Vol. 7 (2024): Conceptualizing Digital Reality through Metaphors: Semiotic and Interdisciplinary Perspectivе

Volume VII of Digital Age in Semiotics & Communication (2024), edited by Kristian Bankov and Federico Biggio, brings together ten articles on how metaphors shape the ways we understand, design and inhabit digital worlds. The collection opens with an analysis of the “blue brain” as visual shorthand for artificial intelligence and its supposed autonomy and cognitive depth, followed by an empirical study of visual metaphors in high-tech product advertising. Another contribution traces the evolution of generative media, from early computer art to AI-driven systems, through its signs, metaphors and modes of experience. Semiotic mediation is explored as a tool for the digital empowerment of older adults, while the database is examined as a metaphor for the construction of taste in AI-assisted gastronomy. Further articles analyse metaphors of subversion in surveillance art photography, and the mythical, technomagic aquatic metaphors of digital aesthetics as an empowerment of the female and oneiric imaginary. The volume also considers metaphors of digital reality in public service announcements and in a city’s identity built through social media campaigns. It closes with a multimodal and intermedial analysis of metaphorical constructs in Blade Runner 2049.