Semiotics

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Semiotics

• Readings Theory Text Ch. 5, 35, 36

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Semiotics on-line

• Semiotics as the study of signs (very basic
  definition)
• Other useful terminology
• semantics relationship of signs to what they
  stand for
• syntactics (or syntax) formal or structural
  relations between signs
• pragmatics relation of signs to interpreters
• Resources
• Daniel Chandler Semiotics for Beginners
• http//www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/semiotic
  .html
• See also Course website links on WebDav

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Language (F. de Saussure)

• not just a naming-process linking words things

4
Linguistic Signs

• Words and language link a signifier to
  concepts and sound-images
• sound-images have two parts Signified,
  signifier

5
Simplified Semiotic Model
Semiotic Domains and Non-Textual
Technologies From Design by Barrie Carter and
Duncan Knight (2008).
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Peirces Model
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Complex Model
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Sign (C.S. Peirce)

• Sign is something which stands to somebody for
  something
• (representamen)
• Creates another sign (mental image) or
  interpretant that has like content
• NOT like this picture

9
Semiotic Analysis of Visual Images

• Zhang Os series Daddy Me
• signifiers? (shown, not shown)
• What is signified

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Types of Signs (Peirce)

• Icon
• Index
• Symbol

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Icon

• only is a sign if the object exists

12
Icon has meaning even if the object doesnt
exist

• From M. McArthur Reading Buddhist Art

Yamandejia or Yamantaka (Terminator of
Death--Victory over evil) (From M. McArthur
Reading Buddhist Art)
13
Yamantaka Thangka

• Textile
• Tibet/Xizang
• C. 1644-1911(?)
• The John C. and Susan L. Huntington Archive of
  Buddhist and Related Art, The Ohio State
  University

14
Court Scene Picton Trial
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Index

• Connects both with the object and with the
  person for whom it serves as a sign
• Three characteristics
• No significant resemblance to object
• Refer to singularities
• Direct attention by compulsion
• Does not depend on association by resemblance or
  intellectual activities
• Video clip (Cai Guo-Qiang discussing Gunpowder
  Paintings Reading a Painting--from Art21, Art
  in the Twenty-first Century, Season Three)

16
Symbol

• Associated with objects (or ideas) by habit or
  convention without regard for original selection

17
Pride Flag
18
Che Guevara--revolution
19
Uncropped photo
20
Nike Che
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Levels of Meaning (Roland Barthes)

• Informational (communication of message)
• Symbolic (semiologies of various kinds, common
  lexicon of meanings, closed sense, obvious
  meaning(s))
• Signifying/Obtuse (extends beyond culture,
  signifier without signified, outside language,
  disturbs, indifferent to the story, against
  nature, free of narrative, subversive, DIFFERENT,
  point where another language begins)

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Ivan the Terrible Screen Shot
23
Ordinary fascism image screen shot
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Signs, Meanings events (Make Bal)

• Rethinking encounters with signs and meanings
• Narrativity vs. scenes from everyday life with no
  iconographic expectations (maybe)

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Nailhole
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NailHole
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How do we know what viewers will respond to?

• Differences between verbal and visual texts
• Fundamental differences between verbal and visual
  reality (or ways of seeing)
• Work-reader interaction

28
A picture is worth a thousand words

• New skepticism about photography and truth
  BUT.persistence of belief in visual images
• Video of tasar use by police and death of R.
  Robert Dziekanski at Vancouver International
  Airport
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?v_3Ggpme5nUA

Larry Berg, CEO of the Vancouver Airport
Authority, points to a map showing the customs
area controlled by the Canada Border Services
Agency. (CBC)
29
Facts, Truth and Design (Kress and Van Leeuwen)
30
Theories and Images (Paul Gilroy)

• Denotations
• reading visual representations text
• Critical discourse analysis

31
August Sander--Men in Suits (John Berger)
32
P. Diddy (200-2008)
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Hipster
34
Beautiful Women

• Ad and Illustration for article about White
  Trash aesthetics by M. Talbot, Getting Credit
  for being White New York Times Magazine. Vol.
  147 (Nov. 30 1997)

35
Jeong Mee Joon Girl Boy babies and their
things
36
Notions of semiotics useful for analyzing
visual challenges to conventions
Marcel Duchamp. Fountain, original (left) and
recreations of lost 1917 Original
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Manet Olympia
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Yasamasu Morimura
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Communication Semiotics (Signs Codes)

• Sign something that stands for something else
  in a system of signification (language, images,
  etc.) (M. Levine 2005)
• Code the relational system that allows a sign
  to have meaning, the social organization of
  meanings into binary oppositions, hierarchies,
  and differential systems.