Birgit Huemer

DATE:       November 18th 2008, 14.00 – 15.30
PLACE:     Interface Culture Lab, Sonnensteinstr. 11-13, 2. floor
Lecturer:   Birgit Huemer, University of Vienna, Department of Linguistics
Title:         "A semiotic approach to visitor interaction, virtual space and perspective in digital arts"

Digital artworks are increasingly generated multimodally. One of the recent tendencies is to combine sound, moving images and language in live performances or interactive installations. Another concept is to transform the ‘invisible’ space of electronic data flows and give the so called information space a physical form in the material world. In order to explore the meaning making potential of these artworks, a theory is needed that enables researchers to analyse the different semiotic modes of communication and their intermodal relations. In my talk I will present a semiotic framework of analysis to digital art installations, which are composed of verbal, visual and acoustic modes of communication. I will show that this model is especially useful for gaining insights into different concepts of interaction between artwork and visitors and visitor perspective in virtual environments. In specific this talk, which is part of my PhD project, addresses the following topics or questions, which are of specific interest to art interpretation and -design: new potentials for visitor engagement, the semiotics of virtual space and visitor perspective in digital arts.

biography:
Birgit Huemer is a doctoral candidate at the department of Linguistics at the University of Vienna, Austria and a research associate at the same department. In 2007 she was funded to spend four months at the University of Technology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Sydney, Australia, where she took part in multimodal research at the department of Media Arts & Production. Birgit Huemer carries out research in discourse analysis and systemic functional linguistics. Her research interests include multimodality, digital arts, new media genres, usability and academic writing.