nokami

The project

Semiotics, or semiology, is the study of signs and symbols, both individually and grouped in sign systems. It includes the study of how meaning is constructed and understood. Semioticians also sometimes examine how organisms make predictions about and adapt to their semiotic niche in the world (see semiosis). Semiotics theorises at a general level about signs, while the study of the communication of information in living organisms is covered in biosemiotics or zoosemiosis.

The term, which was spelled semeiotics (Greek: semeiotikos, an interpreter of signs), was first used in English by Henry Stubbes (1670) in a very precise sense to denote the branch of medical science relating to the interpretation of signs. John Locke (1690) used the term semeiotics in Book 4, Chapter 21 of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Here he explains how science can be divided into three parts:

All that can fall within the compass of human understanding, being either, first, the nature of things, as they are in themselves, their relations, and their manner of operation: or, secondly, that which man himself ought to do, as a rational and voluntary agent, for the attainment of any end, especially happiness: or, thirdly, the ways and means whereby the knowledge of both the one and the other of these is attained and communicated; I think science may be divided properly into these three sorts. (Locke, 1823/1963).

Locke then elaborates on the nature of this third category, naming it Semeiotike and explaining it as “the doctrine of signs” in the following terms:

Nor is there any thing to be relied upon in Physick, but an exact knowledge of medicinal phisiology (founded on observation, not principles), semeiotics, method of curing, and tried (not excogitated,[1] not commanding) medicines. (Locke, 1823/1963, 4.21.4).

Signs and symbols (design/processing/programming)

Beside my study of how signs and symbols meaning is constructed and understood in my work and artistic project, I work a lot these past years of creating and developing icons for various elearning project. Some challenge was to be express complex ideas and concept in a few lines. Where two or 4 lines can be match together to form a visual concept of human behavior. My challenge of this part of the project is to conceptualize a new visuals language over visual programming.

Many results where also rejected from me or clients who find some prototypes to complex or having a non graphical reference or visuals contain from the original concept. But, that where it begin to get interesting for me in my artistic works.

Beside the fabulous study of symbols and signs over culture and historic times, I though that I can use this experience to push ideas over conceptual communication sense and develop and experience new computer graphical tools to develop and produce new visuals signs and symbols.

Beside my actual interested in visual programming, I found and experience various software programs enable to generated ramdom and complex new structure of a original graphics documents.

(Illustrator CS / Flash 8 / Resolume 2.4)

Music:

Michael Trommer

Michael Trommer is a Toronto based producer and visual artist who has recorded for such top electronic music labels as Transmat, Wave, Truffle, Stasisfield, Interchill, Monocromatica, Thinner and Stratagem. He records under his own name, as well as aliases such as ’sans soleil’, ‘minidisco’, ‘Hydraulic’,and ‘Manitou2′.Broad-minded in his approach to electronic music, Michael also creates gallery-based audio installation work. 2005 saw him creating a site-specific sound installation for Australia’s ‘Liquid Architecture’ exhibition. Another of his recent works was a net-based audio-manipulation project which was part of the ‘from 0 to 1 and back again’ exhibition at Kunsthalle Schirn in Frankfurt; this became the subject of many radio specials on both Deutsche Welle and Hessischer Rundfunk.

In 2000, his work was nominated for the Prix Italia for experimental music. His field-recording based material has been featured on London’s Resonance FM, www.vagueterrain.net, www.insine.net, www.monocromatica.com, and www.stasisfield.com. A site-specific field-recording based installation is being exhibited in New York state’s upper Catskill forest (http://www.restlessculture.net/deepwoods ) from the end of May.As a live show, sans soleil was featured at the 2003 Movement Festival (a.k.a.DEMF) in support of Michael’s full-length album on Detroit’s legendary Transmat label. 2007 saw him performing alongside Frank Bretschneider and Olaf Bender of Berlin’s Raster-Noton label, as well as headlining Toronto’s ‘inthemix’ festival (with VJ Nokami) and closing the ‘Electric Eclectics’ festival of experimental and improvised music.

Michael also performs regularly as part of the live electronic improvisation collective ‘i/o’ (http://interaccess.org/studio/iomedia.php).Nominated as one of eye magazine’s ‘10 talents to watch for 2006′, the coming year promises to be busy. Expect more installation work from Michael in 2008: a piece based on Mies van der Rohe’s Toronto Dominion Centre will be presented at the State Gallery in St. Petersburg, Russia in the autumn; in addition, a site-specific collaboration with video artist Arnold von Wedemeyer is planned for downtown Berlin later in the year.

Contact:
trommer@sympatico.ca
http://www.myspace.com/mtrommer

Programming:

Flash / Resolume

Technical spec:

Sound:
michael trommer/sans soleil
set-up diagram
MOTU ultralite soundcard
macbook
uc-33 controller
mixer
mpc1000
kaoss pad
evolver

Video:

References:

Origami interface mockups

Origami folding interface which appropriates the original language of folding symbols into a graphical interface for operations on virtual paper. This interface will also serve as a way to teach newcomers what each symbol means in an interactive manner. This interface is intended less as “origami simulation” so much as it aims to celebrate the beautiful illustrated instruction books intended to teach origami folding. it presents the folding instructional symbols as an interactive interface.Final Project for ICM and Communications LabJosh Nimoy, Nov 2002

Rock glyphs drawings

Hobo code

Origins

Hobo is a term that refers to a subculture of wandering homeless people, particularly those who make a habit of hopping freight trains. They often ask for money. The iconic image of a hobo is that of a downtrodden, shabbily-dressed and perhaps drunken male, one that was solidified in American culture during the Great Depression. Hobos are often depicted carrying a bindle or a sign asking for money. Bindle stiff is an alternative term for hobo.

History

It is unclear exactly when hobos appeared on the American railroading scene. With the end of the American Civil War in the mid 19th Century, many soldiers looking to return home took to hopping freight trains. Others looking for work on the American frontier followed railroads westward aboard freight trains in the late 19th Century.The population of hobos increased greatly during the Great Depression era of the 1930s. With no work and no prospects at home, many decided to travel for free via freight trains and try their luck elsewhere.Nowadays there are very few railroad-riding hobos left. Some itinerant individuals today travel by car rather than rail, but still identify themselves as hobos.Life as a hobo was a dangerous one. In addition to the problems of being itinerant, poor, far from home and support, and the hostile attitude of many train crews, the railroads employed their own security staff, often nicknamed bulls, who had a reputation for being rough with trespassers. Also, riding on a freight train is a dangerous enterprise. One can easily fall under the wheels, get trapped between cars, or freeze to death in bad weather. When freezer cars were loaded at an ice factory, any hobo inside was likely to be killed. Hobos tended to band together for protection and formed an informal “brotherhood”.

Origins

Wi-Fi secret code
Origins
Seventy years ago, during the Great Depression in the United States, hobos drew signs to indicate to each other where they could get a meal. Now, across the Atlantic in London, geeks are talking about using a similar system of chalk symbols to signal where they can get a decent wireless Internet connection.
Warchalking, as the practice has been coined by Matt Jones, entails simply drawing a chalk symbol on a wall or pavement to indicate the presence of a wireless networking node. If you see one of these symbols, you should–in theory at least–be able to whip out your notebook computer equipped with an 802.11 wireless networking card, and log on to the Net.

The first attempt at drawing up symbols resulted in three simple designs: two semicircles back to back to indicate an open node; a circle to indicate a closed node; and a circle with a “W” inside it to indicate a WEP (Wireless Equivalent Privacy, a security protocol) node, which will probably be inaccessible to the public because such nodes use encryption for security. Each symbol has a Service Set Identifier (SSID) at the top, which acts as a password to the node. SSIDs are easily obtained using readily available sniffing software.
The idea of the warchalk symbols, said Jones, is that they should give just enough of a visual cue to indicate that it is worth firing up a notebook or PDA (personal digital assistant).

Some suggestions have concentrated on touring the city with a notebook and GPS (Global Positioning System) to find wireless nodes, and then building an online database, but according to Jones this misses the point: “Using chalk runes breaks the cycle, because otherwise you would have to fire up your computer and log on anyway to find where the nodes are.”
And the attraction of warchalking is its simplicity. Jones likens it to the apocryphal tale of how NASA spent 10 years and millions of dollars to make ballpoint pens work in space, only to send its astronauts up with pencils. There are other attractions of the chalk approach too.
“Some people have asked why not use stickers or paint,” said Jones. “But the idea of chalk means that people have to go around and renew the symbols to the network is constantly revalidating itself and checking its own integrity. Also, using chalk won’t piss too many people off.” By using chalk, warchalkers should be able to avoid the fate of IBM, which was fined $100,000 for spray painting its “Peace, Love and Linux” ad campaign on the sidewalks of San Francisco last year.

Blissymbolics

Blissymbolics is a communication system originally developed by Charles K. Bliss (1897-1985) for the purpose of international communication. It was first applied to the communication of children with physical disabilities by an interdisciplinary team led by Shirley McNaughton at the Ontario Crippled Children’s Centre (now the Bloorview MacMillan Centre) in 1971.The Blissymbolics language is currently composed of over 2,000 graphic symbols. Each symbol or Bliss-word is composed of one or more Bliss-characters which can be combined and recombined in endless ways to create new symbols. Bliss-words can be sequenced to form many types of sentences and express many grammatical capabilities. Simple shapes are used to keep the symbols easy and fast to draw and because both abstract and concrete levels of concepts can be represented, Blissymbolics can be applied both to children and adults and are appropriate for persons with a wide range of intellectual abilities.

Signology

Signology is the art of writing with pictures. If pictures were suitable only to represent concrete things their scope would be very limited. But this is not the case. Pictures can be used to represent verbs and abstract concepts and therefore a whole language can be built on pictures. A good question is to ask what Signology is good for. Is it just a game or is it something else? We can only find a practical use Signology in two fields:First: Translating messages. Suppose someone here or in a remote Country (Finland, Greece, Mongolia…) wants to write something to be understood in a given area or anywhere in the World. He might choose English although he might not be as fluent in English as he should be. To learn to write English properly or any other conventional language takes a lot of time and effort.The alternative is Signology. It is so easy to learn as these images suggest. It takes only a few weeks and there is a lot of fun in it as it is based on easy drawings and logic. Signology could be thus a PIVOT language. You put your thoughts into Signology and can send them anywhere; translators have only to know their own language plus the easy going Signology.

SignWriting

Twenty-five years ago there was no way to read, write or type signed languages, but now, with the invention of our new writing system SignWriting, and the development of the SignWriter Computer Program, the world’s signed languages are becoming written (and typed) languages.

Symbol for Windows

What is Symbol for Windows?Symbol for Windows software is designed to support communication, learning, rehabilitation etc. with the help of symbol languages. Symbol for Windows applications can be used in combination with one or more Symbol for Windows databases, among others: PCS, Bliss, Beta and Pictogram. New databases and applications can easily be added to the family.BackgroundIn the AAC-field, many people work with a lot of different software tools and symbol languages. The acitivities of professionals, AAC-users, their family etc. are aimed at communication via symbol languages. Sometimes symbol languages are used as an enhancement of communication via text and/or speech, sometimes as a full replacement of it. The starting point of the Symbol for Windows software is the coherence between AAC-activities and symbol languages.

Airport

About the symbol signs. This system of 50 symbol signs was designed for use at the crossroads of modern life: in airports and other transportation hubs and at large international events. Produced through a collaboration between the AIGA and the U.S. Department of Transportation, they are an example of how public-minded designers can address a universal communication need.Prior to this effort, numerous international, national and local organizations had devised symbols to guide passengers and pedestrians through transportation facilities and other sites of international exchange. While effective individual symbols had been designed, there was no system of signs that communicated the required range of complex messages, addressed people of different ages and cultures and were clearly legible at a distance.To develop such a system, AIGA and D.O.T. compiled an inventory of symbol systems that had been used in various locations worldwide, from airports and train stations to the Olympic Games.

AIGA appointed a committee of five leading designers of environmental graphics, who evaluated the symbols and made recommendations for adapting or redesigning them. Based on their conclusions, a team of AIGA member designers produced the symbols.A first set of 34 symbols was published in 1974, and received one of the first Presidential Design Awards; 16 more symbols were added in 1979. These copyright-free symbols have become the standard for off-the-shelf symbols in the catalogues of U.S. sign companies. They are now available on the web for the first time.AIGA, the professional association for design

Travel

Subway

Travel safety

Tags

References:

Elements of Semiology(Roland Barthes)
Semiotics: The Basics (Daniel Chandler)
Semiology of Graphics(Jacques Bertin and W.J. Berg)Semiology(Pierre Guiraud)
Phenomenology of Communication(Richard L. Lanigan)
Semiology Symbolism and Architecture(William R. Gwin and Mary M. Gwin)
Semiology and Parables(Daniel Patte)
Semiology(Guillard Pierre)Information, Its Forms and Functions: The Elements of Semiology(Douglas McArthur)
Phenomenology, Structuralism, Semiology(Lewisburg, Harry Raphael Garvin, and Patrick Brady)
Semiologies of Travel(Chris Bongie)
Language and Materialism: Developments in Semiology and the Theory of the Subject(Rosalind Coward)
Introduction to the static functional picture (iconic semiology)(Claude Cossette)
Semiotics, Marketing and Communication: Beneath the Signs, the Strategies(Jean-Marie Floch and Robin Orr Bodkin)
Persuasive Signs: The Semiotics of Advertising(Ron Beasley and Marcel Danesi)
Mediapolis: Aspects of Texts, Hypertext and Multimedial Communication(Sam Inkinen)
Vico’s New Science of Ancient Signs: A Study of Sematology(Jurgen Trabant)