Multimodal Semiotics and Collaborative Design

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Curiza: I told Xavier “Xavier I want a music place where people can come, and it must look like you can do whatever you like, it must look like 2040 or something. Really futuristic” It is possible to partially infer Curiza’s position towards representations of ‘futurism and virtuality’ in relation to PAL –which he calls “very non-human” - and SL from his next comment : Curiza: If I want to create this futuristic music space, then … I can’t mix in nature in that because it’s on a computer, it’s superficial. So why mix these worlds I mean you can’t smell a flower, which is one of the things what a flower can be. It can be very beautiful, but you can’t smell it in there. Of course you can create some magic using plants and stuff like that, but it had just never been the plan for my sim. Similar to Metrotopia and PAL, the workshop student designs involved orchestration of various discursive elements and actors, including images and characters from different mythologies, movie characters and their re-semiotization as trans-gender personas, and representation of ideological content through forms, colors and multimodal (verbal/non-verbal) messages. As the groups followed the pre-constructed narrative framing in Metrotopia, their projects differentiated in terms of the use of intertextual metaphors as narrative elements. For instance, the Superheroes and Supervillains group re-created popular figures from fantasy fiction films and developed a design concept in reference to these stories, whereas the Venus and the Four Moons group’s design concept and the stories of their avatars as super-heroines reflected the ancient Egyptian mythology, with the conceptual support of their feminist approach to signification. The students had limited time and resources, thus they focused on the visual representation of messages rather than construction of complex interactions. In their final presentations, students presented not only their objects, but also their stories, their characters and a brief context-definition for illustrating the problem their project aimed to solve. Within my analytical matrix (table 8.1) construction of such intertextual representations, and genre frameworks, refer to both interpersonal and experiential meta-functions. Therefore, the semiotic cohesion of design elements not only affects the aesthetic style of the overall design, but also shapes the construction of interpersonal meaning potentials in particular areas for social presence and avatar interaction. Design of interaction places and signification of social presence Particular divisions and categorizations of the place often refer to designated areas for avatars to meet and do things together. Multimodal compositions of meeting places, and artifacts that constitute these spaces, usually refer to their meaning potentials as interpersonal and experiential agents. The interpersonal meta-function at this level signifies the meaningful social activities and the ways in which the co-designers organized the environment to afford communication between 217
avatars. In the Metrotopia and PAL projects, these communications often take place within the specific areas that are designed with specific affordances. Therefore, my analysis of meeting places focuses on the scale of divisions and elevations within the overall designs for various mediated social actions (adopted from O’Toole [2004]). I exemplify my discussions on findings such as sandboxes for content generation, stages for live concerts, or dance floors for listening to music while dancing and chatting. As I have explained earlier with reference to Caitlyn’s comments, Metrotopia’s designed layout illustrates the division of space into a group of places that emphasize particular types of mediated action. Fight Club Dojo is designed to accommodate using weapons and fighting with other avatars, Park / Sandbox is for creating (or rezzing) virtual objects, the Museum is for gathering information on Superheroes, or the Costume Bazaar is for avatar modification and character creation. PAL’s layout also shows similarities in terms of functional division of space and use of semiotic elements to signify particular types of activities. PAL has colorful seating areas for public listening, upper-level pods as more intimate places, a social club. an open-air stage for parties and concerts, and a virtual TV studio for broadcasting live talk-shows. These places Although not all workshop student projects had sufficient spatial and interpersonal characteristics to be considered as interaction places, the example I am going to analyze in this section (the oversize pink stereo and the dance floor by the Awesome Three group) bears certain affordances for social presence. By using particular examples from these various places, I will demonstrate my arguments on how interaction places are experientially, interpersonally and textually signified by the co- designers. One example of these designated social spaces is Metrotopia’s Park/Sandbox area. This area emphasizes SL’s affordances for creating virtual objects, collaborating on content generation tasks and meeting builders. In fact, the Sandbox has been the most popular location in Metrotopia to this day; in that it attracts various random visitors to the city for building purposes. Therefore, the practical function of the Sandbox often re-appropriates its purpose as a social environment for a specific type of mediated action. Caitlyn describes the “overall idea” of the visual language as “to replicate a standard park, a standard meeting place with trees and flowers and a playground”, while implying the area’s meaning potentials as “a standard meeting place, a place to hang around.” Design of the Sandbox also had undergone a significant change during the workshop. The ground floor (with natural texture) was replaced with a colorful metric grid (which shows numeric positions and sizes on ground plane) to assist content-generators (figures 22 and 23). 218
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Prologue ‘So it isn’t the origi
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Multimodal Semiotics and Collaborat
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CHAPTER 3. Social semiotics, multim
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Official and third party viewers
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List of Figures Figure 4.1 Domains
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List of Tables Table 2. 1 Theories
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1. Introduction Virtual places and
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technologies introduce new social w
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innovation studies researchers have
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contextual factors of collaborative
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creative collaboration, and creativ
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In a multimodal and multi-method ap
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three case studies. This chapter al
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2. Perspectives in virtual worlds r
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making. In fact, it is possible to
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virtual world technologies, it sign
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collaborative actions that span qui
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mediated social interaction with ot
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their perceived effects on networke
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ackdrop for the understanding of us
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multidisciplinary working (Gu et al
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Socio-cultural perspectives on co-d
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innovation differs from Bonsu and D
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In a place-centric socio-semiotic v
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Theoretical Categories Concepts and
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3. Social semiotics, multimodality
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3.1. The social semiotic approach t
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structures and analyzing the contex
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designers’ purposeful orchestrati
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communication as an essential semio
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aspects of multimodal entities for
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and-paste logic of online media, th
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from the meaning-making practices,
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and Turner 2004). Social Informatic
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From this perspective, to build (an
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human action unfolds in ‘three-di
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genius loci idea to virtual places,
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Michael de Certeau’s (1984) analy
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semiotic practices, in all kinds of
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follow similar considerations of ex
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comparatively analyzing the multimo
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Here, the relevant question for pos
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3.6. Conclusion: social semiotics a
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Theoretical Categories Concepts and
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4. Theory and practice in design re
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elations. One example of the formal
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traditional distinctions between de
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Research for design aims to provide
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potentially offers to our senses. D
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In sum, I consider affordances and
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It is certainly important that desi
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A solely production-based account o
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design problems, while its variatio
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user-driven innovations. Von Hippel
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institutional contexts (Grossen 200
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Meaning-oriented design theories
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As explained in the Introduction ch
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The multimodal social semiotic appr
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them, and (b) experiential and inte
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From multimodal analysis, I draw ce
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phenomenology of time and space (an
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My analytical framework includes a
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characteristics of design in virtua
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6. Methodology Introduction This ch
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multimodal analysis in virtual worl
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sensibilities, and methods of analy
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are contextualized by the socio-tec
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perspectives as the primary source
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‣ Communication and Design in Vir
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perspectives and methods. The evolu
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designers are not necessarily geogr
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material resources either by visiti
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and selection of participants in co
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also the reason why this case study
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within each consequent case study,
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created/constituted in the situated
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than make overall statements and ge
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in-depth qualitative understanding
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7.1. The social actors and configur
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The core design team consists of Ca
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Curiza as the owner of the sim and
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and appreciation. He says “if you
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For Curiza, the hardest part of bei
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context 5 . On the other hand, this
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interviews, combined with findings
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Comparisons with game experiences a
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modification, combination and appro
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Shaggy, who recommends designers to
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he often used the Internet for “f
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Page 192 and 193: Although Shaggy’s perspective abo
Page 194 and 195: For Caitlyn, the major advantage of
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Page 198 and 199: shared or collaborative edited by m
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Page 202 and 203: 8. Analyzing multimodal discourse i
Page 204 and 205: these places, their elevations and
Page 206 and 207: (Rank-scale/ EXPERIENTIAL / INTERPE
Page 208 and 209: Superheroes. Caitlyn, whose needs a
Page 210 and 211: Figure 8.1. View from Metrotopia: T
Page 212 and 213: Although Metrotopia was specificall
Page 214 and 215: The Fight Club Dojo is designed to
Page 216 and 217: Caitlyn: [W]e wanted to advertise,
Page 218 and 219: of expression and reception of digi
Page 220 and 221: In Curiza’s comment the introduct
Page 222 and 223: textual functions of the content (m
Page 224 and 225: their interest in such metaphors fo
Page 226 and 227: Synthesis of the findings on experi
Page 228 and 229: Caitlyn: [L]ooking at what makes up
Page 232 and 233: 0 Figure 8.22. (left) Metrotopia Pa
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Page 236 and 237: Synthesis of the findings on interp
Page 238 and 239: Figure 8.26. (left) The draw-bridge
Page 240 and 241: Use of prims as semiotic units is m
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Page 244 and 245: Xavier: It was very, EXTREMELY colo
Page 246 and 247: Texts and images are often used tog
Page 248 and 249: placement of various interactive lo
Page 250 and 251: 9. Conclusions and discussions 9.1.
Page 252 and 253: and the lack of prior experience, p
Page 254 and 255: in flux in inworld collaborative de
Page 256 and 257: potentials, and aim to reinforce th
Page 258 and 259: Although not all of the co-designer
Page 260 and 261: As mentioned in the literature surv
Page 262 and 263: Drawing on this point, I also consi
Page 264 and 265: (Kress, 2010). The analysis of the
Page 266 and 267: although he also acknowledges the r
Page 268 and 269: creative activities and reduce the
Page 270 and 271: Further directions for research The
Page 272 and 273: Bakhtin, M.M. (1986). Speech, genre
Page 274 and 275: Charmaz, K., (2002). Qualitative in
Page 276 and 277: Fischer, G. and Giaccardi, E., (200
Page 278 and 279: Halliday, M.A.K. (2007). Language a
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Jones, J.C., (2009). What is design
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Lemke, J.L. (2005). Place, pace and
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Norman, D.A. (2008). The way I see
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Reinhard, C. D., & Dervin, B. (2010
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Thackara, J. (2005). In the bubble:
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Summary in English Computer-generat
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Dansk resumé af afhandlingen Compu
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Interview Guide (Metrotopia and PAL
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Multimodal Semiotics and Collaborative Design

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