THIS YEAR'S EXPLORATORIO

,The 2022 Exploratorio “The Signified” opens creative windows into the dual worlds of meaning making and authenticity. N.E.O. artists will grapple with the influence of signs and their interpretation on arts, culture, and society, and craft musical responses that inspire vocal artistry to illuminate life experience.

“The Signified” as a term comes from the scientific study of semiotics. Semiotics is a broad field, but for our purposes we will focus on semiotics’ capacity to uncover how people create often hidden meaning through the use of signs and symbols. Semiotics is traditionally organized in a triadic manner, for example:

1. A sign
2. A signifier
3. The signified

A sign is a symbol that holds space for an object or experience (e.g. the word “chair”, its collection of letters as a symbol for something). A signifier is the interpretation of that sign that people apply to the object/experience that it represents (e.g. a thing that we sit in, a safe place, something stable, comfortable, etc). The signified is the object/experience itself (e.g. the chair itself as it exists without our labeling/interpreting it).  Semiotics engages with codes, systems, and questions of meaning and authenticity, all of which have become important cultural conversations recently. That codes, systems, and meaning can easily become confused and confrontational invites the creative presence of artists to bring light and curiosity to guide others toward understanding. 

​Join us to discover and define the experience of vocal music, and be the creators of new signs and symbols that will influence the future of voicing. 

SAMPLE SCHEDULE