Iconic and symbolic representation in virtual worlds

The development of information technology over the last couple of decades has carried with it a shift from largely textual representation to increasingly detailed graphical and multimodal representations. The narratives of graphics and gaming industries often reflect a wish to recreate reality or realistic alternative realities. This wish is also very obvious in many high-end humanities projects in for instance history and archeology. In this paper a range of virtual environments will be analyzed along a continuum ranging from iconic to symbolic representation. It will be argued that in many cases a lower level of realism is functionally and esthetically advantageous. Evidence will be drawn from visual art research, medical use of information technology, reception studies, cartoons, the simulation industry, and from research on video conferencing. A theoretical discussion of realism, iconicity and symbolism will provide a foundation for analyzing two case studies. The first case study is a contrastive analysis of two computer games; one old-type text adventure game and one modern "realistic" game. The second case study is concerned with an educational project where third-term students of English construct a graphical virtual world instead of writing a traditional textual degree paper. Finally, a more general discussion of the role of non-textual representation in the humanities will be undertaken.

The theoretical discussion will draw on research in several relevant fields: a) cognitive science and cognitive linguistics (Deacon 1997 and Lakoff and Johnson 1999), b) reception studies and literacy research (Langer 1995, Kress 2003), c) philosophy and cultural studies (Baudrillard 1994, Eco 1996, Peirce 1958), and d) new media studies (Laurel 1991, McCloud 1994, Montford 2003, Schmitz 2001). From this multidisciplinary platform and from practical experience (e.g. MacEachren et. al 1999) a model for describing virtual environments in terms of iconic-symbolic will be suggested. An important basis is Peirce's discussion of iconic, symbolic and indexical signs. The model will partly be presented in the form of a continuum ranging from iconic to symbolic representation. The continuum will be populated with a number of virtual environments (text adventure games, MUDs, graphical virtual worlds, modern computer games, video conferencing etc.). These will be briefly discussed and related to concepts such as interpretation, presence and level of detail.

The model will be further tested in two case studies. In case study number 1, we will look at two computer games from different eras: Spellbreaker (a text adventure game from 1980s) and The Black Mirror (a graphic adventure game from 2003). These will be analyzed in terms of symbolism-iconicity, interpretative freedom, human-computer interaction and presence. In the second case study, we will consider an educational project where students populate a graphical environment and create their own representations of themes to do with linguistics, literature and cultural studies. Examples of themes used include the city, monstrosity and recreating reality. The environment used (ActiveWorlds) allow for a graphical representation which is not photo-realistic but very useful for creative work where recreating reality is not the ultimate goal. This ties in with Brenda Laurel's idea about the importance of ambiguity. She says that "ambiguity and sensory incompleteness are key elements in the kind of deep participation we desire with a work of art."

In conclusion, a recent prototype project on the use of computer-supported visualization in the humanities will be briefly described. Here the literature and some relevant projects have been reviewed. In a study of more than 100 recent humanities Ph.D. theses, the use of visualization has been investigated and classified. It will be argued that it is important that the humanities bring in more non-textual representation into their work and that the symbolic-iconic continuum might be a good starting point for such a development, or at least for an engaging discussion.

Bibliography

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