Tag Archives: intent

Symposium 07: Authorial intentions

This week’s symposium started out with the focus on intent.

What role does the authorial integrity of intent play? Can the content of intent be guaranteed? If the aforementioned context is supplied, can it survive?

As Adrian pointed out, the answer to most of the above is no.

Intent is problematic. 

Adrian urges us that one of the strongest skills we could learn is how to read against the intent of an author.

We then discussed semiotics, and the Cartesian separation between the signifier (body) and the signified (what it means; the rational mind). Adrian called this “the delirium of semiotics” which I don’t quite yet understand. I think it’s along the lines of meaning we are so obsessed with that something means (thinking that only that mind matters), that we almost forget about the substance (the body) itself.

Another really interesting takeaway following this was that “words can only mean by difference”. As in, something can only mean something not by what it is, but what it is not. A word only gets its meaning by virtue of the relations to other words that could have been there. The actual word is significant because you chose to use it instead of something else. Thus, the meaning never arrives.

We were encouraged to think about artefacts as a person, with a distinct personality. This is what’s interesting, and what talks to you. Not the author.
Authors/makers tend to give up a lot of their control when they move into a multilinear electronic space. However, they also gain a lot. They gain a different sort of control, and become a bit more like a choreography rather than a dictator. They can try to predict what the user will do and frame their content around this, but ultimately it is in the users’ hands.
In summation, Adrian claims it is a condition of language that you cannot guarantee the intent of your language or the arrival of your message. As media-makers, we should be prepared for this.