Friday, March 26, 2010

Friday Quotations: Something Old, Something New

I was going to post Hopkins' "Pied Beauty," but I went back to read it, and it turns out that it was a little more religious-oriented than I wanted for the moment, or at least, until I do few posts on religion in general. So in lieu of that, here's a quotation from Lev Manovich's "The Language of New Media":

"Umberto Eco once defined a sign as something that can be used to tell a lie. This definition correctly describes one function of visual representations—to deceive. But in the age of electronic telecommunication we need a new definition: A sign is something which can be used to teleact." (170)

The semiotician in me rocks back and forth in absolute glee at the implications of this statement. The rest of me shakes its weary head and wonders when the hell I developed an inner semiotician.

Later Days.

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