language as a linear structure
The comparison of text and picture across cultures has to ask for fundamental schemata, their stability/instability and the levels of content filling for these schemata. From this basis a comparison of cultural variants of the media text (spoken/written) and picture/sculpture becomes possible. It is clear that the linear character of texts poses different problems than the two-dimensional organization of pictures. Both can only be compared if a linear reading of pictures is assumed; but even if a linear reading exists, its trajectory is underdetermined. The paper considers a series of fundamental questions related to the dimensionality of the semiotic object:
• The complexity of sign structures related to their dimensionality.
• The force-fields of a void sign space (in one or two dimensions).
• The reduction of complexity and the coding of ‘lost’ information.