Semiotics

The lecture this week on idea of Semiotics confused me slightly. However, when looking back at my notes I think I understand more than I thought. The fact that all babies can understand facial features and many of their toys include faces e.g. dolls, is really intriguing. Even a basic drawing, including two eyes and a line for a mouth, we all still recongnise as a face. I find it quite strange how our minds interpret things in this way. This helped me understand why Semiotics is the study of meaning and that all humans are natural Semiatitions.

In our seminar we looked deaper into reading the sign. We looked at such words as denotation, connatation and myth. I believe that denotation is what is actually there/what the sign is, connotation is what it suggests/how it is photographed and myth is an explanation of how it relates to the world/what it implies. I'm sure as the weeks go on this will all make a lot more sense to me, once I have applied it in the correct way.

This week John asked us all to look at the buildings and the structures around us. He also showed us a video of a BBC Imagine programme about Thomas Heatherwick. It was really interesting and really relavent to the project we are doing at the moment. It also reminded me of when I watched the one about Anish Kapoor a while ago, which I found really inspirational. I remember seeing some of his pieces at Frieze last year and admiring Cloud Gate, the shiny giant bean sculpture in Chicago. I'd love to go and visit that. The other sculpure is another by Anish Kapoor that I saw in the Tate earlier this year.