[-empyre-] lifeSigns: play with meaning

[Troy Innocent <troy@iconica.org>]

hello empyreans,
thanks to Helen for the intro and also to Melinda for the invitation to 
participate. Perhaps, I will start with with an introduction to my 
work...

Games can play with meaning. Through play, games can become the site of 
‘meaning generation’ as many systems of representation and media codes 
may be blended into a single, interactive experience. Both ‘realistic’ 
and ‘abstract’ worlds may be represented with the same immersive, 
realtime experience of gameplay - rendering abstract ideas into a 
visible, tangible form.

An earlier work, Semiomorph (www.iconica.org/artefact) explored this 
idea by connecting gameplay with a system for transmutating the 
representation of the gamespace. lifeSigns, in the 2004 Screen Gallery 
and Networked exhibitions, invites players to explore an eco-system of 
signs and symbols evolve autonomously and feed off play. They ‘play the 
world’ and through this play influence it’s meaning.

lifeSigns is part of an investigation of virtual worlds as vehicles for 
new forms of communication and expression. Working with the idea of the 
computer as a machine for processing and manipulating symbols, the 
world manifested in lifeSigns is constructed to evolve multiple digital 
media languages. This space combines two areas of research - artificial 
life, the coding of life processes into software and computational 
semiotics, the study of systems and codes of signification in digital 
media. The hybrid form that emerges is expressed in terms of the 
language of electronic space – through form, structure, colour, sound, 
motion, surface and behaviour.

It explores the flux of meaning and constant reconfiguration of 
language brought about by new technologies of communication. If 
electronic signs have agency within the digital realm in which they 
reside, then how does this change our understanding of information, 
data, language and communication? What happens when computational 
processes augment the process of meaning generation?

The lifeSigns web site supports the gallery installation of the work by 
archiving and documenting popular and successful signs and symbols that 
have been generated by the world. Users may search networks of meaning 
within a database and influence the meaning of the lifeSigns by voting 
on their ‘meaning vectors’. The web site is an ongoing ‘research tool’ 
for exploring the languages that emerge from the world.


Troy.