DRAWING SIGNS

Semiotica, 2002

Reflections on Influential Articles from Cartographica, 2011

Every map is at once a synthesis of signs and a sign in itself: an instrument of depiction-of objects, events, places-and an instrument of persuasion-about these, its makers and itself. Like any other sign, it is the product of codes: conventions that prescribe relations of content and expression in a given semiotic circumstance. The codes that underwrite the map are as numerous as its motives, and as thoroughly naturalized within the culture that generates and exploits them. Intrasignificant codes govern the formation of the cartographic icon, the deployment of visible language, and the scheme of their joint presentation. These operate across several levels of integration, activating a repertoire of representational conventions and syntactical procedures extending from the symbolic principles of individual marks to elaborate frameworks of cartographic discourse. Extrasignificant codes govern the appropriation of entire maps as sign vehicles for social and political expression-of values, goals, aesthetics and status-as the means of modern myth. Map signs, and maps as signs, depend fundamentally on conventions, signify only in relation to other signs, and are never free of their cultural context or the motives of their makers.

2018

​This book investigates the global hub airport as an exemplar of cosmopolitan culture and space. A machine made for movement, itself perched at the crossroads of the world’s incessant mobility, the airport is both a symbol of and stage for the ways in which we construct and inhabit the world today. Taking an ethnographically-inflected approach, this study brings together knowledge of the moving body from dance and performance and the study of systems of mobility within cultural and mobilities studies, in order to call attention to the kinaesthetic experience of global space. What is the choreography of the global airport? How does it perform on us. How do we perform within it? Extending thinking about contemporary cosmopolitanism and cultural identity, and the performativity of places and identities, this book is essential reading for those interested in cultural debates around globalisation, the innovative application of performance theory towards everyday experience, and interdisciplinary methodologies. --- “This is more than an original exploration of the choreographed spatiality of airports. It is for all those interested by the way one moves in and is moved by space in the era of transnational mobility. What’s more, the text itself is a well choreographed festival of intelligently deployed theory speaking to acutely observed ethnographic material traversed by sharp socio-political observations that make it a pleasure to read.” (Ghassan Hage, School of Social and Political Science, University of Melbourne, Australia) “Choreographing the Airport is a deeply-grounded study of hubs of contemporary global circulation — of bodies, affects, and cultures. No longer imaginable as the sole province of a transnational elite class, airports now function as critical arteries for the movement of refugees, migrants, transnational families, and others. As Shih Pearson’s nuanced examination demonstrates, airports bear a complex relationship to their geographic locations as well as their cosmopolitan functions — a relationship made all the more complex when considered from the perspective of the kinesthetic/somatic experience of its temporary inhabitants. Employing a kinesthetic auto-ethnographic method and combining performance and dance/movement theory, and postcolonial critique, Shih Pearson goes beyond a purely architectural analysis and asks us to attend to how and where we occupy those spaces, either in concert with or occasionally indifferent to global capitalism’s imperatives, asking us to consider the urgently relevant question, “what is it to move in this space?’” (Karen Shimakawa, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU, USA)

2016

How' do' people'make' sense' of' traffic' signs' in' urban' settings,' and' how' can' this' knowledge' be' utilized' to' inform' the' creation' of' better' design' policies' and' manuals?'These'questions'relate'to'the'theoretical'and'empirical'evidence'of'road' signs'as'traffic'guides'as'well'as'to'how'a'person'moves'around'in'an'environment.' Different'types'of'road'signs'exist'in'this'world.'Most'road'signs'are'uniform'signs' that' are' standard' for' worldwide' application,' based' on' the' Vienna' Convention' (United'Nations'Economic'Commission'for'Europe,'1968).'Many'research'studies'in' the' urban' environme...

Theory & Psychology

This article focuses on bordering as a fundamental semiotic process of human psychological functioning. First, we discuss similarities between semiosis and bordering and explore their relationships. In the perspective of cultural psychology of semiotic dynamics, psychic life is a process of purposeful production and interpretation of signs, carried out through cycles of culturally guided, selective internalization and externalization. Signs and borders are not only entities “out there”: they emerge in the purposeful movement of the organism in the course of future-oriented action in everyday life. Second, we discuss borders in mind and society as particular types of signs, through which humans regulate their own and others’ conduct. Finally, we propose a general genetic law of bordering development: borders are first conceived as tools created and established by humans as interpsychic activities. Later, the sign is internalized and begins to regulate psychological functioning. It al...

2018

Taking its cues from reflections of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and C. S. Peirce on the map, this chapter will focus on the interesting dialectic that characterizes our object of study, that is to say maps of places of origin. The chapter argues that the drawings collected in this study are constructed around a dialogue between a situated experience, realized by moving through a familiar space, and the representation of that experience which illuminates its objects even from an unbridgeable distance. This dialogue between immersion and distance – a theoretical cornerstone of our whole work–will be analyzed not only with regard to the spatial perspective chosen in the drawings, but also in the use of signing space in sign languages. When recounting the spaces they have drawn, signers have consistently changed their point of view: from a map-like description realized using their hands in order to describe spaces from above, to the adoption of a perspective from the inside in which the signers’ whole body becomes the vehicle for signification. In particular, this change of viewpoint is at times realized through the so-called Role Shift, with which the signer adopts a first-person perspective internal to the event narrated. This spatial and enunciative shift allows the signer to interpret the role of himself once again: in this way, he re-enacts an agency directly performed in the places represented in the maps, retranslating them as a subjective experience.

The symbol related problems are developed in the subsequent articles of this publication. In the following texts the reader finds a number of different perspectives, addressing symbol as a specific – using Charles Peirce’s phrase – iconic sign present in different areas of public life; a particular arrangement of open space and closed space; a complex form of community existence of ethnic and cultural groups – increasingly present in the discourse on postmodern society. Symbols are also presented as gestures, actions, persons. Diversity of symbols explored by the authors in different fields of culture: architecture, literature, shamanism, politics, theology, proves that symbol still constitutes important feature of our lives. We look at how various forms and places are being picked by symbols for their existence and functioning in the broadly defined postmodern culture. From the editors: Monika Banaś and Elżbieta Wiącek

Sign Systems Studies, 1998

Sign as an object of social semiotics: evolution of cartographic semiosis

Title 'Drawing from the Non-Place', 2.34mins, 2017, chalk on concrete structure, Strandhil, Co Sligo, Ireland