Proposal for a workshop under the general area of theoretical semiotics and epistemology

The general mandate for the section on theoretical semiotics and epistemology is as follows:

“The theoretical origins of semiotics will be subject to contemporary debate on the sign and communication. Do New Information and Communication Technologies (N.I.C.T.) require semiotics to invent special methods or procedures for analysis and interpretation? In this framework great theoretical questions about the objects and the boundaries of semiotics will also be tackled.”

Our proposal regards a trans-disciplinary workshop on a range of theoretical aspects related to understanding dynamic sign processes in new media in a globalizing world.

Workshop title:

A new media semiotics for understanding the complexities of global culture?

Proposed by:

Patrick John Coppock, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia

Giovanna Cosenza, University of Bologna

Patrizia Violi, University of Bologna

One of the more challenging problems today for both general and specific semiotics (understood in Umberto Eco’s terms) is to aid the development of more profound understandings regarding the invention, production and diffusion of new and often hybrid forms of expression, communication and community in the so-called “new media”.

While it is clear that traditional mediums of human expression and communication (writing, visual arts, theatre, ballet, music) and the more recently developed “mass-media” technologies (the book, the press and television media and the Internet) continue to influence in significant ways the development of these hybrid forms of expression in the “new media” technologies at present under development, it is also clear that the new forms of expression and communication made possible by new media technologies are continually challenging our emotional, physical and conceptual limits and borders and pushing traditional media/ mediums of expression in new directions. However, at the present time it is not immediately clear in what way, or indeed whether or not it is possible, or even necessary, for us to make some kind of clear functional and epistemological distinction between “old” and “new” media. Since each of these supposed categories (or clusters) of technologies and practices is in some sense destined to remain “parasitic” on the other, the “old” and the “new” media cannot exist except in intimate tandem with one another, how then can we manage to define precisely what we mean when we talk about “new” media and attempt to study them in semiotic terms? Is there for instance some quite specific and identifiable characteristic or quality that might be said to be exclusively “intrinsic” to new media and not to “old” media, or is there in reality so much overlap and interaction between these presupposed two categories of technologies and practices that any search for intrinsic identifying characteristics becomes meaningless?

For example: we often hear talk of “digital media”, “sampling”, “coding” and “virtual”, in contexts specifically related to discussions of “new” media, with these notions perhaps being seen to stand in some kind of conceptual and/or pragmatic opposition to concepts such as “analogue media”, “continuity”, “interpretation” and “physical” which more often tend to be used in contexts related to discussions regarding “old” media. On the other hand, we see today that in the “traditional” visual arts, cinema, theatre, opera and ballet “new” digital technologies and methods of production are increasingly being used to enhance and transform more traditional forms of scene-setting, direction and performance styles. Are the visual arts, cinema, theatre, opera and ballet then being translated or transformed into “new” media environments in the process?

Another cluster of concepts that are often heard used in connection with discussions of “new” media regard their supposed “interactivity”, “hypermediality”, “interconnectivity”, “portability” and their contribution to processes of “democratisation”, “globalisation” etc., but generally we find these concepts are relatively poorly and variously defined, seeming to function in practice as rather vague symbols of the “new” in “new media”, with little consideration of the historical fact that a wide range of interactions between people; associative forms of reasoning in modelling practices and methods for production, storage and diffusion of knowledge; intercultural exchange for reasons of political and commercial cooperation across great geographical distances often associated with processes of migration and other forms of physical displacement of people and resources, have all to some extent or other been a fundamental part of human life, cultures and societies as long as these have existed.

Our workshop initiative is motivated by the fact that there has recently been some lively epistemological and methodological discussion of a number of central issues related to semiotics and new media in the italian semiotic community. In the course of 2003 two specialised workshops on semiotics and new media technologies were organised by Giovanna Cosenza at the University of Bologna and at the International Centre for Semiotic and Cognitive Studies of the University of San Marino.

From the outset it was clear that a general field of semiotic studies specialising in studies of new media in a global context must be as broadly interdisciplinary as possible, while at the same time building on the considerable battery of sophisticated conceptual and analytical tools and methodologies that have so far emerged from efforts in general and specific semiotics. Amongst other issues presented and discussed in the Bologna and San Marino sessions was a proposal by Alessandro Zinna of the University of Limoges that the already well-developed field of generative semiotics must now apply itself to the development of new, highly detailed conceptual tools to provide a systematic description of hypertext. Hypertext is understood in this connection as the characteristic mode of organisation and presentation of information in networks. A general taxonomy of the characteristics of hypertext, based on the hjelmslevian distinction between “system” and “process” presupposes parameters for the classification of the various relevant dimensions of hypertext from the level of structural configurations (“sequential” versus “segmental” morphologies) to internal components (activation versus navigation links; sequential versus hierarchical configurations) and time management (presence or absence of internal temporal durations). It is clear that semiotic analyses at this level of specificity and precision of an object of study which is quite central to the whole field of new media of research will provide interesting and useful contributions to a deeper understanding of what new media may be and how they may work more efficiently.

On the other hand, Ugo Volli of the University of Torino has criticised, correctly in our opinion, the current tendency in semiotics towards an over-focusing on semiotic analysis of the new media text (the hypertext, the screen, the trailer, the spot, the banner etc.) which is happening at the expense of trying to understand better in semiotic terms the dynamic relationship between the broader socio-cultural and historical context in which new media technologies and tools have been and are being developed, and the various kinds of human activities and practices that are characteristic for digital forms and methods of production. In this general area, semiotic analyses of various forms of human-computer interaction (which of course also includes key aspects of so-called computer mediated communication) are of particular interest, not least because we can see an increasing tendency toward increasing portability of extremely powerful forms of digital media technologies with enhanced means of communication, offering new possibilities of in-field “live” data (or “content”) production and collection, organisation and archiving and consequently also new forms of postproduction and re-elaboration/ reinterpretation, transposition and translation (both intra- and intersemiotically) in and between a wide range of different physical and virtual contexts and environments in a global context.

Other areas of interest possibly requiring the development of new epistemological models and analytical methodologies in semiotics which were broached at the Bologna and San Marino workshops include those discussed by Federico Montanari of the University of Bologna who has begun looking at web-based multi-author collaborative environments known as weblogs, and their wider role in the organisation of social and political movements and associated mass events on a global level, and the issue of the hidden codes (semantic meta-descriptions) discussed by Giulio Blasi of the University of Bologna, which are implicit in the W3C development of the Semantic Web for the facilitation of machine-machine communication, and thus for the automated organisation, sorting and retrieval of information in global networked systems. Also challenging for semiotics is the user-reader based focus of Daniele Barbieri’s recent work on the digital enunciation of the subject (be it individual, institutional or a local or global business enterprise) in the network where “content” of a website cannot only be understood as that which is presented visually (in the form of words and still or moving images of various kinds) but also (and perhaps more importantly) in the ways in which they are actually organised and presented, and the extent to which the actual reader/user experience is taken account of and facilitated, introducing and challenging the often poorly understood concepts of “usability” and “personalisation” of different forms of networked media in order to cover many different types of semiotic phenomena; and certainly too, the relationship between what is enunciated “virtually” in the digital environment and the physical, social, institutional and organisational realities that belong to the everyday life and doings of the “empirical subject” who stands “behind” the digital enunciation. Here we can envision a movement via the still highly valid basic model of textual production and interpretation proposed by Umberto Eco with its distinctions between Empirical and Model Author/Reader, and Intentio Auctoris, Operis and Lectoris, use and interpretation etc., into the wider pragmatic sphere of research now being opened up in socio-semiotics in the area of social communication, as well as underscoring the need to consider the fundamental role that new, more precise and systematic methodologies in visual, narrative and psycho-semiotics must play in attempting to take account of aesthetic, rhetorical and subjective-emotional aspects of network-based digital production, enunciation and interpretation processes.

Having a strong belief in the fundamental importance of subjective experience in the development of valid epistemological models we have decided that if technically feasible in Lyon, we will also offer the possibility of participation in the workshop at a distance (both as active presentation and discussion of a paper or passive audience observation) for interested parties by means of the Webtrain low cost web conferencing platform (http://www.webtrain.com) which is at present in use to good effect at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia School of Communication Science in a distance education graduate course in Communication and Marketing, where one of the proponents of the workshop teaches an introductory course in semiotics. The technical requirements for allowing us to offer this option will be a reasonably fast Internet connection (preferably 10/100 BASE-T Ethernet or equivalent) and the possibility of projecting live video images with sound on a large screen in the workshop locale. It would also be useful to have a small digital video-camera available, but this is not essential as one can easily be provided by us.