Visual signs in the age of digital reproduction
Visual signs in the age of digital reproduction
G�ran Sonesson
Published in Ensayos Semióticos, Dominios, modelos y miradas desde el cruce de la naturaleza y la cultura. Proceedings
of the 6th International Congress of the IASS, Guadalajara, Mexico, July 13 to 19, Gimate Welsh, Adri�n, (ed.), 1073-
1084. M�xico: Pourrua.
Post-photography (like post-modernity) is really the name of a position: the distance from which it
becomes possible to analyse photography. This position itself derives from a historical event: the arrival of
the computer image. Photography, like many other terms employed in pictorial semiotics, is a common-
sense notion, which it is the task of semiotic theory to reconstruct. As such it designates a particular way
of producing, by means of a mechanical device, such marking on the surface which give rise to the illusion
of seeing a scene of the experimental world projected onto a two-dimensional surface, as well as that
peculiar granularity which was until recently immediately recognized as the expression plane resulting
from such a process. The dissociation of these two (or more) concurrent qualities transforms the arrival of
computer-aided picture construction into an element of social rhetoric.
Photography as texture and construction
Indeed, leading authorities of pictorial semiotics such as Floch (1986) and Groupe � (1992) have denied
the semiotic relevance of such putatively "socio-cultural" categories as photography. There is no reason to
agree with such a judgement. First of all, it is difficult to see why society should be excluded form the
semiotic domain: at least, analogously to what has been argued in the case of perceptual psychology by
Groupe �, we should incorporate as many social parameters as is necessary for the purpose of analysing
signification. In the second place, photography is certainly not merely a social category. Rather, what is
socially grounded is our expectation that certain properties should go together, in other words, that they
should correspond to what the psychologist Eleanor Rosch (1978) calls a prototype, i.e. the most probable
combination of properties (cf. Sonesson 1989a). And probability ("le vraisemblable" of the French
structuralists) is certainly a social concept.
Elsewhere, I have suggested that we ordinarily distinguish pictures according to three kinds of categories:
construction types, such as oil paintings, linear drawings, and photographs; function types, determined by
socially anticipated purposes, such a caricatures, publicity pictures, and pornographic pictures; and
circulation types, defined by the channels through which pictures are conveyed from a creator to a
receiver, such as posters, frescoes, television pictures, and web-page pictures. Normally we expect certain
construction types, function types, and circulation types to go together: art, in the sense in which it was
conceived in the last century, and against which Modernism revolted, was ideally an oil painting
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Visual signs in the age of digital reproduction
(construction type), meant for aesthetic enjoyment (function type), circulating through galleries and
museums (circulation types; cf. Sonesson 1996). The case of the photograph is more intricate: it involves a
particular texture thought to be inseparably connected to a certain origin.
Unlike most other picture categories, photography has already engendered a small body of literature
concerned to lay bare the specificity of its sign function (cf. Sonesson 1989b; 1994). According to Philippe
Dubois (1983:20ff), the first semiotical theories of photography tended to look upon the photograph as a
mirror of reality, or, in Peircean terms, as an icon; then came that most celebrated generation of
iconoclasts who tried to demonstrate the conventionality of all signs, supposing even the photograph to
present a "coded" version of reality, or, as Peirce (according to Dubois, at least) would have said, a
symbol; and finally the photograph was seen for what it really is, in Dubois view: an index, more
specifically, a trace left behind by the referent itself. Without subscribing to Dubois uni-linear story of
progress, I will use his distinctions as a handy classification of the relevant epistemological attitudes.
The authorities quoted by Dubois from the first period are in fact largely pre-semiotical: Baudelaire,
Taine, Benjamin, Bazin, but also Barthes. Most of the minor classics of semiotics are mustered for the part
of the symbol-addicted team: Metz, Eco, Barthes, Lindekens, Groupe �, and so on. In the part of the
daring moderns, we find, apart from Dubois himself, such writers as Bonitzer, Krauss, Vanlier, but also
Barthes, Benjamin and Bazin, when considered from another vantage point, and, of course, Peirce. Barthes
here appears as a proponent of the iconic conception, because of having opposed the conventional,
historically relative, and learned character of drawing to the "quasi-tautological" nature which
photographic expression shows in relation to its content. His claim to be a vindicator of the symbol view
probably rests on his listing of photographic "connotations". And he is considered a pioneer for the index
theory for the reason that he has described each photograph as implying that "this has taken place" ("cela a
�t�"). In fact, also Peirce may be considered as an authority for all conceptions: he sometimes tells us the
photograph is an index, sometimes an icon, and elsewhere he observes that all real icons are somewhat
conventional.
The mapping rules of chirography
Actually, Barthes (1964) defence for the iconicity view may not be as naive as has been claimed by Floch
and others. It could be interpreted as the theory that drawing, but not photography, requires there to be a
set of rules for mapping perceptual experience onto marks made with a pen on paper; and these rules
imply a particular segmentation of the world as it is given to perception, picking up some (kinds of?)
features for reproduction, while rejecting others, and perhaps emphasising some properties at the same
time as others are underplayed; and all this takes place under given historical circumstances, which are
responsible for varying the emphases and the exclusions. Against this, it might be argued that Renaissance
perspective, and a lot of other principles of rendering, are built into the camera: but the point is precisely
that they are incorporated into the apparatus, and thus not present to consciousness in the actual process of
picture production.
The idea becomes more reasonable when expressed as a difference between the types of mapping rules
involved in photography and hand-made pictures, respectively. If we look upon the relationship between
the pictorial content and its referent in the outside world as a kind of indexicality, more in particular as a
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Visual signs in the age of digital reproduction
factorality (a relation of part to whole), we may interpret Barthes to claim that photography is able to pick
up particular proper parts ("son sujet", "son cadre") and perceptual angles of vision ("son angle") of the
whole motive, but cannot chose to render just a few of its attributes. In some all too obvious ways this is
false: for essential reasons, photography only transmits visual properties, and it only conveys such features
as are present on the sides of the object fronting the camera. Also, depending on the distance between the
camera and the motive, only features contained in a particular range of sizes may be included.
As long as no trick photography is involved, however, it seems to be true that, without recurring to later
modification of the exposed material, photography is merely able to pick up features, or restrict its
selection of features, on the global level, whereas in drawing, local decisions can be made for each single
feature (cf. Sonesson 1989b:36ff; Dubois 1983:96f). This also applies to all other rules of photographic
transposition listed by Ram�rez (1981: 158ff) and Gubern (1974:50ff): abolition of the third dimension, the
delimitation of space through the frame, the exclusion of movement, mono-focal and static vision,
granular, discontinuous structure of the expression plane, abolition or distortion of colour, limitation to
scenes having a certain range of luminosity, and abolition of non-visual stimuli,.
The recent turn to an indexicalist position was taken together by Henri Vanlier (1983), Philippe Dubois
(1983), and Jean-Marie Schaeffer (1987), yet the three theorists are very different in many respects. While
Dubois and Schaeffer base their claims on Peirce s theory, Vanlier s notion of indexicality (split into the
untranslatable opposition between "indice" and "index") is not really derived from Peirce; indeed, his
"indice" is actually, in the most literal sense, a mere trace, of which he offers some very usefully
descriptions. Schaeffer takes a less extreme stand than Vanlier and Dubois, arguing that the photograph is
an indexical icon, or, in other cases, an iconical index (cf. Sonesson 1989b: 46ff).
Limitations of indexicality
When photographs are said to be indexical, it is contiguity, not factorality, which is meant, and a particular
kind of contiguity at that: abrasion, i.e. the particular indexical relationship resulting from the fact that the
object which is to become the referent has, on some prior moment of time, entered into contact with, and
then detached itself from, what later is to become the expression plane of the sign, leaving on the surface
of the latter some visible trace, however inconspicuous, of the event (cf. Sonesson 1989a,40; 1989b:46ff).
In fact, as Vanlier (1983:15) notes, the photograph must be taken as a direct and certain imprint of the
photons, and only as an indirect and abstract one of the objects depicted. Unfortunately, Vanlier (1983:23,
25) himself rapidly seems to forget this distinction, talking about the scene as being the cause of the
picture. In any case, he fails to note that, if the indexicality obtains between the photons and the plate, it
does not occur between the same relata as the semiotic function, i.e. the objects depicted and the picture.
Dubois (1983:66) at least is more consistent with his conception of the photograph as being an index when
he takes the photogram to be its most characteristic instance; yet, if this is the kind of photograph he is
intent on explaining, he will fail to characterise what most people would consider prototypical
photography.
Certain limitations are imposed on the photographic trace by the support on which it is inscribed. Some of
these are mentioned by Vanlier: the quadrangular shape of the photograph, its digital nature, the
information it leaves out, its inability to record the temporal aspects of the process giving rise to the trace,
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Visual signs in the age of digital reproduction
etc. This may be restated by saying that the photograph is not only an indexicality of the objects, or even
the photons, but also of the properties of the film, of the lenses, of the photographic device generally, of
the space covered by the photons, and so on. This observation is quite parallel to the one made in the study
of animal traces, according to which the same animal will leave different traces on different ground (see
Sonesson 1989a,I.2.6. and 1989d)
The trouble with a purely indexicalist account of photography is that it cannot explain what the
photograph is a picture of. There is no intrinsic reasons for considering the cause producing a trace (and
even so, we have seen than many more causes than the motif may be held responsible for the trace) to be a
more important type of cause than the others. Indeed, we can only explain the importance of the motif,
when we realise that a trace, in the most central sense of the term, contains not only indexical but also
iconical aspects, and if we begin by admitting that a photograph is a kind of pictorial sign, and that all such
signs are first and foremost grounded in the illusion of similarity.
Contrary to Vanlier and Dubois, Schaeffer (1987:101ff) thinks that the photograph may be an indexical
icon in some cases, and, in other cases, an iconical index. It could be argued, however, that the
photograph, contrary, for example, to a hoof-print, is always primarily an icon (Sonesson 1989b:68ff).
While both the photograph and the hoof-print stand for a referent which has vanished from the scene, the
signifier of the former sign continues to occupy the place that was that of the referent, and it stills remains
temporally dated, whereas the photographic signifier, like that of the verbal sign, is omni-temporal and
omni-spatial, tokens of its type being apt to be instantiated at any time and place (although only after the
referential event and the time needed for development). In sum, in the case of a footstep, a hoof-print, etc.,
both the expression and the content are located at a particular time and place; in verbal language, none of
them are; and in the case of photography, it is only the content (or, strictly speaking, the referent) which is
bound up with spatio-temporality. Thus, the hoof-prints, present where before the horse was present, tells
us something like "horse here before"; but the photograph of a horse, which most likely does not occupy
the scene where the horse was before, only tells us "horse", and then we may start reconstructing the time
and the place .
At this point, it may seem that we could say that, whereas the hoof-print is first and foremost an index, the
photograph must originally be seen as an icon, before its indexical properties can be discovered. In fact,
however, things may be still more complicated. Schaeffer is of course right in pointing out, against Peirce,
that not all indices involve some iconic aspect, but it so happens that the hoof-prints, just like all other
imprints and traces, in the narrow sense of these terms, also convey a partial similarity with the objects for
which they stand. We have to recognise the hoof-print as such, that is, differentiate if from the traces of a
man s feet, or of a donkey s, a well as from fake hoof-prints, and from accidental formations worked by
the wind in the sand. Only then can we interpret the hoof-prints indexically. It remains true, however, that
the essential meanings of the hoof-prints are embodied in indexicality: they tell us the whereabouts of the
animal.
In the case of a photograph, on the other hand, we do not need to conceive of it indexically to be able to
grasp its meaning. It will continue to convey signification to us, whether we are certain that it is a
photograph or not. Indexicality, in photographs, really is a question of second thoughts and peculiar
circumstances. It therefore appears that indexicality cannot be the primary sign relation of photographs,
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Visual signs in the age of digital reproduction
although it is an open potentiality present in their constitution, which is exploited in certain cases. First
and foremost, the photograph is an iconical sign.
The proof of this is that of two pictures which look exactly alike, one may be a photograph and the other
could have been constructed on the computer with the aid of some graphic application, either be
combining elements of photographs scanned into the computer, or by using some algorithms for
calculating the three-dimensional viewpoint and the position of the sources of light. But it is quite
reasonable to claim that, at the present time, both pictures convey a connotation of photographicalness (as
do, of course, to a lesser extent, some hyper-realistic paintings).
From chirography to technography
There is certainly some truth in Barthes intuition, however confusedly expressed, which locates the
difference between photographs and hand-made pictures in the global and piece-meal character of the
respective rules of transformation. One of the disturbing facts about post-photographic pictures, however,
is that they are not hand-made, but still allow for local transformations.
While contemplating the prospects of a "science of depiction", in some ways analogous to linguistics, the
psychologist James Gibson proposed a primary distinction between two large categories of picture signs,
or, more generally, between those signs which constitute markings on surfaces: between photographic and
chirographic pictures, that is, literally, pictures produced by the workings of luminosity on a surface, and
pictures the markings of which are assembled by hand. According to Gibson (1978:228f; 1980) a picture is
"a surface so treated that it makes available a limited optic array /---/ of persisting invariants of structure"
at some point of observation. But he also speculates that to prehistoric man, just as to the child, the picture
make up "a progressive record of movement", a layout receptive to traces, long before it is discovered also
to "delineate something". If the record is of a stylus, brush, pen, pencil, crayon, marker or another hand-
held tool, the result will be a chirographic picture; and if the traces have been produced by a camera,
including its accessory equipment, we will have a photographic picture.
Considered in this way, chirographic pictures, just like photographic ones, are largely indexical: they are
indexical of all forces contributing to produce them. It has been suggested that, to the toddler, the marks
left on the paper are accidental traces of a motor activity which is at first experienced as rewarding in
itself; only at about 18 months, with the emergence of the semiotic function, will the child react with
disappointment when no strokes and dots result form the contact of the marker with the paper, and only at
3 years will he refuse to draw in the air (Cf. Gardner 1973:215ff; 1980ff). What was, in Hjelmslevean
terms, at first accidental substance now becomes the very form of the act, defined by the principle or
relevance known to us as the making of a drawing. Put in another way, chirographic pictures are indexical
in origin: only later will iconicity come to the fore. Contrary to the case of photography, chirographic
indexicality is thus entirely distinct from the iconic relation.
The "photograms" made by avant-garde photographers such as Moholy-Nagy, Man Ray, and Schaad, as
well as preceding the invention of the common photograph in the experimental work of Niepce and
Talbot, could be considered limiting-cases: they are actually comparable to the foot-prints left on the
ground, light being the operating agent instead of mechanical pressure. When placed directly upon the
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Visual signs in the age of digital reproduction
photographic paper, without a camera obscura as an intermediary, two-dimensional objects will give rise
to silhouettes, which can be easily identified; but when three-dimensional objects are used and the source
of light is moved, the configurations which result are due to complex interactions, not only between the
contiguous part of the object and the emulsion, but between the position of the light source and the non-
directly contiguous parts of the object. Paradoxically, it is the camera obscura, which diminishes the
contiguity between the object and the expression plane of the pictorial sign, which brings about the
illusion of seeing a configuration, and which thus makes it possible to trace the configuration
unambiguously back to its real-world source (Sonesson 1989a:64).
To grasp the nature of chirography, it may be necessary to oppose it to something which is vaster and less
specific than photography. "Hard icons" is a term coined by Tomas Maldonado (1974) to describe signs
which, in addition to bearing resemblance to that which they depict, are related to them as traces to that
which produced them. Examples would be X-ray pictures, hand impressions on cave walls, "acoustic
pictures" made with the aid of ultrasound, silhouettes, configurations left on the ground by people who
were out walking in Hiroshima at the moment of the explosion of the nuclear bomb, thermograms, pictures
made with "invisible light" to discover persons hiding in the woods  and ordinary photographs. The real
contiguity between the picture and its referent is here taken to guarantee the cognitive value of the picture.
It is important to note that "hard icons" cannot simply be signs which are both indexical and iconic, for
that is true also of chirographs: there must be coincidence between their respective indexical and iconic
grounds.
The case of the computer image
If photography is defined by the double relation of contiguity and similarity between its expression and its
content or referent, a few surprising cases of photography, or perhaps rather some curious intermediary
cases between photography and chirography, will turn out to exist. During the 18th century a device for
producing drawings from silhouettes was in use: it consisted of a chair having a source of light on one side
and a screen on which the shadow of the person sitting in the chair was cast on the other. The contours
were conveyed by contiguity to the screen, but were not by themselves retained there, because of the lack
of photographic emulsion, but had to be filled in by hand. In the case of the curious device known as a
physionotrace, a view-finder was moved along the contours of the object, producing a contiguity between
these contours and the gaze; thanks to another contiguity, this time between the view-finder and a stylus,
the corresponding figure was concurrently traced onto a paper.
At this point, computer-generated pictures again seems to pose a problem. In some rather indirect way,
contiguity may be said to play a role in the creation of certain computer images: the computer mouse, and
even more clearly the digitalisation board, are clearly hand-held devices leaving a record on a surface,
although this surface is not directly the monitor, and even less the print-out. Even though the very notion
of a surface seems doubtful in this case, it is certainly true that by moving the mouse, we bring about a
record of some kind of abrasion, which may even be accidentally produced by a toddler or a cat more
interested in the movement for movement s sake. The abrasion is not caused by physical pressure (apart
from the first phase in which the hand grasps the mouse and presses it to the desktop) or by light, but by
electronic impulses.
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Visual signs in the age of digital reproduction
However, pictures produced, not by means of a mouse or some other hand-held device, but created
entirely or in part by mathematical algorithms do not seem to involve indexicality in any essential way. On
the other hand, 3D-scanners do not only rely entirely on indexicality, but also supposes a coincidence of
the indexical ground and the sign function, in a way which is reminiscent of photography, and perhaps
even more of the physionotrace.
As for the indexical relation of factorality between referent and content in computer images, it seems to be
identical to that of truly chirographic, rather than photographic, pictures: continuity is suggested by what
we know of the connections obtaining in our socio-cultural lifeworld, not by the acquaintance with some
individual object of real-life experience. Yet the photographic connotations conveyed by some computer
images tend to suggest that some real-world objects have been present around, as well as in front of, the
camera.
According to another classification, proposed by Roman Gubern (1987b:46f), chirographic pictures, such
as drawings, are distinguished from technographic pictures, which is a group comprising photographs as
well as pictures produced by the cinematographic camera and the video. Among the technographic
pictures, we might perhaps also locate those produced by the physionotrace and similar devices, and also
what Gubern (1987a:73ff) elsewhere terms synthetic pictures, i.e. pictures produced by means of a
computer. The disturbing fact about the latter is that they may look exactly like photographs, although they
do not regulate themselves on contiguity, but are rather (indirectly) mediated by similarity. Traditionally
all hand-produced pictures relied on similarity, since they depended on what Gibson calls the hand-eye-
system, whereas all machine-made pictures were indexically derived  until this simple organisation was
destroyed by computer graphics.
Espe (1983) has suggested a threefold division of graphics, which comprises all kinds of manipulations of
two-dimensional surfaces: photographics, chirographics, and typographics. Like the term photographics,
typographics here retains is ordinary sense, but it could perhaps also be conceived to mean, more broadly,
the production of markings on surfaces by means of standardised implements. The case of computer
pictures is ambiguous: it is one of the remarkable feats of desktop publishing that it de-standardises type-
fonts, permitting them to the varied along a number of dimensions (size, obliqueness, etc.), thus bringing
them closer to being pictures (Sonesson 1989b.34ff). But the facility with which documents are copied and
combined on the computers also makes it possible to create pictures from standardised picture-elements
(clip-art, etc.) or from fragments of individual pre-existing pictures, which serves to bring the production
of pictures closer than ever to the methods of verbal and other sign production.
From mechanical reproduction and to digital production
When, in 1936, Walter Benjamin described our time as the age of mechanical reproduction, his diagnosis
was not radical enough. By engendering ever new tokens, mechanical reproduction effectively reduces all
tokens to their type, destroying the uniqueness of the characters of human history, and their infinitely
ineffable creations, the nimbus of individual creation in its hic et nunc. Doing away with the "aura" of the
work of art, it apparently only leaves the bare bones of categoricalness. Yet mechanical reproduction
presupposes there to be an individual object to reproduce in the first place: a chirographic or photographic
original, a first token which creates the type from which further tokens are derived. In verbal language, on
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Visual signs in the age of digital reproduction
the other hand, the type seemingly pre-exist to all its tokens, and this is also true, at least in some cases, of
computer images: those which are combinations of standardised picture-elements, as well as those which
are produced from mathematical algorithms.
It is for this very reason that we should distinguish digital from mechanical reproduction. In the former
case, there is no first token, no real original which may be perceived as such. In that sense, digital
reproduction, as opposed to mechanical reproduction, is not distinct from production.
If indexicality is seen as being on the side of Nature, and symbolicity on the side of Culture, iconicity
could be thought of as bridging this opposition, since it depends on Human Nature, i.e. on the way we, as
human beings, tend to perceive the world. The models of transformation built into graphic computer
programs simulate the conditions of human perception. This means that the virtual world created by
computer imagery remains an extension of the Lifeworld, of Greimas "natural world" and Gibsons
"ecological physics".
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Barthes, R. 1980. La chambre claire. Paris: Seuil & Gallimard 1980.
Dubois, PH. 1983. L acte photographique. Paris & Bruxelles: Nathan/Labor.
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Floch, J:.M. 1986. Les formes de l�empreinte. P�rigueux: Pierre Fanlac.
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GUBERN. R. 1974. Mensajes icónicos en la cultura de masas. Barcelona: Editorial Lumen 1974
GUBERN. R. 1987a. El simio informatizado. Barcelona: Ediciones Pen�nsulo.
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GUBERN. R. 1987b. La mirada opulenta. Exploración de la iconosfera contempor�nea. Barcelona: Gustavo Gili.
MALDONADO, T. 1974. Vanguardia e razionalitą. Turin: Einaudi Editore 1974.
LINDEKENS, R. 1971. El�ments pour une s�miotique de la photographie. Paris & Bruxelles: Didier/Aimav.
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Official address of Nordic Association for Semiotic Studies and of Nordic Network of Semiotic Research
Staff:
Name Function E-mail address Telephone
G�ran Sonesson [e-mail]
professor 046-2229531
[e-mail]
Sara Lenninger doctorate student 046-2228430
[e-mail].
Anna Cabak
doctorate student 046-2228430
Redei se
Ximena Narea [e-mail]
doctorate student 
Description of semiotics
Current research
Reports of the Semiotics Project
Semiotic bibliography
Mini-encyclopaedia of (mainly visual) semiotics
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Cultural Semiotics
Lectures at the Cybersemiotics Institute
Courses offered at the department
Seminar of Cultural Semiotics
Doctorate programme
Current projects
Posts
Index of all other files at this location
Other semiotic sites New linking pages
Department of Semiotics FAQ
Search this site
Semiotics, translated as the science of signification, is often said to derive from two sources, the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce, and the
Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure.
It is, in particular, the latter tradition which has gone through a rich development in our century, beginning in Russia and in Czechoslovakia during the
first decades, then encountering a new vigour in France and Italy in the fifties and the sixties, and finally diffusing over the whole world, notably to
Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Poland, and Spain, in Europe, and to USA and Latin America. With the single exception of Denmark, the Nordic
countries have been newcomers to this game. At present, in the best work, the philosophical rigour of Peirce has been intimately united to the
empirical approach found in Saussure.
Above all, semiotics is a peculiar point of view: a perspective which consists in asking ourselves how things become carriers of meaning. Thus, the
task of semiotics involves the determination of criteria which may help separate different sign types and other kinds of signification. Well-known
instances of such typologies are Peirces trichotonomy icon/index/symbol and the opposition between the analogue and the digital. Both these
distinctions turns out to be insufficient, if not inadequate, when they are confronted with actually existing system of signification.
One reasons for this is that one and the same sign instance may play several different parts at the same time: a picture may represent something,
express something, refer to its own material character, allude to something, be a metaphor or constitue some other type of indirect sign for something.
Since semiotics is interesting in finding general rules and regularities, it tries to describe these phenomena as generic functions in some kind of system.
But it must be admitted that these generic functions are modified by the contexts in which they appear. Therefore, semiotics is not only called upon to
describe similarities and dissimilarities between different ways of conveying signification, but equally the different ways in which several systems of
signification collaborate at the transmission of meaning (spoken and written language, gestures and facial expression during a chat or as part of a
theatre representation or a film; that which may be conveyed by new media such as the computer, etc.). In contrast to the abstract approach
characterising earlier semiotics, semiotics of culture looks at similarities and convergences between different systems of signification in historically
existing cultures.
See also
See also M�lbeskrivning semiotik (only in Swedish)
Bildsemiotikens system och historia
Current research
We take our point of departure in a critical reception of the so-called semiotics of culture, initiated by the Tartu school in the early seventies, mostly
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Cultural Semiotics
with a view of interpreting Russian history, and which was then developed by mostly German and North American semioticians. Our aim, however, is
to apply this point of view to the differences between pre-modern and modern forms of communication in the widest sense of the term, and to their
modification in recent times. We are particularly interested in the spatial expression of these forms of communication, for instance the shape of the
city. Another focus of our interest is the influence of new media, such as television and computers, and the increasing importance of some old sign
types, such as pictures.
Another line of reasoning which we are pursuing has to do with the position of the art sphere within culture, as a specific, but ever-changing, part of
the wider domain of picture production. We have also taken an ever more acute interest in the difficulties of contact between Swedish culture and
other cultures, those outside its domain of spatial extension, naturally, but also those which nowadays occupy the same space, that is the immigrant
cultures.
See also  Bildsamh�llets kultursemiotik (also in Spanish)
 Bridging culture and nature in cultural semiotics
 The limits of nature and culture in cultural semiotics
 The pencils of nature and culture
 The concept of text in cultural semiotics
 The life of signs in society  and out of it
 The multimediation of the lifeworld
 In search of Swedish Nature. Beyond the Threshold of the People s Home
 The Culture of Modernism
 Interacción y identidad. Para una semiótica de la inmigración
 Dos modelos de la globalización
 Does Ego meet Alter  in the Global Village? A View from Cultural Semiotics
 On modelling the complexity of cultural models
 The Life of Culture  and other Signs  in Nature  and Vice-Versa
�versikt �ver kultursemiotikens problematik
Also see: Anders Marner:  Musikvideo och semiotik
Also see: Ximena Narea:  Migración y transformación cultural. Artistas latinoamericos en Suecia
This interest has developed from an earlier preoccupation with the more formal differences between the potentialities of verbal language and
pictures for conveying information. This research interest in now pursued, partly in the sense of a revision of visual rhetoric, and also as a study of the
different potentialities of pictorial and verbal vehicles for conveying specific types of information such as, most notably, narrativity. The two dominant
strains of this research have been, on the one hand, a critique of the critique of iconicity (as conduced by Eco and Goodman, among others):
 Prolegomena to the semiotic analysis of prehistoric visual displays
 Models and Methods in Pictorial Semiotics
 Den allra nyaste Laokoon. Lessing i ljuset av modern semiotik
 Pictorial semiotics
 The semiotic function and the genesis of pictorial meaning
 The ecological foundations of iconicity
 Iconicity in the ecology of the Lifeworld
 That there an many kinds of iconic signs
 Le mythe de la triple articulation
 Mute narratives
 La iconicidad en un marco ecológico
 De l iconicit� des images ą l iconicit� des gestes
 Iconicity strikes back : the third generation  or why Eco still is wrong
 Semiotics of Photography  On tracing the Index
 Visual signs in the age of digital production
 From Semiosis to Ecology. On the theory of iconicity and its consequences for the ontology of the Lifeworld
My bibliography on visual semiotics (created in1990: will eventually be updated)
And on the other hand the development of a model for pictorial semiotics, which is based on visual rhetoric, itself founded on concepts of
indexicality and opposition:
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Cultural Semiotics
See also  Pictorial semiotics
 Tjugofem �rs soppa p� Panzanis pasta
 Bildens yta och djup. Grunder f�r en bildsemiotik
 Den visuella semiotikens system och historia
 Notes sur la macchia de Kandinsky; le problŁme du langage plastique
 Le silence parlant des images
 Quadrature of the hermeneutic circle
 Fantasins ankarf�sten. N�gon om bildavbildningar och andra overkligheter
 Approaches to the Lifeworld core of pictorial rhetoric
 Bildfl�det i den levda v�rlden
 Comment le sens vient aux images. Un autre discours de la m�thode
 Retour sur la matiŁre du sens ą l �re de la production digitale
 Les rondeurs secrŁtes de la ligne droite. A propos de Rothko
 De la estructśra a la retórica en la semiótica visual
 Rh�torique de la perception. Recherche de m�thode
 Postphotography and beyond
 Global and local constraints in picture production
"La fotograf�a  entre el dibujo y la virtualidad"
"La imagen como doble y realidad"
 The Culture of Modernism
 Avantgardet som retorik - eller det nyas st�ndiga �terkomst
 Fr�n varseblivningens till kulturens retorik (also in Spanish)
 Ritens plats i sk�despelets semiotik  (also in Spanish)
 Action becomes Art.  Performance in the Context of Theatre, Play, Ritual  and Life Action becomes Art
 Rh�torique du monde de la vie
Interpretational scheme for visual semiotics
 Indexicality as perceptual mediation
 Perspective from a semiotical perspective
 Semiotiska perspektiv p� perspektiv
 An essay concerning images
 Au d�lą du montage, la rh�torique du cin�ma
 La signification de l espace dans la s�miotique �cologique .
"Spaces of urbanity. From the village square to the boulevard"
 From Semiosis to Ecology. On the theory of iconicity and its consequences for the ontology of the Lifeworld
Also see: Anders Marner: Retoriken i surrealismens dubbla diskurs
My bibliography on visual semiotics (created in1990: will eventually be updated)
This work started out long ago as an attempt to study linguistic problems in an integrated semiotic framework, meant as a substitute for the
 pragmatic waste-basket . This attempt was extended, during my Paris years, into a semiotics of gestuality. Since I have recently taken up this line of
study again, I reproduce here some of my earliest articles, together with the newer ones.
 A plea for integral linguistics
 Hermeneutics of the linguistic act
 Du corps propre ą la grande route
 Bodily semiotics and the extensions of man
 The Multiple Bodies of Man. Project for a semiotics of the body
 De l iconicit� des images ą l iconicit� des gestes
 From Semiosis to Ecology. On the theory of iconicity and its consequences for the ontology of the Lifeworld
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Cultural Semiotics
An even more recent line of development, within the framework of the project "Language, gesture, and pictures from the point of view of semiotic
development", concerns developmental semiotics:
 The semiotic species revisited. Considerations on the semiotic turn in biology and cognitive science
Reports of the Semiotics Project
Some of the reports  published by the Semiotics Projects, during the late eighties, but never widely accessible, will here be made available in PDF
format. The first report is in Swedish, but they others are in English. Viewing and/or printing the PDF files requires the Acrobat PDFViewer plugin,
distributed free of charge by Adobe.
 Bildbetydelser i informationssamh�llet (Only in Swedish)
 Models and Methods in Pictorial Semiotics
 Semiotics of Photography  On tracing the Index
Some other PDF files
 Pictorial semiotics, Gestalt theory, and the ecology of perception
 Varieties of interpretation. A view from semiotics
 In search of the Swedish model in semiotics
 An essay concerning images
 Prolegomena to the semiotic analysis of prehistoric visual displays
 On modelling the complexity of cultural models
 Global and local constraints in picture production
 Den visuella semiotikens system och historia
 The Life of Culture  and other Signs  in Nature  and Vice-Versa
 Iconicity strikes back : the third generation  or why Eco still is wrong
 Au d�lą du montage, la rh�torique du cin�ma
 Rh�torique du monde de la vie
Interpretational scheme for visual semiotics
 Den allra nyaste Laokoon. Lessing i ljuset av modern semiotik
"Spaces of urbanity. From the village square to the boulevard"
"La fotograf�a  entre el dibujo y la virtualidad"
"La imagen como doble y realidad"
 La signification de l espace dans la s�miotique �cologique
 Bildfl�det i den levda v�rlden
 Rh�torique de la perception. Recherche de m�thode
 Perspective from a semiotical perspective
 Semiotiska perspektiv p� perspektiv
 Retour sur la matiŁre du sens ą l �re de la production digitale
 Does Ego meet Alter  in the Global Village? A View from Cultural Semiotics
 From Semiosis to Ecology. On the theory of iconicity and its consequences for the ontology of the Lifeworld
 The semiotic species revisited. Considerations on the semiotic turn in biology and cognitive science
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Cultural Semiotics
Semiotic bibliography
My bibliography of visual semiotics, elaborated in 1990, has now been made available on the net,
courtesy of Visio, and it will soon be actualised
Mini-encylopaedia of (mainly visual) semiotics
The following entries (most of them written for an encyclopaedia of semiotics but published in revised versions in
the book and in some cases not at all) are now available on the net:
Blissymbolics
Chirography
Denotation/Connotation
Icon
Iconicity
Image/Picture
Index
Indexicality
Isotopy
Linguistic model fallacy
Metonomy
Opposition
Photography
Pictorial semiotics
 Rh�torique de l image (Barthes)
Spectacle
Visual semiotics
Current issues in pictorial semiotics
Lectures at the Semiotics Institute Online by G�ran Sonesson
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Cultural Semiotics
Presentation of the course  Current issues in pictorial semiotics
First lecture: The quadrature of the hermeneutic circle. Historical and Systematic
Introduction to Pictorial Semiotics
The first lecture will present pictorial semiotics within the framework of general semiotic theory. It will
construe semiotics as a particular point of view taken on everything which is human or, more generally,
endowed with life, rather than simply the continuation of the mixed or separate doctrines due to Saussure and
Peirce. The historical part will describe briefly the development of pictorial semiotics and the peculiarities of
its different schools and traditions, following upon the somewhat premature founding gesture attributed to
Barthes.
Lecture 2: The Psychology and Archaeology of Semiosis. Pictorality as a Semiotic
Function
In this lecture, we will discuss the emergence of the semiotic function, both ontogenetically and
phylogenetically, and we will consider the part played by the picture sign in this development. In order to
demonstrate that pictures are indeed signs, we will explore the basic elements of the sign presupposed but
never put into focus neither by Saussure nor by Peirce. Indeed, explorations in the psychology and
phenomenology of perception will turn out to be necessary, in order to characterise the sign in opposition to
more elementary meanings, such as those given to us in the common sense world, variously characterized as
the  lifeworld , the  natural world , or the world of  ecological physics .
Courses
Introduction to semiotics (SEM 301 5p)
Course available each term (Information only in Swedish)
Course given during Autumn term 2004. Information on literature and lectures below (in Swedish)
L�sordning, inklusive undervisningstillf�llen, h�sten 2005
Litteraturlista (h�sten 2005)
H�stterminen 2004
L�sordning, inklusive undervisningstillf�llen, h�sten 2004
Aktuell information
Visual rhetoric (part B3 of the course in rhetoric offered by the Faculty of Humanities, HTX 132, 40p,
spring 2005)
Kursplan och studieg�ng f�r delkursen
Litteraturlista
Visual and multimedial rhetoric (part 6 of the course in rhetoric offered by the Faculty of Humanities, HTX 131, 40p)
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Cultural Semiotics
Kursplan och studieg�ng f�r delkursen
Lektioner under v�rterminen 2004
The Seminar of Cultural Semiotics
The Seminar of Cultural Semiotics (with was initiated in 1986) is an interdisciplinary forum, open, primarily, to students at the graduate level, without
any limitation due to the subjects studied beforehand. Every year, the seminar concentrates on a particular area of semiotic research, which is then
treated from different points of view. Invited lecturers also present their conferences in front of the seminar, even though the subject matter may be
outside the theme of the current year. This also applies to those research reports offered by the participants of the seminar who are preparing a doctoral
dissertation in semiotics. The discussion of the central theme, however, often is centred around a particular occasion, a symposium featuring invited
speakers, sometimes as part of the Nordic Network for Research in Semiotics.
Programme Autumn 1995 (only in Swedish)
Programme Spring 1996 (only in Swedish)
Programme Autumn 1996 (only in Swedish)
Programme Spring 1997 (only in Swedish)
Programme Autumn 1997 (only in Swedish)
Programme Spring 1998 (only in Swedish)
Programme Autumn 1998 (only in Swedish)
Programme Spring 1999 (only in Swedish)
Programme Autumn 1999 (only in Swedish)
Programme Spring 2000 (only in Swedish)
Programme Autumn 2000 (only in Swedish)
Programme Spring 2001 (only in Swedish)
Programme Autumn 2001 (only in Swedish)
Programme Spring 2002 (only in Swedish)
Programme Autumn 2002 (only in Swedish)
Programme Spring 2003 (only in Swedish)
Programme Autumn 2003 (only in Swedish)
Programme Spring 2004 (only in Swedish)
Programme Autumn 2004 (only in Swedish)
Programme Spring 2005 (only in Swedish)
Programme Autumn 2005 (only in Swedish)
Theme of the year 1995/96 (only in Swedish)
On the background of the seminar, see also  Semiotics in the Nordic Countries
Doctorate in semiotics
For several years now, the Semiotics Seminar has in actual fact functioned as a meeting place for students interesting in preparing a doctorate in
semiotics. This state of fact has now finally been sanctioned by the university: the curriculum was ratified in April, 1998. New graduate students are
welcome: students having a bachelor degree will be accepted, with no limitation as to the subject matter earlier pursued. Having studied a variety of
subjects, and having some prior knowledge of semiotics, are advantages, but not requirements.
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Cultural Semiotics
During the Spring term of 1995, two graduate courses in semiotics at different levels were given as part of the programme open to all students at Lund
University.
See also M�lbeskrivning semiotik (Semiotics: Description of aims; only in Swedish)
and Studieplan Semiotik (Curriculum; only in Swedish).
Information to foreigners interested in the doctorate program
Current projects
The Departement of semiotics initiated during the Autumn term of 2002 a new project in collaboration with the
Department of cognitive sciences and the Institute of linguistics, with the theme Language, gesture and pictures
from the point of view of semiotic development (SGB).Within this framework, seminars are organised in
collaboration, and there is a series of conferences by prominent invited researchers in the field. A doctorate position
in semiotics and another one in cognitive sciencs have been created
The project publishes workings-papers on the internet. The Department of semiotics has so far published the
following:
The semiotic species revisited. Considerations on the semiotic turn in biology and cognitive science
The signs of the body and the body of signs. From ecology to semiosis in embodiment.
Since April 1, 2005, the Department of semiotics participates, in collaboration with the Department
of cognitive science and the Institute of linguistics, in a project financed by the EU commission
which has as its main theme the study of "Stages in the Evolution and Development of Sign Use".
The three departments in Lund work together with research groups in London, Portsmouth, Leipzig,
Rome and Marseille. The principal goal of the project is to uncover the origins of human cognitive
SEDSU- uniqueness, and for that purpose a number of cross-species comparative studies are to be performed
involving human beings and great apes. Sub-themes of the project are as follows: 1) perception and
categorization; 2) iconicity and pictures; 3) spatial conceptialization and metaphor; 4) imitation and
Lund
mimesis; 5) intersubjectivity and convention. The over-arching goal is to develop an new,
empirically founded, theory about human development.
Posts being announced
The Faculty of Humanities at Lund University, Sweden is announcing a Ph.D. position in General Linguistics / Cognitive
Science / Semiotics, within the project Stages in the Evolution and Development of Sign Use (SEDSU). The announced Ph.D.
position involves 4 years of employment at Lund University, with a progressively increasing salary, starting September 1, 2005.
The application should arrive no later that May 4, 2005.
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Cultural Semiotics
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Avd. f�r semiotik
Department of Semiotics
Institutionen f�r konst &
Avd. f�r konstvetenskap
Lunds universitet
musikvetenskap
Department of Art history
Institute of Art History and Musicology
Lund University
Avd f�r musikvetenskap
Department of Musicology
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Spectacle
Department of
Semiotics
Cultural semiotics  Visual
semiotics  Semiotic theory
Spectacle
The best idea of what a spectacle is may be gained from Eco s (1975) example of a drunkard sleeping on a
bench over which members of the Salvation Army have posed a banderole denouncing the misery
occasioned by alcoholism. This case involves both a kind of framing (separating that which should be the
focus of interest from the rest) and a labelling (telling us what to make out of it). In the spectacle, framing,
in this sense, must be primary.
The notion of a spectacular function enters semiotics in the work of the Prague school during the forties,
notably from Mukar&ovsky (1977)Ź , who argued that the dominant defining the structure of theatre, in
the specific sense of that which both dominates and organizes all other elements for its own purpose, is
transformed from one historical epoch to another: sometimes it is the dramatic text, at another time the
work of the actor, and at still over moments the relation between the stage and the audience.
Mukar&ovskyŹ  s model has been employed by Lars Kleberg and Olle Hildebrand to distinguish theatre
from other kinds of spectacles, as well as to differentiate ground-breaking theatrical theories and practices,
notably as they occurred during the heroic times of the Russian avant-garde. In an early paper on  theatre
modernism , Hildebrand (1976) sets out to distinguish sport, ritual, and theatre by means of a cross-
classification involving the dichotomies between stage versus auditorium, and expression versus content,
sport manifesting the first dichotomy, ritual the second, and theatre both of them. Here, of course, the first
opposition derives from Mukar&ovskyŹ  s theory, while the second is traceable to a superficial
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Spectacle
understanding of the Saussure/Hjelmslev tradition. In his dissertation, which is predominantly concerned
with Eivrenov s play "Harlekin the Saviour", Hildebrand (1978) then goes on to show that the peculiar
"theatrical" style invented by this author combines ritual and theatre, in the senses specified above. It
would be fairly easy to show that Hildebrand s distinctions between sport, ritual, and theatre are
inadequate, and, in particular, that given his definitions, his fourth category, invented especially for
Eivrenov, is incoherent
Kleberg s version of the same dichotomous model is more complex, but then it is also supposed to handle
a much greater set of theatrical styles, viz. all those conceptions propounded by the Soviet avant-garde
between 1917 and 1927, including Stanislavsky at one end, and Brecht somewhat bordering on the other
(cf. Kleberg 1977). All relevant directors are now subjected to a classification on a threefold count: the
limits between stage and auditorium may be marked or unmarked; there may or may not be congruence
between stage and auditorium; and the representation itself can be  directed inwards or outwards.
Unfortunately, these terms turn out to change their meaning as they are applied to different directors and
theatrical styles, which is particularly obvious in the case of the putative  directedness of the
representation.
Ivanov s conception of the cultic theatre is described by Kleberg (1984:60f)), curiously using Hildebrand s
more simple distinctions, the sign function and the interrelation between stage and audience. Expressed in
these terms, Ivanov s conception of the theatre certainly appears problematical, for, as soon at it is stated,
it tends to vanish as such: "In theatre as an art form he was interested in a shift of emphasis from the
"spectacle" towards the cult. /---/ The abolishing of the dualism between actors and audience became a
metaphor for the synthetic elimination of a series of other contradictions like Poet vs Crowd, individualism
vs collectivism, etc. (p.60f). Kleberg fails to realise, or at least to formally acknowledge, that post-
theatrical ritual is not just ritual once again.
Thus, Hildebrand s and Kleberg s conjoint labour leaves us with two paradoxes, which are far from being
trivial. If ritual involves the dichotomy between expression and content, and theatre compounds this
dichotomy with a further one opposing stage and auditorium, what can it mean that Eivrenov s conception
of theatre combines ritual and theatre? And, if, under the same circumstances, Ivanov s idea of the theatre
implied the abolishment of the opposition between stage and audience, in what way did he think he was
proposing something different from a mere return to ritual (cf. Sonesson 1994)?
If we accept Hildebrand s distinctions, lately adopted also by Kleberg, we still have to find ways to
distinguish theatre, sport, and ritual, from still further types of spectacle, such as, for instance, circus and
ballet and even, perhaps, a concert and a public conference. One may wonder if the latter would really
qualify: perhaps they are excluded because the dominant channel of communication is not vision, but
sounds and, in the second case, more particularly, verbal language.
But this raises a basic issues. Mukar&ovskyŹ , as well as Hildebrand and Kleberg, seem to envision the
spectacular function as the result of a division, among a group of human beings, between those who are
subjects and objects of the act of looking. But it is not obvious that this operation must always apply to
human beings only: perhaps we should include, as objects, other animate beings (the animals at the circus,
which, it is true, normally will interact with human beings; cf. Bouissac 1981); and perhaps they may still
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Spectacle
form a spectacle even though they are not putting on any particular act (the animals at the zoo, but also
many example of body art. From animate beings which are not involved in action, it is not such a long step
to admit that the objects of the spectacular function could also involve inanimate things, like they works of
art exhibited in museums and galleries, and the goods displayed in the show-window. Cloths, and body
decorations, which are certainly intended to be seen by others, should perhaps also be included.
Another requirement often imposed on actions (and, if admitted, inanimate objects) for them to be
transformed into spectacles is that the should be, in some sense, noteworthy. Both Lotman (1976) and
VeltruskyŹ (1984) suggests that ordinary behaviour becomes "theatre" when it is distinct, has a certain
consistency of its own, and is meant to be perceived. This may not really be the defining character of a
spectacle, however, for the "happening", which is normally presented in front of an audience, is, in one of
its variants, made up of acts which form part of the routine doings of everyday life, or, alternatively, of
acts which normally do not ordinarily go together, creating combinations which are indeed noteworthy for
their impossibility, but also, as a result, inconsistent.
Then there is the question whether there a cases in which a division between human beings into subjects
and objects of looking has not already taken place. Thus, on the classical scenes of Modernity, on the
boulevards and the caf�s, everybody becomes a potential object of observation for the others, and yet this
is neither theatre nor ritual. In this sense, Modernity, it is often claimed, should vanish with the emergence
of the new information technology, but in fact has not done so: public meeting places, like caf�s, seems to
augment in number, rather than disappear, as we have been told they should. The question, then, is
whether the contemporary world is really, as the situationist said, and as the prophets of information
technology now repeat with a quite different evaluation, "a society of spectacles". For both groups, in fact,
everything which is a sign tends be considered a spectacle, something which clashes with the
Mukar&ovskyŹ tradition.
The essence of the spectacle, then, is visual ostension, that is, a kind of indexicality; since framing clearly
precedes labelling, it will be an exemplification, in Goodman s sense, only if we admit ad hoc labels, like
"the object in focus". The question, which remains to be resolved, however, involves the extant to which
the nature of the object focused upon, apart from its predominantly visual nature, should enter into the
definition.
G�ran Sonesson
Bibliography
Bouissac, Paul, (1981), "Behavior in context: In what sense is a circus animal performing?",
in Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 364, 18-25.
Eco, Umberto, (1975), "ParamŁtres de la s�miologie th��trale", in S�miologie de la
repr�sentation. Helbo, Andr�, (ed.), 33-41. Bruxelles: Edition Complexe.
Hildebrand, Olle, (1976) Teatermodernismen. Bor�s: School of Library Science
(mimeographed).
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Spectacle
 (1978)Harlekin fr�lsaren. Uppsala: Institute of Slavic languages [Dissertation].
Kleberg, Lars, (1980)Teatern som handling. Sovjetisk avantgarde-estetik 1917-27. Norstedts,
Stockholm [Dissertation, Stochholm 1977].
 (1984) "Vjaceslav Ivanov and the idea of theate"r, in Theater and literature in Russia 1900-
1930. Kleberg, Lars, & Nilsson, Nils �ke, (eds.), pp. 57-70. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell
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Lotman, Jurij, (1976), "Theatre and Theatricality in the order of early ninetenth century
culture", in Semiotics and Structuralism, Baran, Henryk, (ed.), 33-63. New York:
International Art and Science Press.
Mukar&ovskyŹ , Jan, (1978), "On the current state of the theory of theater", in Structure, sign,
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VeltruskyŹ , Jiri, (1984), "Acting and behaviour: a study of the signans", in Semiotics of
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See also indexicality, Goodman,
Introduction  Blissymbolics  Chirography  Denotation/Connotation  Icon
 Iconicity  Image/Picture  Index  Indexicality  Isotopy  Linguistic model
fallacy  Metonomy  Opposition  Photography  Pictorial semiotics
  Rh�torique de l image (Barthes)  Spectacle  Visual semiotics
Tillbaka till Avd. f�r semiotik, Lunds Universitet Back to Department of Semiotics at Lund
University, Sweden,
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Retour au D�partement de s�miotique, Universit� Regreso al Departamento de semiótica de la
de Lund, SuŁde Universidad de Lund, Suecia
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