Multimodal Semiotics and Collaborative Design

JUS: We wanted to symbolize nuclear power, countries that have the power to destroy the
world. That was our communicative idea.
The third group project (figure 8.5) by the Awesome Three group contains two objects as design
elements: an oversized pink stereo to disseminate messages on positive thinking and smartness,
which also had large rotating antenna to represent broadcasting, and a multi-colored scripted
dance floor, which students collected and reused for their purposes. For the Awesome Three group,
a major challenge was to communicate the experiential functions of the design. They believe it is
hard for non-users of SL to completely understand neither the meaning potentials of their designs
nor challenges of the design process. In this group, the use of colors, textures, sound and
animations as semiotic resources was significant, as the design of the group’s concept was based on
music and dancing.
The final group, Water Avengers, also designed two objects (figure 8.6). This group’s design
concept was based on water pollution, and similar to the Awesome Three group their aim was to
create social awareness. However, the experiential meanings in their two objects do not show the
same characteristics with the previous group, as their “practical” solution was meant to answer an
experiential meaning while the “symbolic” solution serves as interpersonal signifier to their
messages:
CEL: There were two solutions to the problem
GIU: One is more practical, and the swimming pool is like a monument
MAT: The more important thing was to change the minds and behaviors of people
CEL: Because you asked us to design objects that communicate something. We thought how
can we communicate water pollution (..) then we thought monument.
The students in this group also mention the ways in which they used so-called “ecological” material
textures and linguistic texts for constructing their rhetorical messages, supporting the multimodal
idea. These “ecological” textures mainly included images of water and wood, which the students
found in their SL inventories. Since one of the students in this group was proficient with graphic
design software, they also utilized these tools to create texture maps, and imported these textures
to SL.
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