Emerging cultures and semiotic mediations – CEMES

Within this framework, the media aren’t considered as things in itself: no medium without technique nor contents. Media, digital media included, have to be regarded as expression forms that take part, with the discourses and genders that they convey, in the constitution and in the propagation of cultural practices. It is this deciding point which justifies and makes the semiotic analysis necessary and drives the development of a semiotics of mediation. This semiotics of mediation meets both the characteristics of a cultural and of a formal semiotics; but is capable of answering a social need and to produce an appraisal in the signifying mediation domain. In these two first areas of research, the semiotics thinking about modern media formats leads to the major notion of intermediality. From practices to works, the semiotic analysis describes systematically how intermediality affects the signification of current cultural productions

These three areas back up the working out of a semiotics of mediation, fitting the description of emerging cultures of the contemporary world but loyal to the scientific requirements of the structuralist epistemology semiotics.

The third area of research which isn’t focused on the semiotics of signification but on the additional point of view of communication, being allocated to the analysis of “new practices of the communication and marketing in a digital era”. Relying on an experimental plan of validation, are analyzed: - the new negative interactions forms between brands and audiences – the discursive consequences of the appearance of an assessment society – and the mutation of interpretative practices linked to the arrival of a third-reader

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The ANR CEMES’ ambition is to describe, from a semiotics point of view, the way media transformations are capable of making new cultures rise thanks to new meaningful signifying practices. This objective clearly said implies that we are restricted to the discursive expressions of culture (texts, works, interfaces, posters, files, blogs, marketing communications, social networks and so on) but that we are planning to take them into consideration from a relatively innovative point of view; in disciplines dealing with signification: the signification of the support, of its constraints and of the media specificities.

Within this framework, the media aren’t considered as things in itself: no medium without technique nor contents. Media, digital media included, have to be regarded as expression forms that take part, with the discourses and genders that they convey, in the constitution and in the propagation of cultural practices. It is this deciding point which justifies and makes the semiotic analysis necessary and drives the development of a semiotics of mediation. This semiotics of mediation meets both the characteristics of a cultural and of a formal semiotics; but is capable of answering a social need and to produce an appraisal in the signifying mediation domain. In these two first areas of research, the semiotics thinking about modern media formats leads to the major notion of intermediality. From practices to works, the semiotic analysis describes systematically how intermediality affects the signification of current cultural productions.

In the first area, “an intermediality culture: the practices”, we are switching – from the description of the more elementary categories involved in intermediality: the formats and the functions evolutions, and the role of analogy in the different types of support and current media – to an investigation on the possibility of foreseeing the constraints linked to the computerized declinations of the same original. Follows then the semiotic analysis of digital interfaces where is indeed analyzed, the fundamental intermedial conversion which consists in switching from the software interface to the material interface. The journey of practices ends on an inquiry based on the game of the medium transpositions exploited by the communication of geographic spaces categorized as “non-lieux”.

The second area, “an intermediality culture: the works” begins with the comparison of the media potentiality of digital support and the general literary prescriptions, linked to existing genders such as albums for children or autofiction novels. The second research explores the repercussion of intermediality on hybrid cultural productions, including in a way or in another the “cinema” medium, such as Histoire(s) du cinéma (J.-L. Godard, 1998-2006) or the recent Game of Thrones (1999-2013). The analysis is finally enriched thanks to a general thought about the connection in between the cultural invariants and the media variations.

The third area of research which isn’t focused on the semiotics of signification but on the additional point of view of communication, being allocated to the analysis of “new practices of the communication and marketing in a digital era”. Relying on an experimental plan of validation, are analyzed: - the new negative interactions forms between brands and audiences – the discursive consequences of the appearance of an assessment society – and the mutation of interpretative practices linked to the arrival of a third-reader.

These three areas back up the working out of a semiotics of mediation, fitting the description of emerging cultures of the contemporary world but loyal to the scientific requirements of the structuralist epistemology semiotics.