Gianmarco Thierry Giuliana

In this talk we shall outline a proposal for a new type of narrative analysis where on the level of narrative syntax the values will be considered not on the base of the relation of conjunction or disjunction between the object and the subject, but on the base of the economical principle of scarcity. Such approach makes the semiotic analysis more adequate to the interactive narrative where decision making and “reader’s” performance decide the success or failure of the narrative programs.  We will use the famous game "Dark Souls" as a case study.

International Symposium Jointly Organized by the University of Turin (CIRCE, Prof. Massimo LEONE) and the University of Potsdam (Institute for Romance Languages, Prof. Eva KIMMINICH), with the support of MIUR-DAAD (project: CONTAGIONS. Proposal for the Constitution of an Italian-German Network of Young Scholars for the Study of Viral Misinformation and Hate-Speech in Present-Day Communication).

TITLES AND ABSTRACTS available at:

https://www.uni-potsdam.de/de/romanistik-kimminich/team/aktuelles/tagung-moderation-internet/tagung-moderation-internet-abstracts.html

In this paper we deconstruct the so–called experience of Virtual Reality by enriching the cognitive and phenomenological explanations of VR’s renown “immersiveness” with a semiotic perspective and approach that highlight the quilting of the different dimensions of meaning–making involved in virtual reality. We do this first of all by highlighting how VR mixes key aspects from previous media and by looking at the socio–cultural aspects involved in the attribution of “realism” and “immersion”. Then, in the second part, we focus on the uniqueness of VR’s technology and highlight the consequent cognitive processing and the resulting phenomenological situation in which such experience occurs. In the third part, we underline the narrative essence of this experience as well as the birth of a new spectatorship allowing for VR to work as intended. In the fourth part, we look at the philosophical and anthropological background granting meaning to the experienced virtual utopic body and other space. Finally, we criticize the widespread conception of a non–mediated experience grounded on the embodiment and phenomenological conditions of the virtual worlds, and propose a different triadic explanatory model that helps to complexify our understanding of meaning–making in VR.

Comment le visage va-t-il changer en fonction de sa nouvelle présence numérique ? Et comment l'avenir sera-t-il influencé par le visage en tant que simulacre numérisé ? Ce volume rassemble des essais de sémiologues et de philosophes qui abordent ces questions à partir d'études de cas hétérogènes allant de la première BD de Tintin au tout récent jeu vidéo Cyberpunk 2077, de Twitter à la une de journaux, des bases d’images à l'art contemporain. Le thème est ainsi analysé sous quatre angles différents : la temporalité intrinsèque du visage ; ses lectures incarnées et machiniques ; la construction et la déconstruction du visage numérique ; et enfin les différentes interprétations et hybridations du visage futur.

Virtual, augmented, and mixed reality are at the center of the contemporary media scenario and the latest expressions of digital culture. These different yet alike technologies are innovating and successfully used in very different fields such as entertainment, rehabilitation, professional training, art and urban design. However , these terms also became buzz words and are somehow the preferred subjects of technological myths and technophobic tales. By blending the philosophical reflection and semiotic perspective on virtuality with concrete case studies and detailed analyses of their technical characteristics, the contributions of this volume critically inquire on the means by which the efficiency and meaningfulness of these technologies is achieved. What do we really mean when we talk about the immersive and realistic nature of these media? in what sense can we experience the real in a virtual and digital world? is there a connection between our conception of virtual reality and the social discourses and imaginaries about it? These questions are at the very heart of this book which is thus an investigation on the meaning-making behind, beyond and around virtual, augmented, and mixed reality.

This second issue of our journal addresses an uneasy topic. It is uneasy exactly because it is too easy to speak about love and sex and yet say nothing. It is uneasy because there has not been tremendous academic interest in this topic within the field of humanities and social sciences, and contributions to the field have thus been sporadic and unsystematic. Moreover, it is uneasy because, compared to other aspects of our everyday life, love and sex concern our being in a way that it is difficult to observe in a neutral or scientific way. However, we are here: organizing a small conference on the consequences for love and sex upon the advent of the internet and digital technologies. We could not resist engaging this topic because our program as a research center concerns the cultural changes of the digital age, and we can hardly think of another sphere of life more affected by the development of digital communications technologies. In our preliminary research we have identified no less than six huge areas of semiotic interest (being helped by Sanders & Co, 2018): - Cyber dating and hookup culture - Erotica, pornography websites, and videogames - Webcamming, hidden cams, and online voyeurism - Sex workers’ platforms, websites, and forums - Digitally engineered sex - The dark side of the net: cyberbullying, online pedophilia, revenge porn, etc. In his paper “The Semiotics of the Face in Digital Dating: A Research Direction,” Massimo Leone is concerned with the problem of whether or not the human face will lose its aura as a result of the digital manipulations popular on dating sites. The first part of this paper offers a profound analysis of the face's semiotic essence and its role in the sociosemiotic reality of the everyday life. Then the analysis focuses on seductive behavior and the crucial role that the face performs in seduction. This analysis' depth comes from the comparative approach between humans and primates, where the face is seen as a communicative project. The second part develops the context in which images of the face are used on digital dating sites. Leone explores the possibility of digital dating faces' typology, wherein the degree of idealization varies. The semiotic tools of such idealization include make-up techniques (including modifications like false moles), a number of seductive facial expressions, and an infinity of digitally-assisted improvements or augmented reality effects used on the face. One representative of the new generation of semioticians – Gianmarco Giuliana – has developed an original and innovative approach to account for the use of love and sex in video games. His perspective is part of a new general approach that tries to overcome the limits of structural semiotics by analyzing the video-ludic experience, going beyond the textual occurrence of the potential or accomplished game. Love and sex are entwined with all the major semiotic aspects of video games. In his paper “I kissed an NPC and I liked it: Love and Sexuality in Digital Games,” Giuliana divides his study in semiotic typology into the representation, enactment, and economy of love and sex. The impressive variety of digital sexuality in gaming is explained and theoretically classified on the basis of a huge list of video games, tracing the field from its origins to the latest products of VR immersive experience. Following this young Italian scholar's line of analysis, we may expect that the role of love in the video games—and the role of sex in particular—is destined to increase and bring a qualitative leap to the market of experience. In his paper “Technology selling sex versus sex selling technology,” Konstantinos Michos (who is a PhD candidate from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) investigates advertising in the digital commerce of sexual and technological devices. His case study compares two extreme cases with a mirrored structure: that of the sexual device Lovense promoted through a website with a multimodal technological rhetoric, and a retailer brand that sells conventional technological products using heavy sexual (and even pornographic) rhetoric to advertise its offer. The author proposes a model that poses sex and technology as two extremities on a semiotic axis. We can position the huge variety of commercial appeals for the examined products and services along the semiotic axis. The paper of young Algerian researcher Mega Afaf is unique in our collection. It is situated between academic research and an anti-pornography feminist manifesto, and represents a strong ethical stance. For this reason the paper has been approved with certain reservations on the part of reviewers. However, we insisted on keeping it because this woman's brave act, coming from El Oued to Sozopol with all the obstacles of her socio-cultural reality. Her presence made our conference more valuable and significant. Shortly after announcing the call for papers, our journal was heavily criticized on Facebook by two or three feminists for having only male keynote speakers. Given the topic of our conference, they were quite right to raise the ethical issue of gender participation. The argument that these feminists did not want to accept was the fact that, as organizers, we made consistent efforts to invite two teams of female researchers from Leicester and Glasgow and a professor form UAS/Prague, all authors of important books on the transformation of love and sex in the digital age. These scholars were not available at the beginning of September, as is the case with many academics. More concretely, Mega Afaf's paper begins with a historical reading of the feminist movement's socio-cultural implications as read through Juri Lotman's semiotic model (as presented in the 2009 book from Culture and Explosion). She situates the phenomenon of pornography within this theoretical frame and, contrary to some currents in feminism, sees it as entirely negative and counterproductive for the feminist cause, as a modern form of civilized slavery. Can we talk about the “touristification of love” and of “lovification of tourism”? Questions about love and tourism motivate the research entitled “Sex of Place. Mediated Intimacy and Tourism Imaginaries,” by the young Italian PhD candidate Elsa Soro, presently working in Barcelona. Her fieldwork takes place on Tinder, and she analyzes the ways people increase their sex appeal and construct seductive strategies using images of touristic places and activities in their Tinder profiles. The study starts from a strong empirical observation: in the last few decades, global tourist activities have increased exponentially, at a rate that mimics the uptake of internet platforms for dating. The number of traveling people and the number of dating people has not only increased, but there is also an important lifestyle overlap between the two trends, suggesting there is solid ground for the cultural implications of this socio-economic reality. Soro makes a sociosemiotic typology of ways of being a tourist and performing tourism in Tinder profile pictures, which not only helps to decode the phenomenon but may also be used as a guide for performing a successful seduction strategy. Francesco Piluso from the University of Bologna gives an excellent example of semiotic critique in the tradition of Barthes, Eco, and Baudrillard. In his paper “From sexual community to exclusive sex: Semiotic translation on gay chat and dating applications,” Piluso applies the semiotic method to one of the greatest expressions of present-day social media capitalism: dating platforms. According to the young Italian scholar, LGBTQ dating apps like Grindr and PalnetRomeo make use of LGBTQ community capital to transform it into a heteronormative, individualized product of consumption to maximize profits. Apparently platforms like these are inclusive and community oriented, but an examination of their internal structure and hidden ideology reveals that they promote individualistic sexual experiences in a very neoliberal way, driven by profit-oriented filters. These platforms thus commodify (i.e. re-appropriate and assimilate) the core values of the LGBTQ community, namely the acceptance of the individual difference. This commodification takes place through the list of participants' qualities, qualities like weight, height, colour of skin, eyes, hair, and even the dimension of a user's genitals. Rather than a research paper, Mihail Vuzharov’s “UX & FOMO. Looking for Love or Looking for Options?” is an informative and analytical review of the latest trends in internet experience, with an explicit ethical stance and sound forecasts for the near future. It also contains a list of the most memorable phrases pronounced by the participants of the XXIII EFSS conference. One of the important things in this paper is the further elaboration of the notion (inspired by Eco’s reader model) of the “model user”, already introduced by Vuzharov in previous publications. Concerning love and sex, Vuzharov discusses the general behavioral trend among millennials (as well as other groups) of FOMO – the "Fear Of Missing Out" – as relates to new forms of sexuality and intimacy that emerged after the widespread adoption of dating apps. “Fomosexuality” is a term used to speak about the commodification of our relationships, love, sex, and affection, topics widely discussed during the conference. Kristian Bankov's paper, “The Pleasure of the Hypertext,” is an updated version of the already-published chapter in book, The Garden of Roses III: Lectures and Speeches (2007-2014), edited by prof. Bogdan Bogdanov. This is a reflection on the shift from the age of the “cult of the text” (of which Barthes’ The Pleasure of the Text, 1973 is emblematic), and the age of the Hypertext (which is more or less the last two decades), wherein the cultural impact of the internet and digital technologies is devastating.