Skip to content
Thesis Info
- LABS ID
- 00643
- Thesis Title
- "A Theoretical Model for the Design of a Transcultural Visual Communication System in a Posthuman Condition"
- Author
- Haytham Nawar
- E-mail
- haytham.nawar AT aucegypt.edu
- 2nd Author
- 3rd Author
- Degree
- DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
- Year
- 2016
- Number of Pages
- 267
- University
- Plymouth University
- Thesis Supervisor
- Roy Ascott
- Supervisor e-mail
- roy.ascott AT btinternet.com
- Other Supervisor(s)
- Mike Phillips
- Language(s) of Thesis
- English
- Department / Discipline
- School of Art and Media, Faculty of Arts
- Copyright Ownership
- Haytham Nawar and Plymouth University
- Languages Familiar to Author
- Arabic, English and French
- URL where full thesis can be found
- pearl.plymouth.ac.uk/handle/10026.1/6757
- Keywords
- linguistics, writing systems, communication theory, visual communication, pictographs, semiotic theories, cultural studies, transculturalism, multiculturalism, transhuman, transhumanism, posthuman, posthumanism, singularity, artificial intelligence, unive
- Abstract: 200-500 words
- 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.