Stuart Hall_Encoding and Decoding
Almost all of the examples which Hall utilizes within the structure of his argument to articulate his position regarding encoding and decoding (the communicative process) refer to the televisual’. Hall writes,
The televisual sign is…itself constituted by the combination of two types of discourse, visual and aural. Moreover, it is an iconic sign because it possesses some of the properties of the thing represented… Since the visual discourse translates a three-dimensional world into two dimensional planes, it cannot, of course, be the referent or concept it signifies.
If we are to appropriate this concept, and reapply it with reference to architectural or architectonic signification, what types of discourse are operating, in combination, to construct this type of signification? Can architecture be thought of as an Iconic sign, as the televisual sign is? Should architecture be concerned with ‘signification’ and the role of ‘architecture as sign’ at all? Seemingly, architectural discourse does not “translate a three-dimensional world into two dimensional planes” as visual discourse does so, is architecture then to be understood as the concept it signifies; a more direct form of reference to the discourse it exists within and in part represents? Is architectural representation less ‘arbitrary’ than, say, verbal or certain visual forms of signification?
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