Free Transcript of Episode 2.9 Can YOUR Aesthetic Semiotically Grab & Hold Your Audience's Attention?
Semiosis 101 Season 2, Video 9 Transcript
Hello readers.
In this free transcript for the video published on Semiosis 101 on 21 Jun 2023, we review two books to help you make sense of Semiosis, and how to apply it to enhance your visual communication abilities. One book is on Peircean Semiosis and the other on Pragmatist Aesthetics.
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.
The aesthetic is alluring.
It is the subjective visual-ness in visual communication. Some may disparagingly call this the decoration, or the prettiness, or the gloss, etc. Some creatives may think the aesthetic IS their design, their art. Some may think of the aesthetic as the visual language used, the technical ability, the beauty, etc. Let us side-step any subjective arguments about worthiness or taste, and focus on one main aspect of its power …to attract.
Forget accolades, awards, prizes, collectors, etc. and let us approach the aesthetic semiotically.
Let us approach the aesthetic Pragmatically.
Let us explore aesthetics as a tool or step within semiotic communication.
In this episode, I will review another two books I have found useful to demonstrate the difference that the aesthetic can make once it is semiotically charged! The two books I will discuss with you are Pragmatic Aesthetics by Richard Shusterman, and one of Floyd Merrell’s books on Peircean semiotics Semiosis in the Postmodern Age.
Merrell is on the bio-Semiosis side of semiotics within nature, but he is excellent at explaining Peirce’s sign-action process. For the creative reader, once again the book’s index will be your research friend. Shusterman’s book stands the classical understanding of aesthetics on its head by reframing aesthetics Pragmatically as experience. It is in this reframing as experience that like many of the books I will share (and essentially the whole of Semiosis 101’s philosophical framework), places you all within a phenomenological point of view in which your understanding emerges.
Remember Peirce’s phenomenological sign-action impacts on an interpreter. Meaning emerges. In visual communication the aesthetic encodes that meaning. The main thrust of Shusterman’s Pragmatist aesthetic is that he argues that the value and function of aesthetics does not lie as a specialised ‘means-end.’ Aesthetics is not a mere destination in itself, it is more than an end point of awe from the viewer. Aesthetics is not passive admiration of the creative’s genius, its beauty to be merely observed and framed in a classical sense.
Shusterman says that aesthetics enhances, invigorates and vitalises our immediate environment, and is “at once instrumentally valuable and satisfying in itself” (1991, p9). By taking a philosophically Pragmatic view of the application of aesthetics, it becomes an aid to our achievement of whatever visual communication ends we pursue. Aesthetics becomes a proactive application rather than a passive element. Aesthetics helps to attract attention. Effective semiotics helps retain it. Shusterman’s work opens up a new perception on the power of the aesthetic.
Within a Pragmatic philosophical framing of aesthetics, it becomes an aesthetic experience in the viewer …the audience. This is where this book is influential to creatives who wish to improve the effectiveness of their visual communication. Shusterman’s book Pragmatically reframes aesthetics as experiential, as a proactive application to aid a communicational outcome. This aesthetic experience takes the aesthetic beyond a classical state of being an end to be admired.
By reframing aesthetics as a state of having AN experience, the audience is pulled in by the aesthetic choices of the creative, to a phenomenological experience in which their attention is piqued toward a desired communicational outcome. You can see now how Peirce’s Semiosis can strengthen the aesthetic experience. Shusterman’s book helps creatives trying to understand how and why the semiotic crafting of the aesthetic, through the visual language choices, is crucial.
The book shares with Peirce’s Semiosis the philosophical framework of Pragmatism. It can be said that Pragmatists reject a reality that is independent of the mind. It is in the act of interpretation that personal reality is constructed, embedded in our physical and material worlds. Meaning from the aesthetic is therefore interpreted from the socio-cultural lived experiences of the audience. This changes the dynamic of the power of the aesthetic from the creative to how the audience will interpret what they see.It is in that power shift that Peirce’s sign-action (Semiosis) can effectively strengthen the aesthetic’s reception by the audience.
I have really found Merrell’s books on Peirce’s Semiosis very useful in helping me understand the theory. Merrell is an academic, with an interest in biosemiotics, a branch of semiotic theory integrating biology and semiotics. So, any creative who reads Merrell does so in a comparative way. Obviously, creatives must not expect to be spoon-fed.
Within a comparative reading, Merrell is very useful in writing with clarity on Peirce’s theory. A reader must therefore expect to apply this application of Peirce from one discipline (nature), to another (Visual Communication Design). Once again, the index at the back of Merrell’s books on Peirce will be your greatest ally.
In Semiosis in the Postmodern Age, Merrell’s overall theme is on Peirce’s takedown of binary Modernist thought. As we know Peirce’s theory is predicated on a triad. Initially, I came to Merrell’s books to gain insights on how to understand Peirce’s triadic categories. I discovered his books by chance with a literature search. I was fortunate to buy all his books on Peirce, and cited him in my PhD, as I found I could understand Peirce through how Merrell framed the three categories of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness.
What was really a surprise was through a bio-semiotic focus, the idea that within these phenomenological states it was clear that semiotic signs were participatory. Meaning is extracted through interacting with the sign-action, rather than as a spectator to it. By interacting, the sign-action changes both the interpreter and the semiotic sign. This parallels to what Shusterman writes about how the aesthetic is an aid to achievement rather than the end outcome.
What I mean by that is, with the semiotic act of interpretation the audience discovers something from the sign-action, which a moment before they were not aware of. Professor Frascara would call this a communicational situation, in which a moment of behavioural change has been made. We have discussed this in previous videos.
One audience member may perceive just Iconic shapes, another audience member perceives these shapes coalescing into a “panda.” A third audience member will perceive the logo for the WWF.
It remains the same image, but through different levels of phenomenological perception (Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness), different levels of meaning is extracted from the piece of visual communication. This depends on the participation and lived experiences of the audience. Merrell’s book helps to reinforce that understanding of the participation of the interpreter.
In pairing Merrell and Shusterman’s books, we see examples of how reframing what we see into a framework of experiential perceptions, puts the audience forward rather than the creative.
A Pragmatic aesthetic framing, brings the audience’s role as a participant in the aesthetic rather than a passive viewer. The aesthetic hooks audience attention, but the crafting of effective sign-action by the creative retains their attention.In extending the subconscious moments of perception, sign-action has an increased opportunity to connect with the intended audience. But as we see from Merrell, perception and the semiotic sign can change by the act the sign-action. The audience discovers something that a moment before they had not thought, and then semiotic sign has the power to begin to communicate at higher perception levels.
Pragmatically, meaning is emergent depending upon the perception of the interpreter.
To end this ninth season two video, we can conclude that Peirce’s sign-action is really powerful. It is participatory, involving the perception and experiential references of the audience for the sign-action to begin working. Remember Peirce first says that for a semiotic sign to work it first must be perceived as a sign for something. In Visual Communication Design, the aesthetic is the visual language within which the Iconic, Indexical and Symbolic triad can work.
Iconic representation, between the interaction of lines, shapes, marks, colours, etc., is nested within the higher levels of Representation of a Concept. Like with the panda example, some people may only perceive shapes, some a panda and others a charitable organisation.
Come back next week as the next Semiosis 101 episode will help you understand how to begin encoding semiotic signs within the aesthetic.
Watch the free video on YouTube for the full impact…