Transcript 3semiotics_387_2008

Semiotics
Readings: Theory Text Ch. 5, 3:5, 3:6
Language (F. de Saussure)
• not just a namingprocess linking
words & things
Linguistic Signs
• link concepts and “sound-images”
• “sound-images” have two parts (Signified, signifier)
Sign (C.S. Peirce)
• “is something which
stands to somebody
for something”
(representamen)
• Creates another
sign (mental image)
or “interpretant” that
has like content
• NOT like this
picture
Arrow
Icon
• has meaning even if the “object”
doesn’t exist
• only is a “sign” if the “object” exists
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
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
• Differences
between the
verbal and
the visual
• Work-reader
interaction
Facts, “Truth” and Design (Kress and Van Leeuwen)
Theories and Images
(Paul Gilroy)
• Denotations
• “reading” visual
representations &
text
• Critical discourse
analysis
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.”
August Sander--”Men in Suits”
(John Berger)
QuickTime™ and a
decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
P. Diddy (200-2008)
Hipster
Critical Analysis: “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)
Last Day: Artists had long been
challenging definitions of what is art and
who can define it
Marcel Duchamp. Fountain, original (left) and recreations of lost 1917 “Original”
Manet Olympia
Yasamasu Morimura
QuickTime™ and a
TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.