Abstract
This paper examines how the aesthetics of design is being redefined by the embodiment of intelligent and interactive technologies within the framework of cognitive semiotics. Interpretation—understood as semiosis—is conceived as the fundamental process of meaning-making, through which user and artifact dynamically co-produce sense. Two modes of semiosis are distinguished: motor interpretation, grounded in the embodied incorporation of objects as extensions of the body, and cognitive interpretation, based on inferential and cooperative meaning construction. In traditional design, aesthetics either supports functional embodiment or serves decorative representation. In AI-equipped artifacts, however, function becomes distal, executed at a cognitive distance. Consequently, affordance shifts from enabling physical use to enabling cognitive interpretation, producing a new aesthetic condition based on the user’s interpretive participation. Drawing on Umberto Eco’s theory of interpretive cooperation, the paper argues that design aesthetics is being redefined as a process of cognitive cooperation between artifact and interpreter.
Keywords
cognitive semiotics; interpretive cooperation; embodied cognition; design aesthetics; intelligent objects
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.696
Citation
Caggiano, S. (2026) Meaning at a Distance: Redefining Aesthetics in the Age of Intelligent Objects, in Simeone, L., Gray, C. M., Verhoeven, A., de Götzen, A., Bakırlıoğlu, Y., Zohar, H., Stead, M., and Buwert, P. (eds.), DRS2026: Edinburgh, 8–12 June, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.696
Creative Commons License
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Included in
Meaning at a Distance: Redefining Aesthetics in the Age of Intelligent Objects
This paper examines how the aesthetics of design is being redefined by the embodiment of intelligent and interactive technologies within the framework of cognitive semiotics. Interpretation—understood as semiosis—is conceived as the fundamental process of meaning-making, through which user and artifact dynamically co-produce sense. Two modes of semiosis are distinguished: motor interpretation, grounded in the embodied incorporation of objects as extensions of the body, and cognitive interpretation, based on inferential and cooperative meaning construction. In traditional design, aesthetics either supports functional embodiment or serves decorative representation. In AI-equipped artifacts, however, function becomes distal, executed at a cognitive distance. Consequently, affordance shifts from enabling physical use to enabling cognitive interpretation, producing a new aesthetic condition based on the user’s interpretive participation. Drawing on Umberto Eco’s theory of interpretive cooperation, the paper argues that design aesthetics is being redefined as a process of cognitive cooperation between artifact and interpreter.