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 10th November (at 2 pm UK time)…

ANALYZING THE UN-ANALYZABLE

Inspired by A.J. Greimas’s lyrical late text On Imperfection (1987), which seeks to describe the all-but-indescribable connection between our sensual relationship with the world and our drive to make sense of things, this session asks expert practitioners to share their tools and methodologies for analyzing ambiances, atmospheres, sensory experiences, aesthetics, and other seemingly subjective phenomena. 

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

Our sessionists:

• JEAN-FRANÇOIS AUGOYARD, a philosopher, urban planner, musicologist, and a former senior researcher, is the co-founder of the “Ambiances, Architectures, Urbanités” research laboratory and doctoral training at the CNRS (France’s National Centre for Scientific Research) and at the School of Architecture of Grenoble. The author of several books, his main topics of research include the semiotics and aesthetics of everyday urban “ambiances.”

• TONINO GRIFFERO is professor of Aesthetics at University of Rome Tor Vergata. His studies of hermeneutics, aesthetics, and the phenomenology of atmospheres have been published in such books as Atmospheres: Aesthetics of Emotional Spaces, Quasi-Things: The Paradigm of Atmospheres, Places, Affordances, Atmospheres: A Pathic Aesthetics, and The Atmospheric ‘We’: Moods and Collective Feelings. His forthcoming book focuses on the phenomenology of the lived body.

• COLETTE SENSIER is an independent semiotician, cultural researcher and brand strategist — sometimes as one half of the semiotic branding studio See Say Studio — with recent work for Google, Coca-Cola, Netflix, Ralph Lauren, and Unilever. She has particular interests in body- and mind-focused semiotics, and in collaborating with creatives. She is a poet and creative writer with a book, Skinless, published by Eyewear Press.

Session host: LUCA MARCHETTI is a semiotician who is a contract professor at the Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3 University, and a senior lecturer at the University of Bologna. An experienced consultant and curator for international brands, he is the author or curator of several books on fashion, design, and branding — including Exhibit! Fashion on Display: Exhibitions and Brand Spaces (2020). He regularly contributes to magazines such as Vogue and Revue. In 2015 he co-organized Semiofest Paris, and in 2020 he co-founded the studio The Prospectivists, for trend forecasting and socio-cultural research.

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