Semiotics Readings: Theory Text Ch. 5, 3:5, 3:6

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

Language (F. de Saussure)

• not just a naming-process linking words & things

Linguistic Signs• Words and language link a ‘signifier’ to concepts and “sound-

images”

• “sound-images” have two parts : Signified, signifier

Simplified Semiotic Model

“Semiotic Domains and Non-Textual TechnologiesFrom Design”by Barrie Carter and Duncan Knight (2008).

Peirce’s Model

Complex Model

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

Semiotic & Analysis of Visual Images

• Zhang O’s series ‘Daddy & Me’– signifiers? (shown, not shown)

– What is signified

Types of Signs (Peirce)

• Icon

• Index

• Symbol

Icon• only is a “sign” if the “object” exists

Icon: has meaning even if the “object”

doesn’t exist

• From M. McArthur Reading Buddhist Art

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

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

Court Scene: Picton Trial

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 Art:21, Art in the Twenty-first Century, Season Three)

Symbol• Associated with “objects” (or

ideas) by habit or convention without regard for original selection

Pride Flag

Che Guevara--revolution

Uncropped photo

Nike Che

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”)

Ivan the Terrible Screen Shot

Ordinary fascism image screen shot

Signs, Meanings & “events” (Make Bal)

• Rethinking encounters with signs and meanings

• Narrativity vs. scenes from everyday life with no iconographic expectations (maybe)

Nailhole

NailHole

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

“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)

Facts, “Truth” and Design (Kress and Van Leeuwen)

Theories and Images (Paul Gilroy)

• Denotations• “reading” visual

representations & text

• Critical discourse analysis

August Sander--”Men in Suits” (John Berger)

P. Diddy (200-2008)

Hipster

“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)

Jeong Mee Joon: Girl & Boy babies and their things

Notions of ‘semiotics’ useful for analyzing visual challenges to conventions

Marcel Duchamp. Fountain, original (left) and recreations of lost 1917 “Original”

Manet Olympia

Yasamasu Morimura

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.”