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Semiotics

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;

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Semiotics

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

  2. 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

  3. 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).

  6. Peirce’s Model

  7. Complex Model

  8. 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 O’s series ‘Daddy & Me’ • signifiers? (shown, not shown) • What is signified

  10. Types of Signs (Peirce) • Icon • Index • Symbol

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

  12. 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)

  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

  15. 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)

  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

  21. 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”)

  22. Ivan the Terrible Screen Shot

  23. Ordinary fascism image screen shot

  24. Signs, Meanings & “events” (Make Bal) • Rethinking encounters with signs and meanings • Narrativity vs. scenes from everyday life with no iconographic expectations (maybe)

  25. Nailhole

  26. NailHole

  27. 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)

  33. 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”

  37. Manet Olympia

  38. Yasamasu Morimura

  39. Communication & Semiotics (Signs & Codes) • “Sign: something that stands for something else in a system of signification (language, images, etc.)” (M. Levine 2005) • “ Code: therelational system that allows a sign to have meaning, the social organization of meanings into binary oppositions, hierarchies, and differential systems.”

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