The Visage, Voice and Void in the Community: Art, Senses and (E-)Spaces of Contemporary Semiosis

This book takes an interdisciplinary approach to the face, defined not only as the human physical constitution, but in a metaphorical and cultural sense, and its connection with society.

Bridging the analogue and the digital, the face is examined, step by step, from multiple perspectives and analysed within a qualitative-semiotic framework. With art as the underlying paradigm, semiotics as the founding discipline, and the face as subject of study, the author positions the face as a distinct landscape, offering the tools to study the metaphorical face and space as a panorama. Tracing historical conceptions of the face, along with the iconography and artefacts associated with it, the author follows an experimental and abductive methodology that culminates in a complex constellation of insights on the subject.

This book will interest specialists in the fields of visual semiotics, languages of art, creative industries and cultural heritage, humanities and philosophy.

Silvia Barbotto is researcher and artist, adjunct professor at University of Turin, Italy.