Séméiologie

We are SÉMÉIOLOGIE, the semiotics and semiology reading group at Universiteit Twente.

Semiotics or semiology is the study of how meaning is structured, embeded, and communicated via such cultural artifacts as text, image, myth, sound, and architecture. The field has had a formative role in understanding the underlying structures of human culture and societies, having inspired key developments in, among others, cybernetics and information theory, (post)structuralism, anthropology, media and communication studies, critical social studies, and urbanism and achitecture.

Our main activity is regular informal gatherings, each dedicated to one of the wide range of subjects in the European and American semiotic traditions. Some of our topics include, but are not limited to:

• Cultural and social semiotics
• Architectural, urban, and topological semiotics
• AI & robo semiotics
• Literary semiotics
• Biosemiotics
• Media, film, and musical semiotics

Our inaugural meeting was held on 9/3/2023, where we discussed AI semiotics through the paper Jean G. Meunier (1989), Artificial Intelligence and Sign Theory, Semiotica 77(1-3): 43-63, https://doi.org/10.1515/semi.1989.77.1-3.43.

Moreover, we have been core part in establishing UT's first course on AI & robotics from a Humanities perspective (the M-PSTS course 'Ethics and epistemology of AI & robotics'), which, among others, provided a semiotic angle, firstly, to the epistemology of artificial intelligence and, secondly, into the analysis of AI and robotics as a cultural artefact. 

For more information, or for joining our sessions, contact:
dr. Athanasios Votsis
Assistant professor (sustainability of complex adaptive systems)
BMS-TPS-CSTM
a.votsis@utwente.nl