semiotic Semiotics (also called semiotic studies) is the systematic study of sign processes ( semiosis) and meaning making. Semiosis is any activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, where a sign is defined as anything that communicates something ...

analysis (the studies of signs or symbols), an open text is a text that allows multiple or mediated

interpretation Interpretation may refer to: Culture * Aesthetic interpretation, an explanation of the meaning of a work of art * Allegorical interpretation, an approach that assumes a text should not be interpreted literally * Dramatic Interpretation, an event ...

by the readers. In contrast, a closed text leads the reader to one intended interpretation. The concept of the open text comes from

Umberto Eco Umberto Eco (5 January 1932 – 19 February 2016) was an Italian medievalist, philosopher, semiotician, novelist, cultural critic, and political and social commentator. In English, he is best known for his popular 1980 novel ''The Name of th ...

's collection of essays ''The Role of the Reader'', but it is also derivative of

Roland Barthes Roland Gérard Barthes (; ; 12 November 1915 – 26 March 1980) was a French literary theorist, essayist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. His work engaged in the analysis of a variety of sign systems, mainly derived from Western pop ...

's distinction between 'readerly' ( lisible) and 'writerly' (scriptible) texts as set out in his 1968 essay, "

The Death of the Author "The Death of the Author" (French: ''La mort de l'auteur'') is a 1967 essay by the French literary critic and theorist Roland Barthes (1915–1980). Barthes's essay argues against traditional literary criticism's practice of relying on the inten ...

".Barthes, R., 1977, 'The Death of the Author' in Image-Music-Text, Fontana

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In this essay,

describes a special kind of musical works that can be organized and re-organized by the performers before they are played to the audience. He then applied this idea of "open works" to literary texts and other works of art. Every work of art can be read, according to Eco, in three distinct ways: the moral, the allegorical and the anagogical. Each is not only distinct but can be fully anticipated and directed by the author (or the artist) of the work. An example of this kind of reading is found in the stories by

Kafka Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It typi ...

, in which his symbolic actions cannot be read in one definitive way; each reading will end up with similar and multiple meanings. The reader will read a certain work differently every time, depending on his/her emotional state, physical state and political world view. We can find an example of this in plays written by

Brecht Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a p ...

, which are "open" in the same way that an argument between two people is open: both sides (the actors and the viewers) want and anticipate a solution at the end, but no solution ever comes, leaving us to wander to find meaning.

makes a distinction between these kind of works, which are "open" in their interpretation, to the musical works from the beginning, which are open in their structural sense. These kind of "openness" is not only for musical works, it might be any kind of artistic work (painting, poem, performance etc.) This kind of "openness" is derived from the science of the time, he says. When people believed in a

geocentric In astronomy, the geocentric model (also known as geocentrism, often exemplified specifically by the Ptolemaic system) is a superseded description of the Universe with Earth at the center. Under most geocentric models, the Sun, Moon, stars, an ...

world, they expected every work of art to have only one definitive interpretation, but as people found out about the universe and the magnitude of stars in the sky and their hierarchy, they began to expect more ideas to be interpreted from every work. He continues by comparing open works to

Quantum mechanics Quantum mechanics is a fundamental theory in physics that provides a description of the physical properties of nature at the scale of atoms and subatomic particles. It is the foundation of all quantum physics including quantum chemistry, ...

, and he arrives at the conclusion that open works are more like

Einstein Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born Theoretical physics, theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for d ...

's idea of the universe, which is governed by precise laws but seems random at first. The artist in those open works arranges the work carefully so it could be re-organized by another but still keep the original voice or intent of the artist. Every work can be read in infinite ways, depending on an individual's state of mind and perspective, and it also depends on a third person intervention, either the players of the orchestra or the curator at the museum. Eco understand the difficulties with this perspective, but he ends by saying that this article, as all works, is still a "work in movement", an "open work" and still a "work in progress".

References

*https://web.archive.org/web/20080908003307/http://etd.lib.fsu.edu/theses/available/etd-06092006-044853/ *http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=+%22open+text%22&as_subj=soc

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