DESIGN SEMIOTICS AND POST-STRUCTURALISM
$avtor = ""; if(empty($myrow2["author"])) { $avtor=""; } else { $avtor="автор: "; } ?>Bahcesehir University, İstanbul, Turkey
Melahat.kucukarslanemiroglu@arc.bahcesehir.edu.tr
Abstract
The association of design semiotics and post-structuralism proposes not seeing the design as a closed entity, installed with certain meanings, rather seeing design as irreducibly multiple, plural configurations of signifiers which can never be finally fixed to a single meaning; indestructible system of relationships. Design calls into being as a medium of communication configured by design elements that are channelizing signifiers towards the rest of the world; therefore almost any kind of the product of design becomes as reality through which the addressee and designer communicate; referred as an ‘interface’. Furthermore, each interpretation of a design is a new configuration of signified(s) articulated by a new system of relations arising from diversities of human beings, and consequently, meaning liberates via articulation. A poststructuralist look argues that to understand an object it is necessary to study both the object itself and the systems of knowledge that produce the object. This point of view does not propose to focus on understanding how concepts were understood by the designer at the time, rather it seeks to comprehend how those same concepts are understood by addressee of the design in the present, opting in studying how cultural concepts have changed over time. This manifests a mediating language to describe reality and its expressions from a diachronic point of view to understand the reality which design mediates for an ever-changing dialogue.
1. Prologue
Our study session titled as Design Semiotics and Post-Structuralism is actually came out from my recent excitement with openings of what may or is called as post-structuralism and its possible interactions with what may be called as Design Semiotics. Indeed, design semiotics is the title of an elective course that I’ve been giving in faculty of architecture and design, whom title is not determined by me, it was given to me, and it had never been given by any instructor before in the faculty. Having a course titled Design Semiotics in a curriculum of a design department, manifests to me a presupposition for associating the field of design with the studies of semiotics. For some time, I had second thoughts whether there is something called design semiotics, meaning that there is a specific kit or definition of semiotics, which works specifically for design. Apparently there is not. Substantially, it cannot be talked about a design without semiotics; semiotics is already embedded in designing process. What is important is to set how elements or understanding of science of signs are being used mostly with intuition. Since we could all admit that all the principles or elements of design are semiotic in nature; so how they are articulated together to communicate meaningfully with the receiver of the design?, and how the ascription of meaning is integrated throughout design processes?
As a designer I admit that analytical components that constitute the semiotic analysis can be traced throughout the concept development process of design projects implicitly or explicitly. Design speaks with a language in which elements of semiotics are embedded per se: industrial design, advertising, graphic design, interior architecture, performing arts, etc. I also admit that majority of these designing praxis, presuppose that they are incorporated within an established dialogue in an imagined territory shared with the addressees confronting with the created work. Throughout this dialogue both designer and the confronting body spontaneously transmit messages to each other.
The vast majority of semiotic studies are based on language and communication. The signification for designed object (interior design, industrial design, jewelry design, etc.) is being constituted by constructing interrelations between the arguments in anthropology, cultural studies, morphology, and philosophy, etc., a part from that design comes to being as a context of applied semiotics. This context is a territory where paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations of design theories, design elements, levels of signification get into contact as codes, sub- codes, channels of encoding and decoding systems of signs and structured in such ways as to create concrete end-product originating by intentions of designer. Thus, it has a character of a medium. Designed product, in this circumstance, can be manifested as an interface, a mediating channel for the feedbacks throughout the interactive dialogue of constructed and reconstructed meanings between addressers and addressees of the work of design. Interface is the meeting place between different entities that are assumed to confront with each other, in order to communicate. Consequently, my initial lecture in the course of Design Semiotics is used to be as setting design metaphorically as interface. The schedule of the course is structured sequentially as formerly understanding interrelations in semiotics –to understand the latent components of this interface, then transferring this understanding into manifestation of the semiotic relations embedded in design works –the interface, finally encouraging students to use this point of view in their own design projects –constituting their own interfaces. The tendencies of students during interpretations of interfaces reveals the dominance of their current way of experiencing the reality and contributed to my thoughts to engage in new articulations with given reality.
Design as interface is an intermediary surface facing both sides towards designer and user/reader (addresser and addressee) providing a territorial land for in-between dialogue. This personal and at the same time academic experience is an emphasis for me on addressee side of the interface, especially in relation with diachronically articulation of memory with realities, at the same time, associating it with post-structuralism that argues as every individual reader creates a new and individual purpose, meaning, and existence for a given text. Outside of literary theory, this position is generalizable to any situation where a subject or a confronter perceives a sign or confronts with an interface that is design. Herewith, the author's intended meaning and author’s identity is secondary to the meaning that the reader perceives. Consequently, the interface is perceived as neutrally and meaning liberates from pre-established configurations.
2. Provocation
In recent days, an already established definition on how to look backwards displaced all of my compromised thoughts regarding the phases of my life in accordance with my questionings and following interventions of my existence in the world. Thinking about the exact time that I have started to displace my unconsciously embedded feelings made me to turn back to the moment that I have heart the below words (not exactly the same words, words as impressed me) from the mouth of Massimo Leone at the end of his presentation on the third day of 10th International Conference on Semiotics whose theme was “Changing worlds & Signs of the times” (2013). I was about to be lost in words and theories and among the great endeavor of interconnecting them on my mind –as Leone does not used to require any need to accompany his verbal presentations with visual ones as long as I experienced- and his voice was becoming a homogenous sound pattern... since he said something like “vintage designs are popular among the young people of today, because the products of vintage are ‘new’ for them”, I heard him deeply. All grayness of the previously homogenous sound pattern on my mind blew up and transformed into colorful combinations of connotations at the same time re-formatting my previously constituted interrelations of history. It was this definition itself that re-constructing, re-articulating my own history of articulating things as with conjunctions such as “then…”, “… in that case”, “… if that so” …etc. The title of the Leone’s presentation was Longing for the Past: The Nostalgic Semiosphere. However the presentation forwarding idea was not yearning for the past, but a “future lies in the past hidden in potential paths that history never took” (Leone, 2013).
It can be stated that the idea of new for Leone is constituted on the expression of ‘this is the first time they use them’. So the new users and the ones that had been used before are living and experiencing the vintage design during the same time period. What kind of an interaction is this? At least there is a continuous transformation of meaning of a kind of nostalgia in Leone’s words that re-articulates temporally. This was the triggering idea for emphasizing the user/reader side of the interface that previously elaborated in introduction and gave the way to first sentences of provocative abstract proposal for discussion of Design Semiotics and Post-structuralism: which may refer not seeing the design as a closed entity, equipped with definite meanings, rather seeing design as irreducibly plural, an endless play of signifiers, which can never be finally nailed down to a single center, or meaning, a fixed system of relations. Therefore, meaning is de-territorialized and re-territorialized over time, thus liberated by articulations and “re-articulated synchronically” (Leone, 2013).
In this context, the addition of post-structuralism associative with design semiotics is because poststructuralist studies often emphasize history to analyse descriptive concepts, by studying how cultural concepts have changed over time, understand how those same concepts are understood by readers in the present. As is known, structuralism understand the historical interpretation of cultural concepts, by focusing on understanding how those concepts were understood by the author in his or her own time, rather than how they may be understood by the reader in the present. Michel Foucault postulated numerous ways to re-think and resituate the past that destabilize our preconceived concepts of boundaries and “change over time” (Scott, 1998). In relation with that, Deleuze strongly argues that things should not be defined according to the actualized forms. That is to say, we should not, for instance, explain designs on the basis of how the meaning is usually, generally or actually given to them.
Synchronized with this, a diachronic look to realities tries to find out how the systems of relationships have changed over time; a concept, which is already challenging among so-called poststructuralists.
3. A diachronic look
Design benefits from every kind of representation, which are evidently semiotic by nature, in a manner of a system, which is multi-layered and assembled with paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations ending with a creation that makes inventing new ways of expression a precondition of itself. A diachronic look, to me, situates design as an interfacing surface between a nomadic designer who is viewed as ‘dead’ and a user/reader/receiver (hereafter addressee) as being becoming temporary.
Nomad, in Deleuzian sense is a way of being in the middle or between points, characterized by movement and change, and is unfettered by systems of organization. Thus the goal of being nomadic is only to continue to move within the intermediary territories. When designer seen as nomadic, this can lead to liberation of addressees from pre-established forms of understanding of design and from the domain of designer originally regarded with structuralism.
Barthes, in 1967, wrote The Death of the Author as a metaphorical event: the “death” of the author as an authentic reference of meaning and argued that any literary text has multiple meanings, proposing that the author was not the primary reference of the semantic content of the designed work. Additionally, the Death of the Author, for Barthes, was the Birth of the Reader, as the metaphor of the multiplicity of meanings of the text. Herewith, meaning is accepted to challenge by deterritorialization and reterritorialization over time, thus liberated by articulations of changing relations and continuously re-articulating within the experience of interchanging addressees. A general view for addressee, in such understanding, can be described as becoming in Deleuzian sense, that describes a process of change, or movement within an assemblage, rather than conceive of the pieces of an assemblage as an organic whole, where one piece of the assemblage is drawn into the territory of another piece, changing its value as an element and bringing about a new unity.
A part from that, semiotics, as a methodology is an analysis in understanding meaning transferred by design, presents a mediating language to describe reality and its expressions. As Eco (1962) argues, in The Open Work, that design, particularly contemporary art, has an undefined meaning, in that the will of the artist was exactly that of producing such “indeterminacy or openness”. This proposes openness to new articulations as in Deleuzian territory definition, which can be viewed as perpetually changing configuration of various interrelated assemblages. Meaning then is a dynamic configuration of diverse assemblages as forming a specific territory in time, which may then become the surface where deterritorialisation, and reterritorialisation take place. This gives a way for a diachronic point of view to understand the reality which design mediates for an ever-changing dialogue.
4. Design: ever-changing dialogue
Within the design field, there is a kind of people-to-people flow of knowledge institutionalized in cultural systems generated by the realization of design in a manner of a dialogue. For designers, considering the semiotic implications of whatever they design is an inherent mediation for a possible dialogue with the one(s) s/he designs for. The locus of this dialogue concretizes itself as the surface of intersections and articulations of constitutive elements of used languages specific to that design field and the context. Inherently, each field of design is a form of expression and an entry into experience. Majority of designers of any field do not use the integrals of semiotic analysis along the same path that semioticians follow when they attempt to describe their design ideas. Designing praxis, although cannot be directly applicable to syntagm and paradigm of verbal language, but has its own embedded culture constituting with paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations conceptualized with design theories and principles. Nadin (1990) argues that “since symbols are the dominant sign representation in human culture, and since each symbol contains iconic or indexical elements, it is easy to make use of the semiotic principles governing the cognitive condition of design”. As an exemplification, the place of representation in design gains value as application of sign systems, an approach of various relationships of signifier and signified. Design requiring inventing new discourses, in other words new problem definitions each time, all methods of representation fulfil the basic function of intermediation of design between two or several distinct entities assembled with(in) a dialogue via confrontation with different phases of design. Each of the mediation is constructing a unique dialogue in time as an intrinsic nature of designer-interface-addressee. Furthermore, each interpretation of a design is a new configuration of signified(s) articulated within experience of a specific time-context relations arising from diversities of human being, and meaning is liberated from pre-established forms.
This dialogue, by enabling to uncover a process of transformation, it also reveals and gives a chance to introduce for ideas of a-signifying, neutral signs and, non-representativeness. A designed product, as a whole, just as a sentence or an essay, is also a result of the constitution of a densely structured web of these relations between paradigmatic and syntagmatic axes. Similarly, every element of design, as every word in an expression, exists at the intersection point of two axes (syntagm and paradigm). First level of meanings (denotation) and second level of meanings (connotation) confronted with readers/users (adressees) of design as text are re-configured mentally as multi-levelled signifieds specific to the addressee’s time/space /cultural background.
The content of the studies of semiotics can be described as a translation language between the confronted entity and its connotations. The question is where if the design comes to being as the translation language between confronter and the confronting design; can design be read without any subject and representation? The use of design elements, which are non-representative and a-signifying syntagms and paradigms, would support the liberation of addressee’s translation of the interfacing design and lead to a new articulation with own memory and reality.
In such case, the experience of the addressee itself creates the language independent from the subject. Regarding this acceptance, the idea of minor literature of Deleuze&Guattari (2003), language escaping from signification and representation, resisting to resemblance and mimetic representation, as in abstract art resists figuration, representation or imitation of real life. Both the language of design and its interpretations are ‘becoming’ in which elements of design are intensities as neutral as not dictating a dominant meaning.
5. Epilogue
Consequently, a work of design comes to being as a medium with all its systems and elements for mediating inter-cultural communication, a dialogues of various cultural systems, institutions, changing temporarily (Küçükarslan Emiroğlu, 2012). Designer use language (written, visual representation, tactile component) in designing process in a perception and comprehension of knowledge of design as represented by language and other representations within design knowledge, understanding problem and generation of response, processing of the problem specifications, consequently applied generic and specific knowledge through design representation language (based on Nadin’s diagram, 1990). The interfacing territory of design situates in time/space covering the process of designing-the product-its usage, this is when/where designer and user get into an interactive dialogue.
A recent approach called participatory design proposes user to be co-partner or co-designer during designing process, which aims to foresee and design for future users, communities, and forthcoming cultural relations. This approach concurring with post-structural point of view, vise versa transforms signification of designed product. The medium of design apparently constructs a language for its speakers, in other words its authors and readers, in order to get in contact, understand each other’s intended meanings, interpreting, interact with each other, and end up with a responsive design. Configuration of a pre-coded system of a language of a designed space, of any designed product, or a written poem deals with the diversity of combinations and selections deconstructed in the plane of syntagm and paradigm in designed whole.
This topic welcomes a wide spectrum of research fields such as semiotics in design education, applied semiotics, comparative studies of pre- and poststructuralist approaches in relation with design, etc. A structuralist look focus on to understand how concepts are understood by the designer at the time, wherever a post-structuralist look seeks to understand how those same concepts are understood by addressee of the design in the present, opting in studying how cultural concepts have changed over time. The understanding of participatory design would contribute to understanding and inclusion of future addressees as well. Therefore, as a proposal for the beginning quests of this paper can be a suggestion of a content for the course entitled Design Semiotics; which is concentrated on especially post-structural contributions (Barthes, Eco, Deleuze, etc.) interlacing with eminent understanding of the structuralism and encouraging students towards approaches of participating addressee to designing processes.
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