Semiotics of Void and Information Representation

The objective of this article is to present a semiotic analysis of void— which in this article is the spacio-temporal empty space existing in any representation—in order to consider the representation of quality and to show how this is essential in human representation yet difficult to process computationally. First, a summary of reference to void is presented through a comparison between Western and Eastern cultural approaches to void. A semiotic model of void is then developed by applying both Saussurian and Peircian frameworks and explaining how the two frameworks become equivalent when applied to void, as well as how void is essentially a structural entity. After analysis of various semiotic kinds of void, the article examines the difficulty of computational handling of void and suggests possible paths towards a more human-oriented form of information representation.