DIAGNÓSTICO DE RSE

The above premise might presume that the designer can place a certain meaning into an artefact and that the user, in turn, simply reads the same meaning from that artefact. But meaning is not simply a straightforward entity

that can be transferred as such. The basics of communication theories explain that this basic model is complicated by the translation or, better stated

‘transformation’ process into and from the artefact (Oomkes 2000, chapter 1):

Fig. 4. The basic model of communication (based on Oomkes 2000, chapter 1)²⁵

In addition, the word ‘meaning’ can be problematic if it is interpreted in the sense of ‘intention’, ‘purpose’ or ‘value’, as in ‘the meaning of life’. Dutch psychologist Piet Vroon (1976, p.126) simply equates ‘meaning’ to ‘context’, which he illustrates effectively with the following image:

fig. 5. ‘Meaning = Context’ (Vroon 1976, p.126)

25 This model corresponds to Peirce’s semiotic triangle in fig. 3. and the positions of the designer (offering the representation) and the user (as interpreter) in relation to the artefact.

The meaning of the symbol in the centre depends on the context. From this follows that design, or signification, can also be seen as ‘providing a context’, a frame for interpretation. In film, the sound designer puts the images in an acoustic context, the music designer provides an emotional context. The supplied context can be seen as a frame for interpretation addressed to the receiver, user or viewer of the artefact. From this follows that:

A designer is a creator of context or frame for interpretation.

Salen & Zimmermann (2004, pp. 39-47) follow a similar path to the etymology of the word ‘design’ to obtain a workable definition for the design of games.

They quote Krippendorf (1995, p. 156) stating ‘design is making sense of things’, and from there derive their general definition: ‘Design is the process by which a designer creates a context to be encountered by a participant, from which meaning emerges.’ ²⁶ The interpretation of the design or signification by the receiver depends on his or her own context. The background of the user, their circumstances, their memories, their taste and environment, are all guiding the perception. The designer has no influence on this interpretation other than hoping that the user will read his/her vocabulary of signification. By using conventions designers can try to augment their chances to convey their intentions to a particular context. As the above illustration by Vroon shows, deliberate ambiguous representation (the figure in the centre) allows for multiple explanations in more than one context. Sound designers for suspense movies gratefully exploit this principle by creating nondescript sound effects to allow for a plurality of interpretations. The Kuleshov Effect is a film editing technique that benefits from the phenomenon that viewers will have their own emotional understanding of a sequence of images. Russian filmmaker Lev Kuleshov demonstrated that a single shot of an actor with an ambiguous

expression on his face could convey a multitude of very distinct meanings in the mind of the viewer, depending on the nature of the shot immediately preceding it’ (Open Culture 2012).

26 Italics from the original text.

Since the 1950s the recognition of this phenomenon of reinterpretation and the influence of the observer as a part of perception has led to radical changes in thinking about meaning within the disciplines of physics, philosophy,

psychology and literary criticism. Philosophical and cultural movements such as structuralism, post-structuralism, post-modernism, and deconstruction challenged the concepts of meaning and the role of the author, designer or artist in creating it. In the pivotal essay ‘The Death of the Author’ Barthes (1977, pp. 142-148)²⁷ claims that it is not writer but the reader of a text that creates the story. In the end it is not the designer but the user that creates meaning.

In the case of film, the viewer is the best filmmaker. In the case of music and sound it is the listener who determines the meaning of what is being heard.

As noted in chapter one, in the past, meaning was for the most part dictated by authorities and passed on tracing a hierarchical path. Today, it is the common viewpoint that everybody participates in the process of signification.

Tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin notes that ‘meaning and even facts are becoming more fluid than in the days of our grandfathers’ ²⁸ (Jardin 2012, chapter 145). On Wikipedia facts and explanations are ever edited. No observation is neutral. ‘In our networked mind, the very act of observation changes the story’ (Jardin 2012, chapter 145). This dilemma had already been formulated in 1927, in the field of quantum mechanics by Werner Heisenberg.

‘No test can be devised to measure the position and speed of the individual electron, for any observation must entail some input of energy which will cause both to change’ (Whitfield 2012, chapter 31).

Painter David Hockney puts it like this: ‘Do we know what an empty room looks like?’²⁹ On the internet meaning is negotiated in multiple interrelated networks of discourse. Brian Eno articulates this concept as an ‘ecology’, the evolution of our thinking from a hierarchy (pyramid) to a network, ‘with

27 Around the same time as the publication of the book by Vroon (1976).

28 At the introduction of the first iPad in the press it was compared to the stone tablets of Moses with the Ten Commandments, to illustrate the transformation from fixed to fluid meaning.

29 David Hockney: A Bigger Picture (Wolheim 2009).

information running in all directions’ and where ‘creator and user are co-dependent’ (Eno 2012, chapter 125).

Fig. 6. The two-way process in the creation of meaning.