According to Pierce, a sign is anything that is determined by something else, called its Object. The interpretant is what recognizes the sign and is affected by it. The importance of these three structure lies in its interconnectivity –the triad forms a triangle in which the object determines the sign, and the sign determines the effect on the interpretant, and so on and so forth.
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| Ha! Lunchtime! |
To dissect this concept further, the sign must contain a signifying element. Strictly speaking, it is the signifying element in a sign that do the job of signifying – not the sign as a whole. For example, if a whole in the apple that shows us that a squirrels has bitten into it, it is not the size of the hole that shows us that it is caused by a squirrel, neither is its depth. It is, however, the teeth mark which we can see that might tell us that the animal which did this is a squirrel. Therefore, the teeth-mark is the signifier.
Now, to distillate Pierce’s work to its essential, he proposes that everything we experience in this world is a sign – including to, most obviously, the architectural environment. One such environment is Plearn Wan ‘Market’ in Huahin, Thaiand. The name itself signifies what is inside – “Plearn”, meaning to relax so that one is lost in time, and “Waan”, derived from the Thai word meaning ‘yesterday’. The two combined means a place where people can relax in an environment of the old times. However, upon a careful dissection, one can see that these signs that made up the environment only contains some essential signifying element that converts what would otherwise be a flamboyant artificial world into one where the visitors actually believe that they really are immersed in the old atmosphere.
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| Can you imagine such setup in real life? |
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| [Top-right] Plearn Waan Sign |
Upon entry, one can see a huge sign hanging overhead spelling out its name. The font, however, is where the vintage-ness really sets in – a rigid handwriting style with small alphabetical ‘heads’ (the part where the alphabet curves to make a complete circle)conveys the feeling of traditional formality. Though the feeling of traditional formality that is elicited in the interpretant might be accurate in conveying what the old times might be like, the graphical interpretation, sadly, isn’t, as most proper writing in old times would be done in a beautiful cursive style. Looking around, the façade (both inside and outside the complex) is seen to be made up of multi-coloured wood panels that is arranged somewhat, similar to the old times. However, this style is seen as being those of pop-vintage, where most of the time, the colour of the material is the only thing- a single signifying element- that is a true manifest of past eras.
How the shops inside are set up is also unrealistic- as most of them are very extravagant, fully decorated with all sorts of posters and old keep-sakes that would, otherwise, not be present in such density in real old shops. Again, it is not the shop and its arrangement as a whole that points to the past, but rather, in the individual objects themselves. Lastly, the time of operation of this ‘market‘ in itself, is deceptive. Opening from 11 am to 12 pm, the night portion of its business time (approx. 7 to 12 pm) is not true to the workings of the old markets, as by 7 or 8 pm, most Thai market would have been closed down for the day already.
As have been shown, very little of this ‘Plearn Waan’ sign environment is really what it would have been in the past. It is the very little amount of signifying element that really holds up the illusion that so many people wants to go see and believe for themselves that they are actually in ‘Plearn Waan’. The same applies to the environment around us – that they really are just signs that we experience through the motions of our everyday lives
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