Haytham Nawar

Abstract

This dissertation follows an interdisciplinary approach that weaves practice and theory in the disciplines of visual communication, semiotics, cultural studies, linguistics, and new media art. The research methodology is practice-based located within a historical and contemporary context that allows for artistic experimentation and new knowledge to be generated through reflected creative practice This research proposes a context within which society can develop a transcultural means of communication with the objective of gaining completely unambiguous forms of understanding. This research explores the possibility of an open source scaffold for pictorial language that fosters self-enhancing diversity of production models, communication paths, and interactive communities. The dissertation explores research strategies and visual practice in relationship to a proposed global use of a common system of visual semantic decoding that would allow for visual synthesis by individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds. It is proposed that a shared collective knowledge of signs, symbols, and pictographs, supported by the advancement of future communication and information systems, can lead to a visual communication system that will be universally accepted. There is a historic, on-going and collective consensus on the need for a universal language in the near-future posthuman condition. In answer to this need, this dissertation contextualises and goes on to explore a realised case study of a practice-based solution for a universal pictorial communication system. The system may at times seem ambitious and abstract, however, it aims to include all cultures of the world, seeking to establish a direction that identifies and locates cultural similarities over cultural difference. This practice-based enquiry proposes a direction that should maintain coherence, logic, and veracity in order to develop a pictographic communication system that is a valid representation of the human experience in a posthuman condition.

Keywords

Writing systems, Communication theory, Visual communication, Pictographs, Semiotic theories, Cultural studies, Transculturalism, Multiculturalism, Transhuman, Transhumanism, Posthuman, Posthumanism, Singularity, Artificial intelligence, Universal language, Super intelligence, New Media, Linguistics

Document Type

Thesis

Publication Date

2016

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