Free Transcript of Episode 2.15 LIVED EXPERIENCE: A Side Of Semiotics Design School Won’t Teach You
Semiosis 101 Season 2, Video 15 Transcript
Hello readers.
In this free transcript for the video published on Semiosis 101 on 16 Aug 2023, we discuss the visual, multi-sensory semiotic world of cinema and the qualitative world of phenomenological methodologies. To do this we will have the fifth Semiosis 101 book review.
Watch the free video on YouTube for the full impact…
…and here is the video’s transcript.
NOTE: As with any video transcript the tone used is conversational. The following transcript text features ad libs, and therefore should be read in the spirit of any semi-scripted video.
Welcome to Semiosis 101 season two’s fifteenth semiotic video.
If you have watched Semiosis 101 video before then you will already know I am Dave Wood.
Season two’s semiotic theme is a Semiotic Rosetta Stone, which is a metaphor to the unlocking and designer-centric translation of Charles Sanders Peirce’s semiotic theory of Semiosis - sign-action.
Why do you need Semiosis 101?
Peirce’s writing and terminology is very …obtuse.
In the next few season two videos I will be focusing on methodologies to help creatives to gain insights from their target audiences, to encode semiotic sign-action.
But first, in this week’s video I will prepare the way with another quick review of two books I have found useful on this topic. One will be on what are phenomenological methodologies, and the other will…
…well, hit subscribe and I will explain…
Arguably, the logic of design is abductive reasoning, a form of logic that is not concerned with truth or scientific proofs, but on what is a workable hypothesis.
This does not mean abductive reasoning hypotheses are lies, untruths or erroneous claims. They are currently the best working knowledge until more data is available.
Just because a character in literature is the construct of a writer, it does not mean that the fictional character cannot show truths about reality. The visual, multi-sensory world of cinema can also show reality through the lens of creativity and fiction.
So from a Semiosis context, the first of two books I will be reviewing is Peter Wollen’s Signs and Meaning in the Cinema. Then the second book this month will be Max van Manen’s Phenomenology of Practice.
With a working hypothesis (abductive reasoning) rather than a truth (deductive reasoning) or scientific proof (inductive reasoning), creatives can during ideation begin to design or illustrate to their target audiences on minimal audience insights.
After all, initial sketching of ideas comprises nothing more than shapes, lines, marks, colours, etc. that suggest the qualities to, and resemblances of, possible ideas. At this initial stage of ideation, these are merely Iconic representations of possibilities.
As more insights are made from the target audience’s mutual lived experience, this working hypothesis can be improved. Details can be added, wrong assumptions can be discarded. A working hypothesis of who the target audience are can be fleshed out like a fictitious film character.
In Interaction Design this is called a “persona” (but more on them in the next two videos).
The first book this week steps into the cinema, with Peter Wollen’s highly influential film studies book Signs and Meaning in the Cinema.
I have already stated in earlier videos that I class myself as a ‘cinema-goer’ myself. I did this in the context of attempting to provide an example of Peirce’s ’logic of design’ abductive reasoning. I used the target audience example of ‘cinema-goers,’ to show how a creative can use a working hypothesis of their target audience’s lived experience can provide visual insights.
Check out 2.13 and 2.14 to see that example of ‘cinematic darkness’ can begin the creative’s ideation phase.
With Wollen’s book however, I am only going to focus on cinema as a comparative example on how Visual Communication Design can apply Peirce’s Semiosis.
Specifically, only chapter 3 The Semiology of the Cinema.
Firstly, the title is a bit of a misnomer.
Wollen decides to use the Sassurean term ‘semiology,’ while in fact championing Peirce’s Pragmatic semiotic theory that we know as Semiosis - sign-action.
Do not be mistaken by the chapter title. I nearly was. I only came across Wollen’s book in 2022 when a friend offered me it for free.
I have stated in season 2’s book reviews that the index at the back of theory books will be the designer’s and illustrator’s ally. Thanks to searching Wollen’s index for Peirce, I read this chapter despite the misnomer, and was thankful that I did.
Wollen, provides the visual communication-focused reader with a very clear differentiation between Peirce and Saussure/Barthes, between ‘Semiosis’ and ‘Semiology,’ and ideas how Peirce’s Iconic, Indexical and Symbolic signs affect aesthetics.
There is a lot in this chapter on Peirce, and Wollen rights with clarity about Peirce’s triadic classifications of representing the Concept as we call it (Peirce’s Object).
For the creative lay-reader trying to understand this part of Semiosis, pages 102-103 are wonderfully succinct in offering a summary. Wollen refers to this triad of Peirce’s as “elegant and exhaustive” (p103). He reminds the reader that Peirce did not consider Iconic, Indexical and Symbolic representation as “mutually exclusive.”
The immediate comparative take-home from this chapter for us is Wollen’s statement that cinema’s aesthetic richness comprises of Iconic, Indexical and Symbolic states. That none of them can thus be discounted, as they are “co-present” in the aesthetic.
At the end of the book’s 5th edition, Wollen is not convinced by Saussure’s semiotic model for the cinema.
It seems that Wollen and myself have arrived at the same conclusion about how Peirce’s semiotic model offers more to creatives, whether film-makers or designers and illustrators.
There is much more in this chapter of value, but limited time in this video, so I will be drawing on Wollen over the following two videos. We will also be drawing on the cinematic concept of characterisations to help semiotically inform creatives of target audience motivations too. But, now we will turn attention to the second book.
Max van Manen’s Phenomenology of Practice: Meaning-Giving Methods provides insights to methodologies to underpin creative’s working hypotheses on their target audience.
Semiosis is underpinned by a phenomenological framework. Peirce frames the semiotic sign-action in three states: Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness. What this book provides us with are methodological ideas we can apply.
Max van Manen’s Phenomenology of Practice is the second of his books I have (the first being Researching Lived Experience, which I also recommend).
Phenomenology of Practice is about methodologies. So far in Semiosis 101 I have over a number of videos discussed Phenomenology, and demonstrated that this philosophically underpinned Peirce’s Semiosis and Heidegger’s Dasein. Phenomenology drew the creative’s focus “To The Things Themselves!” where the things are the phenomena, and semiotically the things give creative’s insights on what will attract their target audience. But how can creatives discover/understand/gain insights from these amorphous things?
Well van Manen’s book offers creatives a range of methodologies, from which they can explore and find the best methodological “fit” to their individual practice. He offers the reader a broad range of “meaning-giving methods for doing inquiry” (p16).
Before I state which methods I personally have used in the context of Semiosis, let me just go through his contents to demonstrate the range of methodologies designers and illustrators can explore.
In the book there are fourteen chapters, ranging from beginning a phenomenological enquiry, through methods and conditions, up to how to write up your findings. Chapters 1 and 2 are a must read for the novice to orientate yourself.
Then, my recommendations are as follows:
Chapter 3: Phenomenology: A Method of Methods
Chapter 5: Hermeneutic Phenomenology: Hans-Georg Gadamer
Chapter 8: The Hermeneutic Epoché-Reduction: Openness
Chapter 10: Existential Methods: Guided Existential Inquiry
Chapter 11: both the Phenomenological AND the Hermeneutic Interview sections.
Recently in Semiosis 101 we have begun to explore abductive reasoning - hypothesis - as the logic of design, so chapter 12 is of interest too.
In the last three chapters, van Manen begins to pull things together into how to analyse and communicate phenomenological insights. In chapter 12 there is a section on The Reduction, Production, and Abduction which may be of critical help to some.
Personally, I have myself utilised and synthesised a hermeneutic-semiosis methodology in my PhD. This was prior to buying this book, and I had developed my mixed methodology from a range of other qualitative methodologies. I did find his other book Researching Lived Experience extremely helpful in guiding me, and I probably would have developed my own doctoral methodology more quickly with Phenomenology of Practice.
If I was a novice, after reading chapters 1 and 2, personally I would then explore the sections I have outlined in chapters 3,10 and 11. I cannot recommend enough the semi-structured interview technique.
To end this fifteenth season two video, we can conclude that the lived experiences of our audiences can provide insights to help us semiotically visually communicate to them.
To gain insights on our target audience these two books offer us: firstly, Wollen offers us the semiotic prism of cinema to influence how we can visualise our audience as characters. Secondly, van Manen offers us guidance on phenomenological methodologies to add more methodological rigour to what essentially will be the creative’s working hypothesis - abductive reasoning - of their target audience.
Come back next week and the week after, as Semiosis 101 will explore getting semiotically NOSY next week. and then How to Wear an Experience after that. In those videos we will explore how we can learn from cinema and phenomenological methodologies to gain audience insights.
Watch the free video on YouTube for the full impact…