There is a single abstract machine that is enveloped by the stratum and constitutes its unity. This is the Ecumenon, as opposed to the Planomenon of the plane of consistency. [TP: 50]
A true abstract machine has no way of making a distinction within itself between a plane of expression and a plane of content because it draws a single plane of consistency, which in turn formalizes contents and expressions according to strata and reterritorializations. The abstract machine in itself is destratified, deterritorialized; it has no form of its own (much less substance) and makes no distinction within itself between content and expression, even though outside itself it presides over that distinction and distributes it in strata, domains and territories. An abstract machine in itself is not physical or corporeal, any more than it is semiotic; it is diagrammatic (it knows nothing of the distinction between the artificial and the natural either). It operates by matter, not by substance; by function, not by form. Substances and forms are of expression "or" of content. But functions are not yet "semiotically" formed, and matters are not yet "physically" formed. The abstract machine is pure Matter-Function -- a diagram independent of the forms and substances, expressions and contents it will distribute. [TP: 141]
Defined diagrammatically in this way, an abstract machine is neither an infrastructure that is determining in the last instance nor a transcendental Idea that is determing in the supreme instance. Rather, it plays a piloting role. The diagrammatic or abstract machine does not function to represent, even something real, but rather constructs a real that is yet to come, a new type of reality. [TP: 142]
This Real-Abstract is totally different from the fictitious abstraction of a supposedly pure machine of expression. It is an Absolute, but one that is neither undifferentiated nor transcendent. Abstract machines thus have proper names (as well as dates), which of course designate not persons or subjects but matters and functions. The name of a musician or scientist is used in the same way as a painter's name designates a color, nuance, tone or intensitiy: it is always a question of a conjunction of Matter and Function. . . . There is a diagram whenever a singular abstract machine functions directly in a matter. [TP: 142]
Strictly speaking, therefore, there are no regimes of signs on the diagrammatic level, or on the plane of consistency, because form of expression is no longer really distinct from form of content. The diagram knows only traits and cutting edges that are still elements of content insofar as they are material and of expression insofar as they are functional, but which draw one another along, form relays, and meld in a shared deterritorialization: particles-signs. There is nothing surprising in this, for the real distinction between form of expression and form of content appears only with the strata, and is different on each one. [TP: 142]