–347. Oxon: Routledge. Ruppel, Marc Nathaniel. 2009. Visualizing Transmedia Networks: Links, Paths and Peripheries. Dissertation, Maryland: University of Maryland. Ryan, Marie-Laure. 1991. Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. ———. 2017. Transmedia Storytelling as Narrative Practice. In The Oxford Handbook of Adaptation Studies, ed. Thomas Leitch, 527–541. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schäfer, M.T. 2011. Bastard Culture! How User Participation Transforms Cultural Production. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. https://doi.org/10. 5117/9789089642561. Schmidt-Burkhardt, Astrit. 2012. Die Kunst der Diagrammatik: Perspektiven eines neuen bildwissenschaftlichen Paradigmas. Bielefeld: Transcript. Scolari, Carlos Alberto. 2009. Transmedia Storytelling: Implicit Consumers, Narrative Worlds, and Branding in Contemporary Media Production. International Journal of Communication 3 (October): 586–606. Serres, Michel, and Bruno Latour. 1995. Conversations on Science, Culture, and Time. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Sesame Workshop. 2013. Sesame Street: Homelamb (Homeland Parody) – YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1zL106SGZ8 Singer, Brian. 1996. The Usual Suspects. Beverly Hills: MGM. Small, Tom. 2013. Walking Dead Homeland! USA: The Key of Awesome. https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eH40YvRALc Star, Darren. 2015. Younger. New York City: TV Land. Stein, Louisa Ellen. 2017. Fandom and the Transtext, 71–89. New  York: Routledge. Sykora, Katharina. 1983. Das Phänomen Des Seriellen in Der Kunst. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. Telotte, J.P. 1995. The Dis-Order of Things in Twin Peaks. In Full of Secrets: Critical Approaches to Twin Peaks, ed. David Lavery, 160–172. Detroit: Wayne State University Press. Terry, Paul, and Tara Bennett. 2010. Lost Encyclopedia. DK/Brady Games.

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Thomas, Rob, and Diane Ruggiero-Wright. 2015. IZombie. Burbank: The CW. Trier-Bieniek, Adrienne. 2015. Fan Girls and the Media: Creating Characters, Consuming Culture. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Vaughn, Matthew. 2011. X-Men: First Class. Los Angeles: 20th Century Fox. Winkler, Hartmut, and Heike Klippel. 1994. ‘Gesund Ist, Was Sich Wiederholt’. Zur Rolle Der Redundanz Im Fernsehen. In Aspekte DerFernsehanalyse: Methoden Und Modelle, Knut Hickethier, 121–136. Münster: LIT. Wood, Martin. 2015. Aurora Teagarden: A Bone to Pick. Los Angeles: Hallmark Movies and Mysteries.

CHAPTER 7

Conclusion

At the end of this book, serial pinboarding is much less like a neologism that attempted to grasp character actions, mental deduction, and montage of, and with, TV’s pinboards. Instead, pinboarding has grown into a concept that truly describes a cultural practice, or, as German media theory might call it, a cultural technique, that is always older than the concepts that are generated from them (Cf. Macho 2009). In the following, I will briefly summarize my insights and give an outlook into further research. Serial pinboarding is primarily shaped by TV’s iterations of it, but it is also moving beyond shows or movies. Due to the serial form that TV’s pinboards belong to, their processuality is emphasized. A televised pinboard can appear on a wall, a window, be a display, screen, a blackboard, or whiteboard, or fill a three-dimensional space. In its entirety, it can be a dispositive of seriality that goes beyond immediate serial contexts. When analyzing pinboarding inside or outside a TV series, a necessary first distinction would therefore be to determine if the object of analysis presents the necessary processuality or whether it is presented as a static diagram that merely alludes to the aesthetics and looking practices of pinboarding. With that in mind, focusing on pinboarding as an aspect of contemporary everyday life is also fruitful, when aiming to understand the phenomenon of pinboarding culture. No matter the medium, a pinboarding analysis always has to reflect upon the board’s (simulated) materiality and not just its functions as a diagram or dispositive. Mersch criticized

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Peirce, along with the diagram concepts of Euler and Venn, for their excessive reduction of the pictorial to graphical forms and lines while ignoring any materiality (cf. 2014, 41). In contrast to that, televisual pinboards are a great example of how the materiality and the graphical form are connected, and how their combination creates other values and develops a specific, televisually conveyed haptic visuality. Each element or category of elements influences this dispositive, which consists of all elements as “an absolutely heterogeneous assembly” (Agamben 2005, 3f). But in the network, which forms in the in-between of these elements, seriality and the conditions for a show’s serial narrative appear. Each of the artifact categories explored throughout the chapters fulfills different functions for pinboarding and for seriality, for pinning evidence, place and time, and knowledge. Specific pinboarding elements mirror and facilitate seriality, thus turning the board as an internal organizing principle outward. Some objects promote, fabricate, and stabilize serial pinboarding as a dominant aesthetic expression and/or incite epistemic expectations. Some objects fabricate a base or surface and thus condition any potential pinboarding through their materiality. Others trigger diagrammatic viewing or thinking through their presence or their visual language. Some may be artifacts of police work but also reflect upon repetition, authenticity, haptic visuality, or the practice of collecting. And others create a visual grammar within a board, enable thought experiments, and facilitate the pinboards’ epistemic potential. Yet all objects, materialities, and functions are dependent on each other to work as a serial pinboard within a diegesis. On a second level, a pinboard—all its elements and the network forming between them—needs to be (re-)presented by a series. Only then can it be part of the series’ dispositive and the configuration of its elements. Smith writes: “Everyday film/television practice over the years has developed a recognizable ‘language’ of devices for manipulating time, space, and subjectivity, and such standard techniques such as flashbacks make complex storytelling legible” (2006, 92). This book’s aim was also to shed light on the filmic ‘language’ of serial pinboarding. It has become clear with the examples used throughout this study that pinboards can be more than just one of many elements that ‘make’ a TV show. Instead, they are a central narrative and structural entity and determine when, how, and what becomes visible. Pinboards as the dispositive of seriality determine what is ‘the said’/‘the shown’ and what remains or becomes ‘unsaid’/‘unshown’ (Cf. Foucault 2002). Serial pinboarding can spatialize time, visualize causal connections, or chronologically deal with

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spaces and places. It can do all of this while piecing together a series’ ­narrative which it reciprocally conditions: If an object and its attached storyline do not ‘fit’ onto a series’ pinboard they cannot be part of the board nor of the show’s story. Pinboarding thus makes the conditions of and for seriality apparent—it visualizes and creates them while at the same time being created and presented through the series. The reciprocal creation of board and show, of narrative and montage, of viewers and media is part of the larger, less visible televisual pinboarding. In the connections and relations that form between all the involved parties and parts is where TV’s meta-dispositive could be examined. The formation of a televisual pinboard is a process, which is fundamentally conditioned by seriality, just as much as the formation of any significance is revealed as a process by seriality. Through seriality, pinboards as media become possible and visible. It is precisely ‘the series’ that is the pinboarding medium. And serial pinboarding supports the consideration of the series as a medium in its own right – not, of course, in the apparatic sense in which radio, television, and film are media, but in the sense that series (in a broad sense) enable otherwise impossible mediations between those media, between social and cultural formations, discourses, and practices, between spatial and temporal distances in and between both diegetic and non-diegetic realms. (Denson 2011, 11)

Throughout this book, pinboards have been described through processes and as media, images, epistemic objects, and diagrams. Like an image, they refer to something outside themselves and (re-)present something, though that something might be fictional. Like diagrams, they are also a self-referring system and they oscillate between configuration and reconfiguration within thought experiments. Like a matrix, they ostensibly present information but they also guide the character’s actions and thus gain agency. Bauer and Ernst (2010, 15) suggest that diagrams show parallels to other methods, that they mediate between theory and practice. As pinboards are at least diagrammatic, they too fall under the concepts of heuristic fiction, simulation, and modeling. And they too establish their own set of rules for thinking and planning actions, for epistemic processes and acts of investigation and mediation (ibid.). Episte-scopo-philia, understood as the joy of seeing someone understand something, is central to the idea of serial pinboarding.

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As visual media pinboards fall under Krämer’s definition of operative pictoriality (2009), which means they can visualize non-visual relations through planarity, directedness, graphism, syntaxity, referentiality, and operativity, these categories can be used to sum up some of this book’s central points. Planarity, which has been central to the chapters on flat objects and especially the surfaces of pinboards, allows the eye to perceive many things simultaneously. The visual impression and receptive-cognitive processes that can be triggered by showing a pinboard are essential to serial pinboarding and its applications. Their haptic visuality can only ever be simulated, however, as they are also part of the planarity of the TV screen. That means that pinboards are directed, through the position of the camera eye in relation to the board, the camera movements, reading conventions, montage, or effects. Graphism, meaning ways of inscription or carving into a surface, culminates in many of the objects: borderlines create the board’s inside and outside; thread, lines, and arrows draw distinctions and create spots where they cross in a visual grammar or pinboarding argument that can be read as a thesis. Through the relational positions within the pinboarding space, the syntax of the pinboard develops. By (re-)presenting or depicting anything, even fictional references, pinboards also create a space for exploration and experimentation with the content, making pinboarding epistemic and the board “a tool and an instrument of reflection” (ibid., 104). A close reading of the four main examples has made it clear that serial pinboarding can be many things in many forms. The timeline in FlashForward (Braga and Goyer 2009–2010) and the significantly different net of time in Heroes (Kring 2006–2010); the tree-turned-color-chartturned-­map externalized mind of Carrie Mathison (Gordon and Gansa 2011–); the map-net hybrids and all the other variations in Heroes and Heroes Reborn (Kring 2015–2016); and the window shutter of a cold case in Castle (Marlowe 2009–2016)–they all condition the serial narratives of their shows, while in turn being visibly influenced and shaped by their respective contexts. Their items, objects, and artifacts allowed me to develop more generalized object categories that can serve as a start for any future analysis of (serial) pinboarding. Focusing for example on the thread, led to a first categorization of the pinboard collage, the pinboard of linearity, the bifurcating pinboard, and the pinboarding web in regard to their material appearance and pinboarding function. Additionally, serial pinboards can be sorted by their intra-diegetic use of communication, on an internal, private, or public level. Drawing on different aspects to analyze a

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series’ board can be done with the methodology and tool developed in this book, but will also necessarily have to stay open for adaptation and extension. Throughout, the concept of the dispositive has been constantly linked to serial pinboarding. In 1994, Hickethier described how TV is a dispositive of reception and cognition made of societal power structures, rules and regulations, concepts of time, rituals, habits, entertainment, and information seduction. This dispositive invokes expectations, viewing habits, and specific norms with the viewers so that their overall perspective on society and the individual is changed in the long term (Hickethier 1994, 15). In that sense, pinboarding as part of TV’s dispositive of seriality, which is made of materiality, narrative use, story arc, montage, and viewing habits, invokes diagrammatic or at least deductive viewing, expectations, and norms with the viewers regarding television series. These changes in TV, especially with contemporary developments in production, distribution, and technology, could also be considered further when applying serial pinboarding to other examples and media. Additionally, diagrammatic thinking as a mode of reception also applies to many other forms in television, especially in non-fiction segments, like the news or educational programs. As an epistemic medium, pinboards certainly also enable and condition deduction in countless offices, precincts, laboratories, and classrooms. They are digitally imitated in apps, especially those for team organization, and simulated in games as explored in the beginning of this book under the tagline of the ‘age of pinboarding’. In these games, series, or movies, pinboarding as a narrative device usually presents some form of intra-diegetic information: either about a situation or case, or about a person and potentially their mental state. A serial pinboard is thus both storage for previously acquired knowledge, available if characters or viewers need to refresh their memory, and an experimental space, in which the movement of objects can represent or even produce new insights. Serial pinboards can therefore also be understood as dispositives of thinking, reminding us more of rhizomes than organized tree structures, visually representing and triggering cognitive processes. Within pinboarding processes, and thinking in general according to Peirce, the onlooker is constantly correlating signs and thoughts (Bucher 2008, 14) while the “oscillating back and forth, this dual view of the ‘serial junkie’ […] seems to be a fundamental process of reception with serial narratives” (Hügel 2012, 70: my translation). These cognitive processes, which are connected to the information that is presented by the

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pinboard, are hence part of the reception and the practice of serial ­pinboarding. In the narrative context of a distorted timeline or an unreliable narrator, serial pinboarding then can also be a strategy to withhold or at least fragment information—to increase suspense or to influence the storytelling’s timing. Because pinboarding makes its own serial condition visible and invites viewers to analyze, theorize, and speculate, serial pinboarding is also used in transmedia strategies as well as by fans. Further research efforts might focus on the connection between the characters’ obsessive behavior and pinboarding. A more abstract approach might even consider pinboards under the light of Peirce’s quasi-mind, a concept with which he describes how the semiotic process evokes and spreads shared knowledge and experience, and how the same inventions could come about simultaneously (Murphey 1993, 353). Sherlock’s living room pinboard, for example, is put up precisely when his genius mind does not function. His thinking is blocked, which is why he needs to externalize the ‘net of rats’ on a wall. While sharing this board, and explaining the objects’ significance to Watson (and the viewers) he suddenly understands and the story continues (Gatiss and Moffat 2010–2017, S03E01, original air date: January 1, 2014). When further working with and on pinboarding as a serial practice, aspects that could be considered are questions about gender and pinboarding, as has been touched upon with Kate Beckett and Richard Castle’s his and hers pinboarding. It does so far present itself as a practice for all, but an in-depth analysis might show differences. The gendered gaze of pinboarding could also be further explored, for example in the context of the camera work on obsession walls or stalker shrines, or the importance of light and darkness in the filming of pinboards. Light as a framing aspect has only been hinted at, with the Mosaic Investigation Wall (MIW)’s framing light boxes of the MIW or Saul turning the spotlights around in front of Carrie’s wall. But Kate’s board also gets illuminated by two desk lamps at night. In Heroes, diffused lighting situations support the montage’s efforts to emphasize some areas and leave others vague. In the context of this, pinboards should be further considered under the narratological concept of the unreliable narrator, which also stands in close connection to the as yet unexplored idea of the Mind Game Series. Looking closely at the modes of viewer interpellation and promised participation with pinboarding could also prove worthwhile. Serial pinboards oscillate between their pictorial status and material presence, one never completely denying the other or rather both depen-

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dent on each other. That is why even entirely digital boards imitate ­analogue boards and their object categories, which have been described during the course of this study. Television and TV series are always changing; they have their own performativity, history, and time. Yet most evolutions are successions of previous developments. And while the contemporary trend of pinboarding offers plenty of examples, a look back into the tradition of TV series and their pinboards might also prove insightful. Just like future serial pinboarding, maybe with entirely different object categories, materials, and narrative contexts, should be examined within the context of its tradition. Serial pinboarding encompasses operations, processes, subjects, and objects. It is a cultural practice shaped by television and shaping television series in return. Pinboarding enables visual reflections on seriality in a more general sense while the serial narrative context conditions the practices of actors, film crews, and audiences in relation to the pinboard. As a phenomenon, it demands an interdisciplinary approach that keeps broader cultural developments in mind while applying close readings with the methodologies and theories from (moving) image studies and art theory just as much as from television, narrative, and seriality studies. Combining these approaches, pinboards have been analyzed as dispositives of televisual seriality. Because pinboards and their series in fact fabricate and condition each other reciprocally, pinboards are visual dispositives of televisual seriality.

References Agamben, Giorgio. 2005. What Is a Dispositive? CheCosèUnDispositivo? Lecture presented at the European Graduate School. www.egs.edu:80/faculty/giorgio-agamben/articles/what-is-a-dispositif/overview Bauer, Matthias, and Christoph Ernst. 2010. Diagrammatik: Einführung in ein kultur- und medienwissenschaftliches Forschungsfeld. Bielefeld: transcript. Braga, Brannon, and David S. Goyer. 2009. FlashForward. New York City: ABC. Bucher, Sebastian. 2008. Das Diagramm in den Bildwissenschaften: Strömungen der bildwissenschaftlichen Diagrammforschung. Saarbrücken: VDM. Denson, Shane. 2011. ‘To Be Continued…’:Seriality and Serialization in Interdisciplinary Perspective. In What Happens Next: The Mechanics of Serialization. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam. Foucault, Michel. 2002. The Archaeology of Knowledge. New York: Routledge. Gatiss, Mark, and Steven Moffat. 2010. Sherlock. London: BBC. Gordon, Howard, and Akex Gansa. 2011. Homeland. New York City: Showtime.

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Hickethier, Knut. 1994. “Methodische Probleme der Fernsehanalyse.” In Aspekte Der Fernsehanalyse: Methoden Und Modelle, Knut Hickethier, 10–28. Münster: LIT Verlag. Hügel, Hans-Otto. 2012. Eugène Sues. Die GEheimnisse von Paris Wiedergelesen. Zur Formgeschichte Seriellen Erzählens Im 19. Und 20. Jahrhundert. In Populäre Serialität: Narration – Evolution – Distinktion. Zum Seriellen Erzählen Seit Dem 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Frank Kelleter, 49–72. Bielefeld: transcript. Krämer, Sybille. 2009. Operative Bildlichkeit. Von der ‘Grammatologie’ zu einer ‘Diagrammatologie’? Reflexionen über erkennendes ‘Sehen.’. In Logik des Bildlichen: Zur Kritik der ikonischen Vernunft, ed. Martina Heßler and Dieter Mersch, 94–122. Bielefeld: transcript. Kring, Tim. 2006. Heroes. New York City: NBC. ———. 2015. Heroes Reborn. New York City: NBC. Macho, Thomas. 2009. Zeit Und Zahl: Kalender- Und Zeitrechnung Als Kulturtechniken. In Bild, Schrift, Zahl, ed. Sybille Krämer and Horst Bredekamp, 179–192. München: Fink. Marlowe, Andrew W. 2009. Castle. New York City: ABC. Mersch, Dieter. 2014. “Sichtbarkeit/Sichtbarmachung: Was heißt ›Denken im Visuellen‹?” In Präsentifizieren. Zeigen zwischen Körper, Bild und Sprache, ed. Fabian Goppelsröder and Martin Beck, 17–69. Zürich: diaphanes. Murphey, Murray G. 1993. The Development of Peirce’s Philosophy. Indianapolis: Hackett. Smith, Greg M. 2006. A Case of Cold Feet: Serial Narration and the Character Arc. Journal of British Cinema and Television 3 (1): 82–94. https://doi. org/10.3366/JBCTV.2006.3.1.82.

Index1

A Agamben, Giorgio, 38, 39, 66n11, 224 Archive, 17, 32, 36, 49, 134, 141, 150 B Barthes, Roland, 91, 94, 188 Bergson, Henri, 182n9 Binge-watching, 32, 188 Blackboard, v, 1, 36, 152, 159, 163, 223 Blueprint, 11, 99, 104, 114–119 Booth, Paul, 9, 25, 26, 37, 42, 123, 135, 208 Bourdaa, Melanie, 19, 203 Bussolini, Jeffrey, 39, 40, 66n10, 104

Castle (TV series), 7–12, 27, 29, 41, 57–61, 79, 85, 89, 99, 122, 124, 126, 129, 164, 174, 176, 181n2, 182n13, 194, 196, 226 Causality, 88, 94 Certeau, Michel de, 109 Chalk, 82, 86, 87, 163, 164, 173, 190 Clustering, 47, 146, 147, 149, 152 Collection, 3, 56, 83, 98, 101, 102, 136n8, 141, 148, 163, 207 collector, 27, 101, 102, 136n8, 148 Comedy, 27, 67n15, 212 Complex television, 9, 207 Crime show, 97, 153 CSI (TV series), 22, 94, 182n14 Cultural practice, 3, 5, 7, 12, 17, 18, 26, 39, 116, 119, 130, 223, 229

C Calendar, 11, 44, 86, 90, 99, 100, 104, 130–134, 159, 162, 165

D Data visualization, 3, 4, 10, 30 Decoding, 6, 24, 62, 83, 206

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

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Deictics, 34, 35, 85–87, 110, 118, 122, 164 Deleuze, Gilles, 39, 41, 101, 108, 123, 125, 170, 171, 173 Design thinking, 3 Diagramm diagrammatics, v, 6, 10, 28, 31, 111, 112, 115–117, 119, 130, 132, 133, 148, 150, 152, 153, 159–161, 165–167, 174, 180, 189, 197, 224, 225, 227 diagrammatology, 115 Dispositive, 2, 10, 11, 18, 22, 27, 34, 38–41, 50, 52, 62, 66n11, 82, 83, 85, 88, 93, 94, 96, 103, 104, 108, 110, 112, 119, 120, 126, 143–146, 169, 171, 179, 180, 187, 189, 191, 194, 198, 200, 201, 214, 223, 224, 227, 229 E Encoding, 6, 24, 25, 62 Engell, Lorenz, 19, 94, 121 Episteme epistemic, 3, 12, 18, 35–37, 61, 81, 86, 141–147, 151, 153–156, 161, 177, 188–191, 195, 203, 212, 224–227 epistemology, 34, 142, 143, 159 episte-scopo-philia, 142, 225 Evidence, 11, 27, 36, 97–104, 129, 148, 164, 179, 188, 193, 208, 224 evidence bags, 11, 43, 79, 83, 97–104 F Fahle, Oliver, 19, 31, 33, 123 Fans, 5, 9, 11, 34, 57, 64, 91, 187, 196, 202, 203, 206–212, 214, 215n6, 228

Fan practice fan studies, 167 fandom, 13, 29, 206, 208, 210, 214 FlashForward (TV series), 10–12, 23, 41–45, 47, 51, 62, 63, 79, 80, 86, 95, 96, 100, 101, 112, 117, 118, 121, 122, 130–134, 143, 147, 149, 154, 162, 163, 165, 170, 172, 173, 189–191, 196, 199–201, 207, 209, 226 Foucault, Michel, 38–40, 103, 108, 143, 160, 224 Found object(s), 98 G Gaze, 49, 50, 84, 153, 228 H Hall, Stuart, 24, 32 Heroes (TV series), 10–12, 27, 29, 41, 51–57, 68n18, 79, 84, 99, 105n5, 109–111, 122, 133, 134, 146, 158, 174, 177, 182n13, 193–197, 201, 205, 209, 210, 226, 228 Homeland (TV series), 10–12, 27, 29, 30, 41, 45–51, 56, 67n14, 67n15, 79, 83, 89, 96, 99, 114, 122, 126, 127, 129, 132, 136n5, 148, 158, 168, 179, 191–193, 196, 201, 213 I Interface, 4, 6, 59, 120 Intertextuality, 29, 30 Investigation, 36, 44, 45, 51, 57, 61, 67n14, 92, 95, 97, 99, 100, 103, 118, 130, 133, 136n6, 150, 162, 167, 175, 191, 194, 195, 199–201, 203, 211, 225

 INDEX 

J Jenkins, Henry, 165, 203, 206–208, 210 K Krämer, Sybille, 34, 35, 37, 54, 145, 151, 159–161, 226 L Lost (TV series), 63, 208, 209 M Map(s), 11, 24, 99, 107, 147, 192 Marker, 29, 34, 44, 59, 82–88, 105n4, 113, 126, 129, 130, 148, 164, 213 Mittell, Jason, 29, 119, 135, 142, 167, 183n15, 189, 206, 208, 209 Mosaic Investigation Wall (MIW), 11, 41–45, 51, 62, 79–82, 86, 90, 95, 96, 100–103, 113, 117, 118, 121, 130–133, 149, 154, 162, 165, 166, 169, 170, 177, 189, 190, 199–201, 207, 228 Murder board, 7, 8, 11, 57–61, 68n23, 89, 99, 124, 125, 164, 174, 178, 196, 210 O Objét trouve, 98 P Paratext, 13, 205, 214 Parks & Recreation (TV series), 157, 181n8, 213, 214 Parody, 7, 13, 27, 181n8, 187, 212, 213 Pearce, Susan, 49, 98, 101, 102, 147, 148

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Peirce, Charles S., 63, 64, 66n3, 94, 112, 130, 145, 163, 180, 224, 227, 228 abduction, 141, 144, 145, 152, 168 deduction, 1, 13, 35, 85, 87, 109, 129, 130, 133, 141, 144, 145, 177, 179, 188, 189, 209, 214, 223, 227 induction, 141, 144 Photograph, 11, 50, 52, 87–96, 110, 133, 136n8, 163, 196, 204 Pin, v, 12, 45, 49, 52, 65, 97, 99, 109–112, 126, 127, 129, 146–157, 159, 161–164, 166, 169, 170, 181n2, 189, 196, 197, 201, 212, 213 Police procedural, 1, 123, 129, 156, 211 R Remake, 12, 13, 155, 187–202, 207 Re-mediation, 13, 187, 196, 208, 215n1 Remodel, 13, 187 Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg, 35, 54, 81, 119, 142–144 Ryan, Mary-Laure, 203, 206 S Se7en (movie), 22–24 Semiotics, 1, 10, 11, 13n2, 19, 40, 63–65, 66n3, 199, 206, 228 Seriality, 2, 6, 9, 10, 12, 17–19, 23, 28–41, 45, 48, 50, 54, 55, 59, 64, 65, 67n12, 81, 82, 85, 88, 90, 93, 96, 104, 110, 119, 120, 146, 150, 151, 155, 161, 164, 167, 169, 187, 189–191, 193–195, 197, 198, 201, 202, 207, 223–225, 227, 229

234 

INDEX

Serres, Michel, 125, 131, 132, 169, 170, 180, 182n12, 197 Spatiality, 54, 56, 108 Stalker, 22, 26–28, 36, 49, 228 Star Trek: Deep Space 9 (TV series), 19, 20 Storyboard, 23, 24 T Thread, v, 1, 37, 92, 111, 148, 189, 226 Timeline, 5, 7, 11, 12, 48, 52–55, 84, 89, 122–124, 127–130, 132, 156, 162, 165, 180, 204, 213, 214, 215n2, 226, 228 Time travel, 10, 25, 27, 52, 53, 81, 92, 122, 123, 130, 133, 134

Transmedia, 9, 12, 13, 25, 28, 54, 56, 103, 174, 180, 187, 196–206, 209, 214, 228 Trope, 7, 13, 20, 27, 29, 30, 81, 122, 173, 174, 195, 208, 210–215 True Detective (TV series), 203, 204 V Viscourse, 41, 67n12 Vogl, Joseph, 36, 132 W Warburg, Aby, 64, 69n25, 102, 181n5 White board, 124 Writers’ room, The (TV series), 24