Semiotics And Visual Art's topics - tribe.net

dynamic nonlinguistic thought?

2007-03-25T13:50:22Z

OK I started this thread to more specifically cover the individual subject of the possibility of dynamic nonlinguistic thought, which for now I hold exists, and is vital to what I am sure is a vast number of creative media. For the purpose of this tribe however this topic should be restricted to the static visual mediums such as painting sculpture, etc.

Below is a copy of the point in the discussion where the subject appears to diverge.

Jheem: here's where we disagree. Is there thought without language? I cannot imagine it, let alone describe it. So, for me, painting, (as opposed to daubing paint on a rocky surface, either accidently or while wiping one's paws), if it has meaning has some system of signs and a way to use them.

Patasapien: See, this is a little problem for me, why does painting need to have any inherent meaning at all when the human mind is already so full of ripe meanings and associations just waiting to be triggered by the internal need for significance and language within the human mind.

posted in Semiotics And Visual Art - 13 replies

Applied Semiotic design

2006-09-14T09:30:53Z

I would be very interested to know if anyone has an resources on designing complex semiotic constructs which could be used in visual art. I am hunting around, but not finding much.

I suppose I should aquire some of the texts on semiotics in film, but I am really more interested in the applications if this in static visual media.

posted in Semiotics And Visual Art - 5 replies

Tribe traffic

2006-09-14T09:28:14Z

Hi,

Well, S&VA has been up for a while now, we have some new members, and a lot of intelligent minds, however from what I can tell we need more people here before this baby can really take off.

if you would all take a few moments and invite somwone you know to join, maybe make a comment, perhaps we could get this train rolling.

I am willing to give it a shot..

patasapien

posted in Semiotics And Visual Art - 2 replies

articulation in the visual arts

2006-05-24T15:42:51Z

I was just mulling over the putative evoltuion of writing systems from the pictoral to the alphabetical, and how this might reveal the structure of paintings. One is struck by the iconicity of pictures for most of the history of art: e.g., cave paintings, portraits, etc. I wonder if anybody's written about the evolution of schools of art from representational to absract and beyond? (With reference to semiotics.) It is easy to see how Latin arbor and the concept of 'tree' are arbitrarily linked, but harder when looking at neolithic representations of a bison hunt. Another bit of evolution is the change in the focus of linguistics from the lexical to the syntactic: from the Neo-Grammarians to the Generativists. Word and thing (signifier and signified), etymological change, morpho(pho)nology gives way to the compleixites of word order, -tactics, and constituent structure. Saussure wrote that "the linguistic sign ... has two primordial characteristics": (1) its arbitrary nature; and, (2) its linear nature. While painting, even at its most abstract seems (at least to the consumer) almost always to be representational, it is often difficult to see how signs in a painting signify arbitrarily. Also, what are the levels of signification (the articulation) of a painting? Brush strokes, color, geometry, etc.? And, how do they (inter-)relate? In languages, you have the arbitrarily phonological and the syntagmatically lexico-morphological. As for the linear nature, paintings tend to be two-dimensional. Not everybody thinks that the linguistic sign need be linear: e.g., the meter and rhyme in poetry seems to be trying to get around the linearity of the utterance to some kind of two-dimensional space (or at least 1.5 dimensional one). But, what about those eye-trace studies of how people view pictures, and how the structure leads the eye?

posted in Semiotics And Visual Art - 8 replies