Double Coding

David Peros-Bonnot

Right from the first encounter with David Peros-Bonnot's work (the video tape "KUGEL PROGRAM", one of the two works included in the last year's Zagreb Salon), partly due to the enclosed "instructions for use", I have noticed his sophisticated sense for semiotic games.

According to his own statement, in this charming "do it yourself" assemblage of attractions, he wanted "to confront some symbols/objects" - as is obvious from the wok's title - of round shape. Going back into an renewed examination of this cleverly thought out work, after getting acquainted with this Bonnot's ambiental achievement in the Student's Gallery Centre, it's even more evident that the field of semiotic inventions is one of the most interesting aspects of his work. If we avail ourselves of the classification of signs into icons, indexes and symbols, which was proposed from one of the founders of semiotics and linguistics Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), it's not hard to find in "KUGEL PROGRAM" examples of all three kinds of signs and inter-relations between significant and signified. The globe is the icon of Earth, the clock's face is the index of passing of Time and Pantheon is an symbol of religion and architecture. This are - I repeat - some of Bonnot's textual explanations with "KUGEL PROGRAM".

His second work on the 28th Zagreb's Salon "Mood Machine Pilot "- which is also now integrated in the sacralized media space of Student's Gallery Centre - could be defined, in the context of the Peirce's category apparatus, as a marginal limit between a simple image and a diagram. According to Peirce, in the simple image the significant carries "simple characteristics" of the signified while in the diagram the similarity between significant and signified exists "only in the relationship between compounding parts".

A very similar procedure has been used for the design of TV screens on "The Totem" which represents the most striking and crucial part of this ambient. With the progression of three diagrams (the first with EKG display, the second with radar display and the third with a video game) which represents not only three spheres of human activities (medicine, orientation in space, electronic entertainnent) but also the range from basic vital functions till mental combinations, various possibilities are proposed for the use of screens/monitors which in everyday life are most often subordinated to the passive watchng of TV programs, illustrated by the test signal on the highest screen. Besides this semiotic "double coding", the artist makes use of the contradictions between a careful handmade and the customary serial, industrial production of standard monitors which even more emphasizes the harmony between thought and execution.

The recognizability of the chosen elements of the chosen elements, whether they are artefacts of electronic mass communications or ready made model of Zagreb's Modern Gallery, only is the starting point of semiotic permutations which involve us in complex analysis of the meaning of everyday TV watching rituals by which the virtually inexhaustible possibilities of electronic image are confronted of the one dimensional transfer of reality. Bonnout's television totem screens are warning us that the content of the "Message" depends heavily on the quality of the "medium" who is receiving and decoding it. (Darko Glavan)