Visual Semiotics

"The rapidly increasing amount of video collections, especially on the web, motivated the need for intelligent automated annotation tools for searching, rating, indexing and retrieval purposes. These videos collections contain all types of manually annotated videos. As this annotation is usually incomplete and uncertain and contains misspelling words, search using some keywords almost do retrieve only a portion of videos which actually contains the desired meaning. Hence, this annotation needs filtering, expanding and validating for better indexing and retrieval.

In this paper, we present a novel framework for video annotation enhancement, based on merging two widely known commonsense knowledgebases, namely WordNet and ConceptNet. In addition to that, a comparison between these knowledgebases in video annotation domain is presented.

Experiments were performed on random wide-domain video clips, from the \emph{vimeo.com} website. Results show that searching for a video over enhanced tags, based on our proposed framework, outperforms searching using the original tags. In addition to that, the annotation enhanced by our framework outperforms both those enhanced by WordNet and ConceptNet individually, in terms of tags enrichment ability, concept diversity and most importantly retrieval performance."

The paper “Technics of Thinking” explores the potential of Ernst Cassirer’s notion of symbolic and, especially, technological mediation, which allows for a fresh take on the old problems of knowledge and mind. Building on Cassirer’s core insight, delivered in the technology essay, concerning how tools ground the sort of mediacy that makes thinking possible, it sketches what is coined as a “differential” approach to knowledge. The resulting approach is at variance in significant respects from the philosophy of difference associated with poststructuralist thinking, and Hoel goes on to compare it, instead, with lines of thinking pursued in the contemporary philosophy of technology, in science and technology studies and in recent “extended mind” approaches within the philosophy of mind.

Dall’osservazione dello spazio urbano della città di Roma, effettuato fra gennaio 2011 e giugno 2012, sono stati censiti e documentati 247 graffiti. Ciò che viene presentato in questo saggio è una prima analisi tematica del materiale raccolto. A questa centrale riflessione se ne accompagnano altre incentrate sul contributo che lo studio del graffitismo, osservato e documentato nello spazio urbano e linguistico della capitale italiana, può offrire relativamente a tematiche quali, per esempio, il rapporto diamesico fra lingua scritta e parlata, l’analisi delle varietà giovanili, le interferenze del dialetto e la creazione di neologismi.

Through a historical case study of the mental health community website HealthyPlace.com, the author applies social semiotics and critical discourse analysis to interrogate the visual discourse surrounding mental health online. Web design transformations over the course of a decade demonstrate how visual imagery conveys a shift from a biomedical discourse focused on illness to a social-therapeutic discourse centered on health and wellness. Ultimately, the author argues that the utilization of faces in stock photography, stylized images, and social media platforms on HealthyPlace reflects a growing trend in virtual visual synthetic personalization on the internet to market mental health disorders as a concern for the everyday person while selling the promise of wellness through online participation. This article explores the visual language of mental health and wellness online to expanding on research in the field of visual communication, health communication, and new media studies.

"Abstract: Iconographic evidence, primarily glyptic and fresco, is the main source of information about tree cult in the Aegean Bronze Age. Such images are widely considered to depict rural sanctuaries of various levels of architectural sophistication; three dimensional examples of which have been sought within the physical landscapes of Crete and mainland Greece. Poor archaeological preservation of vegetation from the Aegean Bronze Age means that the presence of trees at such sites can only ever be theoretically determined; any potential locations being dependent upon suggestions derived from architectural configurations. This paper abandons the wild goose-chase of seeking out the fugitive sacred tree, instead focusing upon its two dimensional representation upon gold signet rings and its probable politico-religious function. It argues that whilst the Minoan glyptic idiom appears realistic, the miniaturisation process characteristic of glyptic art means that such images are not scenes but signs, analogous to minimalist Cypriot and Israelite examples. Essentially depicting a heterotopic space, Minoan glyptic images of tree cult are promoted within the Neopalatial administrative network as utopic through the verbosity of sphragistic multiplicity.
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We intend to examine here some of the questions concerning the theoretical variants of discussions on photography: we are specially interested in those discursive trends that are still investing in the technical conditions of image’s origins and its relationships with the semiotical regimes of these visual icons. We refer to those theories by the title of “arguments on the apparatus”, recognizing them as an actual driving force in the general assumptions of about the meanings of visual forms in photographs: we still find them specially influential in the assumed semiotic status of indexicality, as an essential trait of photographic processes. As a corolary of such discourses, we find a commitement to ontological pressupositions about some intrinsic, originary nature of photography, identified with the role played by its technical apparata. We seek the matrix of such discourses, departing from the reading of two influential essays on the nature of photography, L’Acte Photographique, by Phillipe Dubois (1983) and L’Image Precaire, by Jean-Marie Schaeffer (1987).

This article argues that photography should be understood as a set of related media types rather than one medium. It takes an intermedial perspective, based on the principle that photography must be thoroughly compared to how other media are construed, and it supports the view that photography should be analyzed in terms of what are referred to here as the four modalities of media. Minute investigation of the material, the sensorial, the spatiotemporal, and the semiotic features of media products that are understood to be photographs makes it possible to discern essential relations to and intricate overlappings with other media.

"Considering this Analitical-Holistic Synthesis approach one methodology very promising for analyzing any communication that has a form of a conversation, the first part of this paper deals with the Foursome of EUGÈNE IONESCO as a useful tool. The value this approach is in making statistics useful in dealing with conversation analysis. Using it to map out other conversations, or real life situations, real life reports, other pieces of literature, etc. Just to see what outcomes one gets.  Applied in Poetry for example and in short plays of EUGÈNE IONESCO also, it looks as a great tool for analysis of literary dialogs to show the writers' genius of skillfully weighing characters' in a whole.

In the second part, applying the above mentioned methodology and Onicescu Informational Statistics it is concluded that Foursome, a short piece is a metaphor for multiple and conflicting elements within a single human character. If in The Chairs we did not see the guests and the main character is the „chair”, here, in Foursome we see the unseen.
The applied method proves a writing genius of Ionesco, who knew that in order to get his point across of irreconcilable contradictions within human nature--he had to balance the three characters out.

Finally we develop the palimpsest we believe that The Chairs is for the Father of Absurd Theatre, playright Eugène Ionesco, sub-conciousness in creating another masterpiece, Foursome.
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[...] Here, the reader will find contributions on a wide range of topics, from detailed investigations into Peirce’s systems to general surveys of the role of diagrams in reasoning processes: Alpha, Beta, and Gamma systems, Reasoning with Peircean graphs, Diagrams in Peirce’s theory of cognition, Pragmatism and existential graphs, Philosophical concerns about Peircean diagrams, Existential graphs and conceptual graphs, Graphical logic representations, and Diagrammatic reasoning. We hope the reasonings in this special issue will contribute to the further development of diagrams, and of Peircean scholarship in general.

This chapter investigates the role architecture plays in visual persuasion, using the banking industry as an illustrative example.  Buildings are part of the story, but mostly I will emphasize how architecture expresses meaning, and how financial institutions manage that meaning.  I focus on the abstracted, visual, and aesthetic qualities of architecture—especially classical architecture—for that is often how marketing incorporates and consumers experience architectural form.  This is not to downplay architecture’s physical dimensions as buildings, spaces, and places.  Rather, I turn attention onto the communicative and persuasive use of architectural elements via a historical overview of how material form came to be associated with persuasive image. 

"Nella sua tradizione la semiotica ha messo a fuoco in modi diversi la questione della soggettività, rielaborandone progressivamente la nozione nel contesto dei suoi assunti più generali. Nato dai lavori del XL Congresso dell’Associazione Italiana di Studi Semiotici (AISS), questo volume si propone da un lato di riprendere, esplicitare e aggiornare in modo organico questa linea di riflessione teorica, dall’altro di verificare criticamente la capacità analitica della disciplina, mettendola alla prova su corpus e oggetti particolarmente significativi per questo tema. Nella prima parte, molti dei saggi in effetti rimettono in questione l'idea che la semiotica si sia costituita sin dall'inizio nei termini di un paradigma oggettivista, altri si interrogano più radicalmente sul significato di termini che spesso comportano la vaghezza dei loro usi correnti, anche quando sono assunti come espressioni metalinguistiche, proponendo ridefinizioni epistemologicamente più attente. Accanto alle riletture di autori classici come Saussure, Peirce, Benveniste, viene rappresentato il dibattito semiotico attuale sui modi di intendere il dispositivo dell'enunciazione, se ne esplorano la dimensione sociale e culturale, e i vincoli espressivi che esse pongono in casi specifici e significativi, come nella figurazione dell'anima o dei sogni, o nel dibattito sui generi o il postumano.
La seconda parte del volume è dedicata a Omar Calabrese e alla sua ricerca sull'enunciazione visiva: raccoglie gli interventi di molti dei suoi allievi senesi, un saggio di Victor Stoichita su Blow Up di Antonioni e un affettuoso ricordo di Umberto Eco a partire dal libro di Calabrese Mille di questi anni."