Review Article KODIKAS / CODE Ars Semeiotica Volume 23 (2000) · No. 3-4 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen The International Topography of Media Semiotics Ernest W. B. Hess-Lüttich All my notions are too narrow. Instead of 'Signs', ought I not to say Medium? 1 Images, pictures, photos, logos, maps, and stamps 2 Film, television, video, and radio 3 Computers, electronic networks, hypertext, and cyberspace 4 Time, memory, media, and the semiotics of the museum 5 Aesthetic aspects of the media 6 Sociosemiotics and today's myths in the media Charles Sanders Peirce 7 Tbe media myths have changed. Or haven't they,? Some concluding remarks and further reading References In the following paper I attempt to discuss most of the chapters of a volume of some 900 pages on Media Semiotics, based on summaries by Jon Busey (section 2), Cynthia Geiss (section 1), Richard Graf (section 6), Petra Hays (section 4), Charles S. Hutto (section 3), and Jennie Sherrick (section 5), who attended my graduate seminar on media semiotics at the University of Florida in 1999. I dedicate this article to these students who helped making my stay as Distinguished Max Kade Professor at the German Department professionally successful and personally delightful. Winfried Nöth, eminent scholar in the field of semiotics, professor in Germany and Brazil, and author of successful handbooks of semiotics, organised an international conference on Media Semiotics at the University ofKassel a few years ago. Only a couple ofyears later, he managed to bring out the proceedings of this conference in a volume which can be fairly described to represent the topography of the heterogeneous field of current research in the semiotics of the media. 1 In a short introduction, the editor gives a brief overview of current trends in media studies and an outline of the eight parts of the book covering the main fields of research. Part I, for instance, deals with the semiotic foundations of the media. lt investigates especially "the concept of medium in relation to the general theory of signs, studies processes of mediation in the media, and discusses the nature of self-referentiality in media communication" (8). Solomon Marcus, Gerard Deledalle, Göran Sonesson, Elisabeth Walther, Martin Krampen, and Lucretia Escudero Chauv~l contibuted to this first part. 336 Ernest WB. Hess-Lüttich 1 Images, pictures, photos, logos, maps, and stamps The second part is devoted to Pictorial and graphic semiotics. The chapter, in general, deals with the semiotic approach to pictures; anything from logos to postage stamps. JANICE DELEDALLE-RH0DES writes on "Semiotics and Ethics: The image of semiotics and semiotics of the image" (111-119). She states that most semioticians see their field as "a kind of method, a discipline, something akin to philosophy, but which the aim is essentially the analysis of signs and not their evaluation." Other semioticians do concem themselves with values and evaluations and many of these have based their research on Peirce's system in which aesthetics, ethics, and logic cannot be dissociated. Deledalle-Rhodes feels that what is lacking in the field of semiotics is the lack of application of the theory of ethics. She feels that ethics cannot be dissociated from the semiotic analysis of the media and that ethics is important for the future of semiotics as a whole. Deledalle-Rhodes says that the analysis ofthe media, such as films, newspaper, radio, and television, is often misguided. Tue media deliberately present images that are supposed to be described as impartial. Moral evaluation is not the utmost importance of the media. They present images that appear to be deliberately misleading, false, and have been manipulated. Deledalle-Rhodes brings up the contradiction between media and literature. Media is seen as a former of public opinion, while literature is merely for the literary. She wonders why the rise in fascist and racist literature has not brought about a critical response from the semiotic community. A reader can buy a book or not, so it is feit that this form of media is not very influential. On the other band, the media, such as television, are not escapable. Deledalle- Rhodes believes that very few of the images used in media are "true" or "real" and that they "are used to represent some state of things that the user either believes to be true or wishes the public to believe to be true." lt is the ethic question of misrepresentation. An image cannot lie because it does not say anything. Only by how the image is presented can it be manipulated as something that the media wants the public to perceive as being true or false. We see this all the time in news coverage. One picture is used to tel1 many stories but the public believes that the photos that are being shown of a certain event are actually coming from that event. Tue other question of ethics that is raised is that of familiarization. The sensational, the tragic, the dramatic is brought forth every day in the media and it has become too familiar by the process of repetition. Deledalle-Rhodes uses the example of a reporter who told of the damage of the earthquake in Kobe in 1995. He stated that although the event was tragic, many buildings were left standing and not very many people were injured. She finds this a refreshing change that it is possible to find a balance in reporting the devastation and the positive side of the earthquake. But, she feels, as much as the media use these images to help the public, they are harmful because "they encourage a general tendency to seek the sensational for its own sake." "The media create precedents which tend to familiarize, and thus apparently legitimize, acts which previously have seemed inconceivable." This is a very poignant topic is today' s society where people feel that there is a numbing toward the violence that appears on television, in movies, and video games. Graphie scenes of violence are all too common to today' s youth and we have seen some of the consequences that can arise from this. In the next chapter entitled ''The prephotographic, the photographic, and the postphotographic" LUCIA SANTAELLA BRAGA analyses what she defines as the three paradigms of the process of image production (121-132). Tue prephotographic paradigm deals with images that are handmade, or as Santaella Braga puts it, "artisanally produced", including paintings, engravings, sculptures, etc. Tue second paradigm "refers to all images produced The International Topography of Media Semiotics 337 through dynamic connection with, and physical capture of, fragments of the visible world", i.e. photography, since this process requires some sort of mechanical device. This paradigm extends from photography to cinema, video, and holography. The third paradigm is concerned with synthetic images or infographic images. These images are produced by using computers. Braga goes in depth on how the images are produced. In the artisanal form, the mode of production lies in the medium itself. Paintings, drawings, etc. are produced onthe reality of this material. The artisanal depends on the support of the medium, which is almost always a flat surface. The agent of production is the artist using bis body as the main instrument of production with perhaps a paint brush as an extension ofhis body. 'Tue signs produced by the brushstroke are a visible reflection of the gesture of the agent." Braga feels that the artisanal image is unique and authentic because it is an original reflection of the artist's view of the world. With the photographic paradigm comes a process of production that comes from the establishment of photography. Photography has taken from the artist the ability to place bis band on the image. In photography the image comes from the recording on a chemical or electromagnetic support. The rays of light that past through the camera leave a lasting impression on this support. Braga states that the subject aims to dominate the object that is being photographed. After the picture is taken, the image is forever captured and an infinite number of copies may be produced from the negative. In the postphotographic model, the process of production is triadic "presupposing three phases that are interconnected but perfectly delimited." The support ofthis means ofproduction is the computer and the video screen. The artist that produces these images is now a programmer whose intelligence interacts with the artificial intelligence of the computer. The image on the monitor can only be visualized because the screen is composed of units known as pixels. Braga defines three stages of production for infography; (1) the programmer must build a model of an object using calculations; (2) "the numerical matrix is transformed, based on other models of visualization or algorithms of image simulation; and (3) the computer translates this information to form an image. "Always highly iconic, this image presents no analogy to the symbolic representations." "Through the indexical connection between a number in the algorithm and a pixel ön the screen, infography seems to provide a perfect equilibrium for the distribution of the semiotic roles performed by the three sign modalities symbol, index, and icon." The computer allows for the creation of experiences that are not performed on real objects in real time or space. Artisanal images are produced on surfaces that are subject to erosion over time, surfaces such as walls, canvasses, and caves. There is a contradiction between the artist's desire for permanency and the deterioration of the image. In the photographic paradigm, the means of storage gains a permanency. A negative can be developed at any time. ''Thus, the image gains in durability what it loses in uniqueness." In the postphotographic, the computer memory is the means of storage. The image that is displayed is only one of the many possible images that are contained within the computer. The computer can start from any point and visualize any given image. For artisanal images, imagination is the essential tool. For photography, the agent must merely react, while the person working with infography must have the ability to manipulate and calculate data. But is not imagination essential for any form of art? lt could be argued that it takes just as much imagination to establish what will be created on a computer screen as it does to paint a landscape. Also, not just anyone can take a photograph that is considered art worthy. lt takes a special something to be able to visualize and imagine what it is you want to capture. But Braga feels that photographic images take something away from 338 Ernest WB. Hess-Lüttich the world and that there is an act of perversity in it. Synthetic images are a result from a person's need to act on reality with the interaction of the computer. The way an artist sees the world is presented in his work, whereas the photograph is the agent's point of view of the world. "In synthetic images, there is anybody's and nobody's glance." Again many will disagree here. All artists, whatever form they choose to create in, have a loving gesture toward their work. Just because a person chooses to create art with a camera does not mean that they do not do it lovingly. Maybe people tend to jump to the conclusion that if an artist uses a more mechanized tool such as the camera or computer, they are somehow disassociated from their work. Consequences for the relation between the image and the world are how the image and the world relate. Tue prephotographic image is a metaphor; it functions as a look at the world. In this way, what is real is imagined by the artist and filtered through his illusion. "lts ideal of perfect symmetry is the direct outcome of a model existing only in the imagination." The outcome is symbolic. For photography, the image is a reflection of the world. "Thus, it acts as a shadow of the world, its remnant or cut, ip which the indexical dominates." Postphotographie images are a view of a virtual world, a metamorphosis. Reality is refined and filtered through this medium. Consequences for the role of the receptor deal with what the image means to convey. "While the artisanal image is produced for the purpose of contemplation, the purpose of the photographic image is for observation and the purpose of the postphotographic image is for interaction." The photograph's primary effect is recognition and relies on memory. Tue postphotographic image needs to be controlled from the _very beginning and a mode of programming has been developed that makes "the receptor' s response instructions and commands as fast as possible." The prephotographic is "the universe of the etemal", the photographic is "the universe of the instantaneous", while the postphotographic is "the universe of the fugitive, the universe of pure time, thus reversible and capable of being restarted at any time." "Can pictures lie? " asks WINFRIED NöTH, the editor, in the third chapter of this second part (133-146). He discusses how pictures have been seen as a means of manipulating the masses. He asks "whether the alleged manipulative power of pictorial messages could also derive from an inherent semiotic potential to lie, that is, the criterion of untrue pictorial statements with the intent to deceive." There is little doubt that pictures can refer to something that does not exist, or never existed, but do these pictures necessarily lie? Tue question of whether a picture can tel1 the truth or lie has three aspects: semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic. Tue semantic point of view states that the picture must correspond to the facts it depicts. The syntactic point of view requires that the picture must be one that represents an object and "conveys a predication about this object." Finally, the pragmatic aspect states that there must be an intention to deceive on the part of the addresser of the pictorial message. Starting with the semantic viewpoint, photographs seem to be true visual messages because "they fulfill the semantic criterion of correspondence to the facts." Photos correspond to the world they are depicting because of their iconic nature. They also correspond to reality because they depict the object of reality: " ... the photographic picture is defined as an indexical sign." Now it is commonly known that photographs can be manipulated. Through processes such as retouching, filtering and double exposure, pictures can be changed in any number of ways. "By retouching, the signifier referring to an existing object could be made to disappear." However, are these manipulated photos, for example, something an advertiser might use for a campaign, really lying? Do they really want to deceive the viewer? According The International Topography of Media Semiotics 339 to Nöth, they don't. "Instead of a lie, the ad is a mere visual metaphor, a hyperbole not tobe taken seriously." The difference between that and a really deceptive fake, a genuine visual lie, is in the pragmatic dimension of the photographic message. The syntactic part, remembering that the picture must represent an object and convey a predication, brings forth the question whether pictures can function as autonomous dicentic signs, or consist of rhematic signs only. Nöth makes a comparison to how a sentence is looked at. A statement can be true or false but not the individual words. "Truth values can only be derived from sentences or propositions in which a subject or argument is in syntactic relation to a predicate." Do pictures represent objects, or can they represent the object and the predications about the object? Nöth states three reasons why this statement has been found negative. The first argument is contextual incompleteness, which states that pictures alone cannot lie, but that only if accompanied by a caption of title it may convey a true or false proposition. Nöth argues against what he calls a "logocentric thesis of the dicentic incompleteness of pictures." He feels that the theory says nothing about pictures without labels and the semiotic potential of these pictures. Even though pictures without labels or captions are rare they are still tobe found, especially among paintings and family photos where he states that it is a rule not to have these titles. The second argument Nöth brings forth against the argument of the assumption of the dicentic structure ofpictures is called nonsegmentability. Nöth feels that visual arguments of a photo can be determined segmentally. "Such segments are the potential arguments of the visual proposition." He uses, for example, a picture with two dogs. Bachpart of the picture, color, size, shape, descriptions of material, all of these things can be looked at. Based on all of these elements it is easy to see how a picture can be manipulated, but assuming it has not been altered, it conveys a true message. Pictures do have the potential of fulfilling the criterion of propositional structure. The final argument Nöth brings forth that argues against the possibility of assigning truth values to pictures is that of dicentic vagueness. ''This argument claims that pictorial messages are so ambiguous, vague, and polysemous that they cannot serve to prove any truth or falseness." Nöth argues that a message which conveys a plurality of facts about the world must not be less true than a message that simply conveys one true fact. "Neither polysemy nor ambiguity can thus be accepted as general arguments against the truth potential ofpictures." Now, returning to the three main points, the final aspect of whether a picture can tel1 the truth or lie is the pragmatic dimension. Nöth comes back to the question whether pictures can assert at all. "Is not their function restricted to the mere showing of the real or imaginary? " Nöth brings forth the argument, made by Wittgenstein, against the assertive potential of pictures. This argument is that of pragmatic indeterminacy, meaning that the pragmatic function of pictures is open and undetermined. And yet, he states, pictures are used for assertive purposes, for example, police photos and scientific illustrations. "Whenever signs can be used for asserting the truth they can also be used to deceive. If they assert, they will be used as lies." The conclusion is that "pictures can be used to assert or to deceive about facts from the semantic, syntactic, and with certain reserves, also from the pragmatic dimension." LUCA CANEPAR0 and GIAN PA0L0 CAPRETIINI write "On the semiotics of the image and the computer image" (147-158). The authors begin with their definition of an image as "the planar space-place of signification." Their analysis deals with the visual plane, or plane of expression, that is made manifest through a medium in relation to a second plane, the plane of content. Between the plane of expression and the plane of content, a relationship may be established. "The former becomes an expression of the later, which in turn becomes the 340 Emest WB. Hess-Lüttich content of the form.er." Tue plane of expression allows us to get to the plane of content through the identification of relations, similarities and differences, associations and disassociations, during which systems of relations are established. The authors use the term "narrative structure" to define the meaning process that emerges in both planes. "Tue production of a narrative structure derives, in the final analysis, from the dynamism of the relations to be established." The authors then go on to distinguish between narrative structure in a static image (photos, drawings, paintings) and in a dynamic image (video, film, computers). Caneparo and Caprettini go into an analysis of veridiction, of what an image projects outward that allows its being perceived as a concept of reality. This analysis implies looks at perspective, chiaroscuro, or the uses of light and shadow, and detail. Being able to define a correlation between the form of the content and the form of the expression, according to the authors, allows them to advance the theory that for images there exist codes which can be defined as strong. "W e define as strong those codes which, in a representation, trigger the process of veridiction." ELI ROZIK discusses the use of "Pictorial metaphor in commercial advertising" by means of graphic design or photography (159-174). "Pictorial advertising is a clear case of iconic communication, as most products and their qualities are represented by easily identifiable printed or projected images, including printed labels." Rozik posits that metaphor derives its surface structures from a common deep structure, the rules of ellipsis and the particular quality of each medium. This deep structure is viewed as similar but altemate to the structure of literal description. To prove the theory that metaphor gets its meaning from these deep structures, Rozik states that two theories are required, "a theory of metaphor and a theory of pictorial communication, as a particular case of iconic communication." Rozik defines verbal metaphor as "a standard means of describing referents (objects or the phenomena), whether real or fictional, which is alternative to literal description." Metaphor is characterized by the use of an improper term in the "capacity predicate of a sentence." Ellipsis may apply to any of the things that compose the deep structure of a metaphor, other than the improper term, "because without it there is no alternative source of referential associations." Rozik states that structure ofverbal metaphors include five verbal parts; (1) a subject-predicate syntactic pattern, (2) a literal subject of the proposition, (3) an improper noun-predicate, (4) a common literal predicate, (5) an optional preference marker. Pictorial advertising focuses on identifying a product that is known to the customer and on presenting this product in the form of an appealing image. "In iconic utterances, certain signs serve to identify the referent (subject signs) and others to describe or, rather, categorize it (predicate signs)." Any description of a picture is equal to the pictorial description itself. The identification of the referent is crucial because this information allows one to determine if the predicate is literal or metaphorical. Rozik states that two differences must be identified which derive from the nature of the medium. The first one is that "iconic media do not provide signs equivalent to verbal nouns and names." Second, pictorial predication is spatial. Since metaphors consist of having an improper term, you may have a mixture of literal and improper predicates in a picture, relating to one or more sources of referents. Even though bis article addresses both, Rozik feels that there is a difference between design and photography in the sense of subject and metaphorical predicate. "Whereas in design, the merging of literal and metaphorical elements can be achieved by means of dexterous lines, textures, and colors, this is difficult to attain in photography without employing special techniques." He adds a step by step analysis of how to look at metaphorical advertisements and concludes bis paper with the summation that pictorial metaphor reflects The International Topography of Media Semiotics 341 that there are deep structures, shared by pictorial and verbal media, and that there is an operation of the same rules of ellipsis. "The use of pictorial metaphors in advertising suggest that they have a potentially persuasive power, possibly on the unconscious level and, therefore, are of financial interest." BENOIT HEILBRUNN' s article is entitled "Representation and legitimacy: A semiotic approach to the logo" (175-189). According to Heilbronn, the meaning of a logo can be derived from two different systems of signification; a system of intemal dependencies between what makes up a logo sign, and an extemal system of signification constituted by other logos. A logo is a sign that is usually used to represent companies, organizations, brands, etc. People are bombarded with numerous amounts oflogos per day and so companies seek to create signs that are distinguishing, simple and distinctive. The logo has not only a representative function but also a pragmatic one because it anticipates a reaction on the part of the receiver. "A semiotic study of the logo permits us to define what gives logos the status of signs and to investigate the laws of their relationships." The semiotic function of the logo is that it stands for something, it represents. something. A logo identifies an organization, product, or service and can be viewed as an expression of the company's intentions and values. Logos fulfill the following functions: phatic (maintaining the control of the channel that allows communication to happen); poetic (information on the message structure); expressive (information about its sender); conative (information about the receiver); metalinguistic (the code in which the message is expressed); referential (the message including the context ofthe information used by the receiver as source of information). There are three types oflogos: (1) the logotype (for example; IBM, 3M, ABC) is composed only of "alphanumeric signs". The colors and the type style give the logo its identity features. (2) The iconic, or icotype logo representing a company acts as an iconic and indexical sign (e.g. the Shell Oil Company logo, the Nike "swoosh"). (3) The mixed logo makes use of a mixture of words and images (e.g. Pepsi, AT&T, Merrill Lynch). "Usually based on an association of a name (logotype) and an image (icotype) these logos metaphorically borrow the elementary signs of human identity, i.e., a name and a photo." Three types of messages can be recognized in the mixed logo. The first is a linguistic message which consists ofthe product or company's name and logo. The two other messages are in the logo, one iconic, the other symbolic. The iconic message "denotes the 'real object' in such a manner that the signifier and the signified are 'quasi-tautological', hence a relationship of mutual understanding between the linguistic message and the iconic message." The symbolic message includes the connotations of the symbol that form the image of the product or company. These connotations are coded because they depend on knowledge from the viewer and imply that the symbol is open to different interpretations. Heilbronn discusses the extemal dependencies of a logo both from a Peircean perspective and in an anthropological view. The sign function of a logo is based on three main anthropological functions; sovereignty, warrior, and reproduction. Sovereignty is based on sameness and consistency meaning that if a logo is repeated over and over again it is easily identified and recognizable. Warrior is based on "a principle of difference and delimination." This function illustrates the pragmatic type of relationship that exists between logos on a given market. Logos that seek to copy other logos only gain legitimacy through the success of the logo that is being copied. In the old design for Pepsi, for instance, they copied the design of Coke. The way the words were written, the flourish of the design, and the way Pepsi put "cola" at the end of their title, led to a similarity with the original creator of soft drinks. 342 Emest W. B. Hess-Lüttich Finally, reproduction "is based on a principle of ubiquity, that is, the logo can really play an indexical role in so far as it is widely used and repeated over time and space." This function is based on repetition and is sometimes considered to be the most important role of the logo. "Indexical/ iconic ,tensions: Tue semiotics of the postage stamp" is the title of DAVID ScoTI' s article (191..; .201). Scott discusses Peircean semiotic theory, in particular the categories in the Second Trichotomy (Icon, Index, Symbol), and how these categories provide the means to analyze the tension between indexical and iconic functions in the postage stamp. "This is because Peirce's distinction between iconic, indexical, and symbolic signs provides criteria against which both the authenticity and the functional efficiency of stamps as signs can be judged." Tue indexical role of the postage stamp is to identify the country, which indicates where the mail has come from, and that the postage has been paid. As an icon, stamps represent the country from which it came by issuing it with some sort of national emblem in addition to the country' s name. Tue stamp may also propose additional icons, such as people, events, and places, which are associated with the country. This is the commemorative function of the stamp. Scott states that even when presenting an icon or commemorative image, the postage stamp is still an indexical sign. Tue authenticity of a stamp icon can be measured by the links that are proposed between it and the issuing country. These links must be established, according to Scott, if the stamp is to be considered more than just a colored sticker collected by children. Tue distinction between the iconic and symbolic functions in signs is useful in assessing the semiotic efficiency of the stamp. "A sign classified as symbolic in Peircean terminology can become iconic merely by virtue of becoming disproportionately prominent or isolated from its conventional context." Scott states that shifts can occur among the semiotic elements and can result in a destabilizing or reformulation of the reading of the stamp message. Tue role of typographical elements is important in evaluating stamps. "Letters, as conventional signs, are, in theory at any rate, relatively unambiguous in the messages they propose, at least within the restricted texts in which they tend to appear on stamps." Their relationship with the icons promoted on the stamp has the potential of being complex and susceptible to manipulation. Letters and the typography themselves have the tendency to aspire to iconic status. "This semiotic fluidity, reflecting the fluidity of Peirce's categories, serves to remind us that it is impossible ultimately to pin signs down, to arrive at any fixed or absolute classification." Scott feels that in this sense, the stamp warrants "vigilant semiotic analysis". 2 Film, television, video, and radio The third and fourth part of the book deal with.film, television, video, and radio. Tue film section includes twelve papers, some of them excellent, on the history of film, on selfreference, intermediality, and intertextuality in the movies, on acting, star images and the role of the film author, and on topics such as violence, masculinity, eating, and orality in the movies. Warren Buckland, Michael Hayes, Alain J. Cohen, Gloria Withalm, Lisa Block de Behar, Uwe Wirth, Petra Grimm, Stephen Lowry, Paul McDonald, Andrzej Gw6zdz, Hans Krah, and Jochen Mecke contributed to this third part. For reasons of space and complexity, we will concentrate here on the fourth part. The International Topography of Media Semiotics 343 In RICHARD LANIGAN' s "Television: the semiotic phenomenology of communication and the image" (381-392), the author makes a number of critical statements about such programs as "Beavis and Butthead" and MTV Cartoons in general, disguising them as generalities by referring to them as programs substandard to the ones shown on CNN. His claim that "cartoons will never be embodied, imagination is not a person" (389) may be an overgeneralization concerning the future of animation. His opinion of the series becomes apparent in the statement: "Beavis and Butthead reduce imagination to a TV image expression" (ibid.). His categorization of Beavis' and Butthead's 'Other' and 'Self', ego and alter ego according to Foucault and Freud seems a bit overextrapolated. But these critical words contrast sharply with his earlier praises of CNN as the "paradigm of the created image" (3 87), which stems most likely from his affinity with 'news' in general: "The J? resentation of news, in all its categories from "hard" news to "entertainment" news, is a creative representation" (387f.); he qualifies this by defining it with the terminology of Merleau-Ponty. However, our criticism of his style should by no means be taken as a disagreement with his overall assessment of the networks. His example of a "symbol to be consumed as symbolic" in the O.J. Simpson trial, a very popular symbol indeed at the time this article was written, is right on track, andin fact we've seen others since then: Princess Diana' s death had a similar impact on the world, though it was much swifter in terms of the press sensation and length than Simpson's. So too was the Clinton trial ('Affair') an instance of the public's fascination with an image, a Self, which no one really knew and which was abstracted. Lanigan' s argument on this level was therefore quite valid and applicable to a number of television situations and personalities. MICHELC0STANTINI's raises the question "Where is the subject in the macromedia? The question of zapping" (393-401). He defines four 'positions' of the zapper: conjunction, disjunction, nondisjunction, and nonconjunction. Obviously, each is based on the first-string thought of 'conjunction', the root on which the other three are based. He conceives of conjunction as basically the place or point in time in which the viewer (zapper) of a television finds the program s/ he wants and decides to watch it for a moment. According to Costantini, this makes the viewer the "integral subject of the performance" (ibid.). This definition is ambiguous: it can mean subject as in 'main topic' or as in a 'test subject' (i.e., that upon which something is acted or experimented). This leaves a gaping hole in the rest of the definitions. lt is also erroneous, as it neglects the importance of the programs themselves, which come at a given moment, and assigns therefore too little value to the sheer chance of the matter of whether something enjoyable is playing. Nondisjunction evidently conjunction negated twice by prefixes and hence a similar phenomenon is meant here to be nearly the opposite of conjunction, namely the periods when the viewer cannot find a program to interest him/ her. A strange and seemingly unrelated anecdote about a news program he once saw follows. Nonconjunction is characterized by the viewer' s desire not to be a part of the audience. To him, "the verb to zap, in this type of expression, does not even imply the idea that we switch from one channel to another. lt more or less implies that we should remove, erase the painful view by pressing the remote control button" (399). The final position, disjunction, is the true opposite of conjunction: the viewer does not find anything s/ he likes. lt distinguishes itselfby being the one situation in which the 'object of value' (a 'good' and worthwhile television program) does not exist. Costantini thus concludes that the "end of zapping also means the failure of performance" (ibid.). PHILIP C. SUTT0N addresses two very interesting points concerning the audience in his article on "The surrogate audience: Ostension of spectator response in televised shows" 344 Emest WB. Hess-Lüttich (403-415). Automatism and the role of the audience in detennining the final copy of a program are surely topics worth investigating. The use of 'canned' laughter, applause signs, and other contrivances to affect the atmosphere and the feelings and attitudes ofthe audience about and towards the show have been around so long that one accepts them as an inherent part of the program. In fact, the audience is a very important factor in each (performed) show - Sutton calls it a "necessary contributor to the performance text" ( 411) and the viewers are 'tricked' into thinking theyhave acbieved 'conjunction' by the audience's response, although the show itself may not be as worthwhile as one thinks. MICHAEL MÜLLER and BERNHARD SPRINGER' s "Liquid images: A semiotic analysis of onair promotion and TV design of TV stations" (417-420) concems itself largely with the network logos and what they attempt to acbieve. One complaint about these discussions would be that they never offer any support for the data they present. We are told that Premiere aims at exclusiveness, Pro Sieben at experience, etc., but not how this has been established, wbich comes into play when Kabel l's choice of color is criticized as being inappropriate for the age group. Private TV stations are also contra-distinguished, and it is mentioned that they "tend to use the color intensity contrast of modern and pop-art painting" (420), but the why is never addressed. Also, the claim is made of the logo that it has the "foremost function to help the viewer to orientate bimor herself. Apart from that, the logo is creating a trademark wbich works similarly to other brands" (427). To a certain extent this sounds plausible, but the way it is alleged without any support whatsoever casts doubt on the methodology. On the other band, a number of other discussions, for instance the ones on trailers and on pre-presentations, are thought-provoking. At least equally as thought-provoking is CLAUDE GANDELMAN's article entitled "Foreshadowing virtual reality in narrative and film" ( 431-440), presenting a discussion on virtual as being a medium achieved without the use of computers. Every time one sees a movie as powernd as Stalingrad or Gumma or hears certain music or smells an odor that reminds one of past times, one has experienced virtual reality. The 'return' of the mind "from its sojourn in.the virtual back into the concrete reality" (431) and its 'entry' into it are more memorable than all that happens in between. His discourse on virtual reality as more than just a medium for video games and a eure for arachnophobia is both accurate and refresbing. His address of virtual reality is unconventional in many respects: the subsection 'Virtual reality as "infamy"' contains part of a story and then a few examples of Doppelgänger stories examples wbich are instances of a virtual reality. Entering this new world of virtual reality is more of an act of realization than one of derealization. We are no langer in the realm of the pure mental image but in an artificially constituted sensorial world in wbich man touches, smells, as well as sees bis "image." This image world of virtual reality also evokes in him feelings ( of pleasure, fear, pain, etc.) that are not the mere de-realization of real feelings (such as we experience in reading a book or viewing a movie), but wbich are as real as our senses are real. The author adds that he has two fears that bis concept of virtual reality might lead to: that one might not be able to return from bis virtual reality without the feeling of being alienated from reality (as opposed to the normal feeling of retuming to it), and that the "virtual reality addict" might lose bis power of imagination and suffer a loss of creativity in general. Those who cannot leave an intemet chat room without feeling as though they were missing out on something, those whose best friends (or spouses, cbildren, entire families) exist only as lines on a screen those are the virtual reality addicts of today. The International Topogfaphy of Media Semiotics 345 MASSIMO A. BONFANTINI, SUSAN PETRILLI, and AUGUSTO PONZIO claim in their article on "TV is dead, video is bom" that "Dialogue on new intermedia communication" is actually trialogue between three intellectuals. They bring up several interesting and extremely impelling points about the role of television, electronic hypertextual devices, and hopes about the future of television. "And as a powerful means of communication, television is used in this sense ("exploited and exasperated by capitalism") as well. How else can we explain the important role carried out by television in triggering off the Gulf War and in its development? " (448). Here Ponzio merely scrapes the tip of an iceberg. TV is not just a vebicle for propelling the desire for war in Western cultures, it is the medium that should take responsibility for the fact that "war is inscribed in our experience" (447), for a typical American's week is filled with hours and hours of watching TV, and TV is filled with allusions to if not pictures of and thus invocations of war. People believe their television sets. People trust and believe many ofthe people they see on TV whom they shouldn't. When the word gets out that the American military has launched missiles in the direction of a country that cannot protect itself, Americans turn on their television sets and wait for the explanation. And in a very short time a power figure one different from bis precursors in that bis election was largely based on the impression he made on audiences when he appeared on TV assuages feelings of anger people have about their own country. This is what is called propaganda. As a counterexample, Petrilli comments on television's enabling a country to become a "participating democracy". At times, the moment we see bombings or riots or catastrophes of any sort on TV is the same moment in wbich our presidents leams of them. This is the great advantage the citizens of today have over those of the 1940s and 1950s: namely that no one expects to wait days or even more than a few hours when it comes to the goings on in the world as well as in national politics. The allocution on hypertext is a bit more subtle, posing the questions, "What is the real nature of the relation between the use of electronic devices and the user-consumer? Does the subject construct bis or her own texts or, rather, is the subject reduced to passively submitting to the products offered by the sign market, to operating as a function of an institutionalized system, of socio-economic production processes conceived in the interests of whoever [sie] in fact owns and controls the communication network? " (449). Truly, the reader of a text does become rather the 'creator' when s/ he 'reads' a hypertext and is therefore no longer bound the earlier Gestalt-types. And as to the nature of the relation between the use of electronic devices and the user-consumer, it' s pretty obvious what happens every time a new type of device bits the shelves take for instance the DVD players, that are more expensive and harder to come by than the traditional movie-viewing apparatus and for which there is only a limited and very expensive number of titles available. After all, Bonfantini' s hopes on the future of television sound very refresbing: "But above all what we need is very little TV" (450). As a concluding article for this section IV of the book we are looking at, we have STEPHAN SCHI.JCKAU's analysis of games in the media: "Audience participation games. Consideration for parties other than the actual participant" (465-478). Although he does provide descriptions for the three basic types of games that exist (in bis opinion), he never tells us what he uses as criteria to determine wbich are important. He leaves no room for ones just as important at least in American television circles such as "Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy, Double Dare" etc. Another question concems bis purpose. Is it to inform the reader of the three types of games there are and then provide a discussion of each, or is it to narrow the scope of a topic everyone thought s/ he would understand mutually by filling roughly five pages with diagrams and scripts wbile leaving out a simple example? 346 Emest W. B. Hess-Lüttich 3 Computers, electronic networks, hypertext, and cyberspace The next section (V) is opened by RENE J. J0RNA and W0UT VAN WEZEL with a chapter on "Objects and the world metaphor: a semiotic engineering approach" (479-586). In the digital world of computerized media, software, games, and their applications to daily life, some aspects appeal more than others to their users. Aside from the fact that some are popular due to a certain type of genre such as sex, violence, and adventure, there appears to be a mystical element in some, which captures the minds and interests of its users. But why? What is it that tends to draw in users? What is it that turns or pushes them away? According to Joma and van Wezel, what draws a user in is that it "corresponds to everyday experiences [yet also contains] phenomena that only exist in a dream world [ ... ]. The combination of real and fantastic properties stimulates the [users] and makes them feel engaged" (481). However, what turns them away is a combination of the "user interface" and the "communication part ofthe system." There is a large semantic gap between whatthe user wants and what the computer has to offer. Somewhere along the way there is a miscommunication between the computer and its user largely due to misunderstandings or shall we say, lack ofknowledge on both sides. Therefore, this points us in the direction ofthe main question of the article: why some computer games and computer applications seduce many users to behave as if they were in real life. The answer may be found by parting it into different aspects or characterizations of the world around us. We must consider such ideas as the world or metaphor and "conversation metaphor", "first-personness", and the reference of cognitive architecture. lt is also important to take a closer look at the domains of design, programming, and object orientation. Today, the conversation or communication between the computer and its user is completed or takes place in the third person. However, it is suggested that if the point of view was changed, it would be received better by the user. Representation plays a key role here. For example, the key word is mimesis (i.e. mimicry or imitation). If a person can recognize what is being represented and can predict or expect a specific outcome which later formalizes or results in that predicted / expected outcome, then the user will be more apt to use that medium. This concept would remove any aspect of an ''alienation effect" which the medium produces and inflicts upon the user. lt works very much like a play. The actions within a play follow a logical pattem. "A new situation in the play may appear, but it is within the scope of possibilities" (485). Therefore, changes can occur provided clues were presented early enough which were in some way expected or predicted without alienating the viewer or rather, the user. Moving deeper into first-personness and its implications for the design of a computer interface, one must consider the communication between the computer and its user in terms oflanguage-like structures such as world metaphor and conversation metaphor. Characteristics of world metaphor are objects. Objects help the user to identify with what is being represented in an application. Conversation metaphor, on the other hand, consists of indirection. In other words, it is complicated communication in an indirect sense. This means that the user must use a "mental model" to fully understand what is occurring allowing the user to interface much easier with the computer. However, programming experts have found it rather difficult to agree "on which metaphor is better in which situation" and, therefore, have problems to incorporate this into their programs (487). Although many would agree it is fairly simple to understand that using the right combination of object orientation and design would create the perfect virtual world within a computer application, it is still very difficult to do. The International Topography of Media Semiotics 347 Everything depends on perception. One person's view may or may not be another person's view. So to answer the earlier questions about what draws a user in or pushes him away, the same "ambiguous answer" remains: perception. GUILIANO MAGGIORA, PIO LUIGI BRUSASCO, and LUCA CANEPARO look at "Serniotics of computer media in architecture" (497-506) and argue that architecture in a sense is a connotative semiotics. This means that it starts with constructed objects and uses them to communicate "its way of seeing space in a social and ideological way" (498). Therefore, an architectural drawing or a design is not just a simple picture, but rather a text in its own right. For example, many different small drawings are used within a form of hierarchy to create and represent something much larger. In short, each individual drawing has a practical function to create the whole. Now take the same basic principle, yet change the entire medium. Tue computer now replaces our canvas or drawing paper and table. The ruler and pencil are both thrown away, replaced by highly technological "input devices and methods for generating the shapes of the drawing" (502). There is a whole new form of communication between the architect and his virtual sketchpad mediated only by a computer monitor. Thanks to serniotics, the rest is the creation of a whole new world of twoand three-dimensional designs by the architect using every different approach possible. Defining "Electronic communities as social worlds", JOACHIM R. HÖFLICH aims at "a socio-serniotic analysis of computer mediated interpersonal communication" (507-517). He understands 'electronic communities' as "relatively durable groups or networks of mediaconnected individuals, meeting in a virtual electronically created space, and which are constituted by a common rule guided usage" (507). Over the years, their popularity has grown due to overwhelming use of the earlier electronic bulletin boards and mailboxes. To summarize the emergence of 'electronic communities' one only has to study the increased usage of new communicative technologies, particularly the usage of the computer. Rules also have to be understood in context. Aside from considering coded rules of membership, one must be weil aware of the socio-serniotic nature of the mediated communication generating these socalled media generated social worlds. Tue way in which we communicate within the computerized world is changing rapidly. Written words on paper will soon be another aspect of the distant past. lt is digital writing which will take over in the near future. Yet what are the repercussions of this new takeover? RICHARD W. JANNEY speaks of "Tue cold warmth of communication in computer networks" (519-534) with respect to e-mail communication: "While a thesis like this may appeal to computer engineers, software designers, data librarians, and others who stand to profit from it, one wonders about its implications for the many natural language users who rely on computer networks sitnply as a means of linguistic communication" (519). Such a vision demands a system of communication in which all things must be digitally encodable. We are currently not at this stage of development. However, today's e-mail communication has put us well on our way. For example, e-mail addresses already make it rather difficult to distinguish between different senders by the simple letters used in their formation or format. Email, by way of the intemet, has changed our world completely. We can now send and receive information at such a rate that it is no longer necessary to depend solely on printed or televised news. However, has it really revolutionized the way we communicate? Take expressions and the exchange of attitudinal information. lt is very difficult to express emotion, intonation, and gestures. Therefore, e-mail lacks the ability to convey an amount of nonverbal information. E-mail writers have to "try harder" than most other writers to effectively communicate something to their readers. 348 Ernest W. B. Hess-Lüttich What if one considered e-mail as a prothesis? lt would replace a sensory part of the body, yet would contain only deceptive properties. Explanation: "E-mail could [... ] be likened to an artificial hand that enables us to reach out and grasp an object, but not feel its texture. We could call it a form of contact without a sense oftouch" (525). lt also has a tendency to distort a sense of time, space, information, the private and public sphere, and many other things as well. But most important, e-mail blocks our realization of sender and receiver. lt confuses one'.s perception of possible and certain 'real' partners. E-mail leaves a user's clear understanding of the self somewhat hazy. In other words, it blurs a once crystal clear image due to its complexity, flexibility, size, and speed. In short, e-mail has completely changed our world and the way we communicate. In order to keep this change positive and to deter the negative, more research on the influence of computers and their applications on social relationships will have to be made. PIRKKORAUDASKOSKI investigates "Semiosis at computer media" (535-545). The written texts in conjunction with computer media are used to inform the reader / user of certain meanings. lt is necessary, in referenceto any text, that they are interpreted. They are considered obscure because they represent a situation, yet are completely separated from that situation. Therefore, the reader must interpret the text to give it meaning in order to understand the context. "In literary texts, this vagueness is a positive feature, as the creative imagination of the reader is essential for an enjoyable reading experience" (536). Yet when a text is used as a resource or an aid to accomplish something within the real world, it takes away the freedom from the reader to creatively interpret it. As a result, tension forms between the text as a free interpretation and the necessary reading required ofthe text. This leads to uncertainties, between the writer or creator of the text and the reader. For example, a computer manual is written to instruct the user of his equipment and to guide him through any usage ofthe system. The manual completes this task via language as well as icons. However, it has often been documented that the reader could not correctly interpret what the writer wanted to convey, therefore, creating a lack of understanding or comprehension between the writer and his reader. lt is specifically this uncertainty, which has been given great consideration among linguists and social scientists. The examined phenomenon is: where does the uncertainty emerge during communication between the writer and the reader? Research in the field of interaction in technological environments "show how people interpret each other and the other signs in the situation, be they written language, icons on the computer screen, or the visual and audio data that modern multimodal media make available for users to interact with (and with each other)" (535). In an exemplified situation, two participants want to converse and convey to each other certain meanings and understandings. This is often done, however, by questioning the other' s background. Such questioning often becomes a personal struggle between parties about one another's mental competence or reading comprehension a face-to-face threat. Therefore, semiotic studies are necessary "in orderto find out how [... ] texts were treated and interpreted in a situation [and] to understand the unfolding situation and the way the text is used to get a task done" (544). In short, using conversation analytical methods to analyze the situated interpretation of computer instruction manuals is helpful in our understanding of writer / reader interpretations and is effective in the creation of better computer manuals. MlKLE D. LEDGERWOOD is interested in the relation between "Hypertextuality and multimedia literature" (547-558). The technological revolution has brought about quite a change in the way we do things. lt is well known that the revolution, itself, has broken into The International Topography of Media Semiotics 349 virtually every aspect of our lives. But has it really? The educated world has just begun to accept this technological explosion. In fact, departments of the creative arts are now using computers as one of their main mediums of creativity. Yet literature departments are still lagging behind in the acceptance of this new technology. Therefore, perhaps it would do us all some good to explore some aspects of new genres called hypertextuality and multimedia literature. Multimedia is the wave of the future for literature departments and literary scholars and critics. Expansion of the intemet in combination with multimedia computers and materials has spawned a medium as well as a genre for all. CD-ROMs are now the latest rave incorporating written word and hypertextuality. These discs unite the world of literature with that of multimedia games and roll them both into a hypertextual shell to create what is now referred to as 'edutainment.' Countless new programs have been written leading to the creation of numerous CD-ROM titles such as Poetry in Motion, The Madness of Roland, and Myst. What remains in difficulty is the question: Whether or not hypertextuality and multimedia literature are serious formats for educational as well as professional work. GUIDO IPSEN analyzes "Linguistic orientation in computational space" (559-573). Computers have become important aspects of our daily lives. Most people do not even realize how often they must deal with computers. For example, the cash dispenser or ATM at the local bank or grocery store is a computer. The crucial point of computers, however, is to create potential environments, hence the term virtual reality or world. Yet virtual reality is often referred to only as such in conjunction with computer games. However, this is not the case. lpsen argues ''that all applications, be they calculating programs, word processors, or flight simulators, evince spatiality and dimensionality of various kinds and are therefore capable of generating virtual environments within the user's mind" (559). This, in turn, creates a link with spoken language due to behavior and movement within a time-space continuum, real or virtual, and therefore demands the study of linguistics. According to KARINWENZ' s "Principles of spatialization in text and hypertext" (575-586) one cannot assume, as does Nelson, that "hypertext is fundamentally traditional and in the mainstream of literature" nor with Bolter' s idea that technology creates a different space (584). The world oftextual literature and that ofthe technological hypertextual are "interwoven and cannot be reduced to its mere oppositions" (584). Wenz's reason is that hypertext does not only make up recent technical development, but follows tradition as well. 4 · Time, memory, media, and the semiotics of the museum The next section is introduded by a chapter from JOSEFW ALLMANNSBERGER on ''The medium is the memory: Ars memoriae in its age of technical reproducability" (589-601). Since only memory and remembering can provide an invariance of a kind in our lives, which are dynamic in nature and constantly in flux, memory and remembering are crucial to forming our individual identities. Against this background of constant change, however, our ego, that is, our concept of self, is also constantly changing, yet it remains essentially the same, so that we are always conscious of this individual core identity as a constant, and it is this 'constant' identity that serves as a home base for experiencing the world around us. Individuals who do not have the capacity of remembering in a constant, organized manner, such as those suffering from Alzheimer's disease, have lost their capacity to experience themselves as a constant identity. Remembering {and forgetting) determines the temporal matrix of the human mind. 350 Emest WB. Hess-Lüttich Wallmannsberger looks at 'electronic' writing and remembering, noting first that we all must, of necessity, depend upon writing in order to remember the myriads of pieces of information with which we must deal on.a daily basis. He points out that 'electronic' writing has brought with it a dramatic increase in the volume of materials to be produced and processed, which exacerbates the problem which a writing culture develops, a problem first noted by Plato more than two thousand years ago, namely that writing "may begin as a mere instrument, but it gradually turns into a factor in/ forming the whole information processing environment" (592). Tue long-term effect of writing cultures has been a shift away from knowledge as immediately accessible (in memory) to knowledge that is recoverable from written sources, this difference being also the difference between static memories in oral cultures vs. the dynamic ·memories of modernized societies, which "typically structure resources to be remembered in the form of processes of how to recover the information required" (593). Computer technology has made possible the storage and efficient retrieval of information via data bases, so that we now have electronically mediated memories to manage information for us. "Features of human remembering, such as gestalt properties or assignment of prototypical properties, are integrated into electronically mediated information ecologies." This trend toward more "psychologically inspired" models of electronic memories has been implemented in hypertextand hypermedia systems. The problem with these is that they result in the creation of "semantic networks of almost Byzantine complexity." Here Wallmannsberger arrives at the phenomenon of forgetting, the counterpart to remembering. "We know very little about how the human mind goes about forgetting," he writes, but it is obvious that the dialectics of remembering and forgetting must be a characteristic of cognitive processing. One has to forget some things, both to make room for new material and to stay sane; equilibrium must be maintained. Both long and short term aspects of memory are affected by this economy of remembering and forgetting. In the context of computers, writes Wallmannsberger, ars oblivionalis entails a temporary "bracketing" of information not immediately needed, which is recoverable anytime it is required, rather than a total forgetting, as in erasure or deletion of information. The construction of knowledge, Wallmannsberger points out, "is a fundamentally social process. Recent advances in research into human memory have pointed to the situatedness and social feedback systems of forgetting and remembering." Tue systems of "collective memories" spawned by the globality of mass media are manifest in the collective memories of global networks through the medium of computers in the Internet, which calls for an interaction of the sign system and the users of the system. He likens the "knowledge space" of global electronic networks to the market places of Ancient Greece. "Tue 'market place' is the message and the memory," he writes, and it is not a specific physical locale: cyberspace is by definition space beyond space." An "ecological approach" to electronic remembering shows all its aspects: "the dynamics of the sign systems, the interactions of sign users with electronic systems, and most prominently, the social horizons of understanding that are constituted through the interplay of these factors." With global hypertexts, we have ecologies of communication that are both maximally abstract, insofar as the medium is completely digital, and at the same time as concrete as systems of face-to-face social interaction" (601). Continuing the theme of memory, LUCIO AGRA and MONICA NUNES wish to contribute to the debate about the new cultural and communicational environment provided by those media that have the ability of data transmission in real time: i.e., radio, television, video, and The International Topography of Media Semiotics 351 more recently the information highways: "The role of memory in the contemporary acceleration of cultural proliferation" (603-609). In this "landscape created by acceleration, simultaneity, and speediness," the place of memory is important because "it is what provides the survival of culture itself." They agree with Lotman's judgment that the absence of memory is equivalent to "nonculture," and that culture is essentially always moving toward forgetfulness. Some characteristics of the acceleration of information circulating from one medium to another are: first, that the limits between high culture and what is called pop culture have been erased; second, that everything produced in the media field can be turned into a cult object (examples John Lennon, Andy Warhol, the cult of the 50s or the 70s). The survival of any cultural product is "part of a peculiar dynamism," which, say Agra/ Nufies, is determined by the media but is not a closed process; it is rather a process "in which the receiver is also a participant." Agra/ Nufies ask: lf the representations ofour culture are just images of very short duration due to the acceleration and simultaneity, what kind of memory do they produce? They discuss the question of "whether it is still possible to think about social memory, or whether our society is one of oblivion." There are two differing opinions about this question. One common one says that artificial memories are being created by the media, and that means taking away people's own memories. Agra/ Nufies take the opposing position, arguing that "acceleration increases memory by its power oftransformation." However, the "old-fashioned concept" of memory has been transformed, they add, and we are not dealing with the individual or genealogical memory of oral cultures, nor the social memory based on the written page. "In the present techno-scientific panorama, memory can no longer be considered a piece of information or a remembrance about yesterdays." Tue information networks (like the Internet) are almost "collective memories," which "organize the historical experience of a human collectivity." Since culture is memory, and the cultural text is constantly being written, interactively through computer mediation by the users of the system, Agra/ Nufies posit that perhaps we have already arrived at a universal hypertext: a text with no single author, a text always in the process of being written. Memory in the information age, therefore, is already constituted by speed and acceleration. Because of the acceleration, the information is not read and interpreted as before, but it is explored interactively the user navigates in it. "This makes memorization easier, considering that we better retain what is transmitted by the path of experience, thus, by interactivity." In the fourth arid last part of the paper, Agra/ Nufies talk about real and virtual experience. Using the example of computer games that simulate flight, they posit that these games deal with two levels of experience: "the first comprehends the act of flying in itself in the way it is performed by a 'real' pilot. The second level develops a new way of feeling the same experience." Under the aspect of memorization, the real and the virtual experience are the same the memory is as virtual as the computer program, "so that we can say that the simulator is the memory of the real experience." Tue mechanism of memorization "is independent of the 'real' existence of the object and even from the object itself, because the images of the memory willingly appear in the absence of the object." In conclusion Agra/ Nufies quote Levy, who said that the process of elaboration is always present when we remember anything: "To elaborate a proposition or image is then to construct paths of access to its representation in the associative network of the long term memory." So "remembrance is always an act of construction which turns the memory text into a 352 Emest WB. Hess-Lüttich new text"; it is a reconfiguration of the first experience. Agra/ Nuiies posit that "acceleration and speed are inherent to this new way of thinking." lt can be questioned, however, whether acceleration increases memory or whether it makes memorization easier that the user navigates the information highway. The human mind commits that to memory with which it has had a chance to occupy itself, and speed is detrimental to the process of memorization. "We better retain what is transmitted by the path of experience, thus, by interactivity," Agra/ Nuiies state. True, but real-world experience is something we experience in space and time, not in the push-button time-warp of cyberspace. HELOfSA DE ARAUJO DU ARTE VALENTE is "Listening to the virtual past" (611-617). The development of techniques of "capturing, storage and remodeling of sound" characteristic of the acoustic media in the twentieth century has resulted in the appearance of schizophony in the soundscape. The composer R. Murray Schafer coined the term schizaphony to mean "any sound emitted other than from its source." These techniques of recording sound, says Valente, have completely changed our musical perception and listening habits. Valente traces the history of technically mediated sound, beginning with an interesting point for us to think about: "the industrialization in the beginning of the century has brought along the phenomenon of noise, thus substantially altering the soundscape and making disappear many preexisting sounds, specially those of a lower intensity." Technical mediatization has brought new sounds and has stimulated the hearing of works of past centuries. The earliestrecordings were voice only, because the technology did not allow for satisfactory recording ofmusical instruments. Nor could early recording equipment capture various sound sources at the same time (such as a symphony orchestra). This problem was solved in the 1920s, when electrical recording replaced mechanical. High fidelity came along next, but it was not until the 1950s with the arrival of stereophony and the microgroove record that background noise such as hissing could be eliminated and a better integrity of sound could be reached. Another fact about schizophony is that it has "enabled the arrival of a technical fetishism, making the sound sign (in this case the record) stronger than the object itself represented by this sign", a problem studied by Adorno in his article "The fetishism in music and the regression of hearing." People of course began to use the new technology to their advantage. Valente points to modem-day examples, such as some pop music stars which exist only due to competent sound engineering, or the example of the pianist Glenn Gould who left the concert halls for recording studios because of what the technology could do. She points out also that the technical mediatization fits perfectly with some musical styles appearing after the war, such as Frank Sinatra. She terms Sinatra "the [middle dass] voice of high fidelity, soundscape of the economically rising metropolis." lt was in 1948 when Columbia released microgrooves the 33 rpm record, which allowed "codification in two signs and, consequently, the introduction of stereophonic sound." This new technology also allowed a longer recording time. Today, technology is also used to try to restore early recorded sound, so called historical re-editions, so that we can hear, as Valente puts it, "an archaeological Caruso" on our CD player. But beyond that, the latest technology allows the synthetic creation and recreation of sounds that existed only in imagination, for example the creation of the voice of Farinelli, the castrate who lived in the 18 th century, for the movie Farinelli. The creation of this voice was based upon literature, technical texts and recorded cylinders from 1902-1904 left by Alessandro Moreschi, the last known castrate. Based on this information, computer technology allowed the texture, trilling and articulation, impossible for contemporary singers, to The International Topography of Media Semiotics 353 be reproduced. The voices of a countertenor and a soprano were recorded and then processed in a note by note blending ofboth timbres and frequencies. This results in a new sign, writes Valente, a sign based on more than one initial reference, in this case two human voices. lt could be called a virtual voice, once it has been created and brought into the real soundscape. Another kind of virtual voice is the remastering of old recordings, filtering out interference from the old recording, or noise. Valente writes: "In using the word noise, we are actually getting back to the definition established by the Theory of Information, that is: at the moment a sound engineer manages to eliminate the noise hissing, plonking he is actually making a noise in the code of phonographic language, which interferes directly with the ground of the sign." Thus, she writes, "a new way of listening is bom, [... ] which will only be able tobe recovered by means of a virtual past, the ear oftoday intending tobe the ear ofyesterday" (616). In her paper on "The museum as a political media: a semiological assault" (619-628) SANDRA LOTTE ESSLINGER examines the nonverbal ways in which two major art exhibits in Munich in the year 1937 sent messages in keeping with the political ideology of the Third Reich. She begins by pointing out that a crass polarization resulted from the creation of the Aryan identity: "The Aryan category was defined by and assaulted the identity of the inferior Other." Similarly, the two exhibits, Große Deutsche Kunst andEntartete Kunst, were defined relative to one another. "The exhibits constituted the sites in which the Aryan and the Other identities were ostensibly defined by and for the bourgeois of the Third Reich." The notion of space is Esslinger' s focus, specifically, how space was used to influence the viewers of the exhibits. Space in this context has several aspects: the buildings in which the exhibits were housed, the way in which the objects were hung and labeled, and the social events showcasing the openings of the exhibits. These events in turn, writes Esslinger, "extended the museum space into the lives of the people outside of these edifices and provided sites for socially and politically elicited behaviors, corresponding to the valuation of the art works. As 'high' and 'low' art, behaviors reflect and produce social values." These valuations not only corresponded to the works of art but are also easily transposed to the actual groups or individuals that correlate with the works of art. The space of the museum was therefore used as a semiological system that would influence the viewer' s perception of the "true German identity." On the subject of "high" and "low" art, Esslinger points out that the assessments at the time of these exhibits would most likely be reversed today. The 'degenerate' art of the Third Reich was viewed as 'low' art, while what was viewed as true, traditional German was seen as 'high' art, and therefore superior in cultural value. This 'high' art of the Third Reich, however, would be placed in the category of popular culture today - "art for the people, the Volk." Esslinger now examines the subcategories of the concept of space. The buildings in which the exhibits were housed sent a message. The 'degenerate' exhibit was placed in a building that housed the Institute of Archaeology, which is significant because a museum of archaeology contains artifacts from dead cultures. This suggests that this modemist art "not only was not 'high' art, but also was not an art of a living culture." The audience was to consider this collection as "deteriorating, degeneratingan art mausoleum." Furthermore, the rooms were narrow, the openings from one room to another were narrow, and the ceilings were relatively low. This is a space, says Esslinger, that would inspire less "awe and respect" toward the works of art than the space chosen for The German Exhibit, which was found nearby in the 354 Emest WB. Hess-Lüttich Haus der Deutschen Kunst, one of the first public buildings erected by the Third Reich. The Haus der Deutschen Kunst was intended to house 'high' art. "The ceilings were high, the rooms were large and light, and the limestone from which the museum was constructed were permanent, implying that the objects within were etemal and living, creating a discursive space charged with meaning even prior to hanging the works." The hanging of the works of art also sends a message to the viewer, working in conjunction ·with the space chosen. The hanging of the works in the two exhibits differed dramatically. Tue 'degenerate' works were hung quickly and haphazardly, grouped in vague themes if at all, hung close together, some with frames removed, some crooked. The result was a chaotic impression. The ground floor rooms, which were the last rooms visited and therefore left the most lasting impression upon the viewer, were completely disorganized, and the works were not even individually identified. Esslinger believes that "the disorganization is an intrinsic part of the strategy to manipulate the audience." The viewer was "overwhelmed by the sheer number of pictures," and could not view individual works clearly because of the jumbled arrangement and the heights at which they were hung. "The environment was viewer hostile," writes Esslinger, "creating a sense of disorientation and alienation from the works." The works seemed irrational, so that the way the exhibit was arranged in the space chosen "overtly suggested that the works were done by deviants." In contrast, The German Exhibit was "organized in a clear and comprehensible manner." The planning and execution of this exhibit had taken months. The works were hung in the spacious, light rooms of the impressive Haus der Deutschen Kunst. They were hung according to well defined themes, each work was given plenty of space, good lighting, and each work was placed so that it could be comfortably contemplated. Also important to the way the works of art come across to the viewer are the methods of labeling, which also contrasted greatly in the two exhibits. In The Degenerate Exhibit, the commentaries and labeling were painted freehand directly on the walls, without a standard format or size. The prices paid, includedin the label, were often those paid in the inflationary period of the 1920s, so that they were outrageously high, but without an explanation. There were stickers next to many of the works reading, "Bezahlt von den Steuergroschen des arbeitenden deutschen Volkes" (paid for from the taxes ofthe working German people), the unwritten message being 'squandered public funds'. Esslinger writes, ''The texts [labels] provided reasons, rational causes, for the viewer's confusion, disorientation, and hostility." In contrast, The German Exhibit labeled the works of art carefully and neatly, with the artists, titles and requested sale prices. "The works of art were left to speak for themselves, implying that the meaning and.value were inherent qualities. The context of these works defmed the art as bearing the qualities of 'high' art objects." Esslinger also discusses some social aspects that fit into the semiotic system. There was no major social event to mark the openings of The Degenerate Exhibit, as there was for The German Exhibit. For each opening of The German Exhibit in Munich, each year starting in 1937, there was the "Day ofGerman Art." There were parades, speeches, and ! arge crowds. lt was a media event, with cultural speeches by Hitler and Goebbels. The lack of any such event for The Degenerate Exhibit indicated the devaluation of its art. A further difference of this sort: there was no entrance fee to The Degenerate Exhibit, while it cost money to get into The German Exhibit, so that an economic valuation message was being sent. Similarly, FRAUKE VON DER HORST' s paper on "The museum as semiotic frame: 'Degenerate art' in the thirties and the nineties" (629-638) focuses on an exhibition entitled "Degenerate Art: The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi-Germany" at the Los Angeles The International. Topography of Media Semiotics 355 County Museum of Art in 1992, which was internationally praised for producing a 'reconstruction' of the 1937 Degenerate Art Exhibition of the Third Reich in Munich. Von der Horst has a problem with the concept of the exhibition being seen as a 'reconstruction' or 'recreation' of the original. Because the works of art were showcased in the opposite manner as they were in the 1937 exhibition, since they are now considered masterpieces and not degenerate, von der Horst maintains that the exhibition is not a recreation or a reconstruction of the historic Entartete Kunst exhibition. The reconstruction of the actual 1937 exhibition, which crammed the works of art into several cramped, low-ceilinged rooms of the Archaeological Museum, hanging them haphazardly, with inadequate lighting and derogatory, carelessly written labels, was relegated to a dollhouse-sized model. "Tue actual objects," writes von der Horst, "the art work, as signifiers were erected in the signifying systems of the post-industrial, postmodern museum in Los Angeles, the nineteenth century late capitalist Chicago Arts Institute and Berlin's imperial Prussian neoclassic Altes Museum." The 1937 exhibition purposefully sent a message beyondjust the "degenerate art" message, namely a message against the artists themselves, individually and as a group; a message of anti-Semitism, anti-communism and anti-intellectualism, writes von der Horst. Here she sees another problem with the 1992 L.A. exhibition. She states that Americans actually share these prejudices, citing the McCarthy era as the zenith of anti-communism, and that this attitude was still propagated by former President Reagan in the eighties. For anti-intellectualism, she points out that the intellectual as critical thinker was ridiculed as "egghead" by former President George Bush in 1992. Her case for anti-Semitism is merely the statement, "Anti-Semitism is cautiously performed if not spoken." She criticizes the fact that, "rather than foregrounding these shared political assumptions and values, the exhibition side-lined them as part ofthe Nazis' fascist ideology." Von der Horst wonders how "the team ofthirtyseven bad developed such unfailing judgment for an art form they detested that they could determine the future masterpieces ? " She questions whether it could actually be their "sentence as the ugly other" that defines them as masterpieces today, a case of "reverse discrimination." In DIANADRAKE WILSON' s "Western heritage and its autres: Cowboys and Indians, facts, and fictions" (639-651), the process of forgetting is not seen as passive, as it was in Wallmannsberger's paper who states, "we know very little about how the human mind goes about forgetting." Wilson, in contrast, subscribes to a concept of active forgetting posited by De Certeau, which is more a collective than an individual forgetting. Wilson begins with a quote from De Certeau, who sees the dichotomy of present and past, remembering and forgetting, more or less as a battle: the present has expelled the past in order to take its place, but the past haunts the present, it "re-bites," writes De Certeau, "and memory becomes the closed arena of conflict between two contradictory operations: forgetting, which is not something passive, a loss, but an action directed against the past; and the mnemic trace, the return of what was forgotten, in other words, an action by a past that is now forced to disguise itself' (639). Wilson's point ofreference is Tue Gene Autry Western Heritage Museum (she refers to it as the Autry) in Los Angeles. Tue spaces ofthe museum, she writes, "unfold a narrative of conflict between an insistence on forgetting and a return of the disguised." Tue conflict spoken of by De Certeau is present in the museum in the form of dichotomies: "Existing in the ether of the Autry' s Seven Spirits of the West, which are metonyms for historical periods, the dichotomies of cowboys and Indians, past and present, history and legend, cinei: na and TV, fact and fiction, real and imaginary seem to resist here that which haunts them elsewhere." Wilson maintains that "Tue vacillation between spirits standing in for history and the 356 Emest WB. Hess-Lüttich dichotomies as ordering principles creates another metahistory for us to remember, rather than just obscuring the correct history." The way the Autry presents the historical figure of Buffalo Bill Cody creates such a metahistory. In the audio narration of a cinematic collage of both Hollywood and historical films of Buffalo Bill, it is pointed out that he was a performer, and that the legend was bigger than the actual man, and that even in this historical film, Buffalo Bill appears in his mythical form. Following this cinematic presentation, one comes to the Imagination Gallery, at the entrance to which there is the following statement: "Much of what people think about the West comes from motion picture, television, radio, and advertising. Images created by these forms have become apart of the legacy of the West along with the real events and people that mak: e up its history." Wilson writes, "here is an opportunity for active, even aggressive, forgetting of differences." Another of Wilson' s points is that there are different practices of memory, different ways of remembering that have different effects on our perspectives, on how we think about (for instance) cowboys and Indians. Bringing real Indians into the space of the Autry, writes Wilson, "provides for backwards readings of the Museum' s narrative script: there are no real Indians left, the emptiness of wildemess has been converted to civilization' s entertainments." As an illustration of the different ways of remembering, she describes a gallery, the Conquest Gallery, with three vitrines dedicated to General George Custer and Captain Miles Keogh. Perpendicular to these is a vitrine containing six mannequins in costumes from the late 1800s, depicting people with different cultural backgrounds; in descending order from the figure of General Custer, a Euro-American woman, Afro-American man, Euro American man who dresses and acts like Native Americans, a Native American who "mak: es himself useful," a resistant Native American man, to the last figure, a "forcibly adapted" Native American woman. At the end of the vitrine stands a desiccated (dried) saguaro cactus. Tue vitrine is labeled with the following commentary: "When people of different cultures meet they often fight especially if their way of life seems threatened. Sometimes individuals adapt to the newcomers, however, and attempt to live in peace. In either instance, change is inevitable." To Wilson, this seemed offensive, condescending. She interpreted the cactus as suggesting that the 'inevitable change' suggested here is neither resistance nor adaptation, but an inevitable desiccation of Native American culture altogether." However, a Native American Wilson had brought along, Helen Herrera, a Mescalero Apache, remained unperturbed at the exhibit. When asked, Herrera replied that she agrees that change is inevitable, and then added: ''They lump us together with Native Americans, just like they lump the South with the term Hispanics." Herrera had a completely different perspective. Since "they" can't even manage to name the people (the individual tribes) and events properly, the statement, or for that matter the entire historical tableau presented, was not tobe tak: en seriously at all. Herrera knew the history of her own tribe and of other tribes, and differentiated between them; each one has a different story. As Wilson has pointed out (as did Esslinger), a museum exhibit can and often does have a definite semiotic strategy. In the case of the Autry, the strategy of "active forgetting" can be seen as the exercising of the winner' s rights, the winner here being white Americans who won out over the Indian tribes in the latter part of the 19 th century. What Wilson calls historical traumas causes subjectivity; the individuals on each side of an issue will have different embodied memories which determine his or her perspective. The embodied memories will have been mediated by very (Jifferent semiotic systems. The International Topography of Media Semiotics 357 5 Aesthetic aspects of the media The seventh section of the book, entitled "Aesthetic Aspects of the Media" (653- 754), begins with an article by ROLF KL0EPFER wbich is called, "Innovation, gainful learning, and habits in the aesthetics of media" (655-673). He discusses how habit reduces hard-won skills to simple routines by becoming a replacement for learnt knowledge and complex schemata of actions and introduces the complexity of sign processes through an example of a television viewer and a news program. The observation "that the viewer remembers more about the news reader and her clothes than about the hard-won mass of information from all over the world" (656) has convinced some thinkers to reject the idea that television is an 'empty medium'. Opposing this he ponders, whether "aestheticisation of the media [can] only be interpreted in negative terms as 'collective anesthesia' ? " (658). He recommends two ways to surpass this notion: (i) critical awareness of the bistory of media, communicative practices, and functional continuity and (ii) the functions ofthe sign (emotive, connotative, and phatic). The content of the communication, however, often becomes a means for appealing to the viewers, thus losing most of the communicative effect. Ancient rhetoric and poetics established that communication is most effective when signs are used to inform or teach, to move, and to delight. Following Roman Jakobson, Kloepfer objects to a reductionist semiotics suppressing the 'energy' of the gaps and tensions in semiosis. He asserts that this energy is the cause of the development of semiotic capacity. Communication like perception is in origin and in principle multisensory and thus based on tensions. The reason is that "tension filled gaps are the causes of new syntheses and in this way of all aesthetic pleasure and learning" (660). He then discusses deictics and states that the dubious resistance offered to us by the outer world gives rise to our behavior, knowledge, communication, and learning. This explains the aforementioned notion that multimedia complexes can easily become embodied habits. He concludes by saying that semiosis is the presentation of movement in the other' s or in one' s own consciousness and that this can have either value in itself like music or additionally realize contexts. Tbis last point is then illustrated by discussing significant eye movement and attention as in film. Any investigation of communication based on 'content analysis' alone, he claims, lacks feeling and experience and to support this notion he demonstrates the semiotic relevance of the human ability to use apparent deficits as enrichment. In conclusion, it is argued that thought as a sign process based on both procedural habit-memory and declarative knowledgememory must involve feeling/ emotion, volition/ will, and cognition/ knowledge. In bis article on "Deep structure and design configurations in paintings" (675-688), CLAUDI0 FEDERIC0 GUERRI approaches the study of significative production in painting from the perspective of form. He maintains that the pictorial image is the formation of an underlying formal structure and introduces an approach to the 'deep syntax' of a work of art. He examines the relation between syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics by a detailed analysis of Velazquez' "Las Meninas". He discusses how the position of each of the figures in the painting are important with regard to a syntactical, semantical, and pragmatical interpretation of the painting leading to what he calls a Theory of Spatial Delimitation (TSD). However, the author didn't make much of a distinction between the properties of bis tracings for bis interpretations. Anyone could use any series of lines, triangles, squares - Malevich' s squares serve as an example for the aesthetic comprehension of a semiotic reading of deep structuring forms and interpret these tracings syntactically, semantically or pragmatically. 358 Ernest WB. Hess-Lüttich Following Martin Krampen, CLAUS DREYER looks at "Architecture as a mass medium" (689-702) regarding the architect or team which produced the architecture as the sender of the information from a different perspective, one could regard architecture as the actual sender, but that perspective is not followed here -, the construction site as channel, and people as receivers. This "Shannon-Weaver model of architecture as communication" (690) is applied to various examples such as the Centre Pompidou or the Louvre Pyramid in Paris, the Portland Building, the Yokohama Tower of Winds, and the Karlsruhe Center of Art and Media Technology. According to Dreyer, postmodern architecture as a mass medium has become an understandable medium, which can give a response to different expectations to each of its onlookers. Today electronic media allow for virtual construction of architecture, e.g. Toyo Ito's Tower of Winds. Tue outside of the building is composed of all glass windows which mirror their extemal surroundings, also portraying the interior life and true functions of the building as living their own life hidden inside. Tue outside, mirroring its surroundings, is practically a form of camouflage. lt creates an illusion that things seem to be not as clustered as they really are. He concludes by giving an outlook on virtual reality and cyberspace. He believes that electronic media will expand the field of architecture's boundaries, allowing for more creativity and production of new spaces and installations. TANJA LEONTE CHRISTIDIS talks on "Poems on the bus: Some practical aspects of the reception of poetry in the mass media" (703-712). She discusses poems from a poetry contest posted on the wall of a bus and the reception of these poems by the passengers. She also outlines some of the strategies and types of reception of poetry in the mass media. One communication strategy, in particular, used by poems on a bus, resembles strategies of advertising. With regards to reception, her research found that most people were not able to recall the poem' s content, but could remember its visual appearance and rhythm. Thus, mass media and advertising bring art and everyday life together, forming a new type of cognitive perception. Her sociological and empirical approach, forcing the two areas of mass media and poetry together, is limited to people who use public transportation and therefore cannot be generalized to the public' s reception of poetry. The main thesis of FRIEDRICH W. BLOCK's article on "The form of the media: Tue intermediality ofvisual poetry" (713-730) is that "experimental literature develops specific mechanisms in order to reflect on medial prerequisites and possibilities of literary action" (713). Max Bense's concept of art is the catalyst for Block's ideas, and therefore the author makes use of some of bis visual poetry to demonstrate that intermedial literature as well as other forms of media are in need of the individual realization by some active observer. In Bense' s Cartesian Concrete, for example, the author describes the syntactical reading of the text (which reads "ich denke ist etwas") and the gaps within the text. In another example, created by Hansjörg Mayer, the status of language becomes questionable as well. In dealing with the operative and functional aspects of these examples, he takes the observer of the intermedial text into account, focusing along the way on the operation mode of mediation. In order to discuss the functional aspect, he explains the media concept of social systems theory, which allows for the realization of intermedial applications. In the last two sections of bis article, self-reflection in the system of art and digital hypermedia, and the observer are discussed, the latter of which he introduces the term metamediality and maintains that this concept along with intermediality must be considered from the observer's perspective. The first section of EDUARDO PENUELA CANIZAL's article on "Poetics of a multimedia text" (731-740) discusses optical and digital images as well as visual metaphors. He is The International Topography of Media Semiotics 359 examining the hypothesis that poetic over-determination produced by metaphors is inclined to cancel out the opposing elements, therefore allowing it to enjoy the "expressive advantages engendered by the principle of invariability" (731 ). Through exploring this topic, he provides examples, wbich were built by semiotic rhetoric in an attempt to stress those aspects affiliated with the principle of invariability. In considering photography as an important component of multimedia, he discusses photograph indexicality and iconicity, which are of interest and give rise to the subject of rhetoric. In exploring the topic of rhetorical structures, he defines and gives examples to aphaereses, apocopes, syncopes, and synereses, through wbich he attempts to define the connection between the metaphorical process and the principle of invariability. He considers one particular multimedia text, "Roundabout Brasilia" by Teresa Labarrere, as a good example where metaphor plays aii important role. In bis article on "Graphie notation and musical grapbics: The nonnotational sign systems in new music and its multimedial, intermedial, extended-medial, and mixed-medial character" (741-754), NIKSA GLIGO argues with Nelson Goodman' s concept of notationality attempting to give an explanation for the reasons of change in the notational functionality in new music. He describes extramusical messages and notation and asks whether in music the transmitter actually becomes the medium of the nonverbal message. In order to answer this question, Gligo outlines Erhard Karkoschka's list of musical elements which make a grapbic musically relevant. After clarifying the difference between sign and drawing, the author then makes a distinction between a grapbic notation and a musical grapbic. Both of these are usually taken as synonymous terms, however, the author distinguishes between them and also discusses the difference between Karkoschka' s and Anestis Logothetis' sign systems. Tue author states that Karkoschka's system is in terms of musical grapbics wbile Logothetis' system is based on grapbic notations, although bis list of grapbic elements is included in Karkoschka's list. The difference stems from Logothetis' method of notation wbich "is meant to communicate images of sound characteristics and not to serve as material for improvisation" (744). Tue author also concurs with Logothetis' idea, believing that sign systems in music should be referred to in terms of graphic notations. This, in theory, would leave more room for open improvisation instead of giving the transmitter of the music specific instructions. Tue author then proceeds to discuss Karkoschka' s second element conceming verbal aids, which are viewed as being not only indispensable, but also obligatory in a music score. Two examples wbich function as verbal aids but which are not directly bound with the music scores themselves are listed: Treatise by Comelius Cardew and Imaginary Music by Tom Johnson. In the first of these, Cardew' s use of verbal aids was included in a handbook on the Treatise, wbich remarked on the work. His score was non-notational as he wanted the musicians to feel free to respond to bis music, thus leaving it open for improvisation. Johnson' s work, on the other band, bad no verbal aids except for those, which were suggested by bis grapbism. Following the discussion about verbal aids, a brief note about graphic aids is discussed, which was also Part of Karkoschka's list of musically relevant elements. Gligo concludes by discussing examples of scores not intended for translation into music. Such music is expressed into private music, such as Johnson's lmaginary Music, music to read, or prose music where the transmitter has actually become the medium of a nonverbal message. 360 Emest WB. Hess-Lüttich 6 Sociosemiotics and today's myths in the media YISHAI T0BIN opens the eighth section of the book (755-865) and discusses "Divination as a media event" (755-778), i.e. the role of today' s mass media in relation to 'divination', such as fortune telling, astrology, psychics, and palm reading. Because divination bad generally been thought of as a highly personal encounter between the diviner and dient, Tobin's first response is to dismiss as a "contradiction" the idea of a mass media/ public form of divination, that is, a very private act cannot be reconciled with the very public media. However, although Tobin does conclude the act of divination has not yet become a media event in itself, he points out several examples of the intersection between traditional divination methods and the mass media, i.e., the old system has been adapted to new technologies. Tue "need to understand why" (759) is the constant force which has propelled the use of divination through time. As people accept new technologies, this constant need for divination is accepted, if not demanded, within the new mythologies. Tue "Psychic Friends Network" on cable television, the daily horoscope in the national newspaper, and the use of computers in casting astrological birth charts are the most common examples of the meshing of the private and public. Diviners welcome the new technologies as a way of legitimizing or scientifically enhancing their work in the minds of their clients. However, Tobin shows that all divination techniques, regardless of technology, follow the same discourse model and employ the same semiotic systems. In bis reflection of "Media, death, and democracy" (779-790), PATRICK lMBERT states how the control of the "truth" was once the realm of the religious world, who granted access to the "exterior" through oral sermons purporting to represent the word of God. Today it is the mass media (in collusion with the government and industry) that wishes to control access to world events and therefore create the reality ("truth") for the receiver. The example used is the "dead body" as a referent for the truth that is desired to be represented. Receivers can be programmed to react to the dead body image in a predisposed manner based on manipulation of information, the dissemination of misand dis-information, and the inability to access other points of view. Two possibilities are given to break this cycle of manipulation. Tue first is through literary discourse, because this segment is not part of the govemment media industrial coalition, and because with literary texts authors describe and explore the "strategies linked to referentiality" (784 ), which can give an understanding of the issues of manipulation to the reader. Tue second is to bring the ideas and philosophies of "decontextualization" (785), i.e. the ability to understand referentiality and the deconstruction of the official point of view, out of the sphere of intellectualism and into the level of public discourse. In this way a truly informed public can safeguard their democratic institutions. ERSU DING writes on "Myth of the Occident and its manifestations in the Chinese Media" (791-800). He puts forth the proposal that the role of creator of preconceived notions, prejudices, and ideas ("myths") by one culture about another is not confined to the stronger ofthe two cultures. That is, the East, previously dominated by Western power and influence (and still economically and technologically backwards compared to the West), also creates its own myths related to the West and its culture. Because myths involve signifying meaning, they are naturally under the realm of the semiotician. As China is now officially closed to outside information, the source that ultimately propagates and controls the myths are the official state run newspapers, books, and television programs (i.e. state-controlled mass media). Ding goes on to analyze a Chinese television series about a Chinese man in New York, and shows how the series presented myths that reinforce official Chinese govemment The International Topography of Media Semiotics 361 policy. Ding calls this the "everyday myth" (798) which is basically used as a tool for social order. · FERNANDO ANDACHT looks at the "Media coverage of the unreasonable in the land of hyper-reason" (801-815), i.e. at the role of the mass media in continuing cultural myths. Andacht starts with Barthes' definition of myth for semiotic purposes as an "excessively justified discourse used to justify as nature what is historical purpose, as eternity what is contingency" (802). He expands this concept to include myth as making "everything we plan, feel, or do seem reasonable, fair, plausible in advance" (802). He follows this path even further into the realm of semiotics to show how the theory of unmarked and marked ·pairs, which are "the very basis of meaning as it was elaborated by the Prague school's theory" (803), promotes by its very construct of opposition the idea of myth, e.g. good vs. bad, normal vs. abnormal. Any disruption, or even exposure, of these ingrained myths must be dealt with severely in order to maintain the safety of the constructed status quo. Andacht's analysis relates to "myths of the middle" (807), i.e. the myths of the mesocracy (Bürgertum or bourgeoisie) in modern day Uruguay. He describes how Uruguay television's coverage of a gay pride parade, and the semiotic sign usage within the coverage itself, reinforces the antihomosexual myths of the Uruguay middle dass. Tue media thus becomes, in Andacht' s words, a "mythkeeper" (809). "Tue media and logic in the 'housekeeping' press" (817-829) is the topic of COLINE KLAPISCH. She describes the results of a study, which compared a French woman' s magazine against two of its rivals. Tue magazines had re-occurring themes, which Klapisch calls "the grammar of this press segment" (819), which supposedly address "feminine expectations" (817). Among the findings are that the magazine in question "presents itself as solving the totality of problems a woman might have" (820); "advice [ ... ] is always considered legitimate" (821); "no space is given to imagination or independence" (821); "events [ ... ] present themselves as taken-for-granted facts" (822); and that in general the woman is defined socially, by generally accepted 'norms', or by the 'other'. Tue rival magazines seemed to have a broader context and reflect more current thinking regarding a woman and her world. Tue magazine in question has, in effect, been promoting outdated myths. HANSRUEDI SPöRRI's interest is "Tue desire of 'crises': An occidental way of existing" (831-840): he shows that many communications in modern life follow an old pattern, which he refers to as an "apocalyptic form of discourse" (831), based upon bis reading of the Revelation of St. John. Tue apocalyptic form follows the pattern: Superior Power sends message ---. Chosen One receives message, in turn transmits message ___. The Others receive message, defer to new authority of Chosen One. The pattern also uses strong semantic opposites such as 'light/ dark' or 'good/ bad' and links the characteristics of the desired opposite to nature, in order to reinforce the validity of both the message and the authority of the Chosen One. Additionally, those not in the structure, i.e. those who deny the Chosen One, are punished or become somehow non-privileged. Spörri shows how this pattern appears in an Italian political speech, an Islamic religious decree, and a Swiss advertisement, each of which was carried through the mass media. For Spörri such patterns have become so ingrained in our society that we accept their inherent repression and exclusion without contemplation. GIULIA CERANI' s argument, in her article "Invitation to Travel: Tue window-shop relationship in the communication of fashion" (841-850), is very simple: brand names today not only denote the clothes themselves, but a lifestyle, i.e. a set of values have become associated with the brand. Tue sales outlets for these brands have to convey these values, i.e. convey the 362 Emest W. B. Hess-Lüttich meaning of the brand. Therefore the setting and structure of the stores are a valid field for semiotic study. Cerani describes how the display windows, the store set-up, and architecture, called collectively the "expression and content" (844), help communicate the desired "meaning" of the brands. Her conclusion that marketers could use these tools in addition to enhance their product' s desirability is not quite unexpected. SUSANNENIEMEIER investigates ''Nonverbal signs in an intercultural business negotiation" (851-865) and attempts to see if nonverbal signs in a business negotiation match with a previous study conceming four defined cultural dimensions. The results are mixed, andin the author' s own words, "far from being completed" (864). However, for the author the important point is the actual use of these types of semiotic studies so that business negotiators better understand the cultural and ethnic nonverbal signs being communicated, knowingly or unknowingly, by their negotiating counterparts. 7 The media myths have changed. Or haven't they? Some concluding remarks and further reading .The title of the last section clearly indicates one of the central themes of the whole book. What is not so clear is to what extent each of these chapters, intentionally or not, describes a strong myth to their normal business strategies and then shows how the mass media act as "mythkeeper" (Andacht: 809). Are these articles representative of, or exceptions to, the general relationship between myths and the mass media? 2 The contributions from Ding and from Andacht are the most straightforward, the myths are well-defined and the evidence presented for the role of the media in promoting and supporting these myths is convincing. lssues of race and sexual orientation have to be among the top ideas related to myth production, because they strike at the very core of what it means to be 'someone', either as an individual or part of a group, and the 'mass' -media, by its very definition, would reflect the core 'values' of the mass group, whether enlightened or not. Media in the U.S. as well as in Europe certainly have made great strides in changing previously held myths in the areas of race and sexual orientation. Are these reflected in recent mass media events? Regarding media news reporting in the U.S., the murders of a black man in Texas and a gay man in Wyoming, both victims ofprejudice or "hate crimes", as opposed to (unfortunately named) "normal" crimes, received an enormous amount of coverage. The news reports emphasized the brutality of the crimes along with the shock that such a thing could occur in this day and age. Thus, at first blush, the media appear to be presenting the anti-myth, that is, it is news because it should not have happened based on the discrediting of the old myths in our society. On second thoughts, however, it seemed that the media were in fact playing with the same old myths fear over race and sexual orientation as a way to increase ratings or sell newspapers. Have the masses, and their mass media, really changed? Or have we all collectively just put a 'politically correct' spin on our old myths? lt is interesting to note the changes in two fixtures ofthe American television landscape, the situation comedy ('sitcom') and the game show, in this area. The first example is "Will and Grace", a prime-time network sitcom which shows the friendship between a woman and her best-friend/ roommate, a gay man. The show has been a "surprise" hit for the network, the critics love it and the ratings have been impressive. The show is clever, well-written, self deprecating, and avoids (for the most part) tradi- The International Topography of Media Semiotics 363 tional myths related either to gender or orientation. Such a show, especially on network (as opposed to cable) television, would have been hardly imaginable, say, ten years ago. Tue second example is "Hollywood Squares", a daytime and prime-time game show that combines a quiz show, celebrities, and tic-tac-toe, and has been on the air in one form or another for decades. In an attempt to reach a younger, more "hip" audience, the most recent version of the show features current celebrities and entertainers. Among them is RuPaul, a black transvestite. Featuring such a performer would have been unheard of even a few years ago. At least in these examples it seems that the mass media are not as reactionary in their role as mythkeeper, and can reflect other non-traditional or myth-changing modes. This appears to be the case with the article by Klapisch, relating to the French women' s magazines, although this context is hidden. That is, while Klapisch correctly and convincingly points out the traditional myths of "femininity" propagated by the magazine, if one reads between the lines, it appears the magazine knew it bad a problem related to its readers and/ or rivals, hence their commissioning of the study in the first place. We are not told the extent of the problem, or whether the magazine changed because of the study. Klapisch does not emphasize the antimyths of the rival magazines. We are also never told whether the readers have been surveyed to see if they themselves believe the myths being put forth, or if they take the whole magazine with "a grain of salt" in order to get whatever information they wish from it. Thus a new myth that we're all too stupid to re-evaluate the old myths shoved at us by the media is created during the analysis of these old myths. Imbert portrays a dark, Marxist, paranoiac myth and an ominous mythkeeper: the collective truth/ reality is constructed and supplied to us by a govemment-industry-media coalition. While most people would disagree with this Orwellian "1984" description, at least in regards to "free/ democratic" countries such as the U.S. or in Europe, there is more than a kemel of truth in bis scenario, as was shown in the Kosovo crisis in recent years (cf. also the Gulf War on CNN a decade ago, or the coveringof the anti-Taliban coalition in Afghanistan in 2001). Regardless of one's opinion on the military action itself, it has been interesting to note how it has been portrayed to the American people, first by politicians and then by the media. The NATO and U.S. govemment policy for intervention in Kosovo was based upon: the ethnic cleansing program of the Serbians, reminiscent of fascism; the need for a stable Europe in the U.S. national interest; and that through the use of only air power it would be a "clean" action. This already oversimplified explanation has been reduced even further in the mass media to the semiotic signs of "Hitler, money, no dead bodies". Using Imbert's thesis, the media have literally shown ethnic Albanian dead bodies and no dead American bodies. Who could not be manipulated into supporting such a cause with such a non-existent price? lmbert suggests there has been a perfect govemment-media synthesis. Tue opponents of the military action cite the lack of military exit strategies, our stretched military forces, and the lack of an active role of the U .S. in other such conflicts around the world, most notably Africa. Their signs thus become "Vietnam, cost, euro-prejudiced", but at this stage the mass media reported these arguments as side-bars. Eventually it could boil down to a media presentation of "Hitler vs. Vietnam" two myths with such power in the American mind it is hard to see how a rational debate could arise based just upon the crisis itself. Tue articles by Tobin, Spörri, Cerani, and Niemeier show no clear myth or mythkeeper, but that is what is important in itself. That is, how myths and semiotic usage have become such a part of us that we do not even realize it when we try to analyze it. In this regard Spörri' s article is the most straightforward. He shows how form of presentation and the myth it represents have, in effect, become an ingrained myth itself. The Italian politician's speech 364 Emest W. B. Hess-Lüttich uses the earliest fonns of the narrative tradition. The lslamic decree plays on the most primal fears of the unknown and the devil. We respond to the advertising of in/ out, privilege/ nonprivilege at almost a genetic level like a child being accepted by the mother. These structures are used in the mass-media all around us, without us being aware of them. Like Spörri, Tobin discusses an ancient need repackaged in a current context: the desire to know the future. However, he stops short with obvious things such as fortunetellers (based on his prior work), and says divination itself is not yet a mass media event. Perhaps he has ignored such obvious mass media "divinations" as the Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan discussing the economy before Congress, the daily stock market forecast, even sports betting lines and odds. All of these would have their own semiotic codes, are instances of the private becoming part of the mass media, and would be worthy of study. The extreme is shown in the articles by Cerani and Niemeier, that is, how semiotic signs are sent and received sub-consciously. The fact that both articles relate to business (i.e. capitalism) fuels the fire of not only Imbert, discussed earlier, but the theories of philosophers such as Horkheimer/ Adorno (The Culture Industry) and later Enzensberger (The Consciousness lndustry), and would therefore be part of the capitalist / mass-media mythkeeping structure. As an aside, a classic American sub-conscious sign in this regard started with the McDonald' s hamburger chain in the 1950' s. The restaurants used the colors gold and red and became known for their "fast food", that is, limited common menu, fast service, low prices. All future entrants into this market, such as Burger King, Wendy' s, even local chains, all used some combination of red and gold. These colors came to mean, and still mean today, "fast food", and consumers sub-consciously react to those colors when looking for such an establishment. Thus, in its own way, each article in this section addressed the myth and the mythkeeper, and covers almost every facet of modern human existence: race, gender, sexual orientation, politics, business, religion, the "future", and the sub-conscious. There is no shortage of current texts that discuss myths and the media in our society, and while most do not discuss the topic of semiotics per se, the concepts are certainly reflected in them. One interesting aspect for study, not explored in Nöth's edition, is that there are segments of myths and related mass-media mythkeepers, and that the mass-media support these myths for specific economic or ideological reasons, i.e., not just a general coalition as put forth by Imbert above. That is, there is a circular relationship between myth, mythkeeper, and receiver of th.e myth. A publication-pending book chapter from Hess-Lüttich (in prep.: chapter "Media and Text", 10) indirectly discusses such a structure: One cannot underestimate the influence of the anticipation of the readers' expectations by the publishers, who at the same time may serve an (economically or politically) established development of group identification. This can easily be shown by a comparison of the presentation of the same factual information in daily newspapers that are 'aligned' with various political groups. Thus, different segments of the mass-media will "spin" the given infonnation to relate to the myths of their customers. The danger here is that a study of such a segmentation would drift away froin the general (Barthes) definition of myth as relating to a homogeneous bourgeoisie, and an intended mass-media study would instead become an analysis of alternative media (cf. Hess-Lüttich ed. 2001 a). In his 1997 book Media Semiotics: An Introduction, Jonathan Bignell devotes a chapter to defining and explaining the idea of signs and myths, and proceeds to show how these signs and myths exist and are propagated by the mass-media. Like Klapisch, Bignell's analysis of The International Topography of Media Semiotics 365 both women's magazines and advertisements finds that these mediums promote ingrained myths. John David Skrentny (1998) addresses the myths surrounding affirmative action and the "pundits" (which can be defined as mass-media commentators) who use these myths. Skrentny re-evaluates the truth behind these myths and urges the pundits to do the same. Douglas J. McReynolds (1998) discusses how "Western" films are making a popular comeback in the 1990's, after Clint Eastwood's film "Unforgiven" almost killed the genre by twisting the western myths into a critically acclaimed, bot "politically correct" movie. The newer movies revive the standard myths that the audience expects. Robert Hewison (1998) describes how books are entering the market following the success of the film ''Titanic", and exploiting the myths that surround that time period. He feels that the interest over this catastrophe is a manifestation of the public' s own fears about the new millennium. Another area of study that would be ripe for an analysis of semiotics / mass media / myths is that of UFO phenomena all the elements are certainly there: The myths exist regarding government knowledge; the role of the mass-media (whether "manipulated" by the government or not) is present in newspaper reporting of UFOs, television shows (documentary or fictional), specialty joumals, magazines, books, radio call-in shows, and public opinion polls; and the entire sub-culture has its own language and semiotic system, which clearly convey and differentiate meanings and attitudes. A simple example: aliens on earth are referred to by believers as "visitors", by scientists (skeptical or otherwise) as "extra-terrestrials", and by non-believers as "little green men". If anything, the UFO phenomenon reaches to one of the deepest myths of mankind, i.e., our place in the cosmos, and semiotics and the mass-media are major parts of this myth. An interesting primer on the topic of UFOs, certainly entertaining and comprehensive, bot in no way scientific or scholarly, is Phil Cousineau's 1995 book on UFOs. A Manual for the Millennium. Finally, two German volumes on media semiotics further contribute to the new and rapidly expanding field of research. One is devoted to aspects of the change of media and communication due to technical innovation (Hess-Lüttich ed. 2001 a). lt comprises various approaches (linguistic and otherwise) to applied media semiotics with regard to theory, terminology, methodology (part I); to the notion of text in new concepts such as hypertext and computer animation (part 11); and to innovative textual structures in media such as press, alternative press, commercials, and the like (part III). The other book (Hess-Lüttich 2001 b) includes the aesthetic perspective in applied media semiotics: it sketches the new area of net art and the tasks of media aesthetics and tele-semiotics (introduction); it reflects the role of the author in the new media and literary reactions to the change of literature in the age of information (part I); it investigates the structures of new literary genres such as net art and hyperfiction (part II); it looks at the relationship of literature and film and the change of audio-visual codes and conventions (part III); and it adds a diachronic dimension to the study of media semiotics (part IV), giving examples of reconstructing earlier stages of the history of the audio-visual, of television and its development, its transformation and future perspectives. Notes 1 Winfried Nöth (ed.), Semiotics ofthe Media. State ofthe Art, Projects, and Perspectives, Berlin/ New York: Mouton de Gruyter 1997, 896 + x pp., 398,00 DM, ISBN 3-11-015537-0 [All quotes frorn this book, referring to the pages of the chapters cited]. 2 This question will be discussed in collaboration with Richard Graf (Gainesville/ Florida) in order to provide both a European and a US Arnerican perspective on the current rnedia practice. 366 Emest WB. Hess-Lüttich References Bignell, Jonathan 1997: Media Semiotics: An Introduction, Manchester: Manchester University Press Cousineau, Phil 1995: UFOs, a Manualfor the Millennium, New York: HarperCollinsWest paperbacks Garland, Henry & Garland, Mary (eds.) 1997: The O)fford Companion to German Literature, Oxford: Oxford University Press Groden, Michael & Kreiswirth Martin (eds.) 1994: The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press Hess-Lüttich, Emest W.B. 2000: Literary Theory and Media Practice. Essays on Semiotics, Aesthetics, and Technology, New York: CuNY Hess-Lüttich, Emest W.B. (ed.) 2001 a: Medien, Texte und Maschinen. Angewandte Mediensemiotik, Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag Hess-Lüttich, Emest W.B. (ed~) 2001 b: Autoren, Automaten, Audiovisionen. Neue Ansätze der Medienästhetik und Tele-Semiotik, Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag Hess-Lüttich, Emest W.B. (in prep.): "Media and Text: Looking back on thirty years of German Media Semiotics", in: id. Codes of Media Culture, Toronto: Toronto University Press Hewison, Robert 1998: "Exploitation of the sinking of the Titanic", in: New Statesman Jan 1998 v. 127 n. 4368: 38-39 McReynolds, Douglas J. 1998: "Alive and weil: Western myth in Westemmovies", in: Literature Film Quanerly Jan 1998 V. 26 n. 1: 46-51 Nöth, Winfried (ed.) 1997: Semiotics ofthe Media - State of An, Projects, and Perspectives, Berlin/ New York: Mouton de Gruyter Nöth, Winfried 2000: Handbuch der Semiotik, Stuttgart/ Weimar: Metzler Skrentny, John David 1998: "Affirmative Action: Some advice for pundits", in: American Behavioral Scientist April 1998 V. 41 n. 7: 877-885