The Semiosis of Media Art, Science and Technology

Abstract

The notion of semiotic mediation is proposed as a dynamic hypothesis for the remodeling of our conceptual framework in the volatile time we are living in. Semiosis can function as an anthropological-historical rainbow to demonstrate that every relation of human beings to nature has always been mediated by signs and culture. The present status of our cyber minds-bodies results from a gradual process which began when humans arose to the biped position of a primate that gesticulates and speaks. During the evolution of homo sapiens sapiens, there has been an exosomatic growth of the human brain and the human ecosphere has become more and more intelligent, full of signs, culturally marked. It has become a semiosphere. The paper discusses how the industrial, the electronic, and the digital revolutions provoked advances in the evolution of the semiosphere and also the growth of the techno- and the semiodiversity of the arts. A quantum leap occurred with the digital revolution. While the technologies inaugurated by the photographic camera -- followed by the telephone, cinema, radio, video, and holography -- introjected scientific knowledge about perceptive faculties, the present cybertechnologies introjected scientific knowledge about mental and even molecular abilities. This is opening unpredictable horizons for media arts.