1. Indexicality & metaphor The Ethics and Politics of Virtuality and Indexicality Bradford, 1 July 2005 Marianne van den Boomen Institute Media & Re/presentation University Utrecht, The Netherlands

2. Indexicality & metaphor Metaphors in daily Internet practice Materialist semiotics Connections between: concepts & artifacts signs & events code & matter

3. Where is my mail? Brand new permanent connection, just ‘click & go’ But: no mail in the inbox Online? Cables, hardware? No, software No need to connect first, cf. configuration at work

4. There is the mail... Brand new permanent connection, just ‘click & go’ But: no mail in the inbox Online? Cables, hardware? No, software No need to connect first, cf. configuration at work Missing link, hidden steps Small conceptual error Computer illiteracy? No, literacy!

5. Analysis: 1. icontology Inclination to take the icon literally, iconic metaphorical sedution The function of desktop icons: reduction & delegation Double faced sign: Towards user: signifying job, metaphor for result Towards machine: executing job, indexical reference to code Replacing complex processes by an ontological state, place or thing Representing ontological simplicity, depresenting complexity Icontology = at interface value

6. Analysis: 2. expected immediacy Expectation of immediate result Default and touchstone for any mediation One-click ideology and discourse (instant updates, plug & play etc) Historical frames and future dreams, interfaceless computing Default dream of immediacy, icontological slumber Failure and rupture shows implied labour of configuration and processing

7. Analysis: 3. transference & transmediation Conceptual transference from work to home configuration Ubiquitous situations of transference: standardised computer interfaces and operation network transferences & transmediations content (copy, mail, downloading) modality (file -> print, live -> webcam, sound -> files) format (Word -> PDF,.wav ->.mp3) Identical digital identical one-to-one transference? Only on the 0-1 machine level, not on human readable interface Transference by analogical representation and metaphor

8. Metaphors in action Metaphorical transferences: Visual representations Metaphorical seduction, icontology & depresentation Transmediation as cross-domain transfer Lakoff & Johnson: conceptual metaphor Cross-domain mapping ‘Target-domain is source-domain’

9. Target-domain is source-domain SOURCE-DOMAIN POSTAL MAIL postbox letters, packets, junk sending, receiving opening, reading sorting, disposing delivery by postman postal distribution system TARGET-DOMAIN E-MAIL mail program messages push the send or get button click the message subject move to folder or delete mail server at provider connect to provider, ‘fetch mail’

11. Material metaphor Katherine Hayles: materality of text, mediation & code Material metaphor: connection between symbols and material artifacts Mailbox icon, with double reference: Conceptual (source/target-domain, understanding) Material (blackboxed events-domain, action) Digital events-domain: software & hardware No direct access for the user, but mediated: different conceptual, analogical translations represented on an interface

12. Levels of signification C.S. Peirce: eventhood and thinghood of the sign Classification based on relation between sign and object: icon (resemblance) Index (existential causation or proximity) symbol (arbitrary, conventional) Are desktop icons Peircian icons? 1.Appearance: mailbox = icon, telephone = index, browser = symbol 2.Action: all indexical, since invoking machine processes 3.Total signification: all symbolical, since arbitrary and conventionally coded, both for user and machine

13. Levels of material indexicality Peirce’s classification of signs: more trichotomies of levels Desktop icons: dicent (‘factual’) legisign (expression of a general rule) in the form of icon, index or symbol Signifieds can become new signifiers (signs), involving new objects and signifieds (interpretants) Virtual indexicality and executing indexicality However, no loss of indexicality by digitisation!