ABSTRACT
This introductory chapter examines the approach of the book to the notion of digital icon in terms of its travel as a cultural artefact appropriated through its symbolic values while re-birthed through new modes of signification online. Disassembled and reassembled through the digital architecture of the internet and reincarnated through memetics online, the icon inherits a mutable form of fluidity and longevity through its multiple incarnations. Articulated as a contagion through evolutionary genetics, the digital icon is propelled through a libidinal economy in which human psychic forces remediate its production to be contextualized against offline cultures and the autonomy of creativity online; hence, the iconic entrapped within the ‘liminoid’ sphere between morality and immortality is both a depraved and venerated entity. In acknowledging its mutability, this chapter employs the Deleuzean philosophy reviewing the iconic online as simulacra celebrating difference in recognition of its semblance unleashing new possibilities in form and substance on the digital realm.
