sign | structural meaning

The sign has two aspects, which may be reflected in the form:

The signifier is the physical entity which expresses the sign: the sound, shape or texture. the signified is the concept or emotion conveyed byt the sign.

Signification, the link between expression and concept, depends upon rules, codes, which are tacitly accepted by a community, and these rules are area which semiotics seeks to explore.

Signs rarely occur in a fragmented, isolated fashion; if they did the possibilities for human communication would be much more limited.

fun palace | virtual architecture

In his Fun Palace project, Price turned not to traditional architecture or fantasy but to the discourses and theories of his own time, such as the emerging sciences of cybernetics, information technology, and game theory, as well as Situationism and theater, to develop a radically new concept of improvisational architecture capable of negotiating the uncertain social terrain of postwar Britain. 

“Choose what you want to do – or watch someone else doing it. Learn how to handle tools, paint, babies, machinery, or just listen to your favourite tune. Dance, talk or be lifted up to where you can see how other people make things work. Sit out over space with a drink and tune in to what’s happening elsewhere in the city. Try starting a riot or beginning a painting – or just lie back and stare at the sky.”

As socially interactive architecture, the Fun Palace integrated concepts of technological interchangeability with social participation and improvisation as innovative and egalitarian alternatives to traditional free time and education, giving back to the working classes a sense of agency and creativity. The three-dimensional structure of the Fun Palace was the operative space-time matrix of a virtual architecture. The variable “program” and form of the Fun Palace were not conventional architecture but much closer to what we understand today as the computer program: an array of algorithmic functions and logical gateways that control temporal events and processes in a virtual device.

semiotics | analysing structures

Semiotics is probably best know an an approach to textual analysis, and in this form it is characterised by a concern with structural analysis. Structuralist analysis focuses on the structural relations which are functional in the signifying system at a particular moment in history. It involves identifying the constituent units in a semiotic system (such as a text or socio-cultural practice) and the structural relationships between them (oppositions, correlations and logical relations). This is not an empty exercise since 'relations are important for what they can explain: meangingful contrasts and permitted or forbidden combinations' 

Jonathan Culler 1975