Visual semiotics and automatic analysis of images from the Cultural Analytics Lab: How can quantitative and qualitative analysis be combined?
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Maria Giulia Dondero
Abstract
In this article we explore the relationship between semiotic analysis of images and quantitative analysis of vast image corpora, in particular the work produced by Lev Manovich and the Cultural Analytics Lab, called “Media Visualization.” Media Visualization has been chosen as corpus because of its metavisual operation (images are visualized and analyzed by images) and its innovating way of conceiving analysis: by visual instruments. In this paper semiotics is used as an approach to Media Visualization and taken as an object of study as well, especially visual semiotics. In this sense, a comparison between visual semiotics (close reading of small corpora) and quantitative analyses of images (distant reading of vast collections) are conducted from a semiotic point of view. Post-Greimassian semiotics guides this study with respect to the issue of the image-within-an-image and metavisual visualization; Peircean semiotics is employed to explain and develop the notion of diagram.
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge Pierluigi Basso Fossali for the discussions we had on the corpora studied in this article, as well as Jean-Pierre Bertrand and Marion Colas-Blaise for reading my drafts and making suggestions.
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Articles in the same Issue
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- Introduction to Meaningful data/Données signifiantes
- A data-driven computational semiotics: The semantic vector space of Magritte’s artworks
- New approaches to plastic language: Prolegomena to a computer-aided approach to pictorial semiotics
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- Visual semiotics and automatic analysis of images from the Cultural Analytics Lab: How can quantitative and qualitative analysis be combined?
- Uncertain infographics: Expressing doubt in data visualization
- Quelques expériences pour développer l’expression de sens en cartographie thématique
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- Differential heterogenesis and the emergence of semiotic function
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- Modal functioning of rhetorical resources in selected multimodal cartoons
- The mission of the Chinese puzzle: From a quest for order to seeking entertainment
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- Peirce’s philosophy of communication and language communication
- Mythic symbolic type, utopia, and body without organs
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- Transference of brand personality in brand name translation: A case study on the Chinese-English translation of men’s clothing brands
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Introduction to Meaningful data/Données signifiantes
- A data-driven computational semiotics: The semantic vector space of Magritte’s artworks
- New approaches to plastic language: Prolegomena to a computer-aided approach to pictorial semiotics
- Mesures et savoirs : Quelles méthodes pour l’histoire culturelle à l’heure du big data ?
- Visual semiotics and automatic analysis of images from the Cultural Analytics Lab: How can quantitative and qualitative analysis be combined?
- Uncertain infographics: Expressing doubt in data visualization
- Quelques expériences pour développer l’expression de sens en cartographie thématique
- Raw data or hypersymbols? Meaning-making with digital data, between discursive processes and machinic procedures
- Differential heterogenesis and the emergence of semiotic function
- Regular Articles
- Semiotic alignment: Towards a dialogical model of interspecific communication
- Modal functioning of rhetorical resources in selected multimodal cartoons
- The mission of the Chinese puzzle: From a quest for order to seeking entertainment
- Memes, genes, and signs: Semiotics in the conceptual interface of evolutionary biology and memetics
- Formalisation sémiotique de la traduction : Le modèle transformationnel d’Alexandre Ljudskanov
- Glossopoesis in Thomas More’s Utopia: Beyond a representation of foreignness
- Playing peripatos: Creativity and abductive inference in religion, art and war
- Borders and translation: Revisiting Juri Lotman’s semiosphere
- Peirce’s philosophy of communication and language communication
- Mythic symbolic type, utopia, and body without organs
- The contribution of narrative semiotics of experiential imaginary to the ideation of new digital customer experiences
- Transference of brand personality in brand name translation: A case study on the Chinese-English translation of men’s clothing brands
- Intertextuality as a strategy of glocalization: A comparative study of Nike’s and Adidas’s 2008 advertising campaigns in China
- The semiotic web of the research proposal
- Sic vita est: Visual representation in painting of the conceptual metaphor LIFE IS A JOURNEY
