stefan arteni

an essay on visual semiotics

I

solinvictus press 2008

…in [Thomas] Sebeok's view, language is only one type of communication
and it is narrow-minded..to privilege language over other types of sign
systems… To answer the question regarding where visual communication fits, the
answer is that human communication is both anthroposemiotic (language based)
and nonverbal. In the nonverbal area, for example, written language is
communicated visually as are many other nonverbal language or notation systems
(Braille, mathematical, musical and choreographic codes), symbolic systems (dress,
cosmetics, heraldry, road signs, maps, engineering and architectural schematics,
algebra, chemistry tables) and many forms of what we call visual communication
(film codes, color systems, layout, composition, aesthetics, etc.). In areas more
closely tied to what Sebeok was referring to when he used the word zoosemiotics
[nonverbal], we find other sensory communication systems, such as kinesics and
proxemics, and sensory codes such as the language of perfume, as well as
indexical and iconographic sign recognition…
In terms of development, the visual sign system is antecedent to language. In terms
of complexity, visual interpretation can be seen as being more complex than verbal
interpretation…

Sandra Moriarty
VISUAL COMMUNICATION AS A PRIMARY SYSTEM
Journal of Visual Literacy 14:2 (1994): 11-21
The contribution of ethology

Advertisement and persuasion are phenomena that game theoreticians have had problems explaining…

The are empirical psychological data showing that humans like other animals are sensitive to the form of
signals and not just to the information they convey…Some of the qualities found in ritualized biological
signals, such as large size, frequent repetition, symmetry, elaborate ornamentation and mimicry, also
appear in human advertisement….

Spectacular cultural phenomena can evolve that convey little meaningful information, but still have strong
impact on spectators… many displays appear to be highly redundant …

Magnus Enquist, Anthony Arak, Stefani Ghirlanda, and Carl-Adam Wachtmeister

Spectacular phenomena and limits to rationality in genetic and cultural evolution
http://cogprints.org/5277/1/enquist_arak_ghirlanda_wachtmeister2002.pdf

…costly signals may evolve for a number of reasons…

…biases in receivers’ recognition mechanisms can promote the evolution of costly exaggeration in
signals…
…leaned recognition gives rise to more exaggerated signals than inherited recognition.

Masashi Kamo, Stefano Ghirlanda, and magnus Enquist

The evolution of signal form: effects of learned versus inherited recognition
http://cogprints.org/5280/1/kamo_ghirlanda_enquist2002.pdf
Our study will be based on Charles S.Peirce’s semiotics,…
…the object to which a sign refers back is not a piece of the so-called real world, but
something which precedes and thus determines the sign in the process of semiosis
as a previous experience or cognition of the world. Such an object (or referent) of the
sign can be a sign itself…
Both attributes of the genuine icon – exhibition of a quality of its own and reference
to a mere possibility – evince characteristics of self-reference. If a sign is a sign by
Its own quality, it is a self-referential sign. It shows or exhibits those qualities in
Itself, and therefore its object is to a certain degree already present in the sign.
Another aspect of self-reference in genuine iconicity is that it denotes a mere
possibility. Although there may be some vague mode of reference in something
that denotes something merely possible, this referential potential of the genuine icon
remains extremely weak, since mere possibility is never actualized. Insofar as the
genuine icon remains referentially undetermined, the essence of this kind of sign lies
once more in itself.
In the media and in the arts, iconic self-reference can be typically encountered in the
aesthetic dimension…The aesthetic sign, according to semiotic aesthetics, is a sign
which functions as such due to its own quality and not on the basis of its reference
to something else. Aesthetic signs are signs that direct our attention to their own
material substance or form. In this sense, the aesthetic function of a message is
opposed to its referential function, as Roman Jakobson has argued…

Winfried Noeth, Self-Reference in the Media

http://www.uni-kassel.de/iag-kulturforschung/projektbeschreibung.pdf
 “circularity… is crucial for a semiotic grounding…i.e. the fact that signs do not
only participate in sign processes on the basis of dispositions (usage regularities),
but may also – as a result of their participation – change these dispositions.”
Alexander Mehler
Methodological Aspects of Computational Semiotics
http://www.library.utoronto.ca/see/SEED/Vol3-3/Mehler.htm

Culture conditions individuals, which by their turn reciprocate, and so on, in

a circularity that cannot be understood in terms of linear thinking.

The concept of recursive symmetry echoes Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophy of ‘eternal

return’. Nietzsche argued that systems move in a cyclical pattern, returning to similar events or
phenomenon without actually repeating them exactly. Physicist David Ruelle makes reference to
Nietzsche’s concept of eternal return in his discussion of recursive symmetry. Ruelle believes that
complex systems ‘come back again and again to near the same situations’, suggesting that if a
system ‘is in a certain state at a certain time, it will return arbitrarily near the same state at a later
time’.

Brian Ward
The Chaos of History: Notes Towards a Posmodernist Historiography
http://www.limina.arts.uwa.edu.au/past_volumes/volumes_15/volume_2?f=73934
 “We are always simultaneously making gestures that are archaic, modern,
and futuristic. Earlier I took the example of a car, which can be dated from
several eras; every historical era is likewise multitemporal, simultaneously
drawing from the obsolete, the contemporary, and the futuristic. An object,
a circumstance, is thus polychronic, multitemporal, and reveals a time
that is gathered together, with multiple pleats.”
Michel Serres, Conversations on Science, Culture, and Time

Context may be synchronic, diachronic and/or polychronic, According to

Edward T.Hall, polychrony means that many strands of time are moving at
once.
Polychrony [the many different temporalities of the constituting elements] is
being introduced here in addition to synchrony and diachrony. One may infer
that it involves reproductivity, which only means that it can be repeated or
reduplicated in a variety of contexts without losing either its meaning or its
autonomy, while relationally expressions containing it necessarily modify each
particular instance of it. Polychronic and high-context cultures rely more on
implicit and nonverbal information as opposed to monochronic cultures that
seek explicit communication. There is a looseness of reference of signs. A
high-context communication is one in which most of the information is either in
the physical context or internalized in the person, while very little is in the coded,
explicit part of the message. High-context cultures will focus on 'how' something
is done and on the extensive use of cumulative rhetorical style.
 Icon - from Greek ε κών, eikōn, "image, likeness, portrait,“ related to eikenai "be like,
look like“
signum – Roman military banner, perhaps akin to secare, to cut, from PIE sekw, point out
Luhmann (1995) regards communication as comprising of: information (what the communication is about),
utterance (form of the communication) and expectation of understanding. The difference between
information and utterance is regulated by ‘symbolic generalization’. Once information is expressed it is no
longer information per se; it has exhausted itself. Visual art functions in the medium of perception. “[Visual]
art makes perception available for communication, and it does so outside…language…Art integrates
perception and communication without merging…their respective operations…[Visual] art, in circumventing
language, establishes a structural coupling between consciousness and communication…Consciousness
cannot communicate, communication cannot perceive…”, observes Niklas Luhmann.

“Instead of information we might talk about the (in)formation of communication, i.e., the form
of communication, knowing that the same information may be formed in different ways.”
Ole Thyssen, Aesthetic Communication
Skrifter fra VÆRK, Aarhus Universitet & Handelshøjskolen I Århus, Århus 2006

This order generally features what might be called visual equivalents. A viewer may require little more than
reminders to recall. Since the works are often variations on established themes and usually allude to earlier
works, the repeated and now familiar information (the content) appears as a construct that may be
dissociated from the form of the utterance. Communication will take place on the level of
meta-communication, i.e. communication about communication. In meta-communication one communicates
about the effect that a communication has, in other words about what difference the particular communication
makes, and about how it communicates. This is how 'art constructs art' [S.J.Schmidt.] There are
two ways of looking at art and they are mutually exclusive: one either looks at/for the content or one gazes
at the form of the utterance.
Annunciation
Bitonto cathedral, Santa Lucia and Annunciation
Mary Magdalen Basilica,
Vezelay, France
Capital, Saint Sernin Basilica, Toulouse
San Isidoro
de León,
Panteón
de los Reyes
Copenhagen
Psalter
St Albans Abbey,
late 13th century
Constantinople,
12th century
Altamura cathedral, Puglia
Byzantine,
14th century
Painter
from Avignon,
14th century
Mariotto di Nardo
Bernardo Daddi
Niccolo
di Pietro
Gerini
Bartolomeo
Caporali
Zanobi Strozzi
Antonio del Pollaiuolo
Jacopo
del Sellaio
Juan de Burgos
Carlo Crivelli
Francesco
Botticini
Alesso
di Benozzo
Filippo
Lippi
Filippo Lippi
Pinturicchio
(Bernardino
di Betto)
Sandro
Botticelli
Sandro
Botticelli
Paolo Caliari (Veronese)
Jacopo Carucci
(Pontormo)
Balkans,
17th century
Maurice Denis
Mario Sironi
Nativity
St. Catherine's
monastery,
Sinai,
8th century
Armenian miniature,
10th century
Serbia, 13th century
Pietro Cavallini
Mystras, 14th century
Anonymous, 1350,
Chiesa di Santa Margherita,
Borgo Salagona
(Laggio di Vigo di Cadore)
Dark church, Cappadocia
Arles, Romanesque relief

Bonanno Pisano
Jacopo
Torriti
Guido da Siena
Anonymous
Italian master
Taddeo
Gaddi
Anonymous
Italian master,
1340
Bernardo Daddi
Pietro da Rimini
Lorenzo
Veneziano
Duccio
di Buoninsegna
Painter
from Avignon,
14th century
Giovanni
Pisano
Meister von Hohenfurth
(Master of Vyšší Brod)
Kastoria,
Greece,
c.1400
Adoration of the Child
Lorenzo Monaco
Niccolo da Foligno
Filippo Lippi
Master of Avila
Jacques
Daret
Petrus Christus
Francesco
di Giorgio
Martini
Pinturicchio
((Bernardino
di Betto)
Domenico
Ghirlandaio
Virgin and Child
Byzantine
(Sinai, 13th century)
Italian,
13th century
Barnaba da Modena
Bernardo Daddi
Jacobello del Fiore
Master of
Badia a Isola
Cecco di Pietro
Duccio
di Buoninsegna
Greece,
15th-16th centuries
Piero della
Francesca
Anonymous
German master
Pinturicchio
(Bernardino
di Betto)
Francesco
Squarcione
Raffaello Sanzio
Sandro Botticelli
Filippo Lippi
Dieric Bouts
the Elder
Vincenzo Foppa
Giovanni Bellini
Giovanni Bellini
Cosmè Tura
Cima da Conegliano
Donatello (Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi)
Jacopo del Sellaio
Hans Memling
Giovanni Antonio
Boltraffio
Quentin
Massys
Mario Sironi