Materiality and Meaning

The writers now move from the visual signs and their abstract aspects to their material side. Like visual signs theselves, their materiality is also semiotic. They claim that “signs in their materiality are fully motivated” and the relationship between their materiality and their signification are not global, rather it is both specifically contextual and historical. However, the materiality also offers the visual communicators some opportunity to project their individuality or subjectivity.

Technology affects the production and reception of visual signs as it facilitates or limits the use of certain means of production. The writers divide these technologies into three categories as they relate to different historical periods and different epistemological standpoints.
a. Production: technologies in which representations are rendered in all aspects by human hands and hand-held tools like pen, brush, etc.
b. Recording technologies: “the technologies of the eye (and ear), technologies which allow more or less automated analogical representation of what they represent, for instatnce, audiotape, photography and film;
c. Synthesizing technologies: they “allow the production of digitally synthesized representations while remaining tied to the eye (and ear), these reintroduce the human hand via a technological ‘interface’, at present still in the shape of a tool (keyboard, mouse), though in future perhaps increasingly through direct articulation by the body.
This shift in the use of technologies also means the shift in the way the visual signs are perceived by the readers (viewers, audience). The idea of representation as reference has broken down and given way to ‘signification.’ It affects the modality of the visual images too. Like the material substance, the color also has different associations of meaning. It is also contextual and historical, but not arbitrary.