Who is the audience of road signs?

This is something that I have been considering lately, in reference to audience and audiencing of the road sign (Rose, 2013). The natural audience for road sign is, unsurprisingly, people using the roads. This audience intentionally engage with the road signs daily. The road signs engage us with their use of our shared public language (Wittgenstein, 2007) falling into the category of conversational texts, instructing the audience on how to use the roads (Eco, 1979). Going forward I will also need to consider the audience of my copies too.

As I go through this process, I am trying to draw on comparisons between the two contexts for the road signs; real life and the art world. In their current locations the signs are specifically fitting and, in a context, allowing it to resonate. gives the audience immediate access to the work (Stiles and Selz, 2012, p.712). This will change once repositioned. Artists strive for immediacy to be ‘in the moment’ and road signs exist in that state naturally (Hayward, 2004).

Since starting The Road Sign Collection one of two things has happened; there has been a sudden rise in the need for road signs in my local area, or, I have awakened my attention to their existence. As I cannot now walk down a street without feeling absolutely bombarded by them. It is quite distracting. However, I do not feel fluent in this new language, so I investigated this system of signs to find out more about the basic rules.

Road Sign Shapes

Circular road signs -> give orders

Triangular road signs -> warn.

Rectangular road signs -> signs inform

(RAC, 2018)

Road Sign Colours

Black and white -> regulations (i.e., speed limits)

Yellow -> warning
Green -> guide signs

Blue -> guide signs

Orange -> construction occurring

Brown -> parks and recreation

(Top Diver, 2017)

Some signs are very to the point and I appreciate then for that! However, I find myself with odds with others, for example I learnt that this sign means ‘no stopping’ – who knew?! (This is of course a rhetorical question, I’m sure many of you did know).

Some signs irk me more than others, particularly the sign below. The mix if text and image annoy me. If you only look at the image you do not get the full message and likewise, if you only read the text, the sign also falls short. It appears that my own confusion is mirrored by most intended uses, with research showing that only 21% of people surveyed could correctly identify the meaning of the sign (Allen, 2019). 

The audience of the road sign is something that I want to address within my art practice. Firstly, I want to change who the audience of the road sign is, by repositioning them into an art context. My intention being that by positioning them away from the road they will be looked at by either; the same audience in a new way, a new audience in a way that differs to their original intention.

The next step in this process is to step away from the original features of the found road signs. By rendering the signs in tape, rather than creating copies in mental, the signs become cheap, disposable and physically weak. This uncrafted aesthetic communicates to the audience something about my art practice and positions me, as one of them, rather than as an authority figure (Eco, 1989). The font used on the original road signs will slowly be replaced with my own, ACComplete4, to further that feeling.

References

Allen, J. (2019) Survey reveals the road signs most motorists don't understand. [online] Available at: https://www.driving.co.uk/news/survey-reveals-road-signs-motorists-dont-understand/. [accessed 21/11/19].

Eco, U. (1979) Role of the Reader Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts (Advances in Semiotics). Indiana University Press; Midland Book Ed edition.

Eco, U. (1989) The Open Work. Harvard University Press.

Hayward, K. (2004) City Limits: Crime, Consumer Culture and the Urban Experience. Routledge-Cavendish.

RAC. (2018) The Highway Code - Common UK road signs and what they mean. [online] Available at: https://www.rac.co.uk/drive/advice/learning-to-drive/the-highway-code-uk-road-signs-and-meanings/. [accessed 21/11/19].

Rose, G. (2013) Visual Methodologies. Sage Publications Ltd; 3 editions. 

Stiles, K. and Selz, P. (2012) Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists. University of California Press.

Top Driver. (2017) Black, Yellow, Green, Blue, Orange, Brown: Know What Each Type of Road Sign Means. [online] Avalable at: https://www.topdriver.com/education-blog/know-type-road-sign-means/. [accessed 21/11/19].

Wittgenstein, L. (2007) Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief. ed. Cyril Barrett. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

The Road Sign Collection: Types of sign

As I start to grow the Road Sign Collection. One of the first things that has started to become apparent is that there are different types of opposing sign categories within the sign collection.

Temporary / Permanent

Image / Text / Image and Text

Black and White / Colour

Triangle / Circle / Square / Rectangle

As I move forward, I feel that I need to decide on which category I am most engaged with and want to develop further. It is the contrasting temporary / permanent which draws me in the most, as within my art practice I usually work with the temporary.

I am partly interested in temporary art as my practice is very much concerned with creating work which exists for a limited time (Owens, 1998). This also allows me to explore the absence of the art once it has been uninstalled (Doherty, 2015). I feel that there is a real-life parallel with temporary road signs once they are removed from the site. Once removed, is the feeling of absence felt here too? Due to this they also carry a feeling of now-ness (Hayward, 2004). They are in this site right now, for a very time specific reason. Due to the context of the sign and the context the site, the sign would no longer make sense if it existed longer than necessary.

The permanent signs lose these characteristics, as the intention of them is to stay in place and due to this they start to become less interesting to me. However, I also have an interest in the everyday and placing attention onto thing which are usually overlooked. The permanent signs are less obvious than the temporary ones and so this brings me back to them. There is also more variety in the signs which fall into the permanent category, possibly giving more scope for development.

I am also intrigued by, as mentioned in my previous blog, in the notion of multiples as originals (Judovitz, 1998) and this is something that I am more able to explore with the permanent signs.

With both sign categories there is a direct relationship between themselves and their context, the site of the signs gives the reader immediate access to them (Stiles and Selz, 2012, p.712) as all road signs draw on our shared public language (Wittgenstein in Kripke, 1984). The use of context helps the audience to understand the text, in a real-life situation this is particularly important with road signs as they are commenting on social contracts that we follow (Rousseau, 1998).

While I am still unable to decide which category to peruse, I know that I want to challenge this aspect of the signs by putting them into new sites. This will allow the text to have a dialogical relationship with new sites (Owens, 1998).

The other categories are less important in that I do not have control over them, in that I am taking them as I find them.

References 

Doherty, C. (2015) Public Art (Now): Out of Time, Out of Place. London: ART/BOOKS.

Hayward, K. (2004) City Limits: Crime, Consumer Culture and the Urban Experience. Routledge-Cavendish

Judovitz, D. (1998) Unpacking Duchamp: Art in Transit. University of California Press

Kripke, S. (1984) Wittgenstein Rules and Private Language. John Wiley & Sons; New Ed edition.

Owens, C. (1998) The Allegorical Impulse: Towards a Theory of Postmodernism. New York: Oxford Press.

Rousseau, J. J. (1998) The Social Contract. Wordsworth Editions.