Digital Age in Semiotics & Communication

Notes for contributors

2023-04-13T07:27:51+00:00

Introduction: Translation and transformation in audiovisual and digital culture

2023-04-10T09:43:22+00:00

The contributions to this volume of Digital Age in Semiotics and Communication deal with various translation phenomena such as intermediality, film adaptation, film colorization, remediation and various technospheric phenomena such as cinefication, audiovisual and digital mass culture, digital transformation, cyberspace, and digital image. The first group of articles shows that those phenomena are characteristics of a rich interesemiotic space. As Torop (2020: 269) states, “in intersemiotic space, the original text and all of its translations comprise a mental whole, which is all-encompassing for collective cultural memory and selective for every individual reader. In the context of culture, intersemiotic space is also a space of transmedial translation”. The new cultural texts (metatexts) resulting from intersemiosis is expected to carry additional connotations1, a characteristic of particular semiotic interest. The second group of articles reveals the advantages of the semiosphere of digital culture. As Bankov (2022: 26) highlights, “in digital culture, language is no longer the lord of semiotic phenomena; the latter is the communicative disposition of the culture holders. The language is there, together with an incredible variety of visual, audio, kinetic and other expressive forms”. A significant innovation is that other expressive forms could also be interactive.2 Τhis interaction seems to be the essential different characteristic in relation to the study of other cultural texts, an element that justifies the use of the term platfospehere in the context of the semiosphere.3

Intermediality in contemporary avant-garde cinema: Blurring media boundaries in Jean-Luc Godard’s films

2023-04-10T12:00:13+00:00

Drawing on the premises of avant-garde cinema (experimentation, transformation, liminality), this paper seeks to examine how intermediality functions as a form of experimentation in contemporary avant-garde cinema. It also bring new insights regarding the nature of the medium and the impact on the spectator. Examples will be drawn from Jean-Luc Godard’s films First Name: Carmen (1983) and Film Socialisme (2010).

The cinefication of museums: from exhibitions to films. The case of Tate Modern

2023-04-10T12:22:32+00:00

Since the end of the 20th century, museum institutions have been adopting the logic of communication, promotion, and administration typical of cultural industries, mainly Cinema. In 1994, Andreas Huyssen argued that the museum, as an elitist place of preservation of canon and high culture, gave way to the museum as a mass medium. Cinema became the paradigm of contemporary cultural activities whose new exhibition practices respond to the changing expectations of the public and their constant search for stellar events.Since the end of the 20th century, museum institutions have been adopting the logic of communication, promotion, and administration typical of cultural industries, mainly Cinema. In 1994, Andreas Huyssen argued that the museum, as an elitist place of preservation of canon and high culture, gave way to the museum as a mass medium. Cinema became the paradigm of contemporary cultural activities whose new exhibition practices respond to the changing expectations of the public and their constant search for stellar events. This process is evident in the increasing use of banners, marquees, and all manner of resources aimed at promoting the temporary exhibitions gaining their place as the main attractions of art museums. Moreover, with the advent of social media, the phenomenon of cinefication of the museum has accelerated. Exhibitions are now titled, conceived, promoted, and distributed as films, while artists, adorned by the figure of the genius, are presented as parts of the art history star system. In order to highlight this phenomenon, we present an analysis of the programming and promotion of temporary exhibitions at Tate Modern, the paradigm of 21st-century museums. This institution not only titles its exhibitions in a cinematographic manner but also produces trailers and posts them on its website and social media. Our work focuses on one exhibition in particular: Picasso 1932, Love, Fame, Tragedy. To this end we observed both the curatorial discourse and the communication strategies applied by Tate. This paper is part of a research project that includes MoMA, Malba, Centre Pompidou, and Reina Sofia. The study of this phenomenon will provide an overview of the epochal style of modern art museums in the conception and communication of modern and contemporary art exhibitions.

This process is evident in the increasing use of banners, marquees, and all manner of resources aimed at promoting the temporary exhibitions gaining their place as the main attractions of art museums. Moreover, with the advent of social media, the phenomenon of cinefication of the museum has accelerated. Exhibitions are now titled, conceived, promoted, and distributed as films, while artists, adorned by the figure of the genius, are presented as parts of the art history star system.

In order to highlight this phenomenon, we present an analysis of the programming and promotion of temporary exhibitions at Tate Modern, the paradigm of 21st-century museums. This institution not only titles its exhibitions in a cinematographic manner but also produces trailers and posts them on its website and social media. Our work focuses on one exhibition in particular: Picasso 1932, Love, Fame, Tragedy. To this end we observed both the curatorial discourse and the communication strategies applied by Tate.

This paper is part of a research project that includes MoMA, Malba, Centre Pompidou, and Reina Sofia. The study of this phenomenon will provide an overview of the epochal style of modern art museums in the conception and communication of modern and contemporary art exhibitions.

Remediating fantasy narratives for participatory fandom: Tolkien’s stories and their translations in films, video games, music and other products of the culture industries

2023-04-10T12:29:47+00:00

The phenomenon of fantasy transmediality (Rebora 2016) has been discussed by many researchers and scholars during the last decade. The need for the creation of alluring cultural products in the highly competitive new media environment has led to synergies between many cultural industries and/or cultural producers, such as film, music, literature and videogame industries, etc. Many well-known and fan-developing narratives have been remediated – repackaged and redistributed – through the various media, answering to the contemporary nostalgia of pastness (Williams 2016), the cherishing of the familiar and intimate, as well as the need to further popularize “a pre-conceived merchandising industry” (Ball 2002), create new side-products for a fan community or even offer escapelands, which fantasy narratives succeed in creating. This paper will examine the translation and adaptation of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings (LOTR) to different media and cultural industries, such as:- Peter Jackson’s films, - role-playing games (RPGs), - the music industry – with reference to well-known songs and bands.Through comparative analysis of certain segments of the LOTR industry market and comments made by fans on digital platforms, the paper underlines the basic story elements of the Tolkien universe, as adapted to each above-mentioned variant and examines the role of fans in the digital semiosphere.

Me, myself, and my avatar - a semiotic study into digital transformation via avatars

2023-04-10T12:32:23+00:00

The Chinese musical idol show, Dimension Nova, (produced by entertainment company IQIYI) follows the same formula as other shows where a panel of judges choose from a pool of hopefuls to find the best singer. However, the contestants for Dimension Nova are virtual beings. The way these characters are presented, and the way the show is edited, intends for the creations to be the focus of the audience, not the creators behind them. Thus, augmented reality cameras render dances, conversations, performances, and rehearsals for broadcast with the models – or avatars – simulating a mixed reality environment. The audience fantasy is a collaboratively constructed reality – a feat made possible by virtue of the ubiquity of the digital avatar within the zeitgeist of society. The transformation of the avatar from a representation of the user to an individualised entity, interactive and reactive, as we progress from Web 2.0 era to the new Web 3.0 society of omnipresent computing is the focus of this article and is introduced by what I term the “hypervirtual” environment of the future.

A wailing wall in cyberspace: Loneliness, censorship, and collective memory – in memory of Dr. Li Wenliang, the whistle blower

2023-04-10T12:38:11+00:00

As the whistle blower of the outbreak of Covid-19 in Wuhan, Dr. Li Wenliang was dismissed as the spreader of rumors and punished by the authorities. His later death from the coronavirus outraged the netizens in China on various social platforms. His post on Weibo, written by Dr. Li on the day he was finally diagnosed as infected, has thus become a wailing wall in cyberspace. It has invited millions of Weibo comments below, both from those who lost their loved ones in the outbreak and netizens in general. The post functions as a monument in cyberspace for people to commemorate the bereft in the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, the first place where Covid-19 was reported. Considering the transmediality of cyberspace of our modern times, the phenomenon of online mourning urges a semiotic explanation, especially when it concerns a figure who only became famous after his death. The study aims to conceptualize the dynamics of collective memory with the monument in cyberspace following the insights of Eco’s concept of “the open text”. The wailing wall in cyberspace functions as a mnemonic text for members of society, which interacts with the collective memory restored in the social sphere. Moreover, censorship also played an important role in the formation of the wailing wall. All these features are brought together to make the wailing wall in the cyberspace a unique spectacle in online culture, which paves the way for further discussions in the future.

Body and senses in the production of cultural meaning: from Middle Ages to TV series, films and video games

2023-04-10T12:46:55+00:00

In medieval times, the literary nature of the works, including written ones, were determined by contextual elements such as the acoustic and momentary channel of communication along with the domain of gestur-al, instrumental and vocal codes. These elements conditioned writers and performers when they improved and perfected their capacities and perfor-mance, on which the message as a whole depended. Today the media and entertainment industry also use complex and rich connections between verbal and visual signs to produce highly symbolic messages through im-aginary re-enactments of the past. The wide range of discursive productions of the Middle Ages can be ana-lysed through the study of the elements and factors that become carriers of meanings and the way in which they do so. We consider that a comparable perspective is also suitable for contemporary semiotic practices that, when interpreting documentary sources of various types and incorporating them into suitable fictional formats for the general public, constitute playful re-configurations of the historical, literary and fantastic Middle Ages. Accordingly, this paper attempts to examine certain components of mass culture which have transformed narratives, characters and fictional worlds, distinctive of the Middle Ages, into communicative and semiotic practices reinterpreting historical and literary texts as a way of reflecting on people, social life and its problems in the present world. It starts from con-sidering that semantic plurality and diachronic bases of the idea of body and senses enable an interdisciplinary and comparative study, in order to understand their historicity, their ideological effect and the innumerable aesthetic possibilities which they promote in different areas of culture. The reflections take into account the bodily and sensory aspects of the Middle Ages selected by series, films and video games with an impact, as signifi-cant elements, on current cultural orientations and attitudes.

Beyond Mona Lisa’s smile: A theoretical approach to the persuasion of likeness in the digital image

2023-04-10T12:50:44+00:00

In this article we discuss the digital image as a form of representation of likeness in the digital environment. The English word likeness entails the meaning of similarity that in the theory of rhetoric constitute persua-siveness. Likeness is an implicit and often taken for granted quality of the communicative performance of digital media. While the term image is a ty-pological classification, semiotic relations of the transfer of meaning can be described with the terms icon and simulacrum. We show their presence in the digital environment tracing their tradition of their function regarding the establishing of likeness to philosophical ideas. We exemplify with the case of the digital images as derivations from the portrait Mona Lisa that the appearance as an image of all what is displayed on the screen consti-tutes the specific likeness of digitality. The persuasiveness of digital images is in line with the theory of rhetoric in an exaggerated presence of the im-age as source of aesthetic perception with the sense of sight of the viewer.

A semiotic analysis of representations of maids in Greek movies of the 1950s and 60s

2023-04-10T12:55:59+00:00

A variety of semiotic codes, for example, proxemics, kinesics, dress code, verbal code, usually construct specific representations in audiovisual culture. This paper explores the semiotic systems in synergy which seem to lead to consolidation of the social representations of maids in pop culture texts, such as Greek movies in the 1950s and 60s (the old Greek cinema era). The research questions explore the social representations which have been constructed and the ways in which the verbal and non-verbal signs of the maids can lead to the consolidation of their social image or even to a myth construction based on specific ideological perspectives. So, how do maids act in Greek movies in the 1950s and 60s? What does their performance signify? A semiotic analysis will examine all these questions through semiotic codes in those multimodal texts (Greek movies), selected from the field of the historically Greek pop culture texts. These verbal and non-ver-bal codes work coherently to translate the depiction of Greek society and culture and to convey connotative meanings.

Narratological approach of the film adaptation of Thérèse Desqueyroux by François Mauriac

2023-04-10T12:57:40+00:00

The aim of this paper is to examine translation as a phenomenon from literature into movies through isotopies. In particular, the research concen-trates on the intertextual phenomenon between the original classic version in literature and the two film versions (1962 and 2012). In Gideon Toury’s work, translation is seen as an intertextual phenomenon. The three “texts” form an intertextual triangle. Mauriac’s classic novel is at the top of the triangle as a significant guide, and at the same time the two films rest on the triangle’s base. In 1927, the French writer, François Mauriac wrote his iconic work, Thérèse Desqueyroux. In his novel, the writer describes the tragic story of a poisoner. This is a woman who hovers between the romantic of the past and the realism of the present. The young heroine lets herself go psychically into her dreams, and she does not see reality in its logical dimension. Her marriage is not a romantic, happy and ideal union taken from the romantic works of the 19th century. It is a cold, cruel and indifferent marriage. In a way, Thérèse is a victim of herself. Unveiling the psychographic image of this fatal woman called Thérèse D, the application of Greimas’s narratological method offers a fertile field of research, and the examination of the transformation into a double cinematographic portrait. Thérèse is a woman prisoner in her name: Desqueyroux. The narrative structure of the work turns on the fragile psyche of the heroine. Is she real-ly a fragile female figure or, a cruel poisoner in a search of mental freedom?

The colorization of Greek classic films as intersemiotic translation

2023-04-10T12:59:14+00:00

Intersemiotic translation constitutes a field of research and application including those of different modes of expression and substance transmis-sion from one text to another. According to Torop (2000) different types of texts such as films, and comics function as signification systems submitted into different translation processes either intra- or extratextual (intralin-guistic or intersemiotic as referred by Jakobson [1959]) to serve a different kind of media communication. It is well known that the textual nature of film is ascertained by specific elements such as sound, episodes, montage including color which as a medium (“color means” as stated by Kress & van Leuween [2002]) plays a very important role in the transfer of meaning ventured by film makers. In this paper I will attempt to designate the role of color as a mode of new signification through the application of colorization in two classic Greek black and white films. I will examine the films “And let the wife fear her husband” («Η δε γυνή να φοβήται τον άνδρα») and “A mess” («Της κακομοίρας») both classified in the classic Greek cinema period (1940–1970) and very popular with the Greek public. Film colorization was a widespread technique in the ‘80s in the United States and lately in Greece, not always well received due to film forgery reasons, as maintained by fans. In this paper I will try to explain how film colorization works as intersemi-otic translation and what is the new meaning acquired for the public by this procedure in the two films examined in the corpus.