Multimodal Semiotics and Collaborative Design

tied to a process of actualization; and the relevant opposition is rather between ‘the continuous
actual-virtual system’ and the ‘already vanishing present’. In the Deleuzean sense, interpretation
(mental image) of reality will essentially be: “(1) limited in scope by the time and place of the
observer, (2) structured according to the modalities of sense, and (3) ontologically secondary to the
thing it represents” (Gaffney 2010: 13). Similarly, Frédéric Keck (2005) claims that the virtual, the
symbolic, and the actual are three intertwined degrees of experience, and they interact complex
and productive ways. Here, the symbolic acts as an intermediary level between the virtual and the
actual.
In technology-oriented cases of digital communication and virtual presence, signification and
definition of reality becomes an even more complex epistemological problem. In cases such as
multimedia production, where technology is the issue of semiotic analysis, articulation of
potentials and new means of production is important, as “previously technically, materially and
professionally distinct forms of production come together through and in the affordances of the
new technology” (Kress and van Leeuwen 2001: 123). User performances in physical space are
translated to the virtual environment by the mediation of digital technologies; thus, it is possible to
imagine a conceptual relationship between physical actions and their counterparts in the virtual
environment. Social psychologist Jim Blascovich and virtual reality researcher Jeremy Bailenson
(2011) formulate the dichotomy between the real and the virtual by referring to social psychology,
and prefer to discuss in terms of a grounded reality instead. For Blascovich and Bailenson, virtual
behavior (social action in virtual environments) is in fact real, and people apply similar behavioral
templates that they use in grounded reality into the digital realm. Digital communication scholar
Jonathan Steuer (1992) claims that the definition of virtual reality is based on the experiential
concepts of presence and telepresence. Steuer discusses the technological dimensions that
contribute to the construction of these two experiential dimensions in relation to the analysis of
several environmental factors, such as vividness and interactivity. All these interrelated issues on
how the co-designers interpret and co-produce discourses on reality and virtuality in their designs
are reflected in my methodology. The construction of the co-designers’ meaning-makings on the
design processes and the final products can depend on the ways in which they interpret the VW’s
affordances and constraints, and they think virtual places should be signified in a world where
avatars are not bound by conventional RL physics.
3.3. Space, place and virtual place: The semiotic and experiential views
It is necessary to discuss psychological, phenomenological and social aspects of the semiotic
transformation from space to place in order to understand social practices of multimodal signmaking
through collaborative design of virtual places. The semiotic aspect of place-making results
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