virtualization of design and production a thesis - Bilkent University

study of signs divides the sign into its two aspects: signifier and signified. Roland
Barthes takes this study further by his concept of “second order signification
system” or “myth”.
2.2. Logic of Consumption
The works on consumption of commodities are significant since most of the
objects we encounter in our daily lives are produced, advertised and exchanged
in a market system. So it is better to recognize the objects within the discourse of
consumption since it is apparent that the objects are produced introduced and
offered to the consumers through various means and those means have a direct
influence on the consumers. Through the contribution of marketing, the objects
we consume are transformed into something non- material, an image or
representations freed from the regular use value-exchange value opposition and
gaining a more complicated characteristic. It is worth exploring the source of
these values and under which circumstances they are generated.
“Not all cultures produce objects: the concept is peculiar to
ours, born of the industrial revolution. Yet even industrial
society knows only the product, not the object. The object only
begins truly to exist at the time of its formal liberation as sign
function […] That is to say, the object only appears when the
problem of its finality of meaning, of its status as message and
a sign (of its mode of signification, of communication and of
sign exchange) begins to be posed beyond its status as product
and as commodity (beyond the mode of production, of
circulation and of economic exchange.) […] For the object is
not a thing, nor even a category; it is a status of meaning and a
form.” (Baudrillard 185)
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