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

E-MAIL

• 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!