Semiotics in General

Instead of a dictionary definition, semiotics is defined by a more "reliable" source in wikipedia.com's article, from the subject line:

"Semiotics, semiotic studies, or semiology is the study of sign processes (semiosis), or signification and communication, signs and symbols, both individually and grouped into sign systems. It includes the study of how meaning is constructed and understood."

This defintion, strongly defined by its syntactical structure, in relation to the webpage, is of course proven through a reference, with its home towards the bottom of the page. A few names include the actual dictionary definition from freedictionary.com, another wikidictionary definition, and two papers by C.S. Pierce. Further down, the webpage's format allows for further reading within the confines of it's knowledge, with more references, proving its worth further. So wikipedia.com has a method for spreading a form of democratically congregational knowledge to the webworld;therefore, woman in the kitchen must be able to communicate through syntatics as well?

For this question to be justified, further research must be done. In Martha Rosler's Semiotics of the Kitchen, we see at first that the symbolic usage of A to Z kitchen utensils as the main form of language, as no other collection of nouns were linked to violent physical depictions of their use. The A-Z format immediately put a limit on what the viewer was going to be seeing in the film. So, when discussing this obviously deadpan performance, is this film a deadpan presentation of symbols used by woman to understand how a kitchen works? Or, more likely that the filmmaker has some determination to show her interpretation of life, but only in the kitchen.

Martha Rosler's, or rather her character's, painstaking kitchen performance might be only a glimpse into the actual life of her character. Maybe she has similiar feelings towards a bathroom, digging holes, or prison. In contrast, maybe the violent stabs of the fork, knife and pan make it hard to distinguish boredom with crazed anger, or a dire sense of order when using kitchen utensils. More likely, Rosler has attempted to entertain us with an oddity of deadpan mixed with something some people consider an art form. Unfortunately, her lack of verbal definition in favor of physical movement, may have lessened the strength of the symbolic display.

Semiotics of the Kitchen uses a 4:3 space, from a kitchen, and turns it into a cooking show formatted instructional video for every letter associated with the video's space. As well as comedic play with kitchen utensils, including a meat tenderizer bash, it allows for a new way of looking at the kitchen, as well as art.