(Inter)faces, perspectives and image languages

genealogy and image paradigms based on semiotics

Abstract

This article proposes an interdisciplinary dialogue between different studies and perspectives on the image. It discusses issues related to the complexity of this phenomenon, its transformations over time, and its objective, subjective, and intersubjective character as a sign. The aim is to encourage reflection on the (inter)faces of the image, with an emphasis on the historically constituted processes of semiosis. The theoretical framework used is based primarily on William J. T. Mitchell's Genealogy of the Image, which conceptualizes the image through its epistemological distinctions and organizes them as: graphic, optical, perspective, mental, and verbal images. It also uses the Four Paradigms of the Image (pre-photographic, photographic, post-photographic, and hybrid) proposed by Lucia Santaella. The text is interdisciplinary in nature, uses a qualitative methodology, and adopts Peircean semiotics as its analytical perspective, considering the processes of the object-sign-interpretant relationship and its triads. In order to connect the concepts that underpin the study with semiotics, the image languages expressed by the visual arts, photography and audiovisual media were chosen for analysis. With the reflections proposed by the text, we were able to elucidate that the concept of image and its languages are in constant transformation and intrinsically linked to culture, technologies and the development of human societies, also oscillating in the semiotic relations associated with them.