Media | Experience | Semiotics
A Website & Weblog by Ruggero Eugeni
by Michela Balconi, Ruggero Eugeni, Federico Bionda, Carlotta Acconito e Flavia Ciminaghi, in Intelligenza Artificiale. The Official Journal of the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence, online first, 26/08/2025. DOI 10.1177/17248035251369998
Abstract. This paper analyzes the so-called “augmented reality filters” (ARF), a technology that makes it possible to produce and spread widely on social media a particular type of video selfies that are manipulated live while filming – for example, by modifying the somatic characters of the producer’s face. The first part of the paper analyzes ARFs in the light of a socio-semiotics of dispositives. This approach makes it possible to identify three interconnected aspects of ARFs: their technological consistency, which is closer to mixed reality than to augmented reality; their socio-psychological uses, and in particular personal identity construction through body image manipulation; and finally, their economic-political implications, linked to face recognition and social surveillance. The second part of the paper focuses on the marketing uses of ARFs and, in particular, on branded ARFs transforming users’ faces. In these cases, the radical involvement of brands in defining the identity of users requires a profound rethinking of the mechanisms of trust that bind them to consumers.
Keywords: Media semiotics · Socio-semiotics · Digital advertising · Augmented reality · Mixed reality · Enunciation · Identity · Algorithmic capitalism · Media experience · Dispositive
Da oggi in libreria Capitale algoritmico. Cinque dispositivi postmediali (più uno).
Cosa facciamo oggi con le immagini? E soprattutto, che cosa le immagini fanno con noi e di noi? Questo libro cerca una risposta mediante l’analisi di cinque dispositivi (più uno): gli smart glasses, le camere a campo di luce, i visori notturni, la realtà aumentat e quella virtuale, le reti neurali e la fotomicrografia elettronico-digitale.
Le immagini computazionali, chiamate in queste pagine algoritmi, nascono dalla connessione di risorse appartenenti alla economia politica della luce e del visuale con quelle proprie dell’economia della informazione e dei dati.
Esse sono dunque al tempo stesso oggetti e strumenti della produzione, estrazione e distribuzione delle risorse comuni: il “capitale algoritmico” si profila dunque come la vera posta in gioco della condizione postmediale.
The new Issue of Necsus_European Journal of media Studies Spring 2020 is just out, and it features the Special section on Media and Artificial Intelligence edited by Patricia Pisters an me… Enjoy it (and drop a comment, if you want)!
Read and comment the book chapter Valentino Catricalà, Ruggero Eugeni, “Technologically Modified Self–Centred Worlds. Modes of Presence as Effects of Sense in Virtual, Augmented, Mixed and Extended Reality”, in Federico Biggio, Victoria Dos Santos, Gianmarco Thierry Giuliana (eds.), Meaning–Making in Extended Reality, Canterano (RM), Aracne, 2020, ISBN 9788825534320, pp. 63-90
DOI 10.4399/97888255343204
Is finally out the first important paper coming from our research project on “Subjective Experience and Estimation of Moving-Image Time” (SEEM_IT)”. Proud to share it!
Abstract This article illustrates the first steps of a research project concerning the “Subjective Experience and Estimation of Moving-Image Time” (SEEM_IT). After introducing the theoretical background of the research, that links time perception to the embodied experience of movement, the article presents the main empirical results of an experiment aimed at assessing how spectators’ time perception is affected by the style of editing and the type of represented action in short video clips. Though the style of editing played a major role in influencing SEEM_IT, it also significantly interacted with the type of represented action. The article reassesses these findings by discussing them within the theoretical framework of the research.
Keywords Time perception · Film experience · Neurofilmology · Duration estimation · Time passage · Editing · Action
Just published: Ruggero Eugeni, “Cinema:Theoretical Discourses”, in F. Colombo (ed.), Media and Communication in Italy: Historical and Theoretical Perspectives, Milan, Vita e Pensiero, 2019 pp. 32-45.
1. Microtheories; 2. Classical Theories; 3. Modern Theories; 4. Post-theories
The primary hypothesis of this paper is that recent years have seen a shift from digital advertising to post-advertising: thanks to the growing role of machine learning algorithms in communicational processes, advertising has been losing the character of explicitly persuasive addresses to assume that of friendly and open proposals and advice, or even the simple facilitation of everyday purchasing practices. The paper seeks to understand if and under what conditions the socio-semiotic and semio-pragmatic approaches developed in relation to traditional advertising can still be applied to post-advertising phenomena. The paper is divided into three parts. In the first one, the advent of the post-advertising condition is considered. In the second one, Amazon’s Alexa, an example of a post-advertising dispositive, is analyzed. In the third part, the question of the use of traditional semiotic concepts and methods for the analysis of post-advertising is examined. The final answer to this question is affirmative, but on the condition that some new conceptual and methodological tools be introduced.
Keywords: Media semiotics Social semiotics Socio-semiotics
Semio-pragmatics Digital advertising Post-advertising Big data Machine learning Artificial intelligence Algorithmic capitalism
Media experience Dispositive
LInk to the paper: https://rdcu.be/bLk9q
WHAT TIME IS IN? SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCE AND EVALUATION OF MOVING IMAGE TIME, in Reti, saperi, linguaggi – Italian Journal of Cognitive Sciences number 1, 2018, January-June, pp. 81-96, DOI: 10.12832/90973
This paper sketches the main lines and introduces the first results of a theoretical and empirical research set within the framework of Neurofilmology and focused on the Subjective Experience and Evaluation of Moving Image Time (SEEM_ IT). In the first section, the paper reconstructs the state of the art of time studies in different disciplinary fields. The second section explains some underlying options of the research. Notably, it adopts the hypothesis (currently prevalent in neuroscience), that links time perception to movement and proprioception; and connects it to the idea that the perception of movement triggers processes of embodied simulation, which in turn are responsible for the perception of time. Film watching would, therefore, constitute a particularly rich and articulated experience of time. The last section presents the results of an experiment aiming to evaluate the role of editing styles in determining quantitative and qualitative aspects of SEEM_IT. The results show that fast-paced editing usually tends to produce a sensation of higher speed of both the time flow rate and the observed action rate, and an overestimation of the clip durations; however, the type of action displayed can modify this outcome.
I opened a session of discussion on my paper “Hypnose et cinéma” (in French) in Accademica.edu. The paper will be published (in a shorter version, helas!) in the Vocabulaire de l’identification dans les arts du spectacle (Projet Idem: Identification, empathie, projection dans les arts du spectacle), edited by Mildred Galland Szymkowiak (2019).
If you are interested, please join the discussion at this address
The session will close September 20, 2018.
The French Site The Conversation just published my short essay on immersive media
Continue reading “Immersive media are questioning our idea of presence”
What is a “dispositive” (or apparatus)? From Foucault to Deleuze, from Heidegger to Agamben, from Baudry to the schlars that recently reworked the concept in the field of Film & Media Studies, a comprehensive map with bibliographical references
See or download the Prezi Presentation
My article (in Italian) “Voce, scena, suggestione in ‘Trilby’. La donna ipnotizzata dal romanzo di George du Maurier ai film di Maurice Tourneur e Archie Mayo (1894-1931)”, in Roberta Carpani, Laura Peja, Laura Aimo (eds.), Scena madre. Donne personaggi e interpreti della realtà. Studi per Annamaria Cascetta, Milano, Vita e Pensiero, 2014, pp. 417-426. ISBN 9788834327739 Available on line at my Academia.edu page
The article is free for the first 50 downloads (offer by Taylor & Francis)!
http://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/udFkb9DIxy2ZjZTDeqn3/full
Media | Experience | Semiotics 