ABSTRACT
The beating heart of an ultrasound foetus selling a Volvo car (Taylor 1993), a patient caught at the moment of his death to promote Benetton clothes (Falk 1997); long ‘dead’, immortalised celebrities seemingly resurrected to sell the latest DM boots (Pfanner 2007). Sensational signs: and it is not least through advertisements that we have become well used to the representational field opening up perception and curiosity to the startling, as well as the seductive and the artful. Photography, telephony, microscopy, radio, x-ray, film, TV, the Internet; myriad devices for image and sound reproduction, as well as, most lately, many highly mobile digital media platforms. All of these contribute to an environment where irrefutably both manufacture and the reception of signification lie at the heart of the everyday: representation, action and experience.
