Culture of Seduction [the seduction of culture], not necessarily from a sexual perspective, but as a

mechanism of attraction and appeal has often been the case in many communication strategies

and approaches of mass and popular culture. In a ‘seduced’ post‐economic crisis environment, the

Semiotic aspects and power of ‘seduction’ within visual communication, persuading the viewer to

act by positive, negative or perhaps manipulated and directed means, open up a space where

extremes become apparent and occasionally pose ethical problems.

According to Hegarty (2004), «[f]or Baudrillard, seduction stands for play, the play of appearances

which has always prevented the existence of a transparent reality, which would be free from the

traps of illusion, while allowing simulation of truth to operate…seduction implies sexuality, but

eroticism and play have given way to visibility and omnipresence, everything is now sexualized, [in

Baudrillard’s words] ‘register[ing] an explicit demand for seduction, but a soft seduction, whose

weakened condition has become synonymous with so much else in this society‐the ambience, the

manipulation, the persuasion, the gratification, the strategies of desire’.

From the avant‐garde era to our contemporary period, there is a spectrum of activity where artists

and visual designers are obliged to live and create in a situation of great ambivalence. Seduction

has historic and increasing agency in visual communication—the requirement to entice/persuade

viewers is ever more powerful in difficult economic times, in an increasingly hyper‐real world—and

designers become ever more complicit in its strategies.

The purpose of this conference is to explore from a semiotic perspective how do verbal

(text/typography), non‐verbal (images), sound and motion signs work in synergy to construct

‘seductive’ messages in visual communication, as well as raising questions about who are the

seducers, and who are the seduced.