Art as Research in Semiotic Technology : The Case of David Hockney’s Digital Art

Many modern artists engage in semiotic research. They ask the same questions semioticians ask, even if they answer them in the form of artworks, rather than academic papers – questions such as: What kinds of meanings can be made with specific semiotic modes and media, 1 and how? How can semiotic modes and media be combined into multimodal wholes? How can the reach of semiotic modes and media be extended and how can new semiotic modes and media be developed? What are the semiotic affordances 2 of relevant technologies, whether technologies of the hand, recording technologies such as photography and tape recording, or the new synthesizing technologies?