I’m coordinator of Semiofest’s series of informal online “sessions.” These events are intended not only to share best practices among, but to nurture collegiality and friendship within the global semio community.

Coming up on 23rd February (at 2 pm UK time)…

SEMIOTICS & MUSIC

In practical visual semiotics we generally first identify a denotation and then seek to identify and understand its connotation. Musical semiotics, however, is the opposite: it’s easy, even intuitive, to identify a musical connotation, but then trying to identify the denotative level is very difficult. How then are we to understand how music communicates? How might synesthesia play into it? Our panelists will discuss all.

Get tickets (suggested donations only) at the link above.

Our sessionists:

• MARIANE CARA is a Brazilian semiotician and cultural strategist with degrees in Communication and Semiotics. Since 2013 she has headed Comunicara, a consultancy company that delivers meaningful reports for global and national brands. Two of these reports have won the Jatobá PR Award for Innovative Research.

• WILLIAM LIU is director and semiotician at Inner Chapter Shanghai. He is also a stage performer as tenor singer of Shanghai’s Rainbow Chamber Choir. These roles make him very passionate about revealing subtle human subconsciousness shifts, and then transforming opportunities into brand innovation ideas.

Session host: CHARLES LEECH is a SVP and the resident semiotician at Ipsos Canada, based in Toronto. He’s been practicing commercial semiotics for over 20 years, following his PhD in applied semiotics from QUT in Brisbane.

SEMIOFEST SESSIONS: R/D/E | BINARIES | SEMIOTICS & UX | BODY SEMIOTICS | AI & SEMIOTICS | SEMIOTICS & CINEMA | FICTIONAL DECODERS | ON COLOUR | & more.

Also see these international semio series: COVID CODES | SEMIO OBJECTS | MAKING SENSE | COLOR CODEX | DECODER | CASE FILE