The signe work

Abstract

the notions of “aesthetics of frustration” and meta-reading I use to explain the paradoxical situations in which sometimes stays the reader of a work of digital literature are misunderstood they are understood as a denial of reading. In fact, they are useful tools to describe the location these works give to the addressed person of the work. They notably can explain the split of the traditional activity of reading in several components that are performed by different roles of the addressed person. The subject addressed by the work becomes, in digital literature, a “kaleidoscope reader”. So, it is necessary to describe in semiotic terms the nature of the sign that makes, at reception, this splitting of interpretative functions. This article introduces for this purpose the concept of “work sign”. The work acts as a sign at two levels: the classical level of the media and the other of the technical behavior of the situation of communication. The paper mentions exemples of such a sign in other artistic productions, for instance in some Andy Warhol’s works. It describes after this the functioning of this sign in different works of French works that are inscribed in the aesthetics of frustration.