Exploring aethetics, design, and experience in the age of semiotic technology

Abstract

Where there is technology, there is semiotics. Semiotics refers to the science of signs; the study of symbols, markings, and their meanings in the way people interpret them. The human and, arguably, animal worlds are literally littered in signs, both natural (Eco, 1976; Peirce, 1958, p. 172) and artificial (i.e., intentional; de Saussure, 1916/1983). How these are understood and studied depends on the context, purpose, and individual. The built and designed human world can be equated to a massive sign system, in which every form, color, quantity, material, and logic has a communicative function. Architecture, for example, is a classic realm of technology in which form, style, material, and scale have been systematically used to impose societal hierarchy and order upon those who encounter it (Crouch, 1999). Architecture, as with any form of art, design, or technological form, communicates the logic, the values, and the actions of the times. In other words, from a technological perspective, designs are only available at certain periods of time if they serve a purpose, whether functionally through operation or from the perspective of societal ideologies and systems, through style. What is more, the physical nature in which they are realized is also instrumentally linked to public, political, and historical discourses that reinforce their meaning and significance in relation to the public that receives them (Crouch, 2010). When considering contemporary consumption, and that of information technology, this is particularly evidenced in regard to brand value, for instance. That is, bountiful significance and meaning can be obtained from design form through analyzing the technological items’ forms, materials, scale, style, and functions as compositions. The meaning derived from these elements, in connection to brand recognition, act in a very similar way to that of architecture over the centuries. That is, messages inherent in the technology shape people’s lives through molding their behaviors and exposing them to aesthetic compositions that contribute to formulating peoples’ worldviews and norms.