“David Byrne really does love PowerPoint”: art as research on semiotics and semiotic technology

Abstract

This article presents a reading of David Byrne's Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information, an art work created with MicroSoft's presentation software PowerPoint, as an instance of creative research on semiotics and semiotic technology. It reveals commonalities and differences between Byrne's ideas about PowerPoint and related ideas from linguistics and semiotics, and is intended as a contribution to research on PowerPoint, and on semiotic technologies generally, as well as to efforts aimed at developing criteria for evaluating art as research on semiotics.

Keywords:

• art practice as research
• semiotic technology
• PowerPoint
• software studies
• global corporate culture

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank David Byrne for granting permission to reproduce pages and video snapshots from Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information in this article.

The paper is part of a larger project, “Towards a Social Theory of Semiotic Technology: Exploring PowerPoint's Design and its Use in Higher Education and Corporate Settings”, which is supported through an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant.

Notes

1. Byrne (2003a) has no page numbering.