Unruly Ecologies: Biodiversity and Art

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academia, aesthetics, art, biodiversity, conference, conservation, ecology

CALL FOR CONTEMPORARY ARTWORKS

Later on this month, from November 26-28, University of Western Australia’s Center of Excellence in Biological Arts, otherwise known as SymbioticA, is hosting a symposium to explore the diversity of life “through critical investigations in art, ecology, and action.” More about the symposium includes:

Call for Presentations: Zoosemiotics and Animal Representations

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animal communication studies, animal experience, animal relationships, animal representations, animal signals, animal subjects, biosemiotics, call for presentations, conference, human-animal studies, meaning, phenomenology, semiotic processes, sign studies, signs, Thomas A. Sebeok, University of Tartu, zoosemiotics

Tartu University Library, Struve 1

[Animals] never enter into relationships with neutral objects. Through every relationship the neutral object is transformed into a meaning-carrier, the meaning of which is imprinted upon it by a subject.

–Jakob von Uexküll Theory of Meaning

Zoosemiotics is an interdisciplinary research program introduced by an American semiotician Thomas A. Sebeok in the 1960s with the aim to merge semiotics and ethology and to launch semiotic studies of animal communication. The foundational idea in zoosemiotics is that relations between animals and their environment as well as between different individuals are not purely physical, but are to a large extent sign-mediated. This gives a significant role to the animal subjects, and recognizes more as well as higher forms of complexity in animals than previously assumed. A lot has happened since the concept of zoosemiotics was proposed: the rise of biosemiotics and cognitive ethology are two among the many important developments in the field of animal communication studies.