Our first lecture was on Semiology - the study of signs

We started the lecture with an introduction to language and doing a little activity - Devise a sentence
 that no-one has uttered before in the history of human communication 

 I said - “Muskaan a great is singer” 

We then moved onto the Saussure’s theory of the arbitrary relationship between the concept and the sound image - which really confused me. I didn’t understand what sound image meant so I decided to use everyones best friend - google. I read a few articles to helped me a little.

Very nicely explained here- 

[Signifier and Signified, no date]

I used this to make the notes below and read a few more articles to clear out doubts and understand this concept better. 

Joseph Kosuth’s ‘One and Three Chairs’ is an example that challenges the viewers to engage and think about what communicates what. The viewer must consider whether the differences among these types of representation are important or whether it is even possible to articulate those differences.

One and Three chairs by Joseph Kosuth (1965)

Moreover, I thought Marcel Broodhader’s ‘The Farm Animals’ was a good example to understand semiology - how one thing can be used to compare and understand  another thing.

The Farm Animals by Marcel Broodhader (1974)

The concept was connotation and denotation was also very interesting, along with those of myths and anchorage.

Denotation - the physical reality, the object.

Connotation - Arbitrary meaning (affected by reader’s rules and conventions) 

For example, 

Denotation - this is a picture of a dove - a stocky bird with a small head, short legs, and a cooing voice, feeding on seeds or fruit. Doves are generally smaller and more delicate than pigeons, but many kinds have been given both names.

Connotation - peace, love, harmony, white, innocence, hope, compassion, heals the world, maternal symbol.

Before this session, I thought myth were old stories that were used to describe natural or social phenomenon, and typically involved supernatural beings or events. This example shown to us in class explained the concept of myth better and how its applicable in the world today. 

This cover is a picture of a young black boy, saluting. But, it signifies way more. It could led the viewers to believe that all Africans accepted the French imperial power - which was a myth. 

A good example that was shown to us that helped understand what anchorage meant is this painting by Vincent Van Gogh. 

When I first saw it I thought its a nice painting of a field. I think it shows life and growth.

But then, we were shown the next slide….

This instantly changed my perspective. I could suddenly see the day in the picture look more like a torn which could represent the “storm” in Van Gogh’s life perhaps? And I noticed the end of the path in the middle of the painting - is that his way of showing the his “end”? It was titles “Wheat filled with crow” do the crows, that are black, supposed to be another representation of death? The small ‘fact’ attached with the image instantly changed my perspective. And that’s what anchorage is. Barthes describes it as when text is used to add meaning or convey an intended meaning in some way or direct the viewers interpretation in some way. 

Although some parts of this lecture confused me and it took me quite a well to understand certain aspects, it was also really eye-opening to understand how semiology extends beyond the conventional icons, signs and indexes we see around in our day to lives. There is more to it and a lot of different things affect our understanding of different signs. 

At the end of the lecture, we did another activity in pairs. We were given a pair of brands and we were supposed to write first introductions by each brand to each other as if they were people. My partner Elen and I got Dulux and Farrow & Ball. We started with research of the brands and wrote these introductions as if these 'people' met each other at the bar and had a conversation.