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In this article, the author endeavours to analyse Gerhard Richter’s photo-paintings for the way they build an intersemiotic dialogue between photography and painting. On the one hand, he tries to characterize the modalities of this dialogue and to provide an original interpretation of Richter’s work. On the other hand, he uses the special case of Richter’s work as a starting point for a conceptual renewal in the analysis of visual languages, notably with regard to semiotic approaches. In particular, the author aims to define the mediatic dimension of images, which is concerned with the substances, substrates and devices through which images are produced. He does this in order to integrate the achievements of visual semiotics in regard to the compositional dimension of colours, shapes and figures. He takes into account the way in which the material and the substances of expression of images impact the construction of meaning, in accordance with the hypothesis of a superposition of technical and semantic aspects. The confrontation with Richter’s production leads him to go beyond plastic and figurative readings as he proposes the concepts of technical formats and techno-perceptions of images. While the former concern the historical recognition of images on the basis of the devices having produced their substance – leading to identifications such as ‘early cinema images’, ‘smartphone images’, ‘surveillance camera images’, etc. – the latter concern the perceptive configurations resulting from the formative work of the technical devices.

This essay questions the heuristic value of the enunciation theory for the mediality studies. It is a question of specifying the internal articulation that is hidden behind the notion of media and, on the other hand, receiving and analyzing that the contemporary situation, which has been defined as post-media, brings to the stability of the media system. The approach of these two axes analyzes a strategy of innovative audiovisual composition: a series of works that mix in a critical way documents from different times and insist on the separations concerning the space-time coordinates and the generic regimes. The nature of these separations and resulting effects require us to reflect on the concept of archives: how its constitution changed, what is this role in investments, conservation and production of meaning in the digital age.

Among the maps of places of origin considered in this study, more than fifty contain elements of montage, i.e. drawings in which heterogeneous entities are juxtaposed, producing a semantic gap. In the majority of such drawings, the authors went beyond the mere juxtaposition of different elements to realize more radical editing operations, adapting creatively to the representation of one’s place of origin composition techniques borrowed from popular genres and media. Some drawings, for instance, include the reproduction of a series of photographs; others imitate graphic visualization techniques (e.g. zooming) or comics; others include a legend, i.e. a list of symbols with an explanation of their meanings. The techniques used in these maps, this chapter suggests, can be considered examples of intermedial editing. The chapter’s aim is to analyze these drawings focusing on the montage and imitation techniques used by their authors. The first part of the chapter investigates these compositional processes from a theoretical point of view, combining a semiotic perspective with insights from other disciplines. In particular, the reflections on the aesthetic aspects of montage (paragraph 2) are connected to enunciation theory (paragraph 3). By integrating the concepts of montage, practice of the enunciation (praxis enonciative) and bricolage, it will be possible to consider these drawings under a common descriptive frame (paragraph 4). The second part of this chapter will be devoted to the analysis of the maps, which will be ordered according to the level of complexity of their montage procedures (paragraph 5): starting from degree zero – which corresponds to an atypical use of the elements of the map – we shall then focus on the use of color and text, and finally concentrate primarily on those cases that present the imitation of different media devices, genres and visualization techniques.

Utilizzando un approccio semiotico, il contributo intende soffermarsi sull’insieme delle operazioni retoriche reso disponibile dall’attuale situazione postmediale (Krauss 1999). A partire dalla nozione di “cinema della consapevolezza” delineata da Casetti (2015) e di immaginazione intermediale proposta da Montani (2010), intenderò con operazione retorica la produzione di uno scarto che richiede una risoluzione dialettica da parte dallo spettatore (Gruppo μ 1992): nel caso della postmedialità audiovisiva, tali scarti riguardano i formati tecnici e le forme discorsive. Proverò quindi a costruire una correlazione tra le facoltà dell’individuo e le regolarità culturali entro cui si esercitano, affiancando alla riflessione estetica di Emilio Garroni quella semiotica di Charles Sanders Peirce. Seguendo l’attuale interesse della disciplina semiotica per le esperienze di significazione (Fontanille 2008, Eugeni 2010), proverò a precisare le condotte percettive e interpretative sollecitate dall’intermedialità a partire dai concetti di genere (Rastier 2001) e di vedere-in (Wollheim 1980). La tenuta di queste considerazioni sarà infine misurata con l’ausilio di una breve disamina di due lungometraggi: The Act of Killing (2012) e The Look of Silence (2014). Through a semiotic approach, this paper focuses on the rhetorical operations made available by the current post-medium situation (Krauss 1999). Starting from the notion of “awareness cinema” outlined by Francesco Casetti (2015) and of intermedial imagination suggested by Pietro Montani (2010), I shall refer to rhetorical operation as the production of a gap which requires a dialectical resolution by the audience (Groupe μ 1992): in the case of audiovisual post-mediality, the gaps consist of technical formats and discursive forms. I shall try then to build a relationship between the faculties of the individual and the cultural regularities within which they operate, combining the aesthetic reflection of Emilio Garroni with the semiotic studies carried out by Charles Sanders Peirce. Following the current interest in the signification experience shown by semiotics (Fontanille 2008, Eugeni 2010), I shall attempt to clarify the perceptive and interpretative behaviours urged by intermediality starting from the concepts of genre (Rastier 2001) and seeing-in (Wollheim 1980). The validity of these assumptions shall be finally tested with the aid of a brief review of two feature films: The Act of Killing (2012) and The Look of Silence (2014).

This article takes some themes from the semiotic debate on photography and examines them in relation to some key issues of audiovisual intermediality. In his book L’image précaire, Jean-Marie Schaeffer discusses the medium’s nature in detail, emphasising two aspects: the concept of arché, the technical operation behind the photographic impression; and the communication context governing photography as a privileged vector for interpretation. Similarly, the fulcrum of interest in contempo- rary semiotics seems to have moved from textual objects to media practices and experiences. This contribution argues that, in the contemporary debate about overlapping boundaries between media, the gap between the audiovisual images’ material aspects – i.e. several definitions and dimensions of formats – is often used for rhetorical effect. These operations are based on the arché: the spectator inferentially projects the operation of capture devices to understand the audiovisual ‘discourse’. This contribution also discusses Francesco Casetti and Pietro Montani’s theory of interme- diality. In his latest book, Casetti writes of a cinema of awareness, which uses ‘low-definition’ images to generate ‘high-definition’ thoughts. Montani proposes the concept of intermedial ima- gination, a technique that relies on the gaps between formats to push spectators to critically re- compose such gaps. Both theories hinge on two central concepts: 1) the images’ format and 2) the discursive genres. To interpret these gaps critically, spectators must first be able to recognise a technical format or a typical frame. Starting from some cinematographic examples that exploit the ambiguity of photography, the essay seeks to extend such assumptions to audiovisual forms, in an attempt to establish a unified theory.

In this paper, I will present a comparison between the aesthetic concept of internal image developed by Emilio Garroni (2005) and the semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce, especially the notion of guessing and the theoretical framework of pragmaticism. The aim of the paper is to show how this connection helps us to approach technical mediation. In the first part, I will present the elements of convergence between the two authors, by referring to the considerations of Pietro Montani (2014) and Emanuele Fadda (2013). In the second and most important part, I will discuss a sequence from a cinematographic example, Blow Out (1981), in which technical mediation plays a central role. Finally, in the third part, I will try to generalize and propose the concept of habit as a differential starting point for the study of the aesthetic aspects of mediation.

The main aim of this paper is to show how diagrammatic representation works in a specific video/ graphic representation called mapping, especially used and popular in the artistic and scientific fields. The main idea is that mapping involves the use of technology (3D, 2D, motion capture) to make evi- dent not objects but new forms of signification using spatial relations to represent logic connections. Assuming the concept of “diagram” as formuled by C.S. Peirce, we try to figure out how to analyze from a semiotic point of view this particular kind of representation through its process of making of, the “practice” that shapes the image itself, focussing on strategies of visualization and enonciation. This paper centres on discovering how mapping works in different fields taking two examples, one from cinema (Holy Motors, 2012, Leos Carax) and one from public art (Il Segno della memoria, 2013, Studio Azzurro), to explore the sense of diagrammatic representation in scientific, artistic and cultural practices; through showing the concept of mapping by two different point of view, this research wants to highlight the power of diagrammatic representation, that is to show “relational contents”.

Recensione del volume "La misura e la grana. Semantica del corpus ed analisi del WEB", Pisa, ETS, 2013 di François Rastier.

L'articolo propone un approccio semiotico all'analisi dei testi videoludici, mettendo al centro l'idea che l'interattività con cui si descrive la sua specificità sia invece legata al movimento mediato da un'interfaccia.

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