“The Man in the Gallery with the Writing on His Face: Depictions of the Audience at the Diana Inquest” by Graham White provides an intriguing micro study, using communicative and gestures concepts, and in particular methodology of performance studies, of crowd or fan behaviours of observers at the inquest into the death of Lady Diana. The study is illustrates the often uncomfortable yet blurred relationship between authoritative mass media reporting, and personalised accounts and responses by private observers. “Media commentators tended to cast their own journalistic readings of the social interactions and performances they witnessed around the courtroom as authoritative and objective, while deriding private spectators’ own readings of such encounters as delusional.” In an age of blogging, online commentary and twitter, the distinction between private and public accounts of events is blurred. What is pertinent for the Diana Inquest can be generalised to elections, celebrities and world events.
“The Motorcar and Desire: a Cultural and Literary Reconsideration of the Motorcar in Modernity,” by Paul Ryder, is an eloquent analysis of discourse surrounding the development and diffusion of technical innovation, in particularly of the twentieth century motorcar. One is reminded of keynote studies in the sociology of science, particular of Bruno Latour that sought concepts that would personalise and integrate human and technical worlds. Ryder eloquently teases out sub and nuanced discourses that make cultural history both familiar yet also obscure, and that refresh our “organs of cultural perception” of relatively modern history. The paper also provides a window into inquiry about technical and mathematical phenomena, providing a useful stimulus for further contributions.
“Designers: Thinking Meta’s Through, Shaping Signs that Comfort” by Soo Meng Jude Chua, is a well researched and carefully formulated paper, that is best read in the context of wider inquiry into religion as a semiotic field. Soo Meng intriguingly and directly combines religion and design as the field of study, maintaining a focused “fully moral and robustly metaphysical viewpoint” to use an Augustinian theory to present a semio-ethical argument. “But what exactly is ‘design thinking’, and what are the opportunities that design thinking can open up for human civilization?” In asking this key question Soo Meng stimulates and invites a wide ranging debate into iconicity and aesthetics. It is possible to respond to or even question some of the paper’s ideas, while admiring its composure and thorough style. It is certainly a stimulus for diverse and ongoing inquiry into religion and semiotics, as well as design.
It is pleasing to have two bi lingual contributions in this issue. Alberto Quero’s “Narratological approaches to “The pups” (“Los Cachorros”), by Mario Vargas Llosa” offers analysis of narrative in a major non English fictional text. He employs and demonstrates classical European approaches to literary semiology, to establish an interpretive model for approaching the text. The paper includes the author’s own English translation, or rather version, of the paper, which is presented online in a column format adjacent to the original. The inclusion of non English literary material and language is welcomed in this publication, reflecting the true cultural and regional diversity and authenticity that is one of the journal’s primary aims.
Finally, but by no means last, it is a pleasure to have several video interviews with two scholars prominent in relevant fields – Paul Bouissac and Robert Innis. There is always a transformative difference between written text and video, as a platform for discourse. Hopefully these introductory videos serve educational and research purposes, and act as a stimulus for reflection and contributions on our special theme, “Videography and New Media.”