• current schema
• description
• images

to see where we’re at now with this theory, read the current schema first.

the beginning of Semiotech in its current form started over a year ago when Michael Clemow and I started creating wearable performance tools. We were playing with the notion of creating a symbolic performative language via gestural movement. We visualized and sonified a kick, slap, and hug and created expanded iconic albeit cartoonish mini-performances for each one. The gestures themselves of the  kick, slap, and hug became performative by mapping the movements in the gestures to visuals and sound via wearable sensors. This notion of transferring one kind of sensory input into another sensory output (movement to visual, visual to sound, etc) began the narrative of Semiotech that we have carried from then until now.

We started on this path by granularizing each movement, visual and audio stimulus into a single unit. We originally called this unit a Light-Sound Entity. From that unit, we would build each experience- the different configurations of these units created different experiences. At this point in time, each “experience” was meant not only in a performative sense, but in a perceptual sense as well. We were getting into the nature of perception and started drawing from semiotics, phenomenology, science of perception, quantum mechanics, and performance techniques. At first upon building our vernacular around this burgeoning school of thought, we decided Semiotech as a whole should be a performance in itself to embue our actions and thoughts with a notion of “expertness.” For some reason, making the whole paradigm we were creating fictional seemed to allow us more freedom of expression. At first Semiotech wasn’t formally created yet,  we decided we were researchers working for an organization called SALSER (The Society for the Advancement of Light-Sound Entity Research). We hadn’t expanded our notion of a granularized unit of experience into the realms of all 5 senses, we were still stuck on light and sound.

From there, things have changed a lot, we changed our notion of LSE into a phenomenal atom, which is more than just light and sound- it is the smallest unit of experience, which includes all of the senses we utilize to build an experience. To build an experience out of the phenomenal atom, you would have different configurations of these units, which would represent different meanings and contexts. Take the pixel of an image for example- one pixel on its own doesn’t denote, but if you have the pixels in a certain configuration you see a cat in the image. In another configuration, something completely different appears. However, these atoms are not just parts of an image, they’re parts of an experience as a whole, with all of your utilizable senses at play. The different configurations of phenomenal atoms to create meaning, we called phenomenal atom clouds.

As time passed and we tried conveying this idea to people over and over to no avail, we decided to simplify our terms. We had created a whole vernacular around our ideas instead of really fleshing out the ideas themselves. So where we’re at now is in the current schema link. We are now calling the unit a phemel, or phenomenal element. But that word is not nearly as important as the meaning behind it.

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