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Mt_Townsend_20120719_137 No Message.jpg - No message. Signs: icon, index and symbol, and the often impenetrable language of the semioticians. But some of the most obvious and bluntly direct signs are all around us in the form of advertising in public spaces as posters, advertising hoardings and billboards. In public urban spaces they are so ubiquitous that most of the time we don’t even notice their presence. Looking at them, in downtown locations and alongside highways, they overwhelm with their sheer number. Normally, if they reach us at all, it is just as background visual noise. The gaze of the contemporary citizen-consumer, both sophisticated and distracted, is usually directed elsewhere. Combatting the neglectful tendency to ignore, these signs vie for attention through size, shock, visibility, repetition or saturated presentation. Through style or location they attempt to reach (though ‘target’ is perhaps a better word for it) their desired audience/market segment.In the image, a standard (14’ by 48’) roadside billboard stands in a wilderness snowfield near Mt Kosciuszko. It’s just an object, not a message delivery vehicle. It’s McLuhan-esque. Removed from its audience, does it still carry a message? Perhaps it does still have an audience i.e. the viewers of the reproduced photographic image. But we view only a picture of the billboard and its message. It’s a ‘sign-within-a-sign’, or a ‘sign-about-a-sign’ i.e. a ‘meta-sign’. It’s at least one degree of abstraction removed from the ‘real’ sign and its message. (In fact it is even less than that, as it is only a digital contrivance, a 3D model of sign, an ‘object’ which has never had existence in physical space!) No message.

No message. Signs: icon, index and symbol, and the often impenetrable language of the semioticians. But some of the most obvious and bluntly direct signs are all around us in the form of advertising in public spaces as posters, advertising hoardings and billboards. In public urban spaces they are so ubiquitous that most of the time we don’t even notice their presence. Looking at them, in downtown locations and alongside highways, they overwhelm with their sheer number. Normally, if they reach us at all, it is just as background visual noise. The gaze of the contemporary citizen-consumer, both sophisticated and distracted, is usually directed elsewhere. Combatting the neglectful tendency to ignore, these signs vie for attention through size, shock, visibility, repetition or saturated presentation. Through style or location they attempt to reach (though ‘target’ is perhaps a better word for it) their desired audience/market segment. In the image, a standard (14’ by 48’) roadside billboard stands in a wilderness snowfield near Mt Kosciuszko. It’s just an object, not a message delivery vehicle. It’s McLuhan-esque. Removed from its audience, does it still carry a message? Perhaps it does still have an audience i.e. the viewers of the reproduced photographic image. But we view only a picture of the billboard and its message. It’s a ‘sign-within-a-sign’, or a ‘sign-about-a-sign’ i.e. a ‘meta-sign’. It’s at least one degree of abstraction removed from the ‘real’ sign and its message. (In fact it is even less than that, as it is only a digital contrivance, a 3D model of sign, an ‘object’ which has never had existence in physical space!) No message. | Mt_Townsend_20120719_137 No Message.jpg

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