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Indexicality & metaphor
The Ethics and Politics of Virtuality and Indexicality Bradford, 1 July 2005
Marianne van den BoomenInstitute Media & Re/presentationUniversity Utrecht, The Netherlands
Indexicality & metaphor
• Metaphors in daily Internet practice• Materialist semiotics• Connections between:
• concepts & artifacts• signs & events• code & matter
Where is my mail?
• Brand new permanent connection, just ‘click & go’• But: no mail in the inbox• Online? Cables, hardware? No, software• No need to connect first, cf. configuration at work
There is the mail...
• Brand new permanent connection, just ‘click & go’• But: no mail in the inbox• Online? Cables, hardware? No, software• No need to connect first, cf. configuration at work
• Missing link, hidden steps• Small conceptual error• Computer illiteracy? No, literacy!
Analysis: 1. icontology
• Inclination to take the icon literally, iconic metaphorical sedution
• The function of desktop icons: reduction & delegation• Double faced sign:
• Towards user: signifying job, metaphor for result• Towards machine: executing job, indexical reference to code
• Replacing complex processes by an ontological state, place or thing
• Representing ontological simplicity, depresenting complexity• Icontology = at interface value
Analysis: 2. expected immediacy
• Expectation of immediate result
• Default and touchstone for any mediation• One-click ideology and discourse (instant updates, plug & play etc)• Historical frames and future dreams, interfaceless computing
• Default dream of immediacy, icontological slumber• Failure and rupture shows implied labour of configuration and
processing
Analysis: 3. transference & transmediation
• Conceptual transference from work to home configuration
• Ubiquitous situations of transference:• standardised computer interfaces and operation• network transferences & transmediations
• content (copy, mail, downloading)• modality (file -> print, live -> webcam, sound -> files) • format (Word -> PDF, .wav -> .mp3)
• Identical digital identical one-to-one transference? Only on the 0-1 machine level, not on human readable interface
• Transference by analogical representation and metaphor
Metaphors in action
• Metaphorical transferences:• Visual representations • Metaphorical seduction, icontology & depresentation• Transmediation as cross-domain transfer
• Lakoff & Johnson: conceptual metaphor• Cross-domain mapping• ‘Target-domain is source-domain’
Target-domain is source-domain
SOURCE-DOMAIN
POSTAL MAIL
• postbox• letters, packets, junk• sending, receiving• opening, reading• sorting, disposing• delivery by postman• postal distribution system
TARGET-DOMAIN
• mail program• messages• push the send or get button• click the message subject• move to folder or delete• mail server at provider• connect to provider, ‘fetch mail’
Material metaphor
• Katherine Hayles: materality of text, mediation & code• Material metaphor: connection between symbols and material
artifacts
• Mailbox icon, with double reference:• Conceptual (source/target-domain, understanding)• Material (blackboxed events-domain, action)
• Digital events-domain: software & hardware• No direct access for the user, but mediated: different conceptual,
analogical translations represented on an interface
Levels of signification
• C.S. Peirce: eventhood and thinghood of the sign• Classification based on relation between sign and object:
• icon (resemblance)• Index (existential causation or proximity)• symbol (arbitrary, conventional)
• Are desktop icons Peircian icons?1. Appearance: mailbox = icon, telephone = index, browser = symbol2. Action: all indexical, since invoking machine processes3. Total signification: all symbolical, since arbitrary and conventionally
coded, both for user and machine
Levels of material indexicality
• Peirce’s classification of signs: more trichotomies of levels • Desktop icons: dicent (‘factual’) legisign (expression of a general
rule) in the form of icon, index or symbol
• Signifieds can become new signifiers (signs), involving new objects and signifieds (interpretants)
• Virtual indexicality and executing indexicality
• However, no loss of indexicality by digitisation!
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