Cultural Semiotics

Data Dating is a collection of ten academic essays accompanied by works of media art that provide a comprehensive insight into the construction of love and its practices in the time of digitally mediated relationships. The essays come from recognized researchers in the field of media and cultural studies.

INTRODUCTION
Introduction: Dating (the) Data and Other Intimacies
Ania Malinowska and Valentina Peri

1. WIRED LIMERENCE (feat. Deep Love by Antoine Schmitt)
Technology, Commerce and the Intimacy Revolution
Lauren Rosewarne

2. LOVE INFO-STRUCTURES (feat. Glaciers by Zach Gage)
Romance in a Time of Dark Data
Lee McKinnon

3. MEDIATED MATCHMAKING (feat. A Truly Magical Moment by Adam Basanta)
Fast Love. Temporalities of Digitized Togetherness
Ania Malinowska

4. EMOTIONS WITH THE MACHINE (feat. Ashley Madison Angels at Work by !Mediengruppe Bitnik)
‘Emotoys’: Ethics, Emotions and Empathic Technologies
Andrew McStay and Gilad Rosner

5. SELF-FASHIONING DESIRE (feat. Kill Your Darlings by Jeroen van Loon)
The Greatest Love of All: Recognition, Self-Love and the Imaging of Desire
Derek Conrad Murray

6. DIGITAL ONSCENITIES (feat. Peeping Tom (Porn Version) by Thomas Israel)
The New Onscenity. Navigating Digital Desires in the Twenty First Century Pornoscape
Lynn Comella

7. LIBIDINAL TECHNO-SCAPES (Webcam Venus by Addie Wagenknecht and Pablo Garcia)
The Proxemics of Digital Intimacy
Kyle Machulis

8. TOUCHLESS EMBRACES (feat. VR Hug by Tom Galle and Moises Sanabria)
Virtual Hugs and the Crises of Touch
David Parisi

9. SOUNDS OF FEELING (feat. Digital Synaesthetic E.E.G. Kiss by Karen Lancel and Hermen Maat)
I Can Hear Your Feelings
Andrew Blanton

10. INTERFACES OF EMOTIONAL SURVEILLANCE (feat. Face Messenger by Tom Galle and John Yuyi)
Timestamp Anxieties
Kristin Veel and Nanna Bonde Thylstrup

The semiotics of the face studies the meaning of the human face in contemporary visual cultures. There are two complementary research foci: widespread practices of face exhibition in social networks like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Tinder; and minority practices of occultation, including the mask in anti-establishment political activism (Anonymous) and the veil in religious dressing codes. The meaning of the human face is currently changing on a global scale: through the invention and diffusion of new visual technologies (digital photography, visual filters, as well as software for automatic face recognition); through the creation and establishment of novel genres of face representation (the selfie); and through new approaches to face perception, reading, and memorization (e.g., the ‘scrolling’ of faces on Tinder). Cognitions, emotions, and actions that people attach to the interaction with one’s and others’ faces are undergoing dramatic shifts. In the semiotics of the face, an interdisciplinary but focused approach combines visual history, semiotics, phenomenology, visual anthropology, but also face perception studies and collection and analysis of big data, so as to study the social and technological causes of these changes and their effects in terms of alterations in self-perception and communicative interaction. In the tension between, on the one hand, political and economic agencies pressing for increasing disclosure, detection, and marketing of the human face (for reasons of security and control, for commercial or bureaucratic purposes) and, on the other hand, the counter-trends of face occultation (parents ‘hiding’ their children from the Internet, political activists concealing their faces, religious or aesthetic veils, writers and artists like Bansky or Ferrante choosing not to reveal their identity), the visual syntax, the semantics, and the pragmatics of the human face are rapidly evolving. The semiotics of the face carries on a comprehensive survey of this socio-cultural phenomenon.

The semiotics of the face studies the meaning of the human face in contemporary visual cultures. There are two complementary research foci: widespread practices of face exhibition in social networks like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Tinder; and minority practices of occultation, including the mask in anti-establishment political activism (Anonymous) and the veil in religious dressing codes. The meaning of the human face is currently changing on a global scale: through the invention and diffusion of new visual technologies (digital photography, visual filters, as well as software for automatic face recognition); through the creation and establishment of novel genres of face representation (the selfie); and through new approaches to face perception, reading, and memorization (e.g., the ‘scrolling’ of faces on Tinder). Cognitions, emotions, and actions that people attach to the interaction with one’s and others’ faces are undergoing dramatic shifts. In the semiotics of the face, an interdisciplinary but focused approach combines visual history, semiotics, phenomenology, visual anthropology, but also face perception studies and collection and analysis of big data, so as to study the social and technological causes of these changes and their effects in terms of alterations in self-perception and communicative interaction. In the tension between, on the one hand, political and economic agencies pressing for increasing disclosure, detection, and marketing of the human face (for reasons of security and control, for commercial or bureaucratic purposes) and, on the other hand, the counter-trends of face occultation (parents ‘hiding’ their children from the Internet, political activists concealing their faces, religious or aesthetic veils, writers and artists like Bansky or Ferrante choosing not to reveal their identity), the visual syntax, the semantics, and the pragmatics of the human face are rapidly evolving. The semiotics of the face carries on a comprehensive survey of this socio-cultural phenomenon.

Examines the literary topos of dawn, the "Alba," in Persian poetry in comparative perspective, first considering the Alba poem in medieval Provencal lyric in southern France and northern Italy, establishing how the theme of the parting of two lovers at dawn was a well-established trope in European poetry of the medieval and renaissance periods.  A close parallel also appears in the Arabic poetry of Andalusia, perhaps with some interchange.  In Persian there are also some examples of the "Alba" theme -- the ghazals of Sa`di but especially Sana'i. Although Hafiz' poems do not use the Alba theme  in the same way, Hafiz does set many of his ghazals (perhaps 1/5 of all his ghazals) in the dawn or early morning.  The article develops how Hafiz uses the topos of dawn and why it is integral to his mythopoetic vocabulary.

Semiotics is the realm of research that studies sign as an important part of cultural life and message. During the semiotics, we can identify the culture and its reality by an explanation of sign, during the system of signification.
Through this, this essay analysis the myth of the phenomenon of the advertising in the semiotics and linguistic method to let us know how advertising creates myth by using sign and how the myth of advertising come into being might be discussed. Also, this essay seeks to find how the visual massage is formed and given meaning.

In questo lavoro è stata svolta una ricerca parallela tra cinema e canzone in Italia: film e canzoni sono stati considerati come prodotti culturali, oggetti intermediali, forme artistiche e categorie estetiche che entrambe concorrono alla creazione dell'immaginario pop e del paesaggio intermediale italiano. Nella prima parte della ricerca si è indagata la mutua e reciproca interazione e intersezione tra mondo del cinema e mondo della canzone da un punto di vista cronologico (sincronico e diacronico, periodizzazioni), teorico, semiotico e formale, indagando la presenza del cinema nella canzone italiana e della canzone italiana nel cinema italiano. Nella seconda parte si analizzano come prodotti culturali alcune opere significative di due casi studio, un regista (Nanni Moretti) e un cantautore (Claudio Baglioni), che rispettivamente si sono serviti del campo artistico opposto al proprio (Moretti della canzone, Baglioni del cinema), ampliando così le possibilità espressive e di significazione del proprio medium, ed espletando a livello intermediale la propria poetica. Questa trattazione dimostra dunque che nei casi di Baglioni e Moretti canzone e cinema hanno mutuamente collaborato tra di loro scambiandosi forme e materiali, concorrendo a creare l'immaginario pop-culturale italiano che caratterizza la nostra contemporaneità.

La musica si offre al nostro orecchio e al nostro esserne gli interpreti bilanciando sempre quelle che sembrano essere le sue due qualità distintive e contrapposte: l’ineffabilità e la capacità di comunicare sensazioni, atmosfere, storie in maniera chirurgica. La faccenda si complica ulteriormente quando abbiamo a che fare con la musica che ascoltiamo tutti i giorni, attraverso quelli che ci ostiniamo a chiamare dischi. È la musica che chiamiamo registrata e che, però, quasi mai è registrata e basta. La musica rappresenta un problema per la semiotica, che come tale l’ha sempre trattata. Al punto che è forse questo il suo campo di applicazione più trascurato. Il significato della musica è stratificato: ha a che fare tanto con i suoni che essa contiene, e che ci sottopone in presa diretta o in forma mediata, quanto con le parole e le pratiche che costruiamo attorno a questi suoni, e che finiscono per orientarne profondamente il senso. Questo libro si concentra su alcune questioni centrali per una semiotica della musica che voglia comprenderla come fatto comunicativo, proponendo alcuni modelli per provare ad attraversare questo campo con uno sguardo — un orecchio — nuovo: la mediazione e il linguaggio fonografico; l’enunciazione e le sue diverse configurazioni; la nozione di genere e i generi musicali intesi come sistema discorsivo, dove la musica si dà appieno nella sua dimensione sociale e al cui interno tradizione e innovazione finiscono per sciogliersi l’una nell’altra.

"Le basi teoriche della Sociosemiotica e le sue applicazioni nell'analisi di film, programmi e canali televisivi, pubblicità e opere di videoarte.

Sociosemiotics theories and their application to the analysis of films, tv programmes and tv channels, advertising and video art."

The present work is an attempt of semiotic code analysis, based on audiovisual advertising from four of the main private sport television in Europe. The adverstising choosen are presented in order to emphasize the common code characteristic between the brand taken, trying to identify for each of them the main advertising technique, in terms of auto-narration of the brand, building the ideal customer, communication of brand mantra exc. " Documenting is in fact an act of construction " 1 and we will try to bring back these constructions to a precise terminology.

In five steps this text tries to convey a semiotic analysis of the phenomenon of  ‘live VR music concerts’.Through this paper it becomes clear that the meaning of live music and virtual live music is not always clear. Virtual does not want to be like the real. It does not intend to create the same music experience. It is a globalising trend that seeks to go beyond. In contrast, maybe the real becomes more like the virtual. Experimenting with virtual experiences results eventually in the dissolving of the boundaries between the real and the virtual. The meaning of live music is changing and is strongly interpreted in the context of culture. Pandemic culture insinuated the interpretation that VR is just arriving, but actually it was already here for a while. With the semiotic square we analysed the virtual and real through the ‘here and now’. It is the ‘here and now’ (authenticity?) that gets questioned in live virtual concerts. It is legit to present a live concert in other ways, because that is one of the aims of VR. The virtual concert does not necessarily want to substitute real-life concerts. Peircian interpretations led into new kinds of music experience and new music industries/business models. A virtual concert experience constructs experience of identities of experience of collectivity that are real. Even in a manipulated or determined world the emotions that music creates are real. ‘Liveness’ shows the (intersubjective) power of music.

Resumo Este artigo propõe definir um modelo de texto para o texto religioso, em geral, e para o texto bíblico, em especial, por meio de referenciais da semiótica da cultura, dos estudos discursivos e da estética da recepção. Três conceitos se articulam de forma dinâmica: texto, contexto e leitor. A) O texto religioso é estruturalmente complexo, tributário da densidade narrativa do mito e da hiperconectividade da metáfora. B) Textos religiosos são lidos e recriados em redes textuais na história, seus contextos. C) Por fim, o leitor acessa os textos criativamente, atualizando suas possibilidades de sentido. Desta forma propomos um modelo articulado de texto que enfatiza sua polissemia e virtualidade, sua historicidade radical e o papel ativo do leitor. Palavras-chave: texto, contexto, leitor, texto religioso, literatura bíblica.
Abstract This article proposes to define a textual model for the understanding of the religious text, in general, and of the biblical texts, in particular, by means of references from the semiotics of culture, of the discoursive studies and the aesthetics of reception. Three conceptions articulate themselves in a dynamic way: text, context, and reader. A) The texts are considered as structurally complex, narratively dense as the myth, and hiper-connective as the metaphor. B) Religious texts are read and recreated in textual webs in history, their contexts. C) Finally, the reader accesses the text creatively, activating their meaning possibilities. So, we propose an articulated model of text that emphasizes its polysemy and virtuality, its radical historicity, and the active role of the reader.

The following essay is a poetic exploration of ancient indigenous and contemporary market-driven visual narrative strategies and the complex ligatures that bind them. This meditation is rhizomic in form, carrying the reader across cultural, temporal and discursive boundaries.

Der auditive Diskurs im deutschen Roman der Moderne und der Postmoderne: der Versuch der Typologie

Im Beitrag werden die methodologischen und kultur-historischen Gründungen der Typologie der auditiven Diskurses im deutschen Gegenwartsroman untersucht. Der auditive Diskurs wird als akustischen vs. musikalischen Medien im literarischen Diskurs interpretiert. In der Mitte von der Aufmerksamkeit befindet sich die Veränderung des ideologischen und formalen Deutungen des Klanges und der Musik. Auf dem Material der modernen und postmodernen Romane (Th. Mann, H. Hesse, E. Jelinek, Th. Bernhard, R. Schneider u.a.) wird die Reinterpretation und die Dekonstruktion der romantischen Mythe dargestellt.

Der Begriff des Interface kategorisiert die Ausprägungsstufen einer kommunikationsstabilisierenden Schnittstelle als Interaktionsmechanismus, wobei die Interaktion von maschinellen Komponenten (Hardware, Software) sowie die vielfältigen Interaktionen zwischen UserIn und Maschine zur Geltung gebracht werden.

In an essay on the picture frame, Georg Simmel claims the sacredness of this device considered fun- damental for the dialectical articulation of the delicate relationship between art and reality which con- stitutes, for the german philosopher, the core of his aesthetic meditations, including those on theatre. In the most contemporary forms of immersive theatre it is nevertheless no longer the framing of the proscenium – that imaginary “fourth wall”, according to a purely visual approach, through which the audience observes actions on stage – that threshold-figure (according to Simmel’s viewpoint) to which the function of separating and connecting the factual reality of the spectator and the counterfactual one of the (dramatic) possible world is delegated. In fact, in the immersive theatre this boundary devi- ce is embodied by the actor himself, who becomes the figure responsible for the continuous transfor- mation and transfiguration of the performative frame, decidedly more opaque and less transparent than to more traditional theatrical forms, such as bourgeois drama.
We are, therefore, in presence of a sort of 2.0 fictionality, no longer delegated to that specific fictional frame marked by boundary indicators such as the darkness in theater room, the curtain, the silence, etc. Actually, in this new kind of fictionality bodily matter and aesthesia at stake in the actor-spectator experience are solely account for the establishment of the performative frame.

Reseña publicada en el número 13 de la revista "Comunicación" del departamento de Comunicación Audiovisual y Publicidad de la Universidad de Sevilla (pp. 97-100). ISSN 1989-600X

Jorge Lozano (ed.): "Secretos en red. Intervenciones semióticas en el tiempo presente". Madrid: Ediciones Sequitur, 2014. 198 páginas.

"Secretos en red" es un libro surgido del trabajo conjunto por parte de los miembros del Grupo de Estudios de Semiótica de la Cultura (GESC) Jorge Lozano, Marcello Serra, Rayco González o Luis Pablo Francescutti, con aportaciones de Umberto Eco, Paolo Fabbri, Maurizio Bettini, Jacques Fontanille, Denis Bertrand y Alberto Abruzzese.

La llamada a la transversalidad del subtítulo ("intervenciones semióticas en el tiempo presente") hace alusión a la diversidad de metodologías y enfoques presentes en un volumen que tiene como base un único fenómeno de actualidad: Wikileaks, los documentos, los secretos, las demandas de transparencia y las críticas a la opacidad. No existe sin embargo sospecha posible en torno a que la amplitud de miras pueda pecar de dispersión, puesto que las aportaciones de la semiótica de la imagen (Calabrese, pág. 65; Marin, pág. 21; Careri, pág. 24; sobre la mediación del dispositivo de la obra de arte que al mismo tiempo filtra y permite el acceso por medio de la sustancia de su expresión) no hacen sino complementar el ameno análisis del concepto de “transparencia” a través de la lengua latina y de los textos literarios llevado a cabo por Bettini (Séneca, Cicerón, Plauto, Quintiliano… pág. 119-125) o las consideraciones en torno al discurso histórico, las “historias del presente” (pág. 66) y el problema del archivo planteadas por Lozano siguiendo a autores y textos de referencia como "La arqueología del saber" de Foucault (1969). Así planteado, un archivo como el de Wikileaks no es sino “ante todo la ley de lo que puede ser dicho, el sistema que gobierna la aparición de los enunciados como acontecimientos singulares”, esto es, un problema netamente enunciativo, semiótico, comparable al Atlas Mnemosyne de Aby Warburg, “archivo de archivos” (pág. 20), o incluso a la concepción de la Enciclopedia de Umberto Eco como biblioteca de todas las bibliotecas, tema por cierto del su discurso de investidura.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate how visual aesthetic referents used in branding can help foster a transnational imagined community (TIC). The authors use brands embedded with Middle Eastern visual aesthetics as a research context. As such, the study aims to examine how Middle Eastern non-figurative art is used by non-Middle Eastern brands to foster an imagined Middle Easternness. Design/methodology/approach – Through a critical visual analysis, the authors apply a visual social semiotic approach to Middle Eastern art canons to better understand the dimensions of transnational imagined communities. Findings – The study finds and discusses six sub-dimensions of Middle Easternness, which compose two overarching dimensions of TIC, namely, temporal and spatial. These sub-dimensions provide brand managers and designers with six different ways to foster transnational imagined communities through the use of visual aesthetic referents in branding. Research limitations/i...

Ventriloquo è colui che parla col ventre, che simula uno slittamento della voce dalla bocca allo stomaco, da un’interiorità che si apre all’altro attraverso l’inter-faccia del volto, a un’intestinità che nega l’altro nella figura dell’in-volto, dell’in-viso, da una parola nutrimento a una parola escremento, e non quello della sua eiezione naturale ma quello di una parola-vomito, borborigma che parla a sé stesso, che inverte la traiettoria del bolo dal dentro al fuori. Ma ventriloquo è anche colui che parla al ventre, nel senso che non si rivolge al viso, alle orecchie, alla bocca, al volto dell’altro, ma spinge l’interlocutore a dismettere il proprio volto per farsi ventre, per rimanere nel chiuso del proprio io, nel rimuginare la parola ricevuta dal ventriloquo finché essa non diviene a sua volta sterco, e non viene eietta come natura vorrebbe ma vomitata verso il volto altrui, negandone la purezza fenomenologica, frustrandone la funzione di volto, oppure spingendolo a diventare anch’esso pancia, in una asemiosi illimitata che spegne il senso invece di accenderlo, che chiude l’esistenza nell’angolo buio dell’essere, che restituisce i corpi alla natura e li rende ferini, invisi gli uni agli altri, nemici, barbari.

La narratividad no es solo una cualidad de determinados discursos (verbales o no). Es una dimensión básica de nuestra existencia: la narratividad o relatividad ontológica. También, al experimentar la existencia como "agôn", la dimensión dramática está enraizada con nuestro mundo de la vida. En este ensayo hacemos una revisión del texto original de la Poética aristotélica, evidenciando que narración y drama difieren no por los medios ni por el objeto de la imitación, sino por el modo. Así, más allá de una oposición equívoca (diégesis vs. mímesis) proponemos la consideración, dentro de las formas de mímesis, de una dimensión puramente dietética, que reproduce con palabras las palabras y los hechos de los protagonistas, frente a una mimesis pragmática, propia del teatro, en la que las palabras son palabras, pero las acciones se representan como acciones.

Tarkastelen tässä artikkelissa kulttuuriperinnön ja yksilön välistä vuorovaikutusta Vartiokylän linnavuoren ilkivaltatapausten näkökulmasta. Vartiokylän linnavuori on vaurioitunut 1910-luvulta alkaen sekä uudisrakentamisen että ilkivallalla seurauksena. Ilkivallalla tarkoitetaan tässä artikkelissa kulttuuriperintökohteen sellaista haltuunottoa, joka joko tuhoaa kohteen aikaisempia historiallisia kerrostumia tai sellaisia lisäyksiä, jotka vähentävät kohteen alkuperäisyyttä tai tieteellistä informaatioarvoa. Millaisesta kulttuurisesta konfliktista kulttuuriperinnön ilkivaltainen tuhoaminen kertoo?

Olisiko kulttuuriset konfliktit selitettävissä yhteiskunnallisten muutosten; modernin ja post-modernin kulttuuriarvojen kautta? Modernismihan merkitsi perinteisten esteettisten arvojen korvautumista muutoksen ja nykyisyyden arvoilla,  post-modernissa ajassa syvä yhteiskunnallinen muutos ja moniarvoistuminen jatkuivat nopeana. Yhteiskunnalliset muutokset ovat vaikuttaneet siihen, miten ihmiset kokevat menneisyytensä.  Koska kulttuuriperintö ilmentää menneisyyttä, ovat siitä tehtävät tulkinnatkin moninaisia. Tehdyt tulkinnat ovat sidoksissa kulttuuriperintöä tarkastelevan yksilön kohteelle antamiin merkityksiin.

Miksi kaikki eivät tänä päivänä jaa samoja kulttuuri- ja maisema-arvoja, kuin kulttuuriperintöä määrittelevät museoviranomaiset? Voidaanko tuhoaminen nähdä tiedostamattoman toiminnan ja monen sattuman summana? – Ilkivallan tekijällä oli tarve tuhota ja kulttuuriperintökohde valikoitui sattumalta tuhoamisen kohteeksi. John Deweyn näki yleisen apatian, välinpitämättömyyden ja halveksunnan aikaansaavan ihmisten toiminnassa turhautumista ja suoran toiminnan piirteitä.  Kertooko kulttuuriperintökohteiden ilkivaltainen tuhoaminen yksilöiden reaktioista yhteisönsä apaattisuuteen ja piittaamattomuuteen? Onko yhteisön vaalima kulttuuriperintökohde yhteiskunnan hylkäämien yksilöiden vihollinen?

The purpose of this study is examination of the relation between “music” and “mythology” through a current example, which are kinds of ancient narratives. Within the context of this purpose, “music” is discussed in the first chapter of this study as a cultural value. The nature of music, its functions and the historical development of music are examined. Thus, the adventure of music which lasted from Ancient Greece to modern-day and the change that music has undergone within different periods are revealed. In the second chapter of the study, the “mythology” subject is discussed. In this context, researches are made on the content of mythology, its functions, origin theories and its types. Norse Mythology, which is one of the limitednesses of the study, are examined in terms of its sources and scope. Then, the relation between “music” and “mythology” is questioned, which is examined in detail in the previous chapter. As a result of this questioning, examples are given on the reproductions of Norse Mythology in today’s literature, cinema, television and music. In the third chapter of the study, in an attempt to reveal the relation between mythology and today’s music, reflections of Norse Mythology on metal music are examined. This examination contains Norse mythology, which forms the limitednesses of this study, and Amon Amarth, a contemporary metal band. In the application chapter, nine albums released by Swedish death metal band Amon Amarth are examined using semiological anaylsis technique. In the same chapter, sustentation of analysis is aimed through album titles, lyrics and examples of stage shows of Amon Amarth. Also, the conducted examinations are supported with an interview made in Istanbul, in 03.08.2014, with the vocalist Johan Hegg of Amon Amarth. As a result of the study, it is observed that there is a strong relation between music and mythology. Music and mythology maintain their existence with their changeable structures. Today, the genre which benefits most from mythology and uses it for its own music is metal music.

Key Words: Culture, Music, Mythology, Semiotics, Norse Mythology, Amon Amarth

Einladung der Planungsgruppe „Haus der Zeichen“

im Rahmen des Kongresses der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Semiotik laden wir zu einem 2. Workshop am Mittwoch den 13. 09. 2017, von 17.30 bis 19.00 Uhr in der Universität Passau im Hörsaal 7 / WiWi ein.
Zeit/Ort: 13.09.2017, 17:30–19:00 Uhr (HS 7 | WiWi)
Moderation: Friz Fischer und Christina Nuhr (Breuninger Stiftung)

Ziel des Forums ist es, neben einem Archiv für Semiotik (unter Einbezug der bestehenden Textsammlungen von Martin Krampen an der UdK Berlin und der HfG Schwäbisch Gmünd sowie von Roland Posner an der TU Berlin) ein lebendiges Kommunikationszentrum zu schaffen. Für beides gilt es einen Ort zu finden, für Letzteres zudem Konzepte zu entwickeln. Mit dem Forum soll an die bisherige Arbeit der Planungsgruppe um Ingrid Lempp (Haus der Zeichen, 1. Vorsitzende), Eva Kimminich (Universität Potsdam, DGS Sektion Jugend- und Subkulturen) und Martina Sauer (DGS, Sektion Bild) angeknüpft und Ideen und Darstellungsformen für ein „Haus der Zeichen – House of Signs“ entwickelt werden, um damit die Macht des Bedeutens von Zeichen zu veranschaulichen.  Organisatorisch ist die Begegnung als ein Round Table mit Workshop-Charakter angelegt.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen
Ingrid Lempp, 1. Vorsitzende und Martina Sauer, DGS, Sektion Bild

Les sémioticiens des cultures marchent sur des œufs. Ils doivent établir le profil, et donc les limites, d’une civilisation ; déterminer et sélectionner des artefacts culturels en tant que textes d’une telle civilisation ; analyser ces textes afin de comprendre s’ils partagent un dénominateur commun en ce qui concerne un objet culturel particulier ; comprendre et décrire les traits structurels d’un tel dénominateur commun afin d’élaborer un schéma typologique qui pourrait ensuite être comparé avec ceux qui se référent à d’autres civilisations, leurs textes, et leurs conceptions et représentations du même objet culturel. En d’autres mots, ils doivent construire une comparaison typologique de déterminations culturelles. Par conséquent, ils courent constamment le risque de déterminer les limites des civilisations de façon arbitraire, en extraire des textes de façon idiosyncratique afin de confirmer les hypothèses initiales et les préjugés du sémioticien dans un cercle vicieux herméneutique et développer des typologies et des comparaisons qui forcent brutalement la complexité de l’histoire dans des schémas structuraux réductifs.
La sémiotique des cultures ne dispose pas encore d’une méthode souhaitable pour comparer des civilisations ; cette méthode doit être fabriquée par bricolage de trois traditions sémiotiques différentes : celle de Lotman (école de Moscou-Tartu) ; celle de Greimas (sémiotique structurale), et celle de Peirce (sémiotique interprétative).
Cette option théorique sera présentée en relation à un cas d’étude et de comparaison spécifique : la sémiotique de la vacuité dans les cultures spirituelles chrétienne, islamique, et tantrique. En comparant des textes visuels (des diagrammes) issus de l’iconographie de l’hésychasme byzantin, de la calligraphie shiite, et des yantras du tantrisme indien, l’intervention essayera de répondre à la question suivante : comment les différentes cultures spirituelles évoquent par l’image l’idée de vacuité ? Est-il possible de dresser, par le biais de la sémiotique, une paradoxale typologie du vide ? Par quelle méthode de comparaison ?

This paper offers an introduction to 'multiforms' as associated systems of verbal elements that develop in the memory of an individual and are used in text production. It examines these in the highly conservative kalevalaic mythological poetry of Finns and Karelians, where such multiforms become are sufficiently conservative in social circulation that they can become referentially meaningful. This paper looks briefly at general variation in production, variation by dialect, variation by situation and also the meaningful application of kalevalaic epic multiforms in exceptional contexts to produce new meanings

This paper presents some of the same information in the Finnish language "Multiformit kalevalamittaisessa epiikassa" (2010), but it presents a more general introduction to the poetic system and does not open formal typologies of multiforms in this poetic system.

Many scholars have discussed the recent expansion and mixing of Play in our societies, a process generally labelled cultural gamification or ludification. Many cultural phenomena and societal domains are increasingly permeated by ludic elements, metaphors and mindsets. The influence of cultural gamification can also be seen in the media system, through the spread of game-like patterns influencing the narratives and usage of different media. The aim of this paper is to describe the emergence of game-like narratives and interaction in media, focusing on their semiotic dissimulation patterns. More specifically, the following pages will present and analyse recent playful elements and patterns connected to mystery, thriller and similar genres, investigating the ways in which game models interact with other media, and the resulting decrypting and dissimulation effects, both at the textual and at the discoursive level.

Este libro es una recopilación de escritos elaborados durante varios años, en diferentes plataformas digitales. Leerlos resultará de utilidad para cualquier persona interesado en la vida social y política, porque representan esquemas analíticos que pueden ser aplicados a la realidad cotidiana de cualquier sociedad; estos se enfocan concretamente a la Guatemala contemporánea y son ejercicios semiológicos que buscan compartirse con la comunidad académica del área de comunicación, y a la vez con quienes deseen iniciarse en este apasionante campo de esta aplicación teórica. Se abordan temáticas culturales, sociales y políticas, porque la semiótica permite estudiar, como dijo Eco, cualquier hecho cultural (en el amplio sentido de la palabra) como proceso comunicativo, pues prevalece todo un sistema de significación que lo soporta. La semiótica es una disciplina que bucea y escudriña en las redes simbólicas de la vida diaria, apoyándose en diversas áreas del conocimiento. Aplicar el escáner semiótico a estos temas fue una tarea fascinante, para resignificar los andamiajes de los poderes dominantes (y sus resquicios) siempre con la actitud académica de búsqueda.
El autor es Ramiro Mac Donald, reconocido semiólogo guatemalteco, doctorando en comunicación por UNIACC, Chile, profesor de semiótica, Opinión Pública y teorías de comunicación en universidades guatemaltecas. Autor del libro Funciones de Roman Jakobson en la Era Digital. Utiliza un agudo escáner semiótico en sus análisis. En la actualidad preside el Círculo Guatemalteco de Estudios Semióticos.

O presente texto tem como objetivo fazer uma abordagem teórica inicial sob a perspectiva semiótica sobre o conceito de cultura atrelada à noção de hibridismo, aplicado as festas de música eletrônica, especificamente as raves 3. Para compreensão do fenômeno é dado um enfoque com base na semiótica da cultura. O artigo pretende explicar ainda a questão da ordem e do caos presentes nas raves e como essa mescla de sistemas permite que se extraia diversos significados dessa expressão cultural hibrida da contemporaneidade. Palavras-chave: Raves. Hibridismo cultural. Ordem. Caos. Abstract The present text aims to make an initial theoretical approach under the semiotic perspective on the concept of culture tied to the notion of hybridism, applied to electronic music parties, specifically raves. To understand the phenomenon is given a focus based on the semiotics of culture. The article also intends to explain the question of order and chaos present in the raves and how this mixture of systems allows to extract several meanings of this hybrid cultural expression of contemporaneity.

In this working paper we will present a research methodology for describing and comparing corpus of video productions diffused and shared on social media platforms (here: You Tube). The objective of this research is: 1. to study and interpret the cultural representations of the figure of the migrant/immigrant and refugee in virtual local and global communities viewing, commenting and remediating (rewriting) such video productions and 2. to interpret these cultural representations as belonging to a diversity of (new) folk cultures offering especially people from the younger generations (the so-called Millennials and Post-Millennials also sometimes called Homelanders) an epistemic framework for thematizing and narrating the (social) Other (here: the migrant, the immigrant and the refugee). This paper constitutes the principal support of our course entitled “Cultural visions of (im)migrants and (im)migration in the digital social mediasphere”. This course is part of the EMICC (European Master in InterCultural Communication) program offered by a network of European universities and coordinated by the Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) in Lugano . The methodology and results discussed in this paper will also be presented in the First Eurocampus Conference “Advances in Intercultural Communication” in January 2018 and hosted by the Universidade Aberta in Coimbra (Portugal). Finally, we would also like to stress that this is a first uncorrected version of a research article to be published in the Cambridge Handbook of Intercultural Communication, edited by Guido Rings and Sebastian Rasinger (expected publication date: end of 2018/first half of 2019).

When professional designers and even academics needs to give a practical example about design as a paradigm of success in a business perspective and especially as brilliant design user experience, an iconic company Apple and his former charismatic CEO is always mentioned. By the other side, the British designer Jonathan Ive is considered as a worldwide guru designer by firstly designers themselves.

Ανήκουν στο παραλογοτεχνικό είδος, αλλά θεωρήθηκαν βαρόμετρα της κοινωνικής ευαισθησίας της εποχής τους. Είναι τα ληστρικά μυθιστορήματα, με ήρωες τον Νταβέλη και τον Γιαγκούλα. Η μελέτη του Χ. Α. Δερμεντζόπουλου εξετάζει αυτές τις λαϊκές αφηγήσεις Οι βασιλείς των ορέων ΔΗΜΟΣΙΕΥΣΗ: 27/04/1997 00:00

Seine Formbarkeit ist dem Plastik bereits im Namen eingeschrieben, meint die griechische Wortwurzel plastikós doch das, was zum Bilden und Formen geeignet ist. 2 Doch ‚Plastik'-das sind eigentlich zwei Wörter. Diese unterscheiden sich zwar nur in ihrem grammatischen Geschlecht respektive im vorangestellten Artikel, in ihren Konnotationen liegen sie aber umso weiter auseinander. Das Plastik als amorphes Material trägt die Möglichkeit seiner Formung nur potenziell in sich, geht aber mit dem Versprechen einher, jede nur erdenkliche Form anzunehmen zu können. Die Plastik hingegen hat ihre Formung bereits hinter sich gebracht und wurde in dieser Aktualisierung perfektioniert. Im Plastik-Text der Mythen des Alltags wird la plastique von Roland Barthes zur Gänze verschwiegen; 3 und so soll in der Folge nur von le plastic die Rede sein. Kaum ein anderes Material fand in der Warenwelt der Nachkriegszeit größere Verbreitung, kaum ein anderes Material zog aber auch solch vielfältige Deutungen und Wertungen auf sich, sodass mehrere alltagsmythologische Konstellationen darauf aufbauen. Das Plastik ist eine kulturelle Chiffre der Moderne in all ihren Facetten. Barthes' Plastik. Das Phantasma des unendlich formbaren Materials Ausgangspunkt von Roland Barthes' Überlegungen zum Plastik ist eine Messeausstellung, die als performative Bühne jene technisch-industriellen Produktionsprozesse präsentiert, die in den Fabrikhallen normalerweise vor den 1 Aqua 1997. Einzelne Gedanken dieses Aufsatzes finden sich bereits in der Folge 21-"Plastik!"-des Literaturpodcasts "Nachlese" (2020) von Sina Dell'Anno und Jodok Trösch, https://podcasts.apple.com/ podcast/plastik/id1503925797?i=1000477008014 [17. Juni 2021]. Für Ideen und Anregungen danke ich Janneke Meissner. 2 Der Begriff führt sich etymologisch auf das griechische Adjektiv plastikós zurück: "zum Bilden, zum Formen geeignet" (vgl. Art. ‚Plastik', in: Wolfgang Pfeifer et al., Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Deutschen (1993), digitalisierte und von Wolfgang Pfeifer überarbeitete Version im Digitalen Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache, www.dwds.de/wb/etymwb/Plastik [12.05.2021]); verwandt damit ist auch der technische Begriff der Plastizität. Vgl. auch Meikle 1995, 4: "In Greek the verb πλασσειν (plassein) meant to mold or shape a soft substance like clay or wax; the adjective πλαστικος (plastikos) referred to something capable of being molded or shaped." 3 Mahr 2000 vermutet darin eine gezielte Provokation der bildungs-und kulturbeflissenen französischen Bourgeoisie.

In this paper, I explore the idea of board games as a play-type model as described by Juri Lotman. The gothic cathedral as an architectural text had the function to represent to the people of the middle ages the structure of the universe from the cosmic level down to the social structure and the place of each person in that model. This representation is translated to the narrative model in the Novel "The pillars of the earth", which, in turn, is translated into the mechanics of a board game. In this paper, we observe which elements of the architectural text are conserved in the game and how are they conveyed to the players.

The article proposes a typology of meaninglessness based on the semiotics of Charles S. Peirce: meaningless as indecipherable; as incomprehensible; and as uncanny. Each type is exemplified with reference to anecdotic semiotic experience gained while riding Japanese buses. Meaninglessness, however, is not insignificance. Insignificance is a much more disquieting anthropological condition, which the article describes with reference to two symmetrical processes: on the one hand, the euphoric passage from significance to insignificance, a passage meant as the “birth of new meaning”; on the other hand, the dysphoric passage from significance to insignificance, a passage which coincides with the alienation of human existence. Through several examples take from present-day societies, the article advocates for an active role of semiotics in warning human communities against the “emergence of insignificance” and its potential of violence and exploitation.

Abstract: The Saussurian adagio according to which linguistics is "le patron général de la sémiologie" is well known. To a certain extent, the verbal and non-verbal may be subjected to a common, semiolinguistic scheme of investigation. For instance, a fundamental phenomenon in the history of cult(ure)s – the transition of collective expression patterns from sacer ludus to ludus aestheticus – may be described in a semiological metalanguage. Thus, we intend to illustrate, by resorting to a choreographic corpus, the relevance of certain semiological concepts, traditionally applied to verbal objects:
·        “desemantization”/ “resemantization”: a relevant opposition, in our opinion, for the transformation of the choreographic language along with other structures of society;
·        “mutability” and “immutability” of the sign: a paradoxical condition for the subsistence of not only verbal, but also choreographic language;
·        the Saussurean principle of “alteration through continuity”;

    Key-words: dance, desemantization, gesture, (im)mutability, language, resemantization, ritual, sign, Saussure, theatre.the Saussurean concept of “shifting” the semiotic relation; in our opinion, shifting the original relation (ritualistic, magic-religious) between the choreographic significant and signifier is a symptom of the gradual “aestheticization” or “theatricalization” of choreographic “language”.

Business consultants everywhere preach the benefits of innovation—and promise to help businesses reap them. A trendy industry, this type of consulting generates courses, workshops, books, and conferences that all claim to hold the secrets of success. But what promises does the notion of innovation entail? What is it about the ideology and practice of business innovation that has made these firms so successful at selling their services to everyone from small start-ups to Fortune 500 companies? And most important, what does business innovation actually mean for work and our economy today?

In Creativity on Demand, cultural anthropologist Eitan Wilf seeks to answer these questions by returning to the fundamental and pervasive expectation of continual innovation. Wilf focuses a keen eye on how our obsession with ceaseless innovation stems from the long-standing value of acceleration in capitalist society. Based on ethnographic work with innovation consultants in the United States, he reveals, among other surprises, how routine the culture of innovation actually is. Procedures and strategies are repeated in a formulaic way, and imagination is harnessed as a new professional ethos, not always to generate genuinely new thinking, but to produce predictable signs of continual change.

The present paper is concerned with the problem of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic depictions of countries in its diachronic evolution. Relevant terms and their definitions are subject to review, seen through the prism of semiotics. Interdisciplinary nature of the research presupposes accumulation of achievements in different scholarly fields. Apart from that, the article features case studies of three major country symbols (Uncle Sam, British lion and Russian bear), exemplifying author's ideas.