Speculative Semiotics

Abstract

This paper introduces the notion of speculative semiotics as a scientific project within the larger umbrella of speculative studies. The paper first provides a brief account of the projects of “nuclear semiotics” that investigated how to communicate across long periods of time. These efforts are then connected to the traditions of speculative design and design fiction, whose roots can be traced back to situationism and to Italian radical design. The synergy between semiotics and speculation is articulated around four main dimensions: communication with the future, communicating in the future, semiotics as a tool for speculation and speculation as an object of semiotics. To solidify its proposal, the paper presents a small semiotic speculation related to machine learning and image generation and an overview of the papers presented in this special issue. The conclusions reiterate the potential of this approach and outline a simple roadmap for the development of speculative semiotics.