Brandon writes that the layout of a retail floor space isn't terribly
high-tech. But that's not the store--the store is situated in a larger
playing field, which is very high-tech. It's rich to think of retail space
in terms of a crossplatform tectonics: the location of the store is not
bound by the walls, or is a container for racks of products; it's infused
with ways of distributing information, opening channels, controlling flow,
creating desire, etc., in which the walls and structures are like artifacts
of processes (buyer behavior patterns by way of market research, flexible
accumulation modes, etc.)--between which a shopping subject fluxes (in and
out of embodied modes and forms of distance-traversal). Within the playing
field are subjective, visual, and behavioral modifications, where embodied
rhythms are annexed to the paces of market demands. Here is where the
temporal enters into the picture in a powerful vector that cuts below
perception; it's the frequency underneath, like the rates of the wheels
turning under the shopping carts.