Iconography and Fantasy

This is the third prize winner for the 2014 Video contest celebrating student creativity with video and multimedia. Semiosis or semeiosis is the process that forms meaning from any organism's apprehension of the world through signs. A sign, or representamen, is something which stands to somebody for something in some respect or capacity. It addresses somebody, that is, creates in the mind of that person an equivalent sign. Globalization has caused the development of a global consumer culture where products have similar associations, whether positive or negative, across numerous markets. Thus, we are faced with exponentially more signs and signifiers today, with less individual meaning. A homogeneity begins to pervade mass media as further and further imagery reach our tablets, smart phones and other devices at increasingly high speeds. It is difficult to parse through the content we want to see amidst the targeted media experience. The problem of the 21st century is not one of access to media, but rather the lose of digital autonomy. The lines between ad experience and original content blur until we can't delineate between the media we want to see and what is being shown to us.