Semiotics

What surprised me from this lecture was how much we actually use signs. If someone asked me to pick out a sign I would have looked for a road sign or a wet floor sign but its much more than this. A sign can be anything, as long as someone else knows/understands the signified concept. but where is the boundary? can smells, sounds, favours also be considered signs... of course. in order for signs to work it has to have a signifier and an signified. at first this threw me but when you understand the difference it makes perfect sense.

The Signifier is the sign itself whether that's visual or some kind of odour ect.., for example the word "ON", lets say its for a Games Console. The signifier is the actual word "ON" , the Signified is the knowledge/ concept that if you push that button then it will turn it on.

If we're missing one of these two key elements then the sign is useless. for example if someone didn't speak our language or were blind or simply didn't know what it meant.

So maybe using letters and words as signs Isn't the most effective way, as it can restrict your audience.This is a world wide recognized sign for power.

This is far more effective than the word "ON", not only will more people know what it means but they will recognise it quicker.

It can be quite frustrating when, you don't know the Signifier, I know this first hand. Whilst I was travelling in Japan I came across such words as 出口 which translates Way out. now when you in a huge train station this is always a good sign to know, that I learnt quite quickly. One I learnt even quicker was the difference in Male to female toilet signs, now when your in most tourist places you'll see this image below or something like it and know its safe to enter (on the left) but what happens when your greeted with the image next to it? (on the right) now both have the same Signified but different a Signifier, now if you dont speak the language or dont know the Signifier then you'll be the one making the 50/50 chance of walking in a room full of small angry Japanese woman...

so in Conclusion, we use signs everyday, sometimes without even realising it. we depend on them as social beings and always will.
(the image on the right is Kanji for Men and would only really be used in for rural areas)

So are we Magicians or Monsters?

Some thoughts on a lecture I sat threw, which was about realism. When i first heard that, I thought what hows this going to be relevant, it wasn't long before I realized that realism is the very thing that surrounds each of our specialisms, whether it be model making, animation, character creation... we all aim to deceive our audience, to trick them into believing what they're seeing is real. if this isn't achieved then the magic is lost.

So are we Magicians or Monsters?

Can what we create in fact harm or even kill our audience? well, if our goal is to make people believe what they're seeing is real, whether it be watching a film or shooting Nazi zombies, what happens when we perfect this art to such a level that we can no longer differ reality, to some Virtual reality game. ill tell you, we wake up and
find that we're in fact Dwayne Dibley.

(WATCH THIS) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EqeJ__taFhA


The film Surrogates also came to mind, will we ever go that far?

I've come across some people and they never seem to be happy with their day to day lives
or just not happy with who they are and so they throw themselves into some kind of Virtual world. I've seen marriages split apart, children die of hunger over such games as Second life and WoW. so are we aiding this by creating such beautiful pieces of art? or merely playing our part?

Magicians or Monsters you decide.