Slides for my presentation at the VIII Juri Lotman conference, hosted by Tallinn University on May 25-27, 2016.

1. Mikhail Fiadotau
Dept. of Social and Cultural Anthropology
School of Humanities
Tallinn University

2. Semiosphere and mediascape
“While some semiotic approaches tend to concentrate
on message interpretation, most medium theorists
emphasize the medium or media form rather than
content. A link between these two theoretical realms
can allow for a more cogent analysis of media and their
place in society.”
(Leverette 2003)

3. semiosphere:
1. “interconnected Umwelten” (Kull 1998)
2. continuity of sign systems
Semiosphere and mediascape
“The five scapes” (Appadurai 1990):
ethnoscape
technoscape
finanscape
ideascape
mediascape

4. Semiosphere and mediascape
Conventional understandings of the sign do not
accommodate the idea of the medium the sign is
reproduced through.
and yet
The medium chosen to deliver a message shapes our
interpretation of the message:
• because of the intrinsic properties of the medium
(McLuhan: “The medium is the message”)
• because of the conventions that emerge around the
medium

5. Semiosphere and mediascape
Illustration:
Gershon (2010): “media ideologies” create “idioms of
practice” and infuse the choice of medium with moral
value:
e.g. breaking up via a text message is
seen as immoral (“the medium is at
odds with the message”).

6. Semiosphere and mediascape
conventions
competences

7. Media literacies
Media literacies are sets of competencies which give
one “the ability to access, analyze, evaluate and create
media.”
The term is often employed in education science, where
the the emphasis tends to be on the critical/relfective
and the creative components.
But even accessing media (watching a
movie, playing a videogame)
requires a set of competencies
→ primary media literacies.

8. Media literacies
can overlay and re-signify signs which exist in other
semotic spheres (religious, ethnic, political, etc.):
1. graves as places of honoring and reminiscing about
the dead (matches wider cultural code)
2. graves as places to look for clues (taboo in wider
cultural code)
3. the grave as an indicator that the current
playthrough is over

9. Media literacies
can also comprise signs not directly found in other
semiotic spheres, enabling comprehension, mastery,
and suspension of disbelief:
• deadly spikes sticking
out of the floor
• “platforms” hanging in
the air
• a two-dimensional world
with very weak gravity
• a hero who has several
lives
• etc.

10. Primary media literacies in videogames
1. Control scheme
2. Level design: e.g. free-roaming vs. unlockable
3. Perspective/world representation: 2D vs. 3D;
photorealism vs. cartoon aesthetics; etc.
4. User interface and inventory
5. Points and achievements
6. Game mechanics
icon index symbol
What should I do?
>> pick up the flashlight
etc.

11. Primary media literacies in videogames
interpretative competencies
performative competencies
mastery
other semiotic
competencies
other semiotic
competencies

12. Indie games and playing with media
conventions
• The indie game movement started in the
2000s thanks to the emergence of
consumer-grade game production
technology and a favorable distribution
infrastructure
• Indie gamers favor originality,
experiments, and artistic expessiveness
over the high production values of
mainstream videogame industry
• The advent of indie games has widened
the reach of videogames as a medium

13. Indie games and playing with media
conventions
Perdition:
Plays with both religious symbols (re-signifying God for
subservience and Satan for self-indulgence) and with the
simplistic “good vs. evil” dichotomy characteristic of most
platformer games.

14. Indie games and playing with media
conventions
Karoshi series:
A platformer game where the goal is to kill your avatar.
Inverts the basic premise of platformers (navigate your
way past dangers to advance to the next level); re-
signifies many of their “stock signs” (e.g. spikes).

15. Indie games and playing with media
conventions
Fez:
A game about a creature that discovers the third
dimension in a world whose inhabitants are only aware of
two. Plays with the “2D world” convention employed by
platformer games in a way meaningful for the story.

16. Indie games and playing with media
conventions
1213:
A platformer game made with Adventure Game Studio
(AGS). Challenges the meta conventions established
within the AGS community: the expectation that
developers use the tool to create an adventure game.

17. Indie games and playing with media
conventions
These examples pertain to different “layers of the cake,”
but the mechanism is the same:
deliberate re-signification of a “stock,” ready-made symbol
with the aim of evoking a metasemiotic reflection in the
player.

18. Indie games and playing with media
conventions
Lotman: semiotic processes are more dynamic on the
periphery, leading to a production of new meanings, some
of which may replace semiotic structures of the core.
But these processes on the periphery can also can push
the boundaries of the semiosphere as such.
periphery

19. Indie games and playing with media
conventions
Crucially, most of the new meanings emerge at the
intersection of different layers (Lotman: “fusion of leves”):
“New information in the semiosphere can be produced
only as a result of a dialogue between different codes”
(Steiner 2003).

20. So what kind of cake is the semiosphere?
• A cake with many layers, each of
which you have to learn to eat
• (And yet there are no clear
boundaries between the layers)
• A cake which tastes differently in
the center and the periphery
• And whose taste, moreover,
constantly changes, particularly on
the periphery and where different
layers meet
• A cake that is constantly growing in size
• But whose size is impossible to meaure