177 Cham
177 Cham
177 Cham
Karen Cham
Kingston University
London
[email protected]
It is ‘post structuralism’ that offers us a working notion of images as systems of signs whose
‘semantic spaces’ are defined by networks of changing conceptual relationships. As a dialectical
method it has provided useful paradigms for addressing our conceptual interaction with, and
interpretation of, diverse art, design & media visualisations. However, it is limited in effectively
accounting for the significant interaction between the abstractions that are media images and
actual behaviours as practices ‘outstrips theoretical understanding of the relationship between the
sign and the signified, the simulation and the social, the model and the real’.
In the sciences, it is ‘systems thinking’ that emphasizes a concern with relationships, systems and
networks. Here, ‘emergent behaviour’ is accounted for as a recognizable characteristic of
‘complexity’; a new type of science concerning systems that are sufficiently complex as to display
a capacity for ‘autopoiesis’ or ‘self making’.
The author has previously proposed that a convergence of post structuralism and complexity may
allow some greater understanding of the generative feedback loop between the conceptual,
computational and very real ‘semantic behaviours’ of digital culture.
Here she elaborates that as the abstractions of synergetic brand architectures and designed
identity systems are used more and more to underpin user experiences, this type of distributed,
networked, ‘cloud semantics’ can be recognised as the soft engineering of participatory semantic
systems where the emergent actual behaviours are the intentional result of generating metaphoric
‘virtual’ avatars for us all to involuntarily inhabit as part of the natural ‘autopoetics’ of the digital
age.
Post structuralism. Complex systems. Semantics. Emergence. Autopoiesis. User Experience Design.
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Karen Cham
Jacques Derrida who took this proposal to its This work is not coincidental; it is designed to
logical conclusion with ‘deconstruction’; an attempt promote the pasta sauce.
to demonstrate that any text can be deconstructed
to into multitudinous interpretations irrespective of Post-structuralism has however, prefigured a
the authorial intent. number of important key aspects of digital
interaction. Key concepts such as Barthes ‘death of
As an analytical method, poststructuralist ‘textual the author’– the apriori that all cultural artefacts are
analysis’ can be implemented to demonstrate that open to interpretation, and all meanings must be
initially any text has multiple interpretations ‘completed’ by the ‘reader’ had been established by
anchored in contextual cultural narratives and post structuralist theory in the 1970s; indeed
ideologies. Textual analysis relies upon the Umberto Ecos concept of the ‘open work’ has also
successful implementation of the basic been an established concept for over 30 years and
representational concept of a ‘sign’ which both play out very successfully in the context of the
comprises of a ‘signifier’ and a ‘signified’. This computational arts. Lyotard's definition of the
scientific study of signs is known as ‘semiotics’ and ‘performativity’ of knowledge in a cybernetic society
poststructuralist semiotics finds its roots in the work is manifest on a daily basis on the internet; even
of French linguist, Ferdinand de Saussure whose Saussure himself, almost a century ago, described
work underpins the European notion of ‘semiotics’ spoken language as a performative system in use.
which focuses upon human signs and discourse;
significantly different to the American notion of
‘semiology’ which is concerned with broader
‘universal’ sign systems. (Pierces semiology thus
posits a potentially unworkable 56,049 different
sign types. His initial triad of signs; iconic, indexical
and symbolic have proved invaluable however to
the Saussurian inheritance (see Cobley & Jansz
1997)).
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Karen Cham
mankind in what is, in effect, a virtual or as a dialectical method that breaks with logical and
holographic state, composed only of appearances. causal analyses to emphasize relationships within
a whole. It can be traced from Socrates through
From the poststructuralist perspective then, we can Hegel to pragmatics and systems theory (Ball
observe in the work of both Derrida, Barthes & 1979). It is in Ludwig von Bertalanffy ‘General
Baudrillard, a severance of the text from authorial Systems Theory’ of 1969 that we find the roots of
intent and an absence of interaction between the this dialectic as an applied trans-disciplinary
text, its context and its interpretation. Thus the methodology; a means of identifying systemic
pragmatic effects of media images are dissolved principles common to different ‘systems’ from
into the flux of relationships intertwined in different disciplines. General Systems Theory
signification processes. allows us to apprehend mechanical systems such
as a car engine, biological systems such as the
As a result, post structuralism has struggled to heart, or social systems such as a school, from a
effectively account for the significant interaction common theoretical perspective. Aside from their
between images and actual behaviours, falling very obvious differences, all such systems are
back on Raymond Williams interpretative notion of highly organised and integrated wholes whose
‘human agency’ where, by robustly juxtaposing any component parts are themselves recognisable as
idea of technological determinism in our ‘subsystems’. Furthermore, such systems can be
consumption of television content, this theory fails understood as operating by means of inputs,
to properly account for any intentionality on the part processes and outputs to accomplish an overall,
of the producer whatsoever. systemic goal. In this way, a system is always more
than the sum of its parts. Systems can also be
Thirty years later, by virtue of the velocity of defined as either ‘open’ or ‘closed’, which
technological change, many digital practices conventionally describes the systems degree of
interaction with its environment, with open systems
‘outstrip theoretical understanding of the interestingly, being more likely to prosper.
relationship between the sign and the signified,
the simulation and the social, the model and the
In systems theory then, a ‘system’ can be said to
real’
consists of
This demonstrates the key problem in using post
structuralism to effectively account for the main • Objects - the component parts (abstract or
defining aspect of digitally media; its interactivity. physical) of the system
The term is used here to refer to any media that is • Attributes- qualities or properties of the
system and its objects.
‘a machine system which reacts in the moment, • Relationships-between its internal objects
by virtue of automated reasoning based on data • Environment – within which the system
from its sensory apparatus’ (Penny 1996) exists
Post structuralisms core concepts are anchored in Systems theory has become an holistic approach
the notion of interpretation, which is, the author has to scientific analysis that views whole systems
argued, significantly different to interaction. In based upon the links and interactions between the
digital interaction the users interpretation is in many component parts, their relationship to each other
cases represented and fedback into the original and the environment within which they exists. It is a
artefact; interaction is thus significantly more type of thinking that is useful to apprehend dynamic
enactive than interpretation. Furthermore in its phenomena such as networks, interactions and
reactive response to structuralist thought post processes and stands in stark contrast to
structuralism abandoned any notion of deterministic conventional science, based upon Descartes’s
relationship whatsoever between the signifier and reductionism, where the aim is to analyse a system
the signified, the text, its context and its by reducing something to its component parts.
interpretation, which serves only amplifies the void (Wilson 1998)
where notions of interactivity should lie. These
relationships are neither transcendently fixed nor As is apparent, systems theory is a way of thinking
entirely arbitrary but in a fluctuating, interactive rather than a specific set of rules, and similarly
feedback loop. there is no single unified Theory of Complexity, but
several different theories have arisen from the
natural sciences, mathematics and computing. As
3. COMPLEX SYSTEMS THEORY
such, the study of complex systems is very
In the sciences, it is ‘systems thinking’ that interdisciplinary and encompasses more than one
emphasizes a concern with relationships, systems theoretical framework. Whilst key ideas of
and networks. Systems thinking’ can be recognised complexity theory developed through artificial
intelligence and robotics research, other important
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Karen Cham
contributions came from thermodynamics, biology, experiences. When expanded to the pragmatic
sociology, physics, economics and law. effects of media, this approach also allows us to
perceive a generative feedback loop between
In her volume for the Elsevier Advanced media images and the ‘semantic behaviours’ of
Management Series, “Complex Systems and digital media culture such as brand loyalty, the
Evolutionary Perspectives on Organisations”, Eve trajectory of celebrity and ‘pre-mediated’ acts of
Mittleton Kelly defines some generic principles of violence where representation of the act seems
complex systems as: integral to the crime on the part of the perpetrator.
• self-organisation
• emergence
• interdependence
• feedback
• space of possibilities
• co-evolving
• creation of new order
.
These principles can just as easily be traced in
virtual systems as they can in real ones, for
example, a digitally interactive environment such as
the world wide web, clearly demonstrates all the
key aspects of a complex system. Indeed, it has
already been described as a ‘complexity machine’
(Qvortup 2006). In his 2006 paper, Lars Qvortup
describes the internet itself as a ‘complexity
machine’ and described the international crisis
provoked by the publication of a cartoon of the
prophet Mohammed, as a ‘communications event’
(Qvortup 2006). This is rationally demonstrated Figure 4: The “emerging media eco-system” (Bowman &
when comparing the traditional top down model of Willis 2003)
news generation, distribution and consumption to
the “emerging media eco-system” (Bowman & The recent work of Ira Livingston sets out this
Willis 2003). It is clear there is some form of causal notion of an ‘autopoiesis’ or ‘self-making’ capacity
relation between the image, the system and the for language based systems. Livingstons
behaviour. ‘autopoetics’ or ‘the convergence of words and
things’ is based on the proposition that a
It is in design for interactive media arts, where language based system is
algorithms meet images, and the user can
interact, adapt and amend the artefact, that self- ‘of the world, like galaxies and ecosystems…it
organisation, emergence, interdependence, participates in what it represents’ (Livingston
feedback, the space of possibilities, co-evolution 2006)
and the creation of new order are embraced on
a day to day basis by artists, designers and
users alike.
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Karen Cham
create’ (Ardill 2010). We know that users complex systems theory with systems art and
experience of brands feedsback into the brand digital media.
identity itself; one only needs to think of Gerald
Ratners ill thought out comments that the earrings This ‘Complex Adaptive Structuralism’ allows us to
sold in his shops were understand more about the complex adaptive
systems of media culture as a whole and raises
“cheaper than a prawn sandwich but probably important questions about the generative capacity
wouldn’t last as long” of representation per se within a solid theoretical
framework. As a design methodology it is a
to understand how easily the ‘emperors clothes’ of
proposal for a ‘Reconstruction Theory’; whereas
a successful brand can evaporate; within weeks the
Derrida’s deconstruction is ‘fractal’ textual analysis
share price of ‘Ratners’ decreased by £500 million
of the conceptual interpretive systems of the
and his large UK chain of jewellers closed down
reader, Reconstruction Theory is a design
(http://www.mpowerpeople.co.uk/2011/05/7-ways-
methodology and critical tool regarding the
that-being-too-real-on-twitter-can-kill-your-
intentional authorship of a space of possibility in
business/). Whilst in the nascent field of ‘neuro
complex media for emergent behaviours, as part of
economics’, even an EEG machine can detect
any complex text that is intended to be interactive
ones exposure to ‘putative branding moments
such as an installation, networked web
within TV commercials’. (Braeutigam 2004)
communities and massively multiplayer games.
As it becomes easier to demonstrate the ‘When designing digitally interactive artifacts we
relationships between design and behaviour, not design parameters or co ordinates to define the
least as both the design and the behaviour take space within which a performative autopoeitic
place via a GUI, new disciplines such as process will take place. We can never begin to
‘behavioural economics’ are looking at how a predict precisely what those processes might
product’s UX design can even encourage user become through interaction, emergence and self
behaviours that are detrimental to users’ best organization, but we can and do establish and
then author parameters that guide and delineate
interests; a design style known ominously as ‘dark
the space of possibilities’. (Cham 2007)
patterns’. (Brignull 2010)
As the abstractions of this type of synergetic brand
Dark Patterns are not bad design, deriving from architectures and designed identity systems are
ignorance, laziness and a lack of attention to detail used more and more to underpin user experiences,
etc, Dark Patterns are designed systems that have this constitutes in effect distributed, networked,
been ‘cloud semantics’ as part of the soft engineering of
participatory semantic systems where the emergent
‘crafted with great attention to detail, and a solid
understanding of human psychology, to trick
actual behaviours are the intentional result of
users into do things they wouldn’t otherwise generating metaphoric ‘virtual’ avatars for us all to
have done’. (Brignull 2010) involuntarily inhabit as a driver of the natural
‘autopoetics’3 of the digital age.
We can see from dark patterns that it is really not
that difficult to design for intended user behaviours
through GUI based systems. Thus, brand identity is 6. CONCLUSIONS
being rapidly integrated into UX and expanded
across analogue and digital platforms in a mixed Digital media is forcing our understanding of
reality user experience; so its no longer a case of interactivity between representation and the real as
real experiences feeding back into our perception ‘the terms art, design and media converge into a
of a brand identity but of a co-evolving ecosystem process driven, performative event that
of associations in a ‘cybernetic’ version of ‘touch demonstrates emergence through autopoietic
point orchestration’ (Abbing & Gessel 2010). processes’
The author has previously proposed a convergence The void between the signifier and the signified is
of the poststructuralist and complexity theory as a the interaction between polarized conceptual
means of understanding the ‘material’ qualities of constraints inherited from Rene Descartes (In the
digital media cultural systems (Cham 2007). It is a Philosophy of Mind, Rene Descartes states that the
proposal built upon the basis of a theoretical immaterial mind and the material body are separate
continuum from Saussurian linguistics and the and that they interact with each other.). We
concern with synchronic systems and performance; struggle to understand the interaction between the
it predicates post structuralism and the role of the conceptual (non material) and the physical
‘reader’ in ‘completing’ the emergent meaning of (material)“ as we struggle to rationally integrate the
‘open’ texts and integrates systems thinking and notions of mind and body unified in embodied
interaction with immersive interfaces as the
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Karen Cham
conceptual is increasingly mediated and then November, Pages 355-360 2nd Conference on
materialized. NeuroEconomics - ConNEcs 2004.
Brignall, H. (2010) Dark Patterns: dirty tricks
Whilst post-structuralism prefigures the processes designers use to make people do stuff,
of digital interaction to an extent, a complex notion http://www.90percentofeverything.com/2010/07/08/
of language systems accounts for emergent dark-patterns-dirty-tricks-designers-use-to-make-
behaviours rather than simply emergent people-do-stuff/comment-page-3/#comment-
interpretations. This immediately crosses the 161069 (23 May 2011)
Cartesian void between signification and the real.
Brignall, H. (2010) UX Brighton Presentation on
Furthermore, it appears that some type of Dark Patterns,
autopoiesis is at play here across that void; not http://www.90percentofeverything.com/2010/09/13/
only that language systems and behaviour patterns ux-brighton-presentation-on-dark-patterns/ (23 May
are complex systems themselves, and part of the 2011)
complex nested system of culture in dynamic, Cham, K.L. and Johnson, J.H. (2007) ‘Complexity
interactive relation, but that they are equally ‘real.’ Theory; a Science of Cultural Systems?’, ‘M/C
In this realm of autopoetics, signification is best Journal’, Complex, 10: 3, J. Cahir and S. James
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transformation of the real & experience design, International Journal of
Performance Arts & Digital Media, Vol 3 Issue
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