In this seminar presented on a link from Columba, our PhD in cognitive semiotics (2022), Juan Mendoza-Collazos will present his most recent work on design, agency and the roll of sketching. All are warmly welcome to H402, or to the zoom link. The talk will start at 15:15, and last about an hour, followed by discussion.

Visual thinking is a systematic way to produce knowledge in design by means of mental imagery, spatial reasoning, and the use of an array of visual representations. Pictorial representations such as sketches are crucial for the activity of designing at the early stage of the creative process. Designers see more information in sketches than was actually drawn. The ability to see more information than is sketched out can be seen as an enhanced visual capacity of human agency. Enhanced agency is the prosthetic incorporation of artifacts to improve the original agentive capacities. The incorporation of artifacts to draw raises some fundamental questions: Is the pencil an extension of the mind? Can we think with our hands? What agentive capacities are increased with the use of the pencil? What is the representational status of sketching? The presentation is structured around these key questions to spark some reflections and discussion on crucial issues for cognitive semiotics.

Further reading: https://doi.org/10.1515/cogsem-2024-2004