Semiotics

Seminar

The meaning slipping away.

The study of signs, everything in the universe is a sign of something. Everything that we see, we understand we have a place for in culture. Even the natural world is understood through culture. Therefore everything in that sense is a sign. We don’t look for truth.

Intertextuality?????

Sign is the central word

The theory of the sign illustrated by a diagram

Made up of the signified & signifier

Signifier carries the meaning.

Can’t have a signifier without a signified

French philosopher

Rowland Barthes book mythologies.

Post modernists

Signifier = sound pattern or what you see.

Signified = concept

Denotations - literal meaning – what is actually there

Connotations – suggestive meaning – the meaning you give to what is there.

Daniel chandler (get site off the lecture)

Paris match book cover

Denotation. What you can see

The connotation to us right now would be different from what the French in the 1950s would have been.

Underpinning colonisation.

Ideological critique.

The Nude: Naked or Nude

Kenneth Clark

Strong divide between girls and boys toys. The connotations…… 

Lecture

Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak. (Berger 1972)

Charley harper - connection of the letter and a visual (children’s alphabet)

Visual language . in order to undertand how visual communication workd, we need to consider the mechanics of visual language.

Terms and theories used to decode and explain visual communication have been developed from linguistics.

Sophisticated ‘readers’ of visual signs and signals. Consumers of visual art and design.

We consume and decode meaning and visuals unconsciously

Advertising and branding arguably relies on this in order to be successful.

Logo. We give them meaning and associate them with the brand.

Fcuk. This is woman. This is man. Labeling in a simplistic way and an irony with the sophisticated imagery.

 Understand how meaning is formed in order to understand how your work fits into your d you know what conceptually good and bead design is.

Tim burton has a signature style. Personal, visual language.

Practices of looking

“Throughout history, debates about the representation have considered whether these systems of representation reflect the world as it is… or whether the fact we construct the world and its meaning through the systems of representation we deploy. (Sturken. M & Cartwright. L)”

where does ideology come from? How the systems of control operate.

Visual culture regards images as central to the representation of meaning in the world.

Contempory film and proper-ganda. The representations of masculinity post 9/11 and post.

How they contribute to the representation that shapes out world.

It is crucial that we understand how we communicate effectively through our images.

Damien Hurst.  Element of shock. Brit art.

Abram Games. Logo for the festival of Britain.

Twitter user overload – positive imagery.

Meanings are made through the creation and interpretation of signs and these are culturally specific.

Positive – adds to the richness to the understanding of the word we are looking at.

Semiotics/semiology – the study of signs

Useful theoretical framework to apply to help us decode complex images that may be loaded with multiple  signs.

Theory comes from the greek word ‘theorema’ meaning to view, observe or reflect.

Derives from linguistics

Language is both socially constructed and inherited, culturally specific and a system of signs, organized in codes and structures.

Saussure three main areas to consider how meaning is formed

The signs themselves

The way they are organised into systems

The context in which they appear

Pierce was interested in studying signs to identify how we make sense of the world around us. Concept of the sign based on readers cultural experience

Three levels;

Firstness- a sense of something, a feeling or mood (subjective)

Secondness- the level of fact (fundamental) literal.

Thirdness – the level of general rules (culturally specific) that bring the other two levels together in a relationship.

Saussure defines a sign as being composed of a signifier – the form which the sign takes and the signified – the concept it represents.

(come in where open) signifier

the shop is open for business – signified concept

crosses, swastika, red cross, religion signifier is the same but the signified is different.

Leci n’est pas une pipe – this is not a pipe

The text beneath the pipe is neither true nor false

It is a painting, a representation of a pipe, not the pipe itself.

Joseph kosuth (1965) One and Three chairs

Photograph, chair and dictionary definition of a chair.

appropriation of ideas

pierce: Iconic, indexical, symbolic

Iconic. Signifier is perceived as resembling or imitating the signified. [Toilet signs]

Indexical signs the signifier is not arbitrary but is directly connected in some way ( physically or casually) to the signified – this link can be observed of inferred. [Tracks]

Symbolic the signifier does not resemble the signified. It is fumdamentally arbitrary or purely conventional – so the relationship must be learnt, culturally specific [road signs]

Denotation - A first order of meaning. The literal or obvious meaning of the sign.

Connotation - A second order of meaning, less obvious and are introduces by human intervention.

United colours of Benetton

The angelic and the devil