Ramiro Hinojas could have stuck to this sign system until his retirement, like most cops do in the Philippines and in the rest of the world. However, one day he decided to cross-fertilize the sign system of traffic control cop enforcement with that of dance, particularly the one invented by that mighty semiotic innovator called Michael Jackson.
These are the first two points to retain about the semiotics of innovation: first, innovation frequently stems from the conflation of two or more distinct systems of signs; second, innovation never originates from a vacuum; on the contrary, it always rests on some preexistent semiotic materials. However, there is also a third point that Ramiro Hinojas’s experience underlines: simply merging two systems of signs whatsoever does not necessarily bring about innovation. The semiotic characteristics of the first and those of the second must somehow combine in order to produce a third system that derives from them but is at the same time new and harmonious. The purpose of innovation semiotics is to determine the rules, or at least the strategies, of this “somehow”, as well as to pinpoint the hallmarks of both novelty and harmony.
In the case of Ramiro Hinojas, innovation comes about because the sign system of cop traffic control and that of dancing, especially Michael Jackson’s, already share several features. First of all, some general ones: they both adopt the body as an expressive matter and articulate it through an expressive form that is based on rhythm, that is, on the regular repetition through time of certain postures, gestures, movements, often combined according to a certain gestural syntax; then, some specific features: conflating the sign system of cop traffic control and that of another dancing style, for instance tango, would have been more complicated. Michael Jackson’s dancing language, instead, is perfect to be mimicked in traffic control: rapid and short movements arranged in a fluid array of springs and stops display the same kinetics of cops in busy traffic roads. This is the third point about innovation semiotics that this video suggests: innovation does not emanate from the conflation of two systems of signs whatsoever, but from the cross-fertilization of two systems of signs that already shared some structural characteristics, which were always there but which nobody could perceive before innovation took place. One of the purposes of innovation semiotics is to detect innovation potential where nobody has still seen it, structural similarities between systems of signs that everybody else considers as irredeemably separate.
However, discerning and conflating the common expressive features of two distinct semiotic systems is not enough. Ramiro Hinojas’s synthesis of cop traffic control and dance is innovative not only because it produces contamination of expressive patterns, but also and especially because it delivers a rearrangement of semantic configurations. The peculiarity of Ramiro Hinojas’s traffic control style consists in the fact that the expressive form he adopts, Michael Jackson’s dancing moves, has a communicative rationale that is completely different from the expressive form Hinojas is supposed to adopt, the gestural code of traffic cops. The former indeed does not bear any pragmatic value: MJ’s dancing moves are not meant to exert any action vis-à-vis their receivers; they don’t order anything; they are there to be watched and admired; their only purpose is to provoke aesthetical pleasure through the harmoniousness of their spatial and rhythmic patterns. The latter, on the opposite, does not bear any aesthetic value: a cop’s traffic control moves are expected to exert precise actions, usually orders, vis-à-vis car drivers; they don’t signify anything but that; they are not there to be observed and applauded at; their aesthetic form is not at stake.