Signs depend on the type of media, receptive organs and modes of production. The
visual domain is linked to manual techniques of painting, drawing, molding/carving,
construction. It involves the organs of vision (and the neural mechanisms of sight)
and a good coordination with manual shape giving and coloring and is therefore clearly
distinguished from the phonic communication (spoken language) involving the ear
and the mouth (including the larynx and the control of breath). Moreover the dimensionality
of visual signs (two dimensions with a simulated third dimension in painting, three
dimension in sculpture and in addition motion in theatre (film) and architecture,
urban design) specify the limits and potencies of relevant signs (cf. Wildgen, 2006).
In the composition of a painting, sculpture or building, dynamic aspects are prominent.
This was reflected by Leonardo in his treatises on art and was also exemplified
in his major paintings (cf. Wildgen 2001/2010 and 2005). The questions of changing
perspectives and how the artist takes into account the motion of the observer is
analyzed in the case of Henry Moore (cf. Wildgen 2004b). The transition to abstraction
can be followed in the work of William Turner (ibidem) and Jackson Pollock (cf.
Wildgen 2008/2010).
In architecture relevant theories since antiquity and Renaissance (Vitruvius, Palladio)
describe the inscription of buildings into their contexts, the major viewing perspectives
and the central functions. The motion patterns (or ritual steps) of users ask for
a dynamic view of architectural design. In the urban context long term dynamics
like economic growth, traffic routes, mobility of inhabitants create very complicated
and often conflicting strategies of understanding and usage. Morphogenetic fields
of urban development have been analyzed in Wildgen (2007a,b); this links urban semiotics
to dynamic semiotics and to the evolution of urban
structures (since the Neolithic period; cf. evolutionary semiotics).
The understanding of the spatial cues of architecture and urban structures builds
on the mental capacities of man and their cultural unfolding in the history of architecture
and urban planning (cf. cognitive semiotics).
Theatre and film (media) concern simultaneously visual and
literary semiotics. In all historically transmitted forms of visual art
and architecture iconographic traditions and iconographic memory are of central
concern. This can be shown for very intensively treated topics, e.g. the topic of
the Last Supper in the Christian tradition (cf. Wildgen 2004).